Table of Contents
Volume 73
Number 4 (December 1997)

Index

Articles
On the syntax of obviation	Judith Aissen	705
Artificial punning in the Egyptian Arabic ballad: A reinterpretation of structuralist poetics	Eisele	751
Two types of pronouns and variable binding	Tohru Noguchi	770
Don't touch my projectile: Gender bias and stereotyping in syntactic examples	Monica Macauley & Colleen Brice	798
Obituary
Mary R. Haas	Victor Golla	826
Reviews:
Archibald (ed.): Phonological acquisition and phonological theory	W. N. C. Reiss	838
Myers-Scotton: Social motivations for codeswitching: Evidence from Africa	J.A. Walker	841
Romaine: Language in society: An introduction to sociolinguistics	D. Winford	844
Sadock: Autolexical syntax: A theory of parallel grammatical representations	M. Baker	847
Smith & Tsimpli: The mind of a savant: Language learning and modularity	V.M. Garlock & E.M. Frieda	849
Thompson & Thompson (comps.): Thompson River Salish dictionary	I. Doak	851
Van Belle & Van Langendonck (eds.): The dative: Vol. 1, Descriptive studies	M. Haspelmath	854
Webelhuth (ed.): Government and binding theory and the minimalist program	L. J. Whaley	856
Denison: English historical syntax: Verbal constructions	R.P. Stockwell	858
Eble: Slang and sociability: In-group language among college students	T.C. Frazer	860
Gleitman & Liberman (eds.): An invitation to cognitive science	D. T. Langendoen	862
Hall & Bucholtz (eds.): Gender articulated: Language and the socially constructed self	F. Frank	864
Hutchinson: Old English poet metre	R. D. Fulk	866
Noble & Davidson: Human evolution, language and mind: A psychological and archeological inquiry	J. Atchinson	869
Tsujimura: An introduction to Japanese linguistics	S. Dubinsky	872
Campos & Kempchinsky (eds.): Evolution and Revolution in linguistic theory	J. M. Lipski	874
Childs: A grammar of Kissi: A southern Atlantic language	D. J. Dwyer	878
de Klerk (ed.): Focus on South Africa	M. L. Murphy	879
Book Notices		882
The Editor's Department		909
Publications Received		911
Index to Volume 73		916

This article explores the idea that obviation systems like those found in the Algonquian languages are a less parochial solution to syntactic organization than is generally thought. Some simple constraints on obviation provide interesting analyses of key facts in Algonquian. Once certain language-particular differences are recognized, a number of syntactic problems in two unrelated languages, Tzotzil (Mayan) and Chamorro (Western Austronesian), yield easily to solutions based on obviation, despite the absence of obviative-based morphology in either language. Hierarchy alignment constraints play a central role in the analysis. The account is articulated within optimality theory, which provides an appropriate framework for representing the fact that these languages must select from their resources for expressing transitive propositions the optimal mode of expression for each such proposition.

Back to Index

Artificial punning in the Egyptian Arabic ballad: A reinterpretation of structuralist poetics
John C. Eisele
College of William and Mary

This article presents a linguistic analysis of a specific feature of a literary genre: the artificial punning found in the Egyptian Arabic narrative ballad (as described in Cachia 1989). A comparison of how these puns differ from regular processes in the phonology and morphology of the language reveals that this encoding is very much a mirror-image of regular processes. The audience's decoding of them, therefore, follows a pathway similar to regular processes. The dichotomy between the puns' linguistically based formal composition and their contextually based semantic interpretation in analyzed within a reinterpretation of a Jakobsonian structuralist framework involving a hierarchization of linguistic levels based on two factors: the degree of combinatoric freedom and the degree of semantic immediacy. This analysis reveals that the artificial punning in these ballads is actually the obverse of what one would expect to find following the definition of poetic discourse given Roman Jakobson. This study thus shows that such artificial punning subverts normal expectations about poetic discourse and this has great implications for understanding the production and interpretation of literary word play in any tradition.

Back to Index

Two types of pronouns and variable binding
Tohru Noguchi
Tokyo Institute of Technology

It is well known that personal pronouns in japanese such as kare 'he' and kanozyo 'she', unlike their English counterparts, cannot be construed as bound variables in logical form. The purpose of this article is to argue that this cross-linguistic difference is due to the difference in syntactic categories. English personal pronouns are determiners (Postal 1969), exemplifying what will be referred to as D-Pronouns , and can be construed as bound variables, whereas Japanese personal pronouns are nouns, exemplifying what will be referred to as N-Pronouns, and cannot be so construed. I argue that this follows from a general condition on binding that applies only to functional items, and not to lexical ones. I provide empirical and conceptual support for this hypothesis on the basis of the behavior of such elements as articles, determiners, and demonstrative pronouns as well as that of personal pronouns.

Back to Index

Don't touch my projectile: Gender bias and stereotyping in syntactic examples
Monica Macauley
University of Wisconsin
Colleen Brice

This article presents the results of two studies which show that gender bias and stereotyping are widespread in the example sentences of syntax textbooks. results from both studies indicate that little has changed over the past twenty-five years: virtually all of the authors favor male-gendered NPs as subjects and agents and regularly stereotype both genders. Throughout the paper we make reference to the LSA guidelines for nonsexist usage, pointing out the need for such guidelines, and highlighting the gaps in the current version.

Back to Index

---

Previous Issue	TOC Main page	Language Main page	Next Issue