Volume 49, Issue 1

In the field of linguistics, music has become an increasingly important field of study. Authors such as Alim (2006), Beal (2009), Cutler (2010) and Fought (2006), among many others, have based some of their studies on music in order to describe linguistic patterns, explore cultural phenomena, or study the use of a particular language feature. While conducting a sociolinguistic research project on processes of language crossing in rap music, we came up with two independent corpora corresponding to more than 30 rap songs by each ethnic group (European American and African American) studied. Our purpose is to explore how this data can potentially be used as a valuable source of information about these two interacting groups. This article presents some significant results from processing our corpora through Wordsmith Tools, which both delimits and reinforces cultural differences in rap language usage. The use of the term nigga , the presence of different terminology to refer to females in both corpora, and the explicit skin color references made by both rap groups creates an ethnic line that delimits their language uses and has particular relevance in the hip-hop context.

I explore here the status of those expressions in English traditionally labelled "conjunctions", as seen from the perspective of notional grammar (see particularly Anderson 2006, 2011). Among "subordinating conjunctions", which subordinate sentential structures to lower-ranking constructions, I distinguish between those that introduce a non-locative argument of the superordinate clause and those which introduce a locative, typically a circumstantial. The former subordinate conjunctions belong to a category that is optionally realized independently as that. The latter involve in addition a superordinate locative structure, possibly abstract, that specifies the kind of circumstance or participation attributed to the subordinate clause. Other varieties of sentential subordination complicate this picture. As concerns "coordinating conjunctions", "simple coordination" is achieved by a category, realized centrally by and or or , that, prototypically, simultaneously modifies and takes as a complement instances of the same other category; the "conjunction", thus, contrary to the prevailing view, involves subordination of both the conjunction and the second instance of the "conjoined category". "Correlative coordination", exemplified by either ... or , involving a quantifier and a conjunction, is again subordinating.

The present paper demonstrates the relevance of the semantic approach to transitivity (going back to Hopper and Thompson 1980) for the analysis of Vedic causative verbs. I will argue that in terms of this approach it is possible to explain a number of constraints on causative derivation (which cannot be explained in terms of the traditional, syntactic, definition) and to offer a unified account of the semantics of these verbs. I will also briefly discuss some theoretical implications of this analysis of causative verbs in Vedic for a diachronic typology of transitivity.

When English nouns are borrowed into German, they need to be assigned grammatical gender. Since grammatical gender information is not present in English, the integration of anglicisms in German offers the opportunity to investigate regularities of gender assignment. Furthermore, it can be expected that the integration of loanwords can cause some variation in the usage of grammatical gender, as has been observed impressionistically for different varieties of German in previous research. This article picks up on both of these issues and first of all discusses "gender assignment schemas" for English loans based on established patterns of gender assignment in German. Secondly, an empirical study investigates gender variation across three major German dialect areas. The findings show a substantial amount of variation among many of the test items. These results are discussed in relation to cognitive schemas of gender assignment and in terms of regional variation.