Gender Vocalism in the South Bird’s Head Languages in Comparative Perspective

Personal and demonstrative pronouns ('I,’ ‘you,’ ‘s/he,’ ‘we,’ the plural 'you,’ ‘they,’ ‘this’ and ‘these’) are notorious for challenging any theory of natural language. Singular pronouns have received much attention from linguists and philosophers alike during the last three decades. Plural pronouns, on the other hand, have been neglected, especially by philosophers. I want to fill this gap and suggest accounts of ‘we,’ the plural ‘you,’ and ‘they.'Intuitively, singular and plural personal pronouns are ‘counterparts.' Any account of personal pronouns should make sense of this intuition. However, the latter is not very sophisticated and, as we move along, it will be reexamined and relativized. As we shall see, plural pronouns are much more than mere counterparts of the familiar singular ones. It is well known that third person singular pronouns have puzzling behaviors, acting as co-referential terms, bound variables, or unbound anaphora. But co-reference, binding, and unbound anaphora are not confined to the usual examples and extend, in a way, to plural pronouns. My discussion of the latter is partly motivated by this particular behavior.

The question of how children learn Function Words (FWs) is still a matter of debate among child language researchers. Are early multiword utterances based on lexically specific patterns or rather abstract grammatical relations? In this corpus study, we analyzed FWs having a highly predictable distribution in relation to Mean Length Utterance (MLU) an index of syntactic complexity in a large naturalistic sample of 315 monolingual French children aged 2 to 4 year-old. The data was annotated with a Part Of Speech Tagger (POS-T), belonging to computational tools from CHILDES. While eighteen FWs strongly correlated with MLU expressed either in word or in morpheme, stepwise regression analyses showed that subject pronouns predicted MLU. Factor analysis yielded a bifactor hierarchical model: The first factor loaded sixteen FWs among which eight had a strong developmental weight (third person singular verbs, subject pronouns, articles, auxiliary verbs, prepositions, modals, demonstrative pronouns and plural markers), whereas the second factor loaded complex FWs (possessive verbs and object pronouns). These findings challenge the lexicalist account and support the view that children learn grammatical forms as a complex system based on early instead of late structure building. Children may acquire FWs as combining words and build syntactic knowledge as a complex abstract system which is not innate but learned from multiple word input sentences context. Notably, FWs were found to predict syntactic development and sentence complexity. These results open up new perspectives for clinical assessment and intervention.

Many Bantu languages have a system of complex verbal constructions, where several verbal forms combine to describe a single event. Typically, these consist of an auxiliary and a main verb, and often tense-aspect marking and subject agreement is found on both forms. In this paper we develop a parsing-based, Dynamic Syntax analysis of complex verbal constructions in three Bantu languages – Swahili, Rangi and siSwati – and show how concepts of structural underspecification, accumulation of information and contextual update can be harnessed to explain the use of several verbal forms for the building of one semantic structure. At the heart of the analysis is the idea that structure established early in the parse can be ‘re-built’ from subsequent lexical input as long as incrementality and information growth are respected. This correctly predicts the accumulation of tense-aspect information and the fact that multiple subject markers have to be interpreted identically, while maintaining a uniform pronominal analysis of Bantu subject markers. From a comparative perspective, we show that complex verbal constructions result from processes of grammaticalisation, and, especially with reference to the extensive auxiliary system of siSwati, we sketch different processes of lexical change underlying the stages of the grammaticalisation process.

This note concerns the meaning of the phrase μελήσει ταῦτα and the anomalous use of the singular demonstrative pronoun in Aristophanes, Wealth 229. Although the manuscripts are unanimous in their readings, I argue that the paradosis should be emended to μελήσει ταῦτα.

Mishnaic Hebrew shows considerable linguistic variation, which may be narrowed down to three phases: the original living language, its literary crystallization, and its written and oral transmission. While scholars of Mishnaic Hebrew are well aware of this fact, they generally do not explore it and neglect to utilize tools of variationist linguistics and historical sociolinguistics in order to enhance their understanding of the language and the motivations of its users. This paper calls for a careful integration of variationist and sociolinguistic methods into the research on Mishnaic Hebrew and offers two case studies that demonstrate the advantages of this approach. The first case study con-cerns the distribution of the two feminine singular demonstrative pronouns and , for which I argue for a variationist rather than structuralist analysis. The second case study concerns a metalinguistic discussion in tractate ‘Eruvin of the Babylonian Talmud, which is claimed here to demonstrate the ideological nature of rabbinic litera-ture and its linguistic implications.

Of the two forms of the 1CS independent subject pronoun in Biblical Hebrew (BH), אנכי and אני both 'I', the latter, shorter form is the more common, with 874 occurrences, compared to 359 of its longer counterpart. Ancient cognate languages use either only a cognate of אני, only a cognate of אנכי or cognates of both. In Jeremiah cases of אנכי outnumber those of אני by a ratio of 54:37, each form coming in a variety of genres throughout the book's various apparent component parts. In early Hebrew epigraphic sources there is a single relevant case, הית in the Siloam Tunnel inscription. The Greek presents an independent pronoun parallel to אנו/אנחנו in Jer 42.6, but it is obviously impossible to determine which form the translator(s) had before him. In BH the dominant forms of the proximal singular demonstrative pronouns are ms זה and fs זאת.Keywords: Biblical Hebrew (BH); Jeremiah; Siloam Tunnel inscription

This paper investigates the diachronic development of the sequence assim que (lit. ‘such that’) in the history of Portuguese, with a comparative perspective on the parallel construction así que in Spanish. A corpus-based approach was employed, analyzing approximately 1800 tokens from the Corpus do Português: Historical Genres, spanning eight centuries of written European Portuguese. The results show that assim que remained highly analyzable until the end of the Old Portuguese period, with the adverb assim often followed by a complement or result clause. The grammaticalization of assim que appears to have evolved partly independently from standalone assim. While Portuguese and Spanish share many uses of the construction, modern European Portuguese has diverged, with assim que losing its status as a discourse marker. This change is best explained by the frequent use of cleft constructions (e.g., foi assim que), which reanalyzed que as a subordinating connector, undoing the earlier single-unit interpretation. These findings suggest that even deeply entrenched grammaticalization processes may undergo retraction when the semantic analyzability of component elements allows it.

This article is devoted to the emergence of a new paradigm in French and Romance: that of nominal determiners. Latin had no articles, and although possessives, demonstratives and indefinites could determine the noun, they could also be used as pronouns or adjectives, so that the morpho-syntactic category of nominal determiners did not exist as such. We first examine the diachronic evolution of French, where a far-reaching grammaticalization process took place. Syntagmatically, all determiners end up in the NP-initial position as the only available syntactic slot, contributing to the highly configurational NP pattern characteristic of Modern French. From a paradigmatic viewpoint, determiners no longer correspond to a syntactic function, but to a separate morpho-syntactic category. We also evaluate to what extent this evolution took place in two other Romance languages, Italian and Spanish. Through the analysis of this particular evolution, based on parallel corpora consisting of a Latin text and its translations in Old, Middle, and Modern French on the one hand, and in Spanish and Italian on the other, our study also provides evidence for more general mechanisms, analogy in particular, at work in the creation of new paradigms.

The purpose of this article is to study the gender specificity of the self-presentation strategy of modern politicians in the UK, identified during the election campaign of Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss from June to September 2022.The material of the study was the texts of political debates published on the Internet.The relevance of the research is determined by the insufficient study of the politician's self-presentation strategy gender aspect in the texts of pre-election debates. After analyzing the debate materials, it can be stated that Liz Truss's speech is distinguished by assertiveness and moderate emotionality, expressed through such communicative means as the usage of the first person singular personal pronoun, demonstrative pronoun, anaphora and metaphor. In 75% of the considering cases, the personal pronoun of the first person singular is dominated, in 12% Liz Truss uses the demonstrative pronoun, in 6% – the metaphor and in 6% the politician uses the anaphora.In addition, the candidate for prime minister demonstrates his own competence in matters of domestic politics and economics, actively using the terminological apparatus, which contributes to a successful self-presentation. In turn, Rishi Sunak's speech is characterized by confidence, particularity, reasoning, focusing the attention of the electorate on his best qualities, represented by the use of the first person singular pronoun, the active use of verbs in the future tense, as well as stylistic means such as metaphor. As a result of the analysis, it was found that in 55% of the examples the candidate for prime minister uses the personal pronoun of the first person singular, in 33% verbs in the future tense dominate, and in 11% – metaphor.The study showed that the gender characteristics of the two politicians at the verbal level do not have significant differences. Both policies generally use the same set of language features.

The usage of classifiers exist in all dialect areas in contemporary Chinese, but its usages as a demonstrative pronoun and constructional particle equivalent to ”de (的) 1, de2 and de3” exist mostly in the southern Chinese dialects and a few Guanhua in adjacent areas. The demonstrative pronoun ”ge (箇) 1” is complicated both in its order and kind. In the Huangxiao cluster of Jianghuai Guanhua, it serves as a definite demonstrative pronoun with no distinction of distances, but in a few places in the Gan dialect, Xiang dialect and Hui dialect, it has mainly evolved into a demonstrative pronoun to signify near things. It is used as a demonstrative pronoun to denote distant things in a few places which use the Yue dialect and Min dialect. It serves as a demonstrative for both near and distant things in the Kejia dialect and the Gan dialect in adjacent areas and is mainly a demonstrative pronoun for near things in the Wu dialect cluster, but all other kinds of demonstrative pronouns exist in certain aspects. The evolution of ”ge1” from a definite demonstrative pronoun into other kinds of demonstrative pronouns is found basically in southern parts of China in the pattern of ”mostly regular and seldom irregular.” In the Wu dialect cluster, it exhibits a coexistence of the definite pronoun with a neutral demonstrative, near demonstrative, and distant demonstrative. In all the dialects where ”ge1” exists and in Pinghua, there exists the constructional particle ”ge3” equivalent to ”de3” in mandarin. In a few places which use the Gan dialect, Xiang dialect, Wu dialect, and Kejia dialect where ”ge1” is used as a demonstrative pronoun for near things, there exists the constructional particle ”ge2,” which is equivalent to ”de1” and ”de2” in mandarin. The different distribution of ”words of the 'ge' type” in the southern dialects reflects synchronologically the grammaticalization process of ”ge,” from a classifier into a demonstrative pronoun, and from a classifier and a demonstrative pronoun into a constructional particle. The Jianghuai Guanhua in eastern Hubei and in the Gan dialect both reflect this process: the single usage of the classifier ”ge” leads to the appearance of the demonstrative pronoun ”ge1” and the constructional particle ”ge3”; the weakening of the re-referring function of the demonstrative pronoun ”ge1” after mode adverbial leads to the appearance of the constructional particle ”ge2.” The grammaticalization of ”ge” in sound is mainly reflected in the change of tone and vowel. Some ”'ge' type words” leave only traces in some places, which serves as evidence of their gradual extinction under the influence of dominative dialects. The constructional particle ”ge4,” which is between predicate and supplementary, is also formed by the single usage. ”Ge4” widely exists in the Guanhua and Jin dialect, but ”ge1,” ”ge2,” and ”ge3” are rarely found. Hence, the regional distribution of ”ge1,” ”ge2,” and ”ge3” and that of ”ge4” are contradictory.

This paper addresses the usefulness of speech pauses for determining whether third person neuter gender singular pronouns refer to individual or abstract entities in Danish spoken language. The annotations of dyadic map task dialogues and spontaneous first encounters are analyzed and used in machine learning experiments act to automatically identify the anaphoric functions of pronouns and the type of abstract reference. The analysis of the data shows that abstract reference is more often performed by marked (stressed or demonstrative pronouns) than by unmarked personal pronouns in Danish speech as in English, and therefore previous studies of abstract reference in the former language are corrected. The data also show that silent and filled pauses precede significantly more often third person singular neuter gender pronouns when they refer to abstract entities than when they refer to individual entities. Since abstract entities are not the most salient ones and referring to them is cognitively more hard than referring to individual entities, pauses signal this complex processes. This is in line with perception studies, which connect pauses with the expression of abstract or complex concepts. We also found that unmarked pronouns referring to an entity type usually referred to by a marked pronoun are significantly more often preceded by a speech pause than marked pronouns with the same referent type. This indicates that speech pauses can also signal that the referent of a pronoun of a certain type is not the most expected one. Finally, language models were produced from the annotated map task and first encounter dialogues in order to train machine learning experiments to predict the function of third person neuter gender singular pronouns as a first step toward the identification of the anaphoric antecedents. The language models from the map task dialogues were also used for training classifiers to determine the referent type (speech act, event, fact or proposition) of abstract anaphors. In all cases, the best results were obtained by a multilayer perceptron with an F1-score between 0.52 and 0.67 for the three-class function prediction task and of 0.73 for the referential type prediction.

Narrative speech production (NSP), i.e., the conceptualization, linguistic formulation, and articulation of a story, is a multifaceted process underpinned by cognitive functions and mentalization ability, often impaired in individuals with borderline personality disorder (BPD). This study examines differences in linguistic formulation between individuals with BPD and healthy controls (HCs), and explores how task type influences linguistic formulation, as well as how linguistic formulation relates to temporal parameters of speech uniquely in BPD. Speech of 33 BPD and 31 HC individuals was recorded in three task types: telling their previous day, retelling a story, and picture sequences. Features of linguistic formulation were extracted with natural language processing methods, while temporal parameters were extracted using automatic speech recognition. Hypothesis-driven generalized linear mixed-effects models (GLMMs) were applied to test predefined group differences in four linguistic features (content words, first- and third-person singular verbs, and syntactic complexity). Additional exploratory GLMMs examined other linguistic features and task effects. Within-group Spearman correlations assessed associations between linguistic and temporal measures, controlling for task. Hypothesis testing showed that the NSP in BPD is characterized by fewer content words, more first-person singular verbs, and lower syntactic complexity than that of HCs. Exploratory analyses revealed that individuals with BPD used pronouns more frequently than HCs, particularly demonstrative pronouns (e.g., this) and first-person singular pronouns (e.g., I). In BPD, higher first-person singular reference (pronouns and verbs) correlated with fewer silent pauses, while greater syntactic complexity correlated with more filled pauses. Task modulated verbosity and the use of other pronoun types. Findings suggest that NSP in BPD is characterized by dominant self-referential thought content, reflected in elevated first-person singular reference, and by qualitatively impoverished language use, marked by reduced content word production, increased pronoun use, and lower syntactic complexity. Heightened self-focus may hinder the efficient allocation of cognitive resources required for cohesive, listener-oriented NSP.

In this article we discuss the sequence of emergence of six different types of pronouns in 36 Dutch children from one to four. This study is part of a larger project concerning the morphosyntactic development in normal Dutch children of that age. The aim of this project is to find out whether or not there are patterns in the language of three different groups of language impaired children compared to the non-language impaired children. The main conclusions of this article are: the number of pronouns increases as the child gets older. Dutch children make very few mistakes in producing the pronouns studied. The sequence of emergence of interrogative pronouns reflects the order which is found in the English literature on the subject. Demonstrative pronouns are the first to emerge in the system, followed by personal pronouns. The subject forms emerge before the object forms. There is a clear tendency for singular pronouns to emerge before plurals.

This chapter discusses the system of demonstrative adjectives and pronouns found in the dialect of South Zeal, a village on the northern edge of Dartmoor. The system would operate in all positions where Standard English would show either a third person plural personal pronoun, or a plural demonstrative pronoun. The normal singular pronouns are either the simple forms or the 'second compounds', the 'first compounds' being most unusual. In the plural of the adjective, the simple forms are much more frequent than their equivalent 'first compounds', whereas in the plural of the pronoun, there is apparently only the one form. The first form is used in all stressed positions and as unstressed subject except in inverted Q-forms; the second is used as the unstressed non-subject, and as the unstressed subject in inverted Q-forms. The chapter looks at the actual forms found in the dialect.

ABSTRACTThis paper offers the first comprehensive survey of the combination of a third person singular pronoun and the demonstrative pronoun this, which is assumed to be peculiar to Middle English. Through a close analysis of the data extracted from the Corpus of Middle English Prose and Verse, particular attention is paid to how far this usage is attributable to direct Latin influence, as has been previously suggested. A detailed study of the Wycliffite Bible examines how often Latin demonstrative pronouns which refer to persons in the Vulgate (e.g. hic, iste) are translated as he/she this. It will be demonstrated that, other than such translation effects, the pronominal combination is also subject to several conditioning factors such as the Northern dialect, metrical requirements and the set of contexts where a special emphasis is very likely to be intended on the person in question.