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"A team", definitely
(2004)
Using arguments based on the data on verb agreement (pronominalization) in Tibeto-Burman, LaPolla 1989 (see also LaPolla 1992) argues that Proto-Tibeto-Burman should be reconstructed as a language with no inflectional morphology. In that paper it is argued that the Proto-Tibeto- Burman system of grammatical relations1 was closer to the typical 'role-dominated' (Van Valin & Foley 1980) Burmese-Yipho system (epitomized by Lahu—see Matisoff 1973). That is, a system where there is no definable 'subject' or 'direct object'; a system where semantic and pragmatic principles govern the organization of discourse, not syntactic functions. In this paper we look at the nature of 'objects' in Tibeto-Burman languages, and here also find support for this view of Proto-Tibeto-Burman grammatical relations. From a survey of ninety-five reliable grammars or descriptions of languages in the Tibeto-Burman family, I found eleven languages with no nominal object marking, twenty languages with nominal morphology consistently marking the patient as object, regardless of clause type, and sixty-four languages with a type of marking where the patient in monotransitve clauses is often or always marked with the same postposition as the goal or beneficiary (dative) in ditransitve clauses. This type of marking is discussed in Dryer 1986 as Primary Object marking. I argue that this type of marking in the Tibeto-Burman languages reflects the semantically based nature of grammatical relations in Proto-Tibeto-Burman.
"Back to basics" : a cognitive analysis of conversion de-adjectival nominalisation in English
(2003)
'Enough'-/'too'-constructions (E/T constructions) have an implicative reading: e.g., "Mary was clever enough to leave early yesterday" entails Mary left early yesterday. I argue that this implicative reading is not due to the lexical semantics proper of 'enough'/'too', but due to its bi-clausal structure (e.g., the above-mentioned example is analyzed as "Mary left early yesterday because she was clever enough"). I analyze 'enough' and 'too' simply as degree modifiers that involve a comparison: 'enough' means reaching the lower bound of an interval, while 'too' means exceeding the upper bound of an interval. Then inspired by Schulz (2011), Baglini and Francez (2015), and Nadathur (2016), I relate the semantics of E/T constructions to causal dependence: due to some sufficiency/excess, the infinitival complement clause in E/T constructions is episodically or generically (depending on its aspect being perfective or imperfective) true/false. I also argue that this infinitive has its tense and aspect marked on the main predicate of sentences, resulting in the seeming correlation between aspect and implication in languages that overtly make a distinction between perfective and imperfective aspects (e.g., French).
The paper proposes a new semantics for good-predications involving finite if -and that-clauses. The proposal combines a standard semantics for conditionals with a standard semantics for the positive form of gradable adjectives and a minimal semantics for modal good. The predicted truth-conditions and conditions of use solve the mood puzzle presented in the first part of the paper. The remainder of the paper defends the classical notion of comparative goodness in terms of a comparison between possible worlds against Lassiter (2017)’s challenge.
"Great technology, football and ..." : Malaysian language learners' stereotypes about Germany
(2014)
This study focuses on stereotypes about Germany, its culture and people, held by learners of German in a big public university in Malaysia. It examines not only the stereotypical representations of the target language country but also assesses its favourability and salience, which has not been done previously. The findings revealed that the students' stereotypes about Germany were varied and diverse. Also, they were overwhelmingly positive. The top three salient categories of images about Germany were related to technology, famous personalities – for the most part football players and scientists – and cars. The findings also indicated that very few references had been made to German culture and to its great cultural figures. The results of the present study suggest that students could benefit from a wider and deeper exposure to German culture in the language classroom.
"Ich mag so Wasserpfeifeladen" : the interaction of grammar and information structure in Kiezdeutsch
(2008)
This article presents linguistic features of and educational approaches to a new variety of German that has emerged in multi-ethnic urban areas in Germany: Kiezdeutsch (‘Hood German’). From a linguistic point of view, Kiezdeutsch is very interesting, as it is a multi-ethnolect that combines features of a youth language with those of a contact language. We will present examples that illustrate the grammatical productivity and innovative potential of this variety. From an educational perspective, Kiezdeutsch has also a high potential in many respects: school projects can help enrich intercultural communication and weaken derogatory attitudes. In grammar lessons, Kiezdeutsch can be a means to enhance linguistic competence by having the adolescents analyse their own language. Keywords: German, Kiezdeutsch, multi-ethnolect, migrants’ language, language change, educational proposals
With the rise of minimalism, many concepts related to the geometrical relations of phrase structure held fast to in earlier approaches have been reconsidered. This article deals with distinguishing (relational and technical) properties of specifiers and adjuncts in a Bare Phrase Structure framework (X'-Theory). I extend specific aspects of X-structure relevant to the discussion of specifiers vs. adjuncts. I argue that unique specifiers can be derived from the system and that adjunction, possibly multiple, results from Direct Merge only. The final product is a series of relationships in line with recent thoughts and minimalist premises, but formally more similar to earlier conceptions of the X'-schema.
I address conceptual, empirical and theoretical arguments against multiple specifiers and related issues next, that is beyond the predictions immediately following from the tripartitional view of clause structure proposed in Grohmann (2000). After laying out my motivations to critically consider the issue, I present a set of data that casts serious doubt over the justifications offered to replace Agr with v as the accusative casemarker. Having conceptual and empirical back-up, I then tackle the theoretical validity of specifiers, and ways to distinguish unique specifiers from (multiple) adjuncts. I introduce a version of Bare Phrase Structure that does so, yet keeps the spirit of defining structural identification over relational rather than categorial properties.
This paper investigates the production and comprehension of intrasentential anaphoric pronominal reference in Russian. In particular, it examines the elicited imitation and comprehension of three anaphoric pronouns in subject position – personal 3rd singular masculine, demonstrative and zero – in one hundred and eighty monolingual Russian-speaking children and twenty adults. The three types of pronouns were designed to have an antecedent in the preceding sentence containing a verb and two arguments. These antecedents differ in their syntactical role and animacy. The sentence position, agentivity and topicality remained constant. The sentences with (in)animate subjects and objects constituted the following four 'conditions': two sentences with a subject and an object being either animate or inanimate and two sentences with a subject and an object exhibiting a diverse (in)animacy. Regarding the resolution of the anaphoric pronouns the similarity principle (or feature-concord rule) and its possible violations were tested. This principle suggests that an anaphoric pronoun is most likely resolved to the antecedent with a maximum of similar characteristics or features and it primarily governs the assignment of an antecedent to anaphoric pronouns in subject position in the absence of the violating conditions. Results show the influence of this rule on the anaphora resolution process increasing with age, on the one hand, and the development of the impact of animacy, syntactic role and the type of anaphoric pronouns that violate the feature-concord rule, on the other.
Linguistic research and linguistic activism have resulted in key changes to official language use. However, revisions remain contested and many English and German speakers continue to employ male generic terms. In this article I explore whether the encounter with sex-/gender-neutral terminology in June Arnold's novel 'The Cook and the Carpenter' can prompt readers to review their language use and consider alternatives. Based on narrative research, my premise is that fiction can create familiarity with new terms, which is the first step toward wider linguistic change. I frame my investigation with Wittgenstein's notion that "to imagine a language means to imagine a form of life", and put it to the test with a discourse analysis of English and German reader responses. The results of my study show that Arnold's novel stimulates fruitful debate around the issue of linguistic representation. Based on my findings, I propose to integrate literary texts which engage with the issue of sex/gender and language into educational settings to further promote neutral/inclusive language use.
"You don’t mind my calling you Harry?" : Terms of address in John Updike’s "Rabbit" tetralogy
(2020)
This paper examines the use of address terms in John Updike’s Rabbit tetralogy (Updike 1995). The first part of the analysis provides a comprehensive overview of the great variety of terms used to address the protagonist, Harry Angstrom, in the decades covered by the novels. The second part focuses on two important side characters, Reverend Eccles and Harry’s mother-in-law. It demonstrates how address term usage with these two characters reflects ongoing changes in their relationship with Harry. The main aim of the paper is to demonstrate the potential of fictional data for the study of address terms and, in return, to capture the manifold functions of address terms as a literary device in fiction.
"Je suis Charlie" was used over 619.000 times in the two days that have followed the attack of the editorial team of Charlie Hebdo (Le Progrès, The Huffington Post) and has regularly been taken up in both written and spoken form since. In this paper, we argue that the structure of this sentence actually clashes with its meaning. More specifically, whereas its word order and default rightmost sentence stress are compatible either with an all-focus reading or a narrow focusing of Charlie, the context of use of this sentence as well as the solidarity/empathy message it intends to communicate suggest that its subject is narrowly focused. We will propose that two strategies have emerged to solve this conflict: (i) various alternative forms have appeared that allow proper subject focusing and (ii) speakers have reinterpreted the structure so as to pragmatically retrieve the (additive) focused nature of the subject.
Combining the methods of linguistics and literary criticism, this article takes a fresh look at two texts that have been analysed ad nauseam: Henry James’s The Portrait of a Lady and Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence. I use James’s late style as a touchstone to compare and contrast the two texts. Analysing syntax by means of close textual analysis of the novels’ opening paragraphs as well as their metaphorical language, and employing the corpus analysis programme AntConc to survey the entire texts, I aim to show that James’s 1880 text anticipates his late style and Wharton’s 1920 text appropriates it to suit her own agenda. However, in respectively anticipating and appropriating this style, James and Wharton create different effects. James intensifies his female protagonist’s ‘world of thought and feeling’ (Eliot 1963: 56), creating a fictional world with literary equality for both genders, while Wharton subverts gender roles in a scathing critique of Gilded Age society, which did not allow for this other ‘world of thought and feeling’. In addition to positioning both novels as feminist, this article compares Wharton’s writing to James’s, but without presupposing the latter’s influence on the former. Instead, acknowledging the fluidity of style, I aim to put forward a convincing case that there are subtle differences that make these authors’ styles Jamesian and Whartonian, respectively.
Modifiability by almost has been used as a test for the quantificational force of a DP without stating the meaning of almost explicitly. The aim of this paper is to give a semantics for almost applying across categories and to evaluate the validity of the almost test as a diagnosis for universal quantifiers. It is argued that almost is similar to other cross-categorial modifiers such as at least or exactly in referring to alternatives ordered on a scale. I propose that almost evaluates alternatives in which the modified expression is replaced by a value close by on the corresponding Horn scale. It is shown that a semantics for almost that refers to scalar alternatives derives the correct truth conditions for almost and explains selectional restrictions. At the same time, taking the semantics of almost seriously invalidates the almost test as a simple diagnosis for the nature of quantifiers.
This article presents an analysis of the police television series A Touch of Frost (Yorkshire Television, 1992) and the crime novels by Rodney Wingfield upon which it is based.
In order to analyse the way the protagonist, Inspector Jack Frost, is characterised in either version, data is drawn from the pilot episode of the series and Wingfield’s debut novel Frost at Christmas (1984). Wingfield was less than impressed with television’s version of Frost, stating, ‘He just isn’t my Frost’. The rationale for this article is to apply established models in stylistics to investigate the differences between the original and the adaptation. A core motivation for stylistics is to ‘support initial impressions in various extracts’ readings’ and to ‘describe the readers’ response with some precision’ (Gregoriou 2007: 19); this article therefore offers a close linguistic explanation for an author’s dissatisfaction with the adaptation of his own work. The famously reticent Wingfield did not elaborate in detail on why he disapproved of the television version of Frost, although several critics observed that Wingfield felt television had ‘softened’ his creation. This article contends that ‘softness’ is represented in language through politeness strategies adopted by speakers whilst impoliteness represents the ‘tougher’ speech of Wingfield’s original iteration of Jack Frost. In order to demonstrate this contention, this study will analyse pragmatic elements of the dialogue of both novel and television versions of Frost through the analytical framework for impoliteness developed by Culpeper (1996; 2010). This framework will be integrated into the model for analysing the elements of narrative outlined by Simpson and Montgomery (1995), in turn suggesting an elaboration of this model. In investigating whether television’s Jack Frost is ‘softer’ than the character envisaged by Wingfield, free direct speech and accompanying physical behaviour in novel and television adaptation are analysed, focussing on whether the perceived softness of the latter has been partly achieved by making the speech of Frost less impolite on television.
In this paper, we investigate two pairs of structures in German and English: German Weak Pronoun Left Dislocation and English Topicalization, on the one hand, and German and English Hanging Topic Left Dislocation, on the other. We review the prosodic, lexical, syntactic, and discourse evidence that places the former two structures into one class and the latter two into another, taking this evidence to show that dislocates in the former class are syntactically integrated into their 'host' sentences while those in the latter class are not. From there, we show that the most straightforward way to account for this difference in 'integration' is to take the dislocates in the latter structures to be 'orphans', phrases that are syntactically independent of the phrases with which they are associated, providing additional empirical and theoretical support for this analysis — which, we point out, has a number of antecedents in the literature.
Depiction verbs such as paint license i(mage)- and p(ortrait)-readings; for instance, Ben painted a cow can convey that Ben produced an image of an unspecific cow or a portrait of a specific cow. This paper takes issue with a property-based intensional analysis of depiction verbs (Zimmermann, 2006b, 2016) and instead argues for an extensional account. Accordingly, the i-reading is rooted in the introduction of worldly representations by the explicit noun cow as such, whereas the p-reading is rooted in the interpolation of an implicit representation via coercion. This take on the ambiguity captures the following key traits. On i-readings, only representations are accessible to quantifiers and anaphors; moreover, intensional effects such as substitution failure disappear once ordinary objects and representations are adequately distinguished. P-readings, by contrast, involve representations that depend on the portrayed ordinary objects as particulars; correspondingly, only ordinary objects are accessible to quantifiers and anaphors. The proposal is spelled out in Asher’s (2011) Type Composition Logic.
This paper is the second in a series arguing for a discourse·based analysis of grammatical relations in Chinese in which there is a direct mapping between semantic role and grammatical function, and there are no relation-changing lexical rules such as passivization that can change that mapping. The correct assignment of semantic roles to the constituents of a discourse is done by the listener purely on the basis of the discourse structure and pragmatics (real world knowledge). Though grammatical analyses of certain constructions can be done on the sentence level, the sentence is generally not the central unit for understanding anaphora and grammatical relations in Chinese. Two related arguments are presented here: the question of 'subject' and the structure of discourse developed from an analysis of the nature of discourse referent tracking.
As part of a major project on the syntactic organisation of written discourse in the recent history of the English language, this paper tackles the distribution of sentences comprising left-dislocated constituents in a corpus of texts from late Middle English onwards. Once the phenomenon of left dislocation has been properly defined, this investigation will concentrate on the analysis of the corpus in the following directions: (i) statistical evolution of left dislocation in the recent history of the English language; (ii) the influence of orality and genre on left dislocation; (iii) information conveyed by the left-dislocated material, that is, the discourse-based referentiality potential of the left-dislocated constituents in terms of recoverability, and its association with end-focus; and (iv) grammatical complexity of the left-dislocated material and its association with end-weight.
Rawang [...] is a Tibeto-Burman language spoken by people who live in the far north of Kachin State in Myanmar (Burma), particularly along the Mae Hka ('Nmai Hka) and Maeli Hka (Mali Hka) river valleys; population unknown, although Ethnologue gives 100,000. In the past they had been called ‘Nung’, or (mistakenly) ‘Hkanung’, and are considered to be a sub-group of the Kachin by the Myanmar government. They are closely related to people on the other side of the Chinese border in Yunnan classified as either Dulong or Nu (see LaPolla 2001, 2003 on the Dulong language and Sun 1988, Sun & Liu 2005 on the Anong language). In this paper, I will be discussing a particular morphological phenomenon found in Rawang, using data of the Mvtwang (Mvt River) dialect of Rawang, which is considered the most central of those dialects in Myanmar and so has become something of a standard for writing and inter-group communication.
This paper focuses on definite descriptions. It will be shown that a definite description refers to a given discourse referent if the descriptive content is completely deaccented. But if there is a focussed element within the descriptive content it introduces a novel referent. This amounts to allowing two readings for definite descriptions without, however, allowing two readings for the definite article.
(Non)retroflexivity of slavic affricates and its motivation : Evidence from polish and czech <č>
(2005)
The goal of this paper is two-fold. First, it revises the common assumption that the affricate <č> denotes /t͡ʃ/ for all Slavic languages. On the basis of experimental results it is shown that Slavic <č> stands for two sounds: /t͡ʃ/ as e.g. in Czech and /ʈʂ/ as in Polish.
The second goal of the paper is to show that this difference is not accidental but it is motivated by perceptual relations among sibilants. In Polish, /t͡ʃ/ changed to /ʈʂ/ thus lowering its sibilant tonality and creating a better perceptual distance to /tɕ/, whereas in Czech /t͡ʃ/ did not turn to /ʈʂ/, as the former displayed sufficient perceptual distance to the only affricate present in the inventory, namely, the alveolar /t͡s/. Finally, an analysis of Czech and Polish affricate inventories is offered.
This paper evaluates trills [r] and their palatalized counterparts [rj] from the point of view of markedness. It is argued that [r]s are unmarked sounds in comparison to [rj]s which follows from the examination of the following parameters: (a) frequency of occurrence, (b) articulatory and aerodynamic characteristics, (c) perceptual features, (d) emergence in the process of language acquisition, (e) stability from a diachronic point of view, (f) phonotactic distribution, and (g) implications. Several markedness aspects of [r]s and [rj] are analyzed on the basis of Slavic languages which offer excellent material for the evaluation of trills. Their phonetic characteristics incorporated into phonetically grounded constraints are employed for a phonological OT-analysis of r-palatalization in two selected languages: Polish and Czech.
This paper evaluates trills [r] and their palatalized counterparts [rj] from the point of view of markedness. It is argued that [r]s are unmarked sounds in comparison to [r ]s which follows from the examination of the following parameters: (a) frequency of occurrence, (b) articulatory and aerodynamic characteristics, (c) perceptual features, (d) emergence in the process of language acquisition, (e) stability from a diachronic point of view, (f) phonotactic distribution, and (g) implications.
Several markedness aspects of [r]s and [rj] are analyzed on the basis of Slavic languages which offer excellent material for the evaluation of trills. Their phonetic characteristics incorporated into phonetically grounded constraints are employed for a phonological OT-analysis of r-palatalization in two selected languages: Polish and Czech.
In a similar way to dramatic performances and plays, song lyrics establish a complex discourse structure whereby listeners are placed in a position to overhear ‘the pretence of a conversation constructed to convey the performer’s meaning’ (Nahajec 2019: 25; see also Short 1996: 169). In Taylor Swift’s songwriting, listeners are positioned not only to eavesdrop on the narratives presented but are also invited to conceptualise and enact particular roles and scenarios in the discourse. This paper offers a stylistic analysis of songwriting and narrative structure across Swift’s oeuvre to identify how disnarration strategies are used to build stories in her two sister albums written and produced during the Covid-19 pandemic, folklore (2020) and evermore (2020). Specifically, this study examines how disnarration characterises the albums’ narrators, establishes narrator-narratee relationships and invites listeners to adopt a participatory role in the meaning-making process. Through close analysis of four songs across the two albums, this paper builds on developing studies of the stylistics of songwriting (see West 2019) and argues that disnarration strategies foreground particular themes within the discourse, such as nostalgia, wistfulness and regret, and contribute to the fictionalisation and self-aware storytelling characteristic of these albums’ storyworlds.
The aim of this paper is to try to explain how the Tooro system, which phonologically lacks tone, has come into being, by examining comparatively the tone system of each language itself and also by closely looking at the differences which exist among the Haya, Ankole and Nyoro systems (Kiga data insufficient) in order to look for phonetic reasons of the tone changes.
This paper compares the modal particle fei (Schlieben-Lange, 1979; Thoma, 2009) with the modal particle/sentence adverb aber (not to be confused with the conjunction aber, ‘but’). Intuitively, both items express some form of contrast and correction. We will show that both are special among discourse particles in the following sense: They make a contribution that is interpreted at a level distinct from the level where at-issue content (Potts, 2005) is interpreted, as is standard for modal particles (see Gutzmann, 2015 and the references therein). But more interestingly, they exclusively relate to propositions that have not entered the Common Ground via being the at-issue content of an assertion made by the addressee.
This paper discusses an attempt to write a computer program that would properly model the phonological development of Chinese from Middle Chinese to Modern Peking Mandarin, using the rules in Chen 1976. Several problems are encountered, the most significant being that the rules cannot apply in the same order for all lexical items. The significance of this in terms of the implementation of sound change is briefly discussed.
In this paper, we investigate the usefulness of a wide range of features for their usefulness in the resolution of nominal coreference, both as hard constraints (i.e. completely removing elements from the list of possible candidates) as well as soft constraints (where a cumulation of violations of soft constraints will make it less likely that a candidate is chosen as the antecedent). We present a state of the art system based on such constraints and weights estimated with a maximum entropy model, using lexical information to resolve cases of coreferent bridging.
A contrast to a trace
(2001)
For movement, such as quantifier raising, the three different structures illustrated in (1) are discussed in the recent literature.
(1) A girl danced with every boy
a. [every boy]x a girl danced with x (copy + replace)
b. [every boy]x a girl danced with [every boy] (copy)
c. [every boy]x a girl danced with [thex boy] (copy + modify)
In this paper, I'll call the proposal illustrated by (1a) the copy+replace theory since the movement is analyzed as first copying the moving phrase followed by replacing the moving phrase with a trace in the base position of movement. Chomsky (1993) and Fox (1999) argue against the copy+replace theory (1a) on the basis of Condition C data that show that moved material can behave as if it occupied the base position of movement. This behavior would, for example, be expected on the copy theory of movement illustrated by (1b), which also seems conceptually simpler than the copy+replace theory since it involves only copying without replacement. This conceptual advantage, however, is probably only apparent since a theory of the interpretation of structures like (1b) would probably be more complicated than for (1a). Standard assumptions about interpretation, at least, don't predict the right meaning when applied to (1b). For this reason, Chomsky and Fox propose what I'll call the copy+modify-theory illustrated in (1c). This proposes that copying is followed by a trace modification operation that replaces the determiner of the moved DP with something else. I assume that this is an indexed definite determiner, the interpretation of which is to be clarified below.
Multicomponent Tree Adjoining Grammars (MCTAG) is a formalism that has been shown to be useful for many natural language applications. The definition of MCTAG however is problematic since it refers to the process of the derivation itself: a simultaneity constraint must be respected concerning the way the members of the elementary tree sets are added. This way of characterizing MCTAG does not allow to abstract away from the concrete order of derivation. In this paper, we propose an alternative definition of MCTAG that characterizes the trees in the tree language of an MCTAG via the properties of the derivation trees (in the underlying TAG) the MCTAG licences. This definition gives a better understanding of the formalism, it allows a more systematic comparison of different types of MCTAG, and, furthermore, it can be exploited for parsing.
Multicomponent Tree Adjoining Grammars (MCTAGs) are a formalism that has been shown to be useful for many natural language applications. The definition of non-local MCTAG however is problematic since it refers to the process of the derivation itself: a simultaneity constraint must be respected concerning the way the members of the elementary tree sets are added. Looking only at the result of a derivation (i.e., the derived tree and the derivation tree), this simultaneity is no longer visible and therefore cannot be checked. I.e., this way of characterizing MCTAG does not allow to abstract away from the concrete order of derivation. In this paper, we propose an alternative definition of MCTAG that characterizes the trees in the tree language of an MCTAG via the properties of the derivation trees (in the underlying TAG) the MCTAG licences. We provide similar characterizations for various types of MCTAG. These characterizations give a better understanding of the formalisms, they allow a more systematic comparison of different types of MCTAG, and, furthermore, they can be exploited for parsing.
Multicomponent Tree Adjoining Grammars (MCTAG) is a formalism that has been shown to be useful for many natural language applications. The definition of MCTAG however is problematic since it refers to the process of the derivation itself: a simultaneity constraint must be respected concerning the way the members of the elementary tree sets are added. Looking only at the result of a derivation (i.e., the derived tree and the derivation tree), this simultaneity is no longer visible and therefore cannot be checked. I.e., this way of characterizing MCTAG does not allow to abstract away from the concrete order of derivation. Therefore, in this paper, we propose an alternative definition of MCTAG that characterizes the trees in the tree language of an MCTAG via the properties of the derivation trees the MCTAG licences.
The Stanford Project on Language Universals began its activities in October 1967 and brought them to an end in August 1976. Its directors were Joseph H. Greenberg and Charles A. Ferguson. The Cologne Project on Language Universals and Typology [with particular reference to functional aspects], abbreviated UNITYP, had its early beginnings in 1972, but deployed its full activities from 1976 onwards and is still operating. This writer, who is the principal investigator, had the privilege of collaborating with the Stanford Project during spring of 1976. […] One of the leading Greenbergian ideas is that of implicational generalizations, has been integrated as a fundamental principle in the construction of continua and of universal dimensions as proposed by UNITYP. It is hoped that the following considerations on numeral systems will be apt to bear witness to this situation. They would be unthinkable without Greenberg’s pioneering work on "Generalizations about numeral systems" (Greenberg 1978: 249 ff., henceforth referred to as Greenberg, NS). Further work on this domain and on other comparable domains almost inevitably leads one to the view that generalizations of the Greenberg type have a functional significance and that a dimensional framework is apt to bring this to the fore. This is the view on linguistic behaviour as being purposeful, and on language as a problem- solving device. The problem consists in the linguistic representation of cognitive-conceptual ideas. The solution is represented by the corresponding linguistic structures in their diversity and the task of the linguist consists in reconstructing the program and subprograms underlying the process of problem-solving. It is claimed that the construct of continua and of universal dimensions makes these programs intelligible.
The study offers a discourse-based account of the Spanish copula forms ser and estar, which are generally considered to be lexical exponents of the stage-level/individual-level contrast. It argues against the popular view that the distinction between SLPs and ILPs rests on a fundamental cognitive division of the world that is reflected in the grammar. As it happens, conceptual oppositions like “temporary vs. permanent” or “arbitrary vs. essential“ provide only a preference for the interpretation of estar and ser. In addition, the evidence for an SLP/ILP impact on the grammar turns out to be far less conclusive than is currently assumed. The study argues against event-based accounts of the ser/estar contrast in particular, showing that ser and estar pattern alike in failing all of the standard eventuality tests. The discourse-based account proposed instead assumes that ser and estar both display the same lexical semantics (which is identical to the semantics of English be, German sein, etc.); estar differs from ser only in presupposing a relation to a specific discourse situation. By using estar a speaker restricts his or her claim to a specific discourse situation, whereas by using ser, the speaker makes no such restriction. The preference for interpreting estar predications as denoting temporary properties and ser predications as denoting permanent properties follows from economy principles driving the pragmatic legitimation of estars discourse dependence. The analysis proposed in this paper can also account for the observation that ser predications do not give rise to thetic judgements. The proposal is couched in terms of the framework of DRT.
The paper presents a novel approach to explaining word order variation in the early Germanic languages. Initial observations about verb placement as a device marking types of rhetorical relations made on data from Old High German (cf. Hinterhölzl & Petrova 2005) are now reconsidered on a larger scale and compared with evidence from other early Germanic languages. The paper claims that the identification of information-structural domains in a sentence is best achieved by taking into account the interaction between the pragmatic features of discourse referents and properties of discourse organization.