Riau Indonesian Research Articles

Austronesian Undressed: How and Why Languages Become Isolating ed. by David Gil and Antoinette Schapper

Reviewed by: Austronesian Undressed: How and Why Languages Become Isolating ed. by David Gil and Antoinette Schapper Jiang WU David Gil and Antoinette Schapper (eds.) 2020. Austronesian Undressed: How and Why Languages Become Isolating (Typological Studies in Language 129). Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. ix + 510 pp. isbn 978-90-272-0790-6 (HB), 978-90-272-6053-6 (E-Book). The book under review is an edited volume with the goal of addressing the question posed in its title: how and why Austronesian languages become isolating. More specifically, it concerns the Austronesian languages in an area which David Gil describes as a crescent, stretching from Hainan Island in the north, along coastal Mainland Southeast Asia into most of the Malay/ Indonesian archipelago, with the other tip of the crescent at the Bird's Head of New Guinea. The question posed by this book is of great interest and significance to both Austronesianists and a wider audience in fields such as historical linguistics, language contact, creolistics, and typology, for at least two reasons. For one, within the Austronesian family there is a tendency of simplification from Formosan and Philippine languages, which exhibit a considerably higher degree of morphosyntactic complexity, to those currently found in the so-called Isolating Crescent. Such a trend roughly correlates with the direction of the Austronesian dispersal, hence the study undertaken here is a probe into the history of Austronesian languages and their speakers as a whole. In addition, isolating languages appear to be the anomalies on a worldwide scale. The study of isolating Austronesian languages therefore relates to a broader inquiry into whether there is any common driving force behind the simplification processes of languages in general. This volume contains ten main chapters dealing with a wide range of Austronesian languages, including Cham, Riau Indonesian, Minangkabau, Javanese, Central Flores languages, Alorese and its close relative Lamaholot, Tetun Dili, and the languages of eastern Timor. Also included in the volume is an introduction which sets the scene for the book with a concise summary for each chapter, as well as a concluding chapter by John McWhorter (who introduced the metaphor of languages "undressing") with a critical review on much of the content. Chapter 1 by David Gil opens with the question of what it means to be an isolating language. Traditionally, the isolating nature of a language is associated with a low morpheme per word ratio, but it is notoriously difficult to properly define wordhood, upon which the notion of isolating rests crucially (Dixon and Aikhenvald 2002; Haspelmath 2011). Here, Gil defines word as a structural unit characterized by the convergence of a set of language-specific properties, and proposes a novel definition of isolating language as one that lacks a robust [End Page 791] structural unit of word. As Gil then demonstrates, a language like Riau Indonesian has few properties that can converge to define this unit of word, which means that Riau Indonesian has little morphological structure, and is therefore isolating. This chapter evokes some insightful thinking on morphological complexity and illuminates it with an elaborated and thorough case study. However, since the potential sources of evidence for wordhood are language specific, the question remains as to whether this view on morphological typology is readily applicable to other languages on a practical level, with crosslinguistically comparable results. Notably, while Gil intends to lay the groundwork for the remainder of the volume, his definition of isolating languages is not adopted in other chapters (except for an additional chapter on Riau Indonesian by Gil himself). The subsequent chapters present a range of rich and original data on how and to what extent the Austronesian languages in the Isolating Crescent display isolating structures, and many of them also emphasize the question of why. As is argued in most chapters, morphological loss and isolating traits can often be ascribed to language contact, but exactly what kind of contact scenario led to simplification remains a question that is subject to different interpretations. Much of the discussion in this volume centers around the debate between two views: a pre-Austronesian substratum or insufficient adult acquisition. I shall summarize and evaluate these two views in turn. Three chapters endorse the idea...

Do All Languages Share the Same Conceptual Structure?

Abstract In this work, we consider the views of three exponents of major areas of linguistics – Levelt (psycholinguistics), Jackendoff (theoretical linguistics), and Gil (field linguistics) – regarding the issue of the universality or not of the conceptual structure of languages. In Levelt’s view, during language production, the conceptual structure of the preverbal message is language-specific. In Jackendoff’s theoretical approach to language – his parallel architecture – there is a universal conceptual structure shared by all languages, in contradiction to Levelt’s view. In Gil’s work on Riau Indonesian, he proposes a conceptual structure that is quite different from that of English, adopted by Jackendoff as universal. We find no reason to disagree with Gil’s view. In this way, we take Gil’s work as vindicating Levelt’s view that during language production preverbal messages are encoded with different conceptual structures for different languages.

Analisis Kesalahan Berbahasa Tataran Sintaksis dalam Kumpulan Makalah Mahasiswa Universitas Islam Riau

Analysis of language errors is the science of studying or discussing the use of languages that are notin accordance with the rules that have been determined based on standard grammar, these are stillfound in scientific works including in a collection of scientific papers of students of IslamicUniversity of Indonesia Language and Literature Study Program. The language used by students issometimes not in accordance with the rules of language contained in the Indonesian SpellingGeneral Guidelines (PUEBI). Therefore, this research was conducted with the aim of analyzing andinterpreting errors in syntactic level language, phrase fields and sentences in a collection ofscientific papers by students of the Islamic University of Riau Indonesian Language and LiteratureStudy Program. This study uses the content analysis method that is prescriptive. Data collectiontechniques using documentation and hermeneutic techniques. The data of this study are sourcedfrom a collection of scientific papers from students at the Islamic University of Riau FKIPIndonesian Language and Literature Study Program. The data studied was documented by reading,taking notes and then concluded and grouped based on the use of each level. Errors in language in acollection of student papers at the Islamic University of Riau FKIP Indonesian Language andLiterature Study Program found language errors at the syntactic level. The results of this study, thephrase field errors are excessive or redundant use of elements and improper use of prepositions.Meanwhile, language errors in the sentence field include, the sentence is not subject, the sentence isnot predicated, the sentence is not subject and is not predicated/sentence stumps such as the use ofwords, illogical sentences, excessive use of conjunctions, non-parallel sequences, use of foreignterms , and the use of unnecessary question words.

Syntactic Underspecification in Riau Indonesian

Indonesian is known for having a relatively simple morphological and syntactic structure. This is especially true of local varieties of the language, where contrast between categories found in Standard Indonesian is neutralized. In the Indonesian variety spoken in Riau Province, there is almost no morphological marking of grammatical categories and there is relatively free word order. Gil (1994, 2003, 2005b) develops a theory of Riau Indonesian grammar that has only one open grammatical category, which he calls S (Sentence). This means that there are no distinctions between categories like noun, verb, and adjective and no basic word order. In this paper I show that Gil's analysis does not adequately account for generalizations in Riau Indonesian syntax. I argue that Riau Indonesian has the basic lexical categories of noun, verb and adjective. Based on these lexical categories, I show that the language has basic SVO word order. I argue that Riau Indonesian can be better analyzed in terms of Role and Reference Grammar (RRG; cf. Van Valin & La Polla 1997, Van Valin 2005) since RRG accounts for generalizations in Riau Indonesian more adequately. I also use Discourse Representation Theory (Kamp & Reyle 1993, Asher 1999) to show how discourse structure can function to aid semantic interpretation of Riau Indonesian syntax in an RRG framework.

Linear grammar as a possible stepping-stone in the evolution of language.

We suggest that one way to approach the evolution of language is through reverse engineering: asking what components of the language faculty could have been useful in the absence of the full complement of components. We explore the possibilities offered by linear grammar, a form of language that lacks syntax and morphology altogether, and that structures its utterances through a direct mapping between semantics and phonology. A language with a linear grammar would have no syntactic categories or syntactic phrases, and therefore no syntactic recursion. It would also have no functional categories such as tense, agreement, and case inflection, and no derivational morphology. Such a language would still be capable of conveying certain semantic relations through word order-for instance by stipulating that agents should precede patients. However, many other semantic relations would have to be based on pragmatics and discourse context. We find evidence of linear grammar in a wide range of linguistic phenomena: pidgins, stages of late second language acquisition, home signs, village sign languages, language comprehension (even in fully syntactic languages), aphasia, and specific language impairment. We also find a full-blown language, Riau Indonesian, whose grammar is arguably close to a pure linear grammar. In addition, when subjects are asked to convey information through nonlinguistic gesture, their gestures make use of semantically based principles of linear ordering. Finally, some pockets of English grammar, notably compounds, can be characterized in terms of linear grammar. We conclude that linear grammar is a plausible evolutionary precursor of modern fully syntactic grammar, one that is still active in the human mind.

Evolutionary Syntax, by Ljiljana Progovac

Evolutionary syntax , by Ljiljana Progovac, OUP (2015) 280 pp, £24.99. In this monograph, Progovac argues for an incremental evolution of cognitive capacities underpinning syntactic structure, with Conjoin (a binary, non-recursive operation immune to movement and embedding) anteceding recursive Merge. This distinction plays out over four stages, described in Chapters 1–4, with Merge only visible in stage 4. 1. Single words; 2. Two-word combinations, for example, Case closed ; 3. ‘Proto-coordination’, where linkers like English as or Mandarin de mark binary predicate–argument relations; 4. Specific functional categories, permitting recursive syntactic structures. Progovac’s primary evidence comes from syntactic analysis of constructions, such as those above, identified as linguistic fossils (Jackendoff 1999). However, most chapters contain sections on ‘corroborating evidence’, summarizing findings from acquisition, imaging studies, and other related fields, although the interpretation of such evidence is often inconclusive (Boeckx 2016). There are several innovations in the details. For example, the stage 2 grammar, which creates binary verb–noun (VN) combinations, is claimed to have no subject–object distinction (resulting in ‘absolutive’ grammar in Progovac’s terms). This is reflected in English and Serbian VN compounds, where a rattlesnake is a snake that rattles, while rotgut is alcohol that rots guts. Similar indeterminacy is demonstrated in Tongan and Riau Indonesian. A second novel claim is that the capacity for binary protosyntactic combination within a ‘clause’ (stage 2) is linked to binary combination of clauses (stage 2a), giving a strictly finite device which can mimic subordination to a limited extent. Likewise, linkers at stage 3 may appear between predicate and argument, or between clauses. Many of these novel accounts of individual constructions are genuinely insightful and thought-provoking. Progovac argues that constructions which look quirky and cussed from the perspective of modern syntactic theory may be elegantly analysed within the terms of less expressive models of syntax. As … rob.truswell{at}ed.ac.uk

The Structure of Riau Indonesian

This article is concerned with the basic syntactic and semantic structure of Riau Indonesian, a hitherto undescribed dialect differing in many respects from standard Indonesian and Malay. Riau Indonesian appears to exhibit an abundance of zero-markings of various kinds, in which a wide variety of syntactic constructions and semantic categories lack overt morphosyntactic expression. Two alternative descriptions are provided: an “easy” description, couched in traditional grammatical terminology and a Eurocentric perspective, and a “simple” description, positing a single open syntactic category, and unconstrained rules of semantic interpretation. The latter, simple description, is argued to be superior.

The Navajo Relative Clause

Previous articleNext article No AccessThe Navajo Relative ClausePaul R. PlateroPaul R. Platero Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by International Journal of American Linguistics Volume 40, Number 3Jul., 1974 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/465313 Views: 40Total views on this site Citations: 20Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 1974 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Adam Roth Singerman On finite embedded clauses in Tuparí: their synchrony, diachrony, and typology, Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 6, no.11 (Jun 2021).https://doi.org/10.5334/gjgl.1394Emily A. Hanink DP structure and internally headed relatives in Washo, Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 39, no.22 (Jul 2020): 505–554.https://doi.org/10.1007/s11049-020-09482-ySuman KOTHAKONDA Morpho-syntactic and semantic properties of finiteness in Telugu relative clauses, Dil ve Dilbilimi Çalışmaları Dergisi 17, no.22 (Mar 2021): 965–978.https://doi.org/10.17263/jlls.904096Guglielmo Cinque The Syntax of Relative Clauses, 10 (Sep 2020).https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108856195Ken Hiraiwa Internally Headed Relative Clauses, (Nov 2017): 1–32.https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118358733.wbsyncom028Keren Rice, Willem de Reuse The Athabaskan (Dene) Language Family, (Mar 2017): 707–746.https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316135716.023 References, (Jun 2015): 464–499.https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119105664.refsAndrea Wilhelm Nominalization instead of modification, (Jan 2014): 51–82.https://doi.org/10.1075/la.210.03wilAlexander Grosu Towards a More Articulated Typology of Internally Headed Relative Constructions: The Semantics Connection, Language and Linguistics Compass 6, no.77 (Jul 2012): 447–476.https://doi.org/10.1002/lnc3.346Arthur Stepanov The End of CED? Minimalism and Extraction Domains, Syntax 10, no.11 (Apr 2007): 80–126.https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9612.2007.00094.xRachel Nordlinger Spearing the Emu Drinking: Subordination and the Adjoined Relative Clause in Wambaya* Some aspects of this paper were presented at the Blackwood workshop on subordination in Australian languages, March 2002. I would like to thank the participants of that workshop for helpful feedback, and particularly Nick Evans, Ian Green, Mary Laughren, Nick Piper, Nick Reid, Jean-Christophe Verstraete and the anonymous AJL reviewers for discussions, comments and suggestions that have helped shape and improve this paper. Of course, these people may not necessarily agree with the perspective presented here and cannot be held responsible for remaining errors or inadequacies. This research has been financially supported by an ARC APD Fellowship (F9930026) held at the University of Melbourne., Australian Journal of Linguistics 26, no.11 (Apr 2006): 5–29.https://doi.org/10.1080/07268600500531610Akira Watanabe Wh and operator constructions in Japanese, Lingua 113, no.4-64-6 (Apr 2003): 519–558.https://doi.org/10.1016/S0024-3841(02)00084-0Ken Hale The Navajo Language: I, (Jan 2001): 83–86.https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-012349353-8/50011-XLeonard M. Faltz Towards a Typology of Natural Logic, (Jan 1995): 271–319.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-2817-1_10David Gil The Structure of Riau Indonesian, Nordic Journal of Linguistics 17, no.22 (Dec 2008): 179–200.https://doi.org/10.1017/S0332586500003000Maria Bittner Cross-linguistic semantics, Linguistics and Philosophy 17, no.11 (Feb 1994): 53–108.https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00985041Akira Watanabe Subjacency and S-structure movement of wh-in-situ, Journal of East Asian Linguistics 1, no.33 (Sep 1992): 255–291.https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00130554Peter Cole The structure of internally headed relative clauses, Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 5, no.22 (May 1987): 277–302.https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00166587Mark A. Clarke, Ann Losoff, Margaret Dickenson McCracken, David S. Rood LINGUISTIC RELATIVITY AND SEX/GENDER STUDIES: EPISTEMOLOGICAL AND METHODOLOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS, Language Learning 34, no.22 (Oct 2006): 47–64.https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-1770.1984.tb01003.x References, ().https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110218374.443