Theoretical Linguistics

This is the first book to present Canonical Typology, a framework for comparing constructions and categories across languages. The canonical method takes the criteria used to define particular categories or phenomena (e.g. negation, finiteness, possession) to create a multidimensional space in which language-specific instances can be placed. In this way, the issue of fit becomes a matter of greater or lesser proximity to a canonical ideal. Drawing on the expertise of world-class scholars in the field, the book addresses the issue of cross-linguistic comparability, illustrates the wide range of areas—from morphosyntactic features to reported speech—to which linguists are currently applying this methodology.

This book investigates the nature of generalizations in language, drawing parallels between our linguistic knowledge and more general conceptual knowledge. The book combines theoretical, corpus, and experimental methodology to provide a constructionist account of how linguistic generalizations are learned, and how cross-linguistic and language-internal generalizations can be explained. Part I argues that broad generalizations involve the surface forms in language, and that much of our knowledge of language consists of a delicate balance of specific items and generalizations over those items. Part II addresses issues surrounding how and why generalizations are learned and how they are constrained. Part III demonstrates how independently needed pragmatic and cognitive processes can account for language-internal and cross-linguistic generalizations, without appeal to stipulations that are specific to language.

Contact Linguistics is a critical investigation of grammatical structures when bilingual speakers use their two or more languages in the same clause. Myers-Scotton examines major contact phenomena, such as lexical borrowing, convergence, attrition, mixed languages, and creole formation, but especially codeswitching. She argues that different contact phenomena result from the same grammatical principles and processes. They provide a set of limited options so that predictions are possible about expected outcomes, even if social milieux differ. She extends her earlier analysis of codeswitching under the Matrix Language Frame model and develops further the role of asymmetry and the Uniform Structure Principle in contact phenomena in general. Two new models make analyses more precise. The 4-M model of morpheme classification recognizes the abstract basis of four types of morphemes and their differential distribution across contact phenomena. The Abstract Level model proposes that new lexical elements are formed by splitting and recombining levels of abstract structure.

This book presents a detailed model of syntax-information structure interaction. It presents clear empirical arguments that this interaction takes place at the phase level, with a privileged role for the edge of the phase. The phenomena discussed in this book are mostly taken from the Romance languages: dislocations, focus fronting, p-movement, accusative A and clitic doubling, with some discussion of Germanic scrambling and object shift as well as other relevant phenomena. Careful analyses of these constructions show that notions such as “topic” and “focus”, as usually defined, yield no predictions and instead a feature system based on the notions “discourse anaphor” and “contrast” is proposed.

This book adopts the strong Minimalist thesis that grammar contains no rules or principles specifically designed to account for anaphors and pronouns. Lexically, anaphors have unvalued φ-features, which need to be valued under Agree. This leads to the novel assumption that anaphors c-command their antecedents. This idea underlies the analysis of both simplex and complex reflexives. Simplex reflexives are merged in a configuration of inalienable possession, with the simplex reflexive c-commanding its antecedent inside a possessive small clause. Self-reflexives share the syntax of self-intensifiers and floating quantifiers, raising to a vP-adjoined position to c-command their antecedents. In contrast to anaphors, pronouns have lexically valued φ-features. Postsyntactic lexical insertion accounts for absence of Principle B effects observed in many languages. The behaviour of pronouns and self-forms in snake-sentences is related to the nature of the Axpart projection of the locative preposition. Semantically, the difference between simplex and complex reflexives derives from the way they refer to spatiotemporal stages of their antecedents.

This book presents Functional Discourse Grammar (FDG). Chapter 1 gives an overall picture of the model and places it in the context of contemporary linguistics. Chapter 2 presents the interpersonal level of the grammar, at which the Discourse Act, the central object of FDG, is analysed. Chapter 3 is a systematic account of the representational level, where semantic distinctions are located. Chapter 4 is concerned with the morphosyntactic level and Chapter 5 with the phonological level; these show how FDG treats formal distinctions across languages. The book ends with Chapter 6, an application of the theory to sample Discourse Acts.

Names have a distinctive grammar. A survey of the three main traditions in the study of names: onomastics, philosophy, and linguistics, reveals much concern with the meaning of names. Despite controversy over the nature of this meaning, there has been general agreement that names are very distinctive in this respect. Not much of this work has questioned their assumed grammatical status as a sub-type of noun, however. The book, adopting a traditional notional framework and using observations concerning a number of languages (but particularly English and Greek), argues that the semantic distinctiveness of names is matched by a syntax distinct from that of nouns; that they have more in common with pronouns; and that, indeed, names are categorially distinct from and more basic than nouns, though both belong to a cross-class that also includes pronouns and determiners. This match between the semantics and syntax of names is in accord with the assumptions of notional grammar; mismatches are parasitic upon a notionally-based syntax rather than being what is basic to syntax. The syntax of names is determined by three main notional functions: identification, as arguments in predications; address, as vocatives; and nomination (‘name-giving’), which establishes the identificatory capacity of names. Semantically, though primarily serving to permit direct reference, names depart from the Millian (‘non-connotative’) assumption in showing rudimentary sense. It is these differences in sense (notion) that underlie the traditionally recognized classes of name, the most salient of which are discussed here.

This book presents new data and a formal analysis of the inflectional system and syntax of Kayardild, a typologically striking language of Northern Australia. It sets forth arguments for recognizing an intricate syntactic structure that underlies the exuberant distribution of inflectional features throughout the clause, and for an intermediate, ‘morphemic’ level of representation that mediates morphosyntactic features' realization as morphological forms. The book differs from existing treatments of Kayardild in unifying the explanation of shared morphological exponents, positing a detailed, empirically-grounded underlying syntax, identifying new clausal and nominal structures, simplifying the analysis of Kayardild's dual tense system, rejecting an analysis according to which some case markers are morphologically ‘verbalizing’ and some tense markers ‘nominalizing’, and arguing that upper bounds on syntactic complexity are inherently syntactic rather than derivative of constraints on morphology. Analyses are expressed formally in terms of syntactic structures and morphosyntactic features which will be interpretable to a broad range of theories. Early chapters provide overviews of Kayardild phonology and morphological structure in general, and a final chapter implements the analysis in constraint-based grammar. Example sentences are glossed across four or five lines, furnishing explicit analyses at multiple levels of representation, and an appendix gathers over one hundred example sentences to provide large-scale empirical support for the syntactic analysis of tense inflection. Kayardild Morphology and Ssyntax will appeal to the formal or typological syntactician, morphologist, or phonologist, to advanced students, and to all who wish to understand more about the typological significance of Kayardild.

This book investigates a large range of changes and their motivations in all parts of the grammar and lexicon. The core argument is that, in the absence of a Grand Unification Theory in linguistics, a unified account of change is impossible without ignoring the bulk of natural language changes. Changes occur in successive formal grammars. Differences among successive I‐languages constitute a change in the E‐language, but this work rejects the customary high premium on acquisition to the near exclusion of the role of adults and adolescents in the incrementation of change. Many innovations arise from competition in contact accommodation, but contact is only a catalyst. Features determine parametric variation and structures provide evidence (cues) for features. Since changes are typically not macroscalar, this work adopts a (micro)cue theory of parametric variation. The traditional view required a categorical (off/on) value setting. Through multiple binary cuts and different microcues, the new view permits a language to have, for instance, V2 in some structures but not others. With the reduction of UG (Universal Grammar) to a universal inventory of formal features, the once extravagant role of UG has been largely replaced by principles of efficient computation to explain crosslinguistically frequent changes. Additionally, neurolinguists have concluded that some constraints have evolved over time into a multilevel representation in the nervous system. Taking this and structure‐building features into account, this work argues that some changes are grounded in synchronic cognitive constraints, a large number in principles of computation, many in extralinguistic factors, some in processing and functional motivations, and some just accidents of history.

This book investigates a large range of changes and their motivations in all parts of the grammar and lexicon. The core argument is that, in the absence of a Grand Unification Theory in linguistics, a unified account of change is impossible without ignoring the bulk of natural language changes. Changes occur in successive formal grammars. Differences among successive I-languages constitute a change in the E‐language, but this work rejects the customary high premium on acquisition to the near exclusion of the role of adults and adolescents in the incrementation of change. Many innovations arise from competition in contact accommodation, but contact is only a catalyst. Features determine parametric variation and structures provide evidence (cues) for features. Since changes are typically not macroscalar, this work adopts a (micro)cue theory of parametric variation. The traditional view required a categorical (off/on) value setting. Through multiple binary cuts and different microcues, the new view permits a language to have, for instance, V2 in some structures but not others. With the reduction of UG (Universal Grammar) to a universal inventory of formal features, the once extravagant role of UG has been largely replaced by principles of efficient computation to explain crosslinguistically frequent changes. Additionally, neurolinguists have concluded that some constraints have evolved over time into a multilevel representation in the nervous system. Taking this and structure-building features into account, this work argues that some changes are grounded in synchronic cognitive constraints, a large number in principles of computation, many in extralinguistic factors, some in processing and functional motivations, and some just accidents of history.