Volume 43, Issue 3

This article examines the ordering distribution of main and adverbial clauses. Using corpus data from spoken and written English, it is shown that the positioning of finite adverbial clauses vis-à-vis the main clause varies with their meaning or function: conditional clauses tend to precede the main clause, temporal clauses are common in both initial and final position, and causal clauses usually follow the main clause. The article argues that the positional patterns of adverbial clauses are motivated by competing functional and cognitive forces. Specifically, it is shown that final occurrence of adverbial clauses is motivated by processing, while initial occurrence results from semantic and discourse pragmatic forces that may override the processing motivation.

This article presents a fine-grained syntactic categorization of Dutch subordinating conjunctions, both simple and phrasal. By means of a hierarchical set of formal criteria, this article provides a detailed description of the syntactic behavior of 87 conjunctions with a total of 154 different readings. These formal criteria test the degree of dependence on the main clause predicator. The presence or absence of proportionality with paradigms of proforms is introduced as a fundamental criterion for syntactic analysis (Section 2). This concept is further refined by distinguishing between external and internal proportionality (Section 3). The possibility of clefting the subordinate clause is applied as a syntagmatic criterion (Section 4) and correlated with the proportionality criteria (Section 5). The next step examines the possibility of fronting the subordinate clause (Section 6) and its relation to the various clefting types (Section 7). Finally, the different correlation results are integrated into a hierarchically structured general overview (Section 8). In the epilogue, a first attempt is made at mapping the syntactic categorization elaborated in the body of the article onto the more general (semantic and functional) typologies of clause integration presented in the literature by different authors. This comparison wants to stress the general methodological applicability of the approach presented (Section 9).

In pairs of names, male names often precede female names (e.g. Romeo and Juliet ). We investigate this bias and argue that preferences for name ordering are constrained by a combination of gender, phonology, and frequency. First, various phonological constraints condition the optimal ordering of binomial pairs, and findings from our corpus investigations show that male names contain those features which lend them to be preferred in first position, while female names contain features which lend them to be preferred in second position. Thus, phonology predicts that male names are more likely to precede female names than follow them. Results from our name-ordering experiments provide further evidence that this “gendered phonology” plays a role in determining ordering preferences but also that an independent gender bias exists: when phonology is controlled (i.e. when two names are “phonologically equal”), subjects prefer male names first. Finally, frequency leads to another tendency to place male names first. Further investigation shows that frequent names are ordered before less frequent names and that male names are overall more “frequent” than female names. Together, all of these factors conspire toward an overwhelming tendency to place male names before female names.

“Discontinuous” APs are problematic. Under P&P/minimalist assumptions, they cannot be initial structures and must result via MOVE, but MOVE should be motivated, and what the triggering feature might be is unclear, for “AP-splitting” is optional in some cases and impossible in most. This article examines why it occurs in English. Section 1 discusses the facts and what grammarians have said about them. Section 2 reviews current wisdom on adjectival modfication and considers possible approaches to discontinuity via A(P)-raising and extraposition, but shows that neither is wellmotivated nor can explain why “AP-splitting” is not generally available, which suggests still unidentified constraints. Section 3 adopts a theory of modification that bans prenominal right-branching APs, eliminates the extraposition option, and derives genuine cases of AP-splitting through A-raising from postnominal APs. A-raising is assumed to occur to prevent the adjective from inheriting focus narrowly associated with its complement, but is allowed only within unaccusative APs. Most AP “discontinuities,” therefore, cannot involve A-raising, but the theory allows them to be basegenerated when the postnominal PP/CP is a modifier and the adjective is allowed prenominally. Adjectives denoting individual-level properties are, and are predicted to occur in “discontinuous” APs, but those denoting stage-level properties are not. These predictions are confirmed on the whole, but the evidence is murky due to divided usage. Section 4 sorts out dubious cases and claims that they arise from the fuzziness of the complement/modifier and the individual-level/stage-level distinctions, and from alternative construals of the postnominal XP as a modifier of the noun or higher categories. Finally, Section 5 briefly summarizes the results and the advantages of the present approach.

The use of Korean honorifics is generally dependent upon such social factors as age, profession, socioeconomic status, and so forth. Traditional accounts of the two Korean honorific verbal suffixes, namely, the deferential and the polite forms, explain the use of each on the basis of relative status: the deferential is the more formal of the two, used when addressing persons of higher social status; the polite form is used when addressing persons of equal or higher status, but not so high as to require the deferential form. However, cursory examination of naturally produced oral discourse reveals that speakers often alternate between the two forms within the same stretch of talk and while addressing the same interlocutor. Using a database of approximately eight hours of naturally occurring speech from a variety of discourse genres, this article proposes an alternative analysis of the two honorific speech levels. Rather than the static, relative status account put forth by traditional linguistic and sociolinguistic views, we propose instead that these forms differ in terms of the semantic feature of + / − BOUNDARY vis à vis speaker and interlocutor and their respective domains of cognition and/or experience. That is, when speakers use the deferential form ( + BOUNDARY), they index a stance of EXCLUSION with the interlocutor, such that the interlocutor is positioned as outside the sphere of the speaker’s cognitive and/or experiential domains; discourse marked with the deferential form is thus framed as detached, objective, and authoritative. In contrast, when speakers use the polite form ( − BOUNDARY), they index a stance of INCLUSION. Essentially, then, the deferential form creates bounded distance between speaker and addressee, while the polite form establishes and/or reinforces common ground.

Ayumi Matsuo , Maya Hickmann: Children’s Discourse: Person, Space, and Time across Languages . Cambridge Studies in Linguistics 98. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. xvii + 392 pp. ISBN 0-521-58441-8. Suzanne Romaine , Stephen J. Nagle and Sara L. Sanders, editors: English in the Southern United States . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. 244 pp. ISBN 0-5218-2264-5. Amanda Brown , Susan Goldin-Meadow: The Resilience of Language: What Gesture Creation in Deaf Children Can Tell Us about How All Children Learn Language . New York: Psychology Press, 2003. 300 pp. ISBN 1-8416-9026-0.