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Studies in Language. International Journal sponsored by the Foundation “Foundations of Language” - Online First
Online First articles are the published Version of Record, made available as soon as they are finalized and formatted. They are in general accessible to current subscribers, until they have been included in an issue, which is accessible to subscribers to the relevant volume
1 - 20 of 23 results
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Exploring source/goal asymmetries in spontaneous and caused motion expression in Yuhup
Author(s): Ana María Ospina-Bozzi and Caterine Cita-TrianaAvailable online: 12 January 2021More LessAbstractThe aim of this paper is to explore the asymmetry in the expression of Goal and Source in spontaneous and caused motion events in Yuhup (Makú/Naduhup family). We examine the asymmetries at the semantic, morphological and syntactic levels. As this language does not have a specialized system of nominal morphology that distinguishes the ground constituents representing the Source or the Goal of a movement, an asymmetrical treatment of Source and Goal is not evident. However, verbal semantics make more distinctions for Goal than for Source, ground constituents are more frequent in the expression of motion to(wards) the Goal than the one (away) from the Source, and structural variety and complexity differentiate between Source and Goal expression. Also, the Goal bias is stronger in the descriptions of caused motion than in the ones of spontaneous motion. The data were collected using tools designed for elicitation of spontaneous and caused motion events.
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A nonstandard type of affix reordering
Author(s): Natalia StoynovaAvailable online: 08 January 2021More LessAbstractThis paper deals with the restrictive (limitative) marker kə̄n ‘only’ in Ulcha (Southern Tungusic). This marker has nontrivial positional features: it can attach before inflectional suffixes (as a derivational affix) or after them (as an enclitic). One might see the process of affix reordering described in Haspelmath (1993) as “externalization of inflection”, when a former clitic becomes a derivational affix. However, there is evidence that the uses of kə̄n after inflection are innovative as compared to those before inflection, not vice versa, and this direction of diachronic development is very unexpected. In this paper, I propose an explanation for this nonstandard reordering pattern and show that in fact it has the same motivation and the same mechanisms as previously reported types of affix reordering.
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Typology of coding patterns and frequency effects of antipassives
Author(s): Ilja A. Seržant, Katarzyna Maria Janic, Darja Dermaku and Oneg Ben DrorAvailable online: 06 January 2021More LessAbstractFrequency asymmetries within a minimal grammatical domain create offline associations that languages tend to exploit for a more efficient encoding. We explore cross-linguistic coding patterns of antipassives. We first argue that antipassive markers tend to have properties of derivational markers. Secondly, we show that antipassives are considerably rarer than the basic transitive constructions. The lower frequency correlates with the length of coding: antipassives tend to be coded with longer forms than basic transitive verbs. Thirdly, we explore frequency associations of different lexical input types and find that it is the rare input types that tend to select the antipassive, if the marking is differential, while the frequent ones correlate with the unmarked verb (A-lability). We, furthermore, show that the rarer argument types and argument scenarios correlate stronger with antipassives than the more frequent argument types and scenarios.
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Expression of spontaneous motion events in Stieng
Author(s): Noëllie BonAvailable online: 05 January 2021More LessAbstractThis study investigates the expression of Source and Goal in spontaneous motion events in Stieng (Cambodia, Vietnam). The analysis is based on data collected in Cambodia, using the Trajectoire video kit ( Ishibashi et al. 2006 ). Regardless the type of Ground, Stieng data includes a wide range of constructions in describing motion events, combining lexical and grammatical tools (verbs and adnominals). While morphosyntactic resources available to express Source and Goal are formally similar, Stieng data shows that the Goal tends to be privileged compared to the Source, at the semantic, morphosyntactic, and syntactic levels. However, Source and Goal tend to be symmetrical with respect to the semantic distinctions of the verbs, and potential (a)symmetries with respect to the discourse level remain to be clarified. Instances of asymmetries in favor of the Goal tend to support previous studies that postulated a tendency for languages to privilege the Goal in the linguistic expression.
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Asymmetries in Path expression in Ye’kwana
Author(s): Natalia Cáceres ArandiaAvailable online: 22 December 2020More LessAbstractYe’kwana is an Amazonian language of the Cariban family spoken by a group of about 8,700 people in Venezuela and Brazil. This paper explores the expression of Path in spontaneous motion events based on spoken data collected for the documentation and description of the language including data collected with the Trajectoire elicitation material ( Ishibashi et al. 2006 ).
In Ye’kwana, Path is mainly expressed by postpositional and adverbial stems: there is a rich inventory of 80 postpositions all compatible with locative and either allative or perlative uses and 29 spatial adverbs, most of deictic nature. Source is expressed with a dedicated suffix (-nno) which combines with almost all the spatial postpositions and adverbs. The data show that the asymmetries in the expression of Path are not only found between Source and Goal but also need to include the expression of Medium for which the language has dedicated forms.
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Source-Goal asymmetries in Ese Ejja
Author(s): Marine VuillermetAvailable online: 22 December 2020More LessAbstractEse Ejja (Takanan) is an endangered language spoken in the Bolivian and Peruvian lowlands. The paper examines the expression of Source and Goal in this Amazonian language and focuses on three types of Source-Goal asymmetries. The first asymmetry concerns the higher number of Goal adnominals than of Source adnominals. Linked to this morphological asymmetry, the second asymmetry is semantic: Goal adnominals display a [± human] distinction absent from Source markers. In addition, the two Goal adnominals are dedicated while the only adnominal that encodes Source may also encode Median. In fact, the unambiguous (and most frequent expression) of Source requires a biclausal strategy, which accounts for the third type of asymmetry, at the syntactic level. The discussion is based on firsthand data including both spontaneous and elicited data, mostly obtained with Trajectoire, a visual methodological tool designed to collect Path expression.
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Source/Goal (a)symmetry
Author(s): Benjamin Fagard and Anetta KopeckaAvailable online: 21 December 2020More LessAbstractThis paper compares the expression of Source and Goal in German and Polish, on the basis of descriptions elicited with a series of video clips. As satellite-framed languages ( Talmy 1985 , 2000 ), both German and Polish mainly rely on grammatical morphemes to encode Path of motion with respect to Source and Goal. Nevertheless, despite this shared typological feature, these languages also display fine morphosyntactic and semantic differences. Our study reveals that the expression of Source and Goal is more asymmetrical in German than in Polish, both in types of linguistic resources and in semantic distinctions. We show that German speakers tend to combine Path satellites with Path verbs – including both deictic satellites and deictic verbs – more frequently in Source-oriented events, depicting them with finer semantic distinctions than Goal-oriented events. In the expression of the Ground, however, they tend to make finer distinctions in the expression of Goals as compared to Sources, by using a greater variety of prepositions. Polish speakers, by contrast, tend to express Source and Goal in a more symmetrical fashion. These cross-linguistic differences are discussed in the light of language-specific characteristics and their role in the expression – symmetrical or asymmetrical – of Source and Goal.
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Source-Goal (a)symmetry in Romanian
Author(s): Cristiana PapahagiAvailable online: 21 December 2020More LessAbstractAccording to Talmy (2000) , a motion event has four conceptual components: Figure, Motion, Path and one or more Grounds. Path can be further decomposed into Source, Medium and Goal (or: departure, passing and arrival). In many languages, intuitive pairs of motion events such as come/go seem to indicate that Source and Goal are equally able to build the image of the Path. However, numerous studies have pointed to an asymmetry in favor of Goal in motion descriptions. Using the corpus elicited during the Trajectoire project, this paper explores Source-Goal asymmetries in Romanian; this concerns adposition inventories (which are symmetrical for Source and Goal), adposition-verb combinations, and the attention payed by speakers to Source viz. Goal-oriented motion. The paper postulates possible semantic causes of Source-Goal asymmetry not identified in previous literature, such as the bounded nature of the Ground, and motion being associated with a particular human activity.
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Linguistic expressions of Goal, Source and Place in Polynesian languages
Author(s): Claire Moyse-FaurieAvailable online: 14 December 2020More LessAbstractIn Polynesian languages, as in many other Oceanic languages, the linguistic expression of Source and Goal is mainly express by (i) demonstratives and directional modifiers, which combine deictic and spatial information (toward speaker, addressee or third person, upwards, downwards, transverse axe), (ii) locative static and dynamic prepositions which may combine with body-part terms to introduce local and landmark nouns, or place names, and (iii) posture and motion verbs. We examine the occurrences of the Source and Goal prepositions on the one hand, and the directional modifiers on the other, taking into account their compatibilities, the spatial coding they convey, the position of the participants, and the verb meaning. In Polynesian languages, Goal and Source are of similar complexity, though in different ways, and a variety of resources can express fine-grained distinctions for Source vs. Goal depending on the position of the figure.
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Äiwoo wâtu and the typology of comparatives
Author(s): Åshild NæssAvailable online: 14 December 2020More LessAbstractThis paper examines a comparative construction in the Oceanic language Äiwoo and argues that it differs from those known in the typological literature on comparatives on two counts. It is similar to a so-called ‘exceed’ comparative in involving a morpheme meaning ‘go far’; but unlike canonical exceed comparatives, the construction is intransitive, and the standard of comparison is expressed as an oblique. Moreover, the standard is indicated not only by this oblique phrase but also by a directional marker on the verb, in an extension of the frequent use of directionals in Äiwoo to indicate peripheral participants. This construction thus, on the one hand, expands the established typology of comparative constructions; and on the other, shows that the use of directional morphemes to indicate peripheral participants, otherwise attested e.g. for recipients of give verbs, may extend to the standard in comparative constructions, pointing to an avenue for further typological exploration.
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Light-headed relative clauses in Teramano
Author(s): Iara Mantenuto and Ivano CaponigroAvailable online: 09 December 2020More LessAbstractWe investigate an unstudied, rich component of the relative clause system in Teramano, one of the Upper Southern Italian languages. We focus on light-headed relative clauses – relative clauses that lack a full nominal head and are introduced by only a Determiner-like or pronominal “light head”. We also briefly describe headed relative clauses in Teramano since the morphosyntactic features they exhibit are relevant for the investigation of light-headed relative clauses. Last, we highlight commonalities and differences between light-headed relative clauses in Teramano and Italian. Our paper provides the first systematic in-depth description of light-headed relative clauses in an Upper Southern Italian language that we are aware of, contributes to the knowledge of Teramano, the study of light-headed relative clauses crosslinguistically, and the ongoing investigation of microvariation among Italian and Italian languages.
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The development of perfectivity in Khamti Shan
Author(s): Douglas InglisAvailable online: 02 December 2020More LessAbstractKhamti Shan features the marking of perfectivity comprised of three clause-final particles, one perfective and two imperfectives, each emerging from the basic verbs, yau¹ ‘finish’, u⁵ ‘live’, and nam⁵ ‘(be) extensive’. While the perfective category is straightforward, the imperfective category shows an unusual bifurcation, the first imperfective marker accommodating continuatives and habituals and the second imperfective marker working exclusively with the nominal predicate construction, clauses of potentiality (hortatives, futures), and the progressive construction. All three particles of perfectivity develop from lexical sources, with the pathways ‘finish’ > completive > perfective and ‘live’ > continuous/progressive > imperfective being well-documented across languages. The pathway ‘extensive’ > imperfective, on the other hand, appears unique to Khamti Shan. I motivate the usage of these perfectivity particles (primarily) with a semantic-cognitive analysis.
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A typology of depiction marking
Author(s): Kimi AkitaAvailable online: 30 November 2020More LessAbstractIdeophones and direct quotations are “depictive” signs, or vivid re-enactments of what they signify. Pursuing the typology of linguistic depiction, the current study proposes a three-way classification of depiction marking strategies: framing, foregrounding, and backgrounding. While well-known formal characteristics of ideophones, such as prosodic prominence and quotative constructions, illustrate framing and foregrounding, this paper discusses low-pitched quotative indexes in Japanese as backgrounding-type depiction markers. These quotatives immediately follow ideophones and exclamatory quotations and set them off. They also underlie the exceptional pitch pattern of heavy syllables in ideophones.
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Plains Cree animacy–inanimacy hierarchy
Author(s): Jan van Eijk and Vincent ColletteAvailable online: 17 November 2020More LessAbstractLike all Algonquian languages, Cree distributes its stock of nouns over two classes: animate and inanimate. While this distinction is firmly based on different agreement rules, and is to a large extent (but not completely) backed up by semantic differences, Cree nouns can also be put on a 4-level hierarchy scale, depending on their morphological valence with regard to whether or not they allow markers for the plural, obviative, vocative/honorific, absentative or which one of the two types of locatives. In addition, in a few recorded cases an inanimate noun may be reclassified, or “promoted”, as an animate noun, but rarely vice versa. Although this paper concentrates on Plains Cree, and examples are from that dialect unless otherwise noted, some observations are also made on (in)animacy in East Cree and in a wider Algonquian context.
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Differential object marking in P’orhépecha
Author(s): Alejandra Capistrán GarzaAvailable online: 12 November 2020More LessAbstractThis paper analyzes Differential Object Marking in P’orhépecha, which involves split case and fluid case alternations. Although this system is sensitive to Animacy and Definiteness, I will show that prominence on these scales does not account for the distribution of flagging. In fact, in P’orhépecha, the expected prominence effects of these scales are overridden by certain grammatical properties of the NPs, which explains the obligatory vs. forbidden flagging. The fluid pattern is of special interest, since even though there is evidence that flagging is used as a device to codify definiteness/specificity, higher and lower ranked objects on the definiteness scale may be (un)flagged. This peculiar behavior is explained by two facts: (a) definite/specific descriptions may, and in some instances must, be unflagged when the context of use guarantees the intended referential interpretation of the NP; and (b) lower ranked objects may be flagged only when their referents exhibit discourse salience.
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Prolegomena to a theory of chorophorics
Author(s): Francesco-Alessio UrsiniAvailable online: 03 November 2020More LessAbstractThe goal of this paper is to offer a theoretical analysis of chorophorics, a recently proposed pro-formal category that can refer either to “places”, or to locations as arguments of spatial relations. It is suggested that chorophorics are a common category that displays heterogeneous morphological properties but homogeneous syntactic distribution and semantic interpretation. Evidence supporting this argument is offered via eight genetically unrelated languages. The evidence shows that at least three different types of chorophorics can be individuated across languages: chorophorics as a sub-type of prepositions, of case-marked nouns or of postpositions. A formal account is offered, based on a Lexical Syntax analysis. The account shows that chorophorics share a similar distribution with prepositional phrases and receive their “place” sense from their distribution in discourse contexts.
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Morphological structure can escape reduction effects from mass admixture of second language speakers
Author(s): Manuel Widmer, Mathias Jenny, Wolfgang Behr and Balthasar BickelAvailable online: 02 November 2020More LessAbstractMorphological complexity is expected to decrease under mass admixture from adult second language speakers. While this has been chiefly shown for morphological richness, an unresolved question is whether the effect extends to aspects of morphological boundedness. Here we report a case study of Sino-Tibetan verbs, contrasting verbal expressions of two languages with very large (Chinese, Burmese) and of two languages with very small (Bunan, Chintang) numbers of second language speakers. We find that while the amount of second language speakers accounts for differences in the range and number of inflectional categories (degrees of synthesis), it does not affect the way in which morphological constituents are bound together, reflecting fortification through a mix of diachronically stable and universally preferred patterns. This calls for theoretical models that narrow down the range of changes that are driven by second language speaker admixture, and for extensive empirical testing on a global scale.
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Caused-Motion and Caused-Position
Author(s): Ian Joo and Meichun LiuAvailable online: 27 October 2020More LessAbstractAccording to Goldberg (1995) , placement verbs (such as put) are instantiated in the Caused-Motion Construction. Rohde (2001) , however, argued that placement verbs in fact occur in a different construction, which she names the Caused-Position Construction, whose semantic value is not ‘cause to move’ but rather ‘cause to be positioned’. The present paper redefines and justifies the postulation of Caused-Position Construction. The Caused-Position Construction is compatible with not only placement verbs but also a variety of other verbs, such as verbs of creation (write or build) or certain stative verbs (want or need), many of which also occur in the Locative Inversion construction. Further, a similar distinction between Caused-Motion and Caused-Position can be attested in Mandarin as well, which suggests that the distinction between two patterns of spatial causation may not be idiosyncratically confined to the English language but motivated by the general patterns of human cognition.
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Additive particle uses in Hungarian
Author(s): Kata BaloghAvailable online: 22 October 2020More LessAbstractIn this paper, we investigate empirical data that raise challenging issues with respect to focus sensitivity of the Hungarian additive particle is ‘also, too’. In Hungarian, the additive particle is attached to a constituent, and the is-phrase cannot occupy the structural focus position. This raises the issue how to capture the focus sensitivity of is. We propose a primarily pragmatic, context-based analysis of the Hungarian additive particle, where the particle associates with the pragmatic focus ( Lambrecht 1994 ) determined on basis of the immediate question under discussion ( Roberts 2012 ). Important evidence for this claim is that the Hungarian additive particle can take different semantic associates, corresponding to the pragmatic focus of the sentence. After discussing the Hungarian data, we will present the analysis in the framework of Role and Reference Grammar ( Van Valin & LaPolla 1997 ; Van Valin 2005 ). To capture Hungarian and English data in a uniform way, important extensions of the framework will be proposed.
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Tonal morphology in Sama Nubri
Author(s): Cathryn DonohueAvailable online: 19 October 2020More LessAbstractThis paper reports on the Tibeto-Burman language, Nubri, of the high Himalayan region of northern central Nepal. Specifically, data is presented to illustrate the use of tone to mark two morphological features in the language: the use of a H tone suffix to mark the genitive case, and the use of a H tone prefix to mark an increase in transitivity. This is the first account of these phenomena in Nubri and an analysis is presented before contextualizing the phenomena in a typological perspective.
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Where Have all the Adjectives Gone?
Author(s): R.M.W. Dixon
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Quotation in Spoken English
Author(s): Patricia Mayes
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Evidentiality and Epistemic Space
Author(s): T. Givón
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Notes on Agentivity and Causation
Author(s): Scott DeLancey
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On contact-induced grammaticalization
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