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I shall use the precise term 'interlinear morphemic translation (IMT) to designate the object of this study. [...] An IMT is a translation of a text in a language L1 to a string of elements taken from L2 where, ideally, each morpheme of the L1 text is rendered by a morpheme of L2 or a configuration of symbols representing its meaning and where the sequence of the units of the translation corresponds to the sequence of the morphemes which they render. [...] An IMT is needed whenever it is essential that the reader grasp the grammatical structure of the L1 text but is presumed to be so unfamiliar with L1 that he will not be able to do so merely with the aid of a normal translation and the context in which the text is cited. [...] The primary aim of an IMT is to make the grammatical structure of the L1 text transparent. The textual fluency of the IMT by standards of the L2 grammar is a subordinate aim at best.
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.
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 paper "Thesen zum Universalienprojekt" (1976) I mention two complementary procedures for discovering language universals: 1. The investigation of the dimensions and principles whose existence is necessitated by the communicative function of language; 2. The development of a formal language in which all syntactic rules are explicitly formulated and in which all syntactic categories are defined by their relation to a minimally necessary number of syntactic categories. Since the first procedure is treated in many of the other papers of this volume, I wish to discuss the role of formal methods in the research of language universals. As an example I want to take the dimensions of determination and show how expressions denoting concepts are modified and turned into reference identifying expressions. There is a general end a specific motivation for the introduction of formal methods into linguistics. The general motivation is to make statements in linguistics as exact and verifiable as they are in the natural sciences. The specific motivation is to make the grammars of various languages comparable by describing them with the same form of rules. The form has to be flexible enough to describe the phenomena of any possible natural language. All natural languages have in common that they may potentially express any meaning. The flexibility of the form of grammatical rules may therefore be attained, if syntactic rules are not isolated from the semantic function they express and syntactic classes are not defined merely by the relative position of their elements in the sentence, but also by the communicative function their elements fulfill in their combination with elements of other classes.
Montague (1974) has shown that this flexibility may be attained by using the language of algebra combined with categorial grammar. Algebraic systems have been developed by mathematicians to model any systems whose operations are definable. Montague does not merely use the tools of mathematics for describing the features of language, but regards syntax, semantics and pragmatics as branches of mathematics. One of the advantages of this approach is that we may apply the laws developed by mathematicians to the systems constructed by linguists for the description and explanation of natural language.
One of the striking features in modern Newari noun phrases is the wide usage of a set of affixes found in combination with the various elements that may expand a noun into an endocentric construction. At first sight such affixation would appear as a linking device by which the subordinate constituents of a noun phrase are tied to their head noun. Closer investigation, however, reveals a more complex picture which I have attempted to outline in the following paragraphs. The results of this inspection lead to the conclusion that the pattern of affixation displayed in Newari mirrors the close interaction of two converse functional principles: both the syntagmatic function of nominal determination on the one hand and a paradigmatic function – the formation of certain types of lexicalized expressions in Newari – formally tie in with each other by the application of one common technique.
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 […].
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.
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 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.
These notes grew out of my preoccupation with writing a grammar of a particular language, Cahuilla, which is spoken in Southern California and belongs to the Uto-Aztecan family. [...] The Introduction to the Grammar as a whole – of which two sections are reproduced here in a modified version – tries to integrate the synoptic views of the different chapters into a series of comprehensive statements. The statements cluster around two topics: 1. A presentation of Cahuilla as a type of language. 2. Remarks on writing a grammar.