bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Mismatch: Grammar distortion and grammaticalization
Authors: Gaeta Livio
Published: March 2014

The paper investigates the potentially distorting impact of grammaticalization on grammar through the analysis of different types of synchronic form-meaning mismatches which may result from the expansion of a grammaticalization process. Grammaticalization may induce mismatches as a consequence of the development of abnormal structures or new constructions incompatible with the general patterns of the language. Mismatches may also be due to an unchanged residue of grammaticalization, which may derive either from inertial resistance or from a superordinate restriction which prevents the grammaticalization wave from extending to specific domains. Finally, mismatches may also be the result of language contact, either by making use of alternative devices of a foreign origin or by preventing the grammaticalization of native structures due to the introduction of ready-made borrowed constructions.
The grammaticalization of nominalizers in Japanese and Korean: A contrastive study
Authors: Horie Kaoru
Published: March 2014

The paper examines the grammaticalization patterns of sentential nominalizers in Japanese and compares them with those found in Korean. The analysis of the nominalization system of Japanese illustrates the multifunctional character of such forms and the existence of differential degrees of grammaticalization among the various nominalizers. Moreover, the comparison of the behaviour of the Japanese nominalizers no and tokoro with their Korean counterparts kes and tey reveals that the former are far more versatile and have evolved to a more advanced stage of grammaticalization. The paper also suggests that the tendency for Korean to exhibit a lesser degree of grammaticalization than Japanese manifests itself in domains other than that of sentential nominalizers, such as the development of periphrastic aspectual constructions.
On the frills of grammaticalization
Authors: Kuteva Tania
Published: March 2014

The paper shows that contact-induced grammaticalization is frequently accompanied by frills, that is, by linguistic accretion instead of the commonly expected attrition. This fact adds weight to the important insights gained in recent grammaticalization studies that both language-internal and contact-induced grammaticalization can be analysed in terms of the same set of definitional criteria and that contact-induced grammaticalization always entails language-internal grammaticalization and, hence, the same factors operate in both kinds of change. The explanation I propose for linguistic accretion in contact-induced grammaticalization capitalizes on the notion of overlap acknowledged in processes of language-internal grammaticalization. In contact-induced grammaticalization, I show that overlap is manifested both as a diachronic stage of the grammaticalization development and as a synchronic buffer zone in geographical space.
The grammaticalization of clausal nominalizers in Burmese
Authors: Simpson Andrew
Published: March 2014

This paper is concerned with the grammaticalization of clausal nominalizers in two different but closely-related forms of Burmese, Colloquial Burmese and Literary Burmese. A contrastive overview of the morphosyntactic properties of the nominalizersthii and mii of Literary Burmese and their Colloquial Burmese counterpartste and me, together with the application of a number of tests for the identification of nominalized constructions, reveal that grammaticalization is more advanced in the colloquial language than in the literary variety: te and me have lost their nominal specifications and been reanalysed as grammatical elements of a different categorial type, instantiating verb-related mood and realis–irrealis distinctions. The comparison of the system of nominalization in the two complementary varieties of Burmese allows for insights into the evolution, spread and reinterpretation of nominalization structures within a language.
Tense, Aspect and Mood in Awetí verb-paradigms: Analytic and synthetic forms.
Authors: Drude Sebastian
Published: March 2014

This paper describes the verbal Tense-Aspect-Mood system of Awetí (Tupian, Central Brazil) in a Word-and-Paradigm approach.

One classification of Awetí verb forms contains clear aspect categories. A second set of independent classifications renders at least four moods and contains a third major TAM classification, factuality, that has one mainly temporal category Future, while others are partially or wholly modal.

Structural categories reflect the formal composition of the forms. Some forms are synthetic, ‘marked’ only by means of affixes, but many are analytic, containing auxiliary particles.

With selected sample forms we demonstrate in detail the interplay of structural and functional categories in Awetí verb paradigms.
Tonogenesis in Southeastern Monguor.
Authors: Dwyer Arienne
Published: March 2014

As the result of language contact in the northern Tibetan region, one variety of the Mongolic language Monguor (ISO 639-3: MJG) realizes prosodic accent as a rising pitch contour. Furthermore, a small number of homophones have come to be distinguished by tonal contour. Although at least two Turkic and Mongolic languages have occasionally copied the most salient tonal features of some Chinese loanwords, this is the first known example of both distinctive pitch contrasts in native lexemes, as well as default prosodic accent at the utterance level. Such an incipient tonal system offers insight into the relationship between often-contested types of prosodic accent as well as the effects of intensive language contact.
Tofa language change and terminal generation speakers
Authors: Harrison K. David , Anderson Gregory D.S.
Published: March 2014

Small and moribund languages seem to behave in some ways as if they were going to continue living forever. Their speakers – including those in the very terminal generation – may continue to introduce changes and innovations, including changes resulting in both simplification and in greater complexity. It is often difficult to disentangle whether a particular change is driven by internal restructuring, contact induced change, obsolescence effects, or some combination of these. We also find in moribund languages an unusually high incidence of variation both across and within speakers, variation that cannot be correlated to social or demographic factors given the very small size of the speech community. We present new data from a salvage documentation of Tofa, an endangered Turkic language of Siberia, to argue that moribund languages may provide an ideal laboratory to study the interaction of domains in language change.
Hocank's challenge to morphological theory
Authors: Helmbrecht Johannes , Lehmann Christian
Published: March 2014

Hočank is a highly endangered Siouan language of Wisconsin and Nebraska which currently is the object of an extensive documentation project at the University of Erfurt, Germany. The paper presents a descriptive investigation of parts of Hočank verb morphology and its implications for morphological theory. Hočank verb morphology – in particular the left side of the verbal complex – reveals cross-linguistically highly unusual and dispreferred patterns which pose a challenge to traditional and contemporaneous morphological theory. Hočank verbs show to some degree systematically a) discontinuous stems, b) stem-internal inflection, and c) inflectional morphology which is morphotactically closer to the verb root than derivational morphology. Diachronically, these patterns derive from the lexicalization of mostly derivational morphology or compounding which eventually led to the entrapment of inflectional prefixes, hence creating interfixes. The traditional notions of infixation and/or interfixation cannot account for these patterns in a satisfying way. Therefore, a partly new and systematized typology of affix types is proposed which takes into consideration the results of diachronic linguistics as well as grammaticalization theory. A grammaticalization path from interfixes to infixes is proposed with regard to the Hočank data but with relevance beyond this individual case.
On the logic of generalizations about cross-linguistic aspect-modality links
Authors: Abraham Werner
Published: March 2014

In what follows the attempt is made, in all due brevity and succinctness, to gain more solid insight into links between aspect and modality as observed to hold in German and other West and North Germanic languages in Abraham (1990a, b, 2001, 2002, 2005). The basic idea (developed in more detail in the Introduction to this volume) is that there are such logical relations at the basis of the hypothesis, but that they are subject to markedness influences to the extent that the linking generalizations may be under demise in the context of a set of welldefined exceptions to the default links. The directions of the solutions under non-default contexts are those predictable by the A(spect)-T(ense)-M(odality) Hierarchy according to which, under specific markedness conditions, aspect form gives way to tense form, which in turn gives way to modal form if the default form is given up (Leiss 2000, 2002).
The connections between modality, aspectuality, and temporality in Modern Russian
Authors: Klimonov Wladimir D. , Klimonov Gerda
Published: March 2014

The paper deals with the frequency and the collocation modalities of the epistemic and root modal verb constructions with marked variants of some grammatical parameters in two German literary texts representing the 19th century German written language. They are compared with their Slovene translations. According to the Slovene model of Natural Syntax, the token-frequency of the observed constructions and their micro-grammatical collocation tendency form the basis for generating the naturalness and grammaticalization status of the observed structures. Special focus is placed on Abraham’s (1990, 1999, 2001) hypothesis of a strong collocation tendency between epistemic modality and imperfectivity, on the one hand, and root modality and perfectivity, on the other, as well as Leiss’ (2000a, b) hypothesis regarding typological links with referential (in)definiteness. Both hypotheses will be confirmed by the statistical data obtained from the investigated corpora in both languages.
The aspect-modality link in the Japanese verbal complex and beyond
Authors: Narrog Heiko
Published: March 2014

This contribution investigates the aspectual and modal marking in the Japanese verbal complex, and as a result offers support for the hypothesis of a link between aspect and deontic vs. epistemic interpretation of modal markers. Since Japanese is structurally largely different from the Germanic and the Slavic languages and is genetically unrelated, the aspect-modality link must be motivated by general cognitive principles. On the other hand, I suggest that with respect to some points in Abraham’s and Leiss’s (in this volume) theory of the aspect-modality link a revision might be called for. Concretely, I propose the following: (1) The temporality of deontic modal sentences differs from epistemic modal sentences in that deontic modal sentences require [S ≠ E] (E standing for the event time in the complement) while there are no such restrictions on sentences with epistemic modals. (2) The crucial factor in modal interpretation is temporal rather than aspectual. Aspectuality mediates between modality and temporality rather than motivating or entailing modality directly. (3) Grammatical aspect only provides a cue to modal interpretation, but cannot determine it. The ultimate determining factor is context, which provides either a volitive or non-volitive background to the utterance.
A note on modality and aspect in Saramaccan
Authors: Narrog Heiko
Published: March 2014

This article provides a short overview over Saramaccan TMA marking and its modal system and discusses the interaction of modality and aspect. Saramaccan modal markers are stative themselves and therefore do not take durative marking. However, differences appear when modal markers take propositions with divergent temporal-aspectual properties. Especially, it is shown that the uses of the only Saramaccan modal marker which is polyfunctional between root and epistemicity, musu, can be distinguished by their selective properties. Specifically, the epistemic use associates exclusively with stative and durative propositions
From subordinate clause to noun-phrase: Yang constructions in colloquial Indonesian
Authors: Englebretson Robert
Published: March 2014

This paper addresses the blurring of a distinction between subordinate clause and nominal phrase in colloquial Indonesian conversation. Specifically, it presents a discourse-based analysis of the forms and functions of constructions introduced by the morpheme yang. Previous literature has generally described these constructions as relative clauses; however, this paper shows that they form a continuum around three general foci. They range from traditional relative clauses serving as modifiers of head nouns, to headless referring expressions serving as presupposed information in clefts, to referring expressions functioning as direct nominal arguments of predicates. The findings call into question the label “relative clause” for these Indonesian constructions, and support a view of grammatical categories as emerging from their use in discourse.
Conjunction and sequenced actions: The Estonian complementizer and evidential particle et
Authors: Keevallik Leelo
Published: March 2014

The usage patterns of the Estonian complementizer et in sequentially embedded actions show that it functions as an evidential particle. In oral as well as Internet interaction, clause-initial et attributes upcoming content to the previous speaker/writer and thereby incorporates another voice. Clause-combining with et is thus a collaborative achievement of the participants performing sequenced actions in real time. The development of this complementizer and evidential from an original deictic item most probably started in reported speech, where the recurrent repetition of et may have resulted in the incorporation of the last instance into the following clause.
Determining morphosyntactic feature values
Authors: Corbett Greville G.
Published: March 2014

Determining the number of cases (case values) in a given language may be a challenging analytical task. In establishing the techniques, special attention has been devoted to Russian, since it exhibits a whole set of difficult problems. It has been claimed to have as few as six case values or as many as eleven. The evidence is considered again, taking the valuable work of the Set-theoretical School, and moving on to a ‘Canonical’ approach in which we construct a logical scheme against which to evaluate the different case values. We see clearly that the case values differ dramatically in status, from those at the centre of the system to those which are peripheral and in decline, yet maintaining a presence in the case system.
Does Hungarian have a case system?
Authors: Spencer Andrew
Published: March 2014

I argue that case markers in Hungarian are best thought of as ‘fused postpositions’. There is no need to set up a separate syntactic or morphological [Case] attribute as such. Rather, we just need a morphological principle stating that nominals (including pronouns) have a special form, the traditional case form. In this respect Hungarian is crucially different from languages such as Latin (which requires both a morphological and a syntactic [Case] feature) or Finnish (which requires at least a syntactic [Case] feature). I discuss certain typological issues arising from this analysis, arguing that when grammarians refer to Hungarian ‘cases’, they are really referring to a rather more general notion of ‘canonical grammatical function markers on dependents’.
Cases, arguments, verbs in Abkhaz, Georgian and Mingrelian
Authors: Hewitt George
Published: March 2014

A number of apparently anomalous features in the marking of arguments are examined in three contiguous languages spoken in Transcaucasia: Abkhaz from the North West Caucasian family, and Georgian and Mingrelian, two South Caucasian (or Kartvelian) languages. Among the categories examined are those of potentiality, unwilling/accidental activity, causation, (in)transitivity, and non-standard case-assignment, as well as the much debated question of whether Georgian (and, by extension, Proto-Kartvelian) is correctly described in part of its morpho-syntax as exemplifying an Ergative as opposed to an Active configuration. There are passing references to such other languages as (Indo-European) Ancient Greek, (North West Caucasian) Circassian and (Kartvelian) Svan.
The degenerative dative of Southern Norrbothnian
Authors: Dahl Östen
Published: March 2014

In some northern Swedish vernaculars, one can find some rather peculiar developments in the use of inflectional forms of nouns. Thus, in the vernaculars Pitemål and Rånemål, spoken in the province of Norrbotten, no less than three kinds of forms compete for the territory taken up by indefinite nouns in other Germanic languages such as Standard Swedish. These are: (i) definite plural forms; (ii) forms historically derived from older (nominative forms of) indefinite plurals; (iii) forms historically derived from (probably definite) dative plurals. The expansion of the definite forms into indefinite territory is found over a large part of the Swedish dialect area. The development of the old dative forms, on the other hand, is restricted to a smaller area in Norrbotten, although the first stage of it can be seen also in the province of Västerbotten. In this initial stage, dative forms are found after quantifier words such as ‘some’, ‘many’. In some vernaculars, datives are also used after numerals. The most plausible explanation here is that the constructions historically involve a deleted preposition ‘of ’. But the dative forms have expanded way beyond the constructions where such a deletion is plausible, in such a way that they are sometimes referred to in descriptions of the vernaculars simply as ‘indefinite plurals’. However, the original indefinite plurals are still used and there is a certain division of labor between the three types of forms that occur in ‘indefinite’ contexts. Thus, a Swedish bare plural will normally be translated using a definite form; if it is preceded by some kind of modifier such as an adjective, however, it will typically be rendered with an ending which historically is a dative, irrespective of the syntactic function the noun phrase has in the sentence. If the noun is preceded by a quantifier, the form chosen may be one derived from a historical indefinite plural; but this is possible only with certain quantifiers and given that there is no modifier present. At the same time, the original functions of the dative case have lost their productivity in these vernaculars. What we can observe in Pitemål and Rånemål is thus a development in which a dative ending loses its character as a case marker and instead turns into what looks like an indefinite plural ending, although one which has a restricted use.
Case compounding in the Bodic languages
Authors: Noonan Michael
Published: March 2014

Case compounding, which can be defined as the inclusion of two or more case markers within a phonological word, has received a certain amount of attention in the literature in recent years, in particular the phenomenon known as Suffixaufnahme [e.g., in Plank 1995a] and the various sorts of case compounding in Australian languages, some of which manifest Suffixaufnahme and other types of case compounding. There has been relatively less attention paid to the phenomenon outside of these two areas of research. This paper is an attempt to rectify the situation somewhat by presenting a general typology of case compounding, followed by a detailed analysis of the phenomenon in the Bodic languages, a section of the Tibeto-Burman family.
An asymmetry between VO and OV languages
Authors: Hawkins John A.
Published: March 2014

The World Atlas of Language Structures has established an interesting asymmetry between head-initial (VO) and head-final (OV) languages with respect to the ordering of oblique phrases, i.e., phrases corresponding to with the key and on the table in opened [the door] [with the key] and put [the book] [on the table]. Head-initial grammars have a consistent and almost exceptionless preference for VOX order. Head-final grammars have variable basic orders: all of XOV, OXV and OVX are productively attested, and there are fewer clear basic orders than in VO languages. In this paper I offer a multi-factor explanation for this grammatical asymmetry in terms of processing efficiency, developing principles proposed in Hawkins (1994, 2004).
Without aspect
Authors: Polinsky Maria
Published: March 2014

This paper presents and analyzes the encoding of aspect in Heritage Russian (HR), an incompletely acquired language spoken by those for whom another language became dominant at an early age. The HR aspectual system is distinct from the baseline. Aspectual distinctions are lost due to the leveling or loss of morphological marking. As a result, heritage speakers often maintain only one member of a former aspectual pair. Such HR verb forms are underspecified for aspect. To compensate for that, heritage speakers regularly express aspect through the use of analytical forms with the light verbs ‘be’, ‘become’, ‘do’. The frequent occurrence of these forms supports the notion that aspectual distinctions are universal, belonging with the conceptual representation of events. What varies is the actual linguistic encoding of these distinctions, but not the underlying distinctions themselves.
Grammarians' languages versus humanists' languages and the place of speech act formulas in models of linguistic competence
Authors: Pawley Andrew
Published: March 2014

The paper begins by observing that the notion of what a language consists of is problematical, reflected in one scholar's comment that, for the interpreter of texts, “language appears to begin where analytical grammar leaves off”. Section 2 describes ‘speech act formulas’ as conventional bundles of eight or nine different features, including several that are not normally considered part of grammar or lexical items, such as discourse function, idiomaticity constraints, special ‘musical’ features such as voice quality and volume, and body language. Section 3, viewing the period before 1970, asks what place was given to speech formulas in analytic grammars, on the one hand, and in treatments of language by conventional lexicographers and other humanists (scholars chiefly interested in language as an expression of human affairs), on the other. Section 4 comments on the circumstances that led some linguists and lexicographers in the 1970s to treat speech formulas as playing a central rather than a peripheral role in linguistic competence. The final section asks whether in recent decades ‘usage-based’ or ‘discourse-based’ approaches, often drawing on large electronic corpora, have led linguists to modify their views of what languages are, or whether most are still working with a grammar-and-lexicon centric model. It seems that certain methodological and theoretical biases act as conservative forces, keeping linguists focused on grammatical and lexical form, while paying relatively little attention to the full complexity of speech formulas and their role in fluency, idiomaticity, coherence, appropriateness, wit and other highly-valued facets of ordinary language use.
Some remarks on the evaluative connotations of toponymic idioms in a contrastive perspective
Authors: Szerszunowicz Joanna
Published: March 2014

The focal issue is the axiology of Polish and Italian toponymic idioms analyzed in a contrastive perspective. The study is a continuation of the analysis of the evaluative effect of selected idiom components. So far, the author has analyzed the axiology of Polish and Italian faunal idioms. The axiologically marked idioms convey evaluations in various ways; i.e., the core evaluative element is the toponym, the evaluation results from the meaning of the whole unit, and the etymological reinterpretation of the toponym is necessary for decoding the evaluation. The relation between language and culture is important since toponymic components are culture-bound units of universal, national or local character, which influences the translatability of idioms.
The role of prefabs in grammaticization
Authors: Bybee Joan L. , Torres Cacoullos Rena
Published: March 2014

Studies of grammaticization often reveal skewed distributions of lexical items in grammaticizing constructions, suggesting the presence of prefabs using these constructions. We examine here the role of prefabs in the grammaticization of can in English and the progressive estar ‘be (located)’ + V-ndo (Gerund) in Spanish. The data suggest that prefabs play a role in advancing formal and semantic change. We argue that (1) prefabs are ahead of the general construction in unit-hood status in early stages and thus demote the independent lexical status of the emerging grams, and (2) in their association with semantic classes of which they are the most frequent member, prefabs promote the productivity of the general construction. The evidence shows that prefabs maintain associations with the related general construction.
Formulaic models and formulaicity in Classical and Modern Standard Arabic
Authors: Lancioni Giuliano
Published: March 2014

Classical Arabic [ClA], the historical antecedent of Modern Standard Arabic [MSA], is a language reconstructed from a selected, close textual corpus, clearly removed from everyday speech. The analysis focuses on the formulaic features ClA and MSA inherited from their models, which are consistently missing from spoken Arabic variants; these features range from text chunks to morphological and syntactic patterns (including redundant case affixes, and syntactically determined partial agreement). The general consequence of the hypothesis presented is that formulaicity in written languages can be strongly reinforced by the model of literary varieties, even long after the original textual constraints disappeared. The influence of MSA on modern spoken varieties shows the possibility that such formulaic features find their path through spoken languages.
The embodiment/culture continuum
Authors: Mischler James J.
Published: March 2014

Cognitive Linguistics accepts as a fundamental principle that embodied experience and culture both influence the cognitive conceptualization of meaning in language; however, most studies focus on the influence of embodiment. Diachronic studies are useful to show the effect of cultural models on conceptualization. The current study collected samples of metaphors of the spleen (e.g., “He vented his spleen”) from 19th century English popular magazines to investigate the relative contributions of cognition and culture on metaphor instantiation. The results showed that culture was isomorphic with embodied experience in the data. Based on the results, an embodiment/culture continuum is proposed, within which different conceptualizations vary in their content on the two dimensions. Usagebased models of language provide an explanation for the study results.
How transitive are 'eat' and 'drink' verbs?
Authors: Næss Åshild
Published: March 2014

This paper examines the transitivity properties of eat and drink verbs crosslinguistically, and shows that they tend not to pattern with prototypical transitive verbs, but show various properties characteristic of intransitives. This is explained in terms of the transitivity model developed in Næss (2007), where a prototypical transitive clause is defined as a clause showing maximal semantic distinction between the agent and patient in terms of their role in the event. A core semantic characteristic of eat and drink verbs is having an affected agent: eating and drinking are acts performed by an agent in order to achieve an effect on himself. Since affected agents are not maximally semantically distinct from patients, eat and drink verbs are not prototypically transitive.
Quirky alternations of transitivity: The case of ingestive predicates
Authors: Amberber Mengistu
Published: March 2014

This chapter shows that the cross-linguistically robust transitivity pattern exhibited by verbs of ingestion (eat, drink, swallow, taste, etc.) can be accounted for by appealing to a rich Lexical Conceptual Structure (LCS). The key claim is that ingestive predicates are ditransitive at the level of Conceptual Structure with an Agent, Theme/Patient and Goal arguments. We argue that the crucial property of ingestive predicates that is responsible for some of their marked transitivity behaviour is that the Agent and Goal arguments are co-indexed at the level of LCS. In particular, when the Agent argument fails to project (sanctioned by the co-indexation property), the verb may exhibit morphosyntactic behaviour that is normally associated with typical intransitive predicates.
All people eat and drink. Does this mean that 'eat' and 'drink' are universal human concepts?
Authors: Wierzbicka Anna
Published: March 2014

Eating and drinking are, one might say, human universals. Or so it may seem to speakers of English, and other European languages. But what would a Kalam, or a Warlpiri linguist say about it, given that Kalam and Warlpiri have no word meaning ‘eat’ and no word meaning ‘drink’? No doubt, he/she would say that ñb- (Kalam, roughly ‘eat/drink’) or ngarni (Warlpiri, roughly ‘eat/drink’) is a human universal. This paper argues that describing languages like Kalam and Warlpiri through the prism of the English words eat and drink is Eurocentric and it proposes to complement such an Eurocentric approach with a more neutral one, based on empirically established conceptual universals such as body, part, do, and inside (cf. Goddard & Wierzbicka eds 2002; Wierzbicka 2007)
The semantic evolution of 'eat'-expressions: Ways and byways
Authors: Hook Peter Edwin , Pardeshi Prashant
Published: March 2014

The act of consuming food occupies a central place in our day-to-day lives and the experiential reality associated with it serves as a rich source for a variety of metaphorical extensions across languages. In this paper we focus on two Indo-Aryan languages (Hindi-Urdu and Marathi) and demonstrate how various subcomponents of the basic action of eating may be extended to express relatively abstract events, states, and experiences. We approach the explication of the polysemy network of EAT in Hindi-Urdu and Marathi from two complementary perspectives: (1) a cognitive perspective and (2) a lexical perspective. This bilateral approach allows us to explore both the general (aka “universal”) and the particular (historical, language-specific) factors underlying the extended uses of the verb EAT.
Amharic 'eat' and 'drink' verbs
Authors: Newman John , Aberra Daniel
Published: March 2014

‘Eat’ and ‘drink’ verbs in Amharic (Semitic) have a number of interesting linguistic properties. The basic morphosyntactic properties of these verbs in Amharic are reviewed, including the unusual patterning of these verbs in causative constructions, as remarked upon by Amberber (this volume) and others. Figurative extensions of the two verbs are prolific and an attempt is made to give a coherent account of these extensions drawing upon ideas from Newman’s (1997) account of the English eat and drink extensions. In particular, it proves useful to distinguish figurative extensions based on the sensation of the consumer from figurative extensions based on the image of destruction or disappearance of the consumed entity. These two separate aspects of ingestive acts inform both the account of the figurative extensions of Amharic ‘eat’ and ‘drink’ as well as the morphosyntax associated with these verbs.
Determining the semantics of Inuktitut postbases
Authors: Cook Conor , Johns Alana
Published: March 2014

This paper examines a number of properties of Inuktitut postbases, which are affixal morphemes that appear between the root and inflection. These morphemes are the source of polysynthesis in Inuktitut, since they allow the word to expand in principle indefinitely. A number of authors have pointed out that these elements are quite abstract in meaning. We argue that this property stems from the fact that they are all functional morphemes (Harley and Noyer 2000), i.e., grammatical elements. Their ordering is based on hierarchical relations which are determined by universals (Fortescue 1980; Cinque 1999). We show that both the affixal nature and abstract semantics of these elements have independent sources and result from general properties of the syntax, not from individual and idiosyncratic lexical specification.
Arguments and information management in Inuktitut
Authors: Nowak Elke
Published: March 2014

Research on a variety of structurally different languages suggests that information packaging is assigned to grammatical form via preferred representations of arguments. According to the Preferred Argument Structure Hypothesis (PAS), these preferences can be captured by four interacting constraints. Since polysynthetic languages are not under the hegemony of syntax, the constraints concerning grammatical form must be reconsidered. In Inuktitut, arguments of predicates are represented morphologically, and in the vast majority of instances, they are not specified by independent lexical items. Incorporation, on the other hand, represents the established domain for lexical representation of arguments. In Inuktitut, and probably in other polysynthetic languages, information structure manifests itself within the domain of the polysynthetic word. Information structure thus manifests itself wherever grammatical configuration occurs.
Negation of non-indicative mood in Hausa, Fulfulde and Kanuri
Authors: Ziegelmeyer Georg
Published: March 2014

Negation of non-indicative mood in Hausa, Fulfulde and Kanuri differs from negation of
indicative mood in several aspects. For instance, negation markers of non-indicative
mood are morphologically different from those of indicative mood and they occupy
different positions within the sentence. This results in a clear contrast between
negation of indicative and non-indicative TAM paradigms. What becomes apparent is that
the typological feature ‘contrast between negation of indicative and non-indicative
mood’ is shared by genetically unrelated languages spoken in northern Nigeria. At first
glance one could assume that this phenomenon is the result of structural diffusion in
the respective contact region. This feature, however, is also shared by many languages
of the West African Sahel.
Negation in Jukun
Authors: Storch Anne
Published: March 2014

Central Jukunoid languages (East Benue-Congo, Nigeria) such as Hone or Wapan exhibit
rich and complex systems of negation. There are different strategies depending on
whether negation of the indicative or subjunctive mood of the verb is expressed, or
whether an object or a noun phrase is negated. Closely related to negation patterns are
the so-called “repeating” or “recapitulative pronouns”, which sometimes resemble Chadic
intransitive copy pronouns. This contribution describes how negation focuses on
different constituents and explores the origin of negation morphemes and constructions
out of focus and mirativity markers. These seem to have developed from semantically
oppositional markers that are assumed to have been discourse markers first in Jukun
before they were transformed into focus and negation elements.
Double negation-marking
Authors: Beyer Klaus
Published: March 2014

The paper presents data on a syntactic structure that combines two different markers to
express sentential negation in a wide variety of languages all over West-Africa. As
areal distribution of this ‘double negation-marking’ illustrates the non-genetic
character of the feature, an explanation in terms of language-contact processes is put
forward. I thus demonstrate that the repartition of double negation-marking can best be
explained in terms of different grades of contact-induced grammaticalization. I will
further argue that it is not just the double marking of negation that is the basic model
for the contact-induced changes but also the special relation between negation and
emphasis on the negated expression that forms the conceptual template for this type of
negation.
Kongruentie Tussen Woorden uit Verschillende Talen
Authors: Van den Broeck Raymond
Published: March 2014

Especially from the viewpoint of one who translates texts from one language into another, it is obvious that interlinguistic one-to-one correspondences of lexical words are rather hard to find. The first and foremost circumstance that accounts for this phenomenon is that speakers of different languages conceptualize reality in different ways. Even if one subscribes to the hypothesis that there is a universal stock of semantic features by means of which designata can be analysed, it remains true that languages differ considerably with regard to which features their speakers consider relevant to situations, and which not. Thus seemingly corresponding words may have different designata, to the degree that translation requires a clear contextual setting according to which equivalence relationships can be established.
Polysemy, hyponymy and synonymy have largely differing distributions even in affiliated languages. A polysemous SL lexeme may require the coice of a TL lexeme which is not its immediate correspondent according to the bilingual dictionary. Conceptual synonyms (or, rather, quasi-synonyms) should be dealt with suspiciously, since differences in connotation, mode or register may necessitate the use of one term to the exclusion of the other. Even semantically equivalent terms may show different grammatical behaviours in SL and TL in that, for example, the TL imposes selection restrictions on a given term which do not apply to its correspondent term in the SL. Further complications may derive from collocational differences between languages. Finally, quite a lot of interlinguistic lexical anisomorphy, is due to differences in culture and social conventions - even to the extent that semantically and pragmatically corresponding expressions take on astonishingly deviant forms.
In order that they may account for these differences translation didactics as well as foreign language teaching can rely on models which have been elaborated by certain present-day disciplines whose concern is the study of linguistic phenomena. Thus componential analysis still provides a sound basis for comparative lexical analysis, while the theory of speech acts and Permyako's 'paremiological model' explain how semantic and pragmatic invariance goes hand in hand with socio-cultural variability.
Toetsen en Beheersingleren Van Het Engelse Vocabularium op Universitair Niveau.
Authors: Engels L.K.
Published: March 2014

As there is a general complaint about the poor lexical competence of students in non-English speaking universities, and as there is certainly no hope of remedying this by means of an increase in the academic staff, we have decided to measure our students' English vocabulary mastery (recalling of words) at the very start of their anglistic studies, so as to provide them with adjustable mastery-learning strategies, performable at computer terminals.
In this paper we present the test's components and its measuring capacity. We use the 2000 most frequent English words, obtained by means of a merger of three objective frequency lists of about 1.000.000 words (the Brown Corpus, the Leuven Drama Corpus and the Lancaster-Oslo-Bergen Corpus), presented in a descending rank list; to each word the inflected forms and derivatives have been added. We also have combined this objective frequency with two subjective selections; the defining vocabulary of 2000 LDOCE-words (Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, 1978) and 1500 words from J.C. Richards' Familiarity Count (1971).
The words of these two lists that do not overlap with the frequency-words are considered as components of the test-corpus.
The students who score below the means obtained for this test (in the Flemish part of Belgium + 111/150 in October 1980) get the opportunity to increase their vocabulary mastery by means of having to study a number of texts; they have to learn the new words (outsiders) in these texts and practise again the words they supposedly know.
The analysis of the texts, the ordering according to the degrees of difficulty, the definition of outsiders, the construction of exercises on the outsiders and on the supposedly-known words between positions 501 - 2000 in the descending ranklist, the exercises on cohesion, cloze, polysemy - all these operations have been subjected to automation by computer, and the software developed thus far is operational.
In the present paper the results obtained during the session of Mastery-Learning from October 1980 to March 1981 is presented, explained and discussed.
Psycholinguistic Approaches to the Mental Lexicon.
Authors: Hudson P.T.W.
Published: March 2014

The approaches discussed in this paper refer to the problems involved in accessing words in the Mental Lexicon. Once such access has taken place all the other information associated with a word becomes available.
The first section concentrates upon describing three models for lexical access which are defined in terms of the notion of an access code, the format in which information is presented to effect an attachment to the internal representation. The models involving direct sound-based access and the combined sound and visual access systems are extended by a morpheme based model, in which all access codes are more abstract than usually proposed.
The second major section is devoted to a more detailed description of two specific models for lexical access, the Logogen model of Morton and the Active Search model of Forster. Following these the point is made that a model of the Mental Lexicon and its systems needs to be supported by a model for the specific tasks used to test such models and a number of stimulus attributes are described. The possible minimal inferences which can be drawn from effects on such attributes are listed. A third, combined model is proposed which has elements of both active and passive accessing systems, called the Short-List model, which offers a better analysis of the experimental data which is defined by specific tasks as well as the structure of the accessing systems.
Aanvullen Van Ontbrekende Informatie - Over Het Lezen Van Literaire Teksten
Authors: Andringa Els
Published: March 2014

Linking and integrating different parts of information in texts have frequently been the object of the psychology of reading. A lot of attention has been spent on how people infer and how they supply incomplete information. Experimental research, however, mostly has been restricted to causal and final connections in short and simple informative or narrative text samples. But in longer and complexer texts of different sorts the possibilities of connections as well as the functions of concealed information may differ, demanding different kinds of reading strategies and processes.
In literature the concealing of information and even discon-nectedness have become sanctioned literary techniques. The theory of literary reception as founded by Ingarden and Iser have made the "undetermined spots" ("Unbestimmtheitsstellen") one of its fundamentals and have drawn consequences from it for the reading of literary texts.
In an experiment on reading expectations with different age groups between 14 and 22, it could be shown that the perception of informational connections over longer distances and that supplying missing links increased with age. The younger subjects were reading more "linearly", mostly only using the information just read. They were less able to use or modify more remote information or to anticipate later possibilities than the older subjects. This was demonstrated with a detail from one of the short stories used in the experiment.
For making such findings available for teaching aims, two types of further experimental research are necessary. It must be traced which effects different variables such as the kind of the relationship between parts of the text, the form of presentation of informational parts, temporal distance, the influence of context, have on the processing of connections. Secondly methods should be designed and tested for effectuating and speeding up the development of the processing activities.
Door Onderzoeken Leren Lezen
Authors: Bol E.
Published: March 2014

According to the speech theory of e.g Bühler and Wittgenstein the understanding of speech is more than transforming linguistic forms into semantic structures. The core of the process of understanding has to do with interpreting human activity. Modern research in the field of reading comprehension has demonstrated that knowledge of scripts, frames etc. plays a crucial role in the reading process. This also indicates that speech reflects the world of human ac-tivity. This means that, even when a reader has a good command of the language but has insufficient knowledge of and insight into this background, his reading comprehension will be poor.
We take the position that the basic sense of speech is social meaning, which is enclosed in the relation between an utterance and the situation of interpersonal communication and co-operation. E.g. someone wants to sell a house, to inform about a country etc. Within such domains of co-operation language offers the means to indicate and to describe things in a world. Indication and des-cription in speech are always based on social meaning, i.e. they go back to common human activity.
When we confine ourselves to informative texts, we think that description of the world we live in is based on common methods of exploring reality. Some of these methods are feature analyses, comparison, classification, process analyses and explanation. In a learning experiment during the third till the end of the sixth class in two elementary schools we taught the pupils to use these methods systematically by engaging them in the formal exploration and description of things, events etc.
In this paper the outline of the experimental program is sketched. Some results are reported. It seems acceptable to conclude that reading comprehension is fostered by the experimental program. However, more data are needed for more definite and precise conclusions.
Tweede-Taalverwerving Door Turkse en Marokkaanse Kinderen
Authors: Vermeer Anne
Published: March 2014

In second language acquisition two aspects may be distinguished, namely structure (or order and speed or success) of second language acquisition. The structure of second language acquisition is mainly determined by cognitive strategies and has a strong universal character. Speed, however, is for the greater part determined by the socio-economic background and socio-cultural orientation of the learners and the kind and intensity of contact with the second language.
The two aspects distinguished here are object of a 4-year longitudinal research project called 'The speed and Structure of Second Language Acquisition of Turkish and Moroccan Children', which started in June 1981. After a description of the project, the first preliminary results are presented. It is stated that there are large differences between the children in the level of proficiency in Dutch and in the speed of language acquisition, and that, over all, their vocabulary is very weak.