Publications

Abstract

This book explores the thesis that in the Kwa languages of West Africa, aspect and modality are more central to the grammar of the verb than tense. Where tense marking has emerged it is invariably in the expression of the future, and therefore concerned with the impending actualization or potentiality of an event, hence with modality, rather than the purely temporal sequencing associated with tense. The primary grammatical contrasts are perfective versus imperfective. The main languages discussed are Akan, Dangme, Ewe, Ga and Tuwuli while Nzema-Ahanta, Likpe and Eastern Gbe are also mentioned. Knowledge about these languages has deepened considerably during the past decade or so and ideas about their structure have changed. The volume therefore presents novel analyses of grammatical forms like the so-called S-Aux-O-V-Other or “future” constructions, and provides empirical data for theorizing about aspect and modality. It should be of considerable interest to Africanist linguists, typologists, and creolists interested in substrate issues.

Abstract

This paper examines some of the claims of the Unaccusativity hypothesis.It shows that the supposedly unaccusative ‘die’ verb in Ewe (Kwa), kú can appear as both a one-place and a two-place predicate and has three senses which do not correlate with the number of surface arguments of the verb. For instance, the same sense is involved in both a one-place construction (e.g. she died) and a two-place cognate object construction (she died a wicked death). By contrast, different senses are expressed by formally identical two-place constructions, e.g. ‘the garment die dirt’ (= the garment is dead dirty; intensity) vs., ‘he died ear (to the matter)’ (=he does not want to hear; negative desiderative). The paper explores the learnability problems posed by the non-predictability of the different senses of Ewe ‘die’ from its syntactic frame and suggests that since the meanings are indirectly related to the properties of the event participants, such as animacy, a learner must pay close attention to the properties of the verb’s participants. The paper concludes by demonstrating that the meaning shifts observed in Ewe are also attested in other typologically and genetically unrelated languages such as Japanese, Arrernte (Australian), Oluta (Mixean), Dutch and English.

Abstract

In many languages modal auxiliaries such as English can, must, may, need, will, ought, want are ambiguous between two types of interpretations: epistemic and root interpretations. In the epistemic interpretation the modal expresses how likely it is that a proposition is true (for example, necessarily, possibly, probably true) while in the root interpretations the modal expresses the obligatoriness, permissibility, desirability, or possibility of a state or event. A central question in much syntactic research on modal auxiliaries has been whether this systematic semantic ambiguity corresponds to a syntactic distinction. A commonly accepted answer has been that in epistemic interpretations the modal verb is a monadic predicate while in root interpretations it is a dyadic predicate, typically a relation between a subject and an infinitival verb. This distinction between monadic and dyadic modal predicates has been modeled syntactically in various ways: (i) in terms of lexical argument structure, that is, as the distinction between raising and control verbs; (ii) in terms of different base positions in the array of functional heads making up the clausal spine, with epistemic modals being higher than root modals; (iii) in terms of a higher syntactic position for epistemically interpreted modals after raising at the level of semantic interpretation (LF raising); (iv) in terms of the nature of the complement of the modal. This chapter evaluates these proposals, drawing on data from, among others, English, Dutch, Icelandic, German, and Catalan and taking into account cross-linguistic differences in the modal systems. One important conclusion is that the alleged correspondence between the epistemic/root distinction and the raising/control distinction is too simple, as there are sentences with root interpretations but a raising syntax. The chapter ends with a list of questions for future research.

Abstract

Several grammatical features in early Indo-European traditionally have not been understood. Although Latin, for example, was a nominative language, a number of its inherited characteristics do not fit that typology and are difficult to account for, such as stative mihi est constructions to express possession, impersonal verbs, or absolute constructions. With time these archaic features have been replaced by transitive structures (e.g. possessive ‘have’). This book presents an extensive comparative and historical analysis of archaic features in early Indo-European languages and their gradual replacement in the history of Latin and early Romance, showing that the new structures feature transitive syntax and fit the patterns of a nominative language.

Abstract

Nominal apposition—the combining of two equivalent nouns—has been a neglected topic in (Indo-European) linguistics, despite its prominence in syntax and morphology (i.c. composition). This book presents an extensive comparative and diachronic analysis of nominal apposition in Indo-European, examining its occurrence, its syntactic and morphological characteristics and functions in the early languages, identifying parallels with similar phenomena elsewhere (e.g. noun classification and script determinatives), and tracing its evolution in Latin-Romance.
While nominal apposition is not exclusive to Indo-European, its development fits the evolution of Indo-European grammar.

Abstract

How do different languages and cultures conceptualise time? This question is part of a broader set of questions about how humans come to represent and reason about abstract entities – things we cannot see or touch. For example, how do we come to represent and reason about abstract domains like justice, ideas, kinship, morality, or politics? There are two aspects of this project: (1) Time arrangement tasks to assess the way people arrange time either as temporal progressions expressed in picture cards or done using small tokens or points in space. (2) A time & space language inventory to discover and document the linguistic coding of time and its relation to space, as well as the cultural knowledge structures related to time.

Abstract

This book offers an interdisciplinary perspective on verb argument structure and its role in language acquisition. Much contemporary work in linguistics and psychology assumes that argument structure is strongly constrained by a set of universal principles, and that these principles are innate, providing children with certain “bootstrapping” strategies that help them home in on basic aspects of the syntax and lexicon of their language. Drawing on a broad range of crosslinguistic data, this volume shows that languages are much more diverse in their argument structure properties than has been realized. This diversity raises challenges for many existing proposals about language acquisition, affects the range of solutions that can be considered plausible, and highlights new acquisition puzzles that until now have passed unnoticed. The volume is the outcome of an integrated research project and comprises chapters by both specialists in first language acquisition and field linguists working on a variety of lesser-known languages. The research draws on original fieldwork and on adult data, child data, or both from thirteen languages from nine different language families. Some chapters offer typological perspectives, examining the basic structures of a given language with language-learnability issues in mind. Other chapters investigate specific problems of language acquisition in one or more languages. Taken as a whole, the volume illustrates how detailed work on crosslinguistic variation is critical to the development of insightful theories of language acquisition.

Abstract

This chapter outlines two influential "bootstrapping" proposals that draw on presumed universals of argument structure to account for young children's acquisition of grammar (semantic bootstrapping) and verb meaning (syntactic bootstrapping), discusses controversial issues raised by these proposals, and summarizes the new insights contributed to the debate by each of the chapters in this volume.

Abstract

How do children learn a language whose arguments are freely ellipsed? The Mayan language Tzeltal, spoken in southern Mexico, is such a language. The acquisition pattern for Tzeltal is distinctive, in at least two ways: verbs predominate even in children’s very early production vocabulary, and these verbs are often very specific in meaning. This runs counter to the patterns found in most Indo-European languages, where nouns tend to predominate in early vocabulary and children’s first verbs tend to be ‘light’ or semantically general. Here I explore the idea that noun ellipsis and ‘heavy’ verbs are related: the ‘heavy’ verbs restrict the nominal reference and so allow recovery of the ‘missing’ nouns. Using data drawn from videotaped interaction of four Tzeltal children and their caregivers, I examined transitive clauses in an adult input sample and in child speech, and tested the hypothesis that direct object arguments are less likely to be realized overtly with semantically specific verbs than with general verbs. This hypothesis was confirmed, both for the adult input and for the speech of the children (aged 3;4-3;9). It is therefore possible that argument ellipsis could provide a clue to verb semantics (specific vs. general) for the Tzeltal child.

Abstract

The surge of research activity focussing on children's acquisition of verbs (e.g., Tomasello and Merriman 1996) addresses some fundamental questions: Just how variable across languages, and across individual children, is the process of verb learning? How specific are arguments to particular verbs in early child language? How does the grammatical category 'Verb' develop? The position of Universal Grammar, that a verb category is early, contrasts with that of Tomasello (1992), Pine and Lieven and their colleagues (1996, in press), and many others, that children develop a verb category slowly, gradually building up subcategorizations of verbs around pragmatic, syntactic, and semantic properties of the language they are exposed to. On this latter view, one would expect the language which the child is learning, the cultural milieu and the nature of the interactions in which the child is engaged, to influence the process of acquiring verb argument structures. This paper explores these issues by examining the development of argument representation in the Mayan language Tzeltal, in both its lexical and verbal cross-referencing forms, and analyzing the semantic and pragmatic factors influencing the form argument representation takes. Certain facts about Tzeltal (the ergative/ absolutive marking, the semantic specificity of transitive and positional verbs) are proposed to affect the representation of arguments. The first 500 multimorpheme combinations of 3 children (aged between 1;8 and 2;4) are examined. It is argued that there is no evidence of semantically light 'pathbreaking' verbs (Ninio 1996) leading the way into word combinations. There is early productivity of cross-referencing affixes marking A, S, and O arguments (although there are systematic omissions). The paper assesses the respective contributions of three kinds of factors to these results - structural (regular morphology), semantic (verb specificity) and pragmatic (the nature of Tzeltal conversational interaction).

Abstract

How are events framed in narrative? Speakers of English (a 'satellite-framed' language), when 'reading' Mercer Mayer's wordless picture book 'Frog, Where Are You?', find the story self-evident: a boy has a dog and a pet frog; the frog escapes and runs away; the boy and dog look for it across hill and dale, through woods and over a cliff, until they find it and return home with a baby frog child of the original pet frog. In Tzeltal, as spoken in a Mayan community in southern Mexico, the story is somewhat different, because the language structures event descriptions differently. Tzeltal is in part a 'verb-framed' language with a set of Path-encoding motion verbs, so that the bare bones of the Frog story can consist of verbs translating as 'go'/'pass by'/'ascend'/ 'descend'/ 'arrive'/'return'. But Tzeltal also has satellite-framing adverbials, grammaticized from the same set of motion verbs, which encode the direction of motion or the orientation of static arrays. Furthermore, vivid pictorial detail is provided by positional verbs which can describe the position of the Figure as an outcome of a motion event; motion and stasis are thereby combined in a single event description. (For example:  jipot jawal "he has been thrown (by the deer) lying­_face_upwards_spread-eagled". This paper compares the use of these three linguistic resources in Frog Story narratives from  Tzeltal adults and children, looks at their development in the narratives of children, and considers the results in relation to those from Berman and Slobin's (1996) comparative study of adult and child Frog stories.

Abstract

How do children isolate the semantic package contained in verb roots in the Mayan language Tzeltal? One might imagine that the canonical CVC shape of roots characteristic of Mayan languages would make the job simple, but the root is normally preceded and followed by affixes which mask its identity. Pye (1983) demonstrated that, in Kiche' Mayan, prosodic salience overrides semantic salience, and children's first words in Kiche' are often composed of only the final (stressed) syllable constituted by the final consonant of the CVC root and a 'meaningless' termination suffix. Intonation thus plays a crucial role in early Kiche' morphological development. Tzeltal presents a rather different picture: The first words of children around the age of 1;6 are bare roots, children strip off all prefixes and suffixes which are obligatory in adult speech. They gradually add them, starting with the suffixes (which receive the main stress), but person prefixes are omitted in some contexts past a child's third birthday, and one obligatory aspectual prefix (x-) is systematically omitted by the four children in my longitudinal study even after they are four years old. Tzeltal children's first verbs generally show faultless isolation of the root. An account in terms of intonation or stress cannot explain this ability (the prefixes are not all syllables; the roots are not always stressed). This paper suggests that probable clues include the fact that the CVC root stays constant across contexts (with some exceptions) whereas the affixes vary, that there are some linguistic contexts where the root occurs without any prefixes (relatively frequent in the input), and that the Tzeltal discourse convention of responding by repeating with appropriate deictic alternation (e.g., "I see it." "Oh, you see it.") highlights the root.

Abstract

This article selectively reviews the literature on politeness across different disciplines—linguistics, anthropology, communications, conversation analysis, social psychology, and sociology—and critically assesses how both theoretical approaches to politeness and research on linguistic politeness phenomena have evolved over the past forty years. Major new developments include a shift from predominantly linguistic approaches to those examining politeness and impoliteness as processes that are embedded and negotiated in interactional and cultural contexts, as well as a greater focus on how both politeness and interactional confrontation and conflict fit into our developing understanding of human cooperation and universal aspects of human social interaction.

Abstract

This article is a reprint of chapter 1, the introduction to Brown and Levinson, 1987, Politeness: Some universals in language usage (Cambridge University Press).

Abstract

This paper investigates the integration of definite determiner phrases (DPs) as a function of their contextual salience, which is reflected in the degree of dependency on prior information. DPs depend on previously established discourse referents or introduce a new, independent discourse referent. This paper presents a formal model that explains how discourse referents are represented in the language system and what kind of mechanisms are implemented during DP interpretation. Experimental data from an event-related potential study are discussed that demonstrate how definite DPs are integrated in real-time processing. The data provide evidence for two distinct mechanisms – Specify R and Establish Independent File Card – and substantiate a model that includes various processes and constraints at the level of discourse representation.

Abstract

The idea that language shapes the way we think, often associated with Benjamin Whorf, has long been decried as not only wrong but also fundamentally wrong-headed. Yet, experimental evidence has reopened debate about the extent to which language influences nonlinguistic cognition, particularly in the domain of time. In this article, I will first analyze an influential argument against the Whorfian hypothesis and show that its anti-Whorfian conclusion is in part an artifact of conflating two distinct questions: Do we think in language? and Does language shape thought? Next, I will discuss crosslinguistic differences in spatial metaphors for time and describe experiments that demonstrate corresponding differences in nonlinguistic mental representations. Finally, I will sketch a simple learning mechanism by which some linguistic relativity effects appear to arise. Although people may not think in language, speakers of different languages develop distinctive conceptual repertoires as a consequence of ordinary and presumably universal neural and cognitive processes.

Abstract

Empirical studies addressing the age factor in second language acquisition have mainly been concerned with a comparison of end state data (from learners before and after the closure of a putative Critical Period for language acquisition) to the native speaker norm. Based on longitudinal corpus data, this paper investigates the affect of age on end state, rate and the process of acquisition and addresses the question of whether different grammatical domains are equally affected. To this end, the paper presents summarized findings from the acquisition of word order and inflectional morphology in L2 German by Russian learners of different ages and discusses theoretical implications that can be drawn from this evidence.

Abstract

Brain-to-brain interfaces, in which brains are physically connected without the intervention of language, promise new ways of collaboration and communication between humans. I examine the narrow view of language implicit in current conceptions of brain-to-brain interfaces and put forward a constructive alternative, stressing the role of language in organising joint agency. Two features of language stand out as crucial: its selectivity, which provides people with much-needed filters between public words and private worlds; and its negotiability, which provides people with systematic opportunities for calibrating understanding and expressing consent and dissent. Without these checks and balances, brain-to-brain interfaces run the risk of reducing people to the level of amoeba in a slime mold; with them, they may mature to become useful extensions of human agency

Abstract

This entry provides some orientation and task suggestions on how to explore the perceptual world of your field site and the interaction between the cultural world and the sensory lexicon in your community. The material consists of procedural texts; soundscapes; other documentary and observational tasks. The goal of this task is to explore the perceptual world of your field site and the interaction between the cultural world and the sensory lexicon in your community.

Abstract

Linguistic discovery is viewpoint-dependent, just like our ideas about what is marginal and what is central in language. In this essay I consider two supposed marginalia —ideophones and interjections— which provide some useful pointers for widening our field of view. Ideophones challenge us to take a fresh look at language and consider how it is that our communication system combines multiple modes of representation. Interjections challenge us to extend linguistic inquiry beyond sentence level, and remind us that language is social-interactive at core. Marginalia, then, are not the obscure, exotic phenomena that can be safely ignored: they represent opportunities for innovation and invite us to keep pushing the edges of linguistic inquiry.

Abstract

Der vorliegende Beitrag zum Kieler Symposium1 stellt die Resultate eines Teilbereichs meiner Arbeit zum Guarani vor, nämlich einen Vorschlag zur Analyse der Personenpräfixe dieser Sprache und der mit ihnen verbundenen grammatischen Kategorien. Die im Titel angedeutete lexikographische Fragestellung bedarf einer näheren Erläuterung, die ich im Zusammenhang mit einer kurzen Darstellung der Motivation für meine Untersuchungen geben will

Abstract

With the present essay I pursue a threefold aim as will be explained in the following paragraphs. Since I cannot expect my readers to be familiar with the language studied, Guaran´ı, more information about this language will be given in the next subsection.

Abstract

This paper describes the verbal Tense-Aspect-Mood system of Awetí (Tupian, Central Brazil) in a Word-and-Paradigm approach. One classification of Awetí verb forms contains clear aspect categories. A second set of independent classifications renders at least four moods and contains a third major TAM classification, factuality, that has one mainly temporal category Future, while others are partially or wholly modal. Structural categories reflect the formal composition of the forms. Some forms are synthetic, ‘marked’ only by means of affixes, but many are analytic, containing auxiliary particles. With selected sample forms we demonstrate in detail the interplay of structural and functional categories in Awetí verb paradigms.

Abstract

This field guide is for eliciting information about grammatical resources used in describing perceptual events and perception-based properties and states. A list of leading questions outlines an underlying semantic space for events/states of perception, against which language-specific constructions may be defined. It should be used as an entry point into a flexible exploration of the structures and constraints which are specific to the language you are working on. The goal is to provide a cross-linguistically comparable description of the constructions of a language used in describing perceptual events and states. The core focus is to discover any sensory asymmetries, i.e., ways in which different sensory modalities are treated differently with respect to these constructions.

Abstract

People of all cultures have some degree of concern with categorizing types of communicative social action. All languages have words with meanings like speak, say, talk, complain, curse, promise, accuse, nod, wink, point and chant. But the exact distinctions they make will differ in both quantity and quality. How is communicative social action categorised across languages and cultures? The goal of this task is to establish a basis for cross-linguistic comparison of native metalanguages for social action.

Abstract

This Field Manual entry has been superceded by the 2009 version: https://doi.org/10.17617/2.883564

Abstract

To understand the underlying principles of categorisation and classification of sensory input semantic analyses must be based on both language and culture. The senses are not only physiological phenomena, but they are also linguistic, cultural, and social. The goal of this task is to explore and describe sociocultural patterns relating language of perception, ideologies of perception, and perceptual practice in our speech communities.

Abstract

This chapter explores what L2 learners' gestures reveal about L2 grammar. The focus is on learners’ difficulties with maintaining reference in discourse caused by their incomplete mastery of pronouns. The study highlights the systematic parallels between properties of L2 speech and gesture, and the parallel effects of grammatical development in both modalities. The validity of a communicative account of interlanguage grammar in this domain is tested by taking the cohesive properties of the gesture-speech ensemble into account. Specifically, I investigate whether learners use gestures to compensate for and to license over-explicit reference in speech. The results rule out a communicative account for the spoken variety of maintained reference. In contrast, cohesive gestures are found to be multi-functional. While the presence of cohesive gestures is not communicatively motivated, their spatial realisation is. It is suggested that gestures are exploited as a grammatical communication strategy to disambiguate speech wherever possible, but that they may also be doing speaker-internal work. The methodological importance of considering L2 gestures when studying grammar is also discussed.

Abstract

Gestures, the symbolic movements speakers perform while they speak, are systematically related to speech and language at multiple levels, and reflect cognitive and linguistic activities in non-trivial ways. This chapter presents an overview of what gestures can tell us about the processes of second language acquisition. It focuses on two key aspects, (a) gestures and the developing language system and (b) gestures and learning, and discusses some implications of an expanded view of language acquisition that takes gestures into account.

Abstract

Gestures are often regarded as the most typical compensatory device used by language learners in communicative trouble. Yet gestural solutions to communicative problems have rarely been studied within any theory of second language use. The work pre­sented in this volume aims to account for second language learners’ strategic use of speech-associated gestures by combining a process-oriented framework for communi­cation strategies with a cognitive theory of gesture. Two empirical studies are presented. The production study investigates Swedish lear­ners of French and French learners of Swedish and their use of strategic gestures. The results, which are based on analyses of both individual and group behaviour, contradict popular opinion as well as theoretical assumptions from both fields. Gestures are not primarily used to replace speech, nor are they chiefly mimetic. Instead, learners use gestures with speech, and although they do exploit mimetic gestures to solve lexical problems, they also use more abstract gestures to handle discourse-related difficulties and metalinguistic commentary. The influence of factors such as proficiency, task, culture, and strategic competence on gesture use is discussed, and the oral and gestural strategic modes are compared. In the evaluation study, native speakers’ assessments of learners’ gestures, and the potential effect of gestures on evaluations of proficiency are analysed and discussed in terms of individual communicative style. Compensatory gestures function at multiple communicative levels. This has implica­tions for theories of communication strategies, and an expansion of the existing frameworks is discussed taking both cognitive and interactive aspects into account.

Abstract

Rede uitgesproken op 12 mei 2000 bij de aanvaarding van het ambt van hoogleraar in de neuropsychologie aan de Faculteit Sociale Wetenschappen KUN.

Abstract

Reading is a cultural invention that needs to recruit cortical infrastructure that was not designed for it (cultural recycling of cortical maps). In the case of reading both visual cortex and networks for speech processing are recruited. Here I discuss current views on the neurobiological underpinnings of spoken language that deviate in a number of ways from the classical Wernicke-Lichtheim-Geschwind model. More areas than Broca’s and Wernicke’s region are involved in language. Moreover, a division along the axis of language production and language comprehension does not seem to be warranted. Instead, for central aspects of language processing neural infrastructure is shared between production and comprehension. Arguments are presented in favor of a dynamic network view, in which the functionality of a region is co-determined by the network of regions in which it is embedded at particular moments in time. Finally, core regions of language processing need to interact with other networks (e.g. the attentional networks and the ToM network) to establish full functionality of language and communication. The consequences of this architecture for reading are discussed.

Abstract

Beim Sprechen und beim Sprachverstehen findet man die Wortbedeutung im Gedächtnis auf und kombiniert sie zu größeren Einheiten (Unifikation). Solche Unifikations-Operationen laufen auf unterschiedlichen Ebenen der Sprachverarbeitung ab. In diesem Beitrag wird ein Rahmen vorgeschlagen, in dem psycholinguistische Modelle mit neurobiologischer Sprachbetrachtung in Verbindung gebracht werden. Diesem Vorschlag zufolge spielt der linke inferiore frontale Gyrus (LIFG) eine bedeutende Rolle bei der Unifi kation

Abstract

Until recently, the literature on common ground depicted its influence as a purely verbal phenomenon. We review current research on how common ground influences gesture. With informative exceptions, most experiments found that speakers used fewer gestures as well as fewer words in common ground contexts; i.e., the gesture/word ratio did not change. Common ground often led to more poorly articulated gestures, which parallels its effect on words. These findings support the principle of recipient design as well as more specific social functions such as grounding, the given-new contract, and Grice’s maxims. However, conceptual pacts or linking old with new information may maintain the original form. All together, these findings implicate gesture-speech ensembles rather than isolated effects on gestures alone.

Abstract

Time is a fundamental aspect of human cognition and action. All languages have developed rich means to express various facets of time, such as bare time spans, their position on the time line, or their duration. The articles in this volume give an overview of what we know about the neural and cognitive representations of time that speakers can draw on in language. Starting with an overview of the main devices used to encode time in natural language, such as lexical elements, tense and aspect, the research presented in this volume addresses the relationship between temporal language, culture, and thought, the relationship between verb aspect and mental simulations of events, the development of temporal concepts, time perception, the storage and retrieval of temporal information in autobiographical memory, and neural correlates of tense processing and sequence planning. The psychological and neurobiological findings presented here will provide important insights to inform and extend current studies of time in language and in language acquisition.

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to discuss an inherent difficulty of PET (and fMRI) research in language production. On the one hand, language production presupposes some degree of freedom for the subject, on the other hand, interpretability of results presupposes restrictions of this freedom. This difficulty is reflected in the existing PET literature in some neglect of the general principle to design experiments in such a way that the results do not allow for alternative interpretations. It is argued that by narrowing down the scope of experiments a gain in interpretability can be achieved.