Showing papers in "Language in 1988"

Regularity and Idiomaticity in Grammatical Constructions: The Case of Let Alone

Abstract: Through the detailed investigation of the syntax, semantics, and pragmatics of one grammatical construction, that containing the conjunction let alone, we explore the view that the realm of idiomaticity in a language includes a great deal that is productive, highly structured, and worthy of serious grammatical investigation. It is suggested that an explanatory model of grammar will include principles whereby a language can associate semantic and pragmatic interpretation principles with syntactic configurations larger and more complex than those definable by means of single phrase structure rules.*

The Input Hypothesis: Issues and Implications

Abstract: Langs, then, presents strategies which teachers might use to teach on the trans-cultural field of discourse which Gumperz helps us to understand. What's more, Langs's strategies can help teachers to tailor their actions from day to day to the extent of their evolving understanding of this field. If a therapist can maintain communicative fields for deeply disturbed patients, a teacher can maintain similar fields for those students whose discourse strategies the teacher does not yet understand. With a field of communication established, teachers can continue to analyze those strategies by listening closely to the students, attending to their own response, forming silent hypotheses, and seeing them invalidated or validated in the next classroom exchange.

Linguistic Structure in Language Processing

Abstract: The Internal Structure of the Syllable.- Reading Complex Words.- A Synthesis of Some Recent Work in Sentence Production.- The Isolability of Syntactic Processing.- Neuropsychological Evidence for Linguistic Modularity.- Parsing Complexity and a Theory of Parsing.- Comprehending Sentences with Long-Distance Dependencies.- Thematic Structures and Sentence Comprehension.- Integrating Information in Text Comprehension: The Interpretation of Anaphoric Noun Phrases.- Index of Names.- Index of Subjects.

Garden Path Phenomena and the Grammatical Basis of Language Processing

Abstract: L'echec dans l'analyse des productions langagieres (phenomene du " garden path ") revele les conditions dans lesquelles une ambiguite locale resulte en des phrases inanalysables. L'auteur montre la capacite de la theorie du liage et du gouvernement a prendre en compte le phenomene de " garden path "

Wǒ pǎo de kuài and Chinese Phrase Structure@@@Wo pao de kuai and Chinese Phrase Structure

Abstract: Etude de la structure des phrases descriptives et restrictives en mandarin, dans le cadre de la theorie du liage et du gouvernement, et des arguments en faveur de l'''hypothese de predication secondaire'' selon laquelle le second verbe est traite comme un complement du premier

Linguistic Theory in Second Language Acquisition

Abstract: A Theoretical and Historical Context for Second Language Acquisition.- Linguistic Theory: Generative Grammar.- The Ontogenesis of the Field of Second Language Learning Research.- B Parameters.- Parameterized Grammatical Theory and Language Acquisition: A Study of the Acquisition of Verb Placement and Inflection by Children and Adults.- Nature of Development in L2 Acquisition and Implications for Theories of Language Acquisition in General.- Linguistic Theory. Neurolinguistics and Second Language Acquisition.- Second Language Acquisition: A Biolinguistic Perspective.- Neurolinguistics and Parameter Setting.- C Markedness in Second Language Acquisition.- The Acquisition of Infinitive and Gerund Complements by Second Language Learners.- Island Effects in Second Language Acquisition.- On the Role of Linguistic Theory in Explanations of Second Language Developmental Grammars.- L2 Learnability: Delimiting the Domain of Core Grammar as Distinct from the Marked Periphery.- Kinds of Markedness.- D Additional Evidence for Universal Grammar.- The Categorial Status of Modals and L2 Acquisition.- UG-Generated Knowledge in Adult Second Language Acquisition.- Prosodic Phonology and the Acquisition of a Second Language.- Universal Grammar in Second Language Acquisition: Promises and Problems in Critically Relating Theory and Empirical Studies.- E Complementary Perspectives.- Pidginization as Language Acquisition.- All Paths Lead to the Mental Lexicon.- Intermorphology and Morphological Theory: A Plea for a Concession.- F Universal Grammar from a Traditional Perspective.- Second Language Acquisition and Linguistic Theory: The Role of Language Transfer.- Grammatical Theory and L2 Acquisition: A Brief Overview.- Typological and Parametric Views of Universals in Second Language Acquisition.- List of Contributors.- Index of Names.- Index of Subjects.

Phonetic Symbol Guide

Abstract: This is an encyclopedia of phonetic alphabet symbols, providing a complete survey of the many characters used by linguists and speech scientists to record the sounds of the world's languages. This edition incorporates the major revisions to the International Phonetic Alphabet made in 1989 and 1993. Also covered are the American tradition of transcription stemming from the anthropological school of Franz Boas; the Bloch/Smith/Trager style of transcription; the symbols used by dialectologists of the English language; usages of specialists such as Slavicists, Indologists, Sinologists, and Africanists; and the transcription proposals found in all major textbooks of phonetics. With 61 new entries, an expanded glossary of phonetic terms, added symbol charts and a full index, this book should be a useful guide for students and professionals in linguistics, phonetics, anthropology, philology, modern language study and speech science.

Metrical Phonology: a coursebook

Abstract: 1. Segmental approaches to stress 2. Segments and syllables 3. Metrical phonology: the basic concepts 4. The phonology of rhythm (1): introduction to the metrical grid 5. The phonology of rhythm (2): 'grid-only' metrical phonology 6. The phonology of rhythm (3): 'tree-only' metrical phonology Bibliography Index.

The Homogeneity of the Substrate as a Factor in Pidgin/Creole Genesis

Abstract: L'homogeneite des donnees des langues de substrat comme facteur de leur influence sur les creoles. Mise en evidence de la dispersion des faits a partir de l'etude de la presence ou de l'absence du pronom de reprise dans le pidgin anglais du Liberia et dans les langues Niger-congo qui en constituent le substrat

Interactional predictors of early language

Abstract: In this report we ask how mother-infant interaction affects the rate of early language acquisition. Mothers and 15-month-old infants were videotaped playing at home. Coders described (a) infants' attention to people and/or objects, (b) mothers' use of literal and conventional acts to direct infants' attention and (c) functions of mothers' utterances. Taken together, these aspects of mother-infant play predicted 40% of the variance in infants' vocabulary size at 18 months. Significant unique contributions to this prediction were made by mothers' conven tional object-marking and metalingual use of language. The more mothers highlighted both (a) shared objects using conventional means, and (b) the linguistic code, the greater the variety of words their infants used at 18 months of age.

Bracketing paradoxes and the english lexicon

Abstract: In so-called 'Bracketing Paradoxes', it seems to be necessary to assign two incompatible constituent structures to a single expression. The paper outlines empirical and conceptual difficulties with three main current approaches and discusses in detail the problem of 'paradoxical' expressions relating to people, such as transformational grammarian, theoretical linguist, serial composer, and Southern Dane. It is shown that such expressions can be formed productively by means of a process of analogical backformation defined strictly over existing entries in the permanent lexicon, a novel type of productive word formation process.*

The Linguistic Relationships of Spoken and Written Nukulaelae Registers

Abstract: This study is an investigation of the structural relationships between spoken and written Nukulaelae Tuvaluan, a Polynesian language spoken in a restrictedly literate society in the Central Pacific. The results of a factor analysis of the frequency of co-occurrence of 42 linguistic features across a computerized corpus of naturalistic spoken and written texts show that three dimensions must be identified to account for variation between Nukulaelae registers: attitudinal vs. authoritative discourse; informational vs. interactional focus; and rhetorical manipulation vs. structural complexity. Contrary to claims advanced for English and tacitly for speaking and writing in general, spoken Tuvaluan is not necessarily more involved, less complex, and more context-dependent than written Tuvaluan. These characteristics are a function of the communicative norms at play in each register. The structural relationships of spoken and written language must be explained in terms of the social context of orality and literacy in different literacy traditions, rather than the cognitive demands of language production and comprehension in the spoken and written modes.*

Serbo-croatian pitch accent: the interaction of tone, stress, and intonation

Abstract: This article develops an autosegmental account of tone and stress in Serbo-Croatian. The traditional four accents of Serbo-Croatian are decomposed into two independent subcomponents within the accentual system: tone and stress. While tone participates in lexical contrasts, the location of stress is predictable from that of tone, and in this respect Serbo-Croatian represents a previously unattested type of pitch-accent language. The analysis extends naturally to a range of intonation data, some of which are beyond the scope of earlier accounts.* Serbo-Croatian is one of many languages whose accentual system falls under the somewhat elusive heading of pitch accent. In this paper we address the question of what exactly this abstract entity consists of, concluding that pitch accent can be broken down into several component parts. We show that tone and stress are the two operative phonological entities sufficient to characterize prosody in Serbo-Croatian, rendering the term 'accent' superfluous. Using the tools of autosegmental phonology and underspecification theory, we account for the distribution of Serbo-Croatian 'accents' solely in terms of tone: stress, by being totally predictable from tone, makes no contribution to lexical contrasts. We offer a simple and comprehensive account of the data that have been described in the literature. Moreover, our approach extends naturally to cover a range of intonation data which have not been discussed in the literature before

Word Formation in a Modular Theory of Grammar: Postsyntactic Compounds in Japanese

Abstract: A new type of noun + verb compound formation is attested in Japanese which involves a sentential structure as its input and presumably takes place in the phonological component. This 'postsyntactic' compounding serves not only to weaken the strong lexicalist hypothesis but also to elucidate problems surrounding the delicate and controversial issue of where word formation processes take place. The discovery that morphological constraints that have hitherto been believed to characterize lexically formed words also apply to postsyntactic compounds leads us to dissociate these constraints from the lexicon and set them up as an independent system of general principles that constrain word formation processes in various components in a global manner. The proposed word formation model thus instantiates Chomsky's modular conception of grammatical organization.*

Adverbial NPs: Bare or Clad in See-Through Garb?

Abstract: Larson 1985 develops an analysis of 'bare-NP adverbs' as in 1 in which certain NPs are able to appear in adverbial syntactic positions in virtue of a peculiarity of their head nouns:' (1) a. John arrived last week. b. They went that way. For Larson, week, way, and a number of other nouns have lexical entries containing a feature [ + F] that allows them to assign oblique Case to NPs of which they are the head; the difference between 2a and 2b is then that time is [ + F] while occasion is [ F] and accordingly only in 2a does the adverbial NP receive the Case marking that immunizes it against violation of the constraint against Case-less NPs: (2) a. I've gone there many times. b. *I've gone there many occasions. In addition, Larson (606) posits a rule of 'Adverbial 0-role assignment' that says, 'Assign an adverbial 0-role to x, where a is any phrase,' and lists roles OTime, OLoc, ODir, and OManner as assignable by this rule. In the course of his paper, Larson briefly takes up and rejects one specific version of an alternative approach to adverbial NPs. The alternative approach treats them as PPs having no overt preposition, and the specific version of it that he considers is one that he attributes to Bresnan & Grimshaw 1978,2 which involves a fairly baroque apparatus that posits phonologically zero deep structure prepositions, a rule deleting such zero elements, and a constraint excluding their occurrence in surface structure. The particular arguments that he offers against an analysis of adverbial NPs as PPs are metatheoretical rather than empirical3 ('the assumptions and devices that it invokes are ad hoc and theo-

Psychosemantics: The Problem of Meaning in the Philosophy of Mind

Abstract: Psychosemantics explores the relation between commonsense psychological theories and problems that are central to semantics and the philosophy of language. Building on and extending Fodor's earlier work it puts folk psychology on firm theoretical ground and rebuts externalist, holist, and naturalist threats to its position. This book is included in the series Explorations in Cognitive Science, edited by Margaret A. Boden. A Bradford Book.

Complex sentence constructions in Australian languages

Abstract: 1. Preface 2. Introduction (by Austin, Peter) 3. Figure and Ground in Rembarrnga Complex Sentences (by McKay, Graham R.) 4. Mood and Subodination in Kuniyanti (by McGregor, William B.) 5. Participle Sentences in Wakiman (by Cook, Anthony) 6. Complex Sentences in Martuthunira (by Dench, Alan) 7. Switch-reference in Mparntwe Arrernte (Aranda): Form, Function, and Problems of Identity (by Wilkins, David P.) 8. Verb Serialisation and the Circumstantial Construction in Yankunytjatjara (by Goddard, Cliff) 9. Some Features of Manjiljarra Nominalised Relative Clauses (by Clendon, Mark) 10. Case and Complementiser Suffixes in Warlpiri (by Simpson, Jane) 11. Odd Topic Marking in Kayadild (by Evans, Nicholas) 12. Affixes of Motion and Direction in Adnyamathanha (by Tunbridge, Dorothy) 13. Index of Languages 14. Index of Names

Lectures on contemporary syntactic theories : an introduction to government-binding theory, generalized phrase structure grammar, and lexical-functional grammar

Abstract: This books provides an introduction to three contemporary syntactic theories, Government-Binding Theory, Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar, and Lexical-Functional Grammar. In successive chapters, Sells lucidly presents and illustrates the fundamental apsects of each theory. In an introductory chapter he describes the basic syntactic concepts and assumptions shared by each theory; in the postscript, Thomas Wasow provides a more general overview of the different perspectives of these three approaches.

Learning Spanish Stress: Developmental and Theoretical Perspectives

Abstract: This paper uses spontaneous and imitated speech data from 50 Mexican-American preschoolers to demonstrate that children learning Spanish as a first language learn rules for assigning stress, as opposed to simply memorizing stress on a word-by-word basis. From a developmental perspective, this finding is taken as an indication that children's propensity to hypothesize linguistic rules is so strong as to take effect even when rules are not needed to produce correct forms and are obscured by large numbers of exceptional forms. From a theoretical perspective, the acquisition data are used to support the metrical theory of stress advanced by Harris 1983 and Den Os & Kager 1986, and to suggest that future theories take into account degrees of irregularity among different irregular stress types.*