Volume 63, Issue 1

Andi (Nakh-Daghestanian; Russia) displays a typologically remarkable phenomenon: adverbs of numerous morphological and functional types inflect for agreement with a clause-level controller. To the extent that adverb agreement has been observed elsewhere, it is commonly taken to signal that the items involved are semantically oriented towards the participants they agree with, aligning the phenomenon with secondary predication. This paper demonstrates that Andi works differently: the widespread clausal agreement seen on Andi adverbs is insensitive to participant orientation. While agreement exponence on adverbs is morphologically complex, a simple structural principle (modelled here in Minimalist terms) ensures that clause-level agreement is always with the absolutive-case argument. The Andi facts thus provide evidence for a typological distinction between those languages where clausal agreement on adverbs can serve a semantic function and those where it cannot. A potential challenge is posed by the exceptional “biabsolutive” construction, where both subject and object appear in absolutive case and either may control adverb agreement, suggesting a role for some additional non-structural factor. However, on independent grounds this paper identifies the two arguments as belonging to distinct structural layers; this apparent flexibility in controller choice merely reflects the ability of certain adverbs to modify either layer.

This paper addresses the analysis of sentence fragments, specifically the English negative polar response item no . Two main types of synchronic analysis have been proposed for present-day English – one in which yes and no are syntactically inert particles which substitute for a clause, the other in which they are the initial element of an elided clause. Using diachronic data from 15th- to 17th-century English, we argue that the emergence of a novel other-speaker question pattern involving no demonstrates that speakers of early English analysed interrogative polar no as the initial element of a clause with TP-ellipsis. This novel pattern has received little attention in the literature, yet this grammatical innovation is interesting because its emergence demonstrates how diachronic change can be used as a diagnostic for underlying grammatical structure.

This study analyzes hitherto neglected uses of a second-person singular (2sg hereafter) pronoun in Japanese: the ‘generic’ and ‘vague’ uses of the 2sg pronoun anata observed in reported speech. The aim of the study is twofold. First, it refutes the broader assumption in typological studies that languages with an open-class pronominal system, such as Japanese and Korean, do not allow generic uses of 2sg (Kitagawa and Lehrer 1990. Impersonal uses of personal pronouns. Journal of Pragmatics 14(5). 739–759). This study demonstrates that the 2sg pronoun anata in Japanese is used to refer to people in general (‘generic’ use) or to human referents who are low in specificity (‘vague’ use). Second, as these uses occur in reported speech, this study sheds light on the various ways in which current speaker attitudes in reported speech may be encoded across different languages (Spronck 2012. Minds divided: Speaker attitudes in quotatives. In Isabelle Buchstaller & Ingrid van Alphen (eds.), Quotatives: Cross-linguistic and cross-disciplinary perspectives , 71–142. Amsterdam: John Benjamins: 87). Drawing on the notion of ‘constructed dialogue’ (e.g., Tannen 1989. Talking voices: Repetition, dialogue, and imagery in conversational discourse . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), the study shows that these uses of anata are most often the quoting speaker’s ‘construction’ rather than ‘report’, reflecting the quoting speaker’s attitude in specifying the referent. Using the data obtained from parliamentary debates, the study demonstrates that politicians draw on these uses of anata as one of their speech strategies for creating generalized narratives.

Two modal verbs of German are regularly used to express deontic possibility: können (‘can’) and dürfen (‘may’). We examine how speakers select between them, focusing on modal inquiries for permission to carry out some action ( darf/kann ich das machen , ‘may/can I do this’). Our data are video-recordings of everyday face-to-face interaction, which we analyze sequentially, drawing on interactional-linguistic methods. We find that local sequential context and aspects of visible turn-design systematically enter into the accomplishment of deontic meaning. (1) Position of the modal inquiry within a course of action informs verb selection: speakers select kann to nominate an action as coming “out of the blue” and initiating a new course of action; darf to nominate an action as sequentially occasioned: a solution to an already known-in-common problem. (2) Bodily behavior (gaze, body posture) guides the interpretation of modal flavor, moving a kann -inquiry towards a deontic or a circumstantial interpretation, and moving a darf -inquiry towards a deontic or a bouletic interpretation. Overall, the study demonstrates the systematic contributions of sequential position and body behavior in the accomplishment of modal meanings.

This study investigates the use of predicate reduplication to express aspectual meaning in Sign Language of the Netherlands (NGT). The study focuses on three aspect types that have been found to be encoded by reduplication across sign languages – habitual, continuative, and iterative – and addresses potential phonological restrictions. Naturalistic corpus data and data elicited from six deaf NGT signers were taken into account. The results suggest that (i) predicate reduplication can express all three aspect types, but it is optional; (ii) reduplication expressing habitual and continuative aspect appears to be phonologically constrained; and (iii) such phonological constraints do not apply to iterative reduplication, whose form is different from the other two aspects, in that the reduplication cycles are separated by pauses. Since there is no formal difference between habituals and continuatives in the data, it is suggested that this semantic distinction may not be grammaticalized in the language, and that, possibly, the inflectional system of NGT instead more broadly distinguishes imperfective/perfective viewpoint. While this latter suggestion is in line with findings reported for many spoken languages, the results are different from what has previously been described for NGT as well as for other sign languages. Potential explanations for these differences can be found in both methodological and sociolinguistic factors.

This paper documents the common grammaticalization path of the LIKE/LOVE constructions into expressing habitual aspect in Mainland East and Southeast Asian languages. The stages and degrees of grammaticalization for the LIKE/LOVE constructions vary cross-linguistically and different stages of evolution co-exist in one and the same language. Based on the synchronic data from a sample of six national languages in that region, it is found that the grammaticalization process in Chinese, Thai, and Lao is advanced while the process in Vietnamese, Khmer, and Burmese is incipient. At the initial stage of their grammaticalization, there are three context-induced intermediate steps of development before the constructions in question are compatible with inanimate subject referents and the habitual meaning becomes the only possible interpretation. At the later stage, languages vary in their combinability with stative verbs and in their possibility of occurring in future temporal context. The common human experience that if one likes/loves doing something, one tends to do it frequently renders it highly unlikely that this grammaticalization pattern is an areal feature confined to Mainland East and Southeast Asia.

Corpus methods are now established within the field of signed language linguistics. Empirical investigations of signed language corpora have challenged many early assumptions about the nature of deaf community signed languages, while making us more aware of the limitations of traditional corpus documentation methods. One limitation relates to insufficient documentation of ethnographic information that is often necessary for accurately understanding and interpreting corpus data. Linguistic ethnography offers unique possibilities for addressing this limitation. This article outlines a novel interview method developed to enrich the original Corpus of Finnish Sign Language (Corpus FinSL) with additional ethnographic information eight years after it was first documented and archived with standard IMDI corpus metadata. We interviewed 22 Corpus FinSL signers about their family and social networks, as well as their lifelong language, geographical, educational, and employment trajectories. Here we describe how this information illuminates the linguistic analysis and interpretation of constructed action – an enactment-based way to express meaning – in Corpus FinSL data. Our results reveal constructed action in FinSL discourse is influenced by factors like signer’s educational background and age, but not exclusively by family networks or use of other sign languages. The interview materials demonstrate diversity and change in the communicative ecologies of FinSL, which is discussed in relation to the use of constructed action in FinSL. We argue that this kind of approach enables signed language corpus linguistics to “open up” more to signers’ lived experiences, while still “tying down” empirical descriptions of FinSL. A major benefit is the enrichment of both machine-readable annotations and metadata, while supporting deeper engagement between deaf signing communities and signed language corpus projects.