bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Contrast and Phonological Activity in Manchu Vowel Systems
Authors: Dresher B. Elan , Zhang Xi 
Published: February 2018

AbstractIn the Manchu languages, contrast plays an important role in the patterning of vowel systems. Contrastive feature values are phonologically active, triggering rules of Advanced Tongue Root (ATR) and labial harmony, whereas redundant feature values are phonologically inert. To determine which feature values are contrastive in any given segment, it is necessary to establish an ordering of features. This ordering, or contrastive hierarchy, determines the relative contrastive scope of each feature. Our analysis of the Written Manchu contrastive hierarchy is supported by synchronic and diachronic evidence from Spoken Manchu and Xibe, where a realignment of vowel contrasts results in new patterns of phonological activity. We show that our analysis is consistent with the observed typology of ATR and labial harmony systems. We argue that the concept of phonological contrast does not reduce to a phonetic function, nor is it perceptually based. The relationship between contrast and underspecification is considered, and it is shown that constraint-based theories (such as Optimality Theory) do not constitute alternatives to the theory of contrast proposed here.
Linguistic Anthropology in Canada: Some Personal Reflections
Authors: Darnell Regna 
Published: February 2018

AbstractLinguistic anthropology can be understood as attention to the use and communicative context of language across cultures and societies. The legacy of linguistic anthropology for both of its constituent disciplines resides in qualitative research methods and the attention paid to the particular words of particular speakers. Linguistic anthropologists have also modelled ethical ways of doing collaborative research. Canadian linguistic anthropology has been pragmatic and closely tied to the maintenance and revitalization of First Nations (Native Canadian) languages. Issues of language are inseparable from those of community and larger social processes: this can be seen in the context of traditional Algonquian languages in the Prairies as well as in the adaptation of English to First Nations purposes. The latter is a reaction to the imposition of residential schooling that alienated students from their culture, their community, and their language, and escalated language loss. Current research on life-history narratives indicates that nomadic legacies of subsistence hunting are still present in the decision-making strategies of contemporary Algonquian peoples in southern Ontario.
Investigating St. John’s English: Real- and Apparent-time Perspectives
Authors: Hollett Pauline 
Published: February 2018

AbstractThe Canadian English vowel system is undergoing a shift, and the dialect of English spoken in St John’s, Newfoundland—which for demographic and geographic reasons has remained autonomous from North American varieties—is being affected by this change. Incorporating both real-time and apparent-time data, the findings show a process of communal and generational change. The front lax vowel lowering and/or retraction that characterize Canadian Shift appear to be active in St. John’s English. Consistent with the late adoption model of language change, older speakers show ongoing changes from their early 20s through to middle age. Moreover, the older female cohort seems to lead in the adoption of supralocal Canadian English forms, and this both in apparent time and in real time. This challenges the idea that younger generations are the sole or primary locus of language change. While innovative forms are typically associated with younger speakers, this study shows that they can also be adopted, accelerated, and advanced by older speakers.
Noozornyooz?: The Complex Construction of Canadian Identity
Authors: Clarke Sandra 
Published: February 2018

AbstractWe examine the diffusion of a phonological feature, namely the deletion of palatal glides in words such asnews, tune, duke, andstudent. Within Canada, the conservative glided and innovative glideless pronunciations are no longer viewed as carrying, respectively, British versus American affiliation. One observes a steep generational decline in glide usage, with older, and especially upper-middle-class, females, resisting this change. This contrasts with broadcast media, where the overall glide usage rate is high: national media adopt the glided variant to a greater degree than their local counterparts; moreover, male media personnel display more glide retention than females. Both variants index different social meanings: the glided variant is associated with cultural erudition but is nevertheless not the formal target for all groups. Thus, the two variants hold different appeal for different segments of the population, and both are viewed as a prestige target within the same speech community.
Movement Chains at the Interfaces
Authors: Di Sciullo Anna Maria , Isac Daniela 
Published: February 2018

AbstractWe argue that Agree is an asymmetric relation. According to Asymmetric Agree, ifxAgrees withy, then the features ofymust be properly included in the features ofx. If the links of a chain created by movement are related by Agree, this correctly predicts the properties of syntactic movement chains. And if the links of a chain created by movement are subject to the Proper Inclusion Condition, that accounts for the (un)availability of extraction out of a moved XP. The following distinctions interact with Asymmetric Agree: whether movement is A or A-bar, whether or not the constituent extracted out of the moved phrase is selected by the head of that phrase, and whether movement is overt or covert. Syntactic movement is feature-structure preserving, in that the Proper Inclusion Condition applies to sets of features in a particular configuration.
Parsing in the Minimalist Program: On SOV Languages and Relativization
Authors: Fong Sandiway 
Published: February 2018

AbstractI examine computational issues in the processing of SOV languages in the probe-goal theory of the Minimalist Program. A theory that minimizes search, such as the probe-goal theory, provides a strong linguistic basis for the investigation of efficient parsing architecture. For parsing, two main design challenges are presented: (i) how to limit search while incrementally recovering structure from input without the benefit of a pre-determined lexical array, and (ii) how to come up with a system that not only correctly resolves parsing ambiguities, but does so with mechanisms that are architecturally justified. I take as the starting point an existing probe-goal parser with features that allow it to compute syntactic representation without recourse to derivation history search. I extend this parser to handle pre-nominal relative clauses of the sort found in SOV languages. I provide a unified computational account of facts on possessor (and non-possessor) relativization and processing preferences in Turkish, Japanese, and Korean.
Generic predicates and interest-relativity
Authors: Mcconnell-Ginet Sally 
Published: February 2018

Abstract“Simple generics” with bare plural subjects (e.g.,dogs bark) predicate of a kind a property that the kind “inherits” from its individual members. But what does that inheritance amount to if it is not, likemost dogs bark, based on how many individuals have the property. My conclusion: there is no determinate account of which (fundamentally individual-level) properties can be truly predicated of a kind: generics are not quantificational, and language users’ interests guide judgments on their truth-conditions. At the same time, even “canonical” predications of ordinary predicates of ordinary individuals are not so straightforward as they might appear. Generic claims about social groups show the indeterminacy of truth conditions for simple generics and the relation to stereotypes and sometimes conflicting interests.
Verse to prose: a literary fashion
Authors: Holdaway R. G. C. 
Published: February 2018

This article attempts to consider various aspects of the change from verse to prose romances and various linguistic problems related to the rendering of verse into prose.In France towards the end of the Middle Ages, especially during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, prose became the pre-eminent medium for works of narrative fiction, and many of the verse narratives of the previous centuries were rewritten to conform to this change in taste and form. Georges Doutrepont lists some 55 epic poems and some 18 adventure romances that were revised in this manner, and it would be unwise to regard his catalogue as complete. Although Doutrepont analyzes a few of these “mises-en-prose,” his analyses are largely concerned with the appearance of the manuscripts, their dates, and the over-all expansion or condensation of the narratives.
The field situation in Oregon: 1964
Authors: Pierce Joe E. 
Published: February 2018

In a recent paper Melville Jacobs outlined briefly the history of linguistic research in connection with indigenous languages of Oregon. In this paper I will not repeat what has already been said, but rather attempt to describe the field situation in Oregon at the present time as accurately and completely as possible.In May 1963 I began a survey of the indigenous languages still spoken in Oregon and the data presented below were derived from this survey. The purpose of the study was to determine the number of possible informants still using each of the native languages and the level of competence of each speaker in so far as this could be determined without actually doing linguistic field-work at the time. This information was a necessary prerequisite to the organization of a programme of research designed to salvage as much of the remaining languages in the area as possible.
Asyllabic residues in Russian
Authors: Saunders R. 
Published: February 2018

In the process of defining the phonological syllable as a unit which may or may not correspond to the phonetic and phonemic definitions of the syllable, a few of what seem to be basic assumptions regarding the nature of syllables have been overridden, the result in Russian and Czech being the accumulation of some residual segments, which are neither syllables nor members of any syllables. These residual segments are called “isolated consonantal microsegments.”In this paper, we would like to examine one particular definition of the phonological syllable with regard to four criteria for the syllable outlined by Greenberg with particular attention to the fate of the isolated consonantal microsegments (ICM’s).
The linguistic usage of‘palatal’ and its derivatives
Authors: De Armond Richard C. 
Published: February 2018

In a recent article I attempted to establish a more concise definition both of palatalized consonants and of palatal consonants. The process of defining the latter involved the elucidation of the distinction between lamino-palatal and centro-palatal consonants.There is still some confusion about the meanings and uses of the derivatives of the term palatal. The term is derived from palate, and it refers in compound forms to a consonant, the point of articulation of which is on the hard palate. From the form palatal the verb palatalize is derived; this causes some confusion, since it refers to two different events, i.e., it has two formal meanings in the same way that nationalize has at least two formal meanings. In one sense the latter means “to make national in character” and in a second sense “to make into a nation,” among other meanings. Although Webster’s only recognizes one definition of palatalize it is possible to establish a twofold definition for it analogous to nationalize.
Sentence morphemes in English
Authors: Klatte William F. 
Published: February 2018

The Aim of this paper is to define a form class of English (the sentence morpheme) and to try to determine whether or not this form class may be incorporated into the traditional linguistic system of English. Various criteria—phonological, morphological and syntactic—will be applied to establish the formal characteristics of this class.The forms considered here deserve serious treatment by any school of linguistics that claims to give priority to the spoken language, since quite a large proportion of colloquial speech consists of just such forms. Apart from any consideration of their linguistic marginality, they are surely important if only because of their frequency in English speech.
Rule exceptions, functionalism, and language change
Authors: Laferriere Martha 
Published: February 2018

In certain cases the difference between consecutive stages of a language may be explained as a change in the system of rules of the grammar of that language (Chomsky & Halle 1968, 249-252; King 1969; Kiparsky 1968). Between consecutive stages a rule may be added, lost, structurally simplified, or reordered relative to the earlier order. Such changes among phonological rules, when phonetically conditioned, represent an increase in grammatical simplicity in a measurable sense (King 1969, 39-63, 65; Kiparsky 1968; Halle 1962).It has also been recognized that grammatical categories can condition phonological rules. The function of such conditioning appears to be the preservation of surface structure organization defined by grammatical categories, or what Kiparsky has termed “paradigm coherence” (1972, 208). Yet grammatical (non-phonetic) conditioning of phonological rules has been regarded as decreasing, rather than increasing, simplicity (King 1969, 134-139). In this paper I shall be concerned with the historical development of grammatical conditioning on phonological rules, and the role which paradigm coherence, or paradigmatic regularization, plays in grammatical simplification.
On the putative rule of sentence-lifting
Authors: James Deborah M. , Binnick Robert I. 
Published: February 2018

Sentences like the following are basically the same in meaning (although not absolutely the same).
(1)I believe Ralph came(2)Ralph came, I believeThese have been described by Green and Morgan (1972) and Hooper and Thompson (1973) as related by a transformational rule of Sentence-Lifting or Complement Preposing (to be abbreviated here as “Slifting”). By this hypothesized rule, an underlying embedded sentence, here “Ralph came,” is raised so that it precedes its higher subject and verb. Bolinger (1968) describes sentences such as (1) and (2) as related by a rule of Main Phrase Postposing, by which the material at the beginning of the sentence is moved to the end. None of these writers give any arguments for setting up the rule as they do.
Generative phonology and contrastive studies
Authors: Fisiak Jacek 
Published: February 2018

The development of contrastive studies (CS) in recent years, judging by the proliferation of projects and published materials, has been accompanied since the late sixties by vigorous discussions and controversies concerning the theoretical status of CS, their form and their place in both general and applied linguistics.Many linguists and language teachers have gone so far as to reject the validity and usefulness of CS (cf. Alatis, 1968). It seems that this attitude results from a number of misunderstandings created by such factors as the peculiar methodological status of CS, the lack of a clear-cut distinction between theoretical and applied CS (Stockwell, 1968:25; Fisiak, 1971:88ff), and the lack of any precise formulation of the different aims of theoretical CS and applied CS, as well as the confusion of the relationship between CS, psycholinguistic theories of interference and errors, and the theory of second language learning (Zabrocki, 1976). Some confusion also stems from the misunderstanding of the relationship between CS and linguistic theory.
dein Mandarin
Authors: Cheng Lisa Lai Shen 
Published: February 2018

In Mandarin, there is an elementdewhich has for years been the subject of analysis. Li and Thompson (1981) and Ross (1983 and 1984) have tried, with little success, to provide a unified treatment of this element. Li and Thompson (1981) claim that there are severalde’s in Mandarin: a possessive marker, an adjectival marker and a nominalization marker. But the structural properties of thesede’s and the similarities among them are ignored.Using the Government and Binding framework (Chomsky 1981), I will provide an analysis which accounts for the structural and functional similarities and differences among the variousde’s in Mandarin. First, I will state the theoretical assumptions relevant to the discussion ofde. Second, I will present the non-controversial evidence showing thatdeis a head-final complementizer in relative clauses. Third, I will present further data exemplifying a head-finaldein other constructions. Fourth, I will demonstrate the impossibility of having a head-finaldecomplementizer in resultative clauses. Finally, I will propose that there are twodecomplementizers in Mandarin, one head-final, the other head-initial.
/h/ en franco-ontarien
Authors: Thomas Alain 
Published: February 2018

Il suffit d’écouter attentivement plusieurs locuteurs franco-ontariens pour se rendre compte que /h/ est encore bien vivant dans cette province. Mais il est réalisé de manière si irrégulière qu’on peut se demander s’il n’est pas menacé de disparition. La chose ne serait pas surprenante, puisqu’on a déjà noté son amuïssement en latin, avant la période classique, et surtout en français moderne, quelque 20 siècles plus tard. Assisterait-on au même phénomène d’économie phonétique en franco-ontarien?La question a déjà été abordée, dans des pré-publications, par Cichocki et Lepetit (1981) et Thomas (1982), mais l’absence de dimension diachronique dans ces deux études en a considérablement réduit la portée. Les données, en effet, étaient basées sur deux corpus d’adolescents francoontariens, provenant respectivement de Welland et de Sudbury, et ce n’est que par recoupements et déductions successives en synchronie dynamique que les auteurs arrivaient à postuler une évolution probable du /h/.
Des petites propositions à valeur aspectuelle
Authors: Vinet Marie-Thérèse 
Published: February 2018

1. Cette étude a pour but d’analyser le statut catégoriel et la structure interne de petites propositions adjointes que la grammaire traditionnelle désigne couramment sous le terme de “constructions participiales absolues”. Nous sommes d’avis, toutefois, que cette appellation est inappropriée puisqu’ elle ne permet pas d’effectuer une généralisation légitime avec des constructions identiques qui ne présentent pas de forme participiale ou même de valeur absolue. Dans le cadre de la théorie du gouvernement et du liage qui est le nôtre, nous identifions plutôt celles-ci comme des “petites propositions à valeur aspectuelle”. Il s’agit de structures copulatives sans la présence du verbe copule en surface, elles sont introduites par un adverbe aspectuel et la position prédicat peut être remplie par différents syntagmes tels que AP, PP, NP ou un VP participial:(1)a.[Une fois présentable], elle a ouvert la porteb.[Aussitôt dans le couloir], il s’est mis à hurlerc.[Une fois médecin], elle a été heureused.[Sitôt les ballons crevés], la musique a commencéLe marqueur aspectuel (une fois, aussitôt, etc.) permet d’identifier le temps interne de l’événement, il marque l’accompli et est lié à l’aspect perfectif.
The Pragmatic Function of wa in Japanese
Authors: Currah Satomi , Prideaux Gary D. 
Published: February 2018

The Japanese postpositional particle wa has probably received more attention within the linguistic literature dealing with that language than any other single element of Japanese grammar. The present paper is a further contribution to the long and honorable series of attempts to come to grips with the function of this highly frequent, but still poorly understood, linchpin of Japanese grammar.The particle wa may occur with subject nouns, as in (1), with other parts of speech, and may even be attached to entire sentences. Because of the variability of the elements with which wa can be associated, the element to which wa is attached is referred to throughout the present paper simply as X.
De la nécessité des positions vides dans les représentations syllabiques du gen
Authors: Nikiema Emmanuel 
Published: February 2018

AbstractThe introduction of empty nuclear positions in syllable structure goes back to the early 80s. Since then, empty nuclei have been proposed in phonological analyses to account for vocalic epenthesis (vowel/Ø alternation). The analysis of Gen put forth in this article argues for empty nuclei although no vowel/Ø alternation can be observed in the language. Nevertheless, on the basis of the tonal patterns of Gen, it is shown that empty positions must be part of the underlying representation of syllables in the language. Another aspect of the study deals with consonant clusters. Thus far, all analyses supporting empty positions within a cluster have also referred to the absence of cooccurrence restrictions among the consonants surrounding the empty vowel. This paper provides new insights since, in Gen, the consonant clusters in which empty nuclei are proposed are typical of those observed in branching onset languages (like French, Italian and English) or in languages having light diphthongs. We argue that all attested consonant clusters in Gen are heterosyllabic.
Verbes de volonté et absence d’obviation en français ancien
Authors: Martineau France 
Published: February 2018

AbstractThis article examines the absence of obviation with volition verbs in Older French (e.g., je veux que je soye batu). It is shown that the analyses which propose that obviation depends on the anaphoric character of Tense or on the presence of a lexical complementizer cannot explain the absence of obviation in Older French. The analysis proposed in this article relies on the semantic selection of verbs. It is argued that in Older French, volition verbs (i.e., non-factive emotive verbs) select a [definite event], realized on the head of MP, which licenses an operator in Comp; as a result, the binding domain of the embedded subject is closed and the subjects can be coreferent. The presence of this operator, which can be reanalyzed as the head of CP, also accounts for the fact that both moods, indicative and subjunctive, can be found in the complements of volition verbs. It is also proposed that the changes which affect the complements of volition verbs in Classical French (presence of obviation and absence of indicative mood) are triggered by the fact that volition verbs ceased to select the category [definite event].
Implications of Consonant Nasalization for a Theory of Harmony
Authors: Piggott G.L. 
Published: February 2018

AbstractNasalization in several Bantu languages skips vowels and, in some cases, also skips consonants. This process does not appear to apply in a local fashion. A solution to the locality problem has not been found so far in the conventional approaches to harmony. This article offers a novel analysis which maintains the general principle that elements related by rules or constraints are adjacent. It departs from the conventional description of harmony as a purely segmental relation and derives the effects of long distance consonant nasalization from the reconfiguration of harmony as a relation between suprasegmental units. One pattern found in Lamba is described as agreement between adjacent syllables, while another pattern found in Kikongo instantiates agreement between adjacent feet. This article recognizes a new functional foot-type, the Harmony Foot.