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Parts of speech as language universals and as language-particular categories
... Adjetivos apresentam-se como um desafio para entender o que distingue as categorias lexicais umas das outras. Nomes denotam situações "permanentes" (Bhat 1994;Croft 2000) e podem ter critério de identidade e índice referencial (Baker 2003); verbos denotam situações "transitórias" (Bhat 1994;Croft 2000) e podem projetar especificador (Spec) (Baker 2003); adjetivos, por sua vez, não seriam capazes de nada disso (Baker 2003). A evidência para a identificação de adjetivos interlinguisticamente varia bastante. ...
... Adjetivos apresentam-se como um desafio para entender o que distingue as categorias lexicais umas das outras. Nomes denotam situações "permanentes" (Bhat 1994;Croft 2000) e podem ter critério de identidade e índice referencial (Baker 2003); verbos denotam situações "transitórias" (Bhat 1994;Croft 2000) e podem projetar especificador (Spec) (Baker 2003); adjetivos, por sua vez, não seriam capazes de nada disso (Baker 2003). A evidência para a identificação de adjetivos interlinguisticamente varia bastante. ...
... A partir das estruturas dos exemplos apresentadas nas obras de Abeillé; Godard (1999), Aboh; DeGraff (2017), Baker;Stewart (1997); Bhat (1994); Bouchard (2022); Cinque (2010); Croft (2000), DeGraff (2007); Dixon (2004) e Hofherr (2010, foram elaborados questionários em kheuól para verificar possíveis contrastes morfossintáticos entre as categorias lexicais, com foco nas hipóteses sobre as características definidoras dos adjetivos. Os falantes foram não só instados a julgar a gramaticalidade dos estímulos elaborados, mas também a criar sentenças em que as estruturas-alvo fossem possíveis. ...
Este artigo tem como objetivo apresentar aspectos da distribuição sintática da categoria lexical de adjetivos em kheuól do Uaçá, língua indígena falada pelos povos Karipuna e Galibi-Marworno na fronteira franco-brasileira no município de Oiapoque, Amapá, Brasil. Para estabelecermos o contraste com outras categorias lexicais, observamos o comportamento de adjetivos em relação à sua ordem de ocorrência e em construções comparativas. Em kheuól, somente adjetivos podem preceder nomes em sintagmas determinantes encabeçados pelo indefinido un ‘um’, verbos e particípios não podem. Somente verbos podem ser seguidos de plis ki ‘mais que’ em comparativas, adjetivos e particípios devem ser precedidos por pi ‘mais’. Apesar de particípios ocorrerem como complemento de pi (como adjetivos), não podem preceder nomes em sintagmas encabeçados pelo indefinido un ‘um’ (adjetivos podem). Interpretamos, estruturalmente, particípios como adjetivos deverbais. Usamos o termo ‘particípio’ apenas como um rótulo descritivo. Buscamos com este trabalho inaugural contribuir preliminarmente para o entendimento das propriedades sintáticas definidoras da categoria lexical de adjetivos.
... Function motivates structure, of which order is an epiphenomenon, which allows us to correlate basic ordering tendencies with the different functions of adjectives. Secondly, following Halliday (1961), Langacker (1987), and Croft (2000), we adhere to the premise that grammatical categories are not primitives. Rather, the whole construction defines its elements of structure, which in turn have a motivated relation to the grammatical classes realizing them. ...
... Theoretically, we align with semiotically-based, functional-structural construction grammars (e.g. Langacker 1987 andLangacker 1991;Halliday 1994Halliday [1985; McGregor 1997;Croft 2000). All versions of construction grammar hold that constructions are form-meaning couplings, but not all stress the importance of identifying the precise elements of structure between which conceptually motivated dependencies exist, with the resulting symbolic assembly qualifying as a construction (Langacker 2017: 10). ...
This article is situated in a long tradition of functional-structural analyses of the English noun
phrase, in particular Halliday (1976 [1964], 1994 [1985]); Halliday and Hasan (1976), Bolinger
(1967, 1972), Bache (2000) and Langacker (1991, 2004, 2016, 2017). With these authors this
study shares the theoretical tenet that structural relations symbolize functional relations. The
various semantic functions of adjectives in the English NP are coded by different modification
relations, which differ in terms of where and how they fit into the structural assembly of the
whole NP. Function motivates structure, of which order is an epiphenomenon, thus allowing
us to correlate basic ordering tendencies with the various functions of adjectives. This paper
proposes a synthesis which is innovative in a number of ways. Theoretically, it extends
McGregor’s (1997) distinction between representational and interpersonal modifiers, further
interpreting this distinction with regard to ordering potential. Descriptively, this study extends
the traditionally recognised functions, classifier, epithet, noun-intensifier and secondary
determiner, with two additional interpersonal functions realized by adjectives, viz. focus
marker and metadesignative. It also systematically investigates the possibility for coordination
and subordination between adjectives fulfilling the same function, with the implications for
ordering.
... From language to language, psycho-lexical work seems to have silently assumed that word classes can be compared directly across languages, but that is not the case (cf. Croft, 2000;Haspelmath, 2012). In addition to the fact that different word classes do not contain words in similar proportions across languages, the identification of words to belong to a certain class does not follow the same criteria. ...
This study was an endeavor to map out a personality trait structure of the Swahili language that may be used to develop indigenous eastern African personality assessment instruments. We followed the psycho-lexical approach where we not only identified trait terms from the Swahili dictionary but also from free descriptions collected from indigenous Swahili speakers. In combination, these two routines led to a pool of 3,732 personality-relevant terms, which was reduced in several steps to a set of 948 terms, identified as the most relevant trait-descriptive terms, including a small set of 26 adjectives, a large set of 531 nouns, and a substantial set of 391 verbs. This working set of 948 terms was lastly reduced to a final set of 661 most useful terms, converted into brief communicable sentences based on 439 nouns (comprising 250 type nouns and 189 attribute nouns), 199 verbs, and 23 adjectives. The list of 661 items was used to collect self and peer ratings from 480 university and high school students. An analysis of ratings on the 661 items revealed a six-factor personality trait structure that included Virtue, Imprudence, Negative Valence, Self-importance, Deceptiveness, and Attentive Conversation. Separate analyses were done using the type nouns, the attribute nouns, and the verbs, to assess the differential contribution of these word classes to the makeup of these Swahili Six.
... Dans les deux premiers cas, le problème est en effet que lorsqu'une unité non catégorielle, autrement dit une unité sémantique qui peut être employée indifféremment dans n'importe quelle catégorie grammaticale (Hengeveld, 1992), reçoit, dans chaque emploi catégoriel distinct, une interprétation contrainte par cette insertion catégorielle, il n'est possible ni d'ignorer la transformation qu'elle subit 6 (Croft, 2000), ni de décrire les unités obtenues (et leurs sens) comme les briques sémantiques du langage en question. Moyennant quoi, il faut reconnaître en tant que telle la plurisémie qui résulte de cette situation, autrement dit la coexistence d'un signifié non catégoriel et d'un signifié catégoriel, la coexistence d'une signification exosquelettale 7 et de sens endosquelettaux. ...
L’objet de l’article est de montrer ce que des décennies de recherches patientes sur la nature du signifié peuvent apporter à une linguistique du signifiant, en montrant la nécessité d’adopter une conception stratifiée (et plurisémique) du signifié, et une conception plurimorphique du signifiant comme association d’une forme externe et d’une forme interne. Il décrit donc en détail la réalité de la plurisémie d’une part, et celle de la plurimorphie et de la polymorphie d’autre part, avant de décrire la façon dont les deux logiques se renforcent l’une l’autre, Il aborde ainsi la distinction morphème/lexème, la plurisémie des lexèmes et la prosodie d’une part, avant de contraster le caractère non-linéaire et archiphonémique des morphèmes et le caractère linéaire et phonémique des lexèmes.
... The method facilitates cross-linguistic comparison in the face of linguistic multifunctionality and the mounting argument in functionalist research as to the non-universality of formal grammatical primitives (cf. Cristofaro 2009;Croft 2000Croft , 2002Croft , 2003Croft , 2004Croft , 2005aCroft , 2005bCroft , 2007aCroft , 2007bCroft , 2010aCroft , 2010bCroft , 2010cDryer 1997;Foley and van Valin 1977;Haspelmath 2007Haspelmath , 2008Haspelmath , 2010aHaspelmath , 2010bHaspelmath , 2010cHelmbrecht 2005;Lazard 2004Lazard , 2006aLazard , 2006bcontra, e.g., Newmeyer 2007contra, e.g., Newmeyer , 2010. Recently, the first steps of establishing the mathematical basis of the method have been conducted using multidimensional scaling Poole 2008a, 2008b;cf. ...
This article focusses on the issue of deixis and anaphora in Tiberian Hebrew, with the particular aim of ascertaining the functions of the demonstrative paradigm of זֶה and theparadigm of the independent third-person pronoun, הוּא which is often also said to have a remote demonstrative function. Using typological works on demonstratives, a semantic map for demonstrative–anaphoric functions is proposed, which helps to concretely represent the functions of the two paradigms. The finding is that in terms of deictic function, the זֶה paradigm is unmarked for distance, being used for both distal and near referents. In contrast, the הוּא paradigm does not have a deictic function, but is primarily used for various anaphoric functions, as well as having a recognitional function.
... This definition starts out from the generally agreed characterization of roots as content items (as opposed to function items), 4 following the definition given by Bauer et al. (2013: 17): "A root is the centre of a word, a lexically contentful morph, either free or bound, which is not further analysable." As I discuss in Haspelmath (2023b), an action root is much the same as a verb root in a comparative perspective, an object root is a noun root, and a property root is an adjective root (see also Croft 2000 on the semantic classes that are the basis of word classes in the world's languages). 5 Of course, some nouns denote abstract properties (e.g., luck, soul, peace), and these are not covered by the definition (see §3.2 below on shared-core definitions). ...
... The grammatical coding in nominal and verbal domains can provide a testing ground for exploring a potential trade-off relationship. Verbs and nouns are lexical categories that typically denote states of affairs (verbs) and entities (nouns), corresponding to the propositional acts of predication and reference (Croft 2000). Given the different functions that they perform, verbs and nouns are associated with different properties within as well as across languages. ...
Nouns and verbs are known to differ in the types of grammatical information they encode. What is less well known is the relationship between verbal and nominal coding within and across languages. The equi-complexity hypothesis holds that all languages are equally complex overall, which entails trade-offs between coding in different domains. From a diachronic point of view, this hypothesis implies that the loss and gain of coding in different domains can be expected to balance each other out. In this study, we test to what extent such inverse coevolution can be observed in a sample of 244 languages, using data from a comprehensive cross-linguistic database (Grambank) and applying computational phylogenetic modelling to control for genealogical relatedness. We find evidence for coevolutionary relationships between specific features within nominal and verbal domains on a global scale, but not for overall degrees of grammatical coding between languages. Instead, these amounts of nominal and verbal coding are positively correlated in Sino-Tibetan languages and inversely correlated in Indo-European languages. Our findings indicate that accretion and loss of grammatical information in nominal words and verbs are lineage-specific.
... Another potential contributor to verb mutability is relationality of meaning. It has been argued that relationality is a key feature of verb meaning; that is, while nouns often refer to objects or object concepts, verbs typically express relations among those referents (Baker et al., 1998;Croft, 2000Croft, , 2001Fillmore, 1971;Jackendoff, 1983;Langacker, 1987Langacker, , 2008Levin, 1993;Talmy, 1975Talmy, , 1988Talmy, , 2000Vigliocco, Vinson, Druks, Barber, & Cappa, 2011). We suggest that relationality imposes additional pressure to adjust meaning over and above the pragmatic function of predication (although, as discussed below, the two factors normally work in tandem). ...
This paper explores the processes underlying verb metaphoric extension. Work on metaphor processing has largely focused on noun metaphor, despite evidence that verb metaphor is more common. Across three experiments, we collected paraphrases of simple intransitive sentences varying in semantic strain-for example, The motor complained → The engine made strange noises-and assessed the degree of meaning change for the noun and the verb. We developed a novel methodology for this assessment using word2vec. In Experiments 1 and 2, we found that (a) under semantic strain, verb meanings were more likely to be adjusted than noun meanings; (b) the degree of verb meaning adjustment-but not noun meaning adjustment-increased with semantic strain; and (c) verb meaning extension is primarily driven by online adjustment, although sense selection also plays a role. In Experiment 3, we replicated the word2vec results with an assessment using human subjects. The results further showed that nouns and verbs change meaning in qualitatively different ways, with verbs more likely to change meaning metaphorically and nouns more likely to change meaning taxonomically or metonymically. These findings bear on the origin and processing of verb metaphors and provide a link between online sentence processing and diachronic change over language evolution.
... In other words, we only consider words that are considered a major part of speech (MPoS) as descriptors for each pattern. These include Verbs, Adverbs, Nouns, and Adjectives [39]. This step is necessary given that knowledge graphs are better modelled and expressed using single word attributes [40]. ...
Patterns for the internet of things (IoT) which represent proven solutions used to solve design problems in the IoT are numerous. Similar to object-oriented design patterns, these IoT patterns contain multiple mutual heterogeneous relationships. However, these pattern relationships are hidden and virtually unidentified in most documents. In this paper, we use machine learning techniques to automatically mine knowledge graphs to map these relationships between several IoT patterns. The end result is a semantic knowledge graph database which outlines patterns as vertices and their relations as edges. We have identified four main relationships between the IoT patterns-a pattern is similar to another pattern if it addresses the same use case problem, a large-scale pattern uses a small- scale pattern in a lower level layer, a large pattern is composed of multiple smaller scale patterns underneath it, and patterns complement and combine with each other to resolve a given use case problem. Our results show some promising prospects towards the use of machine learning techniques to generate an automated repository to organise the IoT patterns, which are usually extracted at various levels of abstraction and granularity. © 2021 Institute of Advanced Engineering and Science. All rights reserved.
... The emergent literature which treats lexical polyfunctionality as a phenomenon of interest in its own right and applies empirical data to the task of understanding its behavior has advanced our knowledge of the various ways lexical polyfunctionality can be realized, and what the constraints on that variation are. Existing research shows, for example, that lexical polyfunctionality is constrained and shaped by the very principles that give rise to the crosslinguistic categories of noun, verb, and adjective in the first place(Croft 2000;Croft & van Lier 2012). This literature and its many findings are reviewed in Section 2.3.There is however still much to discover about lexical polyfunctionality. ...
Lexical polyfunctionality in discourse: A quantitative corpus-based approach
... Lyons 1977y Croft 2000. Los nombres pueden ser más o menos prototípicos (Croft 2000). Los últimos son unidades léxicas no marcadas. ...
El Predio Putumayo es un resguardo indígena situado en la región amazónica colombiana. Este territorio y sus alrededores están habitados por múltiples grupos indígenas que se comunican en diversas lenguas. Estos grupos indígenas se diferencian e identifican lingüísticamente y mantienen estrechas relaciones interétnicas y matrimoniales entre sí. En los bordes del territorio se encuentran también de manera ocasional algunos asentamientos familiares de gente arawak o tukano. Los vecinos del Resguardo Predio Putumayo hablan lenguas de las familias Tukano oriental, centro oriental, Tukano occidental y Arawak. Contamos con pocos estudios comparativos de las prácticas culturales y lingüísticas del interfluvio Caquetá-Putumayo y aquéllas de la cuenca del Alto río Vaupés. En este artículo se analiza la relación existente entre categorías léxicas y el sistema de clasificación nominal del muinane en perspectiva comparativa procurando así describir el sistema y sus funciones. Finalmente planteamos ampliar estas descripciones tomando en cuenta la relación existente entre la ausencia de una categoría adjetival y la presencia de los sistemas de clasificación nominal para un grupo de lenguas habladas en la región del Noroeste amazónico.
This article analyzes the syntactic features of presumably nominal and verbal lexemes in argument positions based on the material of a late classical text of the 1st century AD. “Lunheng”. The main proposed tool for syntactic analysis is a system of distinctive contexts (allow to determine the syntactic position of the lexeme under study). Such acriteriahelped to parse and analyze more than twenty-five thousand clauses. It appeared that there is a great frequency difference in the number of verb and noun lexemes encountered in given argument contexts (69.48% and 87.84%, respectively), there are also other differences in contexts’ frequency, conditions and restrictions of use. Potentially, these results may highlight some restrictions of free syntactic shift, and as a result indirectly indicate rigid flexibility of the system of categories in Old Chinese with a number of limitations.
As Dependências Universais (UDs) são um modelo de anotação morfossintática de línguas naturais. Este artigo parte do pressuposto de que na base do modelo ficam previstas a adequação computacional (que se liga ao processamento de língua natural), a adequação tipológica (que se liga à proposta geral do modelo de comparação interlinguística) e a adequação descritiva (que se liga à anotação de línguas individuais). A discussão concentra-se nos dois últimos tipos de adequação. A proposta que se defende aqui é a de que os pressupostos teóricos subjacentes ao modelo das UDs necessitam ser claramente explicitados, uma vez que são exatamente tais pressupostos que determinam a construção de quadros categoriais que chancelam as anotações realizadas para línguas individuais. Para tanto, procede-se a uma discussão sobre a concepção do quadro categorial e a formulação da definição das categorias. A avaliação geral a que se chega é que, por um lado, do ponto de vista da proposição de diretrizes gerais, tal quadro categorial deve constituir um conjunto de “conceitos comparativos” (HASPELMATH, 2010), por outro, do ponto de vista da proposição de diretrizes para anotação de línguas individuais, esse quadro deve constituir um conjunto de “categorias descritivas”. Essa dupla visão sobre o quadro categorial das UDs pode garantir isonomia e equivalência teórico-metodológica, de modo a tanto otimizar a realização de tarefas de análise e descrição linguísticas assistidas por modelos computacionais quanto a construção de modelos computacionais baseados em anotação linguística consistente do ponto de vista descritivo e tipológico.
Adverbs are among those complicated subject's different aspects of which have been investigated throughout history. However, linguists have not reached an agreement on the diverse issues related to adverbs, from its definition to the fact that whether it should be considered as a lexical category in addition to nouns, adjectives and verbs. This research is aimed at determining the place of Persian adverbs regarding their prototypical characteristics as one of the parts of speech in the Croft’s semantic map of parts of speech based on the typological prototype theory. Hence, according to the typological criteria, a number of adverbs used in everyday speech of standard Persian speakers gathered from the national media as well as adverbs used in various contemporary Persian texts were analyzed. On the basis of the research results, considering the adverb as a lexical category, the place of the unmarked adverbs, defined functionally and considered unmarked typologically, in the Persian language was determined in the Croft’s semantic map of parts of speech in the lexical class of property the same as the unmarked adjectives, and it was shown that despite of the unmarked adjectives denoting the propositional act of modification within reference, the unmarked adverbs describe the propositional act of modification within predication. Moreover, the places of PPs on verbs and converbs, both of them as marked adverbs, were determined as words of object showing the propositional act of modification within predication and words of action showing the propositional act of modification within predication, respectively, in the Croft’s semantic map of parts of speech.
This chapter introduces a hitherto unnoticed type of concealed questions, namely, polar concealed question readings. Previous research on Concealed Questions has concentrated on NPs corresponding to identity questions (e.g., Kim knows the price ≈ ‘Kim knows what the price is’). This chapter focuses on NPs whose reading is similar to that of a polar interrogative in certain interrogative contexts, e.g., Their survival is uncertain ≈ ‘Whether or not they have survived is uncertain’. The contexts that allow this reading and the properties of the nouns that allow it are explored. It is shown that the polar reading is licensed in contexts that lack factive presupposition or allow presupposition to be cancelled. It is then shown that central polar nouns, those which can easily get polar readings in interrogative contexts, denote simple eventualities and are either stative or correlated with a salient state in their default uses (in non-interrogative contexts). Contextual factors are examined, in particular the possible coercion of polar readings by contextual elements. Possible ambiguities are also discussed, in particular with Degree Concealed Questions, which motivates the hypothesis that the variety of concealed question readings should be reexamined.
This study examines the morphosyntactic functions of Waray substantive lexical items and
seeks to answer whether they are categorized, precategorial, or variable.1 The issue of “parts
of speech” in Philippine languages is discussed in a larger context. It involves a review of the
weaknesses of the absolute category and precategorial positions. A presentation of data on
the validity of the variability position using induction by simple enumeration (qualitative
evidence) supports the review. Key terms such as substantive lexical items, absolutely
categorized, precategorial, variables are defined. A corpus study informed by Dixon (2010)
is the quantitative data of this study, which establishes the variability of Waray substantive
lexical items. The data consisting of Waray roots undergo a pilot test and adjustments to
determine the final data pool of Waray roots. Three independent auditors conduct data
validation. Statisticians plot the data on a multidimensional scale (MDS) and triangulate the
results. The researcher analyzes and interprets the data. The study shows that Waray roots are
variable. Meaning, that a Waray root could be strongly predicative and weaker in membership
in the modificative and referential clusters. Or, a Waray root could mostly be utilized as a
reference and occasionally as a predicate or modifier as observed in their actual usage in the
corpus. The results entail a new scheme in the organization of word classes first articulated
by Dixon (2010). This study entails a new model for tagging Waray roots, inflected forms,
and those with stem-forming affixes doing away with traditional part-of-speech tags such as
noun (n.), verb (v.), adverb (adv.), and adjective (adj.).
El objetivo de este artículo es exponer el panorama de la variación estructural y areal de la expresión de la persona gramatical en diferentes clases de palabra de las lenguas indígenas de Colombia, Venezuela y Ecuador registrados en el periodo colonial. Existen antecedentes sobre la transversalidad gramatical, pero se han centrado en categorías como tiempo (Aikhenvald 2021) y no existen propuestas con fuentes históricas. Se hace uso de una combinación de métodos con (Nerbonne; Colen, Gooskens; Kleiweg; Leinonen 2011) y sin georreferenciación (Garcia-Vallvé; Puigbo 2016 [2002]), de manera que se reconozcan diferentes grados de transversalidad de la persona y sus clasificaciones mediante dendrogramas y de división territorial mínima. El achagua es la lengua más divergente por su mayor presencia de expresión de la persona gramatical en diferentes clases de palabra y la asociación entre quichua y siona se encuentra común en las propuestas de agrupamiento empleadas.
This handbook provides an authoritative, critical survey of current research and knowledge in the grammar of the English language. Following an introduction from the editors, the volume’s expert contributors explore a range of core topics in English grammar, beginning with issues in grammar writing and methodology. Chapters in part II then examine the various theoretical approaches to grammar, such as cognitive, constructional, and generative approaches, followed by the chapters in part III, which comprehensively cover the different subdomains of grammar, including compounds, phrase structure, clause types, tense and aspect, and information structure. Part IV offers coverage of the relationship between grammar and other fields – lexis, phonology, meaning, and discourse – while the concluding part of the book investigates grammatical change over time, regional variation, and genre and literary variation.
This paper empirically investigates the evolution of the gerund and the present participle in Late Latin, and examines on the basis of this investigation the impact of their morphological merging in Old French on their categorial distinction. The results confirm the standard hypothesis of the evolution in Late Latin, but only partly: they support a specialisation of the gerund in adverbial syntax, but not of the present participle in adjectival syntax. Thus, the gerund shows signs of converbalisation, while the present participle does not undergo a process of participialisation. Like the gerund, the present participle has mostly adverbial syntax, and is as such more converb than participle-like. This similarity between the gerund and the present participle in Late Latin makes that their morphological merging in Old French raises a major issue for their categorial distinction. A considerable number of all Old French ant forms are categorially indeterminate, i.e. not categorisable as gerunds or present participles. This finding leads to the conclusion that the morphological merging of the gerund and the present participle in Old French causes these two forms to merge also on a categorial level. The label proposed for this blend is « -ant form ».
Role and Reference Grammar (RRG) is a theory of language in which linguistic structures are accounted for in terms of the interplay of discourse, semantics and syntax. With contributions from a team of leading scholars, this Handbook provides a field-defining overview of RRG. Assuming no prior knowledge, it introduces the framework step-by-step, and includes a pedagogical guide for instructors. It features in-depth discussions of syntax, morphology, and lexical semantics, including treatments of lexical and grammatical categories, the syntax of simple clauses and complex sentences, and how the linking of syntax with semantics and discourse works in each of these domains. It illustrates RRG's contribution to the study of language acquisition, language change and processing, computational linguistics, and neurolinguistics, and also contains five grammatical sketches which show how RRG analyses work in practice. Comprehensive yet accessible, it is essential reading for anyone who is interested in how grammar interfaces with meaning.
The category of adverbs in Chinese, as is its counterpart in English, is featured by morphological, syntactic and semantic heterogeneity. The heterogeneity poses the questions of the categorial coherence and the conflicting criteria in identifying adverbs. This paper starts with the definition of adverbs in Cognitive Grammar and analyzes degree adverbs, temporal adverbs, scope adverbs, manner adverbs, attitude adverbs and negation adverbs in Chinese. It is found that they all profile a relationship with a relational trajector, consistent with the proposal in Cognitive Grammar, but the precise relationship has to be specified. Some adverbs can also serve as mental space builders. Moreover, the morphological and syntactic behaviors of adverbs can be motivated to different degrees by their semantic functions. The paper attempts to establish the categorial status of adverbs. It develops the semantic account of lexical categories and motivates the formal aspects of language from meaning.
This study examined the morphosyntactic functions of Waray substantive lexical items and
sought to answer whether they are categorized, precategorial, or variable; using a corpus
under the lens of Basic Linguistic Theory (Dixon, 2010).
The first step involved a review of the weaknesses of the absolute category and precategorial
positions. A presentation of data on the validity of variability position using induction by
simple enumeration (qualitative evidence) supported the review.
Next, the presentation of quantitative data established the variability of Waray substantive
lexical items. The data consisting of Waray roots underwent a pilot test and adjustments to
determine the final data pool of Waray roots. Three independent auditors conducted data
validation. Statisticians plotted the data on a multidimensional scale (MDS) and triangulated
the results. The researcher analyzed and interpreted the data. The study shows that Waray
roots are variable; however, they can be classified, with or without affixes, based on their
referential, predicative, or modificative functions observed in their actual usage in the
corpus. The results entail a new scheme in the organization of word classes first articulated
by Dixon (2010).
This study proposes a new model for tagging of Waray roots, inflected forms, and those
with stem-forming affixes doing away with the traditional part-of-speech tag such as noun
(n.), verb (v.), adverb (adv.), and adjective (adj.).
Keywords: Waray, morphosyntax, morphosyntactic functions, corpus study, lexical items,
lexicography
This article develops foundations for a new typology of nominal expressions. Despite the significant diversity attested in languages around the world, a view traditionally and sometimes still found holds that languages either have ‘classic’, rigidly structured noun phrases (NPs) or lack them. A simple dichotomy, however, does not adequately represent the significant language-internal and crosslinguistic diversity of forms and functions of nominal expressions. While many linguists may not in fact think in such binary terms, a comprehensive typology is still wanting. This article offers foundations towards such a typology, with a particular emphasis on language-internal diversity. This diversity within languages has received little attention in previous studies, even while it reveals much about the actual complexity in the nominal domain. Besides surveying structural types and their motivating factors across as well as within languages from around the world, this article approaches nominal expressions also from a variety of other perspectives to enrich our understanding of them. This includes approaching nominal expressions from the perspective of word class systems as well as diachronically. We round off the article by looking at the impact of orality-literacy dimensions and communicative modes.
This book provides a view of where the field of morphology has been and where it is today within a particular theoretical framework, gathering up new and representative work in morphology by both eminent and emerging scholars, and touching on a very wide range of topics, approaches, and theoretical points of view. These seemingly disparate articles have a common touchstone in their focus on a word-based, paradigmatic approach to morphology. The chapters in this book elaborate on these basic themes, from the further exploration of paradigms, to studies involving words, stems, and affixes, to examinations of competition, inheritance, and defaults, to investigations of morphomes, to ways that morphology interacts with other parts of the language from phonology to sociolinguistics and applied linguistics. The editors and contributors dedicate this volume to Prof. Mark Aronoff for his profound influence on the field.
Few issues in the history of the language sciences have been an object of as much discussion and controversy as linguistic categories. The eleven articles included in this volume tackle the issue of categories from a wide range of perspectives and with different foci, in the context of the current debate on the nature and methodology of the research on comparative concepts – particularly, the relation between the categories needed to describe languages and those needed to compare languages. While the first six papers deal with general theoretical questions, the following five confront specific issues in the domain of language analysis arising from the application of categories. The volume will appeal to a very broad readership: advanced students and scholars in any field of linguistics, but also specialists in the philosophy of language, and scholars interested in the cognitive aspects of language from different subfields (neurolinguistics, cognitive sciences, psycholinguistics, anthropology).
Few issues in the history of the language sciences have been an object of as much discussion and controversy as linguistic categories. The eleven articles included in this volume tackle the issue of categories from a wide range of perspectives and with different foci, in the context of the current debate on the nature and methodology of the research on comparative concepts – particularly, the relation between the categories needed to describe languages and those needed to compare languages. While the first six papers deal with general theoretical questions, the following five confront specific issues in the domain of language analysis arising from the application of categories. The volume will appeal to a very broad readership: advanced students and scholars in any field of linguistics, but also specialists in the philosophy of language, and scholars interested in the cognitive aspects of language from different subfields (neurolinguistics, cognitive sciences, psycholinguistics, anthropology).
Few issues in the history of the language sciences have been an object of as much discussion and controversy as linguistic categories. The eleven articles included in this volume tackle the issue of categories from a wide range of perspectives and with different foci, in the context of the current debate on the nature and methodology of the research on comparative concepts – particularly, the relation between the categories needed to describe languages and those needed to compare languages. While the first six papers deal with general theoretical questions, the following five confront specific issues in the domain of language analysis arising from the application of categories. The volume will appeal to a very broad readership: advanced students and scholars in any field of linguistics, but also specialists in the philosophy of language, and scholars interested in the cognitive aspects of language from different subfields (neurolinguistics, cognitive sciences, psycholinguistics, anthropology).
The universal and typological status of the notion of word class — closely related to part-of-speech systems, morphology, syntax and the lexicon-syntax interface — continues to be of major linguistic theoretical interest. The papers included in this volume offer a fresh look at the variety of current theoretical and descriptive approaches to word class issues, and present original analyses and new data from a number of languages. The primary focus is on methods (including computational ones) and criteria for identifying and representing major word classes and subclasses in specific languages, with considerable attention also directed towards the characterization of the nature and role of minor — or neglected — word classes, including trans-categorization processes. The range of topics and perspectives covered makes this volume of considerable interest to both theoretical linguists and typologists.
Proverbs (as Easy come, easy go ) are a type of conventionalized multiword unit that can be used as separate, complete statements in speech or writing (Mieder 2007; Steyer 2015). The rationale of this study is to examine word class effects in online processing of proverbs. In Lückert and Boland (submitted), we reported facilitative effects associated with proverb keywords which suggests that word-level properties are active alongside properties of the level of the multiword unit. Previous research has shown that individual word classes have different effects in online language processing. Numerous studies revealed that verbs are processed more slowly (Cordier et al. 2013) and involve greater processing demands compared to nouns (Macoir et al. 2019). The results of the present study suggest that verbs rather than nouns facilitate proverb processing. A distributional analysis of word classes in proverb corpora implies a trend to prefer verbs over nouns in American English proverbs.
In recent years the field has seen an increasing realisation that the full complexity of language acquisition demands theories that (a) explain how children integrate information from multiple sources in the environment, (b) build linguistic representations at a number of different levels, and (c) learn how to combine these representations in order to communicate effectively. These new findings have stimulated new theoretical perspectives that are more centered on explaining learning as a complex dynamic interaction between the child and her environment. This book is the first attempt to bring some of these new perspectives together in one place. It is a collection of essays written by a group of researchers who all take an approach centered on child-environment interaction, and all of whom have been influenced by the work of Elena Lieven, to whom this collection is dedicated.
Pos tagset and lexicon in orféo
The paper discusses the principles and criteria used in elaborating the POS tagset and the structure of the corresponding lexicon at use for the automatic parsing of the orféo corpus. This architecture is compared with the current Lexique des Formes Fléchies du Français (lefff) dictionary, available under open source license. The linguistic and natural language processing challenges are dwelled on. A specific attention is devoted to the processing of multiword expressions. Some ways of improvement of the system are provided.
This chapter is a survey of word classes in indigenous North American languages, with the aim of providing an introduction to the study of parts of speech, and of highlighting the unique place and contribution of North American indigenous languages in this research. Section 2 defines lexical vs. grammatical and open vs. closed classes, and how these distinctions are realized in North American languages. Section 3 summarizes the prominent themes in word classes research in North America: 1) at what level a word is categorized (root, stem, or inflected word), 2) whether a given language distinguishes noun and verb, and 3) whether a given language has an adjective category. The chapter concludes that North American languages present serious challenges to the definition and status of word classes in linguistic theory, and that the development of distinct lexical categories in a language is not necessarily a given.
This paper claims that a wide variety of grammatical coding asymmetries can be explained as adaptations to the language users' needs, in terms of frequency of use, predictability and coding efficiency. I claim that all grammatical oppositions involving a minimal meaning difference and a significant frequency difference are reflected in a universal coding asymmetry, i.e. a cross-linguistic pattern in which the less frequent member of the opposition gets special coding, unless the coding is uniformly explicit or uniformly zero. I give 25 examples of pairs of construction types, from a substantial range of grammatical domains. For some of them, the existing evidence from the world's languages and from corpus counts is already strong, while for others, I know of no counterevidence and I make readily testable claims. I also discuss how the functional-adaptive forces operate in language change, and I discuss a number of possible alternative explanations.
The book Readings in Linguistics edited by Martin Joos is one of the best known collections of papers ever published in the field of linguistics. In this article I trace its publication history, from Bernard Bloch’s idea in 1946 for an anthology of important work in descriptive linguists, to the several editions of Joos’s reader between 1957 and 1995, to the present day, where citations to the book are still quite frequent. Making extensive use of unpublished material in various archives in the United States, I outline in detail the exchanges between Joos and other linguists around its publication, as well as the critical reviews that were published of the book. I attempt to explain why a collection of papers, the majority of which were published in the 1940s, is still of great interest. I offer two reasons. The first derives from the material in Joos’s prefaces to the various editions and from Joos’s editorial comments on the included articles. Practitioners of every current approach to linguistics have cited some of this material either as an opening wedge against opposing approaches or to express smug satisfaction that we know more about how science works now than we did more than a half-century ago. The second is that it provides a fascinating historical record of how linguistics used to be done — not so long ago that the approach documented is a mere historiographical curiosity, but also not so recently as to be no more than a quaint version of current theory
This paper examines the input to Argentinian Spanish-learning children from low and middle socioeconomic status (SES). It aims to determine whether the vocabulary composition (nouns and verbs) of their input varies as a function of SES, the addressee, and other contextual variables such as the type of activity and the pragmatic orientation of the utterances. Thirty children (mean: 14.3 months) and their families were audio-recorded for 4 hours and the middle 2 hours were analyzed using Computerized Language Analysis (CLAN). The nouns and verbs in child-directed speech (CDS) and overheard speech (OHS) were identified using the CLAN's part of speech tagger MOR Morphosyntactic Analysis. Regression analyses showed effects of: a) SES and addressee on the proportion of noun types and tokens b) the type of activity and the pragmatic orientation of the utterances on the proportion of nouns in CDS; c) SES and type of activity on the proportion of entity and action oriented utterances. These findings reveal that given the complexity of children's home environments it is crucial to consider these social and contextual dimensions to account for the distribution of different lexical categories. How they are distributed in the input likely influences the developmental course of vocabulary acquisition. https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/fla First Language
Este artículo presenta una herramienta diseñada para recoger datos fértiles, verificables y comparables sobre clases de palabra en diversas lenguas. Su diseño resulta de la reflexión sobre los problemas teóricos y metodológicos que subyacen a la identificación y recolección de datos sobre las clases de palabra. La herramienta consiste en una serie de actividades lúdicas que se basan en la presentación de estímulos a grupos de hablantes de una lengua. Su objetivo es guiar al investigador en la planeación y recolección de proferencias de enunciados en contextos discursivos que contengan elementos lingüísticos que refieran a entidades, propiedades y eventos contextualizados. Para probar su viabilidad se llevaron a cabo pruebas piloto con hablantes de la lengua yuhup. Con esta herramienta se espera aportar a la investigación futura sobre clases de palabra y contribuir a la construcción de una base de datos comparable que alimente el análisis de las lenguas y la teoría lingüística.
In the last three decades, adjectives have played an important role in the typology of parts-of-speech systems in terms of which meanings are cross-linguistically expressed by members of this class, and whether all languages in the world have an adjective class at all. In this paper, the focus is on the property-concept words in Deni, an Arawá language spoken by about 1,600 people who live in ten villages in Southern Amazonia, Amazonas State, Brazil. The analysis of property-concept lexical items in Deni has led me to assign them to a part-of-speech class which is distinct from those of verbs and nouns. The assignment has followed the Deni-specific criteria for recognizing the verb, noun, and adjective classes.keywords: Adjectives; Deni language; parts of speech.
Effects of concreteness and grammatical class on lexical-semantic processing are well-documented, but the role of sensory-perceptual and sensory-motor features of concepts in underlying mechanisms producing these effects is relatively unknown. We hypothesized that processing dissimilarities in accuracy and response time performance in nouns versus verbs, concrete versus abstract words, and their interaction can be explained by differences in semantic weight—the combined amount of sensory-perceptual and sensory-motor information to conceptual representations—across those grammatical and semantic categories. We assessed performance on concrete and abstract subcategories of nouns and verbs with a semantic similarity judgment task. Results showed that when main effects of concreteness and grammatical class were analyzed in more detail, the grammatical-class effect, in which nouns are processed more accurately and quicker than verbs, was only present for concrete words, not for their abstract counterparts. Moreover, the concreteness effect, measured at different levels of abstract words, was present for both nouns and verbs, but it was less pronounced for verbs. The results do not support the grammatical-class hypothesis, in which nouns and verbs are separately organized, and instead provide evidence in favor of a unitary semantic space, in which lexical-semantic processing is influenced by the beneficial effect of sensory-perceptual and sensory-motor information of concepts.
This book presents a collection of chapters on the nature, flexibility and acquisition of lexical categories. These long-debated issues are looked at anew by exploring the hypothesis of lexical polycategoriality –according to which lexical forms are not fully, or univocally, specified for lexical category– in a wide number of unrelated languages, and within different theoretical and methodological perspectives. Twenty languages are thoroughly analyzed. Apart from French, Arabic and Hebrew, the volume includes mostly understudied languages, spoken in New Guinea, Australia, New Caledonia, Amazonia, Meso- and North America. Resulting from a long-standing collaboration between leading international experts, this book brings under one cover new data analyses and results on word categories from the linguistic and acquisitional point of view. It will be of the utmost interest to researchers, teachers and graduate students in different fields of linguistics (morpho-syntax, semantics, typology), language acquisition, as well as psycholinguistics, cognition and anthropology.
This book presents a collection of chapters on the nature, flexibility and acquisition of lexical categories. These long-debated issues are looked at anew by exploring the hypothesis of lexical polycategoriality –according to which lexical forms are not fully, or univocally, specified for lexical category– in a wide number of unrelated languages, and within different theoretical and methodological perspectives. Twenty languages are thoroughly analyzed. Apart from French, Arabic and Hebrew, the volume includes mostly understudied languages, spoken in New Guinea, Australia, New Caledonia, Amazonia, Meso- and North America. Resulting from a long-standing collaboration between leading international experts, this book brings under one cover new data analyses and results on word categories from the linguistic and acquisitional point of view. It will be of the utmost interest to researchers, teachers and graduate students in different fields of linguistics (morpho-syntax, semantics, typology), language acquisition, as well as psycholinguistics, cognition and anthropology.
This book presents a collection of chapters on the nature, flexibility and acquisition of lexical categories. These long-debated issues are looked at anew by exploring the hypothesis of lexical polycategoriality –according to which lexical forms are not fully, or univocally, specified for lexical category– in a wide number of unrelated languages, and within different theoretical and methodological perspectives. Twenty languages are thoroughly analyzed. Apart from French, Arabic and Hebrew, the volume includes mostly understudied languages, spoken in New Guinea, Australia, New Caledonia, Amazonia, Meso- and North America. Resulting from a long-standing collaboration between leading international experts, this book brings under one cover new data analyses and results on word categories from the linguistic and acquisitional point of view. It will be of the utmost interest to researchers, teachers and graduate students in different fields of linguistics (morpho-syntax, semantics, typology), language acquisition, as well as psycholinguistics, cognition and anthropology.
This book presents a collection of chapters on the nature, flexibility and acquisition of lexical categories. These long-debated issues are looked at anew by exploring the hypothesis of lexical polycategoriality –according to which lexical forms are not fully, or univocally, specified for lexical category– in a wide number of unrelated languages, and within different theoretical and methodological perspectives. Twenty languages are thoroughly analyzed. Apart from French, Arabic and Hebrew, the volume includes mostly understudied languages, spoken in New Guinea, Australia, New Caledonia, Amazonia, Meso- and North America. Resulting from a long-standing collaboration between leading international experts, this book brings under one cover new data analyses and results on word categories from the linguistic and acquisitional point of view. It will be of the utmost interest to researchers, teachers and graduate students in different fields of linguistics (morpho-syntax, semantics, typology), language acquisition, as well as psycholinguistics, cognition and anthropology.
This study presents a corpus-based analysis of adjective phrases consisting of a grading element (‘grader’), a deadjectival adverb and an adjectival head. The interest of this pattern derives from the fact that these three constituents can occur in three different orders, as exemplified by more cognitively complex , cognitively more complex and more complex cognitively . The analysis builds primarily on the distinction between domain and non-domain adverbs. ADJPs with domain adverbs have different patterns from ADJPs with other adverbs. Whereas the adverb–grader–adjective order predominates in ADJPs with domain adverbs, the grader–adverb–adjective order is the most frequent type in ADJPs with non-domain adverbs. Within the set of non-domain adverbs, a secondary distinction is made between lexical and more grammatical types. Lexical adverbs are found to preferentially associate with the grader–adverb–adjective order while the more grammatical adverbs gravitate towards the adverb–grader–adjective order. The following five factors account for the empirical results: branching direction, the frequent-unit-first hypothesis, proximity, analogy/uniformity and modifier–head order. Structural representations are argued to draw on lexical information which is not coded by terminal nodes.
Objective:
Language is a key source of cross-cultural variability, which may have both subtle and major effects on neurocognition. However, this issue has been largely overlooked in two flourishing lines of research assessing the relationship between language-related neural systems and dementia. This paper assesses the limitations of the evidence on (i) the neuroprotective effects of bilingualism in Alzheimer's disease and (ii) specific language deficits as markers of Parkinson's disease.
Design:
First, we outline the rationale behind each line of research. Second, we review available evidence and discuss the potential impact of cross-linguistic factors. Third, we outline ideas to foster progress in both fields and, with it, in cross-cultural neuroscience at large.
Results:
On the one hand, studies on bilingualism suggest that sustained use of more than one language may protect against Alzheimer's disease symptoms. On the other hand, insights from the embodied cognition framework point to syntactic and action-verb deficits as early (and even preclinical) markers of Parkinson's disease. However, both fields share a key limitation that lies at the heart of cultural neuroscience: the issue of cross-linguistic generalizability.
Conclusion:
Relevant evidence for both research trends comes from only a handful of (mostly Indo-European) languages, which are far from capturing the full scope of structural and typological diversity of the linguistic landscape worldwide. This raises questions on the external validity of reported findings. Greater collaboration between linguistic typology and cognitive neuroscience seems crucial as a first step to assess the impact of transcultural differences on language-related effects across neurodegenerative diseases. Copyright ? 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
People readily create and understand denominal verbs they have never heard before, as in to porch a newspaper and to Houdini one's way out of a closet. The meanings are best accounted for by a theory of interpretation that specifies what the verbs mean on particular occasions of their use. Our proposal is that their use is regulated by a convention: in using such a verb, the speaker means to denote the kind of state, event, or process that, he has good reason to believe, the listener can readily and uniquely compute on this occasion, on the basis of their mutual knowledge, in such a way that the parent noun (e.g. porch or Houdini) denotes one role in the state, event, or process, and the remaining surface arguments of the denominal verb denote others of its roles. This convention accounts for the meaning and acceptability of innovative verbs in various contexts; similar conventions may be needed to account for other innovative uses of language.