Volume 44, Issue 1

Short-message service (SMS) discourse, a type of computer-mediated discourse, is a mix of written and spoken language. In this article we show that SMS language is indeed similar to the spoken and written languages, but also differs from them. We provide a description of the salient lexical and grammatical characteristics of Hebrew SMS discourse and analyze its properties by comparing three 18,000-word corpora; one of spoken language, the other of written language, and the third of SMS language. The production characteristics of SMS discourse force senders to shorten their utterances, which sometimes causes their messages to be incompatible with the normative grammar, while at the same time they may contain high-register characteristics. Additionally, the style and lexicon of SMS messages are affected by their limited content: they convey directions, everyday questions, etc.

In dialect contact situations, hyperdialectisms are a common form of hyperadaptation. They are the result of the production of overgeneralised forms in non-standard dialects due to bad analysis. They occur either because of insufficient knowledge about a given linguistic feature or because of excessive effort to show vernacular identity. Adopting the framework of Speaker-Design Theory , which assumes that speakers mould their speech to project a particular image, the present article shows the use of the related phenomenon of hypervernacularisation . This refers to non-standard forms used correctly, though inappropriately, according to socio-demographic and/or stylistic parameters. Though both hyperdialectism and hypervernacularisation are linguistic processes resulting from dialect contact, hyperdialectism is related to incorrectness, whereas hypervernacularisation is associated with inappropriateness. The unexpected use of vernacular forms by an upper-class speaker in non-informal contexts appears to be a strategy to project downward social mobility and a working-class image.

This article describes the phonological treatment of nasal vowels in French loanwords in Standard German, including both northern and southern regional standards, in light of recent language contact theory, in particular Van Coetsem (Loan phonology and the two transfer types in language contact, Foris, 1988, A general and unified theory of the transmission process in language contact, C. Winter, 2000). Based on the realizations reported in the major pronunciation dictionaries of Standard German, it is shown that in aural, as opposed to spelling-based loanwords, linguistic environment plays a determinant role. In particular, in non-contrastive, assimilatory environments before stops, there is no attempt at imitating the French nasal vowels which are fully adapted to native German oral vowel + nasal consonant sequences. In contrastive, non-assimilatory environments before fricatives (more generally, continuants) and in absolute word-final position, on the other hand, there is a more conscious attempt at imitating the French nasal vowels, although in the mouths of northern monolingual Germans, imitation fails and partial adaptation to native V[η] sequences results. It is argued that V[η] sequences come closest to nasal vowels, phonetically speaking, and represent an, albeit unsuccessful, attempt at imitation. Furthermore, the pronunciations listed in the dictionaries for words containing more than one nasal vowel in French suggest that successful imitation starts in word-final position. Both phonological and phonetic factors are suggested to account for the contextual differences. Lastly, it is shown that the synchronic continuum of realizations for nasal vowels in French loanwords in German corresponds to the successive stages typically found in the development of distinctive nasalization in languages.

Grammatical number marking does not always match with the actual, conceptual numerosity of entities to which the word refers. This is the case in Finnish, which has multiple ways of expressing numerosity. In the chronometric number-decision task that we conducted, we used the following morphological stimulus types : singular, neutral (with a possessive suffix that neutralizes the grammatical number distinction) and plural nouns, with the following semantic (cognitive) types of numerosity expression: ordinary nouns, collective nouns, pluralia tantum, and idiomatic plural forms. The main finding is that all stimulus classes are positioned on a cline of numerosity between one and many (with ordinary singulars and plurals marking the two terminal points), although Finnish has only two grammatical number categories, singular, and plural. Moreover, it appears that subjects have an intuition about the frequency of use of singular and plural forms, even in the case where the words are presented in a morphologically neutralized form. This is seen especially in the cases where the referent of a test item was locally marked as ‘one’ or ‘two’, as in the body-part nouns ‘navel’- poss and ‘eye’- poss .

The main thesis of the article is that language change is only partially subject to criteria of functionality and that, as a rule, opposing forces are also at work which often correlate directly with psychological and sociopsychological parameters reflecting themselves in all areas of linguistic competence. We sketch a complex interplay of horizontal versus vertical, deliberate versus nondeliberate, functional versus antifunctional linguistic changes, which, through a variety of processes have an effect upon the languages concerned, whether in the lexicon, the grammar, the phonology or the phonetics. Despite the overall unclarity regarding the notion of functionality in language, there are clear cases of both functionality and antifunctionality. Antifunctionality is deliberately striven for by groups of speakers who wish to distinguish themselves from other groups, for whatever reason. Antifunctionality, however, also occurs as a, probably unwanted, result of syntactic change in the acquisition process by young or adult language learners. The example is discussed of V-clustering through Predicate Raising in German and Dutch, a process that started during the early Middle Ages and was highly functional as long as it occurred on a limited scale but became antifunctional as it pervaded the entire complementation system of these languages.

The article focuses on the French construction nouveau + past participle (e.g. nouveau-né ‘newborn baby’) in which nouveau is traditionally assigned an adverbial value. However, it will be claimed that an alternative analysis, classifying nouveau as an adjective grammaticalising into a prefix – a ‘prefixoid’ – provides a more accurate account of the construction. The article proposes a set of four parameters applying to the grammaticalisation of French prefixoids (resemanticisation, decategorialisation, paradigmaticisation and productivity). These parameters will be applied to the construction nouveau + past participle and it will be shown that they conflict with the traditional adverbial analysis and plead in favour of a prefixoid analysis of nouveau .

This article addresses the question of control in Polish in the context of the current Movement vs. Agree debate and the nature of Obligatory Control (OC). More specifically, it aims to show that many phenomena which are allegedly inconvenient for the movement-based theory – such as control into infinitives introduced by a lexical complementiser and the controller's case independence of the semi-predicate or predicative adjective – can be dealt with without postulating a case-marked OC PRO. The controller's escape from a CP-infinitive is made possible by a small modification of the mechanics of the Phase Impenetrability Condition (PIC) and the ‘derivational window’. The optionality of case transmission and case independence in certain contexts is ascribed to the optional phase-status of infinitives, the clitic-like properties of the bare complementiser and the application of the default case mechanism to semi-predicates and adjectival predicates.