bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The construction of macro-events
Authors: Pedersen Johan
Published: March 2014

In this article Talmy’s influential typology of macro-events (Talmy 1985, 1987, 1991, 2000) is discussed from the point of view of construction grammar (Goldberg 1995, 2006). Talmy has described typological differences of lexicalization between what he calls satellite-framed languages and verb-framed languages. The discussion originates in a contrastive analysis of a short story by H.C. Andersen available in six parallel versions: the original Danish version, an English, a German, a Spanish, an Italian and a French version. The article argues that the generalized version of the typology (Talmy 1991, 2000) suffers from being formulated exclusively in terms of lexicalization patterns, and that the typology should include both the lexical level and a schematic constructional level of analysis. A framework is proposed in which the typological patterns are interpreted as an information structure phenomenon. Constructions of the main information (MIC) and the supportive information (SIC), of varying degree of specificity, are the basic constituents of the typology. From this point of view, Germanic languages tend to map the main information (MI) onto a complex schematic construction and the supportive information (SI) onto a lexical (verbal) construction. Romance languages tend to map the MI onto the verb, while the SI may be mapped onto a complex schematic construction. The article hypothesizes that MIC and SIC stem from generalizations from usage, that they have their own, procedural role in grammar, as a device for organizing the information, and that the typology is anchored in this task. The interpretation of Talmy’s descriptive typology is in this perspective that some pairs of MIC/SIC are more entrenched in the grammar of some languages than in others. The proposed framework is well suited for analyzing usage data that does not fit the basic patterns. It is also adequate for identifying patterns in data that are similar to those recognized in Talmy’s work, yet not recognized as part of his typology.
Transitive adjectives in Japanese
Authors: Caluianu Daniela
Published: March 2014

This article is a descriptive study of the alternation between the nom-acc and the nom-nom sentence pattern with a class of adjectives in Japanese. The analysis of data collected online and through two surveys has revealed that (a) the alternation does not seem to be triggered by a single factor, but by a host of syntactic, lexical and pragmatic factors, and (b) the main consequence of the alternation is the restructuring of the paradigm consisting of the adjective, the morphologically related active verb form and the corresponding passive form, with the adjective coming to replace the active verb form.
Tima
Authors: Dimmendaal Gerrit J.
Published: March 2014

This study presents a first introduction to the phonological, morphosyntactic and pragmatic structure of Tima, a poorly-known language in Sudan whose wider genetic affiliations still need to be clarified. A number of structural properties of Tima, being of particular interest from an areal and general typological point of view, are discussed in more detail below: The highly reduced noun-class system with remnants of a more extensive former system, its discourse-configurational structure, and split ergativity.
How far does semantic bleaching go
Authors: Abraham Werner
Published: March 2014

According to influential work on grammaticalization, the route grammaticalizing changes take is from lexical to functional categories (Lehmann 1985, van Gelderen 1993). It will be demonstrated on two grammatical relations that this is a too specific assumption. First, modal particles in German and Dutch emerge from adverbials and conjunctions — obviously, semantically more complete elements -, but, on their route to non-adverbial particles, they do not arrive at any functional status in any minimal sense. Second, as regards the infinitival preposition (IPrep), IPrep in German as well as other Germanic languages, bleaches out semantically from an original adverbial without, however, ever reaching the functional syntactic domain (in terms of Minimalism). The third relevant characteristic to be mentioned in this context is the fact that, despite heavy semantic bleaching and arriving at new syntactic functions, the original lexical semantics remains ‘shining through’ in the case of modal particles (MPs) in German and Dutch. This allows us to reconstruct an LF-status of modal particles as a triple COMP mapping. The decision which of the three COMPs is instantiated by an individual MP depends on its original categorial status as diachronic pre-MP.
Recasting Danish subjects
Authors: Heltoft Lars
Published: March 2014

The present article is an attempt to construct a scenario for the typological change of the subject in the Scandinavian languages, Danish, Norwegian and Swedish, from nominative subjects to categorical subjects. This change must and will be seen in the context of the rise of the so-called subordinate clause word order. Most of the material will be taken from three stages of Danish. In addition to Modern Danish, the 13th century is represented by the language of the Scanic Law and the mid 15th century by the Danish Lucidarius.

The background is the Copenhagen version of functional grammar, as presented by the papers in Engberg-Pedersen et al. (1996), and the topological theory of Paul Diderichsen (1941, 1943). No specific knowledge of these traditions is presupposed.
No doubt and related expressions
Authors: Simon-Vandenbergen Anne-Marie
Published: March 2014

The epistemic adverb no doubt refers literally to absence of doubt, and hence to complete certainty, but it is actually described in the literature as expressing less than full certitude and as more or less synonymous with ‘very probably’. This contribution uses corpus data to examine the meaning and pragmatic uses of no doubt and of the formally and semantically closely related expressions there is no doubt and I have no doubt in present-day English. An explanation for how certainty adverbs such as no doubt have actually come to express some doubt or uncertainty is sought by considering data from historical corpora. It is argued that grammaticalization is a factor in this meaning development. But from a theoretical point of view the relationship between ‘certainty’ and ‘uncertainty’ needs an explanation which goes beyond the description of individual lexical items. This contribution shows that the explanation for such a relationship must be sought in the rhetorical exploitation of epistemic expressions.
Another take on the notion Subject
Authors: Bakker Dik , Siewierska Anna
Published: March 2014

Linguistic theories typically have a static, competence-based view of the notion Subject. In this view speakers choose their Subjects freely from the relevant constituents of a clause, typically the arguments of the main predicate. However, when one looks at what speakers actually do, it becomes clear that the choice is determined to a high degree on the basis of the pragmatic and semantic features of the candidate constituents. Apart from roles such as Agency and Topicality, the major determining factor appears to be a possibly language specific mix of features such as person, animacy, and definiteness. A multifunctional approach to Subject choice seems to work even for English, a language which is thought to have grammaticalized Subject to a large extent.
English constructions from a Dutch perspective
Authors: Verhagen Arie
Published: March 2014

In construction grammar, specific constructions are daughters of more general patterns, the former inheriting properties of the latter, besides providing specifications of their own. Therefore, differences and similarities between languages may differentially involve lower and higher levels of generality. This paper demonstrates this by comparing three construction types in Dutch and English: the way construction, the time-away construction, and causative constructions. The first instantiates a productive pattern in English, but not in Dutch. The second is syntactic in English, and morphological in Dutch. The third inherits more properties from general clause syntax in Dutch than in English. The grammatical properties of each case nevertheless show important similarities. Low-level constructions may strongly determine cross-linguistic similarity, due to similarity of form-meaning pairing.
Modelling ‘selection’ between referents in the English nominal group
Authors: Fawcett Robin P.
Published: March 2014

This paper addresses two issues, one descriptive and one methodological. It offers a description of the English nominal group (aka noun phrase) that greatly extends the traditional concept of ‘determiner’. More specifically, it describes an integrated semantics and functional syntax for the quantifying and deictic determiners, based on the concept of ‘selection’. This approach has the advantage over standard representations that, when analyzing (1) five books, (2) those books and (3) five of those books, the words five, those and books expound the same element in each case. The paper then shows how this approach can be extended to eight other determiners and their associated uses of of (and, incidentally, the structure for its remaining uses). But there is equal emphasis on the methodology used to establish which of three possible types of structure should be used to model such examples, and the paper concludes by suggesting that the ultimate criteria are those of elegance in the operation of the grammar.
Interactive solution-problems
Authors: Jordan Michael P.
Published: March 2014

The theory of problem-solution patterning is already well established for a wide range of genres and at macrostructure and microstructure levels of communication. That theory has, however, largely failed to account for interactive solution-problems: where a solution is or causes a problem to another person, group or thing. This chapter establishes the major parameters of this sub-theory of problem-solution structures and the related grammar and signalling. For informal writing in the natural sciences, solution-problems are shown to apply to environmental concerns, predator-prey relations and cause-effect relations. More generally the principles are extended to cover third-party involvement, friends and enemies and iatrogenic solution-problems. The sub-theory of structures and linguistic signalling outlined here applies to many genres – not just those in the natural sciences, but also in news and business reports, and general journalism. Studies of the structures and signalling of politics and fictional works (cartoons, sitcoms, soap operas, movies, novels, etc.) would be natural extensions for the principles explained.
Metadiscursive and interpersonal values of pronominal topics in spoken Spanish
Authors: Hidalgo Downing Raquel , Hidalgo-Downing Laura
Published: March 2014

This paper presents a discussion on the interactive and textual functions of pronominal marked topics in spoken Spanish. The study is a continuation of an empirical analysis based on Marcos Marín’s Corpus oral de referencia de español contemporáneo (Marcos Marín 1992), in which we have examined the formal types and pragmatic functions of marked topics in peninsular spoken Spanish, applying a conversational approach to topic (Hidalgo Downing 2003). According to the results of that study, Spanish speakers use marked topics to signal different types of movements in topic sequencing, such as topic introduction, framing, shading and closing. A large group of marked topics in spoken Spanish is composed of pronouns, which are informationally given elements by definition. In Spanish then, marked topics are not restricted to the introduction of referents which are not completely recoverable to the hearers, as other studies have suggested (Geluykens 1992), but rather, serve interactive and textual functions. In this paper, we aim to examine the discourse functions of personal and demonstrative pronouns, and to discuss the organizational and interpersonal nature of such functions. The idea we would like to explore is that topic signalling can be studied as a metadiscursive device, where the different functions of pronouns serve as orientation to hearers in the organization, regulation and interpretation of discourse.
The discourse functionality of adjectival and adverbial epistemic expressions
Authors: Simon-Vandenbergen Anne-Marie , Aijmer Karin
Published: March 2014

In this article we examine the adjectival and adverbial expressions it is certain/certainly, it is clear/clearly and it is obvious/obviously in a corpus of present-day English, the British National Corpus. We aim to answer two questions. One is the question of how the constructional properties of the adjectival expressions create specific behavioural properties which are different from those of the adverbs. The second question is how the adjectival expressions are used rhetorically and how their discourse functionality differs from that of the corresponding adverbial expressions. Starting out from Nuyts’ (2001) criteria, ‘intersubjectivity’, ‘salience’, ‘performativity’ and ‘discourse strategy’ we examine the extent to which the data confirm the relevance of these factors. We show that the reasons why speakers opt for adjectival or adverbial expressions are complex and that an explanation cannot limit itself to a single factor.
Reflexivity and temporality in discourse deixis
Authors: Lenz Friedrich
Published: March 2014

In this paper discourse deixis and anaphora are treated as two separate phenomena. It is argued that discourse deixis is a special case of metacommunication on the one hand and of time deixis on the other. Since discourse deixis focuses on a part of the discourse itself, it is a form of reflexive language use. In order to identify a segment of the ongoing discourse, time deictic expressions have to be used. This combination of both a reflexive and a time deictic element is not inherent in anaphora.
The function of complex anaphors in texts
Authors: Consten Manfred , Knees Mareile , Schwarz-Friesel Monika
Published: March 2014

Complex anaphors are nominal expressions that pick up sentential or longer antecedents referring to propositionally structured referents such as events and states. Concerning their textual function, complex anaphors do not only serve as a means of continuity but also effect the progression of the information flow in text, i.e. they are thematic and rhematic at the same time. The complexation process establishes the pre-mentioned referent as a unified discourse entity. On the basis of natural language corpus data, we show that complex anaphors have a central function in establishing coherence in texts. We distinguish type shifting and non type shifting complexation processes where the former is subject to ontological based constraints. In order to show how ontological features are involved in disambiguation we discuss an example of ambiguous complex anaphora.
Accessibility and definite noun phrases
Authors: von Heusinger Klaus
Published: March 2014

Accessibility is a dynamic discourse structure that is the sum of the salience structure of particular referential expressions. On the one hand, accessibility is continuously updated by referential expressions, while on the other, it determines the reference of definite expression. In this paper, I show that not only indefinite noun phrases, but also definite noun phrases update the accessibility structure of a discourse by promoting the actual referent to the most salient of its kind and some supersets. This dynamic potential of definite noun phrases establishes text coherence by means of salience spreading.
The non-subject bias of German demonstrative pronouns
Authors: Bosch Peter , Katz Graham , Umbach Carla
Published: March 2014

This paper presents evidence from both corpus studies and psycholinguistic experiments regarding the referential preferences of German personal pronouns (er sie, es) and demonstrative pronouns (der die, das). Both types of pronouns are naturally used in German to refer to both animate and inanimate referents, but they appear to have different preferences with respect to their choice of antecedents: While personal pronouns show a slight preference for antecedents which are grammatical subjects, demonstrative pronouns show a strong bias for non-subject antecedents.
Antecedents of diverse types
Authors: Holler Anke
Published: March 2014

The present paper addresses the issue of the grammatical relations in Germanwh-relative clause constructions. It discusses data demonstrating that the ordinary assumption that German wh-relative clauses generally relate to propositional antecedents must be revised. In particular, it shows that the syntactic antecedent of a wh-relative clause has to be separated from its semantic antecedent(s). Wh-relative clauses relate syntactically to a functionally complete sentential projection, while they relate semantically to entities of various kinds. The semantic objects that may function as antecedents of a wh-relative clause are determined by the semantic type of the anaphoric wh-expression introducing a wh-relative clause. The paper provides an account of the described empirical facts in the framework of Discourse Representation Theory.
Demonstratives in the languages of Europe
Authors: Da Milano Federica
Published: March 2014

The definition of ‘demonstrative’ used in this research is based on Diessel’s study (1999): in particular, semantic and pragmatic features of demonstratives have been the main topic of this study. I have compiled a questionnaire for the elicitation of the data. Because demonstratives seem to straddle the boundaries between semantics and pragmatics, two parameters have been considered: distance (semantic parameter) and the reciprocal orientation between speaker and hearer (pragmatic parameter). The questionnaire including 48 pictures is based on the notion of “dyad of conversation” (Jungbluth 2001). The results have been visualized by typological maps and checked also by the use of parallel texts. The research shows that also systems that at a first glance seem to be relatively simple can vary in a very subtle way in their conditions of use.
Discourse binding: DP and pronouns in German, Dutch, and English
Authors: Abraham Werner
Published: March 2014

Grammatical determiners of various sorts are differently distributed in individual languages. We will list and investigate briefl y a few related and non-related languages to survey the lexical lexemes relating to Determiner (DemPro) status vs. Article status and pronominal anaphor (PersPro). A synchronic line of discussion will be pursued. It will be crucial to see synchronically, fi rst, to which extent such determiners co-defi ne anaphors in contexts reaching beyond the single clause. Second, it will be investigated typologically what the determiner-determined features are where they are in interaction with aspect and morphological case. Third, and interlinking the synchronic and the diachronic chapters, since spoken-only codes use anaphoric determiners in ways strikingly different from their written(-only) standard varieties, processing differences will be made responsible for such a variation.
Covert patterns of definiteness/indefiniteness and aspectuality in Old Icelandic, Gothic, and Old High German
Authors: Leiss Elisabeth
Published: March 2014

It is assumed that the rise of the defi nite article is due to changes in the aspectual system of a language. Defi niteness and perfective aspect are shown to be just two instantiations of the same grammatical function. So are indefi niteness and imperfective aspect. Defi nite nouns and perfective verbs share identical mereological features, the same being true for indefinite nouns and imperfective verbs. Thus, defi niteness/indefi niteness and perfectivity/imperfectivity can be viewed as equivalent techniques of nominal and verbal quantifi cation. The central claim is that the definiteness effects of verbal aspect upon their ‘nouny syntactic neighbourhoods’ suffice to create complex patterns of nominal determination. The complexity is the result of combining aspect with a paradigmatic case system. One further main claim is that paradigmatic or differential case systems are characteristic of aspect languages. Complex patterns of nominal determination which involve the ‘support’ of verbal aspect and of paradigmatic case systems are characteristic of Slavic languages. The same holds for older stages of the Germanic languages. No sooner than the verbal part of the pattern, aspect, was subject to erosion, the first occurrences of definite articles can be observed. There is converging evidence from linguistic typology that aspect languages tend to avoid article systems, and article languages tend to avoid aspect. The different stages of article development will be sketched, and it will finally be explained why demonstrative pronouns are the universal source of the overt marking of definiteness. This will be done in the light of Centering Theory as presented in Abraham (this volume).
On the structure and development of nominal phrases in Norwegian
Authors: Lohndal Terje
Published: March 2014

The suffixed definite article in Modern Norwegian developed from a clitic in Old Norse. Such a change creates interesting theoretical questions as to how we can account for this difference in phrase structural terms, and how such a change manifests itself. This paper discusses exactly this question and argues that this change can be viewed as grammaticalization “down the tree” from a high D head to a low n head. Furthermore, it argues that functional categories, like the definiteness category, are non-universal. That is, they are not part of Universal Grammar, but only arise when the child discovers them in the input. The paper also addresses some movement puzzles emerging in Old Norse and Modern Icelandic which have remained a theoretical puzzle. I will propose an analysis of this where I argue that we need to separate Modern Icelandic and Old Norse and thus give two separate analyses.
Complexity in linguistic theory, language learning and language change
Authors: Kusters Wouter
Published: March 2014

In this paper I discuss how the notion of complexity can be defined and operationalized to serve as a concept in linguistic research domains like typology, historical linguistics and language contact and acquisition studies. Elaborating on earlier work (Kusters 2003) I argue that a relative notion of complexity is to be preferred over an absolute one. With such a substantial notion, I show that possible objections raised against the concept of complexity are not valid. I work this further out for complexity in verbal inflectional morphology. Finally I demonstrate some intricacies of complexity with examples from variation and change in Quechua varieties.
Assessing linguistic complexity
Authors: Juola Patrick
Published: March 2014

The question of “linguistic complexity” is interesting and fruitful. Unfortunately, the intuitive meaning of “complexity” is not amenable to formal analysis. This paper discusses some proposed definitions and shows how complexity can be assessed in various frameworks. The results show that, as expected, languages are all about equally “complex,” but further that languages can and do differ reliably in their morphological and syntactic complexities along an intuitive continuum. I focus not only on the mathematical aspects of complexity, but on the psychological ones as well. Any claim about “complexity” is inherently about process, including an implicit description of the underlying cognitive machinery. By comparing different measures, one may better understand human language processing and similarly, understanding psycholinguistics may drive better measures.
Complexity in numeral systems with an investigation into pidgins and creoles
Authors: Hammarström Harald
Published: March 2014

This paper defines and surveys numeral systems from languages across the world. We define the complexity of a numeral system in some detail and give examples of varying complexity from different languages. The examples are chosen to illustrate the bounds on complexity that actually occur in natural languages and to delineate tricky issues of analysis. Then we contrast the complexity in numeral systems of pidgin/creole languages versus their lexifiers and versus languages generally in the world. It turns out that pidgins/creoles have slightly less complex numeral systems than their lexifiers, but probably still more complex than the world average. However, the conclusions in this respect are limited by gaps in documentation and unsystematic knowledge of the linguistic and social history of alleged pidgin/creole languages.
Bare predicate nominals in Romance languages
Authors: Zamparelli Roberto
Published: March 2014

This paper offers an analysis for the possible absence of determiners in singular predicate nominals that refer to professions, roles and certain relations (e.g.dottore, capo-mafia, figlio di Luigi in Italian). Building on the theory of noun phrases in Heycock and Zamparelli (2005), it argues that while singular count nouns are normally licensed by the presence of a determiner, nouns that form bare predicates have an impoverished set of features (in particular, no set value for gender), and can be licensed by entering in an agreement relation with the subject of the predication. Semantically, the article distinguishes three subclasses of bare predicates, and argues that role / profession nouns ambiguously refer either to sets of individuals or to the activities which can identify these individuals.
Lexical chains in technical translation
Authors: Rogers Margaret
Published: March 2014

This contribution examines the role of terms in establishing cohesive ties in a German technical text–a safety-critical text (instructions for use) in the medical field–and its translations into English and French. It expands the notion of terms as multifunctional elements contributing to the “texture” of written communication on the one hand, and performing a referential function with respect to a highly-constrained specialist domain on the other hand. Both intralingual and interlingual aspects of variation are explored, revealing tensions and complex lexical interrelations which suggest a degree of indeterminacy in lexical relations, understood here as lexical choice exercised by the translator but against a background of considerable stability.
Coping with indeterminacy
Authors: Wright Sue Ellen
Published: March 2014

This article reflects the confluence of two contradictory streams of thought regarding language theory and knowledge organization. While linguists, philosophers, and cognitive scientists have turned away from structuralism and the notion of determinacy, knowledge engineers and specialists in information technology have embraced the semantic/semiotic triangle in their efforts to model information and knowledge for use in computerized environments, particularly to support the Semantic Web. The discussion begins with a view of traditional terminological concept systems and goes on to analyze a full range of knowledge representation resources, examining each with a view to its potential for distortion as a result of inherent indeterminacy. Crosswalks and interoperability play a role in linking critical resources.
3. Coordination
Authors: Heath Jeffrey
Published: March 2014

1.Introduction

2. Languages

3. Scope delimitation: English and Koyraboro Senni

4. “Coordinating” particles and “scope” delimitation in Nunggubuyu

5. Lexical alternatives to NP coordination: associative plurals

6. Lexical alternatives to NP coordination: kinship collectives and dyadics

7. Progressive pronominal incorporation

8. Pronominal coordination versus inclusive/exclusive

9. Pronominal hierarchies in coordinand sequencing

10.Inclusory left coordinands

11.Ordering asymmetries among nouns

12.Summary
4. Conjunction and personal pronouns
Authors: Bhat D.N.S.
Published: March 2014

1.Introduction

2. Inclusory conjunction

3. A problem for analysis

4. Plurality and conjunction

5. Conjunction instead of plurality in personal pronouns

6. Other varieties of conjunction

7. Hierarchy of number marking
5. The grammar of conjunctive and disjunctive coordination in Iraqw
Authors: Mous Maarten
Published: March 2014

1.Introduction

2. Basic properties of nee ‘and’ and laqáa ‘or’

3. Coordination in noun phrases

3.1 Coordinated noun phrase as a unit

3.2 Coordinated modifiers as a unit

4. Agreement

5. Word category and origin
9. Where coordination meets subordination
Authors: Kazenin Konstantin I. , Testelets Yakov G.
Published: March 2014

1.Introduction

2. Tests for distinguishing between coordination and subordination

2.1 The morphosyntactic locus test

2.2 The Coordinate Structure Constraint

2.3 Center embedding

3. Some basics of Tsakhur grammar

4. Coordination and subordination in constructions with General Converbs

4.1 The alternation of coordination and subordination properties

4.2 The semantic conditions on coordination and subordination in constructions with converbs

5. Conclusion
11. Coordination in three Western Iranian languages
Authors: Stilo Donald
Published: March 2014

1.Introduction

1.1 Vafsi, Persian and Gilaki

1.2 The sets of coordinate conjunctions

1.3 Historical origins and derivations

1.4 Stress and intonation

1.5 Background grammatical information: Vafsi

2. Conjunctive coordination

2.1 Main points

2.2 Noun phrase conjunctive coordinators

2.3 Verb phrases and clauses

2.4 Subordinator ke as coordinator

3. Adversative coordinative conjunctions

3.1 Main points

3.2 The adversative coordinators

3.3 Initial occurrence in intonational unit

3.4 Adversative conjunctions deleted

3.5 blke : Contrastive after negative

4. Disjunctive coordinators

4.1 Phrase level

4.2 VP and clause level

4.3 The coordinator yá-ìnke

5. Bisyndetic coordinative conjunctions

5.1 Main points

5.2 The bisyndetic coordinators

6. hæm ‘also’ and other uses

6.1 The uses of hæm

6.2 Further discussion of hæm

7. Conclusion
13. Conjunction and concatenation in Sgaw Karen
Authors: Lord Carol , Benson Craig Louisa
Published: March 2014

1.Introduction

2. Functions of a comitative conjunction

3. Noun coordination

4. Modifier coordination

5. Verb coordination

6. Purposive concatetations

7. Idiomatic concatenations

8. Conclusions
14. Riau Indonesian Sama
Authors: Gil David
Published: March 2014

1.Introduction

2. Macrofunctionality

3. Riau Indonesian

4. Sama: Description

4.1 The functions of sama

4.2 Sama plus reduplication

4.3 Sama and other forms

5. Sama: Analysis

5.1 Cross-linguistic replicability

5.2 Fuzziness of boundaries

5.3 Unified syntactic and semantic representations

6. Monosemy and polysemy
15. Coordination in Lavukaleve
Authors: Terrill Angela
Published: March 2014

1.Introduction

2. A brief glance at Lavukaleve

3. Coordinators

4. Structure of coordination

4.1 The coordinator

4.2 Number of coordinands

4.3 Ellipsis

5. Noun phrase coordination

6. Adjunct and adjective coordination

7. Coordination as one type of clause linkage in Lavukaleve

7.1 Independent coordinate constructions

7.2 More common types of clause linkage which are not coordination

7.3 Coordinated clauses within clause chains?
17. Coordination strategies and inclusory constructions in New Caledonian and other Oceanic languages
Authors: Bril Isabelle
Published: March 2014

1.Introduction

1.1 Oceanic languages

1.2 Introduction to Nêlêmwa

2. Noun phrase coordination in Nêlêmwa

2.1 The general dependency marker me ‘and’

2.2 The animate, inclusory NP coordinator ma ‘and, with’

2.3 The additive coordinator ka ~ xa ‘and, also, too’

3. Predicate and clausal coordination in Nêlêmwa

3.1 Me : a polyfunctional morpheme

3.2 Me and xa as medial VP or clausal coordinators

3.3 Me, na and xa in clause chaining

4. Typological comparisons with other Oceanic languages

4.1 Appositive inclusory constructions in some Oceanic languages

4.2 Inclusory, coordinating and comitative strategies: a comparative overview in some Oceanic languages

4.3 Inclusory constructions: paths of grammaticalization and replacement

5. Conclusion
18. Coordination in Upper Kuskokwim Athabaskan
Authors: Kibrik Andrej A.
Published: March 2014

1.Introduction

2. NP conjunction

2.1 The main pattern: ʔił-conjunction

2.2 Other functions of ʔił

2.3 No other formal markers of NP conjunction

3. Clause conjunction

3.1 The main pattern: ts’eʔ-conjunction

3.2 Other functions of ts’eʔ

3.3 Other formal devices of clause conjunction

4. Disjunction

5. Adversative coordination

6. Conclusions
Pragmatic nature of Mandarin passive-like constructions
Authors: Peltomaa Marja
Published: March 2014

This paper examines the Mandarin bei-construction, which is one of the passive structures typical to many East Asian and South-East Asian languages. The relationship of these passives to the more familiar Indo-European passives has been a topic of much discussion. Huang (forth.:37) suggests that the Indo-European type of languages use passive morphology, which directly alters the argument structure of the active, while East Asian languages use embedding of an active clause or a VP under a ‘get’-like predicate. One of the defining factors of the Indo-European type of passives is the demotion of the Agent (or the suppression of the external argument). Huang (forth.:40) notes, however, that because of the complex structure, the Agent is not demoted in East Asian passives such as the Mandarin bei-passive and the Japanese nipassive. Yet, unlike Huang, I argue that the Mandarin bei-passive is a simple structure and that lack of Agent demotion does not follow from complementation. I suggest that the obligatory Agent demotion in Indo-European passives is the consequence of the thematic hierarchy reflected in the subject-object hierarchy in the basic sentence structure. In Mandarin on the other hand, semantic roles and argumenthood are not the main factors determining the assignment of participant roles in syntax, but pragmatic roles contest with semantic roles. I show that different passive constructions, such as the bei-construction, and different focusing constructions, such as the ba-construction, are components of a voice-like system in Mandarin. I call the these constructions together topic constructions. In many respects, they resemble the focus constructions in languages such as Tagalog. The framework used for the analysis is the Role and Reference Grammar (RRG) and the starting point is the fact that Mandarin is a topic-prominent language lacking purely syntactic relations.
Grammatical voice and tense-aspect in Slavic
Authors: Toyota Jun-ichi , Mustafović Melisa
Published: March 2014

In this paper, we analyse the prototypicality of the passive voice in the Slavic languages. We argue that there are some variations in the periphrastic passive, which stem from the historical development of the tense-aspect system, particularly from an earlier resultative construction in the case of Indo-European languages. The periphrastic construction in some languages has abandoned the earlier tense-aspectual features, while in other languages they are still preserved. The periphrastic construction in every branch of Slavic has been considered passive in previous works. However, we claim that it is a case of the passive in East and some of West Slavic, while that in South Slavic is better considered as a resultative. This diversity motivates the continuum of tense-aspect and passive in Slavic
Passive in Nganasan
Authors: Leisiö Larisa
Published: March 2014

In this paper, the passive constructions in Nganasan will be discussed froma semanticfunctional point of view. Nganasan (also called Tavgi and Tavgi-Samoyed) is one of the Northern Samoyed languages belonging to the Uralic language family. Nganasan is an essentially agglutinative accusative SOV language.

In Nganasan, there is a derivational verbal suffix which turns transitive verbs into passive ones. The structural object of the transitive verb becomes the subject of the corresponding passive construction. The formation of passive verbs is quite productive. The discussion will concentrate on the aspectual and modal properties of the passive verb constructions, the semantics of subjects, and the discourse functions of these constructions.

Along with the passive verbal constructions, there are passive constructions based on participles. An analysis of Nganasan participial passive constructions will be provided and the criteria for the use of a particular participle will be discussed. In the conclusion, the main function of the Nganasan passive will be formulated.

An analysis of syntactic and discourse functions of Nganasan passive verb constructions and the criteria of the participle choice in the participial passive constructions constitute a new input in the research of Nganasan syntax.
'Agent defocusing' revisited
Authors: Sansó Andrea
Published: March 2014

This article presents some descriptive generalisations about the distribution of passive and impersonal constructions in five European languages (Italian, Spanish, Polish, Danish, and Modern Greek). The constructions analysed include (but are not limited to) passive/impersonal constructions in which a reflexive marker is used (Italian, Spanish, and Polish), or in which there is a bound morpheme historically connected to the reflexive pronoun (Danish); so-called impersonal passives, i.e. constructions in which there is an unequivocal formal relationship of the predicate with passive morphology, but either there is no patient, or the patient is marked in the same way in which it is marked in the active sentence (e.g., the -no/-to construction in Polish, the impersonal passive in Danish); man-clauses, i.e. impersonal active clauses having some general noun (“man”, “people”, etc.) as subject (Danish). The corpus consists of Umberto Eco’s novel Il nome della rosa, and its Danish, Modern Greek, Polish, and Spanish translations.

Much in the spirit of Myhill (1997), it is argued that the distribution of these constructions in texts is sensitive to the distinction between different types of agent defocusing: there are some discourse conditions under which a given construction is preferred to others, and this can only be captured through a careful inspection of texts. Three basic situation types are identified which are systematically associated with certain modes of expression in each of the five languages of the sample: these are configurations of prototypical semantic features and discourse conditions concerning the agent, the patient (if present), and the nature of the event. The statistical significance of the correlation between situation types and construction types is carefully evaluated, and the results are encouraging: in each of the languages of the sample there is a consistent division of labour among passive and impersonal constructions. This allows us to conclude that the facts surveyed are hardly accidental, and to advance some descriptive generalisations, of both a formal and a functional nature. It is suggested that there is a functional cline of agent defocusing ranging from those cases in which the agent is easily recoverable from the context to those in which it cannot be identified but generally. This cline is correlated with a syntactic gradient of patient and agent coding, although the goal of finding perfect correlations between function and form in the realm of discourse is to be abandoned.
A unique feature of the direct passive in Japanese
Authors: Ariji Kenichi
Published: March 2014

It has long been assumed that in the English passive a passive subject (such as the boy in The boy was scolded by Professor Smith) undergoes NP-movement from its original object position to get Nominative Case. Similarly, the direct passive in Japanese (e.g., Sono-otokonoko-ga Smith-sensei-ni oko-rare-ta. ‘The boy was scolded by Professor Smith.’), which has been assumed to correspond to the abovementioned English passive, has been proposed to involve NP-movement of a passive subject from the object position (Kuno 1973;Miyagawa 1989; Kubo 1990, among others).

The main evidence provided by researchers which advocate such an NPmovement view for the direct passive comes from the behavior of a floating quantifier in direct passives.Miyagawa (1989) offers the mutual c-command requirement on a floating quantifier, according to which, in Japanese, a floating quantifier is allowed only when it mutually c-commands the host NP (or a trace of the host NP) which the floating quantifier modifies. Thus if a floating quantifier for a passive subject is possible in the direct passive, it has been thought to indicate that there is a trace of the passive subject in the object position, which in turn suggests that the passive subject undergoes NP-movement. Indeed, the direct passive allows a floating quantifier (e.g., Otokonoko-ga Smith-sensei-ni

san-nin

oko-rare-ta. ‘Three boys were scolded by Professor Smith.’). In this way the view that the direct passive involves NP-movement similar to the English passive seems to be well motivated.

However, I argue against the NP-movement view for the direct passive. I show that the evidence from floating quantifiers is not conclusive enough to conclude that a passive subject in the direct passive undergoes NP-movement. A closer inspection reveals that the mutual c-command requirement itself has to be dismissed, and furthermore, a floating quantifier does not necessarily imply that there is a trace. Therefore, theNP-movement view supported by the evidence fromfloating quantifiers is nullified.

The NP-movement view has to be recast in a broader empirical investigation. I present several new pieces of empirical evidence on the direct passive, which unequivocally support the totally opposite view from the NP-movement view: a passive subject is not derived by NP-movement; rather it is base-generated in the subject position, [Spec, TP], throughout the derivation (cf. Kuroda 1979; Hoshi 1991; Kitagawa & Kuroda 1992; Matsuoka 2002). Empirical evidence comes from (i) Binding Conditions in the passive, (ii) scope interpretation (scope of negation) in the passive, (iii) Variable Binding in the passive, (iv) V-V compound (long passive) in the passive, and (v) a negative polarity item, sika-phrase, in the passive.
The compositional nature of the passive
Authors: Abraham Werner
Published: March 2014

It is claimed that in languages without a synthetic passive verbal morphology, the passive diathesis is compositional derived by implication or radical underspecification rather than generated in a direct way. As finitizing auxiliaries, equivalents of BE/ESSERE or HAVE/HAB¯ERE are employed together with the participial ANTERIOR (‘past’) morpheme. A distinction needs to be made between ‘passive sense’ and ‘passive denotation’. The claimis that languages such as German, along with numerous other languages, may be seen to provide a ‘passive’ by derivation from the complex ‘AUX+past participle’. The main body of the paper consists of evidence for the assumption that no direct passive meaning is provided by this complex ‘AUX+Anterior participle’, foremost from German. The past participle form has more than one function, an active and a passive one. The claim is that the past participle is void of any diathetic/ voice denotation except for the categorial status of adjectival. The latter allows the inference of a number of syntactic properties, i.e., most prominently a none-agentive external argument which, in syntactic collocation with the monovalent copulas sein and werden, contributes to the passive sense. A further distinction will be made between two different past participle lexicals: one on the basis of aspectual perfectivity implying an ‘approach phase’, antecedent to a result phase and presupposing an agentive external argument; and another, imperfective PP, which is amenable to the presupposition of such an ‘approach phase’ by way of pragmatic implicature. This distinction will be spelled in some detail in terms of formal semantics. Evidence for the formal and empirical correctness of this approach will be drawn from various languages similar to German in some, but not all, respects: Russian, Swedish, Dutch, and Latin. Turning to passive syntax it will be shown that the mere assumption of a passive morpho-syntax to be represented directly in UG-terms will not do justice to the evidence provided by the data and their distributional properties. Rather, it will be held and shown in some detail that passives are to be distinguished in accordance with their derivational basis as perfectives or imperfectives, not only as lexicals but also in terms of true clausal aspectual phrases (e.g., as regards directional vs. non-directional adverbs). Ergatives, commonly held to be a verbal class in their own right, will turn out as belonging to the perfective type of voice.

In essence, this paper wants to demonstrate that there are principally two pathways toward a solution for the undecided semantics of the past participle forms: the ‘pragmatic’ solution presented in Section 4.5., where the fundamental semantics of the participle form is taken to be past without any voice reading. In Section 10, on the other hand, it is assumed that the participle formis a categorially underspecified ‘root’ in terms of Distributed Morphology reaching a specific reading only in an extended morphosyntactic context.
French compound prepositions, prepositional locutions and prepositional phrases in the scope of the absolute use
Authors: Adler Silvia
Published: March 2014

In respect of their absolute use, without complement, French sequences sharing the pattern [Preposition – Definite article – Noun – Preposition] have to be subcategorized by lexical and by semantic parameters. These sequences are frequently classified as “prepositional locutions” in the French linguistic literature, but it seems that this label is wrongly attached to many of them. Our goal is, first, to establish a categorization method whose purpose is to draw a border between the different prepositional expressions. This will allow us to dissociate their absolute use from their lexical status. However, once it is made clear that many of these alleged prepositional locutions are nothing more than regular prepositional phrases, the absolute use can no longer be unconditionally attributed to ellipsis. Second, we will examine why mainly temporal and spatial expressions accept the absolute use contrary to expressions denoting cause, goal, opposition, concession, etc. Consequently, the part of what is usually considered as ‘arbitrary behavior’ in this field will be significantly reduced.
On the grammaticalization of 'come' and 'go' into markers of textual connectivity
Authors: Bourdin Philippe
Published: March 2014

There is crosslinguistic evidence that verbs of ‘coming’ and ‘going’ are prone to grammaticalize into sequential markers and, more generally, into textual connectives. This paper shows how, in the grammaticalization cline from directional deictics to sequentials, some of these markers have preserved their original semantics to varying degrees, while others have developed further into markers of past tense. The grammaticalization of ‘come’ and ‘go’ into markers of textual connectivity also exhibits a wide range of morphosyntactic variation: while in some languages they have retained all their formal verbal characteristics, in others they have become affixes, have followed the auxiliation or the serialization routes, or have fossilized. Three potential triggers for grammaticalization are discussed in the paper: the role of deicticity, the iteration hypothesis and the futurity scenario.