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In this study, we tested the possibility that different word orders engender different processing preferences. Our key hypothesis was that a head-initial language like English (SVO) allows more prediction compared to a head-final language like Japanese (SOV). In Experiment 1, English and Japanese native speakers completed a cloze task in which they heard a sentence fragment (SV_ in English and SO_ in Japanese) and had to complete it with the word they thought best. We assessed cloze probability of the words produced and voice onset times. Experiment 2 examined written completions in English, in which we compared the cloze probabilities in SV_ fragments versus OS_ fragments. Following the central hypothesis, this experiment allowed us to determine (within language) whether there is more prediction from a noun and verb compared to two nouns. Finally, in Experiment 3, we compared written completions in English and Japanese, in which the stimuli given to participants were identical (SV_ in English and S_V in Japanese). Results across all three experiments were consistent with greater prediction in English. We argue that prediction is one important factor in processing, that it is relied on more in English than in Japanese, and that prediction will be especially favored in languages like English in which the verb regularly precedes its direct object.

This research sets out to challenge a conventional wisdom in Japanese linguistics, that the reflexive pronoun zibun is unable to take an inanimate antecedent. Through careful presentation of the data, including corpus sources, it is unequivocally demonstrated that the reflexive use of zibun can indeed overcome the animacy constraint and be anteceded by an inanimate antecedent, without any personification present. This has specific theoretical consequences in the sense of providing a theoretical simplification behind reflexivity modeling in Japanese. This is followed by a psycholinguistic experiment investigating how native Japanese speakers judge and process sentences with inanimate zibun. The key factors tested are the animacy of the antecedent, and also if the type of sentence, episodic versus generic, will affect the acceptability of inanimate zibun. Results from the experiment show that native speakers indeed do find inanimate zibun acceptable, and appear to process it slightly slower than the animate counterpart. The episodic versus generic distinction does not play a role in either the judgment or processing. Combining the corpus and experimental data anchors the phenomenon firmly. Finally, our attention turns to how to account for inanimate zibun theoretically, where we draw information from how zibun can already take inanimate antecedents if they are construed as agentive, or if zibun is used as an adverbial reflexive, showing that in fact, inanimate zibun does not require additional theoretical treatment – leading to a reformulation of Kuno's animacy constraint. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article revisits the distinction between inflectional and derivational patterns in general grammar and discusses the possibility that this well-known distinction is not rooted in the reality of languages, but in the Western tradition of describing languages, through dictionaries (for words, including derived lexemes) and through grammar books (where we often find tables of exemplary paradigms). This tradition has led to rather different terminological treatments of the two kinds of patterns, but from the perspective of a constructional view of morphology, there is no need to incorporate such differences into formal grammatical descriptions. For practical purposes, we need clear and simple definitions of entrenched terms of general linguistics, so the article proposes semantically based (retro-) definitions of inflection, derivation and lexeme that cover the bulk of the existing usage. Finally, I briefly explain why we need sharp definitions of comparative concepts, and why prototype-based and fuzzy definitions of traditional terms are not helpful. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Experiential constructions is an understudied topic in western Austronesian languages. The focus is on Northern Amis (Formosan), with some crosslinguistic comparison. In Amis, experiential constructions are derived by a syncretic suffix –en, which is also an Undergoer Voice suffix. In experiential constructions, –en is suffixed to stative-intransitive verbs compatible with experiences, and functions as an applicative voice that licenses an extra-thematic experiencer marked as the nominative argument, generally with adverse meaning. Though reminiscent of adversative passives in some Asian languages, experiential constructions in Amis are not passives, nor are they standard Undergoer Voice –en constructions for two main reasons: (i) they are restricted to stative and intransitive stems; (ii) their argument structure and case-marking are different. It is argued that the source of Amis experiential constructions is a Proto-Austronesian adversative *ka- ... -an/-en construction (Blust, Robert. 1999. Notes on Pazeh phonology and morphology. Oceanic Linguistics 38(2). 321–365) and that Amis innovated by creating a verbal ma- ... -en experiential applicative construction from that originally non-finite construction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The social categories that characterize a speaker frequently correlate with the use of specific linguistic variables. Research suggests that such correlations are sometimes recognized as socially-indexed meanings. This study examines Japanese individuals' attitudes toward variables that have been shown to correlate with the social category of gender in production. In particular, we contrast patterns of gendered variation that (i) have been prescriptively associated with speaker sex and (ii) tend to correlate with gender in speech production but are outside of the set of prescriptive "women's language". We found that individuals have formed associations between the gender of the speaker and prescriptive variables but not other patterns of variation. Additionally, knowledge of the speech context of the variables had no significant effect on individuals' judgments. The results indicate that not all social information available from patterns of language use is recovered by listeners. More broadly, examining the transmission of social meaning through linguistic variation requires a combination of production- and perception-based research methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]