Nominalization and Its Role in the Formation of Noun Phrase in Japanese

This study sheds light on the yields of nominalization and their role in the formation of Noun Phrases in Japanese in an envisaged framework which considers nominalization to be a morphosyntactic process. Nominalization operates on the linguistic constituent to transform it into a derivative/transformed constituent. It brings forth derivative nouns by operating on the words other than nouns involving the process of derivation as well as action nominal constituent and nominal clause respectively involving the simultaneous process of desententialization and transformation, and the process of reduction of clausal properties from a finite clause. It fundamentally differs from the prevalent nominalizer approach, which derives bound-noun-headed nominals by juxtaposition of a dependent constituent with the nominalizers, e.g. no and koto. The derivative noun, bound-noun-headed constituent, action nominal constituent as well as nominal clause together form a grammatical category called nominals, which partake both as the head or the adnominal in the formation of NP involving certain grammatical rules.

Partial Case-Marking in Japanese Stripping/Sluicing: A Dynamic Syntax Account

This article presents novel data on partial case-marking in Japanese stripping/sluicing: only the final NP in multiple stripping/sluicing may lack a case particle. These data challenge previous works that assign radically distinct structures to stripping/sluicing depending on whether or not case-marking is involved. These case-marking patterns are reducible to incremental growth of semantic representation, formalised in Dynamic Syntax: each NP is parsed at an ‘unfixed ’ node, and this structural uncertainty must be resolved before another unfixed node is introduced

Deverbal Nouns in Modern Hebrew: Between Grammar and Competition

Diese Arbeit beschäftigt sich mit den morphosyntaktischen und derivationellen Eigenschaften von Nominalisierungen im modernen Hebräisch und ihrer strukturelle Repräsentation. Eine zentrale Fragestellung im Rahmen von ‚hybriden‘ Wortbildungen wie Nominalisierungen ist die Ähnlichkeit bzw. die Unähnlichkeit zu den ihr zugrundeliegenden Verben. Unter Heranziehung des Hebräischen, einer Sprache mit reicher morphologischer Markierung, sowohl bei Verben als auch bei Nominalisierungen, werden mehrere Divergenzen zwischen Verben und entsprechenden Nominalisierungen im Bereich der Argument- und Ereignisstruktur eliminiert. Ausgehend von der einflussreichen These der Gleichsetzung von Nominalisierung und Passivierung untersucht diese Studie die syntaktische Struktur und deren Interaktion mit dem Wortbildungsprozess der Nominalisierung und zeigt, dass Eigenschaften, die für Passivformen typisch sind, in Nominalisierungen fehlen. Dabei präsentiert diese Studie mit der Untersuchung morphosyntaktischer Faktoren und deren Beziehungen zu Nominalisierungen, der Inkonsistenzen aufzeigt. Durch einen Vergleich von etwa 3000 Verben auf Basis der Verbklassenmorphologie ergibt sich eine signifikante Asymmetrie zwischen Nominalisierungen, die eine mediale/intransitive Markierung tragen, und Nominalisierungen, die als aktiv markiert sind, wobei sich die mediale Form in zwei klar definierten syntaktischen Kontexten als weniger produktiv erweist. Dies zeigt sich auch dadurch, dass alternierende Wurzeln, also Wurzeln die sowohl aktive als auch mediale Verbformen ausbilden können, bilden ihre Nominalisierungen auf Basis ihrer aktiven Form. Auf Basis der Konzepte von Konkurrenz und Markiertheit werden diese paradigmatischen Lücken nicht als grammatisch bedingte Inkompatibilitäten analysiert, sondern als eine generelle Präferenz für weniger markierte Formen (aktiv-markierte Nominalisierungen) gegenüber komplexeren (medial-markierte Nominalisierungen), wie in der Performanz häufig zu beobachten.This study is concerned with the properties, structural representation and derivational patterns of deverbal nouns (DNs) in Modern Hebrew. A recurring question arises in the context of such ‘hybrid’ formations: precisely how similar or far-apart are these derivatives from the verbs from which they originate? Enlisting Hebrew, a language with rich morphological marking on both verbs as well as DNs, several loci of divergence between verbs and respective DNs in the domain of argument- and event-structure are eliminated. Taking as a point of reference the influential view which equates the processes of nominalization and passivization, this study scrutinizes syntactic structure and its interaction with nominalization, showing that behaviours typical of passives are absent from DNs. a finding which weakens long-standing beliefs bearing on this class. A novel area of exploration offered in this study is the examination of morpho-syntactic factors and their interaction with nominalization, a domain where inconsistencies do arise. What emerges from a comparison of some 3000 verbs based on verb-class (templatic) morphology is a significant asymmetry between DNs carrying Middle (intransitive) marking and DNs marked as Active, wherein Middle forms are found to be less productive in two well-defined syntactic contexts. Not entirely absent, however, the same roots which fail to surface with Middle morphology are perfectly licit when derived from the corresponding Active verb (in case of alternating roots). Building on the notions of competition and markedness, such paradigmatic gaps are analysed not as grammatically-determined incompatibilities, but as a consistent preference for less-marked forms (Active-marked DNs) over more complex ones (Middle-marked DNs), a trend which lies within the realm of performance. As such, Hebrew DNs constitute a case study of the interrelations between the syntactic and morphological modules, and pragmatics

The Evolution of Focus in Austronesian (1981)

The present paper attempts to account for the evolution of Western Austronesian focus constructions by showing that they evolved as a result of the reinterpretation of nominalized equational constructions by analogy with functionally equivalent verbal constructions, i.e., *-en, *ni-/-in-, *-ana, *iSi-, and possibly *mu-/-um- were all noun-deriving affixes in PAN that their verbal focus usages in the Formosan and Philippine languages represent a secondary development

Proceedings of the 1st Conference on Central Asian Languages and Linguistics (ConCALL)

The Conference on Central Asian Languages and Linguistics (ConCALL) was founded in 2014 at Indiana University by Dr. Öner Özçelik, the residing director of the Center for Languages of the Central Asian Region (CeLCAR). As the nation’s sole U.S. Department of Education funded Language Resource Center focusing on the languages of the Central Asian Region, CeLCAR’s main mission is to strengthen and improve the nation’s capacity for teaching and learning Central Asian languages through teacher training, research, materials development projects, and dissemination. As part of this mission, CeLCAR has an ultimate goal to unify and fortify the Central Asian language learning community by facilitating networking between linguists and language educators, encouraging research projects that will inform language instruction, and provide opportunities for professionals in the field to both showcase their work and receive feedback from their peers. Thus ConCALL was established to be the first international academic conference to bring together linguists and language educators in the languages of the Central Asian region, including both the Altaic and Eastern Indo-European languages spoken in the region, to focus on research into how these specific languages are represented formally, as well as acquired by second/foreign language learners, and also to present research driven teaching methods. Languages served by ConCALL include, but are not limited to: Azerbaijani, Dari, Karakalpak, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Lokaabharan, Mari, Mongolian, Pamiri, Pashto, Persian, Russian, Shughnani, Tajiki, Tibetan, Tofalar, Tungusic, Turkish, Tuvan, Uyghur, Uzbek, Wakhi and more!The Conference on Central Asian Languages and Linguistics held at Indiana University on 16-17 May 1014 was made possible through the generosity of our sponsors: Center for Languages of the Central Asian Region (CeLCAR), Ostrom Grant Programs, IU's College of Arts and Humanities Center (CAHI), Inner Asian and Uralic National Resource Center (IAUNRC), IU's School of Global and International Studies (SGIS), IU's College of Arts and Sciences, Sinor Research Institute for Inner Asian Studies (SRIFIAS), IU's Department of Central Eurasian Studies (CEUS), and IU's Department of Linguistics

From the Unexpected to the Unbelievable: Thetics, Miratives and Exclamatives in Conceptual Space

This study investigates the relationship between three linguistic functions: thetics, miratives and exclamatives. Thetics are an information structure configuration that conveys that the information is new to the addressee. The thetic subtypes selected for this study are the following: existentials (e.g. There are apples in the kitchen); presentatives (e.g. Heres your book); weather statements (e.g. It rains); physical sensation statements (e.g. My HEAD hurts) and hot news (e.g. MIchael JACKson died). Thetics do not perform a predication but present the state of affairs as a whole. Crosslinguistically, they tend to use morphosyntactic strategies that distinguish them from prototypical predications. Similar morphosyntactic strategies can also be found in miratives and exclamatives. Miratives are defined as grammatical markers that convey that the information is suprising for the speaker, whereas exclamatives are defined as a sentence type that conveys surprise with respect to a scalar extent that has surpassed the current expectations (e.g. How beautiful you are!). I hypothesize that the structural similarities between these functions are motivated by semantic resemblance. The structural features of these functions are compared in a sample of 76 languages, from which 360 constructions were extracted. Multidimensional scaling was used in order to construct a spatial representation of the degree of similarity/dissimilarity of the constructions. The resulting spatial map shows a dimension motivated by a semantic distinction between event-central and entity-central statements. It also shows a second dimension motivated by the following distinctions: 1) an existential domain, 2) a presentational domain, 3) a mirative domain, and 4) an exclamative domain. Several case studies illustrating the relationships between the functions are presented. It is also demonstrated that miratives can establish a distinction between unexpected and misexpected events. As for exclamatives, it is shown that they are related to linguistic hedges that convey the degree of membership of an item into a category. Several neurobiological and psychological correlates are proposed: thetics correspond to two types of awareness, whereas miratives and exclamatives are related to different stages of a cognitive-evolutionary model of surprise

Action nominalizations in Early Modern scientific English

The present dissertation, Action nominalizations in Early Modern scientific English, was conceived as a contribution to the literature on nominalizations. Its point of departure was the assertion that action nominalizations are the result of a word-formation process which aims at filling gaps in the vocabulary of a particular language, English in this case. Action nominalizations are clear cases of grammatical metaphor (Halliday 2004 [1985]), since they are nouns, but they refer to actions as verbs do. For this reason, attention is given to the evolution and use of action nominalizations in the Early Modern English period (henceforth EModE), the time which sees the greatest increase of vocabulary in the history of the English language. Given that nouns prototypically refer to objects rather than actions, the question arises as to how they behave when they denote actions, and what the consequences of this use are

A study of agrammatism with special reference to Hebrew

The aim of the thesis was to test empirically Grodzinsky's account of agrammatism. Grodzinsky's account is based on Chomsky's Government and Binding theory and it claims that the comprehension deficit in agrammatism is due to the deletion of 'trace' present in passive and relative clauses. English and Hebrew speaking patients were tested. The experiment exploited a special feature of the Hebrew language in which it is possible to construct passive sentences without trace. In addition to passive and obJect relative clause sentences, other sentence types were also used. The results did not support the trace deletion hypothesis of Grodzinsky. An alternative version of his hypothesis, according to which sentences that require coindexation between two elements in the sentence are difficult for agrommatic aphasics did obtain support. The results also suggested that reversible sentences are particularly difficult for agrammatic patients. Grodzinsky's account also claimed that in agrammatism governed prepositions are impaired and ungoverned prepositions are preserved. In order to test this part of the theory an indepth case study of a Hebrew speaking agrammatic patient who never used prepositions in her spontaneous speech was carried out. The study tested the hypotheses of Grodzinsky and Friederici and it concluded that Grodzinsky's hypothesis according to which governed prepositions are impaired and ungoverned prepositions are preserved is not supported by the evidence. Meaningful prepositions as Friederici suggested, were more likely to be produced in certain tasks. Although this also cannot explain the total omission of prepositions of this patient. In addition to the preposition case study, the patient's ability to deal with the Hebrew verb system was investigated. Both the preposition and the verb study suggested that in agrammatism it is not the principles of Universal Grammar that are violated but the particular features of individual languages

North East Indian Linguistics 8 (NEIL 8)

This is the eighth volume of North East Indian Linguistics, a series of volumes for publishing current research on the languages of North East India, the first volume of which was published in 2008. The papers in this volume were presented at the 9th conference of the North East Indian Linguistics Society (NEILS), held at Tezpur University in February 2016. The papers for this anniversary volume continue the NEILS tradition of research by both local and international scholars on a wide range of languages and topics. This eighth volume includes papers on small community languages and large regional languages from across North East India, and present detailed phonological, semantic and morphosyntactic studies of structures that are characteristic of particular languages or language groups alongside sociolinguistic studies that explore language attitudes in contexts of language shift