Studies in Language. International Journal sponsored by the Foundation “Foundations of Language” - Online First

Dogon pseudo-subjects are bare meteorological, temporal-environmental, and partonymic nouns of low referentiality/specificity that occur in fixed noun-verb collocations. The pseudo-subject controls the choice of verb in all cases, but it fails to behave like a true subject in linear position, in a quotative-subject construction, or in pronominal-subject agreement. The pseudo-subject is the sole nominal in these meteorological and temporal collocations, but in partonymic collocations it co-occurs with a true subject denoting the possessor-experiencer. The latter has all of the clear subject properties except controlling the choice of verb. Pseudo-subjects have some similarities with, but are distinct from, a range of typologically familiar phenomena including impersonal subjects, direct objects, possessums stranded by possessor raising, East Asian-style second subjects or post-topic subjects, incorporated nouns, and adverbial adjuncts. They can be classified as pseudo-incorporated nominals if this category is broad enough to include subject-like as well as object-like nominals. The relevant constructions are easily modelled in construction grammars, but not in arboreal syntax.

This paper addresses the development of the Chinese V de O cleft construction, and how the cleft constructional network was developed in the history of Chinese. It is argued that V de O clefts emerged in the 13th century which was about 300 years later than VP de clefts. A key factor in their development is the use in Middle Chinese of relative clause in post-copula position. We argue that the emergence of V de O clefts also involved analogization to the extant VP de clefts as well as deferred equatives. Once V de O clefts occurred, they were recruited into the cleft network as a subschema, resulting in the schematic network being augmented and expanded. This study is a contribution to the developing field of constructionalization by making more explicit the way how nodes are created in a constructional network and how the network is reorganized and expanded.

The present paper examines a hypothetical correlation between language endangerment and the simplification of nominal and verbal inflections. After contrasting the complexities exhibited by two endangered languages (Eastern Huasteca Nahuatl and Wymysorys) with the complexities of their non-endangered predecessors (Older Nahuatl and Middle High German, respectively), the authors conclude that the endangerment-simplification entanglement cannot be demonstrated. First, although Wymysorys (a more endangered code) is slightly more simplified than Nahuatl (a less endangered code) as far as the nominal domain is concerned, this relationship is reversed in the verbal domain. Second, simplifying tendencies are not radical, with a number of innovative complexifying processes being also present. Third, when attested, simplification constitutes part of a “natural” language evolution rather than a process resulting from the endangerment.

This paper aims at investigating the semantics of nominal reduplication cross-linguistically. Nominal reduplication is treated as an iconic morphological device expressing functions that have something to do with plurality. Nevertheless, in the languages of the world, other types of functions are attested as well, which seem to pivot around different notions like conceptual similarity, heterogeneity, combinations of them, or even possession. Based on a large-scale cross-linguistic analysis, we provide a typology of nominal reduplication considering the range of semantic functions and the type of reduplicative patterns. We argue that the attested variation clearly points to a common semantic core underlying the various functions, and this core can be identified in some modification of the degree and type of referentiality. Finally, the attested tendencies and correlations may shed new light on the role of iconicity in explaining the connection between reduplicated nouns and their functions.

The paper at hand deals with morphological marking of information structural relations from the perspective of North-Western Siberian languages. Given many items (morphemes as well as particles and clitics) which have been analyzed as markers of information structure in these languages, I try to discuss whether they indeed mark information structural relations or whether this supposed marking is rather a side effect of other functions expressed. In order to develop criteria for decision marking, I rely on the concepts of sufficiency as well as necessity and sufficient as well as necessary conditions, respectively. Additionally, I argue that the latter can be arranged hierarchically with respect to their reliability for the evaluation of potential markers of information structure, being intertwined with functional and transparency coding principles.

The present study is concerned with complex sentences known as concessive conditionals from a functional-typological perspective. It examines the coding strategies used in the protasis of the three subtypes of concessive conditionals – viz. scalar, alternative, and universal concessive conditionals – in a global sample of 17 languages, thus complementing a previous study of their formal properties in European languages ( Haspelmath & König 1998 ). The results include some coding strategies which are unattested in European languages and suggest that Haspelmath & König’s division between languages which mark the three subtypes uniformly and languages which mark them differentially is too simplistic, there being at least four overall marking patterns rather than two. Although these results are only preliminary in nature, they do look promising for future research, which should be based on a larger and more strictly stratified sample.