Morphosyntactic Categories Research Articles

Kuhn's Laws in Old Icelandic Prose and Poetry

The paper is intended to shed light on the so-called Kuhn's laws pertaining to early Germanic word order and intonation. This is done by investigating the metrical function of different morphosyntactic categories in Old Icelandic meters and interpreting their behavior on the basis of insights from modern intonational phonology. Verb forms belonging to independent clauses cannot fill the last foot in lines in drottkvaett poetry. This is taken to show that phonology was involved in the word order restrictions in Old Icelandic, among them the verb-second (V2) constraint, which is often assumed to be syntactically governed.The work reported in this paper started during a sabbatical at Stanford University under a Fulbright fellowship in 1998–1999. I would like to thank Paul Kiparsky, my sponsor there, for inspiration and help with some crucial issues. I would also like to thank the participants in the Metrics conference in Toronto, October 8–9, 1999, and the GLAC–7 conference in Banff, April 21–23, 2001, for comments on presentations of parts of the work. Finally, thanks go to the editor, Mark Louden, and two anonymous reviewers for suggestions for improvement and editorial guidance.

Definiteness By Christopher Lyons (review)

494 LANGUAGE, VOLUME 76, NUMBER 2 (2000) that performance on neuropsychological tests—and indeed, the organization of the brain—are heavily influenced by literacy and concomitant factors such as schooling. Ch. 8, 'Aphasia in users of signed languages ', by David Corina summarizes the available case studies of aphasie signers and spells out some of their theoretical implications. Ch. 9, 'How typical are the atypical aphasie populations ?', by the three editors concludes that 'language lateralization or representation' is essentially the same in most of the populations studied in the book as in the 'typical' cases. Hence, '[!language organization is much more universal than previously assumed. The current model can indeed apply to the "atypical" populations described in this volume' (312). These conclusions are somewhat surprising since several of the chapters present serious challenges for models exclusively designed to account for 'typical' cases. The overall conclusion one can draw from this volume is that the study of atypical populations is a valuable tool for the study of the typical brain precisely because many facts about atypical aphasia parallel those observed in typical aphasia. The volume also includes author and subject indices . A more sophisticated subject index would have been helpful. For example, under 'language processing ' the reader will find 26 page references but without any indication as to what aspect of processing might be discussed in those pages. Similarly, there is an entry for 'contrastive stress' but none for 'stress'. In the spirit of this volume, the list of criteria that define typicality could be continued and so could the list of future useful contributions. Female vs. male patients and patients with multiple lesions are only two possible foci that come to mind. The main interest of the book lies, above all, in the empirical scope of the material, which will make it a useful reference for researchers in language processing in normal and clinical populations. [Susanne Gahl, Harvard University.] Definiteness. By Christopher Lyons. (Cambridge textbooks in linguistics.) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Pp. xx, 380. This book begins with a basic observation that noun phrases like the car, proper nouns, possessives, personal pronouns, demonstratives, and universal quantifiers refer to identifiable objects or represent the totality of conceivable objects which match the description in a given context. In other words, definiteness has something to do with the identifiability or the inclusiveness of the description. This observation provides a starting point forthe survey ofvarious manifestations of definiteness in Ch. 2: articles, lexical and morphological devices, syntactic agreement involving adpositions, pronouns, or word order. Two important facts emerge: (1) The definite article is not always in a complementary distribution with the indefinite article. (2) There is no definable correlation between the way languages encode definiteness and their common typological features. Further examination in Ch. 3 of noun phrases whose definiteness is due to something other than the use of articles shows that, although definiteness is associated with the Det(erminer) position, it cannot be said that this feature is universal. Some languages lack definiteness marking in their noun phrase structure. Chs. 4-6 contain detailed treatments of various topics connected with definiteness: the semantic and pragmatic manifestations of identifiability and their various nuances (Ch. 4); the interaction between definiteness and direct object marking, verb agreement, animacy, article and nominal feature marking, empty category, classifiers (Ch. 5); definiteness effects in existential sentences, superlatives, extraposition, and the organization of information within a discourse (Ch. 6). The foregoing survey leads Lyons to characterize definiteness as a morphosyntactic category which represents the semantic and pragmatic notions of identifiability (Ch. 7). Languages can be grouped according to how they grammaticalize definiteness: Type I exhibits no grammatical definiteness (Tapanese , Korean); Type II marks definiteness in pronominal noun phrases (Latin, Russian); Type III encodes definiteness in pronominal and full noun phrases (English, French). This chapter is a transition to the more theoretical analysis in Chs. 8-9. L argues in Ch. 8 that, although the basic DP framework has some advantage over traditional NP analysis, it cannot satisfactorily explain the syntax of definiteness either. To remedy this, L suggests that free-form articles like the be treated, as in NP analysis, as specifiers rather than heads, but specifiers of DP rather...

Les particules modales du Chinois contemporain: Esquisse d'un systeme1

AN OUTLINE OF THE SYSTEM OF MODAL PARTICLES IN MODERN CHINESE Chinese possesses a special class of words known as ‘final’ or ‘modal’ particles, according to their position at the end of a sentence, or based on their meaning. All take part in the situational anchoring of predicative relationships, and thus make reference to the situation of utterance and its spatio-temporal parameters. Although they are listed together in comprehensive grammars, they have been so far studied mostly in isolation. Furthermore, each of them has been subdivided into several seemingly unrelated values or even split into two or more homophonous markers. The purpose of this article is to isolate, for every particle, a single fundamental operation underlying it. It is claimed that modal particles should be regarded as an integrated whole, i.e. a system with a set of oppositions and fixed combinatorial rules. The fact that Chinese unites into one morphosyntactic category a series of elusive modal phenomena, often expressed in other languages by heterogeneous means, is of great significance to general linguistic theory.

Central Australian Aboriginal English: In Comparison with the Morphosyntactic Categories of Kaytetye

Central Australian Aboriginal English includes features derived from an earlier Australian Pidgin English, mixed with aspects of colloquial English, and in addition shows the influence of the indigenous languages of Central Australia. This paper explores the way grammatical distinctions of one particular indigenous language, Kaytetye, are reflected in the Aboriginal English of speakers whose first language is Kaytetye. It is claimed that, although the forms are from English, their grammatical uses are determined to some extent by the morphosyntactic categories of Kaytetye. Topics explored include: personal pronouns, a kinship marker, prepositions, and the verbal category of “associated motion”.

A core morphology for Old English verbs

A characterization of the morphology of ‘regular’ Old English verbs is offered on the basis of a ‘word-and-paradigm’ approach to morphological structure. Thus rules of expression are formulated providing for the phonological realization(s) of (combinations of) morphosyntactic categories of tense, mood, person, number etc. However, it is argued that the organization of categories (in terms of compatibility and presupposition) differs with respect to the syntax–morphology interface and the morphology–phonology interface (the rules of expression). There is therefore proposed a set of rules of category realignment which relate the function-oriented system of categories to the expression-oriented system, which (among other things) minimize syncretism in the elements introduced by the rules of expression. Analysis of the preterite-present and weak-present verbs provides further support for this distinction in systems of category organization. The expression rules themselves do not introduce or realize ‘zeros’ and ‘mutations’ are interpreted as correspondences between base and derived/inflected form. An appendix offers a description of Present-day English verb inflexions for comparison.

In the Cause of Subjunctive

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Signed English in the classroom, IV. Aspects of children's speech and sign

This paper explores the use of Signed English by children and their teachers in classroom conversations. Analyses of children's loquacity in sign (measured by their mean length of turn) are compared with previous analyses of the children's loquacity in speech to reveal high correlations between the two. Children's length of utterance in both speech and sign increased with age. However, their reliance on sign, relative to speech, declined with both age and IQ. The implications of these findings for the efficacy of Signed English as a vehicle for assisting the acquisition of spoken English are discussed. Analyses of the relations between teaching style and children's use of sign parallel those found between the same measures of teacher language and children's use of speech, implying that children may use speech and sign to perform similar communicative functions. Whether children communicate in words alone or in signs and speech, their levels of initiative, loquacity and misunderstanding relate to the manner in which teachers manage discourse. No evidence was found to suggest that teachers react differently to children as a function of their pupils' relative use of speech and sign. Morpho-syntactic analyses of the speech and sign of a sub-group of children reveal marked similarities with the 'input' they receive from teachers on two measures. The relative use of 57 morpho-syntactic categories by teachers and children were highly correlated as were the relative frequencies with which a sub-set of 28 categories were spoken, signed or both spoken and signed. The close correspondence between the content and expression of teachers' and children's communication implies that pupils may be acquiring a system of communication similar to that being displayed by their partners in communication. The implications of these results for theoretical debates about the 'impossibility' of the task of acquiring speech/sign hybrids are discussed. The paper ends with a general discussion of the theoretical and educational implications of the findings presented in the whole series of papers on the use of Signed English in the classroom (S.E.C. I-IV).

Aspect et autres catégories du verbe

The morpho-syntactic categories of the verb can be reduced to the three semantic relations that refer the process expressed by the verb (1) to reality : moods, assertions (statuts), modal techniques, (2) to the participants : persons, voices, modes of meaning, and (3) to time : tenses, modes of action, aspects. In the Slavic languages, the opposition between completed (perfective) and incompleted (imperfective) action is carried by-aspect, which occurs in finite, nonfinite and nominal forms of the verb (deverbativa). There are other languages in which this category has no relevant equivalents. However, if we consider grammatical aspect to be a temporal determination of sorts, we can include here the oppositions : anterior / simultaneous, proximate / distant, definite / indefinite, progressive / habitual action.