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Volume 43 Issue 4

Issue of Linguistics

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July 29, 2005

Universals and grammaticality: wh-constraints in German and English

Sam Featherston

Page range: 667-711

Abstract

In this article we investigate the movement constraints superiority and discourse linking. These have played an important role in the tradition of generative syntax and might therefore be expected to be universal, but they are usually argued to be absent from German. We looked for evidence of them in German data using the methodology of magnitude estimation of wellformedness, and compared this data with parallel results from English. The results showed these effects to be robustly active in the grammar of German, and revealed few differences between the two languages. We suggest that the reason why linguists have denied their existence in German is that they have been assuming a binary and categorical concept of grammaticality, forgetting that this is merely a simplifying abstraction from the primary linguistic data. We demonstrate that the admittedly convenient assumption of categorical grammaticality is obscuring our view of the syntax, and that studies using our own more empirically adequate assumptions of grammaticality can be productive. In particular, we hope that our conceptions of constraint survivability and definition of syntax relevance may permit insights into the size of the grammar, crosslinguistic variation, and syntactic universals.

July 29, 2005

Temporal interpretation in Mandarin Chinese

Carlota S. Smith, Mary S. Erbaugh

Page range: 713-756

Abstract

This article presents an account of temporal understanding in Mandarin Chinese. Aspectual, lexical, and adverbial information and pragmatic principles all contribute to the interpretation of temporal location. Aspectual viewpoint and situation type give information in the absence of explicit temporal forms. The main, default pattern of interpretation is deictic. The pragmatic principles are the bounded event constraint, the simplicity principle of interpretation, and the temporal schema principle. Lexical and adverbial information can lead to non-default interpretations. Two other temporal patterns — narrative dynamism and anaphora — appear in text passages that realize the ‘‘discourse modes’’ of narrative and description. We state the semantic meaning of grammatical forms and explain the deictic pattern. Three times are needed to explain temporal interpretation, following Reichenbach (1947). Mandarin forms code the relation between a designated perspective time, or reference time, and situation time. These are typically marked redundantly in written texts. Relation to speech time is not coded linguistically, but conveyed by context.

July 29, 2005

Adjectival modification in Mandarin Chinese and related issues

Waltraud Paul

Page range: 757-793

Abstract

Against the background of recent typological studies postulating crosslinguistically valid hierarchies for the modifiers within the DP (cf. Scott 1998, 2002a, 2002b; Chao et al. 2001; Laenzlinger 2000), the present article argues that both types of modification available in Mandarin Chinese have to be taken into account: that where the subordinator de intervenes between the adjective and the head noun — ‘A de N’ — and the case of simple juxtaposition of the adjective and the noun ‘A N.’ Extensive evidence is provided against the widespread idea that attributive adjectives in Mandarin Chinese can be analyzed as relative clauses and that ‘A N’ de -less modification structures are compounds (cf. Sproat and Shih 1988, 1991; Duanmu 1998; Simpson 2001). As a consequence, adjectives cannot be conflated with intransitive stative verbs, but have to be recognized as a separate part of speech in Mandarin Chinese.

July 29, 2005

Grammaticalization and structural scope increase: possessive-classifier-based benefactive marking in Oceanic languages

Jae Jung Song

Page range: 795-838

Abstract

This article discusses the development of possessive classifiers into benefactive markers in Oceanic languages. On the basis of Tabor and Traugott’s (1998) diachronic string comparison, this change episode will then be demonstrated to involve structural scope increase contrary to the widely held assumption that scope decrease is a manifestation of grammaticalization. The article also identifies as an empirically testable hypothesis the strong connection between scope increase, and the formal identity between source items and their grammaticalized descendants. Moreover, the recent controversy over the status of grammaticalization (theory) is critically appraised with the conclusion that grammaticalization has an independent status of its own and the general mechanisms of language change should be invoked to account for instances of grammaticalization.

July 29, 2005

Aspects of the prosody of Kuot, a language where intonation ignores stress

Eva Lindström, Bert Remijsen

Page range: 839-870

Abstract

This article describes the basic system of intonation and lexical stress in Kuot, a non-Austronesian language of New Ireland, Papua New Guinea. Kuot employs pitch (F 0 variation) primarily to express structural information about the clause. Some intonation contours express functions that are commonly expressed by intonation crosslinguistically, such as final vs. nonfinal clauses and parts of clauses, and yes / no questions. In addition, Kuot has particular contours (or tunes) for question-word questions and negated sentences. Word stress, on the other hand, does not interact with intonation in terms of its encoding. It displays a very stable correlation with duration but no association with F 0 ; in other words, there is no consistent marking of stress by means of F 0 in Kuot. The position of Kuot word stress is lexically determined, yielding minimal stress pairs. In this article, we present a description of Kuot intonation on the basis of pitch extractions made from spontaneous speech. The results reveal that intonation in Kuot is anchored only at the boundaries of intonational phrases. A phonetic analysis of minimal stress pairs recorded in controlled environments demonstrates that lexically stressed syllables do not correlate with pitch. The findings are discussed against a background of prosodic typology.

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Open Accces from 2022

Starting with volume 60 (2022), Linguistics is transformed into a Diamond Open Access journal thanks to our subscribers participating in the Subscribe to Open (S2O) project. All current content will be published under a Creative Commons License (CC-BY 4.0) at no cost to authors and will be freely available to readers.

All authors retain copyright, unless – due to their local circumstances – their work is not copyrighted.

Objective
Linguistics publishes articles addressing research questions of current or general relevance that make a significant contribution to our understanding of human language as a system of communication or a cognitive, social and historical phenomenon. This includes aspects of grammatical organization (phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax) as well as questions of meaning and use (semantics, pragmatics, discourse). Studies may deal with linguistic systems as instantiated in speaking, signing, writing and other modes of communication, as well as the language users themselves and their communities (e.g. psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics). The focus may be on one or several languages, the perspective may be synchronic or diachronic, the methodology may be qualitative or quantitative, and the approach may be exploratory or confirmatory. Linguistics publishes up to two special issues a year in these areas, for which it welcomes proposals.

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