Volume 58, Issue 2

This study examines how the phonetic realisation of the phoneme /sˤ/ and its orthographic form ص is surfacing as the variant [s] in speaking and as س in writing in Ammani Arabic (AA), which is a variety of Jordanian Arabic (JA), and how this relates to language variation. We look at instances where certain Ammani Arabic speakers, particularly females, pronounce and write words containing /sˤ/ ص as [s] س, despite both /sˤ/ and /s/ being phonemes in JA in general and in AA in particular. We used a quantitative corpus-based approach, where we obtained written data from Facebook, and elicited spoken tokens and qualitative data through interviews. Our findings reveal that females in our two corpora [spoken and written] use and prefer [s] and س more than males, and our interviews revealed that female interviewees also prefer this pronunciation and writing. We suggest that the use of [s] س instead of [sˤ] ص by females can be seen as a direct index for femininity within their community of practice, and that this pronunciation/writing can indirectly index female gender in daily conversations and on social media websites, based on orders of indexicality (Silverstein, Michael. 2003. Indexical order and the dialectics of sociolinguistic life. Language & Communication 23. 193–229).

The focus of this study is on the function and grammaticalization of nominalizations in Thai and the nominalization categories and nominalizing strategies in Thai are described. The Thai language exhibits a composite of derivational and clausal nominalizations marked with three nominalizers: kaan 1 derives nouns or nominalized clauses from lexical verbs and relative or complement clauses; khwaam 1 derives nouns from lexical verbs and adjectives; and kaan 1 thii 3 is used for clauses. The current study posits diachronic developments for nominalizers and addresses related issues. It is concluded that nominalizers kaan 1 and khwaam 1 were originally lexical nouns meaning ‘work’ and ‘matter’. The essential features of the use of nominalizations have remained constant, but certain developments have occurred, which include lexical nominalization to clausal nominalization and the emergence of a new nominalizer, kaan 1 thii 3 . It is found that nominalizers kaan 1 , khwaam 1 and kaan 1 thii 3 are basically in complementary distribution, and language internal evolution and external contact are the primary motivations for nominalization in Thai.

This paper compares bilinguals of 2L1s with monolinguals and second language speakers. The experiment and statistical analysis reveals that the question whether bilinguals adopt a more extreme, intermediate, or monolingual-like approach may not have a clear-cut yes or no answer. Our finding demonstrates that bilinguals are more monolingual-like when they have greater control over their speech production. Additionally, bilinguals employ an extreme approach to positive VOTs, where they must distinguish among all the six stops in Japanese and English, though they adopt an intermediate approach to negative VOTs, where they just need to distinguish among the three voiced stops.

Response signals (RS) have emerged as a powerful interaction tool, but they have yet to be fully understood. The current study analyzes 16 h of daily conversations using discourse-pragmatic frameworks to discuss certain aspects of the most prevalent primary and secondary Persian RSs. An RS is identified as a brief interactive response to a prior speaker’s statement, typically expressing (dis)confirmation, (un)acceptance, or backchannel (including assessment and continuer feedback). The research also differentiates and compares the functional and distributional differences and similarities between confirmation and backchannel signals. Following that, it takes a semasiological approach and discusses how the emergence, overlap, and markedness of certain functions for an item can be determined by the persistence of its original propositional meaning as well as the item’s grammaticalization and cooptation. The paper thus reviews the markedness of the backchannel function for na ‘no’ compared to this function’s development for ɂāre ‘yes’. Last but not least, cross-linguistic phonological tendencies, such as the integration of the phoneme /ɂ/ or /h/ in positive RSs and click sounds in negative ones, are supported by Persian RSs and their variants.

In this paper, we show that the widely accepted tendency that manner of motion is described in greater detail in S-languages than in V-languages does not hold for all natural languages. Based on the analysis of manner of gait verbs applying the “lexical approach” (Kövecses, Zoltán. 2015. Surprise as a conceptual category. Review of Cognitive Linguistics 13(1). 270–290), this study shows that in the manner verb lexicon parameter, manner description in Changana (a V-language) is more nuanced than in prototypical S-languages like English (Talmy, Leonard. 2000. Toward a cognitive semantics , vol. II. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press). Contrary to the general tendency of V-languages, Changana presents a rich vocabulary of manner verbs and ideophones that cover many semantic dimensions. Our results suggest that while preserving some features of V-languages, Changana also makes distinctions that are usually only attested in S-languages, even exploring manner dimensions not often explored in S-languages. Our findings suggest that Changana is another language that does not fit well into Talmy’s well-established motion events typology.

Discontinuity in natural language is characterized by the linear disruption of a continuous string of linguistic expressions forming a constituent. While dependency relations in Dependency Grammar (DG) can capture discontinuity well, phrase-structure-based approaches such as Phrase Structure Grammar (PSG) face difficulty in accommodating discontinuity. Categorial Grammar (CG) has correspondences with PSG, although it can handle discontinuity, if equipped with wrapping operations. Given the existing literature on discontinuity in natural language, it appears that constituency relations of PSG, dependency relations of DG and functor-argument relations of CG are distinct and independent. Here, we argue for a unified representation achieved by taking into account fundamental representational principles of PSG, DG and CG. For simplicity, we show this by considering an embedded clause from Wan, spoken in Ivory Coast, as an illustrative case. The paper then attempts to explain, based on available empirical pieces of evidence, the plausible connections between the unified representation and the neurocognitive representation of continuity and discontinuity in natural language.

A corpus study of 100+ years of usage of the verb GRAB in American English contributes to the understanding of the way bleaching takes place. The meaning of GRAB as ‘take or seize suddenly or eagerly’ is firmly established in usage from 1910 through 1980, but in the 1990’s many instances of a bleached sense of ‘take or get easily or casually’ begin to occur. The proposed hypothesis that bleaching results from hyperbolic uses is supported by the finding that bleaching occurs within three common contexts: narrative sequences of GRAB followed by another verb; contexts expanding on grab a bite (to eat) ; and GRAB plus human object, which changes from a sense of ‘take custody of’ to simply ‘capture the attention of’. In addition, the interactional context of requests and offers (often of food and drink) hastens the bleaching of GRAB while also contributing the resulting interpretation of GRAB as ‘get or take easily or casually’. The same conversational actions constitute the contexts in which GRAB is established in the ditransitive construction, as well as the contexts in which it takes on the social meaning of getting or taking in a quick, easy and casual manner.

This paper describes the development of the existential sign var ‘there’ in Turkish Sign Language from a synchronic point of view. The sign has been previously described as being restricted to clause-final predicate position and typically used for two main linguistic functions: (i) existential and (ii) possessive. However, abundant corpus evidence indicates that var can also be used for other linguistic functions in post-verbal position, which have not been reported in the literature before. Following Construction Grammar, this study presents a theoretical framework to investigate how the construction [verb +  var ] arose and what its semantic motivation is, paying particular attention to the notion of possession. It is argued that this construction has three different functions: (i) habitual, (ii) evidential, and (iii) assumptive. According to this account, var originated as an existential marker and subsequently developed into a marker of possession, before evolving to encompass its other linguistic functions in three stages. Using Labov’s Apparent Time Hypothesis (Labov, William. 1963. The social motivation of a sound change. Word 19(3). 273–309), closer examination also revealed that a progressive difference exists between age groups. Younger TİD signers use the construction [verb +  var ] more frequently, and as the age of the TİD signer decreases, the usage of this construction in the assumptive function increases considerably.

This paper explores the nuanced realm of case syncretism, focusing primarily on its synchronic presence in Modern Greek (dialectal variety) and on the diachronic emergence of the phenomenon, classifying the distribution of syncretic cells in the nominal inflectional system of the language. This analysis shows that syncretism has been extended over time to many nouns, no longer limited either to neuter nouns or to the cells for the Nominative and Accusative. I suggest that the distribution of syncretic cells in Greek is influenced primarily by grammatical gender, but it is also affected by the productivity of each inflectional class, which I attribute to the morphomic (in terms of Aronoff [1994]. Morphology by itself: Stems and inflectional classes , vol. 22. MIT Press.) nature of the phenomenon. I propose a decisive new factor preventing a cell from participating in syncretic patterns: inter-paradigmatic similarity of affixes appears to block syncretism. Further, I examine the factors facilitating the development and expansion of syncretic patterns.