Cross-linguistic Tendency Research Articles

Positive reviews on TripAdvisor: a cross-linguistic study of contemporary digital tourism discourse

The emergence of the Web 2.0 profoundly changed the tourist experience and its modes of interaction and communication. Among the most pervasive forms of contemporary tourism discourse we find online reviews posted on social media platforms as TripAdvisor. Previous research on online travel reviews focused almost exclusively on negative reviews and mostly considered monolingual English dataset. In the present study we will explore positive reviews and we will add a cross-linguistic analysis comparing reviews written in English, Italian and Dutch. In this contribution, we first explore the move structure of reviews, and then delve into their different linguistic realizations, paying particular attention to potential cross-linguistic similarities and divergences. Our results show that positive reviews are generally formed by four main moves: positive and negative evaluations, offering extra/background information and future-oriented recommendations. These moves represent stable and recurrent features in reviews written in all three languages under examination. Further, also the topics of the reviews display a cross-linguistic tendency towards similarity, with the preferred topics being the accommodation, its services and the staff. The findings also highlight some divergences among the three language groups, especially not on what is said but on how it is said. For instance, in reviews written in Italian we found expressions of thankfulness and congratulations to the staff, while these are practically absent in the other languages. Moreover, we observed that Italian reviewers tend to realize positive evaluations in a more intensified way (e.g. through the use of superlative lexical expressions) while these strategies are used far less frequently in British and Dutch reviews. With this study we seek to contribute to research in the field of (digital) tourism discourse providing one of the first discourse-oriented analyses on reviews of positive polarity. Moreover, performing a comparative analysis, we aim at gaining a deeper insight on the issue of multilingualism within (online) tourism communication.

Intrinsic fundamental frequency of Amharic vowels

Intrinsic fundamental frequency (IF0) refers to the cross-linguistic tendency for high vowels to have a higher F0 than low vowels (Whalen and Levitt, 1995). IF0 is often thought to be a result of mechanical coupling, where tongue movement causes changes in the laryngeal structures, perturbing the F0. Ohala and Eukel (1987) propose that high vowels lead to increased vertical tension on the true vocal folds, which raises F0. In contrast, the tongue-compression hypothesis proposes that low vowels induce vocal fold slackening, which lowers F0 (Ewan, 1979). The purpose of the present study is to investigate the cause of IF0 by comparing high, mid, and low vowels in Amharic, using audio and EGG signals to measure F0 and contact quotient for different vowel heights. Amharic was chosen because it contrasts three heights of central vowels. The goals are to confirm that IF0 effects are found in Amharic and determine if voice quality changes further support either hypothesis. Discussion will focus on how F0 and contact quotient differ by vowel height, and whether the results support the tongue-pull hypothesis (where IF0 is driven by high tongue position), the tongue-compression hypothesis (where IF0 is driven by low-back tongue position), or both.

Postalveolar co-occurrence restrictions in Slovenian

This paper shows that a postalveolar co-occurrence restriction (Obligatory Contour Principle, OCP) is a productive component of Slovenian phonology. We first examine whether an apparent OCP-based restriction on derived palatalization, previously observed in corpus data (Jurgec 2016), extends to novel forms via a goodness-rating task. We then explore the generality of the restriction across the lexicon, in non-derived novel words as well as derived forms. Our results confirm that native speakers judge derived palatalized nonce forms to be less acceptable when the stem contains another postalveolar, reflecting the pattern found in the previous corpus study. We further demonstrate that multiple postalveolars are dispreferred even in non-derived words, which suggests that the effect is a general case of OCP. This is additionally supported by effects of proximity (the restriction is stronger for postalveolars separated only by a single vowel than for those further apart from one another) and identity (the restriction is stronger for identical than non-identical postalveolars), reflecting cross-linguistic tendencies in the manifestation of OCP and non-local consonant dissimilation. Finally, we show that the restriction does not appear to apply to all places of articulation, suggesting that the co-occurrence restriction in Slovenian specifically targets postalveolars, and adding a previously unattested pattern to the typology of OCP phenomena on consonant place.

Applying refined automatic formant measurement to determination of the orientations of vowel distributions

In order to remedy recurrent problems with false formant readings obtained with an automatic formant measurement routine, prototype-based automatic measurements were compared with manual formant measurements of the same uttered vowels. Two refinements that avoided false formants, one involving the option to skip measured formant racks and the other involving an expectation that successive formants would show successively lower amplitudes, were developed. This method was then applied to seven corpora representing diverse English dialects, with satisfactory results. The measurements of each vowel thus obtained were then subjected to principle component analysis to determine the orientation of the tokens in F1/F2 space. Most vowels exhibited distributions that apparently reflect degree of jaw opening. However, /u/ in North American varieties (with pre-/l/ and post-/j/ tokens excluded) showed mostly horizontal orientations, even when post-coronal and non-post-coronal tokens were considered separately. This pattern contrasted sharply with the vertical orientations of mid back vowels. /u/ was also the only vowel whose orientations coincided consistently with ongoing changes in the communities. We hypothesize that the factors responsible for the horizontal orientations of /u/ also lie behind its cross-linguistic tendency to shift frontward. In order to remedy recurrent problems with false formant readings obtained with an automatic formant measurement routine, prototype-based automatic measurements were compared with manual formant measurements of the same uttered vowels. Two refinements that avoided false formants, one involving the option to skip measured formant racks and the other involving an expectation that successive formants would show successively lower amplitudes, were developed. This method was then applied to seven corpora representing diverse English dialects, with satisfactory results. The measurements of each vowel thus obtained were then subjected to principle component analysis to determine the orientation of the tokens in F1/F2 space. Most vowels exhibited distributions that apparently reflect degree of jaw opening. However, /u/ in North American varieties (with pre-/l/ and post-/j/ tokens excluded) showed mostly horizontal orientations, even when post-coronal and non-post-coronal tokens were considered separately. This pa...

Are tones in the expressive lexicon iconic? Evidence from three Chinese languages

Recent advances in the literature have focused on sketching phonosemantic mappings of imitative or iconic utterances by relying on vowels and consonants, leaving the suprasegmental information unexplored. To begin bridging this gap, this study looks at the interaction of lexical tone and iconicity by comparing sound symbolic (i.e., mimetic, expressive, ideophonic) strata and general (i.e., arbitrary, prosaic, non-iconic) strata from three Chinese languages (Mandarin, Taiwanese Southern Min, Hong Kong Cantonese) using corpus-based means. For all three languages the distribution of tones in the sound symbolic strata are skewed so that the majority of syllables are largely confined to two tonal categories per language, one of which is high level, while the general strata exhibit no such tonal bias. These results indicate that phonological systematicity at the prosodic level might play an important role in demarcating an iconic class of words. This cross-linguistic tendency towards high tone mappings may be derived from phonotactic strategies to facilitate prosodic foregrounding of iconic utterances as well as an embodiment of expressive voice and marked pitch use like that of Infant Directed Speech.

Coordinating nominal compounds: Universal vs. areal tendencies

AbstractCoordinating compounds, i.e. complex word forms in which the constituent lexemes are in a coordination relation, may be divided into two classes: hyperonymic, in which the referent of the whole compound is the “sum” of the meanings of the constituent lexemes (Korowaiyumdefól‘(her) husband-wife, couple’; van Enk, Gerrit J., & Lourens de Vries. 1997.The Korowai of Irian Jaya: Their language in its cultural context. Oxford: Oxford University Press: 66), and hyponymic, where the compound designates a single referent having features of all the constituents (Englishactor-director). It has been proposed that languages choose either type as the one with the “tightest” marking pattern; whereas the crosslinguistic tendency is to have tighter hyperonymic compounds, most languages of Europe rather have tighter hyponymic compounds (Arcodia, Giorgio Francesco, Nicola Grandi, & Bernhard Wälchli 2010. Coordination in compounding. In Sergio Scalise & Irene Vogel (eds.),Cross-disciplinary issues in compounding, 177–198. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins). In this paper, we will test this assumption on noun-noun compounds in a sample of 20 Standard Average European languages and in a balanced sample of 60 non-SAE languages, arguing that the preference for hyperonymic compounds is best explained by the default referential function of nouns; in hyponymic compounds, on the other hand, nouns are used to indicate properties. We will then compare nominal and adjectival coordinating compounds, showing that for the latter the hyponymic compounding pattern is the dominant one, as adjectives are prototypical property-denoting words.

Identifying lexical bundles in Chinese

AbstractRecurrent word sequences, referred to as “lexical bundles”, may be structurally incomplete, but they serve important communicative functions. Despite the essential roles of lexical bundles in discourse, many methodological issues have been raised in the process of identifying lexical bundles, which is generally frequency-based. The present study identifies three-word and four-word bundles in Chinese conversation and news, and efforts are made to respond to methodological challenges encountered in previous studies. We employ a more sensitive dispersion measure, DP, and an internal association measure, G, which help filter out high-frequency word sequences with no identifiable function and reduce the workload of further manual interventions. An exploratory data analysis is then conducted to compare the distributional patterns of lexical bundles in Chinese conversation and news. In Chinese, both the type number and the density of lexical bundles are higher in conversation than in news. This appears to be a strong cross-linguistic tendency that reflects the real-time pressure speakers face in spontaneous speech. The exploratory data analysis also shows that the elements in Chinese bundles are closely associated with each other. This suggests that lexical bundles are useful phrasal units in Chinese discourse, and thus invites further investigations of how lexical bundles are used in Chinese.

Whence subject-verb agreement? Investigating the role of topicality, accessibility, and frequency in Vera’a texts

Abstract While the grammaticalization of subject agreement appears to be a diachronic near-universal, there has been little agreement on usage-based motivations for this crosslinguistic tendency. Three usage-based approaches – Givón’s NP detachment under topicalization, Ariel’s accessibility theory, and a set of accounts in terms of frequency-driven morphologization – are examined here in the light of corpus data from the Oceanic language Vera’a. The high frequency of overt pronouns in 1st and 2nd person subjects, as well as formal reduction in some 1st-person pronouns, observed in the corpus seem suggestive of grammaticalization of subject agreement in speech-act participants (SAPs). Yet, the remaining variation between pronominal and zero forms and the distribution of reduced forms do not appear to reflect functional factors in the way of topicalization or accessibility. Overall, frequency-driven accounts appear to fare better in explaining the Vera’a facts, in particular the distribution of 1st person zero subjects and the formal reduction of 1st person subject pronouns. The overall high levels of subject pronouns, however, are not fully accounted for by any of the three approaches; I suggest that, in addition to genre effects, the deictic and shifting nature of reference to speech-act participants may be a relevant factor.

Nouns slow down speech across structurally and culturally diverse languages

By force of nature, every bit of spoken language is produced at a particular speed. However, this speed is not constant-speakers regularly speed up and slow down. Variation in speech rate is influenced by a complex combination of factors, including the frequency and predictability of words, their information status, and their position within an utterance. Here, we use speech rate as an index of word-planning effort and focus on the time window during which speakers prepare the production of words from the two major lexical classes, nouns and verbs. We show that, when naturalistic speech is sampled from languages all over the world, there is a robust cross-linguistic tendency for slower speech before nouns compared with verbs, both in terms of slower articulation and more pauses. We attribute this slowdown effect to the increased amount of planning that nouns require compared with verbs. Unlike verbs, nouns can typically only be used when they represent new or unexpected information; otherwise, they have to be replaced by pronouns or be omitted. These conditions on noun use appear to outweigh potential advantages stemming from differences in internal complexity between nouns and verbs. Our findings suggest that, beneath the staggering diversity of grammatical structures and cultural settings, there are robust universals of language processing that are intimately tied to how speakers manage referential information when they communicate with one another.

The ‘new’ Russian quotative tipa: Pragmatic scope and functions

The study proposes a typology of the main pragmati≿ functions of the new Russian quotative marker tipa in discourse of young speakers. Based on the analysis of material from an Internet student forum, I present the communicative situations tipa is involved in as an algorithm which can unfold in several directions, depending on the parameters of (i) discursive embedding of the reported information, (ii) its source and (iii) reliability according to the actual speaker. The various quotative and related subuses are presented as a field structure with multiple cores and peripheries which flow continuously into one another.Special attention is given to the fact that tipa represents two crosslinguistic tendencies of language change: the rise of new quotatives and the grammaticalization of type nouns. Though this article's interest lies primarily in the description of the synchronic interrelation of the subuses, the analysis demonstrates that in Russian tipa has undergone a seemingly paradoxical shift from conveying similarity to indicating meanings close to ‘quasi, pseudo’, not attested so far in other languages researched in regard to the grammaticalization of type nouns. Another tendency revealed by the data is towards the ‘explanation marker’ use, which currently seems to be specific to the younger generation.

The role of gesture delay in coda /r/ weakening: An articulatory, auditory and acoustic study.

The cross-linguistic tendency of coda consonants to weaken, vocalize, or be deleted is shown to have a phonetic basis, resulting from gesture reduction, or variation in gesture timing. This study investigates the effects of the timing of the anterior tongue gesture for coda /r/ on acoustics and perceived strength of rhoticity, making use of two sociolects of Central Scotland (working- and middle-class) where coda /r/ is weakening and strengthening, respectively. Previous articulatory analysis revealed a strong tendency for these sociolects to use different coda /r/ tongue configurations-working- and middle-class speakers tend to use tip/front raised and bunched variants, respectively; however, this finding does not explain working-class /r/ weakening. A correlational analysis in the current study showed a robust relationship between anterior lingual gesture timing, F3, and percept of rhoticity. A linear mixed effects regression analysis showed that both speaker social class and linguistic factors (word structure and the checked/unchecked status of the prerhotic vowel) had significant effects on tongue gesture timing and formant values. This study provides further evidence that gesture delay can be a phonetic mechanism for coda rhotic weakening and apparent loss, but social class emerges as the dominant factor driving lingual gesture timing variation.

From conditionality to modality in Luganda (Bantu, JE15): A synchronic and diachronic corpus analysis of the verbal prefix -andi-

This article offers a synchronic and diachronic analysis of the use and meaning of the verbal prefix -andi- in the Great Lakes Bantu language Luganda (JE15). On the basis of a text corpus of 4 million tokens, we show that the prefix, commonly described as a conditional marker, is primarily involved in the expression of modal meanings, specifically deontic necessity and epistemic possibility. Our thirteen-decade diachronic corpus analysis shows that there is a relationship between the increased use of -andi- outside syntactically complex conditional constructions, i.e. those having both a protasis and an apodosis, and an increase in its expression of modal meanings. Moreover, a reduction in the use of -andi- in complex conditional constructions goes hand in hand with a reduction in its expression of conditional meanings. It is further revealed that contrary to the common cross-linguistic tendency to rely on modality as a source for conditionality, the conditional meaning of -andi- is not post-modal. Instead it was primarily a conditional marker, which subsequently developed different modal meanings.

Limb Term Naming Patterns in South American Languages

Although there is widespread agreement that metaphor and metonymy play an important part in naming body parts crosslinguistically, many of the accepted claims regarding body part naming strategies in the world's languages come from unbalanced language samples; the most frequently referenced studies include few, if any, indigenous languages from South America. Focusing on terms for the upper and lower limbs, this article reexamines some crosslinguistic tendencies proposed by David P. Wilkins and Elaine S. Andersen with data from twenty-six language families and isolates spoken across South America; my analysis shows differences in the distribution and examples of the proposed patterns.

Prosthetic Consonants and the Question of Nuclear Impact. Examples from Slavic Languages

The article focuses on the problem of consonant prosthesis in a number of Slavic languages with w view to establishing both the context and trigger of the process. The phenomenon is analyzed from the perspective of Government Phonology (Kaye, Lowenstamm, and Vergnaud 1985, 1990; Charette 1991; Harris 1994; Gussmann 2007; Cyran 2003; Bloch-Rozmej 2008) which advocates a hierarchical model of phonological structure. The evidence examined here comes from Polish, Sorbian, Russian, Czech, Ukrainian and Belorussian. In all these languages consonant prosthesis is realized in the onset of the word-initial syllable. Thus, we also discuss the problem of the initial syllable prominence and the significance of a licensing relation that binds the members of the initial CV domain. It is proposed that the nucleus which determines the identity of the onset licensee is directly responsible for the excrescence of a prosthetic consonant, both prosodically and melodically. Hence, in order to fully understand the nature of the development, the analysis of the vowels involved in the process in terms of their segmental structure is needed. It will be demonstrated that the elements which build vocalic segments extend their domain of interpretation to affect the positions preceding them in the structure of the word-initial syllables. The problem of consonant prosthesis will be examined as an instantiation of the cross-linguistic tendency to strengthen segments in word-initial contexts.

The Semantics of Kwak'wala Object Case

Author(s): Sardinha, Katherine Ann | Abstract: In this dissertation, I investigate factors underlying the distribution of object case in Kʷakʷala, an endangered Northern Wakashan language of British Columbia, Canada. Kʷakʷala has two types of objects, instrumental (=s) and accusative (=x). To account for their distribution, I develop a semantic theory of object case that is grounded in event structure. The first central claim of this theory is that instrumental case marks internal arguments which participate in initiating subevents (Co-initiators), while accusative case marks internal arguments which participate in non-initiating subevents (Non-initiators). Concomitantly, any internal argument which participates in both the initiating and non-initiating subevents of an event can undergo instrumental/accusative case alternation. The second central claim of this theory is that instrumental case adds semantic value, while accusative case is a meaningless default. Supporting evidence for these claims comes from field data. On the one hand, object case realization is constrained by verb meaning, as shown by the existence of correlations between particular semantic verb classes and particular case frames. On the other hand, evidence that case realization is determined by event structure comes from data showing that modifying event structure affects case realization. Three types of event structure modification which license case alternation include the Direct Manipulation Alternation, the Caused Motion Alternation, and semantic incorporation with the affixal verb -(g)ila ‘make’. The event-structural basis of object case is also revealed in the vicinity of weak verbs (Ritter a Rosen 1996) where the semantic value of object case is communicated independently of lexical entailments. This analysis allows us to see how Kʷakʷala’s object case system manifests a wider cross-linguistic tendency for languages to grammaticalize a link between object-encoding and event structure. I illustrate this by showing that Kʷakʷala’s object case system is semantically the mirror image of the object case system in Finnish, in which the final bound of events is grammaticalized as an interpretable accusative case (Leino 1982, Heinamaki 1984, 1994, Kratzer 2004). Taking an even wider view, Kʷakʷala fits squarely within the event-structural typology proposed in Ritter a Rosen (2000), where languages are divided according to whether they grammaticalize the initial or final bound of events. Kʷakʷala’s object case system thereby fits into existing cross-linguistic patterns, while also expanding our notions of what a possible case system looks like.

Transparency and language contact in the nativization of relative clauses in New Englishes

AbstractThe present paper explores structural nativization in relative clauses in three varieties of English (India, Hong Kong, and Singapore Englishes). All three of these emerged as the consequence of British colonization, developed as varieties through educational systems, and are now consolidating as independent, linguistically different (local) prestige varieties. An analysis of comparable samples from the spoken component of theInternational Corpus of English(ICE) is carried out; in addition to the varieties mentioned above, data from ICE-GB are included for comparison. The analysis shows that certain features and structures predominate in specific varieties, and also illustrates constructions which are specific to the Asian varieties under investigation. These nativized relative clauses can be explained as cross-linguistic tendencies that go beyond the influence of the local language(s), and hence they are further analyzed in light of cognitive determinants of learning, which favor isomorphism and aim at maximizing transparency.

Closed-syllable vowel laxing: A contrast enhancement strategy

Closed-syllable vowel laxing describes the cross-linguistic tendency for high and mid vowels to have higher F1 values and more central F2 values in closed than in open syllables. This pattern is often analyzed as resulting from vowel shortening in closed syllables. However, vowel undershoot does not generally result in an increase of F1 for mid vowels. This paper tests an alternative hypothesis according to which laxing is a strategy to enhance coda-consonant place contrasts, with lower and more central vowels providing more informative closure transitions than higher and more peripheral vowels. Two native French speakers were recorded uttering C1VC2 nonce words with C1, C2={p,t,k} and V={i,y,u,e,ø,o,ɛ,œ,ɔ,a}. 85 English and French hearers were presented with the stimuli without word-final bursts and were asked to identify the place of the word-final consonant. In accordance with the enhancement hypothesis, lowering accompanied by centralizing was found to improve [p]-[k] and [t]-[k] contrasts for front unrounded vowels and [p]-[k], [t]-[k], and [p]-[t] contrasts for back vowels. These contrasts were not systematically more distinct after front rounded vowels than after back and unrounded front vowels with similar F1 values (e.g., [y] vs. [i]/[u]), suggesting that centralizing alone is not sufficient to enhance place contrasts.

Varia II. The Origin of Time

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3318/ERIU.2017.67.4 Ériu LXVII (2017) 219–226 Royal Irish Academy VARIA II The Origin of Time* One of the words for‘time’in the Celtic languages is the etymon represented by Old Irish aimser (ā, f), Welsh amser (masc.), Old Cornish anser (n for m probably a scribal error), Old Breton amser, Modern Breton amzer (fem.). In Old Welsh, amser occurs as a temporal and causal conjunction ‘when; because’ (Falileyev 2000, 6). In accordance with a cross-linguistic tendency, these words for ‘time’ can also refer to the ‘weather’,1 thereby evidencing a remarkable semantic shift of reference from a primary abstract2 concept to a phenomenon of daily practical experience. The Irish and British words manifestly go back to a common ancestor which is typically mechanically reconstructed as *ammesterā (see, for example, De Bernardo Stempel 1999, 273, 426) or, disregarding the historical phonology and morphology of Celtic, as *amstero/ā “join, even”’ . To avoid the circularity of an explanation obscurum per obscurius that besets all previous suggestions, a new solution is proposed in this article . It will be argued that a more satisfactory etymological and morphological analysis is possible, and that this group of words can be connected with semantically more proximate words outside Celtic. The Proto-Indo-European root *√h2 et- ‘to walk, wander’ (LIV 273), which occurs as a verb only in the rare Vedic at- ‘to go, walk’, underlies Italic and Germanic words for ‘year’, that is Latin annus; Oscan loc.sg. akeneí, acenei, gen.sg. aceneis, gen.pl. acunum; Umbrian acc. sg./pl. acnu; and Gothic aþn(s)* and ataþni*, all ultimately from a preform *h2 et-no- (De Vaan 2008, 43–4; Kroonen 2013, 40).The semantic motivation behind the occurrence of this root in a word for ‘year’ is probably the idea of the ‘cycle/course/perambulation’ that the sun performs across the sky from one solstice until it reaches the same position again. Although super­ ficially only the initial a- seems to relate the words in these two language families with the above-mentioned Celtic lexemes, on a deeper level a preform can be set up from which all forms can be derived in equal measure. Starting from this premise, two slightly diverging reconstructions for the immediate precursors of Old Irish amm and Gaulish amman are possible, both meaning approximately ‘the going/course (of time)’ . 3 Kloekhorst (2008, 280–1) derives hamesha(nt)- from the root *√h2 meh1 - ‘to mow’ (LIV 279), since spring, which could also be written with the sumerogramme Ú.BAR8 ‘harvest ’, was the time of harvest in Anatolia and in the Near East. The three months of April, May and June are the time of bloom and of rain in the Anatolian highlands (Tischler 1983, 143–4). This semantic link with mowing or harvesting is ruled out for Celtic by agricultural facts. Kloekhorst accordingly does not mention the alleged connection with Celtic at all. 4 RIG III, 422 refers to the dictionary entry for ḫamešḫ(a)- in Tischler (1983, 143–4) who, however, makes no mention of the Celtic words. In the discussion of the etymology of the Hittite word,Tischler critically reports a suggestion by Čop according to which it derives from an Indo-European root *Hem-/Hom- ‘hot’ . Other Indo-European scholars have not accepted the existence of such a root. VARIA II 221 1. The first one starts from pre-Celtic *h2 et-mo- > *atmo- > Proto-Celtic *ammo- for Old Irish amm, and mutatis mutandis from *h2 et-mn ̥ for Gaulish amman. This etymology implies an ad hoc rule that Proto-Indo-­ European *‑tm- resulted in *‑mm- in Celtic. There is, to my knowledge, no other example in support of this change, nor is there a counter-example. Original *-dm- behaved differently. In Old Irish ammus ‘attempt’ Old Irish attach ‘refuge’, or *ad-bati̯ on- > *abbatii̯ on- > apthu ‘death’, this behaviour of preverbal ad could also have been extended to the position before m. Otherwise the retention of the cluster *dm can be observed. In formations such as Old Irish maidm ‘breaking’ *asmo- > *ammo- (for the treatment of Proto-Celtic clusters involving s, see Stifter (2017, 1191–2)). In...

A Corpus-Pragmatic Analysis of Wuli

This paper is a corpus-based approach to the uses of the Korean first person plural pronoun wuli. Moving away from the intuitive research which used made-up data, this paper explores the use of wuli using corpus data. One major finding of this paper is that the pronoun wuli can be employed for a wider variety of non-deictic/non-indexical purposes than previously investigated, providing the evidence against the ‘essential indexical thesis’. This study also reveals that wuli conforms to a cross-linguistic tendency in which first person plural pronouns are used for first person singular references. When deployed for a singular reference, alongside some other uses, wuli is argued to function as a stance marker expressing the speaker’s affectionate attitude.

Clitics, affixes, and wordhood in Garifuna (Arawak): A multidimensional continuum of morphosyntactic boundness

Recent research on wordhood and morphosyntactic boundness suggests that the domains word and clitic do not lend themselves to cross-linguistic categorization but must be defined language specifically. In most languages, it is necessary to define word on two separate levels, the phonological word (p-word) and the grammatical word (g-word), and to describe mismatches between the two. This paper defines those domains for Garifuna, an Arawak language spoken in Honduras, Central America. Garifuna has auxiliary and classifier constructions which make up two p-words, and only one g-word. P-words made up of more than one g-word involve second position enclitics, word scope clitics, and proclitic connectives and prepositions. Garifuna clitics are typically unstressed, able to attach to hosts of any word class and able to string together into clusters. Enclitics are used to express tense-aspect, modality, and adverbial meanings, among others. In other languages, clitic clusters tend to display a fixed order; Garifuna clitic order seems quite free, although certain orders are preferred. Also, contrary to cross-linguistic tendencies, proclitic connectives can act as hosts for enclitic clusters, contradicting the commonly used definition of clitics as phonologically weak elements that need to attach to a host to form a p-word; such clitic-only p-words are problematic for traditional definitions of clitics.