bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The diachronic development of the intensifier bloody: A case study in historical pragmatics
Authors: Biscetti Stefania
Published: March 2014

This paper traces the history of bloody from a holistic perspective, that is, by considering bloody in relation to other items within the system of intensification. Using corpus evidence, the paper rejects current etymological proposals and suggests that the Reformation was the possible socio-historical context wherebloody became a taboo word and an intensifier. It goes on to explain how the adjective bloody became an intensifying adverb in collocation with ‘drunk’ through the cognitive-pragmatic processes of selective binding and analogy. This grammaticalisation cline sets bloody apart from a number of other intensifiers such as very, extremely, utterly, absolutely, which, unlike bloody, were originally manner adverbs and have severely reduced their syntagmatic variability. It also sets it apart from intensifiers such as good, nice, dirty, jolly, pretty and lovely, which, unlikebloody, always retain their descriptive meaning when used as adjectives.
The convergence of two need verbs in Middle English
Authors: Loureiro-Porto Lucía
Published: March 2014

This paper is concerned with OE and ME need v.1, ‘compel, force’ and need v.2, ‘be necessary, need’. It analyses a 2.4 million-word corpus of OE and ME with regard to three factors: relative frequency of both verbs in the two periods, their syntactic properties, and their semantic implications, which are interpreted in terms of Force-Dynamics (cf. Sweetser 1990; Talmy 2000). The results show that, counter-intuitively, need v.2 ‘be necessary, need’ alone is not the only etymological ancestor of PDE semi-modal need, since no clear boundary can be drawn between the two verbs in the periods under analysis. This is most evident in Middle English, when both verbs fully converge syntactically and semantically. Consequently, and most importantly, I show that both need v.1 and need v.2 play a role in the development of PDE need (cf. also Molencki 2002; van der Auwera & Taeymans 2004; Loureiro-Porto 2005b).
Women and other 'small things': -ette as a feminine marker
Authors: Kornexl Lucia
Published: March 2014

Among the inventory of English nominal suffixes, -ette stands out as a relative latecomer with a rather limited productivity and a variety of meanings. Apart from small size, -ette can also indicate imitation or female sex, with the resultant formations often being classed as derogatory. This range of applications has been ascribed to universal tendencies in the semantics and pragmatics of the diminutive. A closer look at the origin and development of personal formations in -ette reveals, however, a number of special traits that can only be explained as the results of specific conditions operative in the English system. This paper sets out to trace the history of female -ette nouns and tries to explain why this minor pattern with its structural and semantic peculiarities has managed to survive in a language in which neither gender marking nor diminution are regular morphological categories.
Reconstruction in syntax: Reconstruction of patterns
Authors: Harris Alice C.
Published: March 2014

In syntax, reconstruction is limited to patterns, that is, repeated surface forms paired with a consistent function or distribution. Comparative reconstruction is illustrated with the example of the pattern of yes/no questions in Kartvelian languages and the core case marking pattern in the languages of the Nakh-Daghestanian family. The method involves setting up correspondences among patterns in languages known to be related. Determination of the ancestral pattern may make use of syntactic relics, dialect data, phonological correspondences, the principle of economy, and identification of internal or external sources of innovation, among other resources. Co-occurrence of all parts of a pattern provides the required safeguards in reconstruction of syntax, just as co-occurrence of all parts of a word does in reconstruction of phonology. Reconstruction of syntax is more likely to be successful in language families with less time depth and in ones with complex morphology reflecting the syntax, than in families lacking these characteristics.
Unpronounced MUCH and the distribution of degree expressions in Spanish
Authors: Androutsopoulou Antonia , Español-Echeverria Manuel
Published: March 2014

This paper focuses on the distribution of degree adjectival modifiers in Spanish. We
distinguish two series of morphologically related degree expressions in Spanish: –to
vs. –toless forms, i.e. tanto ‘so much’ vs. tan ‘so’. In the framework of Corver’s
(1997) Split-DegP Hypothesis, it will be shown that the distribution of these two
series of degree expressions corresponds to that of Q-heads (–to forms) and Degheads
(–toless forms). We argue that Q-heads, as opposed to Deg-heads, are
nominals, more concretely adjectives, and that they license an unpronounced MUCH
head (cf. Kayne 2002). MUCH will be shown to play a crucial role in the account of
the distribution of Q-heads and Deg-heads in Spanish. We also consider the
relationship between MUCH in Spanish and overt much in English much-support
contexts, as well as the somewhat different conditions determining the licensing of
these two elements. Finally, we argue that the postulation of an unpronounced MUCH
accounts for the particular syntactic properties of very in English
The status of the (supposed) expletive
in Brazilian Portuguese existential clauses
Authors: Ornelas de Avelar Juanito
Published: March 2014

This paper characterizes the occurrence of the pronoun você ‘you’ in Brazilian
Portuguese existential clauses as an instance of an indeterminate pronoun, arguing
against the idea that it corresponds to an expletive. I present some evidence that você
is not directly merged in [Spec,TP], but in a thematic position within a locative
predicate that is part of the existential coda
Romance lenition
Authors: Jacobs Haike , Gerwen Robbie van
Published: March 2014

This paper proposes an OT account of diachronic and synchronic Romance lenition
based on the theory of Comparative Markedness. The analysis, contrary to previous
analyses, allows for a straightforward description of synchronic allophonic lenition
processes where voicing and spirantization take place simultaneously without loss of
contrast. The comparative markedness analysis of lenition not only allows for a
parallel OT description of counter-feeding opacity in synchronic Gran Canarian,
Corsican and Sardinian lenition, but moreover makes understandable why sound
change should start out in a counter-feeding fashion.
Temporal reference and grammaticalization in the Spanish perfect(ive)
Authors: Copple Mary T.
Published: March 2014

Much research has discussed the perfect⇒perfective grammaticalization path, but more diachronic research is needed in order to detail the process. In varieties of Peninsular Spanish, the Present Perfect (PP) is grammaticalizing into a perfective, expanding into contexts of use previously occupied by the Preterite. The data for this study, drawn from 15th, 17th and 19th centuries dramatic texts, as well as 20th century conversation, allow for comparison of the relative frequencies of the two forms and examination of the PP and Preterite in different temporal reference contexts. In the 15th century, the Preterite was the preferred form overall, but the PP occupied Immediately Preceding, Irrelevant and Indeterminate contexts to some degree. By the 20th century, a shift in relative frequency had taken place and the PP was more frequent than the Preterite. It had also extended in all temporal reference contexts, except those of prehodiernal events where the Preterite dominates.
6. Some aspects of NPs in Mindanao Chabacano
Authors: Grant Anthony P.
Published: March 2014

This paper examines certain aspects of NP structure and use in Mindanao Chabacano (henceforth MC). This is a mixed creole of the Southern Philippines in which the bulk of the morphs derive from the Mexican Spanish which was the major language of intercommunication among the soldiers of the Philippines when these islands were under Spanish rule (soldiers having been mostly recruited from Mexico). Two forms of MC are attested in any great detail. Firstly, there is Zamboangueño, the major language of the inhabitants of Zamboanga City and its surroundings. Secondly, there is the endangered Cotabateño, a language that is known to a minority of the inhabitants of Cotabato City in a creole community which linguistically is largely an early 20th century offshoot of that of Zamboanga. NP structures in these languages are identical, most of my examples are taken from Zamboangueño because I have more data from that. It will be seen that bare NPs are present in MC but are not any more frequent than they are in Spanish or in the Philippine languages among which MC was formed.
9. The bare NP in Lesser Antillean
Authors: Gadelii Karl
Published: March 2014

This paper examines the structure and behavior of noun phrases in Lesser Antillean French Creoles. It is argued that bare NPs have an indefinite plural reading when appearing in isolation, but that [Indef, Sg], [Def, PL] and [Def, Sg] readings are possible in case a noun phrase with the relevant properties has been previously introduced in the discourse. Lesser Antillean thus displays sensitivity to discourse anaphora in a way that French, the superstrate language in question, does not. When definiteness and number are spelled out in the Lesser Antillean noun phrase, this is done by means of independent particles, leading to a syntax that is superficially more complex than that of an agglutinative/flexional language like French. Post-nominal determiners are shown to be derived via XP-movement, not head movement. Certain contrasts between Guadeloupean and Martinican are shown to be due to different endpoints of the moved XP.
10. Bare NPs and deficient DPs in Haitian Creole and French
Authors: Zribi-Hertz Anne , Glaude Herby
Published: March 2014

Based on a comparative description of Haitian and French noun phrases, this study focuses on the notion of bareness which characterises so-called bare NPs. Lack of determiner is identified as one type of syntactic deficiency, which must be distinguished from Number deficiency. For any functional feature F, phonological deficiency is argued to be ambiguous between feature unmarkedness, feature deficiency, and spell-out deletion. The study of bare NPs must therefore crucially separate the phonological and syntactic modules of grammar. Surveying the main determiners of Haitian in simplex (nonrelativised) noun phrases, we show that these morphemes all have a deictic value, either because of their inherent features, or because of their selectional properties, and that ‘bare NPs’ correlatively occur as default options which take up whatever interpretations are not available for overt determiners. We next turn to complex relativised noun phrases. Adapting Kayne's (1994) theory of relativisation, we argue from Haitian evidence that they include two layers of functional structure which are independently specified for number and/or definiteness, each distribution of features triggering its own set of semantic effects. We suggest that the distribution of number and locative determiners in relativised DPs, and the correlated semantic effects, might be essentially similar in French and Haitian, in spite of the crucially different properties of ‘D’ heads in these two languages.
15. Bare nouns in African American English (AAE)
Authors: Spears Arthur K.
Published: March 2014

Bare count (and mass) nouns, defined as nouns with no determiner or number suffix, occur in African American English, a partially restructured, noncreole language. It is noteworthy that bare nouns in AAE may take definite and generic interpretations. Bare nouns with defi nite interpretations were previously believed to occur in creoles outside the Americas only. However, these bare nouns occur in Palenquero, a creole spoken in Columbia. Bare nouns with generic interpretations are common across creoles but, interestingly, do not occur in non-African American dialects of English in the U.S. Bare count nouns with a definite interpretation are limited to subject position in fi nite sentences. This suggests that the bare noun may in fact contain a null determiner bound by a possibly null sentence topic, as might be the case in some creole languages. However, this analysis does not hold for a bare singular in the scope of negation. In such cases, we could assume that the null determiner is bound by a NEG/existential operator.
18. Functional deficiency, ellipsis or innovation in creole languages?
Authors: Baptista Marlyse , Guéron Jacqueline
Published: March 2014

In this Postface, one of our primary objectives as editors, is to weave together into a coherent whole the insights and analyses of our contributors. We aim to show how the chapters in the volume complement each other, highlighting both similarities and differences in the patterns of the nominal system of various creole languages. A second objective is to try to formulate some hypotheses regarding the use of bare nouns in creole languages and the role of Universal Grammar in shaping the linguistic properties of the creoles under study. To the degree that creole bare nouns have common properties, we try to identify the grammatical options that UG makes available to natural languages in the domain of the Noun Phrase.
Bilingualism and creolization in Solomon Islands
Authors: Jourdan Christine
Published: March 2014

The paper takes a cultural approach to the study of creolization and argues that the expansion of Pijin as the lingua franca of the Solomon Islands was curtailed, during the greater part of its social history (1) by the fact that most adults were bilingual or multilingual and (2) that Pijin was not associated with a cultural world that had legitimacy in the mind of Pijin speakers. The paper starts with a presentation of the nature and extent of multilingualism in the history of the Solomon Islands and Honiara, capital city of the country; it continues with a discussion of the process of creolization understood as inherently linked to social change. The conclusion argues that creolization takes place gradually.
The founder principle and Anguilla's homestead society
Authors: Walicek Don E.
Published: March 2014

This work discusses the sociohistorical origins of Anguillian, the English-lexifier Creole spoken on the Caribbean island of Anguilla. It focuses on the earliest period of colonization (1650–1700) because creolists have suggested that social dynamics in this ‘formative period’ are key to understanding the emergence of Creole languages throughout the region. Responding to Arends’ call for “historical correctness”, the author draws from archival sources to describe language contact, social relationships (including relationships between enslaved Africans and their European masters), and indirect evidence of linguistic variation. He offers a critique of creolists’ interpretations of the Founder Principle and their assumptions about patterns of social interaction, questioning Chaudenson’s claim that ‘Robinsonian conditions’ prevailed in the seventeenth century.
Reducing phonological complexity and grammatical opaqueness
Authors: Zeisler Bettina
Published: March 2014

Old Tibetan shows extraordinary complexity in its syllable structure as well as highly complex or rather opaque verb morphology. The syllable structure (CCC)CV(CC) has broken down completely in the modern Central Tibetan dialects to CV(C), while the opaque alternations of prefixes, consonants and vowels in verb stem formation were levelled out and replaced by regular systems of periphrastic construction in the western and central varieties. Both developments can be described as processes of simplification that were triggered in a linguistic contact situation, where Old Tibetan served as a lingua franca for various non-Tibetan peoples.
Contact language formation in evolutionary terms
Authors: Ansaldo Umberto
Published: March 2014

The aim of this paper is to present a view of contact language formation in which language creation in multilingual ecologies follows the same principles as language maintenance in monolingual ecologies, i.e. selection and replication of features available to speakers in a given environment. In order to do so, I introduce the foundations underlying an evolutionary framework to contact language formation and the views they offer for our understanding of language contact and change. The view of grammar as an evolving system, I believe, can be best appreciated in a functional-typological theory of language. For this reason, I first introduce the basic functionalist, usage-based linguistic theories required for an evolutionary framework. I then synthesize a view on language contact and change in evolutionary terms based on Croft (2000, 2006a) and Mufwene (2001). Finally, I apply the views presented here to a case of contact language formation, namely the evolution of case markers in a variety of Sri Lanka Malay. These are particularly interesting as, from a classic or orthodox view, they might be seen as ‘complex’, ‘marked’ or at least ‘unexpected’ instances of contact-induced change. The evolutionary framework however can explain these as natural acts of linguistic replication in multilingual settings, thus avoiding exceptionalist explanations. Instead, an evolutionary framework offers an integration of socio-historical and functional-typological observation, something that our current approaches to language change still largely lack (Croft 2006b). Among the advantages of the framework applied here, as discussed in the concluding section, is the suggestion that overall structural complexity, however defined, does not change as a result of contact language formation: a new grammar is simply the result of a recombination of grammatical features of the input languages.
Rhetoric in the Mixed Game
Authors: Weigand Edda
Published: March 2014

The paper starts from the assumption that rhetoric is inherent to dialogue. Such a view is based on the Theory of Dialogic Action Games or the Mixed Game Model, which is a theory about human beings’ complex ability to come to terms with dialogic issues in ever-changing surroundings. Human beings are not lost in the chaos of ever-varying empirical data but are competent-to-perform in their own interests, i.e. competent to effecttively achieve their purposes in dialogic action games. Models of dialogue usually proceed either by abstraction to rule-governed patterns of competence or by reducing the object-of-study to empirical elements. In contrast to such reductionist models of the simple, the theory of the dialogic action game represents an adventure in the complex of the mixed game of human action. Basic premises and methodological principles of the theory will be briefly introduced. A sample analysis of a political Round Table discussion demonstrates how the model works.
Dialogic rhetoric, coauthorship, and moments of meeting
Authors: Cissna Kenneth N. , Anderson Rob
Published: March 2014

Distinguishing three concepts of dialogue, we describe a dialogic approach to rhetoric that conceives rhetoric as coexperiential, collaborative, constitutive, open, expansive, and both traditional and radical. Further, we offer an emergent approach to studying dialogic rhetoric that draws on both rhetorical criticism and discourse analysis. We then review briefly four empirical projects in which we have studied conversational dialogue or dialogic rhetoric, including a series of studies of the 1957 dialogue between Martin Buber and Carl Rogers, as well as other conversations involving Gregory Bateson, B. F. Skinner, and Rush Limbaugh. We conclude by identifying the implications of our work to scholarship related to the conversations we have studied, to communication theory and practice, to the facilitation of public dialogue, and to the study of dialogic conversations.
Sociological concepts and their impact on rhetoric: Japanese language concepts
Authors: Grein Marion
Published: March 2014

Communication principles are culturally determined and are, without doubt, omnipresent in every dialogue. In some languages, these culturally determined principles can directly be linked to sociocultural concepts. These concepts are wellelaborated in Japan. In this article, I shall emphasize three concepts: harmony as the communication ideal, visceral communication and intuitive understanding (concept of haragei and inshin denshin), and the different roles of the individual depending on social distance honne (private, true self) vs. tatemae (official, mask).
Attention-influencing as a rhetorical strategy in German and Turkish Parliamentary debates
Authors: Ozan Didem
Published: March 2014

Rhetoric as the art of using human communicative abilities effectively in order to promote individual or collective interests is a permanent and inherent feature of dialogue as a mixed game. In parliamentary debates, influencing attention is used as a rhetorical strategy. Speakers anticipate their audience’s as well as the public’s perception. They target and influence the direction and intensity of attention in various political domains. Politicians have to mediate between institutional functions and roles and their electorate’s expectations. If they do this, they can easily get into conflicts of interest. In October 2004, Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoğan and the then German Foreign Minister Joseph Fischer declared their positions regarding the scheduled accession of Turkey to the European Union. Two sample analyses are taken from their speeches given during two national parliamentary debates. Rhetorical strategies dependent on different cultural conditions were used by these political leaders to shift attention from internal conflicts which could weaken their position.
Practical theories and empirical practice – facets of a complex interaction
Authors: Schalley Andrea C.
Published: March 2014

There is a perceived tension between theoretical and empirical approaches to the study of language. Most recent works in the discipline emphasise that linguistics is an ‘empirical science’. This chapter argues for a nuanced view that is not geared towards one of the two sides. Drawing on the volume’s contributions, it describes the mutual relationship between theoretical and empirical work, and how theory and practice necessarily and as a matter of fact complement each other in linguistic research. It does so by examining a number of methodological facets relevant to the study of language, by illustrating how debated topics in linguistics are addressed by different contributions and hence methodological stances, and by discussing some meta-theoretical implications arising from this. Keywords:﻿﻿ linguistics; meaning in interaction; methodology; pragmatics; typology
The embodiment of linguistic meaning
Authors: Bach Patric
Published: March 2014

Embodied views of language hold that linguistic meaning is derived from the interaction experience of the listener/speaker and the sensory, motor, and internal states that go along with it. This chapter reviews three kinds of evidence that support such views. (1) Linguistic descriptions draw upon processes and brain regions that support the event’s actual sensory experience. (2) These perceptual event representations are treated by the cognitive apparatus just like real events, triggering the motor behaviours that would be elicited in such circumstances. (3) The representation of action content draws upon information encoded in the understander’s own action control systems. Outstanding questions, problems, and implications of such an embodied view of linguistic meaning are discussed. Keywords:﻿﻿ action simulation; embodied cognition; language; perceptual symbols; semantics
Infants’ encoding of social interaction as a conceptual foundation for the acquisition of argument structure
Authors: Thoermer Claudia , Neumann Annina , Sodian Beate
Published: March 2014

Patterns of linguistic encoding influence infant event representations, and fundamental prelinguistic semantic categories are reflected in linguistic structures. We report a study investigating 10-month-old infants’ encoding of action roles in a ditransitive give-and-take event by using a combination of looking time and eyetracking techniques. Results indicate that distinctive encoding strategies of a role reversal in a give-and-take event are associated with looking-time patterns: infants whose looking times indicate an understanding of the role reversal between agent and recipient track actions on an agent-specific basis, rather than on spatial parameters of the scene. Findings are discussed with regard to how our understanding of interaction between non-linguistic and linguistic representations can benefit from close interdisciplinary cooperation between linguists and developmental psychologists. Keywords:﻿﻿action roles; intentional relations; prelinguistic concepts
Yucatec demonstratives in interaction
Authors: Bohnemeyer Jürgen
Published: March 2014

This chapter compares Hanks’ (1990, 2005) ‘practice’ approach to the demonstratives of Yucatec Maya based on the recording of spontaneously occurring interactions to the results obtained by the author with the elicitation questionnaire developed by Wilkins (1999). The study of the meaning and use of demonstratives represents particular challenges to linguistic data gathering because of their context dependency and the role of interactional factors such as attention sharing. The questionnaire study disconfirmed any direct impact of the location of the addressee on the choice of demonstrative and showed a systematic contrast between simple forms used for joint attention and augmented ones used for attention direction. It is argued that observation of spontaneous interactions and elicitation should be pursued in tandem. Keywords:﻿﻿ attention direction; demonstratives; elicited vs. spontaneous data; interaction; Yucatec Maya
The encoding of motion events
Authors: Wälchli Bernhard , Sölling Arnd
Published: March 2014

This chapter investigates eleven fundamental questions of motion event encoding from a massively cross-linguistic (i.e. typological) perspective in a bottom-up approach in parallel and original texts making use of quantitative and qualitative methods and various visualization methods. It is found that motion events can be encoded by lexical and grammatical means, by words and morphemes and tend to be expressed by constructions rather than simple markers (distributional spatial semantics). It is argued that local decomposition is more appropriate to address the semantics of motion events than global decomposition and that motion event typology consists of continuous rather than discrete variables. In motion event typology there are many features with only weak correlations (high heterogeneity). Both universal and culture-dependent aspects of motion event encoding are identified and areal trends in motion event typology are addressed (notably the deviant behavior of the North American continent).
Gender across languages
Authors: Hellinger Marlis , Bußmann Hadumod
Published: March 2014

1.Aims and scope of “Gender across languages”

2. Gender classes as a special case of noun classes

2.1 Classifier languages

2.2 Noun class languages

3. Categories of gender

3.1 Grammatical gender

3.2 Lexical gender

3.3 Referential gender

3.4 “False generics”: Generic masculines and male generics

3.5 Social gender

4. Gender-related structures

4.1 Word-formation

4.2 Agreement

4.3 Pronominalization

4.4 Coordination

5. Gender-related messages

5.1 Address terms

5.2 Idiomatic expressions and proverbs

5.3 Female and male discourse

6. Language change and language reform

7. Conclusion

Notes

References
Chinese. In Chinese, men and women are equal – or – women and men are equal?
Authors: Ettner Charles
Published: March 2014

1.Introduction

2. What is Chinese language?

2.1 Standard Chinese language

2.2 Structural properties of Chinese

2.3 The Chinese writing system

3. Aspects of gender in Chinese

3.1 The ‘woman’ signific and its connotations

3.2 Nouns and pronouns

3.3 Gender specification and gender abstraction

3.4 Gendered word order in Chinese

4. Social attitudes reflected in Chinese language

5. Chinese language reform and contemporary gender politics

5.1 Social language reform in a socialist China

5.2 Reproaching sexist language

5.3 China’s socialist methods for achieving reform

5.4 Promoting literacy – a double-edged sword for women

5.5 Language reform and the Script Reform Committee

6. Conclusion

Notes

References
Hindi. “Unnatural” gender in Hindi
Authors: Hall Kira
Published: March 2014

1.Introduction

2. Gender in the Hindi language system

2.1 Grammatical gender: Assignment and agreement

2.2 Generic masculines

2.3 Gender reversal: Terms of endearment and insult

3. Uses of the gender system by Hindi-speaking hijras

3.1 Language in hijra socialization

3.2 The exploitation of grammatical gender in everyday hijra

conversation

3.3 The use of masculine self-reference

4. Conclusions

Appendix

Notes

References
Norwegian. The representation of gender in Norwegian
Authors: Bull Tove , Swan Toril
Published: March 2014

1.Introduction

2. Historical and sociolinguistic background

3. The representation of gender in Norwegian

3.1 Grammatical gender

3.2 Agreement: Pronouns and adjectives

3.3 Lexical gender

4. Word-formation

4.1 Compounding

4.2 Derivation

5. Names and honorifics

6. Gendered idioms and frozen expressions

6.1 Expressions with mann

6.2 Expressions with kvinne/dame

6.3 Other asymmetrical expressions

7. Language change and feminist language planning

8. Conclusion

Notes

References
Vietnamese. Gender in addressing and self-reference in Vietnamese
Authors: Pham Hoa
Published: March 2014

1.Introduction

2. Selected structural properties of Vietnamese

3. Terms for human referents

3.1 Personal nouns

3.2 Kinship terms

3.3 Pronouns

4. Male/female relations in idiomatic expressions

5. Vietnamese terms of address, reference and self-reference

5.1 Sociopolitical background and characteristics of address terms

5.2 Kinship terms and common nouns

5.3 Terms of address and self-reference in various female-male encounters

5.3.1 Masters and housekeepers

5.3.2 Teachers and students

5.3.3 Neighbors and work mates

5.4 Women and men as couples

6. Conclusion

Notes

References
German. Engendering female visibility in German
Authors: Bußmann Hadumod , Hellinger Marlis
Published: March 2014

1.Introduction

2.Categories of gender

2.1Grammatical gender

2.1.1Gender assignment

2.1.2Agreement

2.2Lexical gender

2.3Social gender

3.Referring to women and men in German

3.1Specification of referential gender

3.1.1Grammatical means

3.1.2Lexical means

3.1.3Morphological means: Derivation

3.2Neutralization of referential gender

3.3Abstraction from referential gender

3.4Marked feminines and “generic” masculines

4.The psychological reality of German masculine generics

5.Gendered messages in German

5.1Discourse: German women and men speaking

5.2Proverbs and metaphorical expressions

6.Language planning as a reaction to the feminist critique of language

6.1Variation and change in the area of German personal nouns

6.2German guidelines for non-discriminatory usage

7.Concluding remarks

Notes

References
Japanese. Women’s language as a group identity marker in Japanese
Authors: Ide Sachiko
Published: March 2014

1.Introduction

2.The indigenous way of looking at women’s language

3.Women’s languages in women’s worlds

3.1Nyoobo kotoba: The language of court ladies

3.2Yuujogo: The language of the courtesans

4.The impact on present-day women’s language

4.1Establishing women’s language as a group language

4.2Indexing group identity and molding the speaker’s self

4.3Adding valuable image

5.Conclusion

References
Arabic. Shifting sands
Authors: Hachimi Atiqa
Published: March 2014

1.Introduction

2. Sociolinguistic perspectives: Multiglossia and multilingualism

3. A brief comparison of Moroccan Arabic with other varieties of Arabic

4. Grammatical gender in Moroccan Arabic

4.1 Feminine and masculine gender

4.2 Grammatical gender in human nouns

4.3 Generic reference

4.4 Rules of pronominalization

4.5 Morphological structure of Moroccan Arabic human nouns

5. The socio-religious basis of gender issues in Morocco

6. Women and men in religious texts

7. How are women addressed and talked about in Moroccan society?

7.1 Pre-child-bearing phase: The virgin female

7.2 The child-bearing phase: The woman as wife and mother

7.3 Post-child-bearing phase: Elderly women

8. Interactional practices

9. Concluding remarks

Notes

References
English. Gender in a global language
Authors: Hellinger Marlis
Published: March 2014

1.Introduction

2. Gender in English

2.1. Grammatical gender

2.2. Lexical and social gender

3. Semantic derogation

4. Reforming English

5. Varieties of English represented in “Gender across languages”

Notes

References
Hebrew. Gender switch in Modern Hebrew
Authors: Tobin Yishai
Published: March 2014

1.Introduction: Historical and sociolinguistic background

2. Grammatical gender in Modern Hebrew

2.1 Masculine and feminine nouns

2.2 Gender agreement

2.3 Generic masculines

3. “Call me Yigal”: Gender switch, gender reversal, cross addressing

4. The implications of grammatical gender for language use

Notes

References
On different types of clitic clusters
Authors: Cardinaletti Anna
Published: March 2014

In this paper, Italian and Bantu clitic clusters are analyzed and compared. I claim that in both language families, pronouns check case in a low clitic position, and in so doing they reverse the order of arguments. In Italian, clitics move to a high clitic position where they check person and number features. Different types of Italian clusters are individuated: they differ syntactically, phonologically, and morphologically. As in Kayne’s (1994) proposal, clusters can be formed either on one single functional head or on adjacent heads; the former type can appear both in enclisis and proclisis, the latter only in proclisis. Clitic pronouns can end with an epenthetic vowel or a class marker/ inflectional morpheme; the former (consonantal clitics) can appear in clitic clusters in any position, the latter (morphologically complex clitics) cannot be the first element in clitic clusters dominated by one single head. Finally, some clusters are inserted as lexical units, others are two independent words: only the former display the linking vowel [e]. The intricate interplay of these (partially) independent properties explains a number of restrictions on clusters found in Italian (and other Romance languages). The hierarchy of person and number features in the high clitic position is also discussed, which explains other restrictions on clusters.
The Bantu-Romance connection in verb movement and verbal inflectional morphology
Authors: Harford Carolyn
Published: March 2014

Romance and Bantu languages show a range of contrasting morphological and syntactic properties, ranging from WH extraction strategies and the existence of V2 to directionality of affixation and degree of fusion and agglutination in verbal inflectional morphology. Using Isizulu and Chishona (Bantu) and standard French and Italian (Romance) as examples, this paper correlates these contrasts in terms of a common right-branching Split-INFL structure, and contrasting preferences for movement (STAY, in Optimality Theoretic terms). It is proposed that the same preference which motivates WH extraction strategies in the four languages also motivates the contrast between the relatively prefixal and agglutinative verbal inflectional morphology of Isizulu and Chishona and the suffixal and more fusional verbal inflectional morphology of French and Italian. The conclusions reinforce intuitions that languages belonging to the Romance and Bantu language families are typologically similar.
Mapping a parochial lexicon onto a universal semantics
Authors: Ramchand Gillian , Svenonius Peter
Published: March 2014

In this paper, we argue that languages differ in what parts of meaning are

specified in the syntax and what parts are negotiated by the Conceptual-

Intentional systems (C-I). This leads to a kind of parametric variation, which

we illustrate with examples from Norwegian definiteness, Russian perfectivity,

Salish tense, and other natural language phenomena. Our claim is that syntactic

variation is not as great as sometimes suggested (for example, we argue that

Chinese has a D head and Salish has a T head), but nor are syntactico-semantic

representations identical across languages; LFs vary from one language to the

next, and in some cases C-I specifies what syntax/semantics does not, particularly

when it comes to reference tracking for the variables introduced by the syntax.

The result is a very clean system with no semantic module disinct from syntax

and hence no distinction between syntactic and semantic parameters.
A two-layered analysis of the Hebrew exceptive xuc mi
Authors: Sevi Aldo
Published: March 2014

The Hebrew exceptive xuc mi seems to allow both minus interpretations (the excepted element fails to have the property predicated of the other elements) and plus interpretations (the excepted element does have the property predicated of the other elements). In this paper I propose a unified meaning for xuc mi. (1) xuc mi is a minus sign: it subtracts elements from a domain of quantification, and (2) there must be some non trivial property that distinguishes the excepted elements from all other elements in the domain. I derive the minus, plus, and other possible interpretations from this meaning and general pragmatic considerations.
Chapter 2. Null subjects and finite control in Brazilian Portuguese
Authors: Ferreira Marcelo
Published: March 2014

The paper discusses the restricted distribution and interpretation of “referential” null subjects in Brazilian Portuguese (BP). It shows that referential null subjects in BP behave like obligatorily controlled PRO and argues, following Hornstein (1999, 2001), that they should be analyzed as traces (deleted copies) of A-movement. The proposal is that with the weakening of the verbal inflection in BP, finite Ts became ambiguous in bearing a complete or an incomplete set of φ-features. When the incomplete version is selected in an embedded clause, T is not able to value the Case of the DP in its Spec, which then remains active and may undergo further A-movement. If the movement lands in a θ-position, we obtain a finite control construction; if the landing site is not a θ-position, we obtain a hyper-raising construction, instead.
Studying literature and being empirical: A multifaceted conjunction
Authors: Margolin Uri
Published: March 2014

I begin with a distinction between rational, empirical and experimentally based types of theoretical claims or discourses. I go on to discuss the study of literary dynamics (or literary historiography) as a field of empirical activity involving the relations and correlations between texts and text models on the one hand and the contexts in which they occur on the other. This is illustrated with respect to literary production, mediation, initial reception and post-processing over time (Siegfried Schmidt’s four components of literary communication). I conclude with a list of theoretical and methodological tasks for current experimental as well as empirical studies of literature.
Imagining what could happen: Effects of taking the role of a character on social cognition
Authors: Hakemulder Frank
Published: March 2014

In a series of experiments, Hakemulder (2000) showed that identifying with a story character representing a particular outgroup affects readers’ beliefs about that outgroup. The present contribution describes theories concerning the uses of imagining ourselves in the shoes of story characters. Second, it discusses the research concerning the fundamental processes that may underlie the effects of such imagination. And third, it presents the results of two experiments. The studies of Hakemulder (2000) were replicated, using a different story, examining the effects on not only university students (as in the previous studies) but also on high school students. Again it was shown that role-taking may be responsible for the effects of narratives on social cognition.
Searching for style in modern American poetry
Authors: Hoover David L.
Published: March 2014

This essay examines a corpus of Modern American Poetry using Zeta and Iota, two recently developed measures of textual difference (Burrows 2007), and some alternatives to them that move beyond the most frequent words of the text, which have been the traditional focus of computational stylistics. These measures concentrate our attention on moderately frequent or rare characteristic words, most of which are content words. These highly characteristic words lead us back to the text, back to questions of interpretation and style, and highlighting such words in texts emphasizes their dense concentration and helps us to visualize how and why intuitive perceptions of stylistic difference are possible.
Empirical evaluation: Towards an automated index of lexical variety
Authors: Viana Vander , Giordani A. , Zyngier Sonia
Published: March 2014

This chapter proposes an objective approach to the formal analysis of literary prose in English in order to investigate the relation between lexical density and judgments of canonicity. Based on the concepts of literariness proposed by the Russian Formalists and lexical variety, a mathematical index is designed, relating three variables which take the materiality of text into consideration: (a) relative frequency of lexical bundles, (b) lexical bundle type/token ratio, and (c) word type/token ratio. The index is described and illustrated with 46 canonical and non-canonical literary works. Statistical analysis shows no significant relation between lexical richness and decisions of what has been classified as canonical, indicating that these judgments may be influenced by factors other than the text itself.
Subject pronouns in bilinguals
Authors: Pinto Manuela
Published: March 2014

Longitudinal data from two Dutch-Italian bilinguals show that third person subject pronouns are not acquired before the age of 3;1 and that the usage of these pronouns does not always converge with the monolingual target. This paper accounts for this acquisitional delay by integrating Müller and Hulk (2001) and Serratrice et al.’s (2004) core insights on crosslinguistic influence in bilingual language acquisition with a global maturational view as proposed in Van Kampen (2004). As for the observed bilinguals’ difficulty in anaphora resolution, we speculate on the existence of an economy principle that might be part of the Language Acquisition Device and guide children’s choices in cases of ambiguity in language.
3. The acquisition of diminutives in Croatian
Authors: Palmovic Marijan
Published: March 2014

Diminutives are very frequent in Croatian child language; children acquire them before they master many other elements of morphology. A great majority of diminutives used by the child are nouns. Although diminutives phonologically are more difficult than the simplex forms, diminutives make paradigms more transparent and reduce the number of noun classes. In this study the data of one Croatian girl were analyzed. The analysis includes frequencies, oppositions of diminutives and simplex forms, mini-paradigms and a comparison of child’s production and parental input.
5. The role of diminutives in the acquisition of Italian morphology
Authors: Noccetti Sabrina , De Marco Anna , Tonelli Livia , Dressler Wolfgang U.
Published: March 2014

The paper deals with the acquisition of diminutives by four Italian children with three objectives: to highlight parallelisms and differences in input and output data; to contrast the mechanism of item-based learning (cf. Tomasello 2003) to the dual-route model (Clahsen et al. 2003) as regards the acquisition of diminutives; to investigate whether the productive use of diminutives is a simplifying strategy for acquiring the morphology of non-productive, opaque inflectional classes. The analysis of data reveals a common developmental pattern in the children and that the acquisition of diminutive suffixes (especially -ino) can be ascribed to children’s rule extraction. The children, more markedly two of them, use the regular inflection of the diminutives as a strategy to simplify the input data.
6. The acquisition of diminutives in Spanish
Authors: Marrero Victoria , Aguirre Carmen , Albalá María José
Published: March 2014

The acquisition of diminutives in Spanish, facilitated by phonoprosodical, morphological and pragmatic means, becomes more than a simple morphopragmatic device to be acquired. We propose that it provides the child with essential cues for grammatical segmentation, which proves very useful in later stages of language development.
To test this hypothesis, an analysis of two longitudinal corpora of Spanish L1 has been carried out. Quantitative considerations included type/token ratio in children and cds across ages and word classes; qualitative considerations included a search for the emergence of the first contrast (mini-paradigms). Both perspectives confirm a pattern of a very rapid development and mastery of diminutive formation.
Some other aspects, such as morphophonology, suffix selection and spontaneity versus imitation, are also considered. We round up with some considerations regarding the semantics and pragmatics of diminutives in Spanish.
8. Diminutives and hypocoristics in Austrian German (AG)
Authors: Korecky-Kröll Katharina , Dressler Wolfgang U.
Published: March 2014

This paper intends to show how diminutives emerge in the corpus of two children who acquire a language which has productive diminutive formation, but where diminutives play a minor role due to low frequency; they do not serve as triggers or facilitators in the acquisition of German noun morphology. In addition, we will look into input-dependent inter-individual variation.
10. Diminutives in Finnish child-directed and child speech
Authors: Laalo Klaus
Published: March 2014

There are various means to form diminutives in Finnish, for example regular suffixation (e.g. isä ‘father’ + i > isi ‘daddy’) and modification of the stem possibly combined with suffixation (e.g. kissa ‘cat’ > kisu ‘pussycat’, maha ‘stomach’ > masu ‘tummy’). The article first deals with the different types of Finnish diminutives and then examines the diminutives of two Finnish-speaking children. In early child language, a trochaic bias is observed. In diminutive formation, there is a tendency towards transparent inflection: when forming diminutives by stem modification, different morphophonological alternations are eliminated and transparent inflection patterns are favoured.
2. The development and interaction of Case and Number in early Russian
Authors: Gordishevsky Galina , Schaeffer Jeannette
Published: March 2014

This chapter reports the results of a spontaneous speech study on the interaction between Case and Number in child Russian. Following Hoekstra & Hyams (1995, 1996) and Müller (1994), we hypothesize that the Number head is initially underspecified in child grammars and represents [+singular] only. Our results support this hypothesis, exhibiting almost flawless Case licensing in the singular, but failure to use plural Cased forms correctly between the ages 1;8–2;0 and to a lesser extent between the ages 2;1–2;6. Our results also support the Full Clause or Full Competence Hypothesis (Hyams 1992; Wexler 1992; Poeppel & Wexler 1993), according to which functional categories are present in child grammar from the beginning.