410 Linguistik
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Using Ultan's theory of descriptivity grading as a starting point, I will attempt to capture this differential utility in terms of [...] criteria of literalness, explicitness and syntactic complexity. I will first briefly present his System and investigate some generalizations which he has proposed on the basis of his study of body part terminologies in numerous languages. I will apply his theory to nouns in this and four other semantic domains, in three North American Indian languages. I will test his generalizations and propose some new ones. I will then present an alternative system of descriptivity grading and compare the results of its application with those of Ultan's system. In the final section I will suggest another methodology for quantification. An appendix at the end of the paper lists all of the descriptive lexical items mentioned, graded according to both systems.
The basic idea I want to develop and to substantiate in this paper consists in replacing – where necessary – the traditional concept of linguistic category or linguistic relation understood as 'things', as reified hypostases, by the more dynamic concept of dimension. A dimension of language structure is not coterminous with one single category or relation but, instead, accommodates several of them. It corresponds to certain well circumscribed purposive functions of linguistic activity as well as to certain definite principles and techniques for satisfying these functions. The true universals of language are represented by these dimensions, principles, and techniques which constitute the true basis for non-historical inter-language comparison. The categories and relations used in grammar are condensations – hypostases as it were – of such dimensions, principles, and techniques. Elsewhere I have outlined the theory which I want to test here in a case study.
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.
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.
In diesem Arbeitspapier möchte ich versuchen, zwei wesentliche Ergebnisse des Sprachkontakts zwischen Englisch und Yoruba in Nigeria zu beschreiben. Erstens sollen die daraus resultierenden Codes, die der gesamtgesellschaftlichen Kommunikation in verschiedenen sozialen Domänen dienen, dargestellt und illustriert werden. Zweitens soll an Hand eines Vergleichs zwischen Entlehnungsvorgängen in anderen Sprachen (hauptsächlich indoeuropäischen) und in der Yoruba-Sprache ein Modell für die Klassifizierung des lexikalischen Lehnguts vorgestellt werden.
Die vorliegende Arbeit ist einem Phänomen gewidmet, das in den letzten Jahren eine gewisse Rolle gespielt hat bei dem Versuch, die Anwendbarkeit des Modells der generativen Transformationsgrammatik an einer möglichst großen Anzahl unterschiedlicher Sprachen und Phänomene zu erproben. Es gehört in den umfassenderen Phänomenbereich der Koordination bzw. der Koordinationsreduktion und wird in der einschlägigen Literatur als "Gapping" bezeichnet. [...] Wir wollen koordinierte Strukturen, die ein für alle Konjunkte identisches Verb nur einmal repräsentieren, als "reduzierte Strukturen" bezeichnen, und zwar als "vorwärts"- oder "rechtsreduzierte", wenn sie es ausschließlich im ersten Konjunkt repräsentieren und als "rückwärts" oder " linksreduzierte", wenn sie es ausschließlich im zweiten bzw. (da auch mehr als zwei Sätze koordiniert werden können) im letzten Konjunkt repräsentieren. Entsprechend nennen wir koordinierte Strukturen, die das Verb in beiden bzw. allen Konjunkten repräsentieren, "nicht-reduzierte" Strukturen. [...] Beispiele zeigen, daß es Sprachen gibt, die ausschließlich vorwärtsreduzierte Varianten gestatten und solche, die nur rückwärtsreduzierte Varianten gestatten. Daraus ergibt sich folgende Fragestellung: ( i ) Welche Sprachen gestatten welche reduzierten Varianten? ( ii ) Warum gestatten bestimmte Sprachen diese, andere Sprachen jene Varianten? Diese hier noch recht grob formulierte Fragestellung wird im Laufe der Untersuchung weiter verfeinert werden. Der Schwerpunkt wird auf der Frage nach dem Warum? liegen.