Studies in Language. International Journal sponsored by the Foundation “Foundations of Language” - Volume 18, Issue 1, 1994

In a number of publications, John Anderson and his colleagues have developed the notion of Structural Analogy — the assumption that structural principles generalise across levels of language — as a meta-theoretical principle of linguistics. In this paper some recent works which appear to criticise the notion are considered, and it is concluded that they fail to invalidate it. It is suggested, however, that some work by Anderson and his colleagues in Dependency Phonology appears to misuse the notion to mask differing content for the same structural labels. It is suggested that the notion of Structural Analogy may not be a scientific notion at all, and should not be used to make predictions about linguistic structures.

In my paper a universal aspect theory is presented which is based on the integration of the various types of states of affairs into the textual web of descriptions of situations and changes in situations. The states of affairs are thereby grouped according to their boundary characteristics. The grammatical meaning of the verbal aspect interacts with the lexical meaning of a given verb in group-specific ways, so that the kind of interaction in the case of a given aspect opposition can be used in order to classify verbs. In addition to the Slavic aspect opposition of perfective vs. imperfective, the aspectual systems of English, Modern Greek and the Romance languages are taken into consideration. The interaction between aspect and tense as well as the interaction within the aspect dimension itself, which plays a role if a language has more than one aspect category, is also discussed. The perfective imperfect and the imperfective aorist of Bulgarian are given as examples of problematic cases, along with the functions of the ing-form of the perfect in English. Generally the problem of the coming together of more than one aspect gram-meme in one verb form is solved by means of a hierarchization, which can be deduced from the particular interaction meaning in question. The grouping of verbs into aspect-sensitive semantic classes is only stable in the centre of the classes, but we find language-specific peculiarities on their peripheries. In addition, regroupings are also possible in the course of the development of a language.

In this paper, I will examine the syntactic and semantic properties of a Latin correlative construction, the so-called comparative conditional. I will investigate the extent to which this construction inherits its formal and interpretive features from constructions needed independently in the grammar. While the syntactic properties of the comparative conditional are highly motivated, the semantics of the construction is idiosyncratic: there is evidence to indicate that the construction is polysemous, having two related scalar interpretations.

This paper investigates the current grammaticalization of the Spanish Present Perfect, an anterior grammaticalizing to perfective, in the dialect of Alicante, Spain. The evidence offered provides insight into this grammaticalization process, and into the development of hodiernal tenses (cf. Dahl 1984). This change results from inferences which extend the functions of the anterior, and also from the gram's absorption of the temporal context with which it normally occurs. Furthermore, the grammaticalization process under study does not involve metaphorical change; it extends the meaning of the anterior form from the speaker's subjective inner state to the external described situation. Such a change thus challenges the views of both Heine et al. (1991a; 1991b), and also Traugott and König (1991).

Modern Yiddish has two subordinating conjunctions introducing complement clauses, az and wos, the latter being an innovation, functionally inspired by Slavic. Our study deals with the distribution of the two conjunctions and with the factors influencing that distribution. We observe that wos is confined to a semantically marked subgroup of factive complement clauses, namely that of factives-emotives.

This paper investigates the clause-chaining mechanism exhibited in Japanese. Clause-chaining is characterized by a string of clauses with non-finite (or partly non-finite) verb forms followed by a clause with a finite verb. The basic property of clause-chaining devices is to conjoin two or more clauses in a (more or less) chronological order. In this paper, the discourse function of the clause-chaining devices, te, to and zero-conjunction, is interpreted in terms of the notion of action/event continuity. First, general properties of the clause-chaining devices, including various degrees of clause integration, are discussed. Then, the notion of action/event continuity in discourse is introduced, and a hypothesis that the clause-chaining devices in Japanese are coding action/event continuity or discontinuity is advanced. The hypothesis will be tested by examining continuity of referent, aspect, time, and location. Firstly, this paper studies switch-reference properties of the clause-chaining devices along with their correlations with subject marking devices (wa, ga and zero anaphora). As a corollary of the hypothesis, I offer a functional explanation of a well-known phenomenon: that generally only the subject marking device ga appears in a subordinate clause. Later, the paper will investigate the significance of aspectual coding in clause-chaining. Finally, it will investigate how referential, aspectual, temporal, and locational continuity correlate with the overall discourse coherence of action/event continuity.