bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Probing the linguistic encoding of placement and removal events in Swedish
Authors: Gullberg Marianne , Burenhult Niclas
Published: March 2014

This paper explores the linguistic encoding of placement and removal events in Swedish. Drawing on elicited spoken data, it provides a unified approach to caused motion descriptions. The results show uniform syntactic behaviour of placement and removal descriptions and a consistent asymmetry between placement and removal in the semantic specificity of verbs. The results also reveal three further semantic patterns, pertaining to the nature of the relationship between Figure and Ground, that appear to account for how these event types are characterised, viz. whether the Ground is represented by a body part of the Agent; whether the Figure is contained within the Ground; or whether it is supported by the Ground.
The semantic role of agentive control in Hungarian placement events
Authors: Andics Attila
Published: March 2014

This paper explores the role of various types of location control in descriptions of placement events in Hungarian. It will be shown that general verb choices cannot be explained in terms of spatial relations (such as containment and support) or spatial relational changes (such as joining and separation). On the contrary, all main verb distinctions within the placement domain can be described in terms of agentive control settings between the Figure and agentive entities (e.g., the Agent, other persons). In Hungarian, only events with continuous agentive control along the motion trajectory are described as either ‘putting’ or ‘taking’, and only events where the Figure is furthermore controlled by a non-agentive entity at the Goal are described as ‘putting’.
Putting and Taking in Tamil and Hindi
Authors: Narasimhan Bhuvana
Published: March 2014

Many languages have general or “light” verbs used by speakers to describe a wide range of situations owing to their relatively schematic meanings, e.g., the English verb do that can be used to describe many different kinds of actions, or the verb put that labels a range of types of placement of objects at locations. Such semantically bleached verbs often become grammaticalized and used to encode an extended (set of) meaning(s), e.g., Tamil veyyii ‘put/place’ is used to encode causative meaning in periphrastic causatives (e.g., okkara veyyii ‘make sit’, nikka veyyii ‘make stand’). But do general verbs in different languages have the same kinds of (schematic) meanings and extensional ranges? Or do they reveal different, perhaps even cross-cutting, ways of structuring the same semantic domain in different languages? These questions require detailed crosslinguistic investigation using comparable methods of eliciting data. The present study is a first step in this direction, and focuses on the use of general verbs to describe events of placement and removal in two South Asian languages, Hindi and Tamil.
The Thaayorre lexicon of putting and taking
Authors: Gaby Alice
Published: March 2014

This paper investigates the lexical semantics and relative distributions of verbs describing putting and taking events in Kuuk Thaayorre, a Pama-Nyungan language of Cape York (Australia). Thaayorre put/take verbs can be subcategorised according to whether they may combine with an NP encoding a goal, an NP encoding a source, or both. Goal NPs are far more frequent in natural discourse: initial analysis shows 85% of goal-oriented verb tokens to be accompanied by a goal NP, while only 31% of source-oriented verb tokens were accompanied by a source. This finding adds weight to Ikegami’s (1987) assertion of the conceptual primacy of goals over sources, reflected in a cross-linguistic dissymmetry whereby goal-marking is less marked and more widely used than source-marking.
Put and Take in Yélî Dnye, the Papuan language of Rossel Island
Authors: Levinson Stephen C. , Brown Penelope
Published: March 2014

This paper describes the linguistic treatment of placement events in the Rossel Island (Papua New Guinea) language Yélî Dnye. Yélî Dnye is unusual in treating PUT and TAKE events symmetrically with a remarkable consistency. In what follows, we first provide a brief background for the language, then describe the six core PUT/TAKE verbs that were drawn upon by Yélî Dnye speakers to describe the great majority of the PUT/TAKE stimuli clips, along with some of their grammatical properties. In Section 5 we describe alternative verbs usable in particular circumstances and give an indication of the basis for variability in responses across speakers. Section 6 presents some reasons why the Yélî verb pattern for expressing PUT and TAKE events is of broad interest.
Take it up, down, and away
Authors: O’Connor Loretta
Published: March 2014

This paper offers a structural and semantic analysis of expressions of caused motion in Lowland Chontal of Oaxaca, an indigenous language of southern Mexico. The data were collected using a video stimulus designed to elicit a wide range of caused motion event descriptions. The most frequent event types in the corpus depict caused motion to and from relations of support and containment, fundamental notions in the de­scription of spatial relations between two entities and critical semantic components of the linguistic encoding of caused motion in this language. Formal features of verbal construction type and argument realization are examined by sorting event descriptions into semantic types of placement and removal, to and from support and to and from containment. Together with typological factors that shape the distribution of spatial semantics and referent expression, separate treatments of support and containment relations serve to clarify notable asymmetries in patterns of predicate type and argument realization.
How to put and take in Kalasha
Authors: Petersen Jan Heegård
Published: March 2014

In Kalasha, an Indo-Aryan language spoken in Northwest Pakistan, the linguistic encoding of ‘put’ and ‘take’ events reveals a symmetry between lexical ‘put’ and ‘take’ verbs that implies ‘placement on’ and ‘removal from’ a supporting surface. As regards ‘placement in’ and ‘removal from’ an enclosure, the data reveal a lexical asymmetry as ‘take’ verbs display a larger degree of linguistic elaboration of the Figure-Ground relation and the type of caused motion than ‘put’ verbs. When considering syntactic patterns, more instances of asymmetry between these two event types show up. The analysis presented here supports the proposal that an asymmetry exists in the encoding of goals versus sources as suggested in Nam (2004) and Ikegami (1987), but it calls into question the statement put forward by Regier and Zheng (2007) that endpoints (goals) are more finely differentiated semantically than starting points (sources).
Non-aprioristic typology as a discovery tool
Authors: Frajzyngier Zygmunt
Published: March 2014

Aprioristic approaches to typology, whether based on assumptions about cognition or real-world reference or on categories exhibited in a single language or groups of languages, are likely to overlook important functions that just happen to lie outside of the aprioristically assumed categories. The present study proposes that a typology can be used as a tool in finding what facts in languages require an explanation. It can also be used as a tool in providing an explanation of why certain expressions in language have the form they have. The typology may even explain why lexical items that have the same reference have different properties across the languages. In order to be useful for the above tasks the typology must be non-aprioristic. The present study consists of three major themes: (1) a discussion of theoretical issues involved in aprioristic and non-aprioristic typology; (2) a proposal for the form of non-aprioristic typology; (3) an illustration of non-aprioristic typology in the domain of locative predication in some Chadic languages.
Chorophorics, or the difference between place as an entity and place as a position in space
Authors: Hagège Claude
Published: March 2014

A differentiation is introduced here between two treatments of the notion of place. Place can be conceived of either as one of the features of an entity or as a mere spatial relationship, in which case it is marked, in certain languages, by special morphemes, which are here called chorophorics. It is showed that various languages, such as Mandarin Chinese, a number of Bantu languages, Austronesian and Amerindian languages, all of which can be characterized as lococentric languages, possess logophorics. This gives them an interesting cognitive property: among the many semantic and pragmatic features that constitute the complexity of the notion of place, they select two opposite ones by means of which they foreground either entities or localizations.
On the diachrony of the ‘Ethical Dative’
Authors: Givón T.
Published: March 2014

In this paper I will discuss the diachronic rise of the so-called ‘Ethical Dative’ (henceforth ED). In examining first data from Spanish or Hebrew, a multi-step diachronic progression seems to lead to the ED construction:ALLATIVE > DATIVE > BENEFACTIVE >REFLEXIVE-BENEFACTIVE > EDSome people may be tempted to call such development a ‘grammaticalization chain’. A closer examination of data from a third language, Tamil, shows that the only necessary step in the seeming ‘chain’ is the final local step REFLEXIVE-BENEFACTIVE > ED. The whole ‘chain’ seems to be highly universal only because each of its individual local steps is by itself highly universal. But the only step relevant to the rise of ED is the final local step. In addition to elucidating the development of the ED construction itself, the data discussed here call into question the theoretical validity of the concept ‘grammaticalization chains’.
Biactantial agreement in the Gongduk transitive verb in the broader Tibeto-Burman context
Authors: van Driem George L.
Published: March 2014

The Gongduk language is spoken in an enclave in south central Bhutan comprising several villages and hamlets in the mountains west of the Kurichu. The language occupies a distinct phylogenetic position within the Tibeto-Burman language family. The intransitive verb agrees for person and number with the subject, and the transitive shows biactantial agreement for person and number with both agent and patient. A morphological analysis has identified the individual agreement morphemes, their precise grammatical meaning and their patterns of allomorphy. The cognacy of the greater part of the desinences of the Gongduk verb with morphemes identifiable in the biactantial agreement systems of other Tibeto-Burman languages supports the view that at least a portion of such conjugational morphology must be reconstructed to the common ancestral language.
Agent case marking in Sahaptian
Authors: Beavert Virginia , Jansen Joana
Published: March 2014

The two languages of the Sahaptian language family, Ichishkíin/Sahaptin and Nez Perce, have split ergative case marking. Only third person agents take ergative case marking, never SAP agents. The Ichishkíin system is further split: one of two ergative makers is used depending on whether the patient is a speech act participant (SAP) or a topical third person, and not every third person agent is marked. The two languages demonstrate different strategies for extending ergative case marking from only scenarios where third persons act on speech act participants, to a broader range of third person agent marking.
The Kurtöp -si construction
Authors: Hyslop Gwendolyn
Published: March 2014

Asian converbs (Bickel 1998) have been an area of recent, theoretical interest in linguistics. Converbs have often been involved in clause-chaining, as has been described in many recent descriptions of Tibeto-Burman languages (e.g. Genetti 2005; Coupe 2007). Though he does not discuss converbs as a theoretical construct, DeLancey (1991) illustrates how clause-chaining constructions may give rise to serial verb constructions, diachronically. Kurtöp, a Tibeto-Burman language of Bhutan, is a prime example of DeLancey’s (1991) hypothesis. The present article explores the link between converbs, clause-chaining and serial verb constructions by describing the clause-chaining construction in Kurtöp. Clause-chaining involving converbs and a final verb is at the heart of Kurtöp syntax. Whether the final verb is lexical, auxiliary or copular has different formal and functional consequences. If the final verb is a copula, the non-final suffix is required on the converb and the interpretation may be monoclausal with durative aspect. The latter category, wherein the final verb in a Kurtöp clause-chain is an auxiliary, often yields a sequence of verbs without interceding material and is thus precisely where serialization may fully grammaticalize in the future, as DeLancey (1991) predicts.
Verb serialization in Ede from a diachronic perspective
Authors: Nguyen Tam
Published: March 2014

Grammaticalization is a phenomenon (Bisang 1996) in which certain independent lexical verbs, become grammatical forms. This process happens in many languages from different families: Tibeto-Burman languages (DeLancey 1991, cf. also Hyslop this volume), languages in mainland Southeast Asia (Bisang 1996; Lord 1993; Thepkanjana 1986), and other language families around the world. DeLancey (2004) proposed that the process of grammaticalization involved diachronic changes of certain lexical morphemes becoming grammatical ones through three stages: serialization, auxiliarization and morphologization. Our particular interest in this chapter will be the process of grammaticalization through verb serialization in Ede (a Chamic language of Vietnam), from a shift of an independent lexical verb to a verb in a sequence, and further to a grammaticalized auxiliary. Verb serialization in Ede provides a demonstration of DeLancey’s (2004) hypothesis regarding the process of grammaticalization occurring even though the stage of “morphologization” may not occur in Ede as it is an isolating language.
Tense-aspect morphology from nominalizers in Newar
Authors: Genetti Carol
Published: March 2014

This paper examines the historical status of tense-aspect suffixes in the Kathmandu Valley and Eastern branches of Newar. By comparing across branches and triangulating with Classical Newar, the paper demonstrates that the innovative past anterior and present tense markers in Eastern Newar were derived from nominalizers. The future tense marker -i, which is found in both branches of the family, also had nominalizing functions, as did the precursors of every suffix now used in finite contexts in Kathmandu Newar. This suggests that the current finite morphology in the Kathmandu Valley varieties was entirely derived from nominalizers as the original system of verb agreement was lost. The mechanism for this process would have been non-embedded nominalization, a common syntactic pattern of Tibeto-Burman.
Predicting reference form
Authors: Chelliah Shobhana L.
Published: March 2014

In retellings of the Pear Story in Meithei (Tibeto-Burman, Northeast India), it was found that NP shape–whether a lexical or zero anaphor is used – is determined not only by the cognitive accessibility of the NP but also by its animacy. Animacy also played a role in the morphological sequences that occur with NPs: animate NPs exhibit more varied morphology than inanimate NPs. This study concludes that NP shape and morphology are determined only partially by cognitive accessibility. A narrator's need to provide a dynamic view of animate NPs and a static view of inanimate entities also determines NP shape.
Causation as “functional sink” in Northern Paiute
Authors: Thornes Tim
Published: March 2014

Two morphological constructions operate within the broad, functional domain of causation in Northern Paiute (Numic; Uto-Aztecan). One, the instrumental prefix construction, indicates the means or manner by which some action is carried out by characterizing features associated with instruments. Syntactically, like a morphological causative, this results in the addition of an agent to the valence profile in the derivation. Another, the applicative construction, also functions as a morphological causative in the context of a subset of stative intransitive verbs. The distinct pathways of grammaticalization are explored in this paper by proposing a set of communicative-functional pressures, resulting from the loss of an older causative construction, to fill the domain of causation.
Discourse semantics and the form of the verb predicate in Karachay-Balkar
Authors: Kibrik Andrej A.
Published: March 2014

Karachay-Balkar, a Turkic language of the Northern Caucasus, uses both finite and nonfinite verb forms to report narrative events. How do language users choose between these options when producing discourse? I propose a discourse-semantic distinction between plain temporal sequence and a sequence with a causal nuance as the guiding force behind this choice and use a combination of observational and experimental techniques to substantiate this suggestion. Such a combination of methods can be used in various field studies of lesser-known languages. In addition, I provide a review of verb forms used in Karachay-Balkar to formulate the predicates of narrative and non-narrative clauses.
Typology and channel of communication
Authors: Slobin Dan I.
Published: March 2014

Many sign languages have been described linguistically; however, such descriptions draw on grammatical traditions developed for the surrounding spoken languages. Although these languages are spoken all over the world, they all happen to be dependent marking, in terms of the typology developed by Johanna Nichols. It is argued here that sign languages are, by their nature, head marking, requiring a different type of grammatical analysis. This proposal is discussed with regard to (1) grammatical relations – agreement, case marking, and alignment; (2) framing – verb framed and satellite framed; (3) subject and topic prominence; and (4) reference tracking. Basic grammatical characteristics of sign languages stem from the manual/visual modality, which allows for the establishment of loci in space, movement, and simultaneous expression of meaning components on hands, body, and face.
Marking versus indexing
Authors: Evans Nicholas , Fenwick Eva
Published: March 2014

In this article, we build on Johanna Nichols’s influential typological distinction between head and dependent marking by supplementing it with a further dimension, that of indexing. We focus on possessive constructions. Whereas marking indicates where morphology about a relationship goes, indexing indicates which syntactic entity the morphology provides information about. We show that, in principle, the two parameters of marking and indexing are logically independent and that for each marking type any indexing option is possible. Passing to an onto-probe of 138 languages, we find that most logically possible combinations are attested, apart from some cases in which the complexity of the combinations required may make instantiations so rare that their absences are likely to be accidental gaps.
Noun classes grow on trees
Authors: Plaster Keith , Polinsky Maria , Harizanov Boris
Published: March 2014

Noun classes (genders) have long played an important role in the understanding of language structure and human categorization. This study presents and analyzes the division of nouns into classes in Tsez (Dido), an endangered Nakh-Dagestanian language of the North-East Caucasus. Computational modeling of the Tsez system shows that noun classification in Tsez is highly predictable, with a simple semantic core and a set of highly salient formal features that can be ranked with respect to one another. Such a system would be easily accessible to children acquiring the language, and the proposed analysis does not require additional semantic or categorical assumptions. The study serves as a proof of principle for the computational approach to the analysis of noun classification.
Affecting valence in Khumi
Authors: Peterson David A.
Published: March 2014

This paper treats the repertoire of valence-affecting constructions found in Khumi (Tibeto-Burman, Bangladesh). In addition to a productive middle, marked by a-, and a semiproductive causative prefix, p-, Khumi has productive suffixal benefactive/malefactive and causative/applicative constructions. The first of the suffixal constructions is organized around a benefactive core but shows signs of generalization to participants with other semantic roles. The causative/applicative construction Khumi exhibits is distinct from other types of causative/applicative isomorphism that have been described, as it apparently lacks any of the more widely attested distributional motivations for its different senses.
Capturing diversity in language acquisition research
Authors: Stoll Sabine , Bickel Balthasar
Published: March 2014

In order to understand how children cope with the enormous variation in structures worldwide, developmental paths need to be studied in a sufficiently varied sample of languages. Because each study requires very large and expensive longitudinal corpora (about one million words, five to seven years of development), the relevant sample must be chosen strategically. We propose to base the choice on the results of a clustering algorithm (fuzzy clustering) applied to typological databases. The algorithm establishes a sample that maximizes the typological differences between languages. As a case study, we apply the algorithm to a dozen typological variables known to have an impact on acquisition, concerning such issues as the presence and nature of agreement and case marking, word order, degrees of synthesis, polyexponence and inflectional compactness of categories, syncretism, the existence of inflectional classes etc. The results allow deriving small samples that are maximally diverse. As a side result, we also note that while the clustering algorithm allows maximization of diversity for sampling purposes, the resulting clusters themselves are far from being discrete and therefore do not reflect a natural partition into basic language types.
Who inherits what, when?
Authors: Donohue Mark
Published: March 2014

There has been much discussion on the kinds of linguistic traits that can be borrowed, and under what circumstances, and the relationship of different kinds of contact to areality. This article suggests that phonological aberrancies, in terms of the family to which a language belongs, in the core phonology are indicative of an older substrate, while morphosyntactic aberrancies indicate superimposition. A case study of Australian phonological systems is analyzed in terms of the typology presented, which when correlated with other nonlinguistic evidence reveals insights into human prehistory in that continent.
Polysynthesis in the Arctic/Sub-Arctic
Authors: Fortescue Michael
Published: March 2014

This paper presents a diagnostic for distinguishing older from newer forms of polysynthesis. Explanations for the global “cline” of polysynthesis from northern Asia into northwestern America are examined in this light. This leads to addressing the questions as to the “robustness” of polysynthesis in general (and head-marking morphology in particular) and as to whether its development is necessarily a “one-way road.” Traces of the phenomenon in the Amur-Sakhalin-Hokkaido area suggest at least one possible Asian source of the cline.
A (micro-)accretion zone in a remnant zone?
Authors: Good Jeff
Published: March 2014

The Lower Fungom region of Northwest Cameroon is one of the most linguistically diverse areas of the Cameroonian Grassfields. Seven languages, or small language clusters, are spoken in its thirteen recognized villages. While the languages are all recognizably Bantoid, most of them do not otherwise have any established close relatives. Lower Fungom, therefore, shares a number of characteristics with parts of the world that Nichols has classified as accretion zones. However, it differs from canonical accretion zones in its very small size and in the fact that all of its languages are uncontroversially related to each other at some level. This paper explores the multifaceted notion of an accretion zone, examining how the linguistic situation of Lower Fungom allows us to refine Nichols’s typology of linguistic areas and also suggests new kinds of research questions for areal typology.
A history of Iroquoian gender marking
Authors: Cysouw Michael
Published: March 2014

The North Iroquoian languages have a three-way gender division in the third-person prefixes. On the basis of small differences between the meanings of these genders, a history of the gender marking is proposed, building upon earlier work by Chafe (1977). This new proposal uses fewer reconstructed stages and only assumes widely attested kinds of semantic change. However, because some aspects of this proposal do not follow genetic or areal connections between the languages, independent parallel developments are proposed to account for the convergence.
Penultimate lengthening in Bantu
Authors: Hyman Larry M.
Published: March 2014

It is often remarked that Eastern and Southern Bantu languages that have lost the historical Proto-Bantu vowel-length contrast tend to have a process of penultimate lengthening (PL). However, there has never been a general, cross-linguistic survey of the phenomenon. In this paper I (i) delimit the geographical distribution of PL; (ii) determine the domain within which PL occurs: it is assumed that the process was innovated before pause, later “narrowing” to the right edge of phrases, then words; (iii) survey the factors that contribute to or block PL; and (iv) propose a historical relationship between PL and the restriction of length contrasts to metrically strong positions (penultimate, antepenultimate), which, I argue, leads to the ultimate loss of contrastive length.
Culture and the spread of Slavic
Authors: Timberlake Alan
Published: March 2014

Slavic peoples, along with their Slavic language, spread widely and rapidly in the second half of the first millennium ad to inhabit territory from the Dnepr and Danube in the south to the North Sea and over to the upper Volga in the north. The present discussion locates the origin of the spread (the conventional homeland between the Carpathian Mountains and the Dnepr River) and its early staging areas (on the perimeter of this homeland) and then the demic interactions that occurred as Slavs moved. Although there are differences in the three main directions of spread – to the northwest, to the northeast, and into the Danube basin – in all three directions, Slavs moved and colonized territories they entered, evacuating or absorbing indigenous populations as they expanded. In the process of demic movement Slavs maintained some cultural praxis well after their dispersal from the homeland, both material (agriculture, dwellings, pottery) and social (diffuse settlement and political structure). In contrast to the theory of ethnogenesis, which restricts discussion of a Slavic ethnos to 500 ad at the earliest, I argue that there has been continuity of language and culture from deep prehistoric times through the period of demic and linguistic spread.
The syntax and pragmatics of Tungusic revisited
Authors: Grenoble Lenore A.
Published: March 2014

This paper considers the changes in clause-combining structures as the Siberian Tungusic languages, represented here by Evenki, are undergoing shift due to contact with Russian. Native clause-combining strategies, specifically parataxis and subordination with converb forms, are being replaced by coordination and subordination with finite verbs based on Russian models. Surprisingly few Russian conjunctions are borrowed, contrary to the predictions of borrowing hierarchies. A comparison of data from monolingual speakers, bilingual speakers, and Russian-dominant speakers raises questions about the processes of typological restructuring versus language shift.
Some observations on typological features of hunter-gatherer languages
Authors: Cysouw Michael , Comrie Bernard
Published: March 2014

The introduction of agriculture is a major event in human history, and this article offers a preliminary investigation into whether there might be structural features of language correlating with the distinction between languages spoken by hunter-gatherers and agriculturalists. A number of feature values treated in the World Atlas of Language Structures suggest promising results, in particular in relation to constituent order, phonology, and lexical typology. Hunter-gatherer languages favor (or agriculturalist languages disfavor) absence of a dominant order of major sentence constituents, absence of adpositions, absence of a dominant constituent order of noun and genitive, presence of subject clitics on a variable host, presence of initial interrogatives; a small vowel inventory, no tone, no voicing opposition in plosives and fricatives; and the lexicalization Finger = Hand ≠ Arm.
Typologizing phonetic precursors to sound change
Authors: Yu Alan C.L.
Published: March 2014

Why are some linguistic patterns more common than others? This question of the relative frequency of pattern attestation has long puzzled typologists of all stripes. In the case of phonological typology, the skewing in frequency of sound pattern attestation may be attributed to the relative robustness of phonetic precursors (i.e. the likelihood of phonetic precursors being phonologized into sound patterns). This article focuses on this concept of relative phonetic precursor robustness. What is it and how is it measured? I argue that one way the robustness of a phonetic precursor can be assessed is in terms of its likelihood to create enough confusion for misperception-based sound change. A model for quantifying relative precursor robustness is proposed using a rational model of speech perception. To illustrate the utility of the present approach, the strengths of the phonetic precursors of velar palatalization, HH- and HV-interactions are assessed, thus demonstrating the viability of constructing a typology of phonetic precursor robustness.
Distributional biases in language families
Authors: Bickel Balthasar
Published: March 2014

This paper introduces a method (the Family Bias Method) that estimates statistical biases in diachronic developments on the basis of synchronic samples. Estimates of developments are sought from their expected synchronic results: if a structure S outnumbers non-S significantly in a family, a change toward S in this family was more likely than a change away from it – either because S was there in the protolanguage and then hardly ever got lost, or because S was not there and then it was was innovated early or often in the family. If structures are balanced in a family, no signal can be inferred: unless we know the protolanguage, diversification could have proceeded in any direction. Using extrapolation methods, signals for diachronic biases can also be estimated for isolates and small families, which represent over half of the known families. If most families show a bias, but there are as many biases toward S as against S worldwide, this suggests genealogical stability. If most biases are in the same direction, this suggests a diachronic universal or, if they are limited to certain geo-historical regions, areal trends or hotbed effects. Evidence for the theoretical assumptions of the Family Bias Method comes mainly from demonstrating that synchronic distributions in families cannot be successfully explained by alternative approaches, such as those assuming general stability indices.
Subgrouping in Tibeto-Burman
Authors: LaPolla Randy J.
Published: March 2014

This paper is an attempt to apply insights and methodologies from Nichols (1996) to help us resolve problems in determining genetic relatedness among Sino-Tibetan languages and in our efforts at reconstructing protolanguages of different time depths. The results from the application of Nichols’s methodology are explained with reference to what we know about the migrations of the Sino-Tibetan peoples.
Ergativity in the Mayoruna branch of the Panoan family
Authors: Fleck David W.
Published: March 2014

The present paper describes the ergative alignment patterns in the extant languages of the Mayoruna branch: Matses, Matis, Kulina, Dëmushbo, and Chankuëshbo/Korubo. The patterns that emerge from the present comparative study suggest that the Mayoruna languages, particularly Matses, are in the process of developing more uniform ergatively-aligned morphology. The alignment patterns in these languages vary in several details, but overall are found to be much more similar to each other than they are to other Panoan languages, thereby supporting the hypothesis that the languages in the Mayoruna branch compose a linguistic subfamily.
Ergativity in Shipibo-Konibo, a Panoan language of the Ucayali
Authors: Valenzuela Pilar M.
Published: March 2014

Shipibo-Konibo (a Panoan language from the Peruvian Amazon) has a highly consistent ergative-absolutive case-marking system that operates all along the Animacy Hierarchy. The marker -n (which exhibits a rich allomorphy) indicates ergative, genitive, instrumental and other oblique functions. Through internally-headed relative clauses it is possible to relativize on S/O but not on A arguments; this constitutes the only instance of syntactic ergativity. Different types of non-ergative arrangements are present in a variety of constructions: accusative case-marking on emphatic pronouns, accusative distribution of emphatic pronouns and of the verbal plural agreement marker -kan, neutral case-marking in a dedicated progressive construction, a very idiosyncratic A/O/Sa vs. So pattern in the occurrence of doubled pronouns, and tripartite configuration of inflectional morphology on adjuncts.
How ergative is Cavineña?
Authors: Guillaume Antoine
Published: March 2014

This paper is an investigation of morphological and syntactic ergativity in Cavineña (Tacanan, Bolivia). Cavineña has a straightforward and consistent ergative/absolutive case-marking system, but unlike other Tacanan languages, Cavineña also has a system of pronominal enclitics in second position in the clause. This system displays a number of intricacies which led previous studies to analyze Cavineña as a person-based split-ergative language. However, it is shown here that the so-called “ergative split” has a morphophonological basis rather than a morphosyntactic one. The second part of the paper searches for ergativity at the level of complex sentences by looking at coreference restrictions between a main clause and a number of dependent clause types. However, none of the coreference constraints investigated work ergatively, but rather according to an S/A pivot or without being sensitive to the grammatical function of the arguments.
The ergativity effect in Kuikuro (Southern Carib, Brazil)
Authors: Franchetto Bruna
Published: March 2014

This article first gives a typological and morphosyntactic profile of Kuikuro, a southern Cariban language. Kuikuro has ergative nominal case marking and alingnments, as well as nearly identical nominal and verbal inflection. The second part focuses on the absolutive and ergative Cases, the former attributed to internal arguments (S and O) and the latter to the external argument (A). The postposition heke may mark either a syntactic adjunct (Perspective) to intransitive verbs or the external (ergative) argument of transitive or transitivized verbs; we present a (semantic) hypothesis on the relation between these distinct syntactic units. We conclude that in Kuikuro, all intransitive verbs behave as inaccusatives. We find evidence that confirms the emergence of a dominant morphosyntactic ergative through reanalysis of nominalization structures. In the last part, we propose to conjoin two hypotheses, theoretically distinct but empirically convergent. The first one is that offered by Alexiadou (2001) in the frame of the generative formal theory: the state of affairs in ergative languages is similar to the case patterns in nominalizations. The second one is that of Gildea (1998): inside the Cariban family, languages with ergative morphosyntax (Full Set II) are innovative, etymologically relatable to nominalizing and adverbializing morphology of Proto-Cariban.
Ergativity in Trumai
Authors: Guirardello-Damian Raquel
Published: March 2014

The goal of this paper is to explore ergativity in Trumai, a genetically isolated indigenous language of Brazil. The initial sections describe and analyze the alignment patterns observed in morphology and syntax, including a detailed investigation of verbal classes. Morphologically, case is ergative-absolutive, but syntactically the situation is more complex: word order and several syntactic constructions (including raising, relative and reflexive clauses) present ergative-absolutive patterns, but there are also two much less salient nominative-accusative patterns (effects in argument suppression, use of posture auxiliaries). No particular alignment is observed in other domains traditionally used to identify grammatical relations (e.g., anaphoric control of coreference). After examining arguments for O/S or A/S as subject, we reach the conclusion that Trumai lacks evidence for traditional grammatical relations. The paper concludes with a discussion of the historical sources of the patterns found in basic main clauses.
Grammatical relations in Katukina-Kanamari
Authors: Queixalós Francesc
Published: March 2014

Katukina-Kanamari, possibly the only extant language of the Katukina family, features ergative alignment both in morphology and syntax. The paper is devoted to the description of the various domains of grammar where ergativity is present, as well as of a functionally conditioned accusative pattern. The main aim is to show, on the basis of empirical data, that on the formal side a syntactically ergative language can be quite isomorphic with an accusative language, the main differences being the always present split of transitivity in ergative languages and the interface between semantics and morphosyntax: the mapping of semantic roles onto grammatical relations is inverted between ergative and accusative systems, not only in the structure of the basic clause but also in valence changing processes.
Gradience, gradualness and grammaticalization
Authors: Traugott Elizabeth Closs , Trousdale Graeme
Published: March 2014

This volume is intended to address three questions: (1) How are we to understand the intersection between synchronic gradience and grammaticalization? (2) What insights does grammaticalization offer for assessing the validity of Aarts’s (2007a) claims regarding synchronic gradience, specifically that there is a significant distinction between subsective and intersective gradience? (3) What does the intersection between grammaticalization and synchronic gradience tell us about the hypothesis of structural gradualness, and about whether work on grammaticalization needs reanalysis and analogy/extension, or some other mechanism? In this paper we present an overview of what we consider to be central issues in answering these questions and in developing a theory of micro-changes.
Grammaticalization, the clausal hierarchy and semantic bleaching
Authors: Roberts Ian
Published: March 2014

This paper takes questions regarding gradience and gradualness to be questions concerning the nature of grammatical categories. A notion of grammatical category is pursued which is not gradient, but rather more “traditional” in the sense that category membership is an instance of standard set membership. In order to deal with some of the empirical difficulties, both synchronic and diachronic, in consistently assigning category membership across all lexical formatives, a fine-grained and elaborate system of categories, following on from Cinque’s (1999) influential work on the clausal hierarchy, is adopted. In the context of this approach, Roberts & Roussou’s (2003) formal approach to grammaticalization, which relies on the central idea that grammaticalization is always upward and leftward in the syntactic structure, is shown to makes some interesting and seemingly correct predictions.
Grammatical interference
Authors: De Smet Hendrik
Published: March 2014

Two instances of grammaticalization are examined that illustrate the gradual character of change and the categorial ambivalence of grammaticalizing items. The first change is the development of the subject marker for in the English for...to-infinitive, whose expansion into new grammatical environments is shown to be steered by the historically related but syntactically distinct preposition for. The second change is the semantic and collocational development of the phrasal verb particles out and forth, which are argued to have influenced each other’s trajectory of change. Both case studies show how grammaticalization processes can be guided by connections between grammaticalizing elements and other elements in the grammar. It is proposed that such connections form the substance of gradience and can be successfully described and explained in a constructionist and connectionist model of language. This interpretation of gradience in turn can shed light on some of the sub-processes (persistence, decategorialization, paradigmaticization) and motivations of grammaticalization.
Category change in English with
and without structural change
Authors: Denison David
Published: March 2014

This paper offers a partial taxonomy of changes of category (word class), exemplified with recent English data. The paper takes as its starting point a structuralist syntax which employs constituent structure and conventional category labels but which lacks empty categories or elaborate functional structure. No fixed, universal inventory of categories is assumed. Three types of category change are distinguished: those where only the affected node and its phrasal projection change labels; those where the topology of the syntactic tree is altered as well; and those where a wholly new category enters the grammar. Most but not all of the examples of category change involve grammaticalization. There is evidence of gradience, and semantics may lead syntax. A distinction is drawn between ambiguous and equivocal syntax, where the latter is under-­determined. I suggest that WYSIWYTCH (‘What you see is what your theory can handle’) militates against the recognition of syntactically equivocal strings, and I conclude that for handling grammatical change of the kind surveyed, a rigidly structuralist syntax may turn out to be unrevealing.
Features in reanalysis and grammaticalization
Authors: van Gelderen Elly
Published: March 2014

This chapter discusses this volume’s contributions by Roberts, De Smet, and Denison because they cover a wide range of explanations of gradience and gradual change. These three approaches can be accounted for in a similar way and I offer an account of gradual change using a Feature Economy Principle. This view is slightly different from that in Roberts’ chapter but contributes to the spirit of his chapter in seeing language variation as determined by feature variation. I then provide some new data on the grammaticalization of for that adds to De Smet’s data and that fits with a view of gradual change as feature economy. Finally, I suggest that the cases discussed by Denison as non-structural are really structural and again fit in a framework of Feature Economy.
A paradigmatic approach to language
and language change
Authors: Schøsler Lene
Published: March 2014

The present contribution develops responses to the papers of Rosenbach, cHilpert, and Traugott and Trousdale found in this volume, with focus on the following topics: synchronic gradience and gradual language change, reanalysis and analogy, both especially with respect to the grammaticalization of constructions. The paper provides additional data concerning the emergence and reorganisation of paradigmatically organised constructions – mainly from modern Danish and French. Constructions have been defined as symbolic combinations of a syntactic element and a semantic component. If expanded too far, the term ‘construction’ loses its explanatory power, but it is useful to distinguish between the level of the individual lexical verb and the level of grammar. The term ‘construction’ will be employed here only in the latter sense.
Grammaticalization and the it-cleft construction
Authors: Patten Amanda L.
Published: March 2014

This paper reexamines the development of the it-cleft construction from the perspective of grammaticalization theory. In a previous study, Ball (1991, 1994) finds that the it-cleft was initially restricted to NP foci, with the relative clause expressing presupposed information that is already known to the hearer/reader. However, it is well known that the modern day it-cleft also permits a range of non-NP foci and that the relative clause is no longer restricted to presenting information that is necessarily known to the intended audience. Using data from the Penn Parsed Corpora of Historical English, I argue that synchronic variation in the it-cleft can be understood as a consequence of gradual constructional emergence. Non-NP focus it-clefts are shown to originate by extension from the existing NP focus it-cleft, resulting in a more schematic it-cleft construction. In line with Lambrecht’s (1994) theorizing, I provide evidence that the development of the ‘informative-presupposition’ (IP) it-cleft involves grammaticalization, whereby a sense of presupposition gradually becomes associated with the construction as a whole and is no longer predictable from the meaning of its parts. Discussing the implications for the present day it-cleft, this paper provides insight into how the gradual grammaticalization of constructions, and mismatch in particular, intersects with synchronic gradience (as understood by Croft 2007).
Grammaticalization and models of language
Authors: Vincent Nigel , Börjars Kersti
Published: March 2014

The focus of this paper is the role of theory for the understanding of linguistic change. We argue that ‘formal’ and ‘functional’ should not be seen as two incompatible ways of viewing linguistic data, but as necessary aspects of any linguistic theory. We consider how theories which are formal, but which incorporate functional information can advance our understanding of linguistic change, for instance Dynamic Syntax and Lexical-Functional Grammar, especially when combined with Stochastic OT. We consider analyses which show that formal semantics can provide more insightful accounts of certain changes than purely syntactic analyses such as those proposed in some papers in this volume. We compare approaches particularly with respect to analyses of gradience and the directionality of grammaticalization.
The relation between focus and theticity in the Tuu family
Authors: Güldemann Tom
Published: March 2014

The paper presents first results of the documentation of Tuu languages regarding information structure, based on the analysis of coherent texts, partly supplemented by elicitated utterances. Unmarked clauses display a fairly strict verb-medial structure; the clause-initial subject can be characterized as a conflation of topic function and agent role-complex and the material after it contains the assertive focus. Pragmatically more marked clauses display an initial nominal which is morphosyntactically set off from the rest of the sentence. These cleft-like constructions are typical for utterances involving contrastively focused items as well as constituent question words. At least in some languages, these structures are also associated with another pragmatic function, namely the expression of so-called entity-central thetic statements in the sense of Sasse (1987). This polyfunctionality of cleft-like sentences is motivated, because both of these functions need to expose a nominal: while it must be more salient than the predicate in the case of term focus, it must be “up-graded” from the status of topical predication base in the case of thetic utterances