Volume 49, Issue 1

In multiple property models of lexical categories, the assignment of a word to a lexical category is determined by a set of properties associated with that category. Specifically, if a word displays a sufficient number of properties associated with a given category, it will be assigned to that category. The current article critically evaluates multiple property models of lexical categories. In particular, it focuses on a multiple property model recently developed by Aarts (Syntactic gradience: The nature of grammatical indeterminacy, Oxford University Press, 2007b) and a variety of other such models. It is argued that multiple property models encounter problems in four key areas. Firstly, they struggle to determine an appropriate set of lexical categories and to provide coherent accounts of the nature and function of such categories. Secondly, they encounter difficulties in determining the properties that define categories and in determining features of properties such as whether they should be weighted or not. Thirdly, a variety of problems arise when multiple property models combine words, properties and categories together. Finally, multiple property models fail to account for crosslinguistic data. It is concluded that multiple property models do not provide viable accounts of lexical categories.

In this article we show that the semantic characterization of the English ditransitive construction, primarily based on the concept of transfer and generally assumed in the international literature within Construction Grammar, is insufficient for the remaining branches of Germanic, in particular for the West-Scandinavian languages, both modern and ancient. On the basis of our findings from West-Scandinavian we suggest eight semantic subconstructions of the ditransitive construction, which in turn can be divided into 17 different narrowly-circumscribed semantic verb classes. We depict the semantics of the construction on a semantic map, and lay out the internal structure of the construction on a lexicality–schematicity hierarchy where both higher-level generalizations and lower-level idiosyncrasies are captured. Finally, we investigate a specific subconstruction of the ditransitive in Norwegian, the V-REFL-NP construction, which shows certain idiosyncratic properties, not derivable from any general or specific syntactic rules of Norwegian, nor from the semantics of the individual parts. We conclude that a constructional analysis is needed to satisfactorily account for all the facts of the ditransitive construction in Norwegian and West-Scandinavian.

This study investigates the relationship of reasoning and gesture production in individuals differing in fluid and crystallized intelligence. It combines measures of speed and accuracy of processing geometric analogies with analyses of spontaneous hand gestures that accompanied young adults' subsequent explanations of how they solved the geometric analogy task. Individuals with superior fluid intelligence processed the analogies more efficiently than participants with average fluid intelligence. Additionally, they accompanied their subsequent explanations with more gestures expressing movement in non-egocentric perspective. Furthermore, gesturing (but not speaking) about the most relevant aspect of the task was related to higher fluid intelligence. Within the gestures-as-simulated action framework, the results suggest that individuals with superior fluid intelligence engage more in mental simulation during visual imagery than those with average fluid intelligence. The findings stress the relationship between gesture production and general cognition, such as fluid intelligence, rather than its relationship to language. The role of gesture production in thinking and learning processes is discussed.

This paper focuses on the interaction between actionality and antipassivization, specifically, on how (a)telicity is related to patient suppression. In the literature, data from a number of languages are discussed showing that crosslinguistically, antipassive markers tend to induce atelicity of verbal predicates. In this paper I establish that the relation between the argument structure and actionality can be the opposite, whereby actional modification of a verbal predicate results in antipassivization. Relying on evidence from Godoberi (North Caucasian, Nakh-Daghestanian, Andic) I argue that lexical and syntactic distribution of the apparent antipassive marker is best accounted for on the assumption that the patient suppression is driven by a more general mechanism of detelicization. Also, I identify effects of detelicization on verbs of different actional classes and examine intricate relations between detelicization and event plurality.

The existence of restricted or phraseologized complex expressions such as clichés, collocations, and idioms (collectively known as phrasemes) is well-known and widely accepted in the domain of multi-word expressions. What is not so widely recognized is the existence of the same type of phraseologized expression at the morphological level — restricted complex morphological expressions, or morphological phrasemes. Morphological phrasemes, found in both derivation and inflection, are governed by the same principles of phraseologization that govern phrasemes at the lexical-syntactic level, and have roughly the same subtypes, including morphological collocations and morphological idioms. In addition to offering clear advantages in terms of useful descriptive practice and formal economy, the recognition of phraseologized morphological expressions makes clear the parallels between linguistic signs at the lexical and morphemic level, this isomorphism falling out from the conventionalized nature of the mapping between linguistic meaning and linguistic form. Contrary to many current approaches to morphological theory that reject the morpheme as a meaning-bearing element in the structure of words, this paper argues that the existence of conventionalized uses of sublexical elements gives strong support to the utility of the morpheme as unit of linguistic analysis.

In this paper I propose, building on an earlier work by Xrakovskij (Grammaticeskie kategorii glagola: opyt teorii vzaimodejstvija, Nauka, 1996) and Aikhenvald and Dixon (Language 74: 56–80, 1998), a general approach to the study of grammeme interaction, focusing on functionally infelicitous grammeme combinations (such as perfective presents), and demonstrate its applicability to the domain of verbal categories. It is argued that the outcome of grammeme conflict depends on the general principles of markedness and semantic scope. I further consider other factors, both functional and structural, which constrain grammeme combinability, and which are regarded as competing motivations in the domain of grammeme interaction. Finally, I demonstrate how the various factors can be integrated into a single model, which crucially relies on the concept of local markedness and markedness hierarchies.