bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Two types of wh-adverbials
Authors: Tsai Wei-Tien Dylan , Chang Melody Yayin
Published: September 2007

This paper presents cross-linguistic arguments for distinguishing between two types of wh-adverbials: causal how, causal why, and epistemic why pattern together in taking an IP scope, functioning as operators, whereas method how, manner how, and purpose why pattern together in taking a VP scope, functioning as predicates of underlying events. For the former group, there is always a cause-effect relation underpinning their syntactic distributions across languages, which is semantically realized as a causative predicate taking two events as its arguments, i.e., a cause event and an effect event. In a causal question, it is the cause event that is bound by the question operator; in a resultative question, the effect event is bound instead. For the latter group, they surface as conjuncts of main predicates in Tsou, which in turn argues for a neo-Davidsonian treatment of adjunct association in syntax (Parsons 1990). The fact that a conjunctive how can be construed as either a manner/method question or a resultative question in Tsou further argues for an independent semantic module in grammar in the vein of Culicover and Jackendoff (1997).
The universal force of free choice any
Authors: Dayal Veneeta
Published: September 2007

This paper adds to the ongoing debate about the quantificational status of English FC any. It argues that any is a universal, though its universality is such that it can be conjoined with an existential statement. This is established by showing, first of all, that various properties that are amenable to a universal account of FC any remain elusive in recent accounts that treat it as an indefinite. Secondly, it presents a detailed description of supplementary/numeral any, cases in which any occurs with an indefinite. Such cases have been assumed to provide evidence for the indefinite-any view but an explicit semantics for the constructions is given, showing that any invariably contributes universal quantificational force. Existential force always comes from other elements. The paper also discusses alternative formulations that preserve the key insights of the universalist position and the role of cross-linguistic variation in the study of FC items.
Nominal classes, reference, and functional parameters, with particular reference to Arabic
Authors: Fassi Fehri Abdelkader
Published: September 2007

DPs and BNs are used parametrically in Arabic (as well as in other languages) to express generic/existential contrasts, and mass/count oppositions. Unlike English and Romance, Arabic BNs behave like overt indefinites, give rise to bare singulars, and to numeral BNs, obviating scope or opacity distinctions between bare singulars, duals, or plurals. These numerous BN varieties are accounted for via various N-to-F computational processes, involving namely Numeral and Generic positions. Second, indefinite and definite generic types also make use of covert/overt D oppositions, yet they are subjected to a unifying treatment. Third, the mass/count dichotomy cannot provide an adequate base for a classificatory system. ‘Atomicity’ and ‘singulativity’ values are needed to characterize more appropriately Classifier and Number interactions in so-called ‘classifier’ and ‘number’ language types. ‘Inner’ atomicity (associated with Classifier) and ‘outer’ atomicity (provided by Number) can be properly identified, making it possible to avoid confusion of Classifier and Number contributions to structure and interpretation (e.g. the kind/generic confusion). Finally, the referential/quantificational split, usually expressed through the BN/DP opposition, finds its counterpart in proper noun (PN) and common noun distributions.
Against a parameter-setting approach to typological variation
Authors: Newmeyer Frederick J.
Published: September 2007

The dominant position among generative grammarians with respect to typological variation is that it should be captured by parameters, which are either directly tied to principles of Universal Grammar (UG) or to functional projections provided by UG. Parameter-setting approaches, however, have failed to live up to their promise. They should be replaced by a model in which language-particular rules take over the work of parameter settings and in which most typological variation follows from independently-needed principles of performance. In such a model, UG specifies the class of possible languages, but not the set of probable languages.
Meaningful silence, meaningless sounds
Authors: Sigurdsson Halldór Ármann
Published: September 2007

This paper discusses the very general question of how syntactic features of individual languages relate to the universal set of syntactic features. It is pointed out that Chomsky’s approach (2001a) to this fundamental issue is paradoxical. On one hand he argues that language is uniform in the relevant sense (L-uniformity), but, on the other hand, he also assumes that languages make different selections of features from a universal feature set (L-selection). The paper argues strongly that L-uniformity is the only conceivable possibility. However, if that is correct, a great deal of what languages have is common is ‘silence’, that is, categories that are present in Narrow Syntax but silent in PF. In other words, language has innate elements and structures irrespective of whether or how they are overtly expressed. It follows that language variation is to a substantial extent ‘silence variation’, that is, much of it boils down to languages being explicit vs. silent about different (syntactically active) categories. This claim is coined as the Silence Principle, saying that any meaningful feature of language may be silent.
Reconstruction in relative clauses and the copy theory of traces*
Authors: Cecchetto Carlo
Published: September 2007

In this paper, after discussing the status of the copy theory of traces in the current formulation of the minimalist program and the evidence for the “No-Tampering” Condition from which the copy theory of traces follows, I focus on a specific case study, namely reconstruction effects concerning the head of a relative clause. The common wisdom in the literature is that reconstruction of the relative clause head can be observed by using variable binding as a diagnostic, while the diagnostic based on Condition C gives opposite results. This split has led some researchers to propose that relative clauses are structurally ambiguous, because they would receive both a raising analysis (which explains variable binding reconstruction) and a non-raising analysis (which explains the absence of Condition C reconstruction). One of the goals of this paper is showing that it is not necessary to postulate that relative clauses are structurally ambiguous. In order to do that, I first show that the description in the literature is partly inaccurate. If some methodological problems raised by the use of transitive nouns are avoided, it can be shown that variable binding reconstruction occurs only when the relative clause modifies the subject of an equative sentence. This suggests that variable binding reconstruction of the relative clause head is not an ordinary case of reconstruction like the one found in canonicalwhchains but should be treated as a case of indirect binding, which is known to be sensitive to the identificational (as opposed to predicational) character of the sentence. I then show that, if this perspective is taken, the absence of Condition C effects can be explained without positing a structural ambiguity. The final result of the investigation is that, despite the initially puzzling evidence, the copy theory of traces can successfully explain the reconstruction pattern of the relative clause head.
Relativization strategies in temporal adjunct clauses
Authors: Lipták Anikó
Published: September 2007

This article takes a close look at the internal structure of temporal adverbial clauses in a number of unrelated languages, with a goal of uncovering the syntactic variation in these. The focus of discussion will be on temporal clauses that take the form offree relatives. It will be shown that there are minimally two different free relative strategies that can be found in temporal adverbial clauses: anordinary free relativestrategy with a gap in the position of a temporal modifier inside the relative clause and anIP-relativizationstrategy that involves relativization of the whole IP of the temporal clause. It will be shown that the latter strategy is awh-relativization strategy as well and it shows similarity to clausal relativization (sentences of the typeTom arrived, after which Susan left).

The language in which the IP-relativization strategy will be isolated and fully analyzed is Hungarian. In this languagebefore/after-clauses (among some other temporal clauses) clearly exhibit a relative clause structure that is different from ordinary relatives. The evidence found in Hungarian will prove useful for the analysis of some temporal clauses in other languages as well. It will be shown that IP-relativization most probably underliesafter-clauses in German and Serbian, too. Further, a brief comparison of Hungarian temporal clauses to temporal clauses in other postpositional languages (Hindi and Basque) will suggest that the IP-relativization strategy inbefore/after-clauses can be thought of as a syntactic alternative tonominalization.
Microvariations in harmony and value-relativized parametrization
Authors: Nevins Andrew
Published: September 2007

This paper explores a parametric delimitation of the space of possible harmony patterns with respect to the class of feature-values that are visible. Extending the framework of Calabrese (1995), the proposal is that alternating morphemes that are searching for a harmonic value may have access toall-values, only asingle-value, or thecontrastivevalues of the harmonic feature. Two cases of microvariation are explored: [ATR] vowel harmony in Standard Yoruba vs. Ife Yoruba, which reduces to the setting of the relativization-value toallvs.contrastive, and vowel-consonant interactions mediated by [high] harmony in Sanjiazi Manchu vs. Sibe, which reduces to the parametric setting ofcontrastivevs.single-value.
Two types of resumptive pronouns in polish relative clauses
Authors: Szczegielniak Adam
Published: September 2007

This paper discusses two types of resumptive pronouns found in Polish relative clauses: (i) adjacent resumptives and (ii) embedded resumptives. It will be argued that adjacent resumptives are truncated forms of the relative operator, whereas embedded resumptives are ‘regular’ resumptive pronouns found in other languages like Hebrew and Russian. Support for this claim will come from analyzing the differences between adjacent and embedded resumptives, and analyzing the similarities between adjacent resumptives and relative operators. Cross-linguistic data involving the interaction of relative clause formation and resumption, as well as the interaction of cliticization and resumption will provide additional support for the above claim.
Extending the extension condition to discontinuous idioms
Authors: Svenonius Peter
Published: September 2007

This paper makes a specific proposal regarding the structure of idioms as they are listed in the lexicon, which has important ramifications. Specifically, I suggest that first Merge as well as internal Merge can target subconstituents of structures already built by Merge. This creates structures which I call Banyan trees, in which there is more than one undominated node. I suggest that this model, together with certain assumptions about phases and about the functional sequence of syntactic heads, derive important facts about the structure of idioms.
On productivity
Authors: Yang Charles
Published: September 2007

Language learning is a remarkably robust process. The child is incredibly good at recognizing systematic regularities even when faced with lexically and contextually restricted exceptions This paper sketches out a preliminary model that recognizes productive processes and exceptions as such; accordingly, the learner can proceed to internalize each as different kinds of linguistic knowledge. We argue that if a linguistic process is conjectured to be productive, then having exceptions to it can add (surprisingly) significant cost to its online processing. Empirically, we explore these issues in the domain of morphology, which leads to finer-grained analyses of a number of well-known morphological problems. We also briefly discuss how the methodology and results of this work may generalize to syntactic learning.
Semantic influences on morphological facilitation
Authors: Feldman Laurie Beth , Basnight-Brown Dana M. , Pastizzo Matthew John
Published: September 2007

Two semantic variables, concreteness and morphological family size, were examined in a single word and a primed lexical decision task. Single word recognition latencies were faster for concrete relative to abstract targets only when morphological family size was small. The magnitude of morphological facilitation for primes related by inflection was greater than by derivation although both revealed a very similar interaction of concreteness and family size. In summary, concreteness influenced morphological processing so as to produce slower decision latencies for small family abstract than concrete words both in a single word and in a morphologically primed context. However, magnitudes of facilitation in isolation from baselines provided an incomplete account of morphological processing.
Spoken word recognition with gender-marked context
Authors: Spinelli Elsa , Meunier Fanny , Seigneuric Alix
Published: September 2007

In a cross-modal (auditory-visual) fragment priming study in French, we tested the hypothesis that gender information given by a gender-marked article (e.g. unmasculine or unefeminine) is used early in the recognition of the following word to discard gender-incongruent competitors. In four experiments, we compared lexical decision performances on targets primed by phonological information only (e.g. /kRa/-CRAPAUD /kRapo/; /to/-TOAD) or by phonological plus gender information given by a gender-marked article (e.g. unmasculine /kra/-CRAPAUD; a /to/-TOAD). In all experiments, we found a phonological priming effect that was not modulated by the presence of gender context, whether gender-marked articles were congruent (Experiments 1, 2, and 3) or incongruent (Experiment 4) with the target gender. Moreover, phonological facilitation was not modulated by the presence of gender context, whether gender-marked articles allowed exclusion of less frequent competitors (Experiment 1) or more frequent ones (Experiments 2 and 3). We concluded that gender information extracted from a preceding gender-marked determiner is not used early in the process of spoken word recognition and that it may be used in a later selection process.
Naming morphologically complex pseudowords: A headstart for the root?
Authors: Burani Cristina , Arduino Lisa S. , Marcolini Stefania
Published: September 2007

Several studies examining Italian have shown that morphemes are effective processing units in reading aloud. Faster naming times and greater accuracy have been found in the reading of pseudowords consisting of real root + real suffix, than for matched pseudowords not made up of such morphemes. The results of this study suggest that the root is of primary importance in the reading aloud of Italian pseudowords. Faster naming times were found both for real root + real suffix pseudowords and for real root + non-suffix pseudowords than for pseudowords which did not include any morpheme. This held true for a stimulus list consisting mostly of words (Experiment 1), and for one consisting of pseudowords only (Experiment 2). Real root + non-suffix pseudowords were read as fast as pseudowords that were fully parsable into morphemes (root + suffix), suggesting that a headstart to a morphemic route can be provided by the root only. However, root + non-suffix pseudowords were pronounced less accurately than root + suffix combinations, indicating that the identification of a root before initiating pronunciation may conflict with the full elaboration of vocal output. Experiment 3 investigated the roles of root and suffix. An effect of suffix on naming latencies was observed, but it was not as strong as the root effect. Taken together, the results suggest that roots and suffixes are accessed and activated in a cascaded manner during the reading aloud of Italian.
The Power and Vulnerability of a Dream Deferred: High-achieving Minority Adolescent Girls’ Narratives of Success
Authors: Ekert Jennifer L.
Published: September 2007

This study chronicles the “ordinary success” of 20 highly motivated, working-class minority adolescent girls. Within achievement motivation literature, success generally has been conceived as measurable performance and studied with quantitative methods. The current study instead uses narrative inquiry to investigate success as a process. The girls in this study speak of pursuing rather than achieving success, moving towards a target beyond their line of vision. Constrained by realities of their daily lives, the girls capitalize on the openness of the future to craft narratives of assured success. Paradoxically, this approach sustains their motivation but jeopardizes their prospects, since they are invested in keeping the future at a distance. Knowledge about the requirements of success is often a “dream killer,” forcing imaginative thinking to collide with realistic planning. This research suggests that ambitious but underprivileged adolescents would benefit from targeted support to help them negotiate tensions intrinsic to their understanding and pursuit of success.
Narrative positioning and the construction of situated identities
Authors: Archakis Argiris , Tzanne Angeliki
Published: September 2007

The present paper is a study of narrative and its relation to the construction of conflicting identities in interaction. The paper is concerned with a group of young Greeks who categorise themselves as members of a particular subculture, but also construct a number of other, often conflicting, identities through the stories they tell in the course of their conversations with two researchers. By focusing on the many narratives these people volunteer to recount to the researchers, the paper aims to delve into narrative positioning and its relation to the plurality of emerging identities in the specific encounters. Particular emphasis is placed on the young people's attempt to delegitimate established figures of power and authority in order to legitimate their own group and present a positive image of themselves. By providing a detailed discussion of identities as constructed in situated discourse, the paper also aims to stress the dynamics of identity construction in context. (Narrative positioning identity construction, Plurality of identities In-group relations, Delegitimation, Category affiliation)
Identity commitments in personal stories of mental illness on the internet
Authors: Jones Raya A.
Published: September 2007

The Internet augments the informational flows that organize biographies in late modernity. Sufferers of bipolar disorder (manic depression) may turn to the Internet for accessible information, to learn about others' experiences and impart their own knowledge. Personal accounts posted in the public domain become themselves part of those informational flows, and thus acquire a dual life at a boundary between private and public domains. This poses certain challenges for the investigation of computer-mediated autobiographical telling, which are identified in this paper and negotiated in an analysis of downloaded personal accounts of bipolar disorder. Two of the stories are selected for a close look. Story 1 tells about achieving long-term remission through personal resolve and psychological alternatives to medication. Story 2 tells about becoming able to talk about the illness through the achievement of a social identity as “manic depressive”. The stories' similarities, differences, and comparability with the other texts are discussed with a view to theorizing how such texts position their implied author in the illness experience. Building upon Bakhtin's idea of a text's plan and its realization, a concept of “identity commitments” as textual properties is proposed. (Narrative identity, Computer-mediated communication, Bipolar disorder, Bakhtin)
Grice in the wake of Peirce
Authors: Pietarinen Ahti-Veikko
Published: September 2007

I argue that many of the pragmatic notions that are commonly attributed to H. P. Grice, or are reported to be inspired by his work on pragmatics, such as assertion, conventional implicature, cooperation, common ground, common knowledge, presuppositions and conversational strategies, have their origins in C. S. Peirce’s theory of signs and his pragmatic logic and philosophy. Both Grice and Peirce rooted their theories in normative rationality, anti-psychologism and the relevance of assertions. With respect to the post-Gricean era of pragmatics, theories of relevance may be seen to have been geared, albeit unconsciously, upon Peirce’s pragmatic agenda.
Evidential particles and mind-reading
Authors: Ifantidou Elly
Published: September 2007

The paper investigates the acquisition of the semantics/pragmatics of two Modern Greek evidential markers taha (‘supposedly’) and dithen (‘as if’, ‘so-called’) and possible correlations with children’s mind-reading abilities. Between (a) an evidential–ironical interpretation and (b) a pretence interpretation, earliest uses of these particles (in spontaneous children’s speech) suggest that pretence-interpretations, rather than evidential ones, are the first to develop (Ifantidou, to appear). This production finding is mapped onto input occurrences of taha and dithen in (i) children’s readers, (ii) adults’ prose, and (iii) adults’ speech. High prevalence of pretence interpretations is observed in (i), with high prevalence of evidential interpretations in (ii) and (iii). These findings are cross-checked by linguistic tasks run with nursery (4–5 years old) and 6–12 year-old children. The results also point to an early acquisition of the pretence-interpretation and a later acquisition of the particles’ evidential uses. Finally, non-linguistic experiments are run with the nursery (4–5 year-old) children to assess their evidential cognitive abilities. Two questions arise: (1) If children lack the semantics/pragmatics of evidential taha and dithen, do they also lack the relevant mind-reading abilities? (2) If children exhibit an earlier working capacity of pretence-interpretations, is there an explanation for why this is so? In addressing these issues, I will explore the possibility that availability of evidential lexical items in language presupposes availability of relevant concepts, and suggest, in turn, a degree of developmental interdependence between cognition and language.
On Strawsonian contexts
Authors: Akman Varol
Published: September 2007

P.F. Strawson proposed in the early seventies a threefold distinction regarding how context bears on the meaning of ‘what is said’ when a sentence is uttered. The proposal was somewhat tentative and, being aware of this aspect, Strawson himself raised various questions to make it more adequate. In this paper, we review Strawson’s scheme, note his concerns, and add some of our own. We also defend its essence and recommend it as an insightful entry point re the interplay of intended meaning and context.
Folk psychology and literal meaning
Authors: Harnish Robert M.
Published: September 2007

Recanati (2004), Literal Meaning argues against what he calls “literalism” and for what he calls “contextualism”. He considers a wide spectrum of positions and arguments from relevance theory to hidden variables theory. In the end, however, he seems to hold that semantic and pragmatic theorizing must answer to broadly introspective or folk psychological constraints — they don’t exist in “heaven”. After surveying Recanati’s wide-ranging and provocative discussion of these issues, we wonder why parity of reasoning does not condemn syntax and phonology, as customarily practiced.
Quantifying the standardization process in a non-standard local community
Authors: Jiménez-Cano José María , Hernández-Campoy Juan Manuel
Published: September 2007

The aim of this paper is to report the results of a study of Murcian speech in order to measure the increasing diffusion of standard Castilian features from northern Peninsular Spanish over Murcian Spanish, a traditionally non-standard region. Following the methodology used in similar studies and a real-time approach, we measured the level of standardization of people interviewed in radio broadcasts in the last 26 years. A detailed analysis correlating linguistic variables with social variables and time intervals allowed us to compare the sociolinguistic behavior of the different social groups in terms of standardization (adoption of Castilian Spanish features) or non-standardization (maintenance of local Murcian features) and their tendencies in diachronic terms.
Complaint stories in male contexts
Authors: Acuña Ferreira Virginia
Published: September 2007

Gender and discourse studies have traditionally reacted to the negative dominant beliefs on women’s gossip by defending its role in the construction of female solidarity. This perspective proves inadequate to the extent that it ignores particular forms of female gossip which highlight patterns of competition between women and excludes the possibility that men could engage in the practice of gossip too. In this article, I aim to contribute to recent research documenting men’s gossip by analysing complaint stories about third parties among men, a variety of gossip first analysed by Günthner (1997) in female contexts. The analysis highlights the emergence of patterns of emotions display which have not been previously found in women’s complaint stories. I conclude by emphasizing the importance of addressing talk in both female and male contexts in gender and discourse studies, to avoid the perpetuation of stereotyped images of women’s and men’s talk.
The function of mitigation in the context of a socially stigmatized disease
Authors: Delbene Roxana
Published: September 2007

This paper studies the pragmatic function of mitigation in the context of a stigmatized disease, such as the HIV/AIDS infection.1 The function of mitigation is analysed by applying the theoretical frameworks of Fraser (1980, 1990) and Caffi (1999). By means of the close-reading technique and quantitative procedures, it has been possible to observe that mitigation is the most common verbal behaviour used in the 34 interviews between physicians and their seropositive patients, collected in a public hospital in Uruguay. By illustrating the use of mitigation in a particular interview, it is argued that mitigation not only functions as a ‘disqualification’ strategy (Caffi 1999) but also that there is a fine line between mitigation and deception. The traditional association between politeness and mitigation (Fraser 1980) is called into question. In the context of an infectious disease that jeopardizes public health, mitigation and politeness are seen in a antagonistic rather than complementary relationship.
Extranjerismos disponibles
Authors: Bartol Hernández José A.
Published: September 2007

En este artículo se analizan los extranjerismos presentes en el léxico disponible de los preuniversitarios sorianos (provincia de Soria, España) en tres campos nocionales muy representativos del mundo juvenil: la ropa, los medios de transporte y los juegos y diversiones. Se comparan los datos con los de otros campos nocionales, se mide su grado de integración y vitalidad en la comunidad de habla analizada y se comparan los datos con los de otras sintopías. También se tiene en cuenta la variable ‘ubicación del centro de estudio’ (urbano/rural) y se comprueba su influencia en la disponibilidad léxica de los extranjerismos.
Evidence in the Spanish language press of linguistic borrowings of computer and Internet-related terms
Authors: Morin Regina
Published: September 2007

With the rise of the Internet, English has become a source of borrowing of computer terms in many languages, including Spanish. Many of these borrowings are rapidly making their way into the Spanish language press. A survey of newspapers from eight Latin American countries yielded a total of 231 lexical borrowings of different types, all related to broad fields, such as software, hardware, data, and Internet-related terms. These borrowings can be classified as loanwords, calques of various kinds, including loan translations and semantic extensions, and loanblends. Many have already appeared in monolingual Spanish dictionaries, such as the Diccionario de la Real Academia, and in a number of dictionaries of Hispanic Anglicisms.
Symmetrical Compounds in Khmer
Authors: Ourn Noeurng , Haiman John
Published: September 2007

Binomial coordinate compounds like English give and take are frequent in Khmer. Once the semantic motivation of these is opaque, the ones that survive are predominantly those which manifest some formal symmetry in the structure of their conjoined roots. The result is that Khmer has an enormous number of words like pell mell or zigzag, but, unlike the English examples, these have neither playful nor pejorative connotations. Moreover, the structural basis of their symmetry is neither rhyme, as in pell mell, nor ablaut, as in zigzag, but alliteration.

A cursory survey of some other languages in which symmetrical reduplicative compounds exist reveals that alliteration is extremely rare outside of Southeast Asian languages. At the very least, the abundance of compounds of the spic and span type is an areal feature. But it may be that it correlates with an even more restricted typological feature as well. Khmer, like Thai, is an exclusively prefixing language. There is a well-known cognitive basis for preserving parallelism or symmetry in the backgrounded rather than the focussed portions of things that are brought together. It may be that this principle can account for the tendency to mark symmetry in the initial portion of words in a prefixing language.
Nonvolitionality expressed through evidentials
Authors: Curnow Timothy Jowan
Published: September 2007

Some languages code that an action was performed unintentionally using evidentials, which in other contexts indicate a speaker’s source of information. Evidentials are only used for indicating nonvolitionality when an action was carried out by the speaker in the past. The evidential marker may carry a quite different meaning in coding nonvolitionality, this may be an extension of its primary meaning, or it may simply be a pragmatic interpretation of the use of a particular evidential in first person contexts. A nonvolitional interpretation can arise with nonvisual evidentials, visual or direct evidentials, inferential evidentials, and nonwitnessed, nonfirsthand or indirect evidentials.
Modelling linguistic gradience
Authors: Aarts Bas
Published: September 2007

Many schools of modern linguistics generally adopt a rigid approach to categorisation by not allowing degrees of form class membership, degrees of resemblance to a prototype or overlaps between categories. This all-or-none conception of categorisation (Bolinger 1961) goes back to Aristotle, and has been pervasive and influential, especially in formal linguistics. The alternative view, prevalent amongst descriptive and cognitive linguists, is to posit grammars which pervasively display categorial vagueness, more usually called gradience. In this article I will begin by briefly tracing some of the ideas on gradience in linguistics and philosophy. I will then argue, firstly, that gradience should have a role to play in language studies (both descriptive and theoretical). Secondly, I will show that two types of category fluidity should be distinguished. One type I will call Subsective Gradience (SG). It is intra-categorial in nature, and allows for members of a class to display the properties of that class to varying degrees. The other type is called Intersective Gradience (IG). This is an inter-categorial phenomenon which is characterised by two form classes ‘converging’ on each other. Thirdly, I will argue that while the two types of gradience are grammatically real, IG is not as widespread as is often claimed. Finally, in this article I will attempt to be more precise about the vague phenomenon of gradience. To this end I will devise a formalisation of SG and IG, using a number of case studies mainly from English. The formalism makes use of morphosyntactic tests to establish whether an item belongs to a particular class or to a ‘bordering’ one by weighing up the form class features that apply to the item in question. This article can be seen to argue for a midway position between the Aristotelian and the cognitivist conceptions of categorisation in that I will defend a position that allows for gradience, but nevertheless maintains sharp boundaries between categories. The ideas put forward in this article have wider implications for the study of language, in that they address the problem posed by the existence of a tension between generally rigidly conceived linguistic concepts and the continuous phenomena they describe.
On the relation between gender and declension
Authors: Enger Hans-Olav
Published: September 2007

This paper examines the relation between gender and declension in Norwegian. Traditionally, one has assumed that genders are the basis for predicting declensions in that language. More recently, it has been suggested that declensions are the basis for predicting genders — in all languages that have both. Diachronic data examined in this paper indicate that the relation between gender and declension is complex: For most Norwegian nouns, declension is predicted on the basis of gender. For a few nouns, viz. those in which the plural is more token-frequent than the singular, declension is the basis on which gender is predicted.

The paper also illustrates the relevance of frequency, local markedness, ‘morphology by itself’ and the principle of contrast.
Polysemy through metonymy
Authors: Chelliah Shobhana L.
Published: September 2007

In Meithei, a Tibeto-Burman language of Northeast India, the noun pí ‘grandmother’ has undergone divergent paths of semantic change, developing on the one hand into a productive nominalizer and on the other into suffixes whose meanings are derived through metonymical extensions (SMALLER VERSION, BEST EXEMPLAR, SALIENT CHARACTERISTIC, PROJECTION, INSTRUMENT and AGENT). The Meithei data illustrate the role of culture in metonymic change and the role of metonymic change in creation of productive and lexicalized morphology.
Suppletion
Authors: Hippisley Andrew , Chumakina Marina , Corbett Greville G. , Brown Dunstan
Published: September 2007

Suppletion is where the word-forms of the same lexeme have phonologically distinct stems. A study of thirty languages shows it to be surprisingly widespread, suggesting resistance to the pressure of paradigmatic levelling. While a major factor in its preservation appears to be the high frequency of the items that display it, two other factors are in operation, the type of inflectional category involved and the nature of the distribution of stems.
The participial construction of Dolakhā Newar
Authors: Genetti Carol
Published: September 2007

The terms “(clause) chaining” and “converbal constructions” are used for the classification of similar types of clause linkage. Chaining is generally used for constructions which do not entail subordination, while converbs are defined as subordinate. In Dolakhā Newar adverbial and “participial” clauses are not syntactically distinct, but neither are they subordinate. I propose that the term “converb” be redefined as a clause-linkage strategy that subsumes adverbial clauses and clauses akin to the Dolakhāe “participial”, and that there be no requirement that converbs be either subordinate or adverbial. I provide an analysis of “case prolepsis”, the casemarking of an argument by a verb in a non-adjacent clause, and argue that this results from the participial construction applying at a distinct level of clause structure.
A cross-linguistic exploration of demonstratives in interaction
Authors: Hayashi Makoto , Yoon Kyung-Eun
Published: September 2007

This study undertakes a cross-linguistic examination of several distinct usage types of demonstratives as “filler words” in the context where speakers encounter trouble in formulating a word during spontaneous speech production. The study documents the range of forms and functions of these demonstratives across diverse languages, and explores theoretical issues that arise from the empirical observation, including the question of why demonstratives, among all linguistic items, are utilized as a tool to deal with word-formulation trouble. By investigating the hitherto neglected usages of demonstratives in social interaction, our study contributes both to typological studies of demonstratives and to interactional studies of grammatical phenomena.
A usage-based analysis of the allomorphy of the Italian masculine definite article
Authors: Russi Cinzia
Published: September 2007

Within standard generative phonology, the distribution of the allomorphs of the Italian masculine definite article has been related strictly to features of the initial segment/cluster of the lexical item following the article. Two main drawbacks characterize such analysis. First, they crucially depend on abstract principles, which are not applied in a very insightful and empirically convincing fashion. Second, they cannot explain the (inter- and intra-) individual variation in the selection of the allomorphs or the changes in their distributional pattern. Conversely, an analysis based on the usage-based framework proposed by Bybee (2001) allows for a more straightforward and unified account of the distribution of the allomorphs and offers new insight to the issues of change and individual variation.
A two-dimensional approach to the study of motivation in lexical typology and its first application to French high-frequency vocabulary
Authors: Koch Peter , Marzo Daniela
Published: September 2007

‘Morphological’ and ‘semantic’ motivation are not just two types (Ullmann 1966), but two interrelated dimensions of the problem of lexical motivation. For instance, Fr. poire ‘pear’ — poirier ‘pear-tree’ expresses the same cognitive relation as the polysemy of Russ. gruša, and, at the same time, polysemy is only one formal device among others expressing cognitive relations that underlie lexical motivation. So the two dimensions of formal and cognitive relations in motivation only exist in combination. A sub-dimension of the formal aspect of motivation is the degree of formal transparency (cf. Fr. jouer ‘to play a game’ — jeu ‘game’).

 This factorization in different dimensions leads to a universally applicable grid for the description of lexical motivation. As a first step of a future comparative research project of lexical motivation in different languages it is applied to the 500 most frequent lexical words of French and yields a systematic motivational profile of French high-frequency vocabulary. In Section 5.3 the French pilot study is discussed in view of an approach to lexical typology which could be applied to any other language.
A Perfect Marker in Israeli Sign Language
Authors: Meir Irit
Published: September 2007

In this paper I argue for the existence of an aspectual marker in Israeli Sign Language (ISL) denoting perfect constructions. This marker is the sign glossed as ALREADY. Though this sign often occurs in past time contexts, I argue that it is a perfect-aspect marker and not a past tense marker. This claim is supported by the following observations: (a) ALREADY can co-occur with past, present and future time adverbials; (b) its core meaning is to relate a resultant state to a prior event; (c) it occurs much more in dialogues than in narrative contexts. Further examination of the properties and functions of ALREADY in the language reveals that it shares many properties with perfect constructions in other languages. In addition, it is shown that the co-occurrence of ALREADY with various time adverbials, as well as with the durational aspectual modulation, gives rise to a rich aspectual system in the language. This aspectual system is compared to similar systems in other languages. The ISL system turns out to be very different from that of Hebrew on the one hand, while showing significant similarities to that of ASL. However, there are also some differences between ISL and ASL aspectual markers, which might be due to the relative youth of ISL, and to the different source for the aspectual marker: a verbin the case of ASL, and an adverb in ISL.
Metrical Structure, Morphological Gaps, and Possible Grammaticalization in ASL
Authors: Wilbur Ronnie B.
Published: September 2007

This paper reports regularities of stress placement at the phrasal level in American Sign Language (ASL) and identifies a category of signs (final pronouns) that appear to be exceptions. The group of exceptional pronouns predominantly comprises experiencer subject arguments, a category that does not traditionally participate in the verb agreement system of ASL, creating a morphological gap. Evidence is presented that some of these pronouns may be in the process of grammaticalizing to verbal suffixes which may serve to fill the morphological gap.
Exploitation of morphological possibilities in signed languages
Authors: Fernald Theodore B. , Napoli Donna Jo
Published: September 2007

American Sign Language shares with spoken languages derivational and inflectional morphological processes, including compounding, reduplication, incorporation, and, arguably, templates. Like spoken languages, ASL also has an extensive nonderivational, noninflectional morphology involving phonological alternation although this is typically more limited. Additionally, ASL frequently associates meaning with individual phonological parameters. This association is atypical of spoken languages. We account for these phenomena by positing “ion-morphs,” which are phonologically incomplete lexical items that bond with other compatible ion-morphs. These ion-morphs draw lexical items into “families” of related signs.

In contrast, ASL makes little, if any, use of concatenative affixation, a morphological mechanism common among spoken languages. We propose that this difference is the result of the comparative slowness of movement of the manual articulators as compared to the speech articulators, as well as the perceptual robustness of the manual articulators to the visual system. The slowness of the manual articulators disfavors concatenative affixation. The perceptual robustness of the manual articulators allows ASL to exploit morphological potential that spoken language can use only at considerable cost.
Morphology in American Sign Language
Authors: Frishberg Nancy , Gough Bonnie
Published: September 2007

Working paper — 1973
Optimal reciprocals in German Sign Language
Authors: Pfau Roland , Steinbach Markus
Published: September 2007

Unlike most spoken languages, German Sign Language (DGS) does not have a single means of reciprocal marking. Rather, different strategies are used, which crucially depend on phonological (one-handed sign vs. two-handed sign) and morphosyntactic (plain verb vs. agreement verb) properties of the underlying verb. Moreover, with plain verbs DGS shows dialectal variation. Altogether there are four different ways of realizing reciprocal marking in DGS. In this paper, we compare a rule-based analysis for the reciprocal data (based on Brentari’s 1998 feature hierarchy) to an optimality-theoretic analysis. We argue that an OT-account allows for a more straightforward explanation of the facts. In particular, we show that the different strategies as well as the variation can be accounted for by the interaction of four, independently motivated constraints.
The expression of time in Spanish Sign Language (LSE)
Authors: Cabeza Pereiro Carmen , Fernández Soneira Ana
Published: September 2007

Our aim in this paper is to describe and systematize the processes used to express time in Spanish Sign Language (LSE). The conception of time as a line, as well as its nature as a deictic category, are confirmed for both spoken languages and sign languages, although in the former time has been studied mainly as inflection, while other types of resources are common in the latter, particularly the expression of time by means of time lines.

In our analysis we have focused mainly on the description of the lexical processes and the time lines that participate in time marking in LSE. We have also referred to an iconic process, which involves the use of so-called "classifier" predicates.
Thwarted Expectations
Authors: Hietaranta Pertti
Published: September 2007

While there are many types of purely linguistic differences between languages which students of translation can be explicitly taught to recognise during their formal training, it is a far bigger task to try to make future translators detect and appropriately cater to relevant cultural differences between a source text and its intended target text. Yet, snags of a cultural character are just as detrimental to translation quality as are linguistic mistakes. The problem with cultural differences between source and target environments in translation is further aggravated by the fact that, in contrast with the finite number of linguistic differences between language systems, the range of variation in differences between cultural environments is virtually infinite.
The History of Research into Conference Interpreting
Authors: Gile Daniel
Published: September 2007

Quantitative analysis of the literature of conference interpreting research (CIR) highlights interesting features of its historical evolution. Paradigm shifts in the seventies and late eighties have intensified its overall production and are associated with the disappearance of some major production centers and the emergence of others. The total population of authors has increased over the years, but only a few dozen have shown long-term productive research activity, and much CIR is conducted independently of any academic institution. Institutional and economic factors seem to account for limitations in the development of CIR so far. Empirical studies represent only a small proportion of the total CIR production, but their proportion in M.A. and graduation theses is far higher. Limitations of quantitative analysis without a qualitative component are highlighted, and suggestions are made for further explorations along the way.
«Si sérieux s’abstenir»
Authors: Vandaele Jeroen
Published: September 2007

Malgré le succès récent desHumour Studieset de la traductologie, la traduction de l’humour ne suscite pas souvent l’intérêt des chercheurs. La plupart des contributions traitent de la soi-disante « (in)traduisibilité », qui se situerait aux niveaux « culturel » et « langagier ». Bien qu’en général les pensées soient empiriquement peu fondées et théoriquement déficientes, elles nous procurent une image plus concrète de ces difficultés de traduction culturelles et linguistiques. Pourtant, la « cartographie culturelle » a tout intérêt à prendre l’humour traduit encore plus au sérieux: son absence ou présence et ses modalités se laissent lire comme des signes incontestables de frontières communautaires. La bibliographie élargie qu’offre cet article pourrait servir de point de départ d’une discussion plus articulée qui incorpore les résultats récents aussi bien desHumour Studiesque de la traductologie.
Les ‘fautes de lecture’
Authors: Baetens Jan
Published: September 2007

Dans cet article on se propose de définir une nouvelle approche de la notionde ‘faute’ de traduction. Au lieu d’analyser la faute comme un élément donnantaccès à la culture (à la performance, au savoir, à l’ignorance...) dutraducteur ou de son public, on aborde ici ce genre d’opérations textuellescomme une contrainte, c’est-à-dire comme un mécanisme de lecture etd’écriture qui s’applique systématiquement à l’ensemble d’un écrit. En tantque contrainte, la faute apparaît comme un élément permettant une nouvellecompréhension du texte-source et comme un défi à l’élaboration denouveaux textes-cibles. Bien que les exemples donnés soient tous littéraires,l’intérêt du mécanisme analysé dépasse le seul champ littéraire.