bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Word Classes in Mayan Languages
Authors: Vapnarsky Valentina 
Published: December 2023

Abstract
Mayan languages present interesting properties that question word classes and the determination of lexical categories. These properties are related to the rich processes of word formation and derivation that characterize them as polysynthetic languages. Three main aspects are of particular interest: first, in terms of the complex relation between root classes and lexical categories at the stem level; second, in terms of the various patterns of cross-over between the word classes in each language, evident as a tension between lexical categorial determination and flexibility or polyvalence; third, in terms of the nature of their word classes, some of them unfamiliar in Indo-European languages, such as Positionals, Expressives, and Classifiers. Mayan languages mostly share the same word classes but differ in the degree and form of flexibility between classes, as well as in the way categorial determination operates with respect to specific word-formation levels and processes. These variations raise important questions regarding how word-class configurations might change over time and vary cross-linguistically, even in closely related languages. This chapter offers a synthetic view of such properties, based on data from more than a dozen Mayan languages, with a special focus given to Yucatec.
Word Classes in Austronesian Languages
Authors: Mosel Ulrike 
Published: December 2023

Abstract
This chapter describes lexicological concepts and morphological and syntactic diagnostics that are used for the classification of content words in Austronesian linguistics. The Austronesian language family counts approximately 1,200 languages which are mainly spoken in South-East Asia and the Pacific islands. With respect to noun–verb distinctions, there are languages in which nouns and verbs differ morphologically and syntactically, while others like Tagalog distinguish nouns and verbs only morphologically, but not syntactically. A third type of language does not divide all content words into distinct classes, but only has some morphological subclasses that are marked by affixes, whereas the unmarked words are flexible or only distinguished by the modifiers they occur with. Prototypical property words may form a word class of their own, be affiliated with either the class of nouns or the class of verbs, or form subclasses of both the class of nouns and the class of verbs.
Word Classes in Timor–Alor–Pantar and The Papuan Region
Authors: Klamer Marian 
Published: December 2023

Abstract
This chapter describes the word classes of the Timor–Alor–Pantar (TAP) family of Papuan languages, located 1,000 kilometres west of the New Guinea mainland. The TAP family comprises some 25 languages, and this study is based on a genealogically balanced sample of eight of these: Teiwa or Kaera of the Pantar-Straits subgroup, Adang and Abui of the Alor subgroup, Sawila or Wersing of the East Alor subgroup, and Bunaq or Makasae/Makalero of the Timor subgroup. Salient characteristics of the verbs, nouns, adjectives, adpositions, adverbs, and numerals are discussed, followed by a section on category-changing morphology and multifunctional words. It is pointed out that, despite the heavy dominance of the national language Indonesian, Indonesian influence on the lexicons of the TAP languages is still limited. Word classes in TAP languages share many features with other Papuan languages, in particular those of the Trans New Guinea family, though significant differences remain.
Word Classes in Sign Languages
Authors: Kimmelman Vadim , Börstell Carl 
Published: December 2023

Abstract
This chapter discusses word classes as applied to signed languages of the world. The chapter provides an overview of various definitions and analyses that have been used to establish word classes in different sign languages. Such definitions are based not only on morphological and syntactic criteria, but also on how the gestural–visual modality affects word classes in terms of iconicity and word formation within and across sign languages. Some of the modality effects on word formation and categorization have in turn also been applied and compared to the gestures of non-signers. Following previous and current work on lexicography and corpus linguistics for sign languages, the chapter also describes some methodological issues and advances in documenting, defining, tagging, and utilizing word classes within these areas of research.
Word Classes in Corpus Linguistics
Authors: Levshina Natalia 
Published: December 2023

Abstract
Word classes play a central role in corpus linguistics under the name of parts of speech (POS). Many popular corpora are provided with POS tags. This chapter gives examples of popular tagsets and discusses the methods of automatic tagging. It also considers bottom-up approaches to POS induction, which are particularly important for the ‘poverty of stimulus’ debate in language acquisition research. The choice of optimal POS tagging involves many difficult decisions, which are related to the level of granularity, redundancy at different levels of corpus annotation, cross-linguistic applicability, language-specific descriptive adequacy, and dealing with fuzzy boundaries between POS. The chapter also discusses the problem of flexible word classes and demonstrates how corpus data with POS tags and syntactic dependencies can be used to quantify the level of flexibility in a language.
Word classes and Grammaticalization
Authors: Smith K. Aaron 
Published: December 2023

Abstract
This chapter treats the shift of language material (qua constructions) within the framework of grammaticalization. Grammaticalization is defined here in most general terms as the change of lexical material, chiefly nouns, and verbs, into grammatical formants such as auxiliary verbs, prepositions, and noun classifiers. In linguistics, grammaticalization has long been studied apart from other kinds of word-class shifts (e.g. lexicalization) because of the particular set of correlative language changes that accompany it, although not necessarily unique to it. In addition to the initial shift from lexical word classes to a grammatical categories (primary grammaticalization), grammaticalization studies have also elucidated the shift of linguistic material from less to more grammatical status (so-called secondary grammaticalization, e.g. pronouns into inflections for person/number, auxiliaries into tense/aspect markers). While this chapter addresses aspects of secondary grammaticalization in its overview, it remains mostly focused on primary grammaticalization focusing on several examples of auxiliation (i.e. the emergence of new auxiliaries) in English, including a present-day, corpus-based study of a very recent word-class shift involving the incipient grammaticalization of the lexical verb try into the auxiliary expression tryna in some varieties of American English.
Word Classes in First Language Acquisition
Authors: Stoll Sabine 
Published: December 2023

Abstract
Word classes are the building blocks of language constituting a precondition for productive language use and grammar development. How can infants generalize word classes? This has been one of the most burning questions in language acquisition research. Theories range from the assumption of abstract innate word classes to bottom-up approaches explaining word-class generation fully by statistical learning. There is, however, general agreement across theories that children have to extract information about the word classes of their language from the input to build up the language-specific categories. This chapter shows how typologically diverse systems can impact this process for the learner. The challenges for the learner with respect to nominal and verbal systems are highly variable in the languages of the world. This suggests an enormous flexibility of the language learning mind, necessitating a highly intricate ability for pattern detection by infant learners. The chapter reviews research on the two major word classes, nouns and verbs, and presents patterns in the input that facilitate category abstraction. Even though nouns seem to be more prevalent in early acquisition, this is only a general tendency, and there is in fact huge variation across learners of different languages.
Word Classes in Neurolinguistics
Authors: Kemmerer David 
Published: December 2023

Abstract
This chapter reviews recent neurolinguistic research on word classes. Although a variety of phenomena involving word classes have been investigated from a neurolinguistic perspective, the vast majority of studies have focused on the noun–verb distinction. In fact, the cortical underpinnings of this distinction have been explored in countless studies employing all of the major brain-mapping methods. The chapter covers the following specific issues, all of which are prominent in the neurolinguistic literature: the universal semantic prototypes of nouns and verbs; differential impairments affecting either just nouns or just verbs in either just oral output or just written output; efforts to overcome confounds between conceptual and grammatical factors when searching for the neural basis of the noun–verb distinction; and the role of inflection in this distinction. The chapter also briefly considers two subtypes of nouns (i.e. proper and common), two subtypes of verbs (i.e. transitive and intransitive), and a few word classes beyond the noun–verb distinction.
Word Classes in Computational Linguistics and Artificial Intelligence
Authors: Mistica Meladel , Vylomova Ekaterina , Bond Francis 
Published: December 2023

Abstract
Word classes, or parts of speech, are groupings of words that share common characteristics, both syntactic and semantic. In the fields of natural language processing (NLP) and artificial intelligence (AI), word classes have been seen as the first level of annotation for text tokens within a text processing pipeline: (pos) tagging. These pos tags were originally conceived as the first step for syntactic processing, but are often used to prepare a stream of unstructured text in for the purpose of natural language understanding. The level of understanding achieved by such a system can be as deep as achieving a semantically motivated representation of meaning or as superficial as recognizing the usage of certain types of words that are important for the task at hand. The importance of word classes in these fields is that they allow a level of abstraction that can alleviate data sparsity and are generally quite accurate, especially when considering left and right contexts and other contextual information. Further, they can help in suggesting the function of a token within a sentence, as well as suggesting its semantic type (such as event, attribute, or referent). Scientists and practitioners in NLP and AI are consumers of word classes. However, the field of computational linguistics has slightly different goals that overlap more with the interest of linguists. Computational linguists ask questions that a linguist might about word classes but the answers to these questions are arrived at either by methods employed in grammar engineering or big data methods employed in NLP.
Lexeme Classes and Word Classes in Functional Discourse Grammar
Authors: Mackenzie J. Lachlan 
Published: December 2023

Abstract
The approach to parts of speech in Functional Discourse Grammar (FDG) originates in the functional definitions of Nominal, Verbal, and Adjectival predicates in Simon C. Dik’s Functional Grammar. Kees Hengeveld’s later development and refinement of those ideas have been formalized within FDG as a theory of four functionally differentiated lexeme classes (Verb, Noun, Adjective, Adverb). These are distinguished from word classes, which may be more numerous and apply at the Morphosyntactic Level of FDG. Certain languages lack one or more lexeme classes; these are classified as either flexible or rigid. The resultant classification has been shown to determine word order, morphological type, and dependent clause constructions, and has strongly impacted the debate on parts of speech in language typology.
Word Classes in Minimalist Syntax
Authors: Zeijlstra Hedde 
Published: December 2023

Abstract
This chapter provides an overview and discussion of how categories are generally analysed within (mainstream) minimalism. It begins with the observation that morphosyntactic rules are not sensitive to word classes or grammatical categories, but rather to lexical and functional formal features that underlie them, potentially augmented with roots. The chapter then discusses the consequences of this approach for the analysis of lexical categories within minimalism, and discusses to what extent lexical categories are ‘inherently lexical’ or whether they consist of functional formal features that combine with categoryless roots. The final part of the chapter discusses the nature of formal features in general, addressing questions as to whether they are universal, and how they can be hierarchically ordered.
Transcategorial Operations
Authors: Malchukov Andrej L. 
Published: December 2023

Abstract
The chapter discusses transcategorial operations such as nominalization and verbalization. Based on the author’s previous work, the chapter presents a model for constraining typology of transcategorial operations in general and nominalization in particular. The crucial ingredients of the proposed Generalized Scale Model (GSM) are: (i) functionally based hierarchies of verbal and nominal categories, which determine susceptibility of individual categories for loss/retention in transcategorial operations; (ii) structural features, pertaining to the way categories are expressed morphologically, which may interfere with the hierarchy constraints; (iii) Generalized Scale formation as a result of integrating the hierarchies of verbal and nominal categories; (iv) Blocking Effects pertaining to incompatibility of verbal and nominal categories providing alternative means of encoding certain functions (e.g. sentential vs possessive encoding of arguments), which impose additional constraints on the GSM. The chapter demonstrates that the proposed model can capture all cross-linguistically recurrent nominalization patterns, as well as account for apparent counterexamples.
Lexical Categories in Distributed Morphology
Authors: Don Jan 
Published: December 2023

Abstract
Distributed Morphology (DM) accounts for native speakers’ knowledge about the word classes of their language using categorially underspecified roots that get categorized in syntactic contexts. This chapter discusses arguments that have been given for roots without category, and presents a new one. The DM view on lexical categories raises questions about the locus of categorial information. If the categorial information is not located in the roots, then where does it come from? This leads to a discussion of the position of derivational affixes for which different proposals are on offer. The chapter focuses on a phonological restriction on word-class membership in Dutch which allows native speakers to judge whether a particular form in isolation is a verb or a noun. The theory offers enough room to accommodate such facts.
Word Classes in Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar
Authors: Van Eynde Frank 
Published: December 2023

Abstract
In Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar the distinction between nouns, verbs, and other parts of speech has a central role in the definition of syntactic word classes, but other distinctions play a role as well, ranging from valence over selection requirements to degrees of saturation. Syntactic word classes are, hence, defined in a factorial way. It will be shown that this provides a way to characterize the properties of functional and minor categories, such as determiners and complementizers, without a proliferation of part-of-speech distinctions. While the role of the part-of-speech distinction in the definition of syntactic word classes is given much attention, the chapter is brief on its role in the definition of semantic word classes, since the latter are defined in terms of model-theoretic notions, such as state of affairs, relations, and propositions, rather than in terms of syntactic notions. The chapter discusses the role of the part-of-speech distinction in the definition of morphological word classes.
Irish English in Advertising
Authors: O’Sullivan Joan 
Published: December 2023

Abstract
In order to investigate language ideological change in the Irish context, this study analyses a corpus of radio advertisements from an Irish radio channel broadcast over a 40-year period (1977–2017). While an initial examination of the corpus indicates the symbolic use of the Irish language, the use of American English, pseudo-French accents, etc., the predominant varieties exploited are Standard Southern British English and Irish English. As research shows, ideological issues associated with standard and non-standard varieties are especially visible in the colonial situation. In light of the colonial history of Ireland, and in view of the predominance of Standard Southern British English and Irish English in the corpus, the main focus of the study is therefore on changes in the exploitation of these varieties, with a focus on accent, to reveal language ideological change in the Irish context.
Emigrant Letters from Ireland
Authors: McCafferty Kevin , P. Amador-Moreno Carolina 
Published: December 2023

Abstract
Ego-documents like personal letters have emerged as an important resource for historical linguistics, as shown by studies of English and other languages. The last decade has also seen a significant increase in the quantity of historical research on Irish English based on evidence from emigrant letters. This research investigates diachronic developments in an important variety of English, expanding our knowledge of the history of Irish English and complementing previous studies, which have largely used evidence from literary texts, travel accounts, etc. The present chapter surveys research in this field and offers a brief account of what such ego-documents reveal about Irish English, using the example of a bundle of letters written by one Irish emigrant in the 1880s. This text is part of the Corpus of Irish English Correspondence, and it contains usage patterns of those features that can reveal a good deal about the language of the writer’s home locality and Irish English in general.
Irish English in Galway City
Authors: Peters Arne 
Published: December 2023

Abstract
The chapter provides a concise description of the historical roots of Galway as an urban centre, and of sociolinguistic developments that led to English, rather than Irish, becoming its dominant language. It addresses the question of how persisting contact between Irish and English has impacted on the development of Irish English in the city between the late twelfth century and today. Secondly, the chapter presents a range of vowel and consonant features that are characteristic of Irish English in Galway City, and for which contemporary variationist sociolinguistic research has found systematic correlations with microsociological local categories and configurations. Finally, building on existing studies of local linguistic landscapes, the chapter addresses possible directions that sociolinguistic research, both variationist and cognitive in nature, may take in future in order to further research socio-cultural and cognitive-conceptual variability in Irish English in Galway City within the general mind set of third-wave sociolinguistic endeavours.
Irish English in Cork City
Authors: Bessell Nicola J. 
Published: December 2023

Abstract
Cork City is Ireland’s second-largest city, with a metropolitan population approaching 418,000 (2016 census). As with many other Irish cities and towns, Cork City has a varied history of settlement and language use, with multilingual influences dating from the period of monastic settlement. Visitors to the modern city will hear many different ways of speaking. Some differences are associated with specific parts of the city or are rooted in conservative regional patterns. Others reflect recent supraregional norms and, increasingly, recent international immigration. As with any linguistic community, most speakers command a range of registers and vary their speech according to context and their own sense of identity. This chapter situates Cork City English in the context of Irish English studies, and brings our understanding of some of the city’s linguistic characteristics up to date by presenting newly collected data from families based in different parts of the city.
Irish English and Variational Pragmatics
Authors: Barron Anne 
Published: December 2023

Abstract
The present chapter deals with pragmatic variation in relation to Irish English within the framework of variational pragmatics. It focuses specifically on pragmatic conventions in Irish English as they compare to other varieties of English, and on pragmatic variation within the variety of Irish English according to macro-social factors, such as region, gender, age, socio-economic status, and ethnic identity. An empirical cross-varietal study of request consents across Irish English and Canadian English, focusing also on gender variation within and across both varieties, is described with the aim of illustrating some of the methods, trends, and issues arising in the analysis of pragmatic variation in Irish English.
Language in Early Ireland
Authors: Ronan Patricia 
Published: December 2023

Abstract
This chapter traces the linguistic situation in Ireland from the earliest attested stages of language use, Early Irish, through the arrival of Latin as a language of learning and Old Norse, which was brought by Viking settlers in the closing centuries of the first millennium bce, until the arrival of Anglo-Norman settlers to the end of the medieval period (c.1200 ce). It is shown that from early stages on, early Irish society has been multilingual. In this society the Irish language was a language of high prestige until the arrival of the first Anglo-Norman settlers and for a considerable period beyond this. Historical developments as well as the societal and political situation in the pre-modern period are related to and discussed in the context of typical developments in language contact.
From Ireland to Newfoundland
Authors: Clarke Sandra 
Published: December 2023

Abstract
Newfoundland Irish English (NIrE) is among the earliest and most conservative of transplanted overseas varieties of southern Irish English. Yet its contribution to the history of IrE has generally been overlooked. This chapter reviews the historical background of NIrE, along with its major phonetic and grammatical features. These are derived from two recent online projects involving some 40 traditional NIrE speakers, born as early as 1880. The Newfoundland data challenge various conclusions of the IrE literature, which is largely based on written sources, including emigrant letters. For example, NIrE indicates that short-vowel diphthongization, along with an onglided goose vowel, may have been more extensive in earlier southeastern IrE than the literature suggests. More importantly, NIrE questions the claim that earlier southern varieties of IrE were characterized by the Northern Subject Rule, and offers further evidence as to the date of emergence of habitual meanings of the verb forms do be and bees.