Volume 17, Issue 2

Cross-category harmony (correlations between basic word order and preference for suffixes or prefixes) has been proposed by several typologists and psycholinguists as a principle to explain some apparent crosslinguistic tendencies. This article attempts to test whether cross-category harmony has an observable influence on morphosyntactic change, and reviews cases of harmonization and disharmonization of affix order. The grammaticalization of associated motion prefixes in Japhug Rgyalrong, a verb-final language of southwest China, constitutes a solid case of development of a disharmonic construction out of a harmonic one, and runs counter to the idea that head ordering principles have a direct effect on language change.

The linguistic expression of the GIVE event is investigated in a sample of 72 Papuan languages, 33 belonging to the Trans New Guinea family, 39 of various non-TNG lineages. Irrespective of the verbal template (prefix, suffix, or no indexation of undergoer), in the majority of languages the recipient is marked as the direct object of a monotransitive verb, which sometimes involves stem suppletion for the recipient. While a few languages allow verbal affixation for all three arguments, a number of languages challenge the universal claim that the `give' verb always has three arguments.

This article seeks in the first instance to identify and exemplify the various senses in which the term `conative' has been used in the descriptive and theoretical literature. It then goes on to elucidate, where possible, the connections between these uses, and to examine the history of the term. The study concludes with some reflections on the status of linguistic terminology and the issues that may arise when technical vocabulary is subject to some of the same processes of semantic shift that affect words in everyday usage.