Volume 47, Issue 2

This contribution is meant to deal, among the papers devoted to complexity in naturalness theory, with the rise of inflectional complexity in first language acquisition and in diachronic change. These two sections are preceded by an introduction devoted to the conceptualisation of inflectional complexity within the theory of Natural Morphology and to explicating factors of morphological complexity. The focus will be on unproductive patterns in acquisition after the child’s detection of morphological (de)composition. Additional topics will be the role of the naturalness parameters of transparency, iconicity, (bi)uniqueness, and of figure and ground. Main topics of the third section on diachrony will be distributed exponence and the control of three classical claims on diachronic change by Natural Morphology in studying changes from Latin to Romance languages.

This paper considers some selected cases of stressed vowel alternations arisen from the application of metaphony in Italo-Romance dialects. While similar cases are often reported in the literature, the ones picked up here stand out because they resist, for several reasons, any analysis treating metaphony as a synchronic phonological rule (albeit opacized), deriving the surface alternants from abstract underlying representations. Such analyses, as standardly practiced in the Generative paradigm from the 1960s to this day, would face insurmountable problems in accounting for the morphological paradigms that capitalize on the metaphonic alternants putting them into service as exponents of morphosyntactic categories. Thus, the study of morphological complexity yields supporting evidence for phonological theories like Natural Phonology, which severely constrains the amount of abstractness permitted to underlying representations.

Recent studies on linguistic complexity (Miestamo 2006, 2009, Miestamo et al. 2008) offer me the opportunity for comparing and re-discussing some major theoretical concepts that were at the basis of my model on textual complexity (2002, 2003, 2004) and which are also fundamental assumptions in those studies. Comparability is limited by the different objects of analysis, text in my research vs. cross-linguistic grammars there, but it is justified by a strong similarity in the very conceptualisation of complexity and in the criteria for defining it. The aim of this paper is to re-propose and further elaborate on my theoretical approach and confirm its validity. Text complexity is viewed as an instance of system complexity and text as a complex system. The analysis of text complexity under this light presupposes conceiving of the text as a dynamic configuration of components that, in the course of the text progression, variously interplay and with varied effects. The theory of complex systems offers good instruments for modelling this type of interplay and for explaining the changes and readjustments that follow. A theory of naturalness/markedness can help motivate and predict the emergence, type and scope of textual complexity.

This paper is an attempt to handle pragmatic complexity within the framework of Natural Linguistics. Specifically it aims at building two naturalness scales of the complexity of pragmatic inferences based on the naturalness parameters of trans-parency–opacity and of biuniqueness–ambiguity, illustrated mainly with French examples. The scales are complementary: transparency–opacity deals with hierarchized meanings, biuniqueness–ambiguity with exclusive alternative meanings. Pragmatic complexity is intended here as a function of the number and types of inferences or inferential steps included in the description of an utterance meaning. It is defined quantitatively and qualitatively and converges with cognitive complexity. The scales distinguish phenomena that are to varying degrees opaque or ambiguous (indirect, elliptic or non-literal) according to whether there is flouting or violation of a Gricean maxim and how this takes place. The number of cotextual and/or contextual dimensions as well as variable cog-nitive operations, modes of reasoning and meaning relations are taken as measures of pragmatic complexity. The paper also discusses the relation between complexity and markedness. This issue reveals a conflict between the perspectives of speaker and hearer.

The Romany language, due to the circumstances in which it is used, frequently borrows lexical items. This mostly happens from the local language, that is, the one spoken by the majority society surrounding the given Roma community. The verbal system seems to be of particular interest, as well as the phenomena and the ongoing processes in the verbal paradigms in relation to the adaptation of loan verbs. One of the most important elements of loan-verb adaptation in Hungarian Lovari is the derivational marker -sar, as opposed to Austrian Lovari, where the dominant marker used for the same function is in. Te marker -sar can be viewed as one single unit, but it is possible to break it down into two parts, namely -(V)s- and -ar, on a historical basis – both possibilities can be justified. Therefore the question arises as to which is worth more, but as we will see, the changes that have happened and are happening in the language may make the strictly diachronic approach unnecessarily complicated, whereas, at the same time, it can be difficult to handle them within a traditional synchronic framework. However, if we look at the analogy-based processes which have taken place and are taking place, the change can easily be made part of the model and the question loses its significance.

The paper offers a proposal of a new classification of hearer roles in media discourse represented by political debates. It is posited that broadcast talk operates on distinct, yet mutually dependent, communicative levels, entailing different hearers: listening interlocutors, recipients in the studio as well as TV recipients. Secondly, it is argued that Speech Act Theory, which is anchored in the dyadic model, must be extended to account for multi-party interactions, notably mediated ones. This is best appreciated on the basis of the problem of a twofold illocutionary intention underlying utterances in political broadcast talk. Such utterances are illustrated with jibes deployed in Polish PM pre-election debates with a view to deprecating the addressee and, simultaneously, entertaining the audience.

The Internal Vowel Alternation (IVA) system is commonly referred to as arbitrarily appearing in a small number of the so-called irregular noun plurals (e.g. goose – geese , mouse – mice ) and past tense verb forms (e.g. sing – sang , take – took ) in Modern English. But, historically, IVA was a prevalent and productive process in Old English in both the nominal and the verbal systems. In this paper, we will postulate that the IVA is a full-fledged sign system composed of a signal (signifiant) that is connected to a meaning (signifié) in the Saussurean sense. It has already been demonstrated that the IVA nominal and verbal forms are systematic phonologically (Even-Simkin & Tobin 2009). In this paper we will present the semantic systems underlying the IVA forms. Beedham (2005:114) argues that "[a]ll linguistic forms must fit into the system somehow, and they all must have a meaning, it is simply a case of working out how they fit in and what the meaning is". In this semantic analysis of the IVA forms we will show that the English IVA systems are both motivated and systematic semantically – i.e. that differences in form always imply differences in meaning (Bolinger 1977). We will maintain that each IVA pattern reflects a fundamental common semantic denominator. Thus our study connects the form (phonology) and the meaning (semantics) of the phenomenon of IVA as a full-fledged system of linguistic signs in English.

This paper explores the idea that first and second person indexical pronouns have one common identical source based on an index. This approach derives the distinction between hearer and speaker by means of spatio-temporal anchoring of the indexical base to the utterance context. Accordingly, it is argued that the deictic category person is nonatomic but dependent on spatial (and temporal) deixes. Evidence is drawn from data concerning various types of second person pronouns and their interpretation. It will be shown that the generic use of second person pronouns available in a large number of languages underlies specific morphosyntactic restrictions that have so far remained undiscussed in the relevant literature that mainly sought a purely semantic account of the phenomenon (Alonso-Ovalle 2002; Malamud 2007). Based on a number of Indo-European languages, it will be shown that certain contexts require the indexical to be temporally anchored to the utterance context giving rise to a strictly indexical interpretation. Generic interpretations are available if the indexical is only spatially but not temporally anchored.

The main purpose of the present paper is to identify the morphosyntactic and discourse errors of language learners at sentence and essay levels. To achieve this end, a total number of 50 Iranian university students were selected to participate in the study. Two types of test were administrated to the participants: a recognition test and a production test. In the former, the participants were asked to read 42 English sentences and identify the erroneous morphosyntactic forms; and in the latter, they were required to translate 14 Persian sentences into English and also write a two paragraph essay. Using Ferris’ (2002) model, the results indicated that there was a direct relationship between the number of errors and the participants’ level of proficiency. The results also revealed statistically significant differences between error identification and error production of both freshmen and seniors Iranian English language learners.

Even though rhotics are very common sounds in the languages of the world, there is a consensus in the literature that they are articulatorily complex. Not only do they tend to be acquired at the last stages of the acquisition period, but also their distribution is usually constrained (cf. Ladefoged and Maddieson 1996; Żygis 2005). As a consequence of being complex, rhotics manifest a strong susceptibility to phonetic change. The present paper reports the results of an experiment that aimed at describing various physical realisations of the Polish phoneme /r/ placed in intervocalic position. The data presented in the article show that in this position speakers do not articulate a tap, but in most cases they produce either a fricative or an approximant. In the light of the data, high vowels constitute an environment that is more conducive to this sort of reduction than mid or low vowels.

In recent years many lexical elements in the syntactic tree have been decomposed into formal features forming part of the functional sequence. This paper explores the effects of this change on the syntax-phonology interface, addressing two problems for language modularity and proposing that the Lexicon be the locus of communication between the two modules. The first issue is the sensitivity of prosody to edges of syntactic constituents and to lexical elements and projections but not to functional ones (cf. Selkirk 1995; Truckenbrodt 1999, 2007 inter alia). Lexicon subcategorisation is offered as the solution (cf. Bye 2006; Paster 2005). The second issue is the prosodic marking of Information Structure. In Prosodic Phonology, constraints (Align-F, Stress-Focus) "see" these syntactic features, which is undesirable if modularity is to be maintained. This paper uses the Nanosyntactic view that features are merged into the tree individually, and suggests that Lexical entries for e.g. F and CT features in English are suprasegmental affixes pairing a H* tone with F feature or a L+H*L-H% contour with a CT feature.