Studies in Language. International Journal sponsored by the Foundation “Foundations of Language” - Volume 25, Issue 3, 2001

In the earliest attested stage of the Akkadian language, relative clauses were introduced by a pronoun which agreed in case with the head noun in the main clause, rather than with the relativized NP in the relative clause. Such a system is extremely rare across languages, is demonstrably dysfunctional, and has been termed ‘inherently disfavoured’. This article attempts to explain how Akkadian acquired this rogue relative construction, and how the language then managed to get rid of it. I argue that this construction was only an unstable way-station in the emergence of a new relative clause in the language. The final section of the article examines the few parallels from other languages to the Old Akkadian system.

This paper presents results of a survey of contour tones in 105 languages with lexical tone. Results indicate an implicational hierarchy of tone bearing ability, whereby long vowels are most likely to carry contour tones, followed by syllables containing a short vowel plus a sonorant coda, followed by syllables containing a short vowel plus an obstruent coda, followed by open syllables containing a short vowel. It is claimed that this tonal hierarchy is phonetically motivated: syllable types which are phonetically better suited to carrying tonal information are more likely to support contour tones. Languages whose tone distributions superficially appear to fall outside the range of variation predicted on phonetic grounds are demonstrated, upon closer examination, to be unexceptional in their behavior.

This paper investigates the correlation between the form and function of yes/no interrogatives in spoken French. Thestandard language possesses three ways of constructing such interrogatives: verb-clitic inversion; prefixation of a declarativesentence with the interrogative particle est-ce que; and a rising intonation pattern superposed on a declarative structure.The choice between the three has traditionally been described in terms of register differences. This paper argues, however, thatthe three constructions differ not only on the pragmatic level, but also on the semantic level, and that the choice between themcan be explained, and largely predicted, in terms of three interactional parameters, namely the accessibility of the informationcontained in the interrogative; participation structure; and considerations of ‘face’.

Members of the MPI for Psycholinguistics are researching the interrelationship between language, cognition and theconceptualization of space in various languages. Research results show that there are three frames of spatial reference, theabsolute, the relative, and the intrinsic frame of reference. This study first presents results of this research in general and thendiscusses the results for Kilivila. Speakers of this Austronesian language prefer the intrinsic frame of reference for the locationof objects with respect to each other in a given spatial configuration. But they prefer an absolute frame of reference system inreferring to the spatial orientation of objects in a given spatial configuration. Moreover, the hypothesis is confirmed thatlanguages seem to influence the choice and the kind of conceptual parameters their speakers use to solve non-verbal problemswithin the domain of space.

The paper seeks to demonstrate that grammatically relevant distinctions of alienable vs. inalienable possessionare not completely uncommon in modern Indo-European languages of Europe. A detailed analysis of pronominal attributivepossession in presentday Faroese shows that there is a clearly defined system at work determined by semantic, syntactic, andpragmatic factors. The interplay of these factors is described on the basis of a corpus analysis of modern Faroese prose. It is arguedthat the presence or absence of the alienability-inalienability distinction in languages is not exclusively a structurally motivatedphenomenon as suggested by Nichols (1992). The authors claim that alienability/inalienability in grammar is, instead, semanti-cally motivated.

This paper deals with the relationship between the formal properties and a specific meaning associated with a class ofJapanese sentences that have the verbal gerund and iru ‘be’ (i.e., -te iru). These sentences arecharacterized by the -te iru verbal morphology on a dynamic verb and a non-volitional subject that does not participatein the event denoted by the verb. The particular stative interpretation induced by these sentences cannot be attributed to themeaning of the individual lexical items. The paper argues instead that the source of the stative meaning is better explained by aconstructional view, that the meaning is attributed to the construction itself.