Volume 44, Issue 2

Direct compositionality is a property of empirical data (and of grammatical frameworks) where the meaning of an expression can be reliably computed from the meanings of its parts (Jacobson, Linguistics and Philosophy 25: 601–626, 2002). Using empirical data from Kam and Northern Zhuang, two Kam-Tai languages spoken in the P. R. of China, I define the notions of compositional and constructional reduplication rules. A rule is compositional if the host construction does not manifest selectional restrictions on the embedded output of the rule. By contrast, a reduplication rule is constructional if there are selectional restrictions. Based on the descriptive insights of this study and on Jacobson's two types of (direct) compositionality, I define four different degrees of compositionality that a morphosyntactic operation may exhibit: strong compositionality, weak compositionality, weak constructionality (non-compositionality) and strong constructionality.

Previous approaches to non-illocutionary uses of speech act verbs (SAVs) concentrated on commissive verbs like promise and threaten , claiming that their non-illocutionary uses result from a subjectification process, and that they therefore describe a subjective relation. Some uses of assertive and directive SAVs do not conform to this pattern: they involve a metaphorical projection whose source domain is the basic level of cognitive apprehension where directive speech acts are perceived as manifestations of an internal necessity and assertive speech acts as direct signs of states of affairs. It is argued that subjectification approaches went wrong when characterising non-illocutionary uses of commissive SAVs in purely subjective terms. Non-illocutionary uses of promise and threaten are better accounted for by a metaphorical projection whose source domain is the conceptualisation of commissive speech acts as highly reliable signs of future states of affairs.

Estonian, a Finno-Ugric language, is usually considered not to have a possessive perfect ( have -perfect). In this article, we argue that there is a construction which is functionally similar to the have -perfect in many European languages. It is based on a possessive construction, as with the have -perfect in other European languages, but since the Estonian possessive construction is based on a location schema, it is different from constructions in other European languages in terms of the morphosyntactic means it employs. We describe the grammaticalization of the construction and its relation to others that use these same morphosyntactic means, that is, impersonal and passive constructions. Though all these constructions seem rather similar, the possessive perfect belongs to neither the impersonal nor the passive paradigm. The meaning of the possessive perfect is mainly resultative, and it seems to be motivated by the meaning of the passive past participle which is a part of the construction.

The article presents an analysis of the periphrastic expression of continuative aspect by taking into account Dutch blijven + V inf and French continuer à + V inf . As prototypical marks of continuation, or the middle phase of an event, they will be argued to constitute the core of a formal field of equivalent expressions and of a semantic field intersecting with other meanings, including spatiality, stativity, iteration and counter-expectation. The lack of substantial research into continuative aspect motivates a semasiological approach making use of translation data which, although potentially controversial, will be shown to be a highly effective heuristic for formal and semantic equivalence in linguistic phenomena. A quantitative outset will be combined with qualitative analyses of synchronic data, resulting in an outline of potential pathways of grammaticalization and, potentially, subjectification.

The article explores whether, and to what extent, there is empirical support for the folk linguistic belief, variously expressed by adult native speakers of German in Eastern Austria, that younger Austrians harbor more sympathetic attitudes toward the German variety and more negative attitudes toward the Austrian variety of the German language. Quantitative data were gathered through a questionnaire asking 115 Austrian participants to rate Austrian Standard German (ASG) and German Standard German (GSG) words in terms of frequency of use and likeability. Analyses of the data led to the conclusion that while between-group comparisons indicate that the older Austrians use and like the ASG words more, and the GSG words less, than their younger compatriots, within-group comparisons reveal that the youngest Austrians prefer the ASG words to the GSG words. By demonstrating that popular judgments about language are less simple than they appear on the surface, the article demonstrates the value of gathering empirical data to test these judgments.

The article examines the striking correlation of the directive infinitive with negation in Dutch. This correlation is interpreted in the light of recent findings on the form of the prohibitive in the languages of the world and is explained in terms of the negative-first principle and politeness. The validity of the two explanations is further investigated from a cross-linguistic perspective. The preference for preverbal negation is shown to be even stronger in prohibitive than in declarative sentences. The difference in politeness between positive imperative and prohibitive speech acts is argued to be reflected in a wide range of languages. On the whole, the article illustrates the fruitful, two-way interaction between the study of language usage and typology.

Despite the abundant corpus-based research on full-inversion constructions in which the subject follows the entire verb phrase in a declarative clause, the analysis of this construction in the spoken mode has traditionally been neglected since it has been suggested that natural speech is not a good source of inversions. The article shows that speech, too, can be a good source of data for full inversion and that the spoken and the written modes do not differ in the overall distribution of the construction but rather in the types of inversion used and in the pragmatic functions these inversions serve in discourse. The article also casts light on the lack of consensus regarding the distribution of full inversion in written fictional and non-fictional texts, and in the pragmatic function the construction serves in both genres.