Current Issues in Linguistic Theory (vols. 1–335, 1975–2015)

This volume presents selected papers from the 5th International Cognitive Linguistics Conference within the area of discourse analysis.

The topics addressed include pronominal anaphora in English and Russian narratives, the subtleties of the definite article in English and Spanish, the use of discourse particles in Dutch, and the function of prosody as a marker of text structure in spoken narratives.

The papers illustrate the potential of the emerging cognitive linguistic paradigm to provide fresh, revealing insights in the study of discourse.

The present volume consists of nine articles dealing with the role of the constituent ‘phonological word’ (or ‘prosodic word’) in various typologically diverse languages. These languages and their respective families subsume Indo-European (Dutch, German, English, European Portuguese), Bantu (SiSwati, KiNande), Algonquian (Cree), Siouan (Dakota), and Salishan (Lushootseed). One contribution examines the phonological word in a sign language.

The theoretical issues dealt with in the book include: evidence for the phonological word (e.g. rules, phonotactics, syllabification, stress patterns), the connection between morphosyntactic and prosodic structure (e.g. alignment phenomena in Optimality Theory), and the relationship between the phonological word and other prosodic constituents (e.g. the prosodic representation of clitics).The volume will be of interest to all linguists and advanced students of linguistics working on Prosodic Phonology, phonology–morphology and phonology–syntax interface and Optimality Theory.

All of the articles in this volume focus on the interaction of form and meaning. Most of them are developed under the principal thesis of the Minimalist Program. These works show that the theoretical linguistic trend is to discover semantic aspects which are assumed to have visible syntactic repercussions through morphosyntactic and morphosemantic features.

The brain is the organ of knowledge and organizer of our abilities, our means of recognizing a face in a crowd, of conversing about anything we experience or imagine, of forming thoughts and developing ideas, of instantly understanding words coming rapidly in conversation. How does it manage all this? Does it represent information in symbols or in the connectivity of a vast network?Pathways of the Brain builds a theory to answer such questions. Using a top-down modeling strategy, it charts relationships among words and other products of the brain’s linguistic system to reveal properties of that system. Going beyond earlier linguistics, it sets three plausibility requirements for a valid neurocognitive theory: operational, developmental, and neurological: It must show how the linguistic system can operate for speaking and understanding, how it can be learned by children, and how it is implemented in neural structures. Unlike theories that leave linguistics isolated from science, it builds a bridge to biology.

Of interest to anthropologists, linguists, neurologists, neuroscientists, philosophers, psychologists, and any thoughtful person interested in language or the brain.

The author is Agnes Cullen Arnold Professor Emeritus of Linguistics and Cognitive Sciences.

The formal aspects of non-concatenative morphology have received considerable attention in recent years, but the diachronic dimensions of such systems have been little explored. The current work applies a modern methodological and theoretical framework to a classic problem in Arabic and Semitic historical linguistics: the highly allomorphic system of ‘stem-internal’ or ‘broken’ plurals. It shows that widely-accepted views regarding the historical development of this system are untenable and offers a new hypothesis.
The first chapter lays out a methodology for comparative-historical research in morphology. The next two chapters present an analysis of Arabic morphology based on contemporary formal linguistic approaches, and applies this analysis to the noun plural system. Chapter Four shows that neither semantic shift nor ablaut-type sound change account adequately for the data. The fifth chapter offers a systematic comparison of the plural systems of Semitic languages, incorporating much new research on the languages of South Arabia and Ethiopia. Chapter Six proposes a new reconstruction.

This monograph aims to close the gap in our knowledge of the nature and pace of grammatical change during the formative period of today’s Indo-Aryan languages. During the 6th-12th c. the gradual erosion of the synthetic morphology of Old Indo-Aryan resulted ultimately in the remodelling of its syntax in the direction of the New Indo-Aryan analytic type.

This study concentrates on the emergence and development of the ergative construction in terms of the passive-to-ergative reanalysis and the co-existence of the ergative construction with the old and new analytic passive constructions. Special attention is paid to the actuation problem seen as the tug of war between conservative and eliminative forces during their development. Other chapters deal with the evolution of grammatical and lexical aspect, causativization, modality, absolute constructions and subordination.

This study is based on a wealth of new data gleaned from original poetic works in Apabhraṃśa (by Svayaṃbhādeva, Puṣpadanta, Haribhadra, Somaprabha et al.). It contains sections dealing with descriptive techniques of Medieval Indian grammarians (esp. Hemacandra). All the Sanskrit, Prakrit and Apabhraṃśa examples are consistently parsed and translated.

The opus is cast in the theoretical framework of Functional Grammar of the Prague and Amsterdam Schools. It should be of particular interest to scholars and students of Indo-Aryan and general historical linguistics, especially those interested in the issues of morphosyntactic change and typology in their sociohistorical setting.

Fusing insights from cognitive grammar, systemic-functional grammar and Government & Binding, the present work elaborates and refines Davidse’s view that the English grammar of lexical causatives is governed by the transitive and ergative paradigms, two distinct models of causation (Davidse 1991, 1992). However, on the basis of extensive synchronic and diachronic data on verbs of killing (e.g. kill, execute, choke or drown), it is shown that ‘transitivity’ and ‘ergativity’ are not absolute but prototypical characteristics of verbs which may be overruled by the semantics of the construal in which they occur. The variable transitive or ergative character of the verbs reveals the complex interaction between the semantics of the construction and that of the verb. The diachronic analyses further illustrate how in the course of time verbs may change their paradigmatic properties, either temporarily (e.g. the ergativization of strangle, throttle and smother) or permanently (e.g. the ‘causativization’ of starve or the partial transitivization of abort). The analyses show that these changes are semantically well-motivated and further illustrate the cognitive reality of the two causative models. The work explores the experiential basis of the prototypical paradigmatic behaviour of verbs (e.g. the ergative predilection of the SUFFOCATE verbs). In addition, it attempts to shed more light on the semantics and restrictions of certain constructions, such as the medio-passive, the derivation of adjectives in –able, or the derivation of agentive nominals in –er.

The “Nostratic” hypothesis — positing a common linguistic ancestor for a wide range of language families including Indo-European, Uralic, and Afro-Asiatic — has produced one of the most enduring and often intense controversies in linguistics. Overwhelmingly, though, both supporters of the hypothesis and those who reject it have not dealt directly with one another’s arguments. This volume brings together selected representatives of both sides, as well as a number of agnostic historical linguists, with the aim of examining the evidence for this particular hypothesis in the context of distant genetic relationships generally.

The volume contains discussion of variants of the Nostratic hypothesis (A. Bomhard; J. Greenberg; A. Manaster-Ramer, K. Baertsch, K. Adams, & P. Michalove), the mathematics of chance in determining the relationships posited for Nostratic (R. Oswalt; D. Ringe), and the evidence from particular branches posited in Nostratic (L. Campbell; C. Hodge; A. Vovin), with responses and additional discussion by E. Hamp, B. Vine, W. Baxter and B. Comrie.

This volume contains selected papers from the 27th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL-27), which was held at the University of California, Irvine, on February 20-22, 1997. The 22 papers deal with current issues in linguistic theory as they can be illuminated by the close analysis and comparative study of Romance languages. A majority of the articles tackles topics in syntax and semantics; the rest is divided among topics in language acquisition, phonology, morphology, and sociolinguistics. Among the well-represented Romance languages examined are (Old) French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese.