Ideophones in Gizey grammar

The question of whether or not ideophones constitute a separate word class in a language has attracted the attention of many researchers in recent years. While Newman (1968), Courtenay (1976), Marivate (1985), Creissels (2001), Laughlin (2007), Beck (2008), among others, argue that ideophones in their languages of research form a subset of one of the major word classes, others like Alpher (1994) assign them to a separate part of speech. Although the problem of classifying ideophones into a lexical category has been addressed in many languages, the case of Temne remains unclear. As in many languages, ideophones in Temne have a number of distinctive phonological, morphological, semantic and syntactic properties. Regarding the phonology of ideophones, Wilson (1961:43) states that, “ideophones are pronounced on a higher or lower pitch than other words and are more susceptible to individual manipulation”. Right from the outset, Wilson sees ideophones as a set of words that are distinct from all other words in the language. He classifies ideophones into two groups: those which “emphasize abstract notions or states”, and those “describing actions or sounds”. Valuable as it is, Wilson’s work on ideophones is not only brief, but also silent on the morphological, syntactic and semantic properties of ideophones. Most significantly, Wilson did not address the issue of the word class to which ideophones belong. In this paper, I identify and describe the distinctive properties of ideophones in Temne and argue on the basis of their syntactic distribution and functions that they do not form a coherent word class. Rather, they belong to two different parts of speech. Some ideophones constitute a subset of adverbs, while a small set of ideophones constitute a separate language specific word class that I will refer to as intensifiers. The rest of the paper is structured as follows: Section 2 examines the various approaches in defining parts of speech and advances reasons why lexical classes in Temne should be defined in terms of their syntactic functions and distribution. The distinctive properties of ideophones are discussed in section 3. Section 4 highlights the syntax of adverbs, followed by a comparison of their syntactic functions and distribution with ideophones in section 5. The results of the study are summarized in section 6.

The backbone of every grammar is recognising major word classes, and providing grammatical criteria for these. This chapter investigates the principal types of derivations which change word classes. It considers their semantic and syntactic properties, patterns of polysemy, and distribution across the world. The chapter recapitulates the major criteria used in defining word classes. These criteria can then be applied to potentially problematic derived forms. It provides a brief list of suggestions and questions for fieldworkers analyzing word-class-changing derivations in a language of their expertise. The chapter also distinguishes the basic types of word-class-changing derivations such as verbalizations, nominalizations, adjectivizations and adverbializations.Keywords: adjectivizations; adverbializations; grammar; language verbalizations; nominalizations; patterns of polysemy; semantic properties; syntactic properties; word-class-changing derivations

Dissociative neural correlates of semantic processing of nouns and verbs in Chinese — A language with minimal inflectional morphology

As we saw in the last chapter, in a word-based grammar the words in a language are divided into separate classes. These have traditionally been known as parts of speech, though that term is no longer satisfactory. The word speech is largely restricted nowadays to the spoken language, whereas we are more concerned in this book with the written form; and parts suggests that the sentence is the predominant unit which is being divided into its essential elements. So it is better to refer to the divisions into which the words fall as word classes. There are nine word classes which are normally recognised in English: nouns, verbs, pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, conjunctions, prepositions, articles and interjections. However, some grammarians disagree over the precise number of these classes. This dispute has been caused partly by a comparison of English with Latin and partly because the boundaries between some of the classes are somewhat fuzzy. In Latin there is no class of articles, since they do not exist in that language; and so some early grammarians who were influenced by the model of Latin tried to suggest that the class of articles should not be recognised in English.

The goal of this work was to examine the semantic and syntactic properties of the vocabularies of autistic and non-autistic infants and toddlers to see if children in these two groups know different kinds of words. We focused on both receptive and expressive vocabularies. For expressive vocabulary, we looked only at the "active" lexicon: Of those words that are already in children's receptive vocabulary, we asked which ones they also produce. We used an existing data set of 346 parent report vocabulary checklists (MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory: Words and Gestures) from 41 autistic and 27 non-autistic children at multiple timepoints between the ages of 6 and 43 months. We coded the words on the checklists for various semantic and syntactic properties and evaluated which properties predicted whether children understood and produced those words. Overall, we replicated a common finding that autistic children have smaller receptive vocabularies than non-autistic children, but we found that of the words they understand, autistic children produce a similar proportion of those words as non-autistic children. While we found that some syntactic properties are more or less likely to be represented in children's early vocabularies (e.g., nouns are more likely to be understood and produced than words that are not nouns), these patterns did not differ across autistic and non-autistic children. The semantic and syntactic compositions of autistic and non-autistic children's vocabularies are similar. Thus, while receptive vocabularies are relatively smaller for autistic children, they do not appear to have specific difficulty with words that have particular syntactic or semantic properties, or with adding words to the expressive vocabulary that they already understand.

This paper proposes a functional word class called “path satellites” that includes adverbs, particles, verbal prefixes, and preverbs expressing direction or orientation of motion. The starting point of the analysis is Hungarian, which has a specific set of morphemes considered in different grammars either as a subclass of adverbs or as a specific word class called “preverb”. A detailed description of the semantic and syntactic properties of spatial preverbs in Hungarian and a comparison with adverbs enables two separate classes to be established in this language. However, as many examples presented here show, several other items in different languages have important functional similarities with Hungarian preverbs, e.g. particles or verbal prefixes in German, Italian, Polish, Ancient Greek or in Mayan languages. Moving beyond the traditional semantic, morphological and syntactic criteria that have been used in identifying word classes enables us to demonstrate the functional commonalities of the elements discussed, which are labeled differently in the grammars of individual languages. Adopting the term “satellite” proposed by Talmy is useful for the description of this class of grammatical items moving in the verbal sphere.

Based on the notion of a lexicon with default inheritance, I address the problem of how to provide a template for lexical representations that allows us to capture the relatedness between inflected word forms and canonically derived lexemes within a broadly realizational-inferential model of morphology. To achieve this we need to be able to represent a whole host of intermediate types of lexical relatedness that are much less frequently discussed in the literature. These include transpositions such as deverbal participles, in which a word's morphosyntactic class changes (e.g. verb ⇒ adjective) but no semantic predicate is added to the semantic representation and the derived word remains, in an important sense, a "form" of the base lexeme (e.g. the 'present participle form of the verb'). I propose a model in which morphological properties are inherited by default from syntactic properties and syntactic properties are inherited from semantic properties, such as ontological category (the Default Cascade). Relatedness is defined in terms of a Generalized Paradigm Function (perhaps in reality a relation), a generalization of the Paradigm Function of Paradigm Function Morphology (Stump 2001). The GPF has four components which deliver respectively specifications of a morphological form, syntactic properties, semantic representation and a lexemic index (LI) unique to each individuated lexeme in the lexicon. In principle, therefore, the same function delivers derived lexemes as inflected forms. In order to ensure that a newly derived lexeme of a distinct word class can be inflected I assume two additional principles. First, I assume an Inflectional Specifiability Principle, which states that the form component of the GPF (which defines inflected word forms of a lexeme) is dependent on the specification of the lexeme's morpholexical signature, a declaration of the properties that the lexeme is obliged to inflect for (defined by default on the basis of morpholexical class). I then propose a Category Erasure Principle, which states that 'lower' attributes are erased when the GPF introduces a non-trivial change to a 'higher' attribute (e.g. a change to the semantic representation entails erasure of syntactic and morphological information). The required information is then provided by the Default Cascade, unless overridden by specific declarations in the GPF. I show how this model can account for a variety of intermediate types of relatedness which cannot easily be treated as either inflection or derivation, and conclude with a detailed illustration of how the system applies to a particularly interesting type of transposition in the Samoyedic language Sel'kup, in which a noun is transposed to a similitudinal adjective whose form is in paradigmatic opposition to case-marked noun forms, and which is therefore a kind of inflection.

In the study of 'exotic' languages a question that often surges and sometimes evolves into discussion, is whether they have adjectives, or whether property denominating words, that could be called adjectives, are in fact better grouped with either the word classes of nouns or verbs. This paper examines whether adjectives can be said to exist as a separate word class in the Oto-Aztecan language Hueyapan, Nahuatl spoken in central Mexico. In recent studies of Mesoamerican languages for example Palancar (2006) argues that Otomi has no adjectives, but that the words referred to as adjectives by other Otomi scholars are in fact stative verbs. Oppositely, for Totonac, which has been claimed to be a language without adjectives, Beck (2000) argues that the property denoting words that previous scholars have relegated to the nominal category, are in fact adjectives. This paper investigates whether a class of adjectives can be defined by using Beck's arguments in Nahuatl specifically the variety spoken in Hueyapan, Morelos another Mesoamerican language for which there has been disagreement regarding the existence of a separate class of adjectives. In order to arrive at conclusions about whether a language has adjectives or not,

Nouns and verbs differ in their semantic properties and relationships with other words in the lexicon. This study uses electroencephalography (EEG) to investigate how word class differences influence semantic retrieval and identification of semantic relationships. Participants identified whether the final word in a triplet (noun or verb) was related to the first two words (both nouns). Time frequency analysis of the EEG revealed word class and relatedness effects in theta, beta and gamma. Decreases in beta power were found during action verbs, which may be related to motor processing. Theta exhibited a word class by relatedness interaction in which unrelated verbs elicited a greater power increase compared to other conditions. These data indicate that action verbs require more neural activity when identifying the absence of relationships than object nouns, likely due to the abstract, flexible nature of verb meanings and the shallow structure of verb organisation.

Recent work on verbal polysemy has shown that a typology taking into account syntactic as well as semantic and lexical properties, not only allows us to better understand the link between syntax and meaning, but also offers an operational framework for the description of verbal meaning extensions (cf. Willems : 2002 & 2006). These observations reveal the existence of polysemic regularities within and between lexical classes. However, the discovery of those regularities, presupposes an exhaustive inventory of the syntactic and semantic properties of the verbal lexicon. In this perspective, the verb classification presented by Jean Dubois and Francoise Dubois-Charlier constitutes a particularly useful database. The aim of this contribution is to confront various verbal typologies (Guillet & Leclere : 1992, Dubois & Dubois-Charlier : 1997, Dixon : 1991 and Levin : 1993) in order to propose an integrated definition of the ditransitive locative verbs (mettre, enlever, transporter, laisser...) and to analyse the polysemic extensions specific to this verb class.

Background: Differential language recovery in bilingual speakers with aphasia is of interest for theoretical reasons. One issue concerns the interaction between languages (L1–L2), word class (noun versus verb), and language task (naming versus discourse production in recovery). No study has examined this issue in Chinese speakers with aphasia who speak two dialects such as Cantonese and Mandarin that have different phonological and syntactic properties. Aims: We compared the patterns of confrontation naming and discourse production in YF, a Cantonese–Mandarin speaker with a chronic mild anomic aphasia after stroke. Our prediction was that there would be an interaction between the language, word class, and language task. Methods & Procedures: Naming was examined in Cantonese (L1) and Mandarin (L2) with an adaptation of the Object and Action Naming Battery (Druks & Masterson, 2000). Discourse production in L1 and L2 was analysed with the Quantitative Production Analysis (Berndt, Wayland, Rochon, Saffran, & Schwartz, 2000) and Conversation Analysis Profile for People with Aphasia (Whitworth, Perkins, & Lesser, 1997). Outcomes & Results: There were no significant differences in object and action naming or in discourse production between dialects. However there was an effect of word class on naming in L2, with object naming better than action naming in Mandarin, but not in Cantonese (L1). Conclusions: Word class had an effect on recovery in YF's less-dominant language as in other cases of bilingual aphasia. The interaction between word class and language status in a Cantonese–Mandarin speaker suggests that this pattern of recovery is robust across languages.

The word classes are structural and not cognitive classes and should be established on the basis of or grammatical criteria and not on the basis of semantics. There is a division in Atong between roots that can occur in predicates and those that cannot. The word classes and their most important subclasses and propositional properties are illustrated in Table form. The sub-classes of the Predicative word class share syntactic, morphological and propositional properties. The different properties they have as head of a predicate are due, to a large part, to their denotation and for the other part to convention. The name Predicative word class is chosen because being able to function as predicate head is the only propositional function all subclasses have in common. There is no real word-class changing derivation in Atong. Charts are used as a tool to simplify explanations.Keywords: Atong; grammatical criteria; predicates; semantics forms; word classes

While semantic and syntactic properties of verb meaning can impact the success of verb learning at a single age, developmental changes in how these factors influence acquisition are largely unexplored. We ask whether the impact of syntactic and semantic properties on verb vocabulary development varies with age and language ability for toddlers aged 16 to 30 months in a large sample (N = 5520, N Late Talkers = 821; N Typically Developing = 4699, cutoff = 15th percentile) of vocabulary checklist data from the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory (MBCDI). Verbs from the MBCDI were coded for their syntactic and semantic properties, including manner/result meanings, durative/punctual events, and syntactic complexity. Both late talkers and typically developing children were less likely to produce syntactically complex verbs at younger ages as compared to older ages. Group differences emerged for manner/result: Typically developing children were more likely to produce manner verbs at all ages, but late talkers were more likely to produce result verbs. Regardless of group, children who produced more manner versus result verbs also had larger verb vocabulary sizes overall. These results suggest that late talkers and typically developing toddlers differ in how they build their verb vocabularies.

Word classes in the brain: Implications of linguistic typology for cognitive neuroscience

“In the last analysis it is difficult to find a definition valid for all pronouns, though there is much in their often pecuiiar paradigms and usage to justify our setting them up as a separate word class" (Otto Jespersen). One of the peculiarities which serves to "justify" an interpretation of the pronoun (or, in this case, the Russian pronoun) as an independent word class is its completely unique distribution, that is, the syntactic combinations to which it lends itself.