Studies in Language. International Journal sponsored by the Foundation “Foundations of Language” - Volume 46, Issue 2, 2022

Truth markers commonly evolve into intensifiers (Heine & Kuteva 2002), but we here argue that this shift is only indirect, and a counter-loosening phase necessarily mediates between truth marking and intensification. Counter-looseners instruct the addressee to avoid (or rather, constrain) the very natural interpretative process of broadening, whereby the speaker-intended concept would have been taken as a loosened, “more or less” interpretation of the meaning of the modified expression (Carston 2002). We provide a diachronic analysis for Hebrew mamash ‘really’, which supports our point, and we reinterpret diachronic analyses of other truth markers in order to show that they too underwent a counter-loosening phase before turning intensifiers. Finally, we briefly distinguish between a counter-loosening mediated intensifier evolution (for truth markers, particularizers and maximizers) and a direct evolutionary path into intensification for originally upscaling expressions (extreme scalar modifiers and augmenters).

Previous work on colour lexicons focussed on universal patterns in their structure and evolution. We collected new colour naming data in Japanese and three under-described Ryukyuan languages (Amami, Miyako and Yaeyama) to investigate semantic variation and change in the colour lexicon of related languages in a modern context. We found several new colour terms (e.g., midori and guriin for ‘green’) in the lexicon of Ryukyuan speakers, apparently resulting from contact with Standard Japanese and English. A comparison of our data with historical data suggests that modern Ryukyuan colour systems are closer to modern Japanese than they are to their historic pasts. However, we also found that modern-day Ryukyuan languages are more similar to each other than they are to Japanese. These findings show the scope of semantic changes that can occur through outside influence and highlight the need for fresh empirical data in the study of semantics in related languages.

This paper discusses the coding of Goals and Sources from a cross-linguistic perspective and proposes a formal-functional typology based on how animacy and direction affect their coding. The proposed typology comprises three types; Goal vs. Source-languages, animacy and direction-languages, and variable types. The paper shows that the coding of Goals and Sources is primarily conditioned by their semantic roles (by the direction of transfer/motion), but animacy makes an important contribution in some languages as well. Moreover, the paper will also show that animacy affects the coding of Goals more drastically than it affects the coding of Sources. Goals and Sources differ from each other also in that Goals are more often coded by cases, while Sources are usually more peripheral participants and they are thus often marked by adpositions. One of the proposed reasons for this is found in the goal-oriented nature of humans.

As one of the most robust typological findings, the suffixing preference captures the empirical observation that grammatical categories are more likely to be coded by suffixes than by prefixes. The goal of this contribution is to explore the effects that this asymmetry may have on the inflectional paradigms of the languages of the world. Three empirical issues are addressed: do languages with either possessive prefixes or suffixes and languages with both possessive prefixes and suffixes differ in their suffix-to-prefix ratio? Do prefixes and suffixes differ in the number of cases that they code? Do prefixes and suffixes differ in their probability of explicit singular in addition to plural marking? The answer to all three questions is in the affirmative. These effects are understood in terms of a response to an inherent disadvantage of prefixes. Morphological systems reduce the processing difficulty incurred by prefixes by assigning them fewer tasks (i.e. number of cases), by limiting their occurrence in highly competitive contexts (i.e. inconsistent possessive-affix coding) and by creating prefix paradigms, which are conceived of as protective structures in which the individual members strengthen one another. The general claim these three effects lead up to is that morphological systems develop “repair strategies” which reduce the processing cost involved in using inherently disadvantaged units. These repair strategies shape morphological structure.

Although SAY-complementizers have been extensively documented, the question of the forms used in this function and their specific properties has received less attention. The paper focuses on the complementizer tenine (an action nominalization of SAY), which is used with communicative reception verbs (‘hear’, ‘read’, etc.), in a dialect of Chuvash (Turkic). The main puzzle concerns the difference between tenine and the more general complementizer teze (the same-subject converb of SAY) with respect to the controller of shifted first person (namely, teze, but not tenine, disallows non-subject controllers). An account of this restriction based on three independent language-specific constraints is offered. An alternative account is discussed whereby tenine (and teze) are synchronically non-finite forms of SAY. The findings highlight the importance of the form of the complementizer as well as of the choice of controller for shifted 1st person in SAY-based complementation and extend the typological parameters of indexical shift.

Western Austronesian symmetrical voice languages exhibit at least two basic transitive constructions. This paper investigates what factors influence speakers’ choice of one voice over another in natural spoken discourse. It provides a thorough assessment of all factors that have been proposed to be relevant for voice choice in the literature on symmetrical voice systems. Using the Indonesian language Totoli as a case study, we show that unlike in languages with asymmetrical voice alternations, argument-related properties such as topicality, activation state, animacy, etc. do not play a major role in voice choice in symmetrical voice languages. We argue that for symmetrical voice alternations other factor groups are relevant than for asymmetrical voice alternations and that the clear structural differences between the two alternation types are mirrored in functional differences.