Search

This article addresses the problem of vowel-generated glides in Kurpian. In general, glides come from two sources: Gliding and Glide Insertion, for instance, word-initial /#iVC/ → [jVC] and /#iC/ → [jiC], where V stands for a vowel and C for a consonant. Even though Gliding and Glide Insertion are different phonological operations, they are united by a single goal: to eliminate onsetless syllables because a glide, regardless of whether it comes from a vowel or from insertion, provides an onset to a syllable. Onset-driven effects are particularly rich in Kurpian because they involve all kinds of vowels, including /a/ but not /ɛ/, a situation that has not been noted in the past research on crosslinguistic typologies (Levi, Susannah V. 2004. The representation of underlying glides: A cross-linguistic study. Seattle, WA: University of Washington dissertation, Levi, Susannah V. 2008. Phonemic vs. derived glides. Lingua 118. 1956–1978; Rosenthall, Sam. 1994. Vowel/glide alternation in a theory of constraint interaction. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts dissertation; Sands, Kathy. 2004. Patternings of vocalic sequences in the world's languages. Santa Barbara, CA: University of California, Santa Barbra dissertation). Further, glides are found both word-medially and word-initially. In this regard, Kurpian is different from Standard Polish, which tolerates both hiatus and word-initial onsetless syllables. It is argued that the constraint interaction required cannot be accounted for in classic Optimality Theory (OT). The solution is to adopt Derivational OT. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In different languages around the world, morphemes representing the (cooked form of) staple food or food in general tend to begin with a [+labial] phoneme followed by a [+low] phoneme (/pa-/, /ma-/, /fa-/, /wa-/, etc.). This article provides evidence for this phonological similarity by analyzing 66 sample languages' morphemes representing the staple food within the society where each language is spoken. About a fourth of the morphemes referring to staple food begin with a [+labial] first phoneme followed by a [+low] second phoneme, which is a much higher proportion compared to another list of basic morphemes in the same 66 languages. I further argue that the motivation for this crosslinguistic tendency is the iconic association between the mouth-opening gesture and the concept of eating. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Keywords: low IP area; Najdi Arabic; topics typology; verb movement EN low IP area Najdi Arabic topics typology verb movement 1011 1038 28 07/05/22 20220701 NES 220701 1 Introduction The cartographic approach to syntactic structure has been increasingly used as a tool to investigate the nature of the structural and functional make-up of natural languages ([12], [13]; [25], [26]; [27]; [63], [64] among many others). Before we discuss our assumption that low topics in NA express a unique value of given information (i.e., familiar topical information), we would like to discuss a related construction in Levantine Arabic that appears to be amenable to our analysis developed for the object in clitic-object constructions in NA. We extend our proposal of clitic-object constructions of NA to the corresponding constructions in Jordanian Arabic and Palestinian Arabic, given that the same interpretation of the topics is obtained in these three dialects. There is evidence showing that OCD constructions in Levantine Arabic call for a similar treatment of clitic-object constructions in NA. 2 See [14], [40], [52], and [53] for the view that the preverbal subject in SVO clauses is a true subject (located in Spec,TP), not a topic or a focus in Arabic dialects including Moroccan Arabic, Palestinian Arabic, and Jordanian Arabic. [Extracted from the article]

3.1.2 Person restrictions An important property that distinguishes Basque impersonals from passives of any type has to do with the nature of the subject: contemporary Basque impersonals do not allow first or second person subjects, whereas passives do. In English, for instance, the passive is formed by a periphrasis that involves the auxiliaries I be i or I get i along with the past participle form of the verb, i.e., it is a periphrastic passive, contrasting with strict morphological passives as in Latin or Ancient Greek ([56]). As for the definitional properties of passives, some authors consider subject demotion (or just deletion) to be the a central property of passives, given that there are languages that have passives involving subject demotion without object promotion ([28]). Thus, if Basque constructions such as (1b) or (6b) were considered passives, they would be of the basic type in [56] typology (agentless passives), or "non-prototypical passives" as in [115]. Keywords: Basque; causative alternation; impersonal; middle; passive EN Basque causative alternation impersonal middle passive 1039 1101 63 07/05/22 20220701 NES 220701 1 Introduction The aim of this article is to provide an analysis of Basque impersonals ([5], [6]; [79], [80], [81],). [Extracted from the article]

Formally, however, this construal type involves (complex) NP-hood in some cases, and may then perhaps be included under for example rigidly structured NPs (Section 3.1.1) or flexibly structured NPs (Section 3.1.2), but this is certainly not always so. Keywords: discourse functions; nominal expression; noun phrase; syntax-prosody interface; word classes EN discourse functions nominal expression noun phrase syntax-prosody interface word classes 659 714 56 05/19/22 20220501 NES 220501 1 Introduction This article offers foundations towards a comprehensive typology of the nominal domain, capturing the significant language-internal and crosslinguistic diversity of nominal expressions. Another path towards further NP-internal slots is proposed by Mark Van de Velde (this issue) for some Bantu languages, where appositional modifiers following NPs, marked by a prefixed augment, have in some languages become reanalyzed as part of the NP. The first set of determiners (pronoun, demonstrative and quantifier) are normally placed at the left edge, but occur at the right edge when the NP is the subject of a non-verbal predicate (as in (34b)), in coordination structures, and in subsequent mentions where the NP adds extra specification (as in the second NP in (34c)). For example, [155]: 19-23), in his crosslinguistic study of the NP, distinguishes between integral NPs (where elements that semantically modify the head are also modifiers syntactically), non-integral NPs (where elements that semantically modify the head are in apposition to it at sentence level), and something in between (where each element is a minor NP; all are in apposition within a larger phrasal structure). [Extracted from the article]

Keywords: iconicity; information structure; noun phrase discontinuity; theticity EN iconicity information structure noun phrase discontinuity theticity 865 898 34 05/19/22 20220501 NES 220501 1 Introduction Recent research on discontinuity of nominal expressions has brought to light increasing evidence that such discontinuous structures do not occur randomly in discourse. Second, claims about discontinuous noun phrases in Australian languages often do not provide prosodic information for the examples in question, and do not clearly distinguish between expressions that meet the definition of nominal expression (NE) given in Section 1 (an expression which functions as a unit in establishing or tracking reference) on the one hand, and multiple coreferential nominal expressions, on the other. From the perspective of recognizing different constructions as following the same principle of detopicalization, clauses where the subject is a discontinuous nominal expression whose sub-constituents appear on either side of the predicate would seem an excellent further strategy for marking theticity, and equally iconically motivated: framing the predicate with two nominal elements is consistent with the monolithic character of a sentence focus expression, and moreover, a discontinuous constituent becomes an unlikely target for topic assignment. 2 Thetic constructions in crosslinguistic perspective 2.1 Theticity defined The argument presented in this article crucially relies on the assumption that information structure is a universal feature governing linguistic structure, that it is encoded in grammatical constructions, and that there are crosslinguistically recurrent (though not necessarily universal) construction types encoding differences in information structure. [Extracted from the article]

In Coastal Marind, adjunct NPs do not allow the syntactic freedom that argument NPs allow, and therefore reveal the "true" left-branching nature of the NP, an issue I return to in Section 4.3.4. The most remarkable aspect of the tight NP structure is the absence of an adjectival phrase within the NP, this niche being taken by adjective-noun compounding. Keywords: Coastal Marind; information structure; noun phrases; Papuan languages; syntax EN Coastal Marind information structure noun phrases Papuan languages syntax 829 863 35 05/19/22 20220501 NES 220501 1 Introduction In research on Papuan languages (i.e., the non-Austronesian languages of New Guinea and surrounding islands), the issue of the cohesion of nominal expressions (henceforth NEs) has never enjoyed the attention it has received in research on Australian languages (see references in [39], [27]). NP complexity in Papuan languages is clearly an interesting area for future typological research, especially as more corpora of spontaneous language use become available, which makes it possible to broaden the investigation from structural limitations on NP elaboration to the ratio of NP complexity found across different corpora. I estimate (based on counts of other texts) that simple NPs (containing only a single noun) outnumber complex NPs by a ratio of 6:1, which would suggest that discontinuous NEs constitute less than 1% of all NPs in discourse. [Extracted from the article]

Possessive pronouns, genitives, numbers, adjectives, and the modifiers "another", "many" and "how many" correspond formally to Chichewa 2 I i modifiers, because they create a prosodic boundary to their right, but not to their left (38). 3 Word order: variation, freedom and discontinuity No systematic comparative study of word order patterns in the Bantu noun phrase has been carried out, but even a superficial look reveals an impressive amount of inter and intra linguistic variation along several dimensions, such as the position of modifiers with respect to the head noun, the mutual ordering of postnominal modifiers with fixed word order, flexibility and contiguity. Although the match between functional types of modifiers and word classes is not perfect, classifying and qualifying modifiers can be mapped to adjectives, qualifying modifiers to numerals and localizing and discourse-referential modifiers to demonstratives. Keywords: agreement; apposition; Bantu languages; historical syntax; prosody; word order EN agreement apposition Bantu languages historical syntax prosody word order 899 931 33 05/19/22 20220501 NES 220501 1 Introduction The Bantu languages show an extraordinary range of crosslinguistic and intralinguistic constructional variation in their nominal expressions. In turn, the quantifying modifier I three i has scope over the qualifying modifier, the classifying modifier and the head noun. [Extracted from the article]

5 Functions of SDRA After presenting the main formal characteristics of SDRA, we now focus on the functions expressed by this pattern in Italian (cf. point [vi] in Section 3). Keywords: antonyms; Construction Grammar; discontinuity; Italian; reduplication EN antonyms Construction Grammar discontinuity Italian reduplication 315 345 31 01/18/22 20220101 NES 220101 1 Introduction Reduplication has been broadly investigated in both theoretical and typological studies (cf., among many others, [17]; [20]; [21]; [29]; [35]; [37]; [41]). As for the prototypical approach, the SDRA meets 5 criteria out of 8: more specifically, the SDRA does not conform to criteria v/vi (adjacency) and viii (wordhood of the whole construction). An advantage of a constructionist analysis to the SDRA is that we may account for the fact that the SDRA displays recurrent form-meaning associations: these can be analyzed quite straightforwardly as a network of related constructions motivated by a more general SDRA mother construction, to which they are linked via polysemous inheritance links. Finally, the SDRA displays a marked preference for the I di qua ~ di là i pair, whereas this pair is comparatively much less common than other pairs in the corresponding binomial version: if the SDRA were the unification of the reduplicative and the binomial constructions, we would expect the frequency of the pairs within the SDRA to mirror their frequency within the binomials. [Extracted from the article]

We also considered the diachronic relationships between locative and copular verbs and found that in Type II languages (mainly represented by a subset of Sinitic and Hmong), the source of locative verbs is the copula: Copula > Locative. (Saul and Wilson 1980: 72) ht It appears more plausible in terms of regular semantic change for a two-argument dwell verb to undergo semantic shift to a locative and thence to a copula rather than postulating that a dwell verb directly evolves into a copula and then reverts to a two-place locative verb. Keywords: existential and possessive verbs; locative; Mainland East and Southeast Asian linguistic area (MESEA); polysemy sharing; semantic typology EN existential and possessive verbs locative Mainland East and Southeast Asian linguistic area (MESEA) polysemy sharing semantic typology 1 82 82 01/18/22 20220101 NES 220101 1 Introduction Over the past century, the relationship of existence and location to possession has been the subject of a vast field of research including studies in both linguistics and philosophy. Apart from the Type II languages, where the copula shares a form with the locative verb, the copula is always distinguished formally from the other three verb categories in Type III and Type IV (that is, from locative, existential and possessive verbs). 5.1.3 C opular > Locative Pathway (ii) When the source of a locative verb is I not i a Postural or Dwell verb, locatives may be diachronically linked with copulas in our Asian survey. [Extracted from the article]

This therefore raises a question of whether Macro-Tani "middle-like" constructions are in fact middle voice constructions, or not, and (in either case) what factors will account for their similarities with and differences from middle voice constructions as they have been identified for other Trans-Himalayan languages and elsewhere. 2 Background 2.1 Middle voice typology The modern-day typology of middle voice has taken shape through studies of voice and reflexivity by [5] and [15]: Chapter 2), but received its best-known and most influential treatment in works by [13], [14]. Keywords: grammatical relations; middle voice; Sino-Tibetan languages; Trans-Himalayan languages; voice constructions EN grammatical relations middle voice Sino-Tibetan languages Trans-Himalayan languages voice constructions 215 238 24 01/18/22 20220101 NES 220101 1 Introduction Middle voice constructions are generally understood as syntactically detransitivizing, and as semantically characterized by a "low degree of event elaboration" involving a relatively affected subject ([13], [14]; among others). [Extracted from the article]

The acquisition literature has documented several different types of misinterpretations of telic sentences by children, yet a comprehensive analysis of these child interpretations has not been attempted and a crosslinguistic perspective is lacking. This task is not easy, for, on the surface, children's non-adultlike interpretations appear to be scattered and even contradictory across languages. Several cognitive biases have been proposed to explain given patterns (children initially adhere to a Manner bias, or alternatively a Result bias). Reviewing a wide range of studies on the acquisition of telic sentences in relation to tense-aspect markers, we show that children's non-adultlike interpretations fall into three different patterns. We conclude that the diversity of non-adultlike interpretations that is found across child languages is incompatible with accounts that rely on these cognitive, language-independent principles, but instead is triggered by language-specific properties. Analyzing these patterns in detail, it appears that child learners across languages have problems with tense-aspect forms with variable meanings, in contrast to forms with a one-to-one form/meaning mappings which are acquired earlier. While adults use a context-sensitive interpretation of forms with multiple meanings, various semantic-pragmatic sources can explain children's difficulties with interpreting such forms. All explanations that we identify across child languages rely on children's immature command of pragmatic reasoning, albeit in very different ways for the three different patterns. Thus, by taking a crosslinguistic semantic approach and integrating detailed insights from the tense-aspect semantics of specific languages with universal pragmatic effects, we explain the non-adultlike interpretation of telic sentences in a variety of child languages in a comprehensive way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Large lexica of basic smell terms are considered to be restricted to a handful of small languages of non-industrialized societies. Accordingly, they are thought to belong to the sphere of rara within lexical typology (Plank 2001. Das grammatische Raritätenkabinett. Konstanz: University of Konstanz. https://typo.uni-konstanz.de/rara/intro/index.php (accessed 3 October 2017)). However, smell lexica might in fact be more common than previously suggested. In this article, we discuss the case of Thai – a language with a population of tens of millions of speakers – which defies this assumption. We show Thai has a sizeable lexicon of terms for olfactory qualities, and investigate their semantics using a multi-method approach. In particular, we demonstrate a novel use of exemplar listing where – in addition to giving insights into the terms' extensions – exemplar data is used to reveal the structure of the lexicon. Additionally, we use corpus data to provide complementary information on meaning and usage, thereby showing the advantage of multi-method approaches. Overall, the findings suggest smell lexica are not rara, and their distribution in the world's languages goes beyond the stereotypical cases of languages spoken by small-scale societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article inquires into the diachrony of the determiner in Dutch. First, it is argued that the determiner is an emergent syntactic category, and that it must be consequently excluded from universal grammar. Second, it is argued that languages that do have a determiner slot in the NP differ considerably with regard to which lexemes they allow in this function. On the basis of these two observations, an in depth usage-based analysis of the emergence of the Dutch determiner is undertaken. It seems that over the centuries, the determiner projection consolidates its position in Dutch. It first cropped up in Old Dutch, and was further elaborated in Middle Dutch, Modern Dutch and Present-day Dutch by the recruitment of ever new slotfillers. Difficulties in the demarcation of the determiner phrase and the notoriously elusive syntax of some adjectives are claimed to be due to diachronic instability: what is e.g., conveniently but somewhat misleadingly called postdeterminers, can be argued to be an instable syntactic category that represents an intermediate stage in the diachronic process. Evidence will be drawn from (quantitative) corpus inquiry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]