Studies in Language. International Journal sponsored by the Foundation “Foundations of Language” - Volume 20, Issue 1, 1996

Various kinds of motivation, such as psychological and physiological, affect and determine the forms of an utterance. Often observed consistent forms of sarcastic expression are likewise configured by sarcastic motivations. These forms, though still reflecting their original sarcastic motivation, progressively become emancipated from that motivation and become increasingly rigid and arbitrary as they undergo repetition. The relationships between motivation, this process of "grammaticalization", and arbitrary linguistic signs are observable in various forms of Japanese sarcastic expression. These forms are grouped by each specific major characteristic: 1) exaggeration 2) alienation 3) informal speech 4) stylized intonation 5) glottal stop

It has been claimed by Hasegawa, Yoshimura, Nishigauchi, Kikuchi, Saito and Watanabe, among others, that Japanese observes subjacency in relative clause formation, question formation, topicalization, comparative deletion (all non-overt operator movements), PP-topicalization, and scrambling (overt movements). In this paper I present counterexamples to each of these claims and argue that an aboutness condition on topic-comment and focus-comment constructions not only better explains the data but also explains the fact that subjects are usually easier to relativize than non-subjects, the fact that NP-topicalization is more free than PP-topicalization and the fact that there is pressure for a "list" interpretation in multiple wh-questions.

In this paper we first summarise how linguists have treated the notions of topic and comment in the context of Chinese sentence structure. We then review how a number of Chinese scholars have analysed sentence structure in Chinese. We then propose that certain sentences in MSC traditionally analysed as following a topic — comment sequence, particularly those with sentence initial adverbial clauses are, in fact, exhibiting the principle of modifier — modified sequence rather than the topic — comment sequence.

The article examines the distribution and formal realization of Subject and Object agreement markers in different word order types on the basis of a sample of 237 languages. Special attention is paid to the genetic and areal stratification of agreement markers and the impact of these two parameters on the relationship between agreement and word order type emerging from this investigation as opposed to those of previous studies, especially that of Hawkins & Gilligan (1988) and Nichols (1992). The relationship between agreement and word order type is considered in the light of the currently entertained functional explanations for the presence of agreement which are put into question by the high incidence of agreement in V3 languages.The formal realization of the agreement markers (their morphological form and also order relative to each other) in different word order types is investigated relative to the Universal Suffixing Preference, the Head Ordering Principle and the Diachronic Syntax Hypothesis. It is argued that though due to genetic and areal differences in the formal realization of agreement markers, none of the above three hypotheses concerning the relationship between the formal realization of affixal morphemes and word order type provide an adequate account of the cross-linguistic data, the Diachronic Syntax Hypothesis fares better than the other two, particularly in regard to the formal reflexes of object agreement markers.By comparing the results stemming from our sample with those of other samples we seek to draw attention to how areal biases in samples may affect cross-linguistic generalizations. In doing so we hope to highlight the need for developing a sound sampling methodology.

This study examines the spontaneous oral narrative of three native speakers of Hebrew for overall clause structure in terms of number and type of arguments per clause, following DuBois' (1985) theory of Preferred Argument Structure. The results indicate that there exists a preferred shape for narrative clauses in Hebrew and that it strongly parallels that which has been found in the ergative Mayan language, Sacapultec, upon which Du Bois' study is based. As Hebrew is a nominative-accusative language, the results point to the universality of pragmatic-cognitive factors and information flow in discourse.