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U hrvatskoj jezikoslovnoj tradiciji element se formalni je pokazatelj pripadnosti pojedinoga glagola skupini povratnih glagola. Taj se element dosad smatrao zamjenjivim zamjenicom sebe u tzv. pravih povratnih glagola. U ovome se radu na temelju postavaka više autora (Zec 1985, Sells, Zaenen i Zec 1987, Moskovljević 1997, Medová 2009, Oliva 2010) pokušava dokazati neistovjetnost elemenata se i sebe. Slobodna zamjena tih dvaju elemenata rezultira promjenom značenja i gramatičkom neovjerenošću. Iz toga proizlazi i drugačija podjela povratnih glagola. U radu će se usporedbom nekoliko povratnih glagola i njihovih prijelaznih parnjaka iznijeti drugačiji pristup povratnim glagolima.
This paper deals with the linguistic situation of the European Union, especially considering the role played by the German language. Beginning with some general remarks on the historical mechanisms that may influence the relative importance of a given language on a global scale, the history of the German language is discussed with the aim of explaining its present situation as the language with the greatest number of native speakers in Europe. which, at the same time, plays a relatively unimportant role in international communication.
This paper investigates the role of Hunsrückisch, a dialect spoken by German descendents in South Brazil, in regard to the performance of high school students in the proficiency exam Deutsches Sprachdiplom (DSD-I). The article will first discuss the concept of bilinguism and then analyzes the performance of bilingual students (Portuguese/German) from the Instituo de Educação Ivoti in DSD-I exams over the last 5 years.
Este trabalho teve a intenção de investigar sobre o processo de tomada de decisão quanto às funções comunicativas das partículas modais (doravante PM), frente a diferentes contextos. Nesse sentido, aplicamos um questionário online em alemão. Para a coleta de dados foi solicitado a 62 participantes alemães nativos e não nativos que selecionassem dentre um conjunto de orações (contendo ou não PMs) as que proporcionariam interpretações adequadas para contextos pré-estabelecidos. Os resultados apontam que os participantes nativos tiveram maior facilidade em selecionar as opções esperadas nas tarefas apresentadas, porém as reflexões sobre as decisões tomadas foram desafiadoras para ambos os grupos. Portanto, a análise de dados indica deficiências na compreensão da função e complexidade modal das PMs. Assim, além de investigar as decisões tomadas pelos dois grupos, procuramos oferecer ferramentas para o ensino das PMs em aulas de alemão.
The purpose of this article is to report on the work carried out during the research project "O trabalho de tradutor como fonte para a constituição de base de dados" (The translator´s work as a source for the constitution of a database). Through the restoration, organization and digitalization of the personal glossary and part of the books containing the translations made by the deceased public translator Gustavo Lohnefink, this research project intends to construct a digital database of German – Portuguese technical terms (for the language pair), which could then be used by other translators. In order to achieve this purpose, a specific methodology had to be developed, which could be used as a starting-point for the treatment and recovery of other similarly organized data-collections.
U radu se obrađuju načini tvorbe pridjeva, priloga, prijedloga, zamjenica i veznika na primjerima iz Tadijanovićeva djela „Svašta po malo“. Posebno se upozorava na tipove tvorba koji su neobični zbog značenja koje ima tvorenica, na tvorbu neuobičajenih tvorenica prema već postojećim modelima, na različite pristupe i tumačenja u određivanju tvorbenih načina te na odnos motiviranih i nemotiviranih riječi sa stajališta povijesne i suvremene tvorbe. Analizirani se primjeri uspoređuju s potvrdama iz „Rječnika hrvatskoga ili srpskoga jezika JAZU“.
U radu se daje analiza i prikaz tvorbenoga sustava umanjenica u kajkavskome narječju. Analiza je provedena na primjerima iz objavljenih dijalektoloških opisa govora, kajkavskih rječnika te iz vlastite građe. U tvorbenome se opisu polazi sa sinkronijskoga stanovišta, a povijesnojezične se napomene donose tek sporadično. Navode se svi u građi potvrđeni sufiksi za tvorbu umanjenica muškoga, srednjega i ženskoga roda. Uz svaku se tvorbenu kategoriju navode i jezične značajke koje se odnose na glasovne promjene na granici osnove i sufiksa.
The present article analyzes the development of the system of spatial prepositions in the acquisition of German as a foreign language by Brazilian learners. The study is based on a corpus of written language data produced by students in the undergraduate course in Letras, collected from 1996 to 1998. The theoretical bases of the study are theories of second language acquisition, cognitive processing of space, and the linguistic encoding of spatial relations through prepositions. The main section of the analysis begins with the quantitative evaluation of the occurrences of spatial prepositions found in the data. Subsequently, each preposition found in the corpus is individually discussed in relation to its correct and incorrect uses. The main results are a steady increase in the number of spatial prepositions used by the subjects from the first year to the fourth year of the course, an increase in the variation of the use of these prepositions, and a constant reduction of the percentage of incorrect uses. In the first phase, acquisition can be seen in the increasing specificity of the semantic oppositions involved in neutralizations, whereas in the second phase, a quantitative reduction of errors can be found.
Os seriados televisivos vêm se destacando como opção de lazer bastante recorrente entre pessoas de diferentes faixas etárias, em especial, dentre estudantes. Diante disso, este trabalho tem como objetivo abordar as vantagens do uso de tal material para o ensino de aspectos linguísticos, político-sociais, ideológicos e socioculturais de língua alemã. Trata-se do recorte de uma pesquisa que se encontra ainda em desenvolvimento, no qual destacaremos o seriado Deutschland 83. Ressaltaremos a importância do uso de materiais autênticos para o ensino de línguas e a necessidade do ensino com foco em aspectos da cultura estrangeira. Concluímos que o seriado Deutschland 83 é um material com potencial a ser explorado, permitindo que o aprendiz se aproxime da cultura e língua alemã, ao mesmo tempo em que proporciona ao aluno material para gerar uma reflexão sobre sua própria realidade.
Rezension zu Dunja Jutronić: Spliski govor. Split: Naklada Bošković, 2010, 476 S.
Este artigo se propõe a discutir algumas questões de interesse tradutológico referentes às três traduções brasileiras (1950; 1977; 2017) da obra Der Witz und seine Beziehung zum Unbewussten, de Sigmund Freud - cuja primeira publicação data de 1905. Parte-se de argumentos expostos em um debate entre o poeta e tradutor brasileiro Haroldo de Campos e o tradutor francês de Freud, Jean Laplanche, acerca das possibilidades de traduzir os chistes citados por Freud no referido livro, para identificar as diferentes estratégias adotadas pelos tradutores brasileiros. Longe de apresentar uma análise completa das diversas versões ou um cotejo exaustivo entre o original e as três (re)traduções, o que este trabalho visa é defender que elas constituem aproximações diferentes – porém todas válidas e potencialmente relevantes para o leitor-alvo - em relação a determinados aspectos da obra "original".
U ovome su radu obradena 232 obiteljska nadimka u Puciscima na otoku Bracu. Obiteljski su nadimci, kao dodatan vid identifikacije koji se razvio još u pretprezimenskome razdoblju, a kasnije je sve zastupljeniji zbog brojnosti nositelja pojedinih prezimena, svojevrsni specifikum hrvatskih otoka koji dosad nije dostatno proucen. U Puciscima se obiteljski nadimci bilježe od konca 16. st. te se na temelju njihove motivacije može djelomicno rekonstruirati fond osobnih imena (odnos hrvatskih narodnih imena te hrvatskih i novijih romanskih prilagodenica kršcanskih imena), vanjština (posebice tjelesne mane), karakterne crte (uglavnom nekonvencionalne) te podrijetlo i svakodnevni život Puciscana. Fond je obiteljskih nadimaka znatno otvoreniji inojezicnim sustavima (poglavito romanskim) te je odraz svojevrsne tisucljetne hrvatsko-romanske simbioze na istocnoj obali Jadranskoga mora.
In this paper, I examine two object control constructions in Korean which differ only in the surface word order: in one of the constructions, the control complement follows the controller, but in the other, precedes it. I argue that the contrast between these constructions cannot be attributed to scrambling. The difference between these constructions can only be captured if one of them is analyzed as OC, and the other as instantiating NOC. Section 2 presents the relevant constructions and their earlier analyses available in the literature; section 3 presents a detailed discussion of differences between the two object control constructions. My proposal for analyzing these constructions is presented in section 4. Section 5 introduces two outstanding questions related to the proposed structures: the status of scrambling in Korean and the analysis of the inverse control construction. Conclusions and general discussion follow in section 6.
It is a much-debated issue whether one should assume separate lexical entries for participles used in passive and perfect constructions or whether there is just one lexical entry that is used in different ways depending on whether a passive or perfect auxiliary is present in the clause.
In previous work I criticized approaches trying to analyze the passive with one lexical entry for making empirically wrong predictions and suggested a lexical-rule based approach were two different lexical items for the participle are licensed.
In this paper I show how Heinz and Matiasek's (1994) formalizations of Haider's (1986) ideas can be extended and modified in a way that both modal infinitives and control constructions can be captured correctly. The suggested analysis needs only one lexical item for participles, base form infinitives, and zu infinitives irrespective of their usage in active or passive like structures.
Objektrelativsätze mit haben
(2006)
Objektrelativsätze mit dem Vollverb haben sind im gesprochenen Deutsch vergleichsweise häufig. Sie treten als einfache Objekt-Subjekt-Verb-Strukturen auf, z.B. die ich habe, und auch erweitert durch Modalisierungen und/oder Adverbialphrasen etc., z.B. wie in die ick uff de GRUNDschule schon hatte. Um die Differenzen, die sich zwischen den Verwendungen erkennen lassen, zu erfassen, kann eine standardgrammatische Beschreibung allenfalls als Ausgangsbasis dienen. Ein konstruktionsgrammatisches Vorgehen hingegen, bei dem alle linguistischen Ebenen der Sprachbeschreibung berücksichtigt werden, zeigt die Bandbreite von haben-Relativkonstruktionen auf. In Zusammenhang mit den Matrixstrukturen und unter Berücksichtigung der Diskurspragmatik (informationsstrukturelle und konversationelle Dimensionen) lassen sich vier verschiedene Konstruktionen mit haben-Relativsätzen konturieren: eine Präsentativkonstruktion, eine Topikkonstruktion, eine cleftartige Konstruktion und eine Konstruktion mit identifizierenden haben-Relativsätzen.
The present paper deals with selected morphological, syntactic, semantic and pragmatic characteristics of nominal totalizers in German and in Brazilian Portuguese. In particular, it analyzes the elements 'todo', 'cada', 'ambos' and 'os dois', as well as 'alle', 'jeder', 'der ganze' and 'beide'. In terms of morphology, it describes the formation of gender, number and case forms. In the field of syntax, it focuses on the position of totalizers in the nominal phrase, their relations to determiners and quantifiers, and the functional distribution of declension types. In terms of semantics and pragmatics, it investigates the codification of referential and quantificational information, definiteness and cumulative v distributive totalization. The epistemological interest is defined by the objectives of linguistic comparison between German and Brazilian Portuguese, including the analysis of typical errors committed by language learners in both directions.
U radu se analiziraju odrazi praslavenskoga jata u bačko-srijemskom rusinskom jeziku. Ako zanemarimo nekoliko primjera s odrazom a, odraz je jata u rusinskom jeziku dvojak - i i e, s otprilike podjednakom zastupljenošću. Poredbeno-povijesnom analizom može se ustvrditi da njihova distribucija ovisi o kvantiteti staroslovačkog e, u koji su se stopili praslavenski *e i *ě. Pojedine nepodudarnosti mogu se objasniti posuđivanjem iz srpskog ili ukrajinskog, odnosno rusinskom tendencijom generaliziranja produljenog samoglasnika iz oblika nominativa jednine.
This paper discusses aspects of direct speech in James Joyce’s story "The Sisters". The story is often analyzed with special attention to the gaps and ellipses in the utterances, which are usually read as omissions, evasions, or uncomfortable silences, and thus as indicative of some transgressive behaviour of the dead priest who is at the centre of the dialogues. In this article we explore the hypothesis that the utterances in question show features that are quite common in natural spoken language and thus may also be read as literary techniques to create authentic oral discourse. This hypothesis is not intended to invalidate previous interpretations, but to introduce an additional aspect of interpretation that has been neglected so far. In the context of a literary work, features of natural spoken language acquire new meaning, and the very attempt to narrow the gap between literary and natural spoken language appears as inauthentic, ominous and as an artistic strategy to express the unspeakable. The story thus evokes suspicion and a feeling of eeriness while also offering narrative and linguistic information that allows for a more empathic assessment of the characters. We use quantitative methods of analysis and linguistic data from corpora of (authentic) spoken language to substantiate our hypothesis. As "The Sisters" is a rather short story and the present study is, in several respects, exploratory, our claims and hypotheses need to be confirmed and validated by more exhaustive research into Joyce’s major works.
Friedrich Schlegel's lasting contribution to linguistics is usually seen in the impact that his book "Über die Sprache und Weisheit der Indier" from 1808 left on comparative linguistics and on the study of Sanskrit. Schlegel was one of the first European scholars to have studied Sanskrit extensively and he made a number of translations of Sanskrit literature into German which make up one third of "Über die Sprache und Weisheit der Indier". Schlegel's book is widely regarded as a founding document both of comparative linguistics and of indology, a fact which is quite remarkable in light of the development of Schlegel's thought after this text. His interest in Indian studies ceased more or less directly with the publication of this work, while his thoughts on language became more and more suffused by transcendental philosophy.
Aramaic is not among the oldest Semitic languages in a strictly chronological sense, but among those languages which are still spoken today, it has the longest continuous written tradition. The existing written documents span a period of three millennia and thus enable us to study language history in a long-term perspective. It is very important, in this respect, that the latest stage of development of Aramaic, Neo-Aramaic, still exists in a multitude of spoken varieties which can be studied in vivo. We can thus describe the phonetics and phonology of the modern varieties with more precision than is possible for the older language stages, which in turn enables us to draw conclusions on diachronic sound change. Likewise, we can study morphology and syntax not only from recorded texts, but we also have recourse to native speakers in order to clarify doubtful points. Thus the latest stage of Aramaic casts a strong light back into the past. It is therefore most unfortunate that many Aramaicists and Syrologists show so little interest in this living heritage.
Old masters and new frameworks : a pilot analysis of selected semantic changes in the field economy
(2003)
O presente artigo tem por objetivo apresentar um estudo comparativo da percepção de textos multimodais, mais especificamente, anúncios publicitários impressos em revistas brasileiras e alemãs, por aprendizes brasileiros de ALE (Alemão como Língua Estrangeira) e por aprendizes alemães de PLE (Português como Língua Estrangeira), com especial atenção para a dimensão intercultural envolvida neste processo. Através da análise desenvolvida no estudo, puderam ser identificados tanto os aspectos culturais mais diretamente relacionados a usos linguísticos (uso de pronomes pessoais e formas de tratamento, por exemplo), quanto de aspectos culturais mais subjetivos (a percepção de estados emocionais, a visão de trabalho, entre outros). Este estudo também discute as implicações do vínculo entre as escolhas linguísticas e a cultura para o ensino de LCE (Língua/Cultura Estrangeira).
This article presents an analysis of German nicht...sondern... (contrastive not...but...) which departs from the commonly held view that this construction should be explained by appeal to its alleged corrective function. It will be demonstrated that in nicht A sondern B (not A but B), A and B just behave like stand-alone unmarked answers to a common question Q, and that this property of sondern is presuppositional in character. It is shown that from this general observation many interesting properties of nicht...sondern... follow, among them distributional differences between German "sondern" and German "aber" (contrastive but, concessive but), intonational requirements and exhaustivity effect sondern presupposition is furthermore argued to be the result of the conventionalization of conversational implicatures.
(Ingria 1990)'s claims that both feature neutrality, where a sign acts in a sentence as though it simultaneously had multiple values for a single feature, and the coordination of unlike categories, where the features of two or more conjuncts differ from each other, pose fundamental problems for unification-based theories of grammar do not apply to constraint-based theories like HPSG.
New types can be introduced into the hierarchy of appropriate values for any given feature that directly represent neutralizations and coordinations. In this manner, feature neutralization and the coordination of unlikes are seen to be different aspects of the same problem: how to determine the values of a coordinate mother's features from those of its conjuncts.
Reference of pronouns may be constrained via lexical presuppositions, including marked F-features, implicated presuppositions, and deictic center shifting in certain languages.
This paper explores the acquisition of personal reference terms in Thai, a language that has a highly complex personal reference system. The participants of the study were 67 typicallydeveloping children (TD) and 29 children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD), a population which has long been observed to have difficulties with pronouns. The children were asked to complete simple production and comprehension tasks on personal reference terms. Overall, ASD children performed on par in production but significantly poorer in comprehension than TD children. Given the freedom of choice in the production task, ASD children preferred using fixed referential terms for self-reference, whereas TD children opted for personal pronouns. In terms of comprehension, ASD children were shown to generally be able to detect the person features but they seemed to struggle the most with the pragmatic aspects of personal reference terms. Our results support previous literature that lexical presuppositions are acquired earlier than implicated presuppositions. We add to the literature that the types or the amount of implicated presuppositions matter in acquisition
This paper provides an analysis of an alternative strategy to A´-movement in both German and Dutch where the extracted constituent is preceded by a preposition and a coreferential pronoun appears in the extraction site. The construction has properties of both binding and movement: Whereas reconstruction effects suggest movement out of the embedded clause, there is strong evidence that the operator constituent is linked to an A-position in the matrix clause; this paradox is resolved by assuming a Control-like approach that involves movement from the embedded clause into a theta-position in the matrix clause with subsequent short A´- movement. The coreferential pronoun is interpreted as a resumptive heading a Big-DP which hosts the antecedent in its specifier.
Accusations are a very frequent type of speech act both in everyday life and in formal controversies, and answering accusations is a sophisticated type of linguistic practice well worth analysing from a pragmatic point of view. In my paper I shall first describe some basic properties of accusations and characteristic types of reactions to accusations, i. e. denying the alleged fact, making excuses, and giving justifications. I then go on to describe some fundamental functions of accusations in controversies. Using the basic patterns of accusations and reactions to accusations as an object of comparison, I then analyse some relevant exchanges from historical controversies (l6th to 18th century), among them famous polemical interactions like the Hobbes-Bramhall controversy, but also less well-known debates from the fields of medicine and theology. The present paper is both a contribution to the theory of controversy and to the pragmatic history of controversies. Keywords: historical pragmatics, theory of controversy, ad hominem moves, dynamics of controversy
On binding domains
(2005)
In this paper I want to explore reasons for replacing Binding Theory based on the anaphor-pronoun dichotomy by a Binding Theory allowing more domains restricting/defining anaphoric dependencies. This will, thus, have consequences for the partitioning of anaphoric elements, presupposing more types of 'anaphors'/'pronouns' than standard Binding Theory offers us.
In this paper, I address verbal predicates of change in Southern Aymara, an understudied Andean language. I concentrate on verbs that are derived with the suffix -cha. This suffix derives degree achievements and creation predicates. I propose that they should be analyzed uniformly as degree achievements. The main empirical point of this paper is that there are two degree morphemes that combine with verbs with -cha, namely, a covert positive morpheme v.POS and an overt suffix -su. The latter is a degree morpheme that restricts the standard of comparison to lexical or contextual maximal degrees. I propose an analysis in terms of Maximize Presupposition: v.POS and -su constitute lexical alternatives where the latter is preferred over the former when maximal values are reached. v.POS is thus felicitous when no maximum is reached. The discussion bears on how telicity is achieved cross-linguistically when degree achievements are considered, thus enriching our typologies on the topic.
The study examines the hypotheses that the acquisition of the finite verb is an indispensable and linking constituent of the development of SVO utterances. Four apparently separate or at least separable processes are analysed over 6 months in one Russian and one German child: a) the emergence of verbs in the child’s utterances, b) the occurrence of correctly inflected (finite) verb forms, c) the development of multi-component utterances containing a verb, and c) the emergence of (potential) subjects and objects. Russian and German exhibit rich verb morphology, and in both languages finiteness is strongly correlated with inflectional categories like person, number and tense. With both children we find a correlation in the temporal order of these four processes and – what is more relevant for our study – a dependency of a certain development on the utterance level on the emergence of finite verbs. Further, our investigation shows that language-specific development comes in to play already when children start to acquire verb inflection and becomes more contrastive when we observe the onset of the production of the SVO utterances.
Davidsonian event semantics has an impressive track record as a framework for natural language analysis. In recent years it has become popular to assume that not only action verbs but predicates of all sorts have an additional event argument. Yet, this hypothesis is not without controversy in particular wrt the particularly challenging case of statives. Maienborn (2003a, 2004) argues that there is a need for distinguishing two kinds of states. While verbs such as sit, stand, sleep refer to eventualities in the sense of Davidson (= Davidsonian states), the states denoted by such stative verbs like know, weigh,and own, as well as any combination of copula plus predicate are of a different ontological type (= Kimian states). Against this background, the present study assesses the two main arguments that have been raised in favour of a Davidsonian approach for statives. These are the combination with certain manner adverbials and Parsons (2000) so-called time travel argument. It will be argued that the manner data which, at first sight, seem to provide evidence for a Davidsonian approach to statives are better analysed as non-compositional reinterpretations triggered by the lack of a regular Davidsonian event argument. As for Parsons´s time travel argument, it turns out that the original version does not supply the kind of support for the Davidsonian approach that Parsons supposed. However, properly adapted, the time travel argument may provide additional evidence for the need of reifying the denotatum of statives, as suggested by the assumption of Kimian states.
There are two main approaches to change of state verbs. One adopts an approach in terms of a total change (becomeP, for base predicate P), i.e., a change from not being in the extension of the base predicate to being in it. The other adopts an approach in terms of a relative change (becomemore P, for base predicate P), i.e., a change for a theme in which it increases in the extent to which it holds the property denoted by the base predicate. Different languages have been analyzed using one or the other approach. I argue that both proposals are actually appropriate for analyzing related but not (completely) overlapping phenomena in the domain of derived change of state verbs in the very same language. This proposal is based on the discussion of change of state verbs in Southern Aymara that are derived with the suffixes -pta and -ra. I show that verbs with -pta convey the meaning of total change and that verbs with -ra convey the meaning of relative change. I further discuss how expressions with -pta and -ra interact: expressions with -ra implicate that the theme does not change from not being in the extension of the base to being in it. I propose an account in terms of scalar implicatures in which -pta and -ra are lexical alternatives, thus extending the domain of linguistic phenomena for which the computation of scalar implicatures is relevant.
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.
On describing word order
(2006)
One aspect that is always discussed in language descriptions, no matter how short they may be, is word order. Beginning with Greenberg 1963, it has been common to talk about word order using expressions such as "X is an SOV language", where "S" represents "subject", "0" represents "object", and "V" represents "verb". Statements such as this are based on an assumption of comparability, an assumption that all languages manifest the categories represented by "S", "0", and "V" (among others), and that word order in all languages can be described (and compared) using these categories.
On embedded implicatures
(2004)
The Gricean approach explains implicatures by assumptions about the pragmatics of entire utterances. The phenomenon of embedded implicatures remains a challenge for this approach since in such cases apparently implicatures contribute to the truth-conditional content of constituents smaller than utterances. In this paper, I investigate three areas where embedded implicatures seem to differ from implicatures at the utterance level: optionality, epistemic status, and implicated presuppositions. I conclude that the differences between the two kinds of implicatures justify an approach that maintains Gricean assumptions at the utterance level, and assumes a special operator for embedded implicatures.
Based on a Relevance Theory-informed view of language development, this paper argues that grammatical relations are construction-specific conventionalizations (grammaticalizations) of implicatures which arise out of repeated patterns of reference to particular types of referents. Once conventionalized, these structures function to constrain the hearer's identification of referents in discourse. As they are construction-specific, and hence language-specific, there is no category "subject" across languages; different languages will either show this type of grammaticalization or not, and if they do, may show it or not in different constructions. Any cross-linguistic use of terms such as "subject" (and "S", as in "SOV") should then be avoided.
Alexopoulou (2008) argues that Greek provides new evidence for the concept of binding illusions that was hypothesized by Fox and Sauerland (1996). Of special interest from my perspective is Alexopoulou’s argument that binding illusions arise not only with existential and universal quantifiers, but also with negative and interrogative quantifiers. The purpose of this note is to speculate on how to account for these kinds of binding illusions semantically building on Alexopoulou’s argument. In the following I refer to Alexopoulou’s (2008) paper as BIRG (Binding Illusions and Resumption in Greek) and to Clitic Left-Dislocation as CLLD. BIRG’s argument is based on the generalization concerning CLLD in Greek. Generally, a left-dislocated noun phrase cannot bind a pronoun in its clause in Greek.
Dictionaries contain lexicographic data whose occurrence is restricted to certain geo-graphical areas, subject fields, professions, etc. It is part of the duties of the lexicographer to give an account of such deviations to ensure a successful retrieval of the information on the part of the user. This contribution presents a discussion on labelling issues in the Dictionnaire Français–Mpongwé. Although the main focus is on the presentation of different types of labelling as well as problems in labelling, textual condensation procedures and mediostructural representations (to-gether with some aspects of the user perspective) are also critically evaluated. It is shown that these procedures reveal some inconsistencies which are not accounted for in the outer texts (front matter and back matter texts) of the dictionary. Finally suggestions are made for the improvement of the access structure of this dictionary.
The phenomenon discussed in this paper is the so-called expletive negation in negated yes/no questions in Serbo-Croatian. The term expletive negation seems, at this point to be a useful descriptive term for the phenomenon in question. One of the goals of this paper, however, is to show that it is not the correct one. Proposing the existence of semantically vacuous negation is the consequence of the assumption that sentential negation has a fixed position in the clausal hierarchy (Brown and Franks 1995). This approach cannot account for the relevant data in Serbo-Croatian. My claim is that the cases under consideration involve an alternative position of NegP in Serbo-Croatian, above TP. It is confined to the derivation of one semantic type of negated yes/no interrogatives, and it cannot trigger negative concord.
For this paper, 170 Tibeto-Burman languages were surveyed for nominal ease marking (adpositions), in an attempt to determine ifit would be possible to reeonstruet any ease markers to Proto· Tibeto-Burman, and in so doing leam more about the nature of the grammatieal organization of Proto-Tibeto-Burman. The data were also eross-cheeked for patterns of isomorphy/polysemy, to see ifwe can leam anything about the development ofthe forms we da find in the languages. The results of the survey indicate that although a11 Tibeto-Bunnan languages have developed some sort of relation marking, none of the markers ean be reconstrueted to the oldest stage of the family. Looking at the patterns of isomorphy or polysemy, we find there are regularities to the patterns we find, and on the basis of these regularities we can make assurne that the path of development most probably followed the markedness/prototypicality clines: the locative and ablative use would have arose first and then were extended to the more abstract cases.
The present paper investigates a certain subset of clause linkage phenomena and develops a constraint-based account to the empirical fact that clauses need to be distinguished with respect to their degree of integratedness into a potential matrix clause. Considering as example German, it is shown that the generally assumed twofold distinction between main and subordinate clauses (or root and embedded clauses) does not suffice to deal with the presented data. It is argued that the discussed linkage phenomena originate from syntactic, semantic and pragmatic properties of the clauses involved, and should hence be encoded in grammar.
This paper argues for non-primary c- and s-selectional restrictions of verbs in computing nonprimary predicatives such as resultatives, depictives, and manners. Our discussion is based both on the selection violations in the presence of nonprimary predicates and on the cross-linguistic and language-internal variations of categorial and semantic constraints on nonprimary predicates. We claim that all types of thematic predication are represented by an extended projection, and that the merger of lexical heads with another element, regardless of the type of the element, consistently has c- and s-selectional restrictions.
On object specificity
(2001)
[W]e have demonstrated that the object specificity follows from the same principle as the subject specificity under the EMH. Furthermore, the semantic discrepancy between the realis and irrealis object shift constructions turns out to be a subcase of the more general indicative-modal asymmetry. Although our analysis presented here is nothing but conclusive, it does suggest that the EMH is a potent candidate for explaining the indicative-modal asymmetry, as well as for building a general theory of the specificity effects in question.
In this paper I show that Clitic Climbing (CC) in Spanish and Long Scrambling (LS) in German (and Polish) are (im-)possible out of the same environments. For an explanation of this fact I propose a feature-oriented analysis of incorporation phenomena. The idea is that restructuring is a phenomenon of syntactic incorporation. In German and Polish, Agro incorporates covertly into the matrix clause and licenses LS out of the infinitival into the matrix clause. Similarily the clitic in Spanish, which is analysed as an Agro-head, incorporates into the matrix clause. I argue that this movement is necessary for reasons of feature-checking, i. e. for checking of an [+R]- or Restructuring-feature. In section 2 I discuss several differences between CC and LS. For example, the proposed analysis correctly predicts that clitics in contrast to scrambled phrases are subject to several serialization restrictions. Throughout the paper I use the term restructuring only in a descriptive sense, in order to describe the phenomenon in question.
This paper pursues the question what the implications of the Anti-Locality Hypothesis could be for the syntax of secondary predication. Focus of the discussion will be an investigation of what their internal structure of small clause complements must look like, how these small clause complements connect to their matrix environments, and what the relevance could be for the formulation of anti-locality presented here. Anti-locality is defined over a tripartite clause structure (split into three Prolific Domains) and a PF-condition on the computation (the Condition on Domain-Exclusivity). The investigation revolves around two leading questions: (i) does the syntax of small clauses involve more structure than simply [SC DP XP] and (ii) do small clauses constitute their own Prolific Domain (or maybe even more)? The results, affirmative answers to both questions, are also relevant for other types of secondary predication.
The status of quantifier raising in German and other languages where scope is fairly rigid is debated. The first part of this paper argues that quantifiers in German can undergo covert extraction out of coordinations, and therefore that quantifier raising is available in German. The second part argues that quantifier raising in German is constrained to never move one DP across another. This result might provide part of an explanation of scope rigidity in German.
The interaction between Syntax and Phonology has been one area of interesting empirical research and theoretical debate in recent years, particularly the question of the extent to which syntactic structure influences phonological phrasing. It has generally been observed that the edges of the major syntactic constituents (XPs) tend to coincide with prosodic phrase boundaries thus resulting in XPs like subject NPs, object NPs, Topic NPs, VPs etc. forming separate phonological phrases. Within Optimality Theoretic (OT) accounts, this fact has been attributed to a number of well-motivated general alignment constraints. Studies on relative clauses in Bantu and other languages have significantly contributed to this area of research inquiry where a number of parametric variations have been observed with regard to prosodic phrasing. In some languages, XPs which are heads of relatives form separate phonological phrases while in others they phrase with the relative clauses. This paper makes a contribution to this topic by discussing the phrasing of relatives in Ciwandya (a Bantu language spoken in Malawi and Tanzania). It shows that XPs which are heads of restrictive relative clauses phrase with their relative verbs, regardless of whether they are subjects, objects or other adjuncts. A variety of syntactic constructions are used to illustrate this fact. The discussion also confirms what has been generally observed in other Bantu languages concerning restrictive relatives with clefts and non-restrictive relative clauses. In both cases, the heads of the relatives phrase separately. The paper adopts an OT analysis which has been well articulated and defended in Cheng & Downing (2007, 2010, to appear) Downing & Mtenje (2010, 2011) to account for these phenomena in Ciwandya.
On Russenorsk
(2002)
The concept of mixed language has recently gained some popularity, to my mind for no good reason. It is unclear how a mixed language can be distinguished from the product of extensive borrowing or relexification. I therefore think that the concept only serves to provoke muddled thinking about linguistic contact and language change. Note e.g. that Munske adduces German as an example "because the author is a professor of German linguistics and because the phenomenon of language mixing can be explained better in relation to a language on which a large amount of research has been done than, for example, in relation to pidgin and creole languages" (1986: 81).
The paper shows that shared indefinite expressions in coordinative constructions may differ with respect to their referential properties. This is due to their being either in a focused or in a nonfocused shared constituent. Their different information-structural status follows from Rooth's theory on focus interpretation. Thus it follows that focused shared constitutents must be beyond the actual coordination and that coordinative constructions with unfocused shared constituents can be represented as ellipsis. In a focused shared constituent indefinite expressions may have a specific and an non specific unique reading as well as an non specific distributive one. For the latter we outline the idea that subjects and objects in the actual coordination form a pair of sets to which a distributing operator is attached. The set formation is further supported by plural pronouns referring to the respective set and by plural verb agreement in subsequent expressions.
This paper discusses critically a number of developments at the heart of current syntactic theory. These include the postulation of a rich sequence of projections at the left periphery of the sentence; the idea that movement is tied to the need to eliminate uninterpretable features; and the conception put forward by Chomsky and others that advances in the past decade have made it reasonable to raise the question about whether language might be in some sense ‘perfect’. However, I will argue that there is little motivation for a highly-articulated left-periphery, that there is no connection between movement and uninterpretable features, and that there is no support for the idea that language might be perfect.
This contribution is concerned with prefixed forms in western Austronesian languages which have been called a wide variety of names including 'stative', 'accidental', 'involuntary', 'potential', 'coincidence', 'momentary', and so on. Although widely neglected in the literature, these formations are of major import to the grammar of many western Austronesian languages, where for all event expressions there is an obligatory choice between a neutral form and a form marked for 'involuntariness', 'potentiality', 'coincidence', or the like. Furthermore, this distinction has implications for a wide range of theoretical issues, including the nature of unaccusativity and causativity, split-intransitivity, and the grammar of control and complementation.
The main goal of this contribution is to bring some basic order to the fairly broad and, on first sight at least, somewhat heterogeneous range of uses and meanings associated with these forms. I will argue that the different uses can be grouped into two semantically and morphosyntactically quite different construction types, which I will call STATIVE (proper) and POTENTIVE, respectively.
Section 2 presents the major uses of the 'stative' prefix ma- in Tagalog. In section 3, it is shown that despite superficial similarities the various examples with ma-marked predicates presented in section 2 involve two different constructions and that the prefix ma- belongs to two different morphological paradigms. Section 4, finally, provides a systematization of stative and potentive uses and discusses similarities and differences between the Tagalog system and superficially similar systems in so-called split-S languages.
This paper focuses on different subtypes of constructions involving temporally bounded quantification, e.g. sequences like David visited Rome three times followed by temporal phrases as different as (i) last year, which defines a time interval; (ii) in less that two months, which defines an amount of time; and (iii) per month, which refers to a time unit. As for the first two types of temporal phrases, data will be presented which shows that they have specific linguistic properties in these quantifying contexts, and do not behave exactly as the locating or duration adverbials they are superficially identical with. The third type of phrases will receive special attention. Structures with frequency adverbials like n times per month will be analysed compositionally, separating the quantified component n times from the temporally binding phrase per month (whose role is comparable to that of adverbials (i) and (ii) in the relevant constructions). The data presented is mainly from Portuguese, although the issues at stake – the linguistic properties of temporally bounded quantification – are obviously relevant to parallel constructions in other languages.
The article analyzes the accentuation of western South Slavic l-participles of verbal stems ending in an occlusive that are formed by adding the formant *-l- directly to the stem, e.g. *nes-lъ, Croatian nȅsao, Slovene nesel. Data from Slovene, Čakavian, Kajkavian and Štokavian dialects are compared and discussed against the background of late Proto-Slavic and early dialectal accentual and phonological changes. The operation of accentological changes such as Dybo’s law, Stang’s law and the rise of the neocircumflex, as well as the reduction of weak jers caused alternations in tone, vowel-length and position of the ictus. These alterations could be analogically eliminated or extended at different times and in different areas during the linguistic history of western South Slavic, thus causing the rise of some of the earliest isoglosses in the area in which western South Slavic is spoken.
In a recent article of major importance (2013), Tijmen Pronk has treated the accentuation of l-participles of the type neslъ in western South Slavic. Pronk points out correctly that Dybo’s law did not shift the accent onto final jers, e.g. in *kòņь, *bòbъ, and that the short vowel was preserved in Slovak osem < *òsmь, oheň < *ògņь, mohol < *mòglъ. Contrary to what Pronk claims, Slovene nę́sǝlis the phonetic reflex of *néslъ < *neslъ̀, Slovak niesol. The Slovene doublets (v)ǫ̑gǝl < *ǫ̀glь and (v)ózǝl < *ǫ̀zlъ suggest an earlier paradigm with vǫ̑- < ǫ̑- in the nom.sg. form and ó- < *ǫ̀- in the oblique cases. The vowel of ógǝnj < *ògņь also stems from the oblique cases. The expected neo-circumflex in the nom.sg. form is actually attested in rę̑bǝr < *rèbrь beside rę́bǝr with the reflex of Stang’s law from the oblique cases. There is no reason to assume that the accent was not retracted at an early stage in *neslъ̀, nor is there any reason to assume that Dybo’s law shifted the accent to the final jer in *dòbrъ and *sèdmь, as Pronk claims.
It has been previously reported that in languages demonstrating the Root Infinitive (RI) Stage the use of RIs is characterized by two properties: these forms are overwhelmingly eventive and have, in the majority of instances, a modal interpretation. Hoekstra and Hyams (1998, 1999) have proposed a theory stating that these two properties of RIs are co-dependent in that the application of the modal reference restriction limits the use of the aspectual verbal classes to eventive predicates. Furthermore, this theory assumed that the described mutual dependency of these constraints was valid cross-linguistically.
In this paper, we investigate the application of this theory to the case of RIs in Russian, one of the languages exhibiting the RI Stage. Using new longitudinal data from two monolingual Russian-speaking children, we demonstrate that the predictions of Hoekstra and Hyams’ approach are not realized for Russian child speech. While the constraint requiring that Ris have a modal reference does not seem to apply in Russian since the infinitival forms do receive past and present tense interpretation, these predicates are still overwhelmingly eventive and stative predicates appear mostly as finite verbs. Having shown that a theory connecting the application of the two restrictions on RIs does not account for the Russian data, we examine several alternative analyses of Russian RIs. We arrive at a conclusion that an explanation based on the lack of the event variable in stative predicates (Kratzer 1989) necessary for the interpretation of RIs in discourse (Avrutin 1997) succeeds in handling the Russian data presented in this article.
In the following, we will discuss the acquisition of plural forms in German from the unified perspective of the two, in our opinion compatible, approaches, on the basis of a longitudinal data sample of eight children. There are at least six recordings of each child, all of whom are girls. Together, the data cover the acquisition period from 1;11 to 2;10. One may thus anticipate that the data sample under investigation reflects the transition from purely lexical memorization to the acquisition of regularities or patterns.
In this paper it is argued that several typologically unrelated languages share the tendency to avoid voiced sibilant affricates. This tendency is explained by appealing to the phonetic properties of the sounds, and in particular to their aerodynamic characteristics. On the basis of experimental evidence it is shown that conflicting air pressure requirements for maintaining voicing and frication are responsible for the avoidance of voiced affricates. In particular, the air pressure released from the stop phase of the affricate is too high to maintain voicing which in consequence leads to a devoicing of the frication part.
In this paper it is argued that several typologically unrelated languages share the tendency to avoid voiced sibilant affricates. This tendency is explained by appealing to the phonetic properties of the sounds, and in particular to their aerodynamic characteristics. On the basis of experimental evidence it is shown that conflicting air pressure requirements for maintaining voicing and frication are responsible for the avoidance of voiced affricates. In particular, the air pressure released from the stop phase of the affricate is too high to maintain voicing which in consequence leads to a devoicing of the frication part.
In attempting to reconstruct the morphosyntax of Proto-Sino-Tibetan, one of the most basic questions to be answered is what was the unmarked word order of the proto-language? Chinese, Bai, and Karen are verb-medial languages, while all of the Tibeto-Burman languages except for Bai and Karen have verb-final word order. lf these languages are all related, as we can assume from lexical correspondences, then either Chinese, Bai and Karen changed from verb-final to verb-medial word order, or the other Tibeto-Burman languages changed trom verb-medial to verb-final order. How we answer the question of which languages changed their word would then give us the answer to the question of word order in Proto-Sino-Tibetan.
Studying kinematic behavior in speech production is an indispensable and fruitful methodology in order to describe for instance phonemic contrasts, allophonic variations, prosodic effects in articulatory movements. More intriguingly, it is also interpreted with respect to its underlying control mechanisms. Several interpretations have been borrowed from motor control studies of arm, eye, and limb movements. They do either explain kinematics with respect to a fine tuned control by the Central Nervous System (CNS) or they take into account a combination of influences arising from motor control strategies at the CNS level and from the complex physical properties of the peripheral speech apparatus. We assume that the latter is more realistic and ecological. The aims of this article are: first, to show, via a literature review related to the so called '1/3 power law' in human arm motor control, that this debate is of first importance in human motor control research in general. Second, to study a number of speech specific examples offering a fruitful framework to address this issue. However, it is also suggested that speech motor control differs from general motor control principles in the sense that it uses specific physical properties such as vocal tract limitations, aerodynamics and biomechanics in order to produce the relevant sounds. Third, experimental and modelling results are described supporting the idea that the three properties are crucial in shaping speech kinematics for selected speech phenomena. Hence, caution should be taken when interpreting kinematic results based on experimental data alone.
In what follows, I first briefly review Perlmutter (1968, 1970), in which it is argued that aspectual verbs are ambiguous between control and raising. I suggest that while the argument for the raising analysis is solid, the arguments supporting the control analysis of aspectual verbs are less so. As an alternative hypothesis to consider, I introduce the structural ambiguity hypothesis. In Section 3, I review three recent analyses of control and raising. Although there are important differences among them, they all share the basic assumption that the control/raising distinction is due to differences in selectional restrictions that the lexical items impose. Under such an assumption, the lexical ambiguity hypothesis is the only available option. In Section 4, I present evidence for the structural ambiguity hypothesis from studies concerning aspectual verbs in languages from four distinct families, German (Wurmbrand 2001), Japanese (Fukuda 2006), Romance languages (Cinque 2003), and Basque (Arregi Molina-Azaola 2004). These data strongly suggest that across languages aspectual verbs can appear in two different syntactic positions, either below or above vP, or the projection with which an external argument is introduced (Kratzer 1994, 1996, Chomsky 1995). Given these findings, I argue that it is the aspectual verbs' position with respect to vP which creates the control/raising ambiguity. When an aspectual verb appears in a position that is lower than vP, an external argument takes scope over the aspectual verb. Thus, it is interpreted as control. When an aspectual verb appears in a position that is higher than vP, on the other hand, it is the aspectual verb that takes scope over an entire vP, including the external argument. Thus, it is interpreted as raising. In section 5, I extend the scope of this study to include a discussion of want-type verbs in Indonesian, as analyzed in Polinsky & Potsdam (2006). Polinsky & Potsdam argue that the Indonesian want-type verbs must be raising in at least certain cases where they allow a rather peculiar interpretation. Although they assume that there are also control counterparts of the want-type verbs, I argue that applying the proposed analysis to the want-type verbs does away with the need for stipulating two distinct lexical entries for these verbs. Section 6 concludes the paper.
This paper takes a close look at the properties of Hungarian relative clauses that occur in the left periphery of the main clause, preceding a (pro)nominal associate. It will be shown that these left-peripheral relative clauses differ in many ways from relative clauses dislocated on the right periphery, as well as from relative clauses embedded under a (pro)nominal head. To capture the precise syntax of these left-peripheral clauses, these will be compared to ordinary left-dislocated items, with which they have some properties in common. Despite the surface similarities between the two, however, there are a few decisive aspects of behaviour, most notably, distributional properties and connectivity effects, which argue against taking left-peripheral relatives as cases of clausal left-dislocates in Hungarian. Instead, one is led to consider these as correlative clauses, on the basis of the properties they share with well-established correlatives in languages like Hindi.
This paper is part of an ongoing investigation into the nature of grammatical relations in the Sino-Tibetan language family. The ultimate goal of this investigation is to develop a hypothesis on the typological nature of word order and grammatical relations in the mother language which gave rise to all of the many languages within the Sino Tibetan language family. As the verb agreement (pronominalization) systems of Tibeto-Burman have been said to be a type of ergative marking, and to have been a part of Proto-Tibeto-Burman grammatical relations, the questions of the dating and nature of the agreement systems in Tibeto-Burman are relevant to the discussion of the nature of grammatical relations in Proto-Sino-Tibetan.
This paper deals with the variable position of adjectives in the Romanian DP. As all other Romance languages, Romanian allows for adjectives to appear in both prenominal and post-nominal position. In addition, however, Romanian has a third pattern: the so-called cel construction, in which the adjective in the post-nominal position is preceded by a determiner-like element, cel. This pattern is superficially similar to Determiner Spreading in Greek. In this paper we contrast the cel construction to Greek DS and discuss the similarities and differences between the two. We then present an analysis of cel as involving an appositive specification clause, building on de Vries (2002). We argue that the same structure is also involved in the context of nominal ellipsis, the second environment in which cel is found.
On the early development of aspect in greek and russian child language, a comparative analysis
(2003)
The category of aspect is grammaticized in both Greek and Russian opposing perfective and imperfective verb forms in all inflectional categories except the nonpast (‘present’). Despite these similarities there are important differences in the way the aspectual systems function in the two languages. While in Greek nearly all verbs oppose a perfective to a given imperfective grammatical form, Russian aspect is more strongly lexicalized with pairs of imperfective and perfective lexemes not only differing aspectually, but also as far as their lexical meanings are concerned. This is especially true of perfective verbs formed by prefixes as compared to their imperfective bases. Thus, in pairs of prefixed and unprefixed dynamic verbs, the derived prefixed (perfective) member has a telic meaning while its unprefixed (imperfective) counterpart is atelic (e.g. sjest’ (PFV) ‘to eat up’ vs. jest’ (IPF) ‘to eat’). Such derived perfective verbs may in turn be “secondarily” imperfectivized by suffixation furnishing the only “true” perfective/imperfective pairs of verbs (e.g. sjest’ (PFV) ‘to eat up’ vs. sjedat’ (IPF) ‘to eat up’ (iterative)). “Secondary” imperfectives do not occur in our child data.
In this pilot study, we will analyze the tense-aspect-mood forms of the 20 most frequent verbs with equivalent meanings occurring in the longitudinal audiotaped data of a Greek and a Russian boy between 2;1 and 2;3 (their entire lexical inventories comprise approx. 100 verbs each).
We adopt a constructivist perspective on the development of aspect in Greek and Russian child language and will show that in spite of a broad inventory of imperfective and perfective verb forms to be found in the speech of both children aspect has not yet developed into a generalized grammatical category, but is strongly dependent on aktionsart (stative/dynamic, telic/atelic) in both languages. While this results in a strong preference for perfective verb forms of telic verbs and of imperfective forms of atelic ones in the speech of the Greek boy, the Russian child tends to use the unmarked members.
This paper studies the acquisition process of Spanish verbal morphology in a monolingual child. The study focuses on the period of the first 50 verb lemmas. This covers the period from age 1;7 till 1;10.
The data shows that the verb acquisition process of this Spanish child follows three main stages:
1. A lexical stage in which verbs are only acquired as a lexical element.
2. A syntactic stage in which the verb, still contemplated as a non-split word, becomes the main element in the development of thematic and semantic relations.
3. A morphological stage in which verb suffixes begin to be analysed separately. At this stage, the relationship between form and meaning starts and the functional categories linked to the verb (tense, aspect, agreement, mood... ) begin to be acquired. Just at this moment, the first miniparadigms appear, which suggests that the acquisition process of verb morphology has started.
The first two stages are premorphological and cover in our child the period till 1;9. In the last stage, which begins at 1;10, the child enters the protomorphological stage.
This paper discusses a variant of German V2 declaratives sharing properties with both subordinate relative clauses and main clauses. I argue that modal subordination failure helps decide between two rivaling accounts for this construction. Thus, a hypotactic analysis involving syntactic variable sharing must be preferred over parataxis plus anaphora resolution. The scopal behavior of the construction will be derived from its 'proto-assertional force,' which it shares with similar 'embedded root' constructions.
A correct interpretation of the genitive plural forms in Slavic and related languages requires a detailed chronological analysis of the material. At every stage of development we have to reckon with both phonetically regular and analogical forms. Analogy operates quite often along the same lines in different periods. Explaining an analogic change amounts to indicating a model, a motivation, and a stage of development for its effectuation. If one of these cannot be indicated, we must look for a phonetic explanation.
On the Indo-European nature of non-Indo-European animals metaphor : the case of Chinese zoosemy
(2007)
In this paper, a class of sentences in German is discussed that are often called whexclamatives. […]
So called wh-exclamatives can be roughly characterized as wh-clauses that are embedded under exclamative predicates like erstaunt sein/to be amazed at [...] or that are used as the basis for an exclamation [...].
One can ask if wh-exclamatives are a clause-type of their own, in particular, whether they are different from wh-clauses in question environments, that is under question predicates like to ask or to wonder or used as questions. It is often assumed that wh-clauses in exclamative contexts, both embedded and unembedded, are indeed different from wh-clauses in interrogative or question environments [...], at least regarding their semantical type, see for example Elliot (1971, 1974), Grimshaw (1979, 1981), Zaefferer (1983, 1984), Altmann (1 987, 1993). […]
I assume with Grimshaw (1979) that so called wh-exclamatives and wh-interrogatives are alike with respect to their syntactical properties. In addition, I think that they are also alike semantically. So, what I like to do here is to evaluate the following hypothesis:
So-called wh-exclamatives are of the same semantical type as wh-interrogatives.
A fundamental question in the study of speech is about the invariance of the ultimate percepts, or features. The present paper gives an overview of the noninvariance problem and offers some hints towards a solution. Examination of various data on place and voicing perception suggests the following points. Features correspond to natural boundaries between sounds, which are included in the infant's predispositions for speech perception. Adult percepts arise from couplings and contextual interactions between features. Both couplings and interactions contribute to invariance. But this is at the expense of profound qualitative changes in perceptual boundaries implying that features are neither independently nor invariantly perceived. The question then is to understand the principles which guide feature couplings and interactions during perceptual development. The answer might reside in the fact that: (1) adult boundaries converge to a single point of the perceptual space, suggesting a context-free central reference; (2) this point corresponds to the neutral vocoïd, suggesting the reference is related to production; (3) at this point perceptual boundaries correspond to the natural ones, suggesting the reference is anchored in predispositions for feature perception. In sum, perceptual invariance seems to be grounded on a radial representation of the vocal tract around a singular point at which boundaries are context-fee, natural and coincide with the neutral vocoïd.
Since Donald Davidson’s seminal work “The Logical Form of Action Sentences” (1967) event arguments have become an integral component of virtually every semantic theory. Over the past years Davidson´s proposal has been continuously extended such that nowadays event(uality) arguments are generally associated not only with action verbs but with predicates of all sorts. The reasons for such an extension are seldom explicitly justified. Most problematical in this respect is the case of stative expressions. By taking a closer look at copula sentences the present study assesses the legitimacy of stretching the Davidsonian notion of events and discusses its consequences. A careful application of some standard eventuality diagnostics (perception reports, combination with locative modifiers and manner adverbials) as well as some new diagnostics (behavior of certain degree adverbials) reveals that copular expressions do not behave as expected under a Davidsonian perspective: they fail all eventuality tests, regardless of whether they represent stage-level or individual-level predicates. In this respect, copular expressions pattern with stative verbs like know, hate, and resemble, which in turn differ sharply from state verbs like stand, sit, and sleep. The latter pass all of the eventuality tests and therefore qualify as true “Davidsonian state” expressions. On the basis of these empirical observations and taking up ideas of Kim (1969, 1976) and Asher (1993, 2000), an alternative account of copular expressions (and stative verbs) is provided, according to which the copula introduces a referential argument for a temporally bound property exemplification (= “Kimian state”). Considerations on some logical properties, viz. closure conditions and the latent infinite regress of eventualities, suggest that supplementing Davidsonian eventualities with Kimian states may yield not only a more adequate analysis of copula sentences but also a better understanding of eventualities in general.
In her discussion of the Japanese adversative passive, Anna Wierzbicka writes (1988: 260): “The problem is extremely interesting and important both for intrinsic reasons and because of its wider methodological implications. It can be formulated like this: if one form can be used in a number of different ways, are we entitled to postulate for it a number of different meanings or should we rather search for one semantic common denominator (regarded as the MEANING of the form in question) and attribute the variety of uses to the interaction between this meaning and the linguistic or extralinguistic context?” Though it “may seem obvious” that the second stand is “methodologically preferable” (261), she takes the first position and concludes that “the Japanese passive has to be recognized as multiply ambiguous” (286). In the following I intend to show that this view is both wrong and fruitful.
On the notion 'determiner'
(2003)
Following a common practice in generative grammar, HPSG treats the determiners as members of a separate functional part of speech (Det). The status of the functional parts of speech is a matter of debate and controversy. The auxiliaries, for instance, are commonly treated as members of a separate functional category (Aux or Infl) in many variants of generative grammar, including GB, MP and LFG, but in GPSG and HPSG, it is a matter of equally common practice to treat them as members of V and to reject the postulation of a separate functional category, see Pullum & Wilson (1977) and Gazdar, Pullum & Sag (1982). This text makes a similar case for the determiners; more specifically, it argues that the determiners are categorially heterogeneous, in the sense that some are members of A, whereas others are members of N. The argumentation is mainly based on inflectional morphology and morpho-syntactic agreement data. The consequences of the categorial heterogeneity are hard to reconcile with the specifier treatment of the determiners in Pollard & Sag (1994) and with the Det-as-head treatment in Netter (1994), but it can smoothly be integrated in the functor treatment of the prenominals in Allegranza (1998) and Van Eynde (2002).
Since the introduction of the X-bar principles it is commonly assumed that prepositions are heads of PPs, in the same way as nouns and pronouns are heads of NPs. However, while this is well motivated for a large majority of the pronouns and the prepositions in many languages, there are also exceptions. More specifically, Van Eynde (1999) argues that the reduced or minor pronouns of Dutch — as opposed to their full or tonic counterparts — cannot head an NP, and the purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that there are also prepositions which cannot head a PP. The first section introduces the distinction between major and minor categories. The second shows how it can be applied to the prepositions and presents a way of treating minor prepositions in HPSG. The third singles out the Dutch te(to) as a plausible candidate for a minor preposition treatment, and the fourth provides criteria for the identification of other minor prepositions. The concluding section points out the wider significance of these findings.
The purpose of this dissertation is to defend the idea that the empirical responsibilities of binding theory can be handled in a more psychologically and historically realistic way when assigned to the field of pragmatics. In particular, I wish to show that Optimality Theory (OT) (Prince & Smolensky, 1993), the stochastic OT and Gradual Learning Algorithm of Boersma (1998), the Recoverability of OT of Wilson (2001) and Buchwald et al. (2002), and the bidirectional OT of Blutner (2000b) and Bidirectional Gradual Learning Algorithm of Jäger (2003a) can all participate in a formal framework in which one can formally spell out and justify the idea that the distributional behavior of bound pronouns and reflexivs is a pragmatic phenomenon.
The focus of this paper is the perspectivization of thematic roles generally and the recipient role specifically. Whereas perspective is defined here as the representation of something for someone from a given position (Sandig 1996: 37), perspectivization refers to the verbalization of a situation in the speech generation process (Storrer 1996: 233). In a prototypical act of giving, for example, the focus of perception (the attention of the external observer) may be on the person who gives (agent), the transferred object (patient) or the person who receives the transferred object (recipient). The languages of the world provide differing linguistic means to perspectivize such an act of giving, or better: to perspectivize the participants of such an action. In this article, the linguistic means of three selected continental West Germanic languages –German, Dutch and Luxembourgish– will be taken into consideration, with an emphasis on the perspectivization of the recipient role.
This paper investigates the relation between TT-MCTAG, a formalism used in computational linguistics, and RCG. RCGs are known to describe exactly the class PTIME; simple RCG even have been shown to be equivalent to linear context-free rewriting systems, i.e., to be mildly context-sensitive. TT-MCTAG has been proposed to model free word order languages. In general, it is NP-complete. In this paper, we will put an additional limitation on the derivations licensed in TT-MCTAG. We show that TT-MCTAG with this additional limitation can be transformed into equivalent simple RCGs. This result is interesting for theoretical reasons (since it shows that TT-MCTAG in this limited form is mildly context-sensitive) and, furthermore, even for practical reasons: We use the proposed transformation from TT-MCTAG to RCG in an actual parser that we have implemented.
Last year Georg Holzer proposed a relative chronology of accentual developments in Slavic (2005). Here I shall compare his chronology with the one I put forward earlier (1975, 1989a, 2003) and discuss the differences. For the sake of convenience, I first reproduce the relevant parts of my chronology, omitting asterisks before pre-historic Slavic forms. 1. Proto-Indo-European. 2. Dialectal Indo-European. 3. Early Balto-Slavic. During this period the characteristic lateral mobility of Balto-Slavic accent patterns came into existence. 4. Late Balto-Slavic. During this period the Balto-Slavic accent patterns obtained their final shape.
On the role of syntactic locality in morphological processes : the case of (Greek) derived nominals
(2008)
The paper is structured as follows. In section 2, I briefly summarize the facts on English and Greek nominalizations. In section 3, I discuss English nominal derivation in some detail. In section 4, I turn to the question of licensing of AS in nominals. In section 5, I turn to the issue of the optionality of licensing of AS in the nominal system.
In the late seventies, Bernard Comrie was one of the first linguists to explore the effects of the referential hierarchy (RH) on the distribution of grammatical relations (GRs). The referential hierarchy is also known in the literature as the animacy, empathy or indexibability hierarchy and ranks speech act participants (i.e. first and second person) above third persons, animates above inanimates, or more topical referents above less topical referents. Depending on the language, the hierarchy is sometimes extended by analogy to rankings of possessors above possessees, singulars above plurals, or other notions. In his 1981 textbook, Comrie analyzed RH effects as explaining (a) differential case (or adposition) marking of transitive subject ("A") noun phrases in low RH positions (e.g. inanimate or third person) and of object ("P") noun phrases in high RH positions (e.g. animate or first or second person), and (b) hierarchical verb agreement coupled with a direct vs. inverse distinction, as in Algonquian (Comrie 1981: Chapter 6).
If we want to develop a semantic analysis for explicit performatives such as I promise you to free Willy, we are faced with the following puzzle: In order to account for the speech act expressed by the performative verb, one can assume that the so-called performative clause is purely performative and provides the illocutionary force of the speech act whose content is given by the semantic object denoted by the complement clause. Yet under this perspective, the performative clause that is, next to the performative verb, the indexicals I and you that refer to the speaker and to the addressee of the utterance context is semantically invisible and does not contribute compositionally its meaning to the meaning of the entire explicit performative sentence. Conversely, if we account for the truth conditional contribution of the performative clause and deny that the meaning of the performative verb is purely performative, then we have to find a way to account for the speech act expressed by the performative verb. Of course, there is already the widely accepted and very appealing indirectness account for explicit performative utterances developed by Bach & Harnish (1979). Roughly, Bach and Harnish solve this puzzle in deriving the performativity by means of a pragmatic inference process. According to them, the important speech act performed by means of the utterance of the explicit performative sentence is a kind of the conventionalized indirect speech act. However, the boundary between semantics and pragmatics can be drawn in many various ways. Therefore, I think there could be other perspectives regarding the interface between the truth-functional treatment of the declarative explicit performative sentences and the speech acts performed with their utterances and which are expressed by the performative verbs. Hence, this thesis consists in the experiment to develop a further analysis and to check out its consequences with respect to the semantics and pragmatics of explicit performative utterances and the new interface emerged. Briefly, the experiment runs as follows: First, I develop an analysis for explicit performative sentences framed by parenthetical structures such as in (1)(a). In a second step, this parenthetical analysis is applied to the proper Austinian explicit performative sentences in (1)(b). (1) a. Tomorrow, I promise you this, I will teach them Tyrolean songs. b. I promise you that I will teach them Tyrolean songs. To analyze at first explicit performatives framed by parenthetical structures bears the convenience that we are faced with two utterances of two main clauses. In (1)(a) there is the utterance of the host sentence Tomorrow I will teach them Tyrolean songs, and the utterance of the explicit parenthetical I promise you this, where the demonstrative this refers to the utterance of Tomorrow I will teach them Tyrolean songs. Since speakers perform speech acts with utterances of main clauses, I assume that the meaning of the explicit parenthetical I promise you this specifies that the actual illocutionary force of the utterance of Tomorrow I will teach them Tyrolean songs is the illocutionary force of a promise. Hence, instead of deriving an indirect illocutionary force by means of a pragmatic inference schema, we can deal with an ordinary direct speech act that is performed with the utterance of the host sentence. This kind of analysis stresses the particular discourse function of explicit performative utterances. Performative verbs are used whenever the contextual information is not sufficient to determine the illocutionary force of the corresponding implicit speech act. The resulting consequences of the parenthetical analysis are interesting since they cast a different light on performative verbs. Surprisingly, the performative verbs are not performative at all. They do not constitute the execution of a speech act, but are execution supporting. Instead of constituting the particular illocutionary force, they merely specify the illocutionary force of the utterance of the host sentence. For instance, the speaker utters the explicit parenthetical I promise you this for specifying what he is simultaneously doing. Hence the speaker does not succeed in performing the promise simply because he is uttering I promise you this. Rather, by means of the information conveyed by the utterance of I promise you this, the potential illocutionary forces of the utterance of the host sentence are disambiguated. Thus, it is not the case that explicit parentheticals are trivially true when uttered. Their function is more complex. Their self-verifying property (‘saying so makes it so’) is explained by means of disambiguation. Furthermore, according to the parenthetical analysis, instead of being purely performative, the performative verbs contribute compositionally their meanings to the truth conditions of the entire explicit performative sentence. Together with its consequences, this analysis is applied to the proper Austinian performatives, which display subordination. I assume that regardless of their structure, explicit performatives always semantically and pragmatically behave as the parenthetical analysis predicts.
This is a survey of the development of the model of PARTICIPATION (P'ATION) with reference to the postulated sequence of the techniques on the dimension of P'ATION. Along with a brief explanation of the techniques this article contains a discussion of the major claims with regard to the sequence of the techniques and the possibilities of subjecting the claims to empirical verification.