JOURNAL OF THE LINGUISTIC
|
VOLUME 77, NUMBER 3 |
SEPTEMBER 2001 |
The ordering distribution of main and Holger Diessel 433
adverbial
clauses: A typological study
Aspects of plurality in ╪ Hoan Chris Collins 456
Abaza applicatives Brian O’Herin 477
The nominal analysis of children’s Helen Goodluck 494
interpretations
of adjunct pro clauses
The mental representation of inflected Harald Clahsen, 510
words:
An experimental study of Sonja Eisenbeiss,
Meike Hadler,
adjectives and verbs in German & Ingrid Sonnenstuhl
Short report: The prosodic phrasing Eileen Fitzpatrick 544
of
clause-final prepositional phrases
Obituary:
Kenneth L. Pike Ruth M. Brend 562
Reviews:
Johnstone: Qualitative methods in sociolinguistics T. C. Frazer 567
Calvin & Bickerton: Lingua ex machina: R. Jackendoff 569
Reconciling Darwin and Chomsky
with the human brain
Kroeber: The Salish language family: M. D. Kinkade 573
Reconstructing syntax
Eckert: Linguistic variation as social practice: N. Schilling Estes 575
The linguistic construction of identity
in Belten High
Levinson: Presumptive meanings A. Capone 578
Lakoff: The language war T. C. Frazer 580
Chomsky: New horizons in the study D. T. Langendoen 583
of language and mind
Boysson-Bardes: How language comes J. Musolino 585
to children: From birth to two years
Darnell et al. (eds.): The collected works J. Stanlaw 587
of Edward Sapir III: Culture
Rickford & Rickford: Spoken soul: C. T. Adger 590
The story of Black English
Toman (ed.): Formal approaches to Slavic A. Caink 592
linguistics 3: The College Park Meeting;
Browne et al. (eds.): Formal approaches to
Slavic linguistics 4: The Cornell Meeting;
Lindseth & Franks (eds.): Formal approaches
to Slavic linguistics 5: The Indiana Meeting
Dixon & Aikhenvald (eds.): The Amazonian D. L. Payne 594
languages
Smith: Chomsky: Ideas and ideals G. Milsark 599
Book Notices 601
Publications Received 643
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Abstracts:
The ordering distribution of main and adverbial
clauses: A typological study
This article examines the ordering distribution of main and adverbial clauses in crosslinguistic perspective. Using a representative sample of forty languages, the author shows that the ordering of main and adverbial clauses correlates with the position of the subordinator in the subordinate clause. In languages in which adverbial clauses have a final subordinator, adverbial clauses tend to precede the main clause, whereas in languages in which adverbial clauses are marked by an initial subordinator, adverbial clauses commonly occur in both sentence-initial and sentence-final position. In the latter language type, the position of an adverbial clause varies with its meaning or function: conditional clauses precede the main clause more often than temporal clauses, which in turn are more often preposed than causal, result, and purpose clauses. The distributional patterns are explained in terms of competing motivations; it is suggested that they arise from the interaction between structural and discourse-pragmatic factors.
Aspects of plurality in ╪ Hoan
Cornell
University
In ╪ Hoan, nouns and verbs can be pluralized. This article investigates various syntactic and semantic aspects of plurality in ╪ Hoan: first, the formation of plurals of inalienable nouns, then, how the plurals of verbs (termed pluractional verbs) are formed in much the same way as the plurals of inalienable nouns. The phenomenon of pluractional verbs strongly supports the event argument analysis of verbal semantics.
Abaza applicatives
The applicative is a construction in which a verb bears a particular morpheme which licenses an oblique, or non-core, argument that would not otherwise be considered a part of the verb’s argument structure. Abaza, a Northwest Caucasian language, has an applicative construction which differs systematically from applicative constructions reported in many other languages. The properties of the Abaza applicative construction include the ability of both transitive and intransitive verbs to host applicative prefixes, the stability of the underlying argument structure despite the presence of applicatives (i.e. the underlying direct object is not demoted to an oblique argument), the ability of a single verb complex to host multiple applicatives, and the use of additional agreement morphology in the verbal complex corresponding to applied object(s), beyond the normal agreement requirements of the verb. This paper attempts to present a thorough description of the applicative construction in Abaza, as well as a brief analysis along the lines of Baker (1988).
The nominal analysis of children’s interpretations of adjunct
pro clauses
The hypothesis that children’s errors in interpreting adjunct PRO clauses are due to their use of a nominal structure was tested in two act-out experiments. Four- to six-year-old English-speaking children permitted a by phrase inside an adjunct clause containing an intransitive verb to be interpreted as agentive, and they gave such an interpretation for a construction for which a nominal analysis is not permitted in the adult grammar (when PRO clauses). This behavior can be accounted for if children have knowledge of general principles governing the interpretation of nominal and PRO constructions, and use a nominal analysis in interpreting adjunct clauses. In the second experiment, children distinguish between constructions that are unambiguously nominal and those that are ambiguous between a nominal and PRO structure, permitting agentive reading of by more frequently in the former case. This argues that adjunct PRO may be acquired by some children at a point during the preschool years. Overall the results fit a view of acquisition in which the language learner actively analyzes the input data, using knowledge of general grammatical principles, and is not narrowly bound by his or her current knowledge of the lexicon of the language.
The mental representation of inflected words:
An experimental study of adjectives and verbs in German
Sonja Eisenbeiss
Meike Hadler
Ingrid Sonnenstuhl
The authors investigate how morphological relationships between inflected word forms are represented in the mental lexicon, focusing on paradigmatic relations between regularly inflected word forms and relationships between different stem forms of the same lexeme. We present results from a series of psycholinguistic experiments investigating German adjectives (which are inflected for case, number, and gender) and the so-called strong verbs of German, which have different stem forms when inflected for person, number, tense, or mood.
Evidence from three lexical-decision experiments indicates that regular affixes are stripped off from their stems for processing purposes. It will be shown that this holds for both unmarked and marked stem forms. Another set of experiments revealed priming effects between different paradigmatically related affixes and between different stem forms of the same lexeme.
We will show that associative models of inflection do not capture these findings, and we explain our results in terms of combinatorial models of inflection in which regular affixes are represented in inflectional paradigms and stem variants are represented in structured lexical entries. We will also argue that the morphosyntactic features of stems and affixes form abstract underspecified entries. The experimental results indicate that the human language processor makes use of these representations.
Short report: The prosodic phrasing of clause-final prepositional phrases
Montclair
State University
Spoken language is not produced in a continuous flow; it is broken up into phrases. An understanding of phrase-boundary placement is critical for comprehension and of great importance in text-to-speech technology. The knowledge that speakers use to determine phrasal boundaries has been attributed in the literature to many seemingly competing factors, syntactic, semantic, phonological, discourse, and pragmatic. This article reports on a study of the boundaries of a single type of data, clause-final prepositional phrases (PPs). The study was done to improve the phrasing of a text-to-speech synthesizer. The syntactic constituency of the PP and its length as measured in accented syllables account for an overwhelming majority of the data. The few exceptions to this account fall into natural categories of semantics, discourse, and pragmatics, which suggests they have the status of marked forms.
Cairns: Psycholinguistics: An introduction C. van Kerckvoorde 601
Cunningham-Andersson & Andersson: Growing up C. van Kerckvoorde 601
with two languages: A practical guide
Cram et al. (eds.): History of linguistics 1996: M. Oja 601
Selected papers from the Seventh International
Conference on the History of the Language
Sciences (ICHOLS VII) Oxford, 12-17 September
1996; Vol. 1: Traditions in linguistics worldwide;
Vol. 2: From classical to contemporary linguistics
Stein: John Palsgrave as Renaissance linguist M. Oja 602
Epstein & Hornstein (eds.): Working minimalism A. Pereltsvaig 603
Carr: English phonetics and phonology: An introduction M. Picard 603
Schulte: Grundfragen der Umlautphonemisierung: M. Pierce 604
Eine strukturelle Analyse des nordgermanischen
i/j Umlauts unter Berücksichtigung der älteren
Runeninschriften
Oller: The emergence of the speech capacity Z. Salzmann 604
Sihler: Language history: An introduction E. J. Vajda 605
Yamamoto: Animacy and reference E. J. Vajda 606
Dalby: The linguasphere register of the world’s E. J. Vajda 606
languages and speech communities
Gorlach: English in nineteenth-century England: J. A. Walker 608
An introduction
Berk: English syntax: From word to discourse F. Bramlett 608
Koerner: Linguistic historiography: Projects M. A. Covington 609
and prospects
Kornai (ed.): Extended finite state models of language M. A. Covington 610
Levine & Green (eds.): Studies in contemporary phrase M. A. Covington 610
structure grammar
Link: Algebraic semantics in language and philosophy M. A. Covington 610
Reiter & Dale: Building natural language M. A. Covington 611
generation systems
Armstrong et al. (eds.): Natural language processing M. A. Covington 612
using very large corpora
Martin-Vide (ed.): Mathematical and computational M. A. Covington 612
analysis of natural language: Selected papers from
the 2nd International Conference on Mathematical
Linguistics, Tarragona, 2-4 May 1996;
Martin-Vide (ed.): Mathematical linguistics: Workshop
on Mathematical Linguistics, State College, PA,
April 1998
Hausser: Foundations of computational linguistics: M. A. Covington 613
Man-machine communication in natural language
Dauses: Einführung in die allgemeine J. Dailey-O’Cain 613
Sprachwissenschaft
Miller & Weinert: Spontaneois spoken language: J. Dailey-O’Cain 613
Syntax and discourse
Coates: Word structure M. J. Elson 614
Garrod & Pickering (eds.): Language processing S. Gahl 615
Crocker et al. (eds.): Architectures and mechanisms S. Gahl 615
for language processing
Christophersen: A linguit’s credo A. S. Kaye 616
Hiraga et al. (eds.): Cultural, psychological, and V. Haser 617
typological issues in cognitive linguistics
Thomas & Wareing: Language, society and power I. M. Laversuch 618
Štekauer: An onomasiological theory of English I. M. Laversuch 619
word-formation
Huebner & Davis (eds.): Sociopolitical perspectives I. M. Laversuch 619
on language policy and planning in the USA
Ronowicz & Yallop (eds.): English: One language, I. M. Laversuch 620
different cultures
Hammond: The phonology of English: A prosodic A. R. Luís 621
optimality-theoretic approach
Linell: Approaching dialogue: Talk, interaction M. Nevile 621
and contexts in dialogical perspectives
Sarangi & Roberts (eds.): Talk, work and M. Nevile 622
institutional order: Discourse in medical,
mediation and management settings
van Oostendorp: Phonological projection: A theory M. Pierce 623
of feature content and prosodic structure
Roca & Johnson: A workbook in phonology M. Pierce 624
Goldsmith (ed.): Phonological theory: M. Pierce 624
The essential readings
Payne & Barshi (eds.): External possession E. J. Vajda 624
Smith & Bentley (eds.): Historical linguistics 1995. E. J. Vajda 625
Vol. 1: General issues and non-Germanic languages
de Leeuw van Weenen: A grammar of Möðruvallabók E. J. Vajda 626
Fox: Prosodic features and prosodic structure: E. J. Vajda 627
The phonology of suprasegmentals
Frajzyngier & Curl (eds.): Reciprocals: E. J. Vajda 627
Forms and functions
Růžička: Control in grammar and pragmatics: E. J. Vajda 628
A cross-linguistic study
Franks & King: A handbook of Slavic clitics E. J. Vajda 629
Dedrick & Casad: Sonora Yaqui language structures E. J. Vajda 630
Peccei: Child language C. van Kerckvoorde 630
Sampson: Nasal vowel evolution in Romance D. C. Walker 631
Biber et al.: Longman grammar of spoken E. Battistella 631
and written English
Hughes: A history of English words E. Battistella 632
Jay: Why we curse: A neuro-psycho-social E. Battistella 633
theory of speech
Poulisse: Slips of the tongue: Speech errors in Z. S. Bond 634
first and second language production
Bhatt: Verb movement and the syntax of Kashmiri D. Bury 634
Fernald: Predicates and temporal arguments K. Chirkova 635
Michaelis: Aspectual grammar and past-time reference K. Chirkova 635
Ludlow: semantics, tense, and time: An essay in the K. Chirkova 636
metathesis of natural language
Branner: Problems in comparative Chinese dialectology: K. Chirkova 637
The classification of Miin and Hakka
Dempwolff: Induktiver Aufbau des Urbantu A. P. Grant 637
Tsitsipis: A linguistic anthropology of praxis and A. P. Grant 638
language shift: Arvanítika (Albanian) and
Greek in contrast
Gair: Studies in South Asian linguistics: Sinhala A. P. Grant 639
and other South Asian languages
Felser: Verbal complement clauses: A minimalist J. Gutiérrez-Rexach 639
study of perception constructions
Kontra et al. (eds.): Language: A right and a resource D. O. Jackson 640
Hansen (ed.): Second language attrition in D. O. Jackson 641
Japanese contexts
Mohammad: Word order, agreement and A. S. Kaye 642
pronominalization in standard and
Palestinian Arabic