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This paper provides an overview of suppletion phenomena in Zapotec. As established by previous cross-linguistic studies of suppletion, most suppletion phenomena in Zapotec occur in the verb system. Nominal suppletion is attested in the possessed forms of selected nouns, such as tortilla, clothing, house, and pueblo, and the numeral system includes suppletive forms of the numeral first. Verbal suppletion types include suppletion based on aspect, mood, person/number of the subject, person of the oblique object, and valence. Each category of nominal and verbal suppletion is represented by a small number of strongly suppletive forms that appear to be etymologically distinct and a larger number of weakly suppletive forms that appear to derive from morphological processes that have ceased to be productive. By documenting suppletion phenomena across the Zapotec family, the present study aims to contribute both to the comparative Zapotec linguistics and to the empirical basis of the typological and theoretical investigation of suppletion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes TAM marking in the nominal domain in Chorote (Mataguayo or Matacoan; Argentina and Paraguay). In this language, some of the verbal TAM markers also occur in the nominal domain, and at least three of them can have scope over only the nominal but not over the predicate of the clause: the distant past pe(j), the irrealis -a and the conjectural (epistemic or evidential) -t'ey. The phenomenon is analogous to nominal TAM as described for many languages by but the difference is that Chorote markers are clitics or independent words and not nominal inflectional morphemes. Regarding the distant past marker, we argue that it codifies tense and not aspect or any other category; however, it is syntactically a modifier of the verb or the noun and not a functional category Tense like the one found in the verbal domain of European languages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The syntactic correlates of the diachronic process of subjectification within grammatical constructions, unlike that of discourse markers and connectives, do not include a cancellation of syntax. This can make the identification of subjectification within some grammaticalization processes difficult to identify. Pairs of purportedly synonymous constructions, such as continuative aspectual markers in Spanish, offer an ideal site to explore how certain linguistic contexts, through frequency, can come to be associated with more or less subjectivity. Six forms are included in this study: the phasal adverbs aún 'still' and todavía 'still' and the 'phasal periphrastic' (Laca 2000) constructions including (semi-)auxiliaries: seguir 'follow' + V ndo and continuar 'continue' for positive polarity, and the corresponding seguir sin 'follow without' + INF and continuar sin 'continue without' + INF for negative polarity. In a variationist study of 481 occurrences of these forms from 1760-1860 in Corpus Diacrónico del Español (CORDE) and 2762 occurrences from 1975-1980 from Corpus de Referencia del Español Actual (CREA), it is found that the difference between these 'synonyms' is linked, on the one hand, to contextual elements indicative of subjectivity, and on the other, to register. Furthermore, it is suggested that variation due to differing levels of subjectivity and register variation may share some characteristic patterns in the distribution of grammatical features. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Standard models of aspectual classes focus on event decompositional or featural distinctions. However, such classifications often over- or under-generate, and do not necessarily capture the temporal properties aspectual classifications are based on. I develop a predictive model of aspectual classes based on theories of scalar change, taking two independently motivated properties of scales as key: (a) how specific the predicate is about the theme's final state on the scale and (b) the scale's mereological complexity. The resultant classification accommodates the standard Vendler dynamic classes, plus additional classes that have proved difficult for prior approaches, and makes novel predictions about the relation of aspectual class and argument realization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several languages have verbal tense, aspect and mood (TAM) and nonfiniteness markers that originate from spatial cases and adpositions. However, the evidence for the gradual loss of the original transparent and systematic correspondences is scarce. Due to the lack of analysis of rich and transparent verbal case systems in modern languages, the essence of the relationships between TAM and locative meanings is still a matter of debate, as in case of the progressive and the absentive. The Finnic dialect continuum provides unique data for clarifying the unresolved issues. Finnic parades an elaborate system of nonfinites with the properties of nominals and verbs. The nonfinites combine with a rich case system whose spatial meaning is bleached to different extent in the combinations. I coin a new term for the case phenomenon -- cross-categorial case -- and I analyze the Finnic rich cross-categorial case paradigms to provide evidence about the functioning of a transparent system of spatial forms and TAM meanings. A corpus study of the Estonian inessive nonfinites (the mas-construction) exemplifies how the correspondences in space and time as well as social cognition interact in the progressive and the absentive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two connectionist networks, DISLEX and DevLex-II, were used in this study to model the acquisition of lexical and grammatical aspect. Both models use multi-layered self-organizing feature maps, connected by associative links trained according to the Hebbian learning rule. Previous empirical research has identified a strong association between lexical aspect and grammatical aspect in child language, on the basis of which some researchers argue for innate semantic categories or prelinguistic predispositions. Our simulations indicate that such an association can emerge from dynamic self-organization and Hebbian learning in connectionist networks, without the need of a priori assumptions about the structure of innate knowledge. Our modeling results further attest to the utility of self-organizing neural networks in the study of language acquisition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children's early production typically favors prototypical groupings of temporal-aspectual features; children prefer to say telic, perfective, past combinations (e.g., broke) and atelic, imperfective present combinations (e.g., riding). The current experiments examine the extent to which adults also favor these prototypical groups in a comprehension task (Experiment 1) and a sentence comparison task (Experiment 2). The results show that, like children, adults find prototypical combinations easier to understand, particularly in low-information contexts. Moreover, adults judge prototypical combinations as better sentences than nonprototypical sentences. The results are argued to support continuity in aspectual representations. The differences between children and adults is linked to the proposed origin of the prototypes themselves, namely, information processing demands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]