Tonal aberrations signaling contact-induced grammatical change

The close cross-linguistic relation between the domains of space and time has been well described. The frequent emergence of Tense-Aspect-Mood (TAM) markers from deictic motion verbs in particular, has also been extensively detailed in the literature. This paper focusses on the less well-known link between associated motion, a category of functional morphemes expressing (deictic) motion events, and TAM, in a language contact situation. Specifically, it provides a synchronic and diachronic description of three associated motion prefixes,joo-,tóó-andkoo-, found in the Tanzanian Bantu language Rangi, spoken in an area of high linguistic diversity. It proposes that the prefixjoo-encodes movement towards a deictic centre,tóó-encodes movement towards a goal which is not the deictic centre, andkoo-encodes movement away from a deictic centre. It further contends that whiletóó-andkoo-have maintained a purely deictic function,joo-has grammaticalised to assume an additional function whereby it encodes future tense, possibly aided by the absence of a dedicated future tense marker in the language. This three-way morphological encoding of spatial relations on the verb form is not a common characteristic of East African Bantu languages. However, this paper proposes that the system in Rangi can be accounted for on the basis of cross-linguistically widely attested pathways of grammatical change.

A Typology of the Ground of Deictic Motion Verbs As Path-Conflating Verbs: the Speaker, the Addressee, and Beyond This paper examines typical deictic motion verbs come and go in different languages, Chinese, English, German, Japanese, Korean, and Shibe, as well as other languages in the literature, using Talmy's framework for analyzing motion verbs. While his framework makes it possible to analyze and compare the lexical semantics of deictic motion verbs viewed as Path-conflating verbs, the actual characterization of the Ground, i.e. the deictic center, is far more complicated than suggested by Talmy: "toward the location of the speaker". The analysis of deictic motion verbs in various languages reveals that there is a cross-classified hierarchy among the elements which constitute the Ground: all languages take the location of the speaker at the utterance time as the deictic center while, in addition, the location of the addressee and/or the reference time locations play the role of the deictic center in some languages. Furthermore, it is shown that the Ground of the deictic motion verbs is relativized in some languages to the referent of a particular sentence element such as the subject of the matrix subject, rather than being anchored to the participants of the speech act, which are usually considered to determine the deictic center.

Distinctions of time are among the most common notions expressed in morphology cross-linguistically. But the inventories of distinctions marked in individual languages are also varied. Some languages have few if any morphological markers pertaining to time, while others have extensive sets. Certain categories do recur pervasively across languages, but even these can vary subtly or even substantially in their uses. And they may be optional or obligatory. The grammar of time is traditionally divided into two domains: tense and aspect. Tense locates situations in time. Tense markers place them along a timeline with respect to some point of reference, a deictic center. The most common reference point is the moment of speech. Many languages have just three tense categories: past for situations before the time of speech, present for those overlapping with the moment of speech, and future for those subsequent to the moment of speech. But many languages have no morphological tense, some have just two categories, and some have many more. In some languages, morphological distinctions correspond fairly closely to identifiable times. There may, for example, be a today (hodiernal) past that contrasts with a yesterday (hesternal) past. In other languages, tense distinctions are more fluid. A recent past might be interpreted as ‘some time earlier today’ for a sentence meaning ‘I ate a banana’, but ‘within the last few months’ for a sentence meaning ‘I returned from Africa’. Languages also vary in the mobility of the deictic center. In some languages tense distinctions are systematically calibrated with respect to the moment of speaking. In others, the deictic center may shift. It may be established by the matrix clause in a complex sentence. Or it may be established by a larger topic of discussion. Tense is most often a verbal category, because verbs generally portray the most dynamic elements of a situation, but a number of languages distinguish tense on nouns as well. Aspect characterizes the internal temporal structure of a situation. There may be different forms of a verb ‘eat’, for example, in sentences meaning ‘I ate lamb chops’, ‘I was eating lamb chops’, and ‘I used to eat lamb chops’, though all are past tense. They may pick out one phase of the situation, with different forms for ‘I began to eat’, ‘I was eating’, and ‘I ate it up’. They may make finer distinctions, with different forms for ‘I took a bite’, ‘I nibbled’, and ‘I kept eating’. Morphological aspect distinctions are usually marked on verbs, but in some languages they can be marked on nominals as well. In some languages, there is a clear separation between the two: tense is expressed in one part of the morphology, and aspect in another. But often a single marker conveys both: a single suffix might mark both past tense and progressive aspect in a sentence meaning ‘I was eating’, for example. A tense distinction may be made only in a particular aspect, and/or a certain aspect distinction marked only in a particular tense. Like other areas of grammar, tense and aspect systems are constantly evolving. The meanings of markers can shift over time, as speakers apply them to new contexts, and as new markers enter the system, taking over some of their functions. Markers can shift for example from aspect to tense, or from derivation to inflection. The gradualness of such developments underlies the cross-linguistic differences we find in tense and aspect categories. There is a rich literature on tense and aspect. As more is learned about the inventories of categories that exist in individual languages and the ways speakers deploy them, theoretical models continue to grow in sophistication.

A Typology of the Path of Deictic Motion Verbs as Path-Conflating Verbs: The Entailment of Arrival and the Deictic Center This paper analyzes deictic motion verbs in various languages using Talmy's framework, and isolates the Path of motion expressed by these verbs. It is argued that the different interpretations of the Path so discovered are attributable to the lexical meaning of deictic motion verbs as well as locative phrases. Furthermore, deictic motion verbs are claimed to be lexically specified for the entailment of arrival only if they express the Path eventually directed to the deictic center. The arrival-time and departure-time interpretations of cooccurring point-of-time expressions are shown to coincide with the entailment of arrival, or the lack thereof, which is inherent to the semantics of deictic motion verbs.

In Hittite, deictic motion verbs pai- ‘go’ and uwa- ‘come’ may co-occur in a monoclausal structure with a second verb that carries the lexical meaning. As yet, their exact function remains obscure. I argue that motion verbs involved in such construction underwent transcategorization and function as New Event Markers. I show that this development is best explained as an instance of constructionalization involving both the motion verbs and the second verb in the clause, which is based on a pragmatic inference arising when motion verbs were used without a spatial complement. Either motion verb contributes a different semantics to the construction based on the different perspective regarding the deictic center identified by the ego, whereby pai- ‘go’ (motion originating from the deictic center) marks an event as close in time and controlled, while uwa- ‘come’ (motion originating outside the deictic center) indicates distance in time and possible lack of control.

Frank Ankersmit has revised our understanding of political representation in terms of an aesthetic distance between the represented and representatives. The advantage of the parliamentary politics lies also in a rhetorical and temporal distance between the practices of MPs and those of the citizen-voters. The parliamentary democracy is constituted temporally through its procedures and practices. The parliamentary time is rhetorical, based on speaking for and against, in utramque partem, and the parliamentary procedure consists of temporal units aiming at guaranteeing that opposed points of view can be heard. To speak in the presence of the adversaries in the parliament alludes to the omnipresence of alternatives in parliamentary politics. The citizens, occasional politicians (Weber), can liberate themselves in the ballot box from their everyday ›being‹ and vote as if they were MPs. So we could give a rhetorical redesciption to Rousseau’s dictum that Englishmen are free only on the election day.

This study examines the linguistic construal and cognitive representation of time and viewpoint in the genre of news narratives. We present a model of mental spaces that involves a News Space in which the deictic center is construed of the news actors at the time the newsworthy events took place, and a Reality Space in which the deictic here-and-now center of journalist and reader is construed. This model explains how the dynamic representation of narrative news discourse, characterized by shifts in time and viewpoint, is steered by linguistic devices. An analysis of Dutch news narratives shows that temporal adverbs such as yesterdayand shifts from present tense to past tense may signal a moveforwardin narrative time, to a viewpoint in the future relative to the narrative now-point, rather thanbackward. These atypical time shifts can be accounted for by presupposing an Intermediate Space located at a point in time between the News Space and the Reality Space where the progression of narrative time comes to a halt and experiences are rather relived than reported. The salience of the Intermediate Space may be signaled by quotative conditionals reflecting the viewpoints of implicitly quoted sources. These results clarify how tense and temporal deixis steer the linguistic construal of time and viewpoint in news narratives, demonstrating that time and viewpoint are closely linked in the cognitive representation of these narratives.

Counts of females with cubs-of-the-year (FWC) have been used as an index for monitoring brown bear (Ursus arctos) populations or estimating a minimum number of adult females in several small and medium-sized populations. Because discriminating among family groups is crucial to this procedure, we sought to improve criteria used to differentiate among FWC using spatial and temporal distances between sightings. We used telemetry data from 11 FWC from southern and central Europe and 15 FWC from Sweden to determine the likelihood that observations were of the same FWC based on the distance moved and elapsed time period. Euclidean distances traveled by each FWC were estimated daily. We then calculated straight-line distances traveled by each FWC using intervals of 1–180 days, or the maximum available. We obtained the maximum values (highest percentiles) of distances over time for each FWC. We considered 2 periods of bear activity: early spring, from first observations after denning until 30 June, and t...

A novel motion compensated temporal filtering (MCTF) scheme is proposed in this paper by properly using forward and backward motion compensations. The mean, the second moment and the maximum value for the temporal distance of all motion compensation pairs (MCPs) in a group of frames (GOF) are minimized such that the number of unconnected pixels is minimized. The overall coding efficiency is improved by up to 1.5 dB when compared to the scheme provided in [?] while the total number of motion estimation remains the same.

Previous articleNext article No AccessNotes and ReviewsFurther Comments on Zapotec Motion VerbsVelma B. PickettVelma B. Pickett Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by International Journal of American Linguistics Volume 42, Number 2Apr., 1976 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/465406 Views: 4Total views on this site Citations: 3Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 1976 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Tsuneko Nakazawa A Typology of the Path of Deictic Motion Verbs as Path-Conflating Verbs: The Entailment of Arrival and the Deictic Center, Poznań Studies in Contemporary Linguistics 45, no.33 (Jan 2009).https://doi.org/10.2478/v10010-009-0022-6Tsuneko Nakazawa A Typology of the Ground of Deictic Motion Verbs As Path-Conflating Verbs: the Speaker, the Addressee, and Beyond, Poznań Studies in Contemporary Linguistics 43, no.22 (Jan 2007).https://doi.org/10.2478/v10010-007-0014-3Søren Wichmann A semantic framework for the azoyú tlapanec iterative, Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 25, no.11 (Jan 1992): 125–142.https://doi.org/10.1080/03740463.1992.10412281

指示動詞「來」、「去」的原為一組以說話者為基準點指示客體位移方向的不及物動詞。然而經過語法化(grammaticalization)的演變，指示動詞已發展出相當多元的語意。本文旨在探討現代閩南語的指示動詞「來」(lai5)和「去」(khi3)的各種語義。我們發現閩南語指示動詞除了表現空間趨向義外，經過語法化演變至非空間意義後，在表達說話者主觀態度功能上，有著比國語更為豐富的表現。然而，指示動詞的各種語義隨著在格式中位置的不同，呈現的語義也會有所不同，因此為了能更清楚的掌握閩南語指示動詞的各式用法，我們採用格式語法(construction grammar)的角度來分析閩南語指示動詞在格式中的各種意義。 我們發現指示動詞每種語意的展現，都出現在有特殊限制的格式，即空間意義或非空間意義各出現在不同限制的格式中。指示動詞的空間意義表現，其中最為重要的為參照點的定位，「來」表示的方向為接近參照點，「去」則是遠離參照點。一般來說參照點位置為說話當下說話者所處地點，然而為了表達某些社會性的語用功能，「來」的參照點可以轉移至聽話者身上，「指示動詞 + 處所詞」此一格式可以幫助我們定位參照點所在。而處所詞的有無也可以確保指示動詞空間性意義的一個指標，我們可以從格式中處所詞的有無看出格式的演變和語法化過程之間也有著互動關係。從語料中可以觀察到非空間意義的指示動詞在格式中通常不會再與處所詞搭配，並且會與非自主動詞搭配出現。指示動詞的非空間意義表現，用在祈使語氣中的「來」可以表示說話者的意志和參與；而用於陳述句則常與說話者主觀態度有關，「來」表示說話者置身事內的態度，「去」表示說話者置身事外或無法掌控的態度。閩南語指示動詞主觀性意義的發展，正符合Traugott(1989)年所提出的語法化趨勢。 本文第一章為引言；第二章介紹前人的研究及理論；第三章開始介紹指示動詞的空間趨向性意義；第四章討論動趨結構中的指示動詞；第五章探討指示動詞的非空間趨向意義；第六章為結語。

This article deals with translating South Slavic deictic verbs. Specifically, we consider translations among Bulgarian, Croatian, and Serbian. Deictic verbs are verbs whose interpretation is dependent on the location of speech-act participants (Fillmore 1997), such as come and go. In research on Slavic, certain motion verbs prefixes have been discussed as deictic prefixes (see Grenoble 1991, Filipović 2009, Łozińska 2018). Particular emphasis in this analysis is on the prefixed motion verbs dojda/doći, idvam/dolaziti, otida/otići, and otivam/odlaziti found in Bulgarian, Croatian, and Serbian literary texts and their translations. We present a brief quantitative overview and conduct a qualitative study of deixis-related meanings, paying necessary attention to other non-deictic meanings. Special attention is given to the constructional interplay of various deictic elements that co-occur with deictic verbs. Since we deal with literary texts and not everyday interaction, we consider the genre and context and apply the notion of viewpoint, which also covers the mental viewpoint adopted by the narrator, in addition to the deictic viewpoint of one of the speech participants. In the study, we observed shifts in point-of-view from deictic to non-deictic construal and vice versa, and from dynamic to static construal. These phenomena relate to the fact that in a text with a third person narrator, there is no innate deictic centre, while in casual conversation, the interlocutors create the deictic centre. The results show a preference for using come when motion towards a protagonist is described in a neutral context.

This work studies two related phenomena in human language: the ability of verbs and other lexical items to describe how a situation (event or state) develops or holds in time (sc LEXICAL ASPECT) and the view some verbal auxiliaries and affixes present of the development or result of situations at a given time (sc GRAMMATICAL ASPECT). Through this investigation I reveal a formal situation structure represented by aspectual phenomena, a structure to which other linguistic elements refer, particularly tense. I examine data in a variety of languages, taking particular care to distinguish between aspect semantics and cancellable pragmatic implicatures associated with aspect forms. The semantic-pragmatic distinction provides a tool for determining what properties need to be accounted for in the semantic representation and what may be adduced as evidence for these properties. In particular, I show that oppositions generally assumed to be semantically equipollent ($+/-$) are semantically privative ($+$/unmarked), with unmarked forms interpreted in accordance with pragmatic principles. Lexical aspect semantics is represented by the privative features ($+$telic), ($+$dynamic), and ($+$durative). These features define the Event Time (ET) as a situation structure consisting of a nucleus and a coda. Grammatical aspect oppositions, also represented privatively, crucially interact with this structure: ($+$imperfective) views situations intersecting a Reference Time (RT) at the nucleus, and ($+$perfective) views them at the coda. The conception of grammatical aspect as a view of the ET-RT intersection allows the representation of tense to be limited to a relation between a RT and the deictic center (C). Complex temporal phenomena--perfect and extended tenses--are shown to be interactions between grammatical aspect and tense. The privative analysis allows aspect semantics to be built up monotonically--from the lexical aspect ET features, the grammatical aspect view of the ET, and tense. The semantics restricts pragmatic interpretation in principled ways, based on marked and unmarked features. Chapter 1 introduces theoretical issues and assumptions. Chapters 2-4 outline the semantic structure of lexical aspect, grammatical aspect, and tense, respectively. Chapters 5-6 apply the analysis to the aspect and tense systems of English and New Testament Koine Greek.

This paper examines the expression of futurity in Spanish, specifically the periphrastic future (PF), the morphological future (MF), and the present indicative (PI) in heritage language learners (HLLs) and second language learners (L2 learners), a comparison that allowed us to explore whether linguistic experience provides HLLs an advantage over L2 learners in the domain of morphosyntax. These forms (PF, MF, and PI) are regulated by certainty, temporal distance, and the presence of temporal adverbials. Previous research showed that L2 learners acquire some of these linguistic constraints and that HLLs tend to reduce the MF to modal uses. Data from a contextualized acceptability judgment task completed by 46 HLLs and 42 L2ers manipulated for verb form, certainty, temporal distance, and adverb and revealed that (i) the PF and the MF were generally rated higher than the PI, (ii) HLLs were sensitive to the three linguistic factors examined, while the L2ers’ sensitivity was modulated by proficiency, and, relatedly, (iii) the two groups differed in the effect of proficiency. For the L2 learners, an increase in proficiency led to a closer pattern to that of monolingual native speakers (only for temporal distance). Differences in exposure to and instruction in Spanish are discussed as possible sources of these differences.

While humans are capable of mentally transcending the here and now, this faculty for mental time travel (MTT) is dependent upon an underlying cognitive representation of time. To this end, linguistic, cognitive and behavioral evidence has revealed that people understand abstract temporal constructs by mapping them to concrete spatial domains (e.g. past = backward, future = forward). However, very little research has investigated factors that may determine the topographical characteristics of these spatiotemporal maps. Guided by the imperative role of episodic content for retrospective and prospective thought (i.e., MTT), here we explored the possibility that the spatialization of time is influenced by the amount of episodic detail a temporal unit contains. In two experiments, participants mapped temporal events along mediolateral (Experiment 1) and anterioposterior (Experiment 2) spatial planes. Importantly, the temporal units varied in self-relevance as they pertained to temporally proximal or distal events in the participant’s own life, the life of a best friend or the life of an unfamiliar other. Converging evidence from both experiments revealed that the amount of space used to represent time varied as a function of target (self, best friend or unfamiliar other) and temporal distance. Specifically, self-time was represented as occupying more space than time pertaining to other targets, but only for temporally proximal events. These results demonstrate the malleability of space-time mapping and suggest that there is a self-specific conceptualization of time that may influence MTT as well as other temporally relevant cognitive phenomena.