Volume 42, Issue 1-2

In the evolution of languages, some changes may lack functional explanations of their own and instead be mechanically triggered by changes occurring in other areas of the grammar. This paper illustrates the necessity to consider indirect explanations of typological regularities on the basis of examples taken from alignment typology, namely: a ) in predominantly ergative languages, intransitive constructions with accusative alignment may develop as a result of the coalescence of light verb compounds; b ) in predominantly ergative languages as well as in predominantly accusative languages, constructions deviating from the dominant alignment type may originate from elliptical variants of transitive constructions; and c ) alignment changes (both from accusative to ergative, and from ergative to accusative) may occur as a consequence of the grammaticalization of TAM periphrases.

This paper starts out from the observation that the semantic labels of ‘fact’ and ‘action’ (Lees 1968[1960]) that are traditionally used in the description of English gerundive nominalizations (e.g. I worry that my posing the question defines me as a depressive ) cannot distinguish gerundives from so-called action - ing nouns (e.g. Saddam's targeting of Israel ) and also fail to capture the more subtle semantic distinctions within the system of gerundive nominalization. The descriptive analysis that is presented tries to move beyond the action/fact dichotomy, is firmly grounded in the nominal-constructional properties of the system and covers all subtypes of gerundive nominalization. Building on Schachter (1976), it argues that gerundive - ing nominalizations have shifted from the representational semantics of action - ing nouns to a more schematic, constructional semantics: gerundives, it is suggested, nominalize either a type or kind of process, with no subject implied, or they nominalize an instance of a process, characterized by the (clausal-)constructional link which it implies between the process type and a subject (Davidse 1997, Heyvaert 2003). The system of gerundive nominalization exploits all nominal-constructional options which it has within the structure of the NP to encode the absence or presence of this subject. Gerundives thus opt for non-specific, generic reference to encode the name of a type or class of process (with no subject implied) or to encode an instance with generic reference. They use specific (definite or indefinite) reference to designate a specific, non-generic instance. The subject is either included in the nominalized clausal unit (and in the oblique case), or it is encoded through nominal means: in the form of bare definite reference of the gerundive NP (signalling control by the matrix clause or anaphoric/exophoric reference with the co(n)text), or in the form of a possessive/genitive determiner. The analysis that is proposed sheds new light on previously undifferentiated categories of gerundive nominalization (such as the control type of bare gerundives), as well as points to interesting resemblances between gerundive nominalization and diachronic changes in other systems of deverbal nominalization. Crucially, it also allows for a better understanding of the semantics of the system and its differences with action - ing nominals, whose nominal-constructional options do not revolve around encoding the presence or absence of a subject but instead allow for a wide range of modifying elements and determiners.

This paper investigates the use of 830 instances of spoken comment clauses (e.g. I think, I suppose ) in the British component of the International Corpus of English and shows that their communicative functions depend to a large extent on prosodic realisation of the comment clause (CC). Four different prosodic patterns are identified, viz. left-bound, right-bound, left-right bound, and prosodic independence. It is shown that prosodic binding to the left or right, together with positioning in the host, can narrow the scope of CCs to phrasal rather than clausal constituents. Unlike clausal CCs, which function as epistemic shields (Prince et al. 1982), phrasal CCs typically have approximative function. On the other hand, prosodic integration (especially left-right binding) is linked to high-frequency CCs and semantic weakening to the extent that they are used mainly as pleonastic elements for the structuring of text. Prosodic independence, finally, may give the CC an assertive or boosting function. It is argued that the wide range of communicative uses is the result of an ongoing grammaticalisation (pragmaticalisation) process, which involves semantic bleaching and a development from epistemic shield to approximator and, finally, structural device.

This paper focuses on non-anaphoric nominalized adjectives denoting abstract concepts, such as le vrai ‘the truth’, du sublime ‘the sublime’, and suggests that the standard analysis in terms of morphological conversion does not stand up to scrutiny. Abstract nominalized adjectives, for instance, cannot be considered “non-syntactic”, cannot be integrated without problems into existing patterns of derivation, and exhibit strong restrictions in terms of modification and determination. To solve the categorial mismatch of nominalized adjectives an alternative analysis from the perspective of Construction Grammar is proposed. More specifically, it is argued that, in accordance with the override principle (Michaelis 2003), the adjective conforms to the features of the construction with which it is combined. The fact that the construction in question inherits many of its specifications from the Determination construction, which is typically nominal, accounts for the hybrid nature of phrases headed by nominalized adjectives.

This article addresses a phenomenon of language contact that has not received much attention in mainstream contact linguistics, namely borrowing via a mechanism Zuckermann (2003) calls multisourced neologisation . Multisourced neologisation is a subtype of Zuckermann's larger class of camouflaged borrowing , and constitutes a special form of calquing in which the calque is phonetically similar to the source language material. It has much in common with folk etymology and is sometimes identified with it, but there are good theoretical reasons to keep the two phenomena apart. Though German is well known for its calquing ability, the application of this special type of calquing has gone virtually unnoticed in the literature as well as in the ongoing public debate over the excessive influx of loanwords. This paper shows that multisourced neologisation is not uncommon in the integration of elements borrowed from English into German, and argues that factors favouring its use include lexical and structural congruities between both languages as well as the relatively high transparency of English to the average speaker of German. Thus, though German does not belong to the protypical language groups using multisourced neologisation that are described by Zuckermann (2003), special circumstances prompt the application of this and other methods of camouflaged borrowing.

The UPSID database, comprising the segment inventories of 451 languages, was computationally inspected for implicational universals of type “If Segment A, then Segment B”. The system found 146 statistically significant (near) universals that are supported by languages from at least two language families from at least two geographical areas. Some implications of these findings are discussed. A principle holding for implicational phonological universals is proposed, stating that the antecedent and the consequent of an implicational universal must share at least one feature and, additionally, the consequent must have an equal or smaller number of features than the antecedent. The principle is both statistically significant and highly predictive (valid in 94.5% of all found universals).