Toward a construction-based theory
of language function: The case of nominal extraposition
Laura A. Michaelis
University of Colorado, Boulder
Knud Lambrecht
University of Texas, Austin
Through a detailed examination of a particular sentence type, we outline a formal model in which grammatical description includes the description of use conditions on form-meaning pairs. The sentence type at issue is an exclamative construction we refer to as Nominal Extraposition (NE). this construction, exemplified by the sentence It's AMAZING the difference, bears a superficial resemblance to Right Dislocation (RD). However, NE must be distinguished from RD on syntactic, semantic and discourse pragmatic grounds. The postpredicate NP represents a Topic in the case of RD, a Focus in the case of NE.; this NP receives a metonymic scalar interpretation in the case of NE, but not in RD. We employ the framework of Construction Grammar and seek to demonstrate that it is uniquely suited to grammatical description of the type required here: NE represents a gestaltlike interaction of formal, semantic, and pragmatic constraints. We argue for a compatible formalism akin to that found in recent versions of Lexical-Functional Grammar in which argument structure and syntactic constituency parallel a level of representation incorporating categories of Information structure. In addition, we seek to validate the notion - central to Construction Grammar - that sentence types are a crucial basis for syntactic description. in particular, we argue that NE is an instance of the exclamative sentence type and that the basic formal and semantic properties of NE follow from this categorization. We suggest that the relationship between NE and like exclamatives can be represented in an Inheritance Network.
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Split intransitivity in Japanese and
the unaccusative hypothesis
Hideki Kishimoto
Shiga University
It's been a locus of debate in the literature whether the so-called unergative-unaccusative split among intransitive verbs is syntactically or semantically based. Previously unnoticed data in Japanese show that the distinction between unergatives and unaccusatives is fully determined on the basis of verbs' inherent lexical meanings. In order to make the contrast, it is not sufficient to postulate that subjects of accusatives are derived syntactically from underlying direct objects.
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A parametric theory of poetic meter
Kristin Hanson
University of British Columbia
Paul Kiparsky
Stanford University
This paper presents a parametric theory of poetic meter which defines a set of formally possible meters based on the prosodic constituents and categories given by universal grammar, and a functional principle that selects an optimal meter for a particular language on the basis of its lexical phonological structure. We support this theory by a detailed analysis of a favored meter in Finnish, a stress-based meter in which syllable count varies in accord with constraints on syllable weight, and show why partially similar meters are likewise favored in English.
Genius ipsius linguae Fennicae, copiosa vocum ponderosissimarum et elegantissimarum varietate superbientis, egregie vatum favet industrae.
(H.G. Porthan, Dissertatio de Poesi Fennica, 1778.)
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The Amerind personal pronouns
Johanna Nichols
David A. Peterson
University of California, Berkeley
Personal pronouns with first person n and second person m have been claimed to be frequent in the native languages of the Americas, widespread there, and rare elsewhere, and thus to indicate genetic unity of Amerind. A controlled cross-linguistic survey shows that these pronouns have an extensive yet restricted geographical range limited to the western Americas, and that they recur (though not frequently) elsewhere around the Pacific rim. This distribution removes the strongest (and perhaps the only) evidence for genetic relatedness of Amerind. In addition, on statistical grounds the n:m paradigm fails as a diagnostic of genetic relatedness, though equally clearly it cannot be due to universals or random chance. Certain other linguistic features and one mitochondrial DNA lineage have much the same geographical and statistical distribution. Though the language families in which these appear cannot be shown to be genetically related, the families have clearly had some shared history (the type and degree not precisely specifiable) in the distant past. The n:m pronouns reflect a single, datable, noninitial and nonterminal phase in the settlement of the Americas and are probably the best linguistic marker of that phase.
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