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In an earlier paper, I proposed a system for evaluating the relative descriptivity of lexical items in a consistent manner in terms of the interrelations of three metrics. The first of these, including five possible degrees of descriptivity, is based on the premise that the sum of the meaningful parts of a given form is or is not equal to the meaning of the whole. The second, also composed of five degrees, is based on paraphrase-term relations in which the logical quantifiers: all, some and no, are applied to the terms of the paraphrase in one test and to the meaningful parts of the term (linguistic form) in the reversibility test. Both tests are applied in the form of logical propositions. The third metric, with three degrees, deals with the relative explicitness of the meaningful parts of a given form: explicit, implicit or neither. […] This system was then tested in a pilot study involving the fairly limited and semantically homogeneous lexical domain of body-part terms in a specific language, Finnish. The purpose of the present paper is to subject comparable data from other languages to the same kind of analysis and compare the results in order to ascertain whether the generalizations arrived at with the Finnish data also hold for the other languages or, more specifically, which of these generalizations are more or less universal and which language or language-type specific? The additional languages to be examined here are: French, German, Ewe, Maasai and Swahili.
The first question under Consideration is whether it is possible to explicate the meaning of 'meaning' (in the sense of Carnap's 'meaning explication'). It is argued then that we have to distinguish just between meaning1 and meaning2: Meaning1 refers to the proper semantic meaning whereas meaning2 refers to a pragmatic meaning expressed by the form 'S means that p'. The statement follows that there is no possibility of giving an explication of meaning directly based on meaning1. Concerning meaning2, arguments are given which demonstrate the identity of meaning2 with material implication. An explication of meaning2 would show tight resemblances to Tarski's well- known truth-definition.
The language of the Cahuillas shows two systems of expressions referring to kinship, which could be termed, respectively, as labeling-relational and as descriptive-establishing. […] Descriptive terms show two properties: 1. They are analysable into constituent elements so as to recognize the connection between the term and the proposition. 2. They are distinguishable from the proposition: a. by a special formal element […], in Cahuilla the absolutive suffix. b. by a narrowing or specialization in the meaning. A term which is not descriptive, i.e. which is not connected with a proposition, I shall call "label", "1abeling": It does not say anything about the object but is assigned to it just as a label is attached to a thing […].
Studies of syntax in first language acquisition have so far concentrated on the propositional side of the sentence, i.e. on the occurrence and interplay of semantic roles like agent, benefactive, objective, etc. and their syntactic expression. The modality constituent, however, has received little attention in the study of child language. This may be due in part to the impetus more recent research in this field has received from studies of the acquisition of English, a language with poor verb morphology as compared to synthetic languages. The research to be presented in this paper is concerned with an early stage of the acquisition of Modern Greek as a first language, a language with a particularly rich verb morphology. Since modality, aspect, and tense are obligatorily marked on the main verb in Mod. Greek, this language offers an excellent opportunity for studying the development of these fundamental categories of verbal grammar at an earlier stage than in more analytic languages. [...] As this paper is concerned with the semantic categories of verbal grammar mentioned above as weIl as with their formal expression, only utterances containing a verb will be considered. For reasons of space we shall further limit ourselves to those utterances containing a main verb. Such utterances divide into two classes, modal and non-modal. [...] In spite of Calbert's claim (Calbert 1975) that there are no strictly non-modal expressions, affirmative and negative statements as well as questions not containing a modal verb will be considered as non-modal. As will be shown below, modal and non-modal expressions are formally differentiated at the stage of language acquisition studied.
In my Cahuilla Grammar (Seiler 1977:276-282) and in a subsequent paper (Seiler 1980:229-236) I have drawn attention to the fact that many kin terms in this language, especially those that have a corresponding reciprocal term in the ascending direction – like niece or nephew in relation to aunt – occur in two expressions of quite different morphological shape. The following remarks are intended to furnish an explanation of this apparent duplicity.
In this study I want to show, above all, that the linguistic expression of POSSESSION is not a given but represents a problem to be solved by the human mind. We must recognize from the outset that linguistic POSSESSION presupposes conceptual or notional POSSESSION, and I shall say more about the latter in Chapter 3. Certain varieties of linguistic structures in the particular languages are united by the fact that they serve the common purpose of expressing notional POS SESSION. But this cannot be their sole common denominator. How would we otherwise be able to recognize, to understand, to learn and to translate a particular linguistic structure as representing POSSESSION? There must be a properly linguistic common denominator, an invariant, that makes this possible. The invariant must be present both within a particular language and in cross-language comparison. What is the nature of such an invariant? As I intend to show, it consists in operational programs and functional principles corresponding to the purpose of expressing notional POSSESSION. The structures of possessivity which we find in the languages of the world represent the traces of these operations, and from the traces it becomes possible to reconstruct stepwise the operations and functions.
Inhärenz und Etablierung
(1981)
Die folgenden Überlegungen zum Problem der Inhärenz und Etablierung beziehen ihre wesentlichen Anregungen aus dem Aufsatz von H. Seiler "Zum Problem der sprachlichen Possessivität" (1972), wo eben dieses Problem eingebettet wird in den Rahmen von Inhärenz und Etablierung. […] Ziel der Untersuchung ist es, ausgehend von einer vorläufigen Definition der letztgenannten Begriffe […] und angelehnt an eine kasussemantische Methodik, Possessivität als ein sprachliches Phänomen zu beschreiben, das verstanden werden muß im Rahmen allgemeiner relationaler Erscheinungen: Inhärenz und Etablierung ist in meinem Verständnis immer Inhärenz und Etablierung semantischer Relationen, einem Lexem ist immer eine solche Relation (mehr oder weniger) inhärent, es wird stets zwischen Lexemen eine Relation etabliert. Damit ist auch eine Brücke zur Valenz, die man als Inhärenz im verbalen Bereich verstehen könnte, gegeben […]. Nach einer Klärung des Umfeldes wird die Inhärenz zunächst für das Deutsche und Türkische einer genaueren Untersuchung unterworfen, eine weitere Detailanalyse ist dem Nahuatl gewidmet. Untersuchungen zu weiteren Sprachen […] sollen das gewonnene Bild erweitern und modifizieren. Die Untersuchungen zur Etablierung können nur als allererste Ansätze gelten, wie die gesamte Arbeit lediglich den Anspruch stellt, den Bereich nicht etwa erschöpfend abzuhandeln, sondern nur die Richtung aufzuzeigen, in der mögliche Ergebnisse zu suchen sind.
Die vorliegende Untersuchung zu Verwandtschaft, Körperteilen und Besitz im Tamil möchten einen kleinen Beitrag zur Erforschung der Possessivität […] leisten. Die Arbeit ist in zwei Teile gegliedert, zunächst werden possessive Strukturen und Verwandtes im determinativen Bereich untersucht, danach werden relevante prädikative Strukturen betrachtet.
Possessive constructions are grammatical constructions which contain two nominals and express that the referent of one of these nominals belongs to the other. The kind of relationship denoted by possessive constructions is not only that of ownership (1), as the term "possessive" might suggest, but also that of kinship (2), bodypart relationship (3), part/whole relationship (4) and similar relationships [...]. The following investigation will start with possessive constructions on phrase level, i.e. possessive phrases, and then deal with possessive constructions on clause level.
The basic question is whether POSSESSOR and POSSESSUM are on the same level as the roles of VALENCE, two additional roles as it were. My research on POSSESSION has shown (Seiler 1981:7 ff.) that this is not the case, that there is a difference in principle between POSSESSION and VALENCE. However, there are multiple interactions between the two domains, and these interactions shall constitute the object of the following inquiry. It is hoped that this will contribute to a better understanding both of POSSESSION and of VALENCE.