Studies in Language. International Journal sponsored by the Foundation “Foundations of Language” - Volume 33, Issue 3, 2009

This paper investigates the preferred argument structure in Tsou, and the extent to which such a preference pattern is shaped by the interaction among mention type, valency role and activation status. Two significant findings emerge from the data. Strikingly, Ss and Os in discourse are not the most preferred loci for introducing new information. In addition, lexical NPs in Tsou are not a dispreferred form for encoding given information, and pronominals are restricted to occurring only with specific valency roles. Since lexical As are shown to occur with a higher proportion than those in other languages, they cannot strictly be said to be avoided in Tsou discourse. The morphosyntactic properties in Tsou are argued to add a critical fourth dimension to the three-way interaction of mention type, valency role and activation status to shape the final form of preferred argument structure in discourse.

Perfects of the type I have my dinner eaten are a well-known feature of Irish English dialects. They can be linked to a functionally similar construction in Irish, of the type tá mo dhinneár ite agam (literally “is my dinner eaten at-me”), but also to earlier constructions in Standard English. The issue has sometimes been treated as a competition between two seemingly mutually exclusive explanations, a “substrate” and a “retentionist” hypothesis.
This dichotomy can be overcome on the basis of a model of “contact-induced grammaticalisation” (Heine/Kuteva 2005): an existing source structure in the receiving language (English) expands along normal paths, but under a triggering effect of a contact language (Irish), ultimately leading to an apparent duplication of a foreign model.
Empirical data comes from historical 18th/19th century corpus material. It provides evidence about the chronology and sociolinguistic setting in which the relevant changes took place. It supports a scenario where both Irish-English bilingualism and exposure to the English source constructions played crucial roles.

Taboo terms in certain English expressions and constructions are intensifiers, which have spread as a unit over time to various syntactic positions (Hoeksema & Napoli 2008). Here we look at the pragmatic coherence that has allowed such semantically disparate terms to be grammaticalized as a unit. We examine language using taboo terms in English with comparisons to Dutch, Italian, and other languages. The terms studied here regard religion, disease, sex, and bodily excretions. They exhibit common characteristics with cross-linguistic variation.

This paper gives clear synchronic evidence for the origin of serial verb constructions (SVCs) in Emerillon, a Tupi-Guarani language. SVCs in that language result from a gerundive construction after the loss of both a subordinator and an indexation pattern specific to dependent clauses. After a short review of the general literature on the origins of SVCs and their similarity to converbs (of which Tupi-Guarani gerundives may be considered a subtype), the author gives a detailed account of the Emerillon SVCs. Strong arguments then show that Emerillon serial verbs (superficially comparable to independent verbs) originate from a ‘deranked’ dependent clause. The paper ends with some discussions on clause linkage, comparing more specifically SVCs and converbs on the morphological, syntactic and functional levels.

The predicative possessive construction in Amharic exhibits a mismatch in grammatical coding: the possessor receives object marking on the verb while the overt NP exhibits phenomena associated with nominative case in Amharic. This article investigates the mismatch in light of its historical development as attested in archaisms found in proverbs and old Biblical texts, examines both overt and covert syntactic properties of the possessor today, and also considers evidence from other related constructions. The possessive construction developed from the existential construction where the possessor corresponded to a locative/recipient and today shows evidence of developing subject status.