Volume 63, Issue 3

Negative concord (NC) is used in many English varieties but usually considered ungrammatical in ‘standard’ contemporary English, where negative polarity items (NPIs) are used. In this paper, we take a novel experimental approach to the use of NC versus NPI constructions in relation to register, i. e., sets of speech repertoires linked to specific situational and functional parameters. We report on two rating experiments with American and British English participants using interlocutor relations as a formality manipulation. Results show that (i) across both samples, NC constructions were rated as less appropriate than NPI associates, and (ii) there was a register effect in the American English data in that NC was rated less appropriate in formal than informal contexts. Our study is the first to provide experimental evidence for the register-sensitivity of NC constructions in American English.

This study contributes to a growing body of research on the social meanings of linguistic variation with particular interest in the cognitive processes governing their emergence. Our research follows in the tradition of Labov et al.’s (2011) work on the sociolinguistic monitor, a cognitive mechanism hypothesized to track quantitative linguistic variation and prompt social evaluations (Labov et al. 2011. Properties of the sociolinguistic monitor. Journal of Sociolinguistics 15(4). 431–463). Previous research shows that L1 English listeners are sensitive to frequency variation, but it is unclear whether this also applies to L2 listeners. This study thus replicates Labov et al.’s (2011) original experiment in a context where English is primarily acquired through L2 instruction. To test the generality of sociolinguistic monitoring , we investigate L2 listeners’ sensitivity to quantitative differences in sociolinguistic variation ( ing ) as well as proficiency-based variation. Since participants were L1 speakers of (Austrian) German, we tested evaluations of varying realizations of /θ/ ([θ]/[s]), /d/ ([d]/[t]), and /w/ ([w]/[v]). Experiments included 135 participants, who rated several versions of newscaster test passages regarding professionalism . Our data shows that both sociolinguistic and proficiency-based variation are monitored and evaluated by L2 listeners, albeit to different extents. This supports the assumption that the focus of the monitoring process is socially meaningful variation that includes L1 sociolinguistic but also L2 proficiency-based features.

The Basic Variety has been described as a fully fledged system that is developed in second-language acquisition. It is guided by a small number of interacting phrasal, semantic, and pragmatic constraints. This article is devoted to the semantic controller-first constraint, which says that “the NP-referent with highest control comes first” in discourse contexts where this constraint comes into conflict. The Basic Variety, as described by Klein and Perdue, relates to migrant learners that were exposed to target languages in naturalistic contexts and situations outside the classroom. Our study also deals with learners living in the target language’s country at the time of the data collection, but our learners were benefiting from foreign language teaching at university. The goal of this study is twofold. The first part of the article discusses the origins of the key notion of ‘controller’ and introduces related theoretical underpinnings, such as argument hierarchies of transitive verbs and crucial factors determining argument realization. Our analysis shows that the controller-first constraint overlaps with two key concepts of the description of L1 functional grammars – i.e., control asymmetry and the Actor-Undergoer Hierarchy – suggesting that it does not only pertain to the Basic Variety but broadly speaking to the human language capacity. The second part of this study presents some preliminary results on the L2 grammars of Spanish-speaking learners of French in a context of ‘competition’. Our results show the pervasiveness of the controller-first constraint on L2 grammars beyond initial, non-instructed learner varieties, suggesting that this semantic principle is not totally independent of (a) the specifics of the source language and (b) the target constructions of the foreign language classroom.

This article is in part an intra- and cross-modal comparison of the count-mass distinction (CMD) in Hong Kong Sign Language (HKSL). For the intra-modal analysis, HKSL data are compared to data found in Koulidobrova’s (2021) work on the CMD in American Sign Language/ASL (Koulidobrova, Elena. 2021. Counting (on) bare nouns: Revelations from American Sign Language. In Tibor Kiss, Francis Jeffry Pelletier & Halima Husić (eds.), Things and Stuff: The Semantics of the Count-Mass Distinction , 213–231. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). According to Koulidobrova, the existing diagnostics used in spoken language research are insufficient to bring to light CMDs in sign languages. ASL’s CMD is visible in the failure to conjoin count and mass nouns and in the ungrammaticality of partitive constructions containing mass nouns. HKSL and ASL differ from each other in a few respects, among which the two aforementioned ASL diagnostic criteria. Regarding the cross-modal comparison, HKSL and ASL belong to different categories in Chierchia’s (2010) count-mass typology (Chierchia, Gennaro. 2010. Mass nouns, vagueness and semantic variation. Synthese 174. 99–149). Chierchia’s typology is based on CMDs in spoken languages. ASL is a number-neutral language (Type III), whereas HKSL is a number marking language (Type I) and thus patterns with languages like English and Dutch. The CMD in HKSL is visible in its failure to combine mass nouns directly with numerals and count adjectives without the intervention of a classifier. Based on my data analysis, I can furthermore argue that HKSL is a number marking language but that its plural number marking is realised through zero marking.

The present article provides a contrastive corpus-based analysis of resultative secondary predicates in recipe contexts. Two Germanic languages (Dutch and English) and two Romance languages (French and Spanish) are investigated. Based on a sample of 4,000 (i.e., 1,000 per language) resultative constructions (RCs) retrieved from a tailor-made corpus of cooking recipes, this study sheds new light on Talmy’s typological dichotomy between satellite-framed and verb-framed languages. Specifically, it is shown that (i) Adjectival phrases (APs) are not totally excluded from Romance RCs but their occurrence is restricted in several ways. (ii) Prepositional phrases (PPs) can be headed by a whole range of prepositions (or ‘result markers’) which exhibit important differences in terms of semantic properties, token frequency, and distribution across verb classes: ‘weak’ result markers, which mainly consist of locative prepositions (viz. in ‘in’ in Dutch, in in English and en ‘in’ and a ‘to’ in Spanish) occur almost exclusively in RCs that contain achievements, which are argued to be less dynamic, depictive-like instances of the construction. By contrast, ‘strong’ result markers (e.g., tot ‘to/until’ in Dutch, to , into , and until in English, en ‘in’ in French and a punto de ‘to point of’ in Spanish) combine with various aspectual classes, including activities, and may therefore give rise to ‘strong’ (i.e., aspect-shifting) RCs. Finally, (iii) although they are both ‘satellite-framed’ languages, Dutch and English impose different restrictions on the formal encoding of APs, which are very often preceded by the preposition until in English as a result of discourse and internal language factors.

This study delves into the intricate process of reanalysis, wherein linguistic expressions undergo grammatical or semantic changes, or sometimes both. The primary objective of this study is to explore the theoretical aspects surrounding historical changes of this nature. To facilitate a comprehensive understanding of the topic, we provide a formal description of reanalysis as an analytical tool. Our formal description allows for the differentiation of various change scenarios, enabling us to identify distinct types of shifts from one analysis to another. This approach not only focuses on what has been reanalyzed, be it the morphology, syntax, or the semantics, but also emphasizes the interplay between all three linguistic modules (Form, Grammar, and Meaning) and their relationships. This holistic perspective enables a systematic examination of the significance of what remains constant at both points in time during the reanalysis process. The key insight arising from this analysis leads us to propose and substantiate the Early Semantic Stability Hypothesis. This hypothesis posits that the truth-conditional semantics of the original proposition remain unchanged throughout reanalysis, either in all contexts or in specific “bridging contexts” where the reanalysis occurs. To demonstrate these phenomena, we present a compelling test case, focusing on the development of the counterfactual conditional marker ʾilmale in Hebrew and Aramaic. Through a detailed examination of the syntactic and semantic reanalyses it underwent, we observe the emergence of unique semantic features. By adopting a formal semantic perspective, we address fundamental questions such as the level of ambiguity required for reanalysis to take place, the potential existence of universal constraints on reanalysis, and potential motivations driving these linguistic changes. This investigation provides valuable insights into the intricate mechanisms at play during reanalysis and contributes to the broader understanding of linguistic evolution and development.

All languages exhibit basic colour terms that manifest how distinct linguistic systems categorise colour. Māori, the language of the indigenous people of New Zealand, demonstrates an instructive case where drastic innovations in colour terminology took place in response to environmental and cultural influences. We demonstrate how and when Māori accrued new colour terms to replace existing ones in its immediate ancestor, Proto-Eastern-Polynesian, and eventually coined new colour terms through borrowing from native words for nature to match the English colour categories that did not previously exist in Māori – except for the colour pink. While contemporary Māori is at the same stage as English (Stage VII) in Berlin and Kay’s colour term hierarchy, the evidence is that Māori was at Stage IV pre-colonisation, possessing only five native colour categories. The evolution of Māori’s colour categories thus illuminates how colonisation may impact the basic vocabulary of a language, both in the Māori settling a new land in the 13th century and in their subsequent language contact with English colonisers in the 19th century.