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The category of person has both inflectional and lexical aspects, and the distinction provides a finely graduated grammatical trait, relatively stable in both families and areas, and revealing for both typology and linguistic geography. Inflectional behavior includes reference to speech-act roles, indexation of arguments, discreteness from other categories such as number or gender, assignment and/or placement in syntax, arrangement in paradigms, and general resemblance to closed-class items. Lexical behavior includes sharing categories and/or forms and/or syntactic behavior with major lexical classes (usually nouns) and generally resembling open-class items. Criteria are given here for typologizing person as more vs. less inflectional, some basic typological correlations are tested, and the worldwide linguistic-geographical distribution is mapped. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study we report a hardly noticed, poorly studied, and non-understood property of kinship terms in many Dutch dialects: a distinct, more impoverished possessor inflection in kinship terms, which was coined "possessor truncation" in Goeman et al. (2008). After reporting dialect-geographical, diachronic, and morphological properties of possessor truncation, we give a morphosyntactic account inspired on determiner drop in kinship terms in Italian. Possessor truncation in Dutch and determiner drop in Italian can be unified under the assumption that kinship terms generate their referential role within in the sub-lexical domain, while ordinary nouns merge these argumental properties in the supra-lexical domain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Construction Grammar is a linguistic framework which postulates that all grammar is based on a single, relatively simple entity, the construction, defined as a conventionalized mapping between a form and a meaning. Construction Morphology is a sub-theory of Construction Grammar which deals with the word-level domain. This article shows how Construction Morphology can account for the full range of inflectional types. It argues that Construction Morphology falls into the type of morphological theory which Stump (2001) has designated ‘inferential—realizational’, and which he contends is the only kind of theory that accounts for all the known facts of morphology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1968 Emmerick proposed the existence of a present stem type D. It is shown here from morphophonological patterning that his category contains two subtypes, temporarily labelled D1 and D2. By comparing vocalic contractions from the nominals with the D1 endings, it is clear that the D1 stems end synchronically in -a- and take the regular type A endings. The D2 stem vowel in contrast, behaves partly like nominal stems in -a-, and partly like stems in -i-. By reviewing contraction evidence relating to all vowels, it is shown that the D2 stems end synchronically, albeit abstractly, in -e- and take the regular type A endings. Two further verbs from Emmerick’s type C are shown also to end in -e- and take the regular endings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Papuan language Mian allows us to refine the typology of nominal classification. Mian has two candidate classification systems, differing completely in their formal realization but overlapping considerably in their semantics. To determine whether to analyse Mian as a single system or concurrent systems we adopt a canonical approach. Our criteria - orthogonality of the systems (we give a precise measure), semantic compositionality, morphosyntactic alignment, distribution across parts of speech, exponence, and interaction with other features - point mainly to an analysis as concurrent systems. We thus improve our analysis of Mian and make progress with the typology of nominal classification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: There has been no consensus as to what explains the well-attested problems with inflection in individuals with agrammatic aphasia. Some studies point to a predominantly phonological influence while others view morphological factors as primary. Aims: The present study aims to investigate what morphological and phonological factors influence the production of inflectional suffixes in agrammatism. Methods & Procedures: Seven non-dysarthric and non-apraxic English-speaking agrammatic patients (mean age 53.2 years, range 35–69 years, at least 2 years post onset) were given a production task in which the morphological or phonological complexity of the environment of the inflectional morpheme was varied. Outcomes & Results: Analysis indicates that morphological factors (number and type of morpheme, real vs. pseudo stems), rather than phonological factors (sonority, suffix syllabicity, stem length) resulted in significantly higher error rates. Conclusion: Once morphological and phonological influences are teased apart in a controlled experiment, we see that morphological environments in the production of affixed forms in agrammatic aphasia play a greater role than phonological factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article deals with verbal inflection based on concepts introduced in the word-based morphological model; in particular, the Word and Paradigm model. We propose a methodology for the analysis of verbal inflection of Spanish. For this, we take only the first conjugation of Spanish. The analysis here is based on determining the main parts that allow prediction of verbal paradigms of first conjugation. We show that from a few main parts it is possible to obtain the complete paradigm of a verbal form. We also discuss the phenomena of competition between schemas where there is a change of accent ("hablemos" and "háblemos" case) as well as the diphthongizations /o/ → /ue/ and /e/ → /ie/. This phenomenon responds to the modification of the principal part. Finally, the advantages that the word-based model presents in the inflection analysis are shown. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the given article the author speaks about new words that appear in the political discourse and different types of techniques in the process of translation. These two languages belong to the Indo-European family but to different groups. Russian is a Slavic language and English is a West Germanic language which is considered nowadays to be a global lingua franca. At the given moment the English language as well as many other languages, experiences ‘neology boom'. Huge inflow of new words and necessity of their description have caused creation of special branch of lexicology- neology - science about neologisms. The big contribution to neology is brought by the English and American linguists developing lexicographic aspects of neologisms. New words come from a wide range of subject areas, including politics. Politics and current affairs are fertile subject areas for new words. The occurrence of a new word presupposes the struggle of two tendencies: the tendency of development of language and the tendency of its preservation. The world is not reflected directly in language, the world is reflected in consciousness, and the consciousness fixes this reflection in conventional signs. The transformations in translation are needed due to different morphological and grammar structures of these two languages. There is a lot of literature within translation studies about strategies for the translation of problematic terms and concepts. According to our investigation we come to the conclusion that the most convenient and useful ways of translation of neologisms are: transcription and transliteration (transliteration is preferable); loan translation; addition and deletion; explanation and description. Sometimes it is difficult to use only one technique of translation in these cases some techniques are combined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do late proficient bilinguals process morphosyntactic and lexical-semantic information in their non-native language (L2)? How is this information represented in the L2 mental lexicon? And what are the neural signatures of L2 morphosyntactic and lexical-semantic processing? We addressed these questions in one behavioral and two ERP priming experiments on inflected German adjectives testing a group of advanced late Russian learners of German in comparison to native speaker (L1) controls. While in the behavioral experiment, the L2 learners performed native-like, the ERP data revealed clear L1/L2 differences with respect to the temporal dynamics of grammatical processing. Specifically, our results show that L2 morphosyntactic processing yielded temporally and spatially extended brain responses relative to L1 processing, indicating that grammatical processing of inflected words in an L2 is more demanding and less automatic than in the L1. However, this group of advanced L2 learners showed native-like lexical-semantic processing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background German participles are formed by a co-occurrence of prefixation and suffixation. While the acquisition of regular and irregular suffixation has been investigated exhaustively, it is still unclear how German children master the prosodically determined prefixation rule (prefix ge-). Findings reported in the literature are inconsistent on this point. In particular, it is unclear whether participle formation is vulnerable in German children with specific language impairment (SLI). Aims To compare children with and without SLI in their abilities to form German participles correctly, and to determine their relative sensitivities to the morphophonological regularities of prefixation. Methods & Procedures The performance of 14 German-speaking children with SLI (mean age = 7;5) in a participle formation task was compared with that of age-matched and younger typically developing controls. The materials included 60 regular verbs and 20 pseudo-verbs, half of them requiring the prefix ge-. Outcome & Results Overall, children with SLI performed poorly compared with both groups of typically developing children. Children with SLI tended either to avoid participle markings or choose inappropriate affixes. However, while such children showed marked impairment at the morphological level, they were generally successful in applying the morphoprosodic rules governing prefixation. Conclusions & Implications In contrast to earlier findings, the present results demonstrate that regular participle formation is problematic for German children with SLI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the logic behind the various morpho-phonological subdivisions in the verbal system of Palestinian Arabic. It argues for the importance in the understanding of Palestinian Arabic of the apophonic chain proposed for Classical Arabic in 1993). In Palestinian, it is first argued, the Measure 1 perfective template includes a hard-wired association of its two vocalic positions; the main differences in vocalization between the Palestinian and Classic varieties follow from this fact. The account is then extended to include three large subclasses of weak verbs. Following the analysis of Classical Arabic in 1996), it is argued that such verbs involve a null element ø, whose realization is determined by the apophonic chain. The second part of the paper provides an account of the entire inflectional paradigms of each of the verbs discussed, a task that was not fully undertaken in previous work. The mechanism of apophony is shown to be at work in this domain, too. An interesting case is discussed of an apparent shift in inflectional paradigm in some forms of the biradical verb. This shift is again shown to follow from the general mechanisms used in the analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a descriptive analysis of the morphology of transitive verbs in Shilluk. Shilluk is a language in which stem-internal changes, many of them suprasegmental in nature, play an important role in the morphology, alongside affixal markers. In particular, tone, vowel length, Advanced Tongue Root (ATR), vowel height, and the stem-final consonant are involved in the morphological marking of a range inflections, expressing tense-aspect-modality, valency changes, agreement, and focus. The paper lays out the inflectional marking of these operations, for each of seven classes that can be distinguished among transitive verbs. In this way, the study extends our understanding of stem-internal morphology and its development in West Nilotic languages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The verbal suffixes of Seri (a language isolate of Sonora, Mexico) divide the lexicon into classes of unparalleled complexity. The paradigm has only four forms, which mark subject number and aspect (or event number), yet there are over 250 distinct types in a corpus of just under 1,000 verbs. This relation of forms to types means that by information-theoretic measures this is among the most complex inflection class systems yet studied. In part this complexity is due to the sheer wealth of allomorphs and the freedom with which they combine within the paradigm; however, these properties can be found in all inflection class systems of any complexity. The unique property of Seri is that although the suffix morphology and the morphosyntactic paradigm have the same featural content, the two systems are not directly coordinated. Both suffix morphology and verbal morphosyntax are based on the concatenation of markers of plurality, and an increase in the morphological marking of plurality reflects a morphosyntactic accumulation of subject and predicate plurality (i.e. aspect). In this sense, morphology is a direct exponent of featural content. But there is no consistent mapping between the two systems, and the precise calibration between morphological form and morphosyntactic function must be lexically specified; it is this specification that increases dramatically the number of inflectional types. Seri therefore represents a middle ground between the conceptual extremes of morphosyntactically motivated and morphologically autonomous morphology that serve as a basis for much of our theory building. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study demonstrates the existence in Wandala (Central Chadic) of two inflectional markers which, although they change the form of the word, are not word-formation means but rather sentence-formation means. While neither of the forms indicates any specific semantic relation, they both enable the listener to parse the sentence into units that can undergo further analysis and allow for inferences about a large number of semantic relations within the clause and within the sentence. The types of inflectional marking described in this study are unrelated to the dichotomy of head marking and dependent marking. Although this study is based on data from a single language, it has implications for the typology of coding means and for theories of clausal structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I consider the notions of crosslinguistic categories and comparative concepts as they apply to a diminutive category in Walman, a language in the Torricelli family spoken in Papua New Guinea. I discuss three interpretations of the question of whether the Walman diminutive is a gender. One interpretation is the question whether the Walman diminutive is an instance of a crosslinguistic category of gender. I argue that this interpretation is problematic since it assumes the existence of crosslinguistic categories and I argue that there is no reason to believe that crosslinguistic categories exist, since the similarities among languages can be explained without appeal to crosslinguistic categories. A second interpretation involves a question of how the diminutive fits into the grammar of Walman, whether the diminutive should be considered a third value of a feature in the grammar of Walman which has two clear values, masculine and feminine. I argue that the evidence supports the view that the Walman diminutive is not a gender in this sense. The third interpretation is whether the Walman diminutive is an instance of a comparative concept of gender. But the answer to that question depends on how one defines gender as a comparative concept. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research with children learning a second language (L2) has reported errors with verb inflection and cross-linguistic variation in accuracy and error patterns. However, owing to the cross-linguistic complexity and diversity of different verbal paradigms, the cross-linguistic effects on the nature of default forms has not been directly addressed in L2 acquisition studies. In the present study, we compared accuracy and error patterns in verbal agreement inflections in L2 children acquiring Dutch and Greek, keeping the children’s L1 constant (Turkish). Results showed that inflectional defaults in Greek follow universal predictions regarding the morphological underspecification of paradigms. However, the same universal predictions do not apply to the same extent to Dutch. It is argued that phonological properties of inflected forms should be taken into account to explain cross-linguistic differences in the acquisition of inflection. By systematically comparing patterns in child L2 Dutch and Greek, this study shows how universal mechanisms and target language properties work in tandem in the acquisition of inflectional paradigms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses the problem of crosslinguistic rarity by mapping the types of diachronic factors that contribute to the rarity of a particular feature. It is proposed that a number of different diachronic factors may play a role, such as the rarity of source constructions, the rarity of particular types of change, the number of stages necessary for a particular feature to develop, and the number of pathways that can lead to a particular feature. This article looks at a rarissimum of person marking, namely, a zero-marked feminine 2nd singular person index in the Sahidic dialect of Coptic (Afroasiatic; Egypt). It is argued that such markers are rare because they presuppose rare input structures, and most processes of change would lead away from - rather than to - zero-marked 2sg. Furthermore, this study identifies a diachronic process in which a part of a morpheme is reinterpreted as a segmentable morpheme (in this case, a person index), thereby leading to the loss of a zero person marker. This is the converse of the well-known 'Watkins' Law', in which a segmentable person marker is reinterpreted as part of a base. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Blocking, as traditionally defined, refers to a situation where the mere presence of a form or pattern in language preempts the application of another form or pattern. Recent studies on blocking, especially in derivational morphology, have provided many examples which seriously cast doubt on the assumed discreteness of the notion. Using data from sizeable corpora, this paper seeks to address this issue in inflectional morphology. Within that domain, it is illustrated that - throughout time - there may have been an alternation between competing morphological patterns. In particular, pluralization by suffixation and transfixation, may have alternated in assuming the role of a blocker. On the basis of frequency data of inflectional classes in New Persian, it is shown that whenever there is an increase in the usage of either of these two strategies, there is also a decrease in application of the other. This alternation follows a neat and systematic pattern strongly suggesting that transfixation and suffixation have relative blocking effects on each other. It can therefore be concluded that there is essentially no need for one form, or a number of forms, to be eliminated in favor of a more productive one. In fact, competing forms can co-exist, decline and flourish alternatively, and thrive for centuries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How is morphological and morphosyntactic information processed during sentence reading? Are the neural mechanisms underlying word- and phrase-level combinatorial processing overlapping or distinct? Here, electroencephalography (EEG) and magnetoencephalography (MEG) responses were recorded simultaneously during silent reading of Finnish sentences. The experimental conditions included 1) well-formed grammatical sentences (correct condition), 2) sentences containing morphosyntactic violations (adjective–noun number agreement violations), 3) morphological violations (incorrect stem allomorph and inflectional suffix combination), and 4) combined violations, containing both morphosyntactic and morphological violations. Signal space and source modeling results showed that morphosyntactic violations elicited a left anterior negativity effect, generated particularly in the left inferior frontal area. Morphological violations elicited a widespread negativity, resembling the N400. The neural sources of this negativity were localized most prominently to the right temporal cortical networks. Furthermore, all violations elicited P600 effects with similar widespread bilateral fronto-temporal neural generators that did not differ between morphosyntactic and morphological conditions. Our findings suggest at least partially distinct subnetworks in the fronto-temporal cortices for morphological and morphosyntactic parsing during the earlier stages of processes (∼400 ms post stimulus onset) and shared neural generators for the later processing stages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the given article the author speaks about the grammatical transformations in the process of translation. These two languages belong to the Indo-European family but to different groups of languages. Russian is a Slavic language and English is a Germanic language which is considered nowadays to be a global lingua franca. The transformations in translation are conditioned by different grammar structures of these two languages. The author analyses the types of transformations in translation of composite sentences: sentences with negative statements and sentences with the parts formed in the process of conversion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reports an eye-tracking study on the native and non-native processing of case in Spanish. Twenty-four native and 27 first language (L1) German non-native speakers of Spanish were tested on their sensitivity to case marking violations involving structural case with objects of ditransitive verbs and to violations of inherent case for objects of transitive verbs (differential object marking; DOM). Both groups distinguished between grammatical and ungrammatical case marking for all sentence types in off-line acceptability judgments. In reading, however, the non-native speakers, unlike the native speakers, were sensitive only to violations of structural case marking with ditransitive verbs and the erroneous realization of DOM with inanimate objects. In contrast, they did not show processing slowdowns for the omission of DOM with animate objects. We interpret the asymmetry in non-native processing as reflecting sensitivity of the parser to grammatical feature hierarchies in that the parser licenses default case markings, yet flags feature clashes occasioned by the suppliance of erroneous inflectional forms with inherent case marking. We discuss the findings in the context of current approaches to second language (L2) acquisition and processing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present article addresses the issue of auxiliaries in English and Romanian, pointing out the differences and similarities between the two languages in question, in regard to their morphology and behaviour within the VP which contains them. We use as the model of grammar in which the analysis is carried out, the Chomskyan P&P model of grammar. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Verbs in San Pedro Amuzgo, an Oto-Manguean language of Mexico, often have two different stems in the paradigm, one used with singular subjects and the other with plural subjects. This split motivated by number is typologically interesting due to its rarity, since number splits are commonly along the S/O vs. A distinction, not the S/A vs. O distinction. Apart from at stem level, the split is also manifested in the incompletive of an inflectional class of verbs. At stem level the plural stem is derived in a variety of unproductive ways, making the relation between singular and plural stems, synchronically, one of suppletion. In this article, we study the distribution and the morphological properties of this split in depth, using a sample of almost 600 fully inflected verbs from a large database compiled by native linguist Fermín Tapia and now publicly accessible on the Surrey Morphology Group's website. We also place it in a typological context, relating it to other systems we have observed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Ecuadorian Siona reportative is prima facie an evidential par excellence because it indicates that the information contained in the utterance has been acquired through hearsay. However, the morphosyntactic and semantic behavior of the reportative verb form demonstrates that it is not an evidential. Rather, it is part of the clause-typing system, together with the assertive, interrogative, and imperative. Clause-typing relates to the assignment of authority: the speaker holds the epistemic authority in assertions, the addressee in questions, and a non-speech-act participant in reports. The hearsay reading of the reportative clause type emanates from a shift of epistemic authority. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Calculations on lexical stability show that the V-pronoun is variable but the T-pronoun is stable across language families (cf. Swadesh 1971 [2006]; Wichmann and Holman, 2009; Tadmor et al., 2010 ). In fact, the T-pronoun is in the top 10 of basic vocabulary items. Nevertheless, both English and Dutch have lost their T-pronoun. We suggest that this unexpected loss of T in English and Dutch can be explained via an exceptional combination of circumstances, namely (1) a focus on negative politeness, (2) the possibility of deflection via the loss of the T-pronoun and (3) pressure on the inflectional system due to language contact involving adult second language learners. These factors lead to two predictions: one related to the subject-non-subject ratio, and one related to text style. We test both predictions in a corpus of 13th and 16th century texts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Similar to English words, Chinese words can be viewed as the combination of root morphemes with either grammatical affixes, word-formation affixes, or other free morphemes. Therefore, it is logical to argue that Chinese speakers develop knowledge about inflectional and derivational morphemes similar to speakers of English language. To test this research hypothesis, 287 junior high school students (grades 7–9) were administered morphological awareness tests in both Chinese and English. Results from the Structural Equation Modeling showed that both inflectional and derivational awareness of Chinese are necessary (along with an awareness of compound words) to a construction of Chinese morphological awareness. The students' awareness of Chinese inflection and derivation is partially explained by their awareness of Chinese compound words, but there are still features that are uniquely inherent to Chinese inflection and derivation (in contrast to their counterparts in English). The overall transferring coefficient from Chinese MA to English MA in this study was .56, which suggests that higher levels of Chinese MA are associated with higher levels of English MA. Inductive reasoning can be as important as Chinese MA to the development of English MA, since it supports learners dealing with morphological features with which they are less familiar (English derivations) and that share many connections (such as English compounding). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To gain more insight into evidentiality, the grammatical marking of information source, it is worth studying the category in its relation to other grammatical categories. This study explores tensed evidentials, morphemes in which tense and evidentiality are fused, in 36 languages from four macro-areas (North America, South America, Eurasia, and Papunesia). The study reveals several interactions between tense values and evidential values. As opposed to what has been claimed, firsthand future evidentials seem to exist. Visual and non-visual evidentials occur equally with present and past, whereas mental activity evidentials and reportative evidentials are much more limited to the past. These findings conform to the logic of tense: every type of evidentiality can be gathered in the past, whereas some are less suited for present or future. As a result, we find exceptionless implicational hierarchies of the form future ⊃ present ⊃ past for several evidential values. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evidentiality - a grammatical expression of information source (, ) - is often expressed on a clausal level, and its marking is associated with the verb. In a few languages, a noun phrase can acquire its own evidential specification. Evidentiality can be expressed autonomously, or be fused with another grammatical category, including aspect, tense, or mood for verbs, or spatial distance and topicality for noun phrases. We investigate interactions and dependencies between evidentiality and other grammatical categories, both verbal and nominal. A number of such dependencies is supported by the diachronic development and history of evidentials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a typological characterization of a class of demonstratives so far neglected in the literature: demonstrative verbs expressing manner. First, the morphological characteristics and syntactic behaviors of these demonstratives are examined to illustrate their verbal properties and to justify categorizing them as verbs. Next, their exophoric and endophoric roles in narratives and interactions are described. As their discourse usages closely replicate that of nominal demonstratives, we argue that demonstrative verbs belong to the class of demonstratives and propose to integrate them in a general typology of demonstratives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within the domain of inflectional morpho-syntax, differential processing of regular and irregular forms has been found in healthy speakers and in aphasia. One view assumes that irregular forms are retrieved as full entities, while regular forms are compiled on-line. An alternative view holds that a single mechanism oversees regular and irregular forms. Arabic offers an opportunity to study this phenomenon, as Arabic nouns contain a consonantal root, delivering lexical meaning, and a vocalic pattern, delivering syntactic information, such as gender and number. The aim of this study is to investigate morpho-syntactic processing of regular (sound) and irregular (broken) Arabic plurals in patients with morpho-syntactic impairment. Three participants with acquired agrammatic aphasia produced plural forms in a picture-naming task. We measured overall response accuracy, then analysed lexical errors and morpho-syntactic errors, separately. Error analysis revealed different patterns of morpho-syntactic errors depending on the type of pluralization (sound vs broken). Omissions formed the vast majority of errors in sound plurals, while substitution was the only error mechanism that occurred in broken plurals. The dissociation was statistically significant for retrieval of morpho-syntactic information (vocalic pattern) but not for lexical meaning (consonantal root), suggesting that the participants' selective impairment was an effect of the morpho-syntax of plurals. These results suggest that irregular plurals forms are stored, while regular forms are derived. The current findings support the findings from other languages and provide a new analysis technique for data from languages with non-concatenative morpho-syntax. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the production of German plural nouns by two aphasic participants with non-fluent speech production. Experimental tasks included two production tasks: (1) picture naming of single and multiple objects, and (2) an elicitation task of singular and plural nouns. Materials were controlled for regularity and predictability of plural form, and for dominance of number, referring to the relative difference in word form frequency between a singular and its corresponding plural form. Both regularity and number dominance have been shown to affect plural noun production in both unimpaired and aphasic speakers, but the underlying functional origin of these effects is still a matter of debate. The results point to differences in the lexical representation and processing of regular and irregular German plural nouns. Thus, the data are in line with the dual mechanism account. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present studies investigated the influence of the semantic and syntactic predictability of an inflectional morpheme on word recognition and morphological processing. In two eye-tracking experiments, we examined the effect of syntactic and semantic context on the processing of letter transpositions in inflected words. Participants experienced greater and earlier disruption from cross-morpheme letter transpositions when target verbs appeared in a context that syntactically predicted the presence of a past-tense suffix. Further, internal transpositions caused greater and earlier disruption even in monomorphemic verbs when syntactic context created an expectation of morphological complexity. No effect of semantic predictability was observed, potentially because the semantic manipulation was insufficiently strong. The results reveal that syntactic contexts typical of most English sentences can lead readers to make predictions about the morphological structure of upcoming words. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tone is widely reported as a prosodic feature of many African and Asian languages that contrasts meaning among words and sentential constructions. Hardly have any of the studies examined in detail the underlying syntactic principles which make it perform such functions. This article therefore investigates the principles which underlie the function of tone in the Igbo language, an East Benue Congo language, with particular emphasis on grammatical tone. This is done with the hope that the findings of the study can be inductively applied to other tone languages across the world. It answers such questions as: what are the principles which enable tone to perform its grammatical functions? What syntactic positions predispose tone to perform the grammatical functions? What are the grammatical realisations of tonal governance? The paper finds that tone is a constituent commander and governor. The principle of precede and constituent command (c-command) underlies tone governance. Just as in proper government, tone governs the lexical items, which it c-commands. The scope of tone and its domain of governance vary from one structure to another. The position of the governor determines its domain of governance and the kind of structure that is realised after governance. Such syntactic constructions as the negative, perfective, past tense, and serial verb constructions result from tonal government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Consensus recommendations for three variants of primary progressive aphasia (PPA), the non-fluent/agrammatic, logopenic and semantic variants, were published in 2011 [Gorno-Tempini et al., 2011]. These recommendations describe the most characteristic language impairments for each variant. However, studies using these criteria in larger groups of patients revealed serious limitations concerning their application. Some of these limitations are related to imprecisions in the description of language features, especially for grammatical features. The aim of this review was to examine studies of inflectional morphology in three variants of PPA and in the disease that is the most relevant for differential diagnosis, namely Alzheimer's disease. MedLine, CINAHL and PsycINFO electronic databases were searched to retrieve all relevant peer-reviewed articles published in English language journals. Despite the focus that has been placed on agrammatism by the consensus recommendations, the studies reviewed do not systematically report impairments of inflectional morphology in the non-fluent/agrammatic variant. Studies also show that some individuals with the logopenic variant present with substantial inflection impairments. Contrary to expectations, some studies reveal the presence of morphological difficulties in the semantic variant. These difficulties concern mostly the production of irregular, low-frequency verbs while regular verbs are spared. Similar difficulties are also reported in studies of people with Alzheimer's disease. Overall, the results show the need to more clearly define the criteria related to grammar and morphology and to better characterise impairment severity. Future research on primary progressive aphasia and other degenerative diseases with language impairments will help refine our expectations regarding language features that characterise each profile. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Allocutivity is a term coined to describe a phenomenon in Basque whereby, in certain pragmatic (and syntactic) circumstances, an addressee who is not an argument of the verb is systematically encoded in all declarative main clause conjugated verb forms. Although the term has been exclusively applied to Basque, similar phenomena are found in other languages as well. Indeed, despite certain differences in the degree of grammaticalization and usage, allocutive verb forms are attested in at least Pumé (isolate; Venezuela), Nambikwara (isolate; Brazil), Mandan (Siouan; North America), and Beja (Cushitic; Northeast Africa). The aim of this article is to propose a typology of verbal allocutivity in a crosslinguistic perspective, taking into consideration the locus of encoding, the manner in which it is encoded, the information concerning the addressee which is encoded, and the syntactic environments in which it can appear. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Critically reviewing the recent analysis of the distinction between the so-called 'absolute' and 'annexed' 'states' in Kabyle (Berber) by (M&F), it is shown that it does not fare better than the existing treatments in its account of the empirical facts, mainly due to the assumption of monosemy. It is further argued that M&F's rejection of 'case' as a valid notion for the description of the Kabyle data rests on simplistic and ill-informed views on the nature of case, and that adoption of a case analysis allows one to compare the Berber data to a wide range of languages with similar peculiarities in the distribution of dependent marking. Finally, M&F's claim that their analysis of Kabyle has pointed out a 'previously unrecognized typological category' is refuted, showing that it stems from an unwarranted mixing of language-particular descriptive categories and crosslinguistic comparative concepts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Kin terms in some languages have suppletive roots according to the person of the possessor, as in Kaluli na:la: 'my daughter', ga:la: 'your daughter' versus ida: 'her/his daughter'. Suppletion is generally seen as a language-specific morphological peculiarity, but in this context there are a number of lexical and morphological similarities across languages, suggesting the motivation may also lie in the nature of kin terms themselves. We offer a typological assessment of suppletive kin terms through a case study of the languages of New Guinea, where the phenomenon appears to be particularly common. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From the perspective of prototype theory, boundaries between categories can be more distinct or less so. This gradience is captured by the notion of boundary permeability which is applied to units (e.g., nouns vs. verbs), properties (e.g., count vs. mass), and levels (e.g., phonological vs. morphological). boundary permeability is introduced as a typological parameter in the sense that a given language is generally characterized by (relatively) soft or (relatively) sharp boundaries. A fairly extensive analysis is offered of category and level boundaries in English and German. A battery of fourteen comparisons between the two languages reveals that German is a largely sharp- or strict- but English a largely soft-boundary language. This scalar difference is argued to follow from the varying importance of inflectional morphology in the two languages. Inflections are claimed to be boundary markers in that they bring about a divide between syntax and the lexicon. Thus, the moderately strong inflectional component makes German a strict-boundary language and the relative lack of inflections makes English a soft-boundary language. A tentative case is made for regarding strict boundaries as the typologically unmarked, and soft boundaries as the typologically marked, option. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inflection is a vital element to express semantic in synthetic languages. Proper induction is crucial for text generation and reporting systems. The induction of inflection rules is an open question in computational linguistics. The existing solutions use dictionary, transformation rules or statistical observations to inflect a stem. These methods have drawbacks either in precision and cost efficiency. This paper present a hybrid method which is based on classification and associative memory. The words which belong to non- frequent categories are stored in the associative memory thus the classification process can be performed faster. The transformations for the regular words are determined by the classifier. Precision, size and time cost of the algorithm are measured with different sized associative memory. The tests were performed on a training set of (stem, inflected form) pairs for the accusative case in Hungarian. The precision of the hybrid algorithm can exceed the 90 per cent based on the experimental results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this contribution, I offer a summary of my 2013 Ph.D. dissertation from the University of Patras on inflection and derivation from a Construction Morphology standpoint. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Concentrations of Polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins and dibenzofurans (PCDD/Fs) and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in soil samples from Tibetan Plateau were determined. The average concentration of total 2,3,7,8-PCDD/Fs was (2.30 ± 1.02) pg/g, and World Health Organization Toxicity Equivalency (WHO-TEQ) average concentration was (0.013 ± 0.010) pg WHO-TEQ/g. The average concentration of ∑ PCBs (7 indicator PCB and 12 dioxin like-PCB congeners) was (16.2 ± 9.25) pg/g, and WHO-TEQ average concentration was 0.043 ± 0.049 pg WHO-TEQ/g. Comparing to previous studies in similar environmental conditions, PCDD/Fs and PCBs in this study showed a relatively lower concentration. The altitude dependences of PCDD/Fs and PCBs were also studied. Total organic carbon (TOC) normalized concentrations presented a quadratic relation with the altitudes, and an inflection could be found on the parabola of the total concentrations and some congeners of high concentration. The concentrations decreased with altitudes below about 4500 m above sea level (a.s.l.), while they increased with altitudes above it. These phenomena indicate that cold condensation of PCDD/Fs and PCBs would happen above 4500 m a.s.l, on the Tibetan Plateau. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article two hypotheses about the relationship of verbal and adnominal agreement are proposed: first, it is claimed that languages tend to have adnominal agreement only if they also have verbal agreement, but not vice versa. Second, it is argued that languages with adnominal agreement are areally restricted, while languages with verbal agreement are not. A sample of languages was selected to test these hypotheses, and both are confirmed by the data. The article closes with an admittedly speculative explanation of the hypotheses involving patterns of grammaticalization of different types of agreement markers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cognate Head-Dependent Constructions (CHDCs) are employed across numerous genera in Africa to signpost alternations in the aspectual characteristics of a predicate or the information focus of a clause. The co-occurrence of a finite lexical verb (the cognate head) and an etymologically related (deverbal) noun or non-finite verb form (the cognate dependent) in such structures is interpreted with reference to the scalar semantics of events and properties. Within this areal typology, CHDCs are employed to indicate either (i) a high point relative to a norm on a semantic scale or (ii) a conventionally low-ranked possibility, in order to implicitly contrast possible alternatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article describes the reality status system of Nanti (Arawak) and argues that it constitutes an instance of a canonical reality status system. The relevance of such a system is examined in the light of literature that casts doubt on the typological validity of reality status as crosslinguistic grammatical category. It is shown that reality status is an obligatory inflectional category in Nanti, and that the distribution of realis and irrealis marking across Nanti construction types hews closely to expectations based on notional understandings of 'realis' and 'irrealis' categories grounded in a contrast between 'realized' and 'un-realized' situations. It is also shown that the Nanti reality status system does not exhibit evidence of being based, either synchronically or diachronically, on semantically narrower notions that could account for the distribution of reality status marking in the language, without recourse to the more generalized notions of realized and unrealized events. It is suggested that the Nanti reality status system might serve as a suitable canonical system around which a canonical typology of reality status might be built. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two masked priming experiments with Greek advanced ESL speakers were run in order to reproduce the experiments reported by Silva & Clahsen (2008): our data yielded similar derivational priming but divergent results for inflectional priming. After comparing the two sets of results and examining some discrepancies between the two studies, we provide an interpretation outside the decompositional framework: morphological priming effects are not viewed as low level perceptual saliency effects but rather as the result of the form-meaning systematic relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The morphosyntactic property set associated with the syntactic node occupied by a word form is not invariably identical to the property set determining that word form's inflection, as evidence from Bhojpuri, Turkish, Sanskrit and Hua shows. The difference between syntactic property sets and their corresponding morphological property sets may be represented as a property mapping relating two different kinds of paradigm: a lexeme L's content paradigm specifies the range of property sets with which L may be associated in syntax ; its form paradigm specifies the (sometimes distinct) property sets that determine L's inflectional realization. Thus, a language's inflectional morphology doesn't merely specify the realization of paradigm cells: it also specifies the sometimes nontrivial linkage of content with form at the interface of syntax and semantics with morphology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the most important texts in the history of written albanian language, especially at the beginning of XVIII century, is the text of Kuvendi i Arbënit (Convention of Arbën). It contains the acts of the convention assembled in 1703 by the order of Pope Clement XI and was published first in Latin and in Albanian, becoming thus an important source to study Albanian language grammatical features and structures, even though it is a religious text. This study aims to point out the differences between the nouns determinatives in both these texts, their place and adaptation in the sentence. As it is known, word order in Latin and Albanian is free, both indo-European languages, as a consequence of the inflection system which is not reduced, especially in Latin. So, in this comparing study will be analyzed the different kinds of pronouns and adjectives, their position in the sentence, before or after the noun which determine, similarities and differences between their use in these two languages. Even more linguistic observations can be done on this text, especially in syntactic level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article we obtain a formula relating inflections, bitangencies and the Milnor number of a plane curve germ. Moreover, we present an extension of the formula obtained by the first author and Luis Fernando Mello for a class of plane curves with singularities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]