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This study aims to re-examine the essential notion of "gap" in the studies of relative clauses. Following Creissels' (Creissels, Denis. 2006. Syntaxe générale: une introduction typologique. Paris: Hermès; Creissels, Denis. 2019. Remarks on the typology of noun-modifying clause constructions. Paper presented at the Conference of Complex Sentences, Central China Normal University, 26–29 July) discussion, we argue that there are at least three types of gaps in terms of their respective compositions, namely the gap corresponding to a zero-marked constituent, the gap corresponding to a case-marked constituent, and the gap corresponding to an adposition-marked constituent. This classification, which is not based on the grammatical relation of the relativized constituent in the relative clause but focuses on the composition of the gap, can better explain the existence of the so-called "enlarged gap", a special type of gap that has been almost completely ignored so far. Moreover, this marking-based approach can shed new light on Keenan and Comrie's (Keenan, Edward & Bernard Comrie. 1977. Noun phrase accessibility and universal grammar. Linguistic Inquiry 8(1). 63–99) Accessibility Hierarchy. In particular, we argue that some interplay of the syntactic position and the morphological marking of a syntactic object determines whether the constituent can be relativized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the organizational structure of introductory sections of research papers written by authors from Poland in English and Polish. Application of language analyst John Swales' model; Effect of cultural differences in the rhetorical pattern of the papers; Variation in schematic patterns.

This paper forges links between early analytic philosophy and the posits of semiotics. I show that there are some striking and potentially quite important, but perhaps unrecognized, connections between three key concepts in Wittgenstein's middle and later philosophy, namely, complex (Philosophical Grammar), rule-following (Philosophical Investigations), and language games (Philosophical Investigations). This reveals the existence of a conceptual continuity between Wittgenstein's "early" and "later" philosophy that can be applied to the analysis of the iterability of representation in computer-generated images. Methodologically, this paper clarifies to at least some degree, the nature, progress and promise of an approach to doing philosophy and semiotics from a modally modest perspective that sees in the intellectual products of humanities, and not in unreflective empiricism, the future of scientific development. This hybrid, non-reductionist approach shows, among other things, that semiotic processes are encoded by specific types of complexes in computer-generated images that display iterability in time and space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on a special issue of Poznan Studies in Contemporary Linguistics dedicated to Professor Jacek Witkos on his birthday, featuring original articles by his former students and colleagues. Topics include Professor Witkos's passion for syntax, his contributions to generative syntax, and analyses of syntactic phenomena such as existential unaccusative verbs in Polish, the status of the nominal structure in Polish, and acceptability judgments in Polish generative linguistics.

This special issue provides an overview of the xu-argument, a newly emerging view on language acquisition. The view is new in that it makes two key points: i) language is acquired through xu, a Chinese word with a composite meaning of completion, extension and creation (CEC) (Wang, 2016), and ii) high efficiency in learning a language is achieved by xu. Using a single word to capture the highly complex human endowment of language learning might be too ambitious an attempt. Convincing justifications and supporting evidence are needed to verify this claim, as the papers in this issue are intended to do. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stripping is a phenomenon whereby a full clause is coordinated with a phrase (XP) and an adverb, typically NEG(ation) (e.g. John read Hamlet but not Othello). As noted previously in the literature (e.g. Bosque 1984), while in English NEG must precede XP, Spanish allows the reverse order as well (XP-NEG). This paper examines these two strings (i.e. XP-NEG and NEG-XP) in Spanish and compares them with respect to a number of properties. The major goal of this paper is to show that, despite the appearances, the two strings constitute radically distinct phenomena. Analytically, I defend, in line with many others, that XP-NEG involves sentential coordination and clausal ellipsis (Depiante 2000; Vicente 2006, a.o.). With respect to NEG-XP, I contend that it involves constituent negation, constituent coordination and no ellipsis at all. This paper thus provides novel data and arguments which support the view originally proposed in Bosque (1984). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the behaviors of tag questions in Chinese and proposes a unifying analysis involving empty CP/DP pro-forms and predication. It is found that there are universally two types of Tag questions – (i) the invariable type and (ii) the (modal) verbal type, which correspond to the question-types in Chinese syntax. Previous research by Culivocer (1992. English tag questions in Universal Grammar. Lingua 88. 193–226) analyzed English tag questions as a pro-IP structure that is bound by a previous sentence. However, in Chinese, two types of tag questions include both A-not-A form and particle form. Furthermore, both the two kinds of tag questions display syntactic predication between the tag and an empty subject pro. An abbreviated "yes-no question" is attached to empty CP/DP constituents in these constructions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the L2 acquisition of Spanish object drop by advanced learners whose L1s are English and Brazilian Portuguese, in order to assess effects on their knowledge of the interpretable and uninterpretable features conditioning the realization of object drop in their L2 Spanish. Object drop in Spanish is subject to semantic restrictions related to definiteness and specificity, as well as syntactic restrictions related to subjacency. Current debates about second language acquisition (SLA) have led to different hypotheses. On the one hand, the Interpretability Hypothesis/IH (Hawkins, Roger & Hajime Hattori. 2006. Interpretation of English multiple wh-questions by Japanese speakers: A missing uninterpretable feature account. Second Language Research 22. 269–301) claims that uninterpretable features will not be completely acquired. On the other hand, the Feature Reassembly Hypothesis/FRH (Hwang, Sun Hee & Donna Lardiere. 2013. Plural-marking in L2 Korean: A feature-based approach. Second Language Research 29. 57–86; Lardiere, Donna. 2009. Some thoughts on the contrastive analysis of features in second language acquisition. Second Language Research 25. 173–227) does not distinguish between interpretable and uninterpretable features for the purposes of SLA, arguing that the difficulty of the acquisition task hinges on the required amount of feature reassembly from the L1 to the L2 lexicon. Finally, the Full Transfer/Full Access (FT/FA) (Schwartz, Bonnie & Rex Sprouse. 1996. L2 cognitive states and the Full Transfer/Full Access model. Second Language Research 12. 40–72; Schwartz, Bonnie & Rex Sprouse. 2000. When syntactic theories evolve: Consequences for L2 acquisition research. In John Archibald (ed.), Second language acquisition and linguistic theory, 156–186. Malden, MA: Blackwell; White, Lydia. 2003. Second language acquisition and universal grammar. New York: Cambridge University Press) hypothesis treats SLA as equivalent to first-language acquisition, in terms of the potential for ultimate attainment. Both the FT/FA and the FRH are in principle compatible with full attainment in L2 acquisition. To assess these hypotheses, this study tests the L2 acquisition of the semantic and syntactic restrictions on Spanish object drop by learners whose L1 either lacks widespread object drop (English), or has regular object drop but realizes it differently from Spanish (Brazilian Portuguese). The Full Transfer/Full Access hypothesis seems to best explain the results of the two experiments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Saito, Mamoru. 2007. Notes on East Asian argument ellipsis. Language Research 43. 203–227 argues that argument ellipsis (AE) is available only in languages that lack phi-feature agreement. Accordingly, Japanese, but not English, permits AE. Under Saito's theoretical framework, this paper compares experimental data from L1 Japanese learners of L2 English (J-EFL) and L1 English learners of L2 Japanese (E-JFL). Given that sloppy and quantificational reading arises from an ellipsis operation (Hankamer, Jorge & Sag, Ivan. 1976. Deep and surface anaphora. Linguistic Inquiry 7. 391–426, Takahashi, Daiko. 2008. Noun phrase ellipsis. In Miyagawa, Shigeru & Saito, Mamoru (eds.), The Oxford handbook of Japanese linguistics, 394–422. Oxford: Oxford University Press, among others), we hypothesize that J-EFL learners, but not E-JFL learners, allow the reading in point with null arguments: AE is available only in the grammar of J-EFL learners, forced by the lack of phi-features in their L2 English grammar, due to L1 transfer. The results from our main study adopting a truth value judgement task supported the hypothesis. Based on our finding, we suggest that correct L2 phi-feature specification can ultimately be obtained when no phi-features are present in L1 (Ishino, Nao. 2012. Feature transfer and feature learning in universal grammar: A comparative study of the syntactic mechanism for second language acquisition. Doctoral dissertation: Kwansei Gakuin University, Miyamoto, Yoichi. 2012. Dainigengo-ni okeru hikenzaiteki-na yōso-ni kansuru Ichikōsatsu [A study on null elements in second language acquisition]. Paper presented at the 84th ELSJ annual general meeting: Senshu University, 26 May). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last few years, the number of corpora that can be used for language comparison has dramatically increased. The corpora are so diverse in their structure, size and annotation style, that a novice might not know where to start. The present paper charts this new and changing territory, providing a few landmarks, warning signs and safe paths. Although no corpus at present can replace the traditional type of typological data based on language description in reference grammars, corpora can help with diverse tasks, being particularly well suited for investigating probabilistic and gradient properties of languages and for discovering and interpreting cross-linguistic generalizations based on processing and communicative mechanisms. At the same time, the use of corpora for typological purposes has not only advantages and opportunities, but also numerous challenges. This paper also contains an empirical case study addressing two pertinent problems: the role of text types in language comparison and the problem of the word as a comparative concept. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Animate nouns can be divided into three groups: (1) prototypical human nouns, (2) non-prototypical human nouns, and (3) nouns denoting animals. Note that the size of different zones in the table does not reflect the real number of nouns in each class: most nouns are inanimate (column 4); columns 1 and 3 also correspond to relatively large groups of nouns, whereas the number of nouns in column 2 (if potential diminutives and augmentatives are not taken into account) is relatively small. In (12d, e, f), the controlling nouns are inanimate; the agreement prefix in the numeral repeats an initial fragment of the controlling noun; in (12e, f), this initial fragment is not a prefix but simply the initial consonant of the root. Landuma shows agreement in animacy (a clearly semantic factor) and, for inanimate nouns, I radical alliterative agreement i , a type of agreement conditioned by phonology: the first phoneme of the agreement prefix is conditioned by the first phoneme of the controlling noun. Keywords: agreement; Landuma; Mel; radical alliterative agreement EN agreement Landuma Mel radical alliterative agreement 83 118 36 09/13/22 20220501 NES 220501 1 Introduction The principal goal of this paper is to describe agreement in the Landuma language (Mel < Niger-Congo; see Section 3 for more information). [Extracted from the article]

The article discusses various reports published within the issue including one on language acquisition of children, one on language grammar, and one on oral communication.

This paper provides support for Ratliff's hypothesis of a highly unusual shift from labio-dorsal to lateral affricates in some Hmongic languages. It proposes that this shift, which results from a series of sound changes, constitutes evidence for positing a 'Tlowic' subgroup within Hmongic. In addition, it disproves attempts to use correspondences between Chinese labiovelars and Hmongic lateral affricates in borrowings as evidence to revise Chinese historical phonology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the relationship between habituals, including expressions of unbounded repetition, and verbal aspect. It is often assumed that past events that are conceptualized as habitually occurring or repeated in an unbounded way are inherently expressed by imperfective verb forms in languages with verbal aspect. A crosslinguistic analysis is provided of the relationship between habituals and the perfective and imperfective aspect, based on analysis of 36 languages from different language families. It is shown that there is a strong but certainly not absolute association between the imperfective and habitual constructions/expressions of unbounded repetition with past reference. With respect to perfective habituals, some crosslinguistic patterns can be found. It is further argued that any account of the specific aspectual behavior in habituals must take heed of language-specific properties of the aspectual-verbal structure, and that using general, abstract comparative concepts, such as 'perfective', 'imperfective', or 'habitual', is insufficient to explain aspectual usage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some languages tend to derive intransitive verbs from transitive verbs, while others tend to derive transitive verbs from intransitive verbs. In this paper, we will argue that Teotitlán Zapotec, an Otomanguean language spoken in the state of Oaxaca, Mexico, represents an extreme case of a transitivizing language: the transitive counterpart is almost always morphologically more complex, not only in the anticausative/causative alternations, but also in passive/active alternations, thus, an 'activizing' language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I discuss Kant's philosophy of grammar in order to argue that: (a) the formal analysis of language implies that there is a structural correspondence between logical and grammatical form; (b) there is a distinction between the sense in which logic is formal and the sense in which grammar is formal; (c) universal grammar descends from the system of categorial functions that are investigated in the transcendental analytic; (d) transcendental grammar implies that the universal form of human language has its ground in the universal structure of thought; (e) the concept of a grammatical norm is clarified once we combine the theory of universal grammar with how linguistic experience takes place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the structural and internal properties of adjectives in Mə̀dʉ́mbὰ, a Grassfield language spoken in the west region of Cameroon. It focuses on material inside the NP with a view towards establishing the structural positions of NP-internal constituents such as adjectives. I analyze adjectives and propose, following Scott, Gary-John. 1998. Stacked adjectival modification and the structure of nominal phrases. School of Oriental and African Studies Working Papers in Linguistics and Phonetics 8. 59–89, Scott, Gary-John. 2002. Stacked adjectival modification and the structure of nominal phrases. In Guglielmo Cinque (ed.), Functional structure in DP and IP: The cartography of syntactic structures, 91–120. New York: Oxford University Press that adjectives pattern within the DP just like adverbs pattern within the clause. In Mə̀dʉ́mbὰ, an adjective can be placed before the noun, after the noun or alternatively before and after the noun. Mə̀dʉ́mbὰ adjectives can further be distinguished as belonging to three classes: pure adjectives, verbal adjectives and nominal adjectives. In this paper I focus principally on the position in which attributive adjectives are generated inside the DP. However, issues relating to the internal structure of adjectives will also be mentioned. I show that Cinque, Guglielmo. 1994. On the evidence for partial N-movement in the Romance DP. In Guglielmo Cinque, Jan Koster, Jean-Yves Pollock, Luigi Rizzi & Raffaella Zanuttini (eds.), Paths towards universal grammar, 85–110. Georgetown: Georgetown University Press, Cinque, Guglielmo. 2003. The dual source of adjectives and XP-vs. N-raising in the Romance DP. Incontro annuale di dialettologia, Padua, 26, Cinque, Guglielmo. 2010. The syntax of adjectives: A comparative study. Linguistic Inquiry Monographs. Cambridge: MIT Press), and Laenzlinger, Christophe. 2005. French adjective ordering: Perspectives on DP-internal movement types. Lingua 115 views are both necessary to fully capture adjectival placement facts in Mə̀dʉ́mbὰ. Building on and refining the analysis given by these authors, I demonstrate that the type of mechanism involved in introducing adjectival modification correlates with the syntax of the adjective. On the proposal advanced here, depending on their syntactic distribution, adjectives are generated in specifier positions directly and NumP versus FP movement yields the surface structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lin (2017), according to the author, "offers a refutation of Chomsky's Universal Grammar (UG) from a novel perspective". Unfortunately, "novel" does not mean logical or valid. On the contrary, as I will show in this refutation of Lin's refutation, there is a profound and fundamental misunderstanding in Lin's interpretation of UG. His refutation only proves his superficial understanding of the questions raised and discussed, which nevertheless are worth discussing and explaining. I take each of Lin's arguments in turn and attempt to show why they are not well founded, either because of flaws in his argumentation or because of a careful consideration of the available empirical evidence. In the first section I show that Lin's refutation of UG is illogical in that he confuses UG as a theoretical construct and as a reality entity, which renders his own analysis self-contradictory. The second section aims to examine in detail the so-called novelty of Lin's refutation, proving that his refutation is unscientific. The third section offers a point-to-point refutation of his arguments presented in the third section of his paper. The fourth section furthermore points out several misunderstandings of previous studies against Chomsky and UG. The last section concludes the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present article aims at investigating the pro-drop phenomenon in L2 Spanish. The phenomenon of pro-drop or null subject is a typological feature of some languages, which are characterized by an implicit subject in cases of topic continuity. More specifically, behaviour regarding subject (dis)continuity in Spanish differs from French. This paper will offer a contrastive analysis on subject realisation by French learners of L2 Spanish compared to L1 Spanish speakers. So, the goal of this pilot study is to see if a different functioning in pro-drop in the mother tongue also influences the L2. The study is based upon a written description task presented to the two groups of participants: the experimental group of French mother tongue L2 Spanish language learners and the control group of Spanish native speakers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In research on intra-sentential pronominal anaphora resolution in null subject languages, it has been argued that null pronouns tend to be biased towards subject antecedents, whereas overt pronouns tend to prefer object antecedents, as predicted by Carminati's 'Position of the Antecedent Hypothesis'. However, these studies have mainly focused on only one of the two possible clause orders (main-subordinate or subordinate-main), which have not been overtly contrasted. This paper investigates the effects of clause order on the interpretation of third-person subject pronouns in globally ambiguous intra-sentential contexts by 49 native speakers of Spanish. The results of an acceptability judgment task explicitly comparing both clause orders indicate that relative clause order is a key factor affecting the interpretation of pronouns: while a preference of overt pronouns for object antecedents holds across clause orders, null pronouns show a bias towards subject antecedents only in subordinate-main sequences. These findings refine the Position of the Antecedent Hypothesis predictions by restricting them to subordinate-main complex sentences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Peirce's semiotics is a formal doctrine of signs. As such, semiotics "would be concerned, in part, to determine the conditions for counting anything as true" (Liszka 1996: 2). Sometimes, semiotics is reduced to its first branch, speculative grammar, which concerns the classification of signs. However, critic and methodeutic are fundamental to guarantee the accuracy of the semiotic process. Critic gives "the conditions which determine the reasoning to be secure" (c.1902, CP 2.1) and methodeutic is the "study of the necessary conditions of the transmission of meaning by signs from mind to mind" (c.1897, CP 1.444). When we observe the system of sixty-six sign classes, we can find a method that provides confidence in the reasoning process. That means we can find classes of signs that represent critic and methodeutic in this system. The set of symbolic signs are the core of this process. In this paper, I will examine the interpretants of symbolic signs in order to describe the production of interpretants that increase the level of confidence in reasoning, contributing to the evolution of thought. The system of sixty-six sign classes provides a more complex set of interpretants, which might show the relation between the three branches of semiotics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we take up the challenge of exploring the relationship between markedness and frequency in phonotactics. The study is based on word-initial and word-final consonant clusters in Polish and English. The aim of this study is threefold. First, we establish logarithmic frequencies for word-initial and final consonant clusters compiled from two resources, a dictionary (or paradigm) and a written corpus. Second, we examine the preferability status of clusters in three frequency bands (high, mid, low) in terms of two phonotactic principles, i.e. sonority and Net Auditory Distance. Finally, we test the correlations between degrees of markedness and frequency. The present paper extends our previous studies on comparative Polish-English phonotactics, where markedness and frequency constitute the core of the analysis. The study shows that there is no relationship between cluster markedness and its frequency. As to frequencies, Polish and English differ from each other with respect to the distribution of clusters in the dictionary list, while the disproportions are neutralized in usage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes some jokes in Thai, which is an isolating language. The focus of this paper is on a linguistic construction, which has high potential for structural ambiguities in Thai, that is, noun compound. The result of this study shows that they are a good resource for constructing two types of ambiguities in Thai jokes: case relation ambiguity, which is the ambiguity of surface realization of case relation, in which a noun or noun phrase can have more than one semantic role, and class ambiguity, which is an ambiguity that causes one word class to be mistaken for another class. As researches on puns in non-inflectional languages are rarely talked of in relation to others, this work might shed light on the study of puns from a new perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Considering the interaction between grammar and pragmatics, the present paper aims to thoroughly investigate the role played by encyclopedic information in the lexicon and in pragmatic construction of utterance meaning. With the help of a series of subtle analyses of Hungarian and Russian data, several types of encyclopedic information are identified both in encoded lexical-semantic representations of word senses and inferential mechanisms of utterance interpretation. It is demonstrated that representations and mechanisms are mutually connected to each other. More precisely, on the one hand, requirements on representations are raised by a considerable number of possible utterance meanings, and, on the other, special mechanisms are needed to construct them from lexical-semantic representations. It is the attempt to account for such mutual connections that forms a novel and promising conception of lexical pragmatics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to examine some aspects of the development of what is often referred to as nonlinear phonology and to set recent research in this area into a fuller historical perspective. Nonlinear approaches to representation have played a guiding role in the discussion of theoretical issues in recent phonological theory, reflecting the view that a correctly-chosen representational system provides a necessary basis for advances in the study of phonological patterns and their interrelations with phonetics, grammar, and lexicon.

This paper aims to explore the main constructions showing a covert encoding of Path of motion in Classical Greek (5th–4th century BC). Based on a corpus study of five texts belonging to different literary genres, it applies the theoretical frameworks and conceptual tools of contemporary linguistic approaches, such as the semantic typology of motion events and Construction Grammar, to the data from an ancient language, in order to address the non-compositional expression of Path. The results of the analysis reveal that, in addition to the overt morphosyntactic encoding of Path information, Ancient Greek resorts to more implicit patterns, in which coercion, meaning extension and inference play a crucial role. Furthermore, as opposed to traditional views on motion expression, this study shows that the encoding of spatial meaning is rarely committed to a single lexical or morphological tool within the clause, but rather it distributes across different linguistic units and results from their interaction with one another. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes a hitherto unnoticed semantic change process in Chinese, in which lexical (adjectival) materials develop into superlative operators, and subsequently turn into definiteness markers. Our analysis focuses on the semantic factors that underlie this meaning change trajectory. Specifically, we argue that frequent association of gradable adjectives with superlative implication leads to pragmatic strengthening in which the superlative implication conventionally enters the literal meaning. Furthermore, we show that a further change in the extension of the nominal part of superlative phrases leads to a maximality reanalysis that is compatible with the semantics of definite NPs. This paper contributes to the burgeoning field of applying truth-conditional semantics to theories of grammaticalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the emergence and demise of verbal person-number indexes on the basis of a sample of 310 languages. First, qualitative evidence is provided to show that there are different ways in which indexes may emerge, and that independent anaphoric pronouns are not the only possible source. Second, quantitative evidence is provided against the claim that indexes tend to demise via phonological attrition in the course of time. A considerable degree of demise is not a universally likely process, but rather a major restructuring process that requires additional – areal – triggers in order to come about. Thus, 92% of the languages of my sample do not show any strong tendency toward losing their indexes, and the degree of demise of their indexes is persistently low when compared to the proto-forms. This is despite the fact that indexes constantly change over time, and the phonetic shape found in the proto-languages is never faithfully preserved in the modern languages. Finally, those few languages that exhibit a relatively high degree of demise are not randomly distributed across the world, but are clustered in the following areas: Northwestern Europe, Eastern South East Asia with Oceania and, possibly, Mid Africa as well Northern South America. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates a number of restrictions on word order in a Null Subject Language (NSL) such as Modern Greek (MGr). These restrictions are related to the interaction between situation aspect of the predicate (stative vs. eventive) and viewpoint aspect of the predicate (Perfective vs. imperfective, cf. Smith 1991). The paper argues that these restrictions are linked to the discourse-sensitivity that word order shows in MGr. Hence, they are significant in that they show how discourse notions such as ‘focus-topic’ are reflected in the manner in which phrases are structured in a sentence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1961, Simon Belasco published a paper entitled "The Role of Transformation Grammar and Tagmemics in the Analysis of an Old French Text." He attempts to show in the paper that transformational analysis is "cumbersome" in the case of Old French. It is the aim of this article to contradict Belasco's arguments. The author seeks to present that Belasco's transformational sketch of Old French is called transformational quite erroneously. The author then presents another sketch of reasonable adequacy.

This paper considers the relationship between research using systemic functional linguistics and research of the kind referred to as corpus linguistics, specifically in a study of ideology in a popular science text. The paper argues that ideas in SFL and corpus linguistics may be regarded as parallel (register), divergent (grammar and phraseology), and complementary (lexis and taxonomy). Following a review of research in these areas, the paper presents a case study of evaluation of status in a popular science book ( The Rough Guide to Evolution). 'Status' draws on the grammatical concept of projection and on a set of lexis and phraseologies. The interaction between grammatical choice and lexical choice is quantified. It is argued that particular combinations of lexis and grammar are preferred when knowledge is presented as in the process of formation, and other combinations are preferred when knowledge is presented as in a state of completion. The case study reveals that concepts drawn from a systemic functional view of grammar and from a corpus linguistic view of phraseology are usefully combined in studying ideology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an overview of phonological relationships that are "intermediate" between contrast and allophony. As has been observed for many years, such intermediate relationships occur widely in the world's languages, yet they are often simply relegated to being exceptional cases or ignored in linguistic analyses. While there is a set of criteria that can be used to define relationships, these criteria may conflict with one another or be inadequate in certain cases. Thus, relationships may be intermediate for a number of reasons, including issues with: the concept of predictability of distribution; the existence of foreign or specialized strata of a language; variability and gradience; frequency; theory-internal classifications; and phonetic factors. Each of these is discussed in turn, with examples from the literature. In addition to this basic typology of inter-mediate phonological relationships, the paper also lays out a number of different kinds of approaches that have been taken to accommodate intermediate relation-ships in the phonological grammar and summarizes the issues to be resolved in future work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper concerns a particular grammatical construction, extraposition, and its use for assessments at points of transition between activities and topics by speakers of Finnish in ordinary conversation. A basic assumption taken here is that "recurrent clausal constructions of a language are social action formats for that language" (Thompson 2006), and that grammatical constructions such as clause types are learned and therefore routinized responses to certain types of interactional contingencies, and, at the same time, emergent from the current local context (Hopper 1987; Helasvuo 2001). The paper combines the two central perspectives developed in this issue, sequential design and dialogicality, with the study of grammar-in-interaction. It shows that the grammatical form of the Finnish extraposition construction emerges from its use by speakers for the creation of inter subjectivity through reproduction of prior talk and for the projection of stance taking to follow. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This very interesting paper investigates differences between copula verbs on the one hand, and ‘truly eventive’ verbs, on the other, discussing a number of important topics, including the effect of word order on modification relations, and the difference between internal and external event modification. The core claim of the paper is that states and eventualities have a different logical structure, and that the differences between them follow from this. Rather than commenting directly on the arguments made in the paper, I am going to concentrate in my response on this issue, trying to show that statives and eventualities are more similar than Maienborn assumes, and suggesting that the differences between them might be explained without postulating different logical structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this short review I address certain issues and predictions that arise from the position papers by Erteschik-Shir, and by Fox and Pesetsky. The two proposed analyses are radically different, so I have made no attempt to relate them in terms of their properties. In section 1 I discuss some underlying issues in the architecture of grammar assumed by Erteschik-Shir, and in section 2 I evaluate some of the predictions generated by Fox and Pesetsky’s approach. In section 3 I draw some more general conclusions about what consequences Object Shift shows us concerning the organization of grammar, and the nature of grammatical principles. While my remarks mainly address problems or drawbacks that I see with the proposals in the two position papers, they both offer a stimulating account of OS and explore the wider implications of the natures of their enterprises, and deserve fuller consideration beyond the present venue, consideration that they will surely receive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the phenomenon of second language acquisition, within Principles & Parameters Theory and the research area of Metrical Phonology. It (re)interprets earlier core literature addressing the issue of how second language learners acquire the stress patterns of a target language, if it is a language with parameter settings different from those of their native language. Under the view of ‘biological maturation’, parameter resetting may be argued to be simply impossible, especially in those cases in which the acquisition of the second language takes place ­ as it often does ­ ‘after puberty’. Against this background, this paper presents a review of the evidence for parameter resetting for metrical systems, put forward in the recent literature. This review indicates that, despite more optimistic claims, the bulk of this literature fails to demonstrate that resetting may occur. This comment is developed in the first half of this paper, and applies to influential studies on speakers of Polish, Hungarian and Cairene Arabic having English as a second language. In the second half of the paper we present a reinterpretation of data obtained by Pater (1993, 1997) for speakers of Quebec French again with L2 English. We bring to bear on this author's results the hypothesis that Universal Grammar is more than an unstructured pool of initially ‘unset’ parameters. In addition to the commonly assumed default values, it provides, following Dresher and Kaye (1990) and Dresher (1999), ‘cues’ and a ‘learning path’, which the learner uses to find his way through the data maze. In our interpretation of Pater's results they show that his subjects had been able to at least take a first step on the cue based learning path, resetting the parameter for quantity sensitivity to English QS. The final section comments on our review from the perspectives of learnability and methodology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes an alternative analysis of the thematic structure of existential clauses. In the context of Halliday's systemic-functional account, existentials provide an interesting area for study because the non-referential there throws up theoretical and other problems which suggest the need for an alternative perspective on the way the theme-theme notions are presently understood. A message development angle is proposed in this paper, one which claims that theme and theme are not merely linked in sequential terms but in terms of acceptability, forming the basis of the principle of acceptable message development (AMD). The flout-AMD procedure turns out to be a useful way of delimiting the theme of existential clauses. More crucially, the characterisation of theme and rheme in terms of message development also permits us to pin down these elusive notions in an intuitively appealing way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper assesses the productivity of adverbial derivation with { -ment} in Maltese with regard to its source { -mente} in Italian. In addition to a comparison of formation rules and restrictions in both languages, a traditional measure of productivity, Baayen 's P, is compared between Italian and Maltese, using a variable corpus approach suited for further cross-linguistic application. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to establish the hierarchy of 'finiteness' in Polish based on 'morphological' considerations relating to syncretism and alternations, which were taken to be the interface between the lexicon and syntax. The paper focuses on parasitic stem syncretism within the paradigm of eight verb forms in Polish. The eight forms exhibit numerous stem syncretism patterns where one stem forms a 'parasitic' base for the formation of another verb. The major point is to argue for a scale of degrees of finiteness rather than any categorical two-way distinction between finite and non-finite forms. The paper suggests various new topics for further research, e. g. how person hierarchy relates to the finiteness hierarchy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I argue that contrary to commonly held belief the -ing affix in nominal gerund phrases (NGPs) in English does not function as a nominalizing element. The primary evidence for the argument comes from the failure of the V-ing element in NGPs to take nominal inflections (FuIlum 1991), unlike nominalized verbs heading phrasal nominalizations in languages with dedicated nominalizing affixes (such as Korean), which behave morphologically as nominals. However, in order to account for the fact that (i) V-big, when used in lexical deverbal nominalizations, behaves morphologically as a noun, and (ii) the same element is used in both lexical and phrasal nominalizations (ALe. NGPs), I propose that both types of nominalizations are zero-derived from projections of the present participle form of the verb - the difference being that zero derivation applies LEXICALLY to V° in lexical deverbal nominalizations while it applies PRASALLY to Vn in NGPs. The proposal for English receives support from a similar analysis for lexical and phrasal nominalizations in Spanish, both of which are based on the infinitive. The paper also provides an account of the aforementioned morphological difference between the deverbal elements in English and Spanish nominalizations on the one hand, where nominalizations are based on an inflectionalform of verbs (VFORM), and those in languages with dedicated nominalizers, such as Korean, on the other. The analysis proposed in the paper presupposes a view of morphosyntactic interaction in which morphological combinatoric operations such as affixation and zero derivation apply in both the lexicon and syntax. To the extent that it succeeds in answering descriptive and conceptual questions about the behavior of lexical and phrasal nominalizations in different languages, the analysis proposed here provides support for this particular view of morphosyntactic interaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with several related issues concerning English words formed with certain prefixes. First, it explores the relationships and constraints on full lexemes and semantic units smaller than lexemes. Traditionally, lexical semantics has concentrated on lexemes, devoting relatively little attention to semantic units that are smaller or larger than words. Secondly, among morphologists, there is a controversy concerning the nature of affixes; namely, whether they are ordinary signs. The third topic, and the one that most of the paper deals with is a description of the semantics of English prefixes. Most English prefixes have two interesting properties, they are iterative and they combine freely. Finally, a recent paper by Samuel J. Keyser and Roeper on the prefix re- is discussed.

This paper explores how adults acquire a new lexical item, and how they integrate it into their overall lexical knowledge. It suggests that the findings are relevant both to lexical semantics, and 10 studies of the mental lexicon. In particular, the paper examines how the word wimp and its derivatives (mainly wimpish, wimpishness, and wimp out) have become widely-known in British English in a time-span of around ten years. Wimp-usage predated entry into standard dictionaries, so dictionary consultation is unlikely to have played an important role. This paper therefore analyses a corpus of over 500 occurrences of wimp-words from British newspapers 1990–3, mainly from The Times and Sunday Times, on the assumption that word learning can occur from reading. and that newspaper usage overlaps with ‘normal’ usage. It shows that over 80% of wimp-word tokens contain information on their meaning in the immediate surrounding text. This involved one or more of the following: reference to the sex of the wimp (usually male), collocation with a word indicating feebleness (e.g. ‘paihetic wimp’), contrast with a ‘strong’ non-wimp (e.g. ‘From wimps to warriors’), overt negative evaluation (e.g. ‘reviles as a wimp’). covert negative evaluation (e.g. ‘Who needs an enclosed cockpit? Wimps’). Finally, it argues that ‘the wimp effect’ reinforces the idea that a desirable male is one who is a belligerent action-man, and so promotes and sustains cultural stereotypes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes the papers by Bernard Comrie and Renaat Declerck on the treatment of tense in indirect speech. Both adopt contrasting positions on the appropriate way to account for the past tense in the subordinate clause. Both papers, however, omit certain crucial types of examples which purportedly show that neither account on its own can cover the full range of data and that there is a need for some combination of semantic and syntactic account.

This article talks about compensatory lengthening (CL) in defense of the concept "Mora." The purpose of this paper is to show that at least some traditional historical linguists have offered a phonetic explanation for CL in terms of the concept "mora" and that this explanation is superior to that of D & A, in that it is able to account for phenomena which the latter is inherently unable to cover. Finally, at the end of the paper, the author considers the implications of the findings for phonology, not only for already published treatments of CL, but for other conceivable versions as well.

This paper presents an investigation into the diachrony of the parenthetical uses of the mental state verb denken 'think' in Dutch. It reviews the literature on the emergence of parentheticals, which predominantly focuses on English. Supported by a systematic diachronic corpus study, it argues that the facts of Dutch (in particular: its word order properties, which are quite different from those in English) are not obviously in line with the most important traditional views (including the well know hypothesis that the parentheticals are the result of a reduction of the full complementing use of the relevant verbs). Instead, the data offer arguments for an alternative hypothesis: the parentheticals may originate in a combination of two main clauses, of the kind present in direct quote expressions (as in I thought: Oh no, he is doing it again). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the results of the first study of the acquisition of Accusative clitics in Romanian by Romanian–Hungarian bilingual children. Our data show that the acquisition route is similar to the one in a monolingual setting. An interesting observation which arises from this study is that two structures which are superficially similar in the two languages favour the occurrence of non-target constructions, unavailable in either of the two languages. They occur under bilingual conditions via non-language-specific mechanisms, such as comparison and analogy. This is why their use, age of onset, and end of influence are subject to individual variation. Their analysis reveals that even structures which are the result of non-language-specific mechanisms, when drawing on morpho-syntactic knowledge, can fall within the range of constructions made available by Universal Grammar. The same superficial similarity seems to boost the acquisition of clitics by Romanian–Hungarian bilinguals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has been argued in the literature that morpho-syntactically agents are universally more prominent than patients. At first sight, this claim seems to be challenged by so called symmetrical voice languages because these languages show no preference for agents to be the privileged syntactic argument (PSA). They do thus not display an obvious syntactic prominence of agents. However, this paper will argue that even symmetrical voice languages show instances of agent prominence. These instances are not reflected in a default linking of agents to PSA function, but rather in a slightly more subtle manner: First, agents always function as binders to reflexive pronouns, regardless of position or grammatical function. Second, agent properties like volitionality, ability and control are reflected in verbal morphology, even in undergoer voice construction in which the agent is not the PSA. This is the case in potentive, stative, and causative construction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The following paper presents the structure of a language teaching inspection of the topic of capitalization applied within sentences in the secondary education level, which comprises both a quantitative and a qualitative research part. The emphasis of this paper, in respect to its content, does not lie in the discussion of each and every result, but concentrates on the question of how the quantitative and qualitative results can be correlated to each other, and on what types of complementary information can be deducted from it from a language teaching point of view. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Both lexico-syntactic analysis and comparative study of the content of the texts attributed to the supposed Council of Elvira reveal that this canonical series is the result of the compilation and modification, before the mid-6th century, of precepts from various times and places. After an introduction dedicated to the textual transmission of these canons and the methodologies applied to their study, the paper then explains the characteristics of the parts from which the extensive pseudo-Iliberritan list we have today was put together, mentioning which parts were later additions. Next, the paper focuses on disciplinary practices, demonstrating the non-unitary nature of the catalogue and providing important indications regarding the time parameters. The paper also looks at some of the conspicuous themes dealt with in the series of decrees. When these decrees are compared against the extant pool of documents, they continue to provide important details on the dates and provide a deeper understanding of various statements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

SMIT (2007) discusses the possibility that Hengeveld's parts-of-speech systems of types 1-4, when viewed diachronically, represent stages of a dynamic development with intermediate types as transition stages. In the present paper, grammar efficiency is calculated for each stage of this development. The results are analogous to those observed in other syntactic changes. This confirms the plausibility of the suggested diachronic development [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]