Linguistic Series Research Articles

From Structural Linguistics to Theatre Semiotics Prague School Contribution

Nobody denies the leading role Prague Linguistic Series has played in the development of the international linguistic thinking during the 1930s and 1940s of the last century. Given that, only few people are aware of the fact that the merit of the establishment of cultural semiotics in art generally and in theater semiotics in particular goes back to them. They have tried to transfer the conceptual tools and curriculum procedures, which have been formulated to study Natural Language, other coded study systems, trying in this way to realize the dream of Ferdinand de Saussure, i.e., to come up with a holistic science of signs. This article, thus, tries to pinpoint the transfer from structural linguistics to theater semiotics, shedding light on the conditions of taking a sentence from its basic concept in the linguistic field to the theater semiotic domain. It also tries to demonstrate the pertinent role of the series’ pioneers in tracing the path that theater semiotics research would follow.

Bernard Bloch on Japanese: edited with an introduction and analytic index by R. A. Miller (Yale Linguistic Series). New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1970. Pp. xli + 190.

Bernard Bloch on Japanese: edited with an introduction and analytic index by R. A. Miller (Yale Linguistic Series). New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1970. Pp. xli + 190.

A Novel Fuzzy Document Based Information Retrieval Model for Forecasting

Information retrieval systems are generally used to find documents that are most appropriate according to some query that comes dynamically from users. In this paper a novel Fuzzy Document based Information Retrieval Model (FDIRM) is proposed for the purpose of Stock Market Index forecasting. The novelty of proposed approach is a modified tf-idf scoring scheme to predict the future trend of the stock market index. The contribution of this paper has two dimensions, 1) In the proposed system the simple time series is converted to an enriched fuzzy linguistic time series with a unique approach of incorporating market sentiment related information along with the price and 2) A unique approach is followed while modeling the information retrieval (IR) system which converts a simple IR system into a forecasting system. From the performance comparison of FDIRM with standard benchmark models it can be affirmed that the proposed model has a potential of becoming a good forecasting model. The stock market data provided by Standard & Poor’s CRISIL NSE Index 50 (CNX NIFTY-50 index) of National Stock Exchange of India (NSE) is used to experiment and validate the proposed model. The authentic data for validation and experimentation is obtained from http://www.nseindia.com which is the official website of NSE. A java program is under construction to implement the model in real-time with graphical users’ interface.

Current Studies in Italian Syntax: Essays Offered to Lorenzo Renzi (review)

Reviewed by: Current studies in Italian syntax: Essays offered to Lorenzo Renzi ed. by Guglielmo Cinque, Giampaolo Salvi Roberta D’Alessandro Current studies in Italian syntax: Essays offered to Lorenzo Renzi. Ed. by Guglielmo Cinque and Giampaolo Salvi. (North-Holland linguistic series: Linguistic variations 59.) Amsterdam: North-Holland, 2001. Pp. xii, 326. ISBN 0080438741. $88 (Hb). This volume is a collection of sixteen essays on various topics in Italian syntax that were collected to honor Lorenzo Renzi, a scholar who has promoted research on Italian syntax since the 1960s, and who has been editor of the Grande Grammatica Italiana di Consultazione (Bologna: Il Mulino) together with Giampaolo Salvi and Anna Cardinaletti. While the volume targets syntacticians, Romance linguists, and students of Italian, a background knowledge of generative syntax is necessary to fully understand the content of the book. Paolo Acquaviva’s opening chapter, ‘Syntactic intervention effects on Italian polarity items’, considers polarity items in Italian and the extent to which they can be accounted for by the intermediate scope constraint proposed for English polarity items. In ‘Speculations on the possible source of expletive negation in Italian comparative clauses’, Adriana Belletti addresses the issue of expletive negation in subjunctive comparative clauses. In ‘The position of topic and focus on the left periphery’, Paola Benincà considers the fine structure of the left periphery, utilizing the so-called ‘cartographic’ approach. The fourth chapter is dedicated by Franco Benucci to ‘Aspect prefixes in verbal periphrases in Italian and other Romance languages’. Pier Marco Bertinetto examines tense in ‘ “Propulsive” tenses in modern Italian fiction prose’. In the sixth chapter, Anna Cardinaletti considers the issue of right dislocation in Italian, showing that the VO-S order is obtained by the right dislocation of the subject and motivated by antisymmetry requirements. ‘ “Restructuring” and the order of aspectual and modal heads’, by Guglielmo Cinque, examines the relative order of aspectual and modal heads in the clause. In ‘The birth of a functional category: From Latin ILLE to the Romance article and personal pronoun’, Giuliana Giusti proposes that the shift from Latin ILLE to the Romance definite article is due to the reinterpretation of a phrase in a specifier position as the head of the same phrase. In ‘Romance causatives and dynamic antisymmetry’, Maria Teresa Guasti and Andrea Moro show how the word order of some Romance causative constructions provides evidence for Moro’s theory of ‘dynamic antisymmetry’. Richard Kayne, in ‘A note on clitic doubling in French’, proposes that French pronominal arguments that are Case-marked must be doubled by a clitic. In ‘Either “subject-oriented” or merely sentential’, Lidia Lonzi states that left-adjunction is a better solution than base-generation in the specifier of an XP for so-called subject-oriented adverbs. Maria Rita Manzini and Leonardo Savoia’s ‘The syntax of object clitics: si in Italian dialects’ examines the distribution of the clitic si in several Italian dialects. Cecilia Poletto’s ‘Complementizer deletion and verb movement in standard Italian’ also examines the left periphery of the clause, as does Luigi Rizzi’s ‘On the position “int(errogative)” in the left periphery of the clause’, where the existence of an interrogative phrase projection is postulated. In ‘The two sentence structures of Early Romance’, Giampaolo Salvi discusses a little-known subordinate sentence in early Romance. Finally, Christina Tortora provides ‘Evidence for a null locative in Italian’. This book is a rich source of information for those who are interested in the syntax of Romance languages. Roberta D’Alessandro University of Stuttgart Copyright © 2004 Linguistic Society of America

Book Review: Text, role, and context: developing academic literacies (Cambridge Applied Linguistic series)

Book Review: Text, role, and context: developing academic literacies (Cambridge Applied Linguistic series)

A Discourse‐Centered Approach to Culture: Native South American Myths and Rituals

. Discourse‐Centered Approach to Culture: Native South American Myths and Rituals. Greg Urban. Texas Linguistic Series. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1991. 215 pp. $35.00 (cloth)

The Language of the Inka since the European Invasion

The Language of the Inka since the European Invasion. Bruce Mannheim. Texas Linguistic Series. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1991. 326 pp. $25.00 (cloth)

Frits Stuurman, Two grammatical models of Modern English: the old and the new from A to Z (Croom Helm Germanic Linguistic Series). London: Routledge, 1990. Pp. xii + 301.

Frits Stuurman, Two grammatical models of Modern English: the old and the new from A to Z (Croom Helm Germanic Linguistic Series). London: Routledge, 1990. Pp. xii + 301.

Sumitra Mangesh Katre (ed. and tr.): The Aṣṭādhyāyī of Pāṇini in romanised transliteration. (Texas linguistic series.) xlvi, 1330 pp. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987. $100.

Sumitra Mangesh Katre (ed. and tr.): The Aṣṭādhyāyī of Pāṇini in romanised transliteration. (Texas linguistic series.) xlvi, 1330 pp. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987. $100.

I Cannot Tell a Lie: Hugh of Lawton's Critique of William of Ockham on Mental Language

I CANNOT TELL A LIE: HUGH OF LAWTON'S CRITIQUE OF WILLIAM OF OCKHAM ON MENTAL LANGUAGE The idea that at least some mental activity constitutes a mental language entered the medieval tradition from two ofthe most authoritative of sources: Aristotle and Augustine.1 The concept of mental language had a long history prior to the fourteenth century.2 But with William of Ockham, the history of the concept took a decided turn. Ockham devoted such systematic attention to the idea ofmental language , putting it to new uses, that discussion and controversy erupted among his successors. Discussions of mental language centered around four questions: 1). Does mental language exist? 2). Ifso, what is it like? 3). What is its relation to spoken and written language? and 4). Does postulation ofmental language do any useful philosophical work? Ockham gave a much more detailed answer to the second question than had his predecessors, changed the usual Aristotelian answer to the third question, which not only subordinated spoken language to mental, an idea Ockham maintained, but also proposed that spoken language ' Aristotle, De lnterpretatione 1.16a3—18, and see Norman Kretzman, "Aristotle on Spoken Sound Significant by Convention," in Ancient Logic and Its Modem Interpretations, ed. John Corcoran, Buffalo Symposium on Modernist Interpretations ofAncient Logic, 21 and 22 April, 1972 (DordrechtHolland : D. Reidel, 1974) 3-21. For Augustine, Sermo 288 (PL XXXVIII, 1304-6), and De Trinitate, lib. 15, cap. 10, n. 19 (CCL L, 486), are the key texts. See Gabriel Nuchelmans, Theories of the Proposition: Ancient and Medieval Conceptions of the Bearers of Truth and Falsity, North-Holland Linguistic Series , no. 8 (Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Company, 1973) 192-4, for discussion. 2 Nuchelmans 192-4. 142HESTER GELBER referred to its mental equivalents, an idea Ockham rejected,3 and, in regard to the fourth question, opened the way for an expansion of the sorts of philosophical tasks mental language might perform. Much research lies ahead, both on Ockham himself and on the views of his successors, before the story will finally be told of how Ockham 's fruitful new position on mental language affected his contemporaries . We do know some of the chapters. Ockham is justly famous for having perceived mental as an ideal logical language.4 Also well known are his doubts about the ontological status of mental language and his halting progression from the "fictum" theory in which the constituents of mental language had only objective being to the "intellectio " theory in which they had subjective being.5 And, third, we know how Ockham's views developed in vigorous debate with his fellow Franciscan and critic Walter Chatton. Chatton objected to the "fictum" theory and to Ockham's contention that mental propositions are the objects of knowledge.6 There are more chapters of the story yet to be written, however. Ockham's position on mental language set off an immediate controversy , not just among his fellow Franciscans, but also among the 3 Ockham, Summa Logicae, pars I, c. 1 (OPh I, 7-8), and cf. Aristotles, De lnterpretatione, 1.16a3-9. 4 John Trentman, Ockham on Mental," Mind 79 (1970): 586-90, in arguing against Peter Geach's dismissal of Ockham's distinction between mental and spoken language as hardly more than the elimination of synonymy from mental, pointed out that Ockham treated mental as an ideal language. Cf. Geach, Mental Acts: Their Content and Their Objects (London: Routledge &. Kegan Paul, 1957) 102-4. Also see Paul Vincent Spade's comments on the importance of Ockham's views about mental language in Peter of Ailly: Concepts and Insolubles: An Annotated Translation, Synthese Historical Library 19 (Dordrecht-Holland: D. Reidel, 1980) 2-3. 5 Philotheus Boehner, "The Relative Date of Ockham's Commentary on the Sentences," in Collected Articles on Ockham (hereafter CAO) Philosophy Series, no. 12 (St. Bonaventure, N.Y.: The Franciscan Institute, 1958) 96-1 10, and idem, "The Realistic Conceptualism of William Ockham" (CAO 168-74). 6 Gedeon Gal, "Gualteri de Chatton et Guillelmi de Ockham controversia de natura conceptus universalis," Franciscan Studies 27 (1967): 191-9, and E. A. Moody, "A Quodlibetal Question of Robert Holkot, O.P. on the Problem ofthe Objects ofKnowledge and ofBelief...

Studies in formal semantics: Intensionality, temporality, negation Edited by Franz Guenthner and Christian Rohrer (review)

REVIEWS455 attacks so substantial a fragment of English. The sample grammar in Appendix D is 26 pages long, and covers a great deal of ground. As a theoretical proposal regarding the psychological mechanisms underlying human syntactic recognition , it is not an obvious success and is also (by its own admission) premised on some highly controversial assumptions (namely the alleged grammatical universals of REST).8 My most negative opinion, however, concerns a nonsubstantive matter, namely that the book is outrageously overpriced considering the poor quality of its format. REFERENCES Kaplan, Ronald M. 1972. Augmented transition networks as psychological models of sentence comprehension. Artificial Intelligence 3.77-100. Miller, George A., and Philip N. Johnson-Laird. 1977. Language and perception. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Ross, John R. 1967. Constraints on variables in syntax. MIT dissertation. Wanner, Eric, and Michael Maratsos. 1979. An ATN approach to comprehension. Linguistic theory and psychological reality, ed. by Morris Halle et al., 119-61. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Woods, William. 1970. Transition network grammars for natural language analysis. Comm. Assoc, for Comp. Mach. 13.591-606. [Received 15 July 1981.] 8 One of M's major concerns is to show that some of Chomsky's proposed constraints follow directly from the determinism hypothesis. Assuming that they do follow, and that they are valid, the result would nonetheless be cold comfort to an orthodox Chomskyan, to whom it is an article of faith that the universals in question represent innate predispositions that cannot be explained in terms of such 'functional' or 'performance-related' considerations as limitations on memory. Studies in formal semantics: Intensionality, temporality, negation. Edited by Franz Guenthner and Christian Rohrer. (North-Holland linguistic series, 35.) Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1978. Pp. viii, 265. / 62.50. Reviewed by Leonard M. Faltz, Arizona State University The formal study of natural-language semantics has recently occupied an active and growing group of scholars. G&R's collection represents work in this field carried out in the mid-to-late 70's at Stuttgart and Bonn. Following an introduction (1-10) in which the study of formal semantics is outlined and placed in perspective with regard to the current state of logic and of linguistics, eight papers are presented in three groups: Intensionality (three papers), Temporality (four papers), and Negation (one paper). Readers working in formal semantics will want to know about the sorts of proposals found here. I personally was particularly interested in the articles of the 'Temporality' section, hoping that some insight into the logic of aspect would be obtained by the careful construction of formal systems. As it turned out, after reading the articles, I feel that we have yet to get to the bottom of the matter—that the essential features which control the logic of aspect have still eluded the investigators. There may be inherent limitations to the sort of approach taken here—although deeper investigations may prove this suspicion wrong. 456LANGUAGE, VOLUME 58, NUMBER 2 (1982) Fabrizio Mondadori, 'Interpreting modal semantics' (13-40), is primarily a review of the justifications for representing intensions as functions from possible worlds to extensions, together with a discussion of the applicability of this construction to proper names and natural-kind terms. He emphasizes the fact that modal semantics is a theory of truth conditions, not of language use— and that therefore epistemological considerations should not play a role in justifying the way constructions are set up to represent modal semantics. Franz Guenthner, 'Systems of intensional logic and the semantics of natural languages' (41-74), sketches the four formal semantic systems of Kripke, Âqvist, Bressan, and Montague, and compares the ways that these systems handle variables and constants (e.g., are variables assigned to individuals relative to worlds, or independently of worlds?), quantification, predication (especially intensional predicates), and indexical expressions (such as time-indexed expressions). Aldo Bressan, 'The interpreted modal calculus MC and some of its applications' (75-1 18), tells how the language MC was developed by Bressan to formalize the logic of physical sciences (especially classical particle physics). The article begins with a terse but complete definition of the syntax and model-theoretic semantics of this language. Bressan then shows how a number of modally interesting sentences (e.g. The...

Joel Sherzer, An areal-typological study of American Indian languages north of Mexico. (North-Holland Linguistic Series 20.) North-Holland Publishing Company, Amsterdam & Oxford; American Elsevier Publishing Company, Inc., New York, 1976. Pp. xiv + 284 + 11 maps. [With a comparison to Colin Masica,Defining a linguistic area: South Asia(1976)

Joel Sherzer, An areal-typological study of American Indian languages north of Mexico. (North-Holland Linguistic Series 20.) North-Holland Publishing Company, Amsterdam & Oxford; American Elsevier Publishing Company, Inc., New York, 1976. Pp. xiv + 284 + 11 maps. [With a comparison to Colin Masica, Defining a linguistic area: South Asia (1976)]. - Volume 9 Issue 1

H. Chr. Wekker : The Expression of Future Time in Contemporary British English : An Investigation into the Syntax and Semantics of Five Verbal Constructions Expressing Futurity (North-Holland Linguistic Series 28), North-Holland Publishing Company, 1976., xi+173 pp.

H. Chr. Wekker : The Expression of Future Time in Contemporary British English : An Investigation into the Syntax and Semantics of Five Verbal Constructions Expressing Futurity (North-Holland Linguistic Series 28), North-Holland Publishing Company, 1976., xi+173 pp.

R. M. W. Dixon (ed.), Grammatical categories in Australian languages. (Linguistic series No. 22, Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies.) Canberra, 1976. Pp. 776.

R. M. W. Dixon (ed.), Grammatical categories in Australian languages. (Linguistic series No. 22, Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies.) Canberra, 1976. Pp. 776.

Franklin E. Huffman and Im Proum: Cambodian literary reader and glossary. (Yale Linguistic Series.) vii, 327, vii, 152 pp. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1977. $20, £14.40. (Glossary available separately. $10, £7.20.)

Franklin E. Huffman and Im Proum: Cambodian literary reader and glossary. (Yale Linguistic Series.) vii, 327, vii, 152 pp. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1977. 10, £7.20.) - Volume 41 Issue 3

H. Chr. Wekker, The expression of future time in contemporary British English: an investigation into the syntax and semantics of five verbal constructions expressing futurity. (North-Holland Linguistic Series, 28.) Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1976. Pp. xi + 173.

H. Chr. Wekker, The expression of future time in contemporary British English: an investigation into the syntax and semantics of five verbal constructions expressing futurity. (North-Holland Linguistic Series, <b>28</b>.) Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1976. Pp. xi + 173.

Erica C. García, The role of theory in linguistic analysis: the Spanish pronoun system. (North-Holland Linguistic Series, 19.) Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Company, 1975. Pp. xxii+522.

Erica C. García, The role of theory in linguistic analysis: the Spanish pronoun system. (North-Holland Linguistic Series, 19.) Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Company, 1975. Pp. xxii+522. - Volume 12 Issue 2

BOOK REVIEWS

Book reviewed in this article: Remedial Education Olive C. Sampson Routledge and Kegan Paul. Shaping the Education of Slow Learners W. K. Brennan Routledge and Kegan Paul. New Readers Start Here Margaret Redfern (ed.) A Philosophy of Leisure Kenneth Solly Language Development in Deaf and Partially Hearing Children D. M. C. Dale Charles C. Thomas Developmental Features of Visual Communication. A Psycholinguistic Analysis of Deaf Children's Growth in Communicative Competence Bernard T. Tervoort North‐Holland Linguistic Series. Parents of the ‘ESN’ Sonja Hunt National Elfrida Rathbone Society. Trends in the Education of Children with Special Learning Needs Alice F. Laing (ed.) Developmental Features of Visual Communication. A Psycholinguistic Analysis of Deaf Children's Growth in Communicative Competence Bernard T. Tervoort North‐Holland Linguistic Series. Parents of the ‘ESN’ Sonja Hunt National Elfrida Rathbone Society. Trends in the Education of Children with Special Learning Needs Alice F. Laing (ed.)

Beginning Polish: Revised Edition. By Alexander M. Schenker. Yale Linguistic Series. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1973. Vol. 1: LESSONS, POLISH-ENGLISH GLOSSARY, xviii, 491 pp. $10.00, cioth. $7.00, paper. Vol. 2: DRILLS, SURVEY OF GRAMMAR, INDEX, xi, 452 pp. $10.00, cloth. $7.00, paper.

Beginning Polish: Revised Edition. By Alexander M. Schenker. Yale Linguistic Series. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1973. Vol. 1: LESSONS, POLISH-ENGLISH GLOSSARY, xviii, 491 pp. 7.00, paper. - Volume 33 Issue 3

Franklin E. Huffman (ed.): Intermediate Cambodian reader. (Yale Linguistic Series.) ix, 502 pp. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1972. $20, £7.95.

Franklin E. Huffman (ed.): Intermediate Cambodian reader. (Yale Linguistic Series.) ix, 502 pp. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1972. $20, £7.95.