Reflexive - Middle and Reciprocal - Middle Continua in Romanian

In Romanian, the middle marker se is employed to encode five distinct situation types: reflexive, reciprocal, (medio-)passive, inchoative and impersonal. The principal aim of the present research is to identify the relationships among the different uses of the marker and to put forward explanations for them within a cognitive framework. The discussion presented is limited to the semantic properties of middles. This work provides an insight into Romanian itself, as well as a contribution to theoretical accounts of middle systems in general. Following theories developed by Faltz (1985), Geniusien? (1987), Haiman (1983), Kemmer (1993), Maldonado (1992) and Manney (2000), a synchronic account of the Romanian Middle Domain is given. Our findings show that the semantic property of low elaboration of events (introduced by Kemmer 1993) constitutes the common denominator among the different uses explored. For instance, the Romanian middle construction: (1) Copilul se piapt?n?. child MIDDLE brushes ‘The child brushes (her/his hair).’ involves low elaboration since the event expressed exhibits relatively low distinguishability of participants, the Patient is backgrounded, and the verb (se piept?na ‘brush one’s hair’) denotes what is typically a self-directed event. One innovative aspect of the research concerns the uncovering of formal and semantic continua between certain Romanian middles situation types, namely natural reflexives and natural reciprocals, and their non-middle counterparts (prototypical reflexives and prototypical reciprocals, respectively). This sheds light on the interaction between the various middle categories comprising the Middle Domain for the case of Romanian and raises several open questions regarding middle systems cross-linguistically, such as: do any other middle systems exhibit continua among their middle categories, and, if so, which middle types are they and are these the same as the ones found in Romanian

Reflexive - Middle and Reciprocal - Middle Continua in Romanian

In Romanian, the middle marker se is employed to encode five distinct situation types: reflexive, reciprocal, (medio-)passive, inchoative and impersonal. The principal aim of the present research is to identify the relationships among the different uses of the marker and to put forward explanations for them within a cognitive framework. The discussion presented is limited to the semantic properties of middles. This work provides an insight into Romanian itself, as well as a contribution to theoretical accounts of middle systems in general. Following theories developed by Faltz (1985), Geniusien? (1987), Haiman (1983), Kemmer (1993), Maldonado (1992) and Manney (2000), a synchronic account of the Romanian Middle Domain is given. Our findings show that the semantic property of low elaboration of events (introduced by Kemmer 1993) constitutes the common denominator among the different uses explored. For instance, the Romanian middle construction: (1) Copilul se piapt?n?. child MIDDLE brushes ‘The child brushes (her/his hair).’ involves low elaboration since the event expressed exhibits relatively low distinguishability of participants, the Patient is backgrounded, and the verb (se piept?na ‘brush one’s hair’) denotes what is typically a self-directed event. One innovative aspect of the research concerns the uncovering of formal and semantic continua between certain Romanian middles situation types, namely natural reflexives and natural reciprocals, and their non-middle counterparts (prototypical reflexives and prototypical reciprocals, respectively). This sheds light on the interaction between the various middle categories comprising the Middle Domain for the case of Romanian and raises several open questions regarding middle systems cross-linguistically, such as: do any other middle systems exhibit continua among their middle categories, and, if so, which middle types are they and are these the same as the ones found in Romanian

Inferentials in spoken English

Although there is a growing body of research on inferential sentences (Declerck 1992, Delahunty 1990, 1995, 2001, Koops 2007, Pusch 2006), most of this research has been on their forms and functions in written discourse. This has left a gap with regards to their range of structural properties and allowed disagreement over their analysis to linger without a conclusive resolution. Most accounts regard the inferential as a type of it-cleft (Declerck 1992, Delahunty 2001, Huddleston and Pullum 2002, Lambrecht 2001), while a few view it as an instance of extraposition (Collins 1991, Schmid 2009). More recently, Pusch's work in Romance languages proposes the inferential is used as a discourse marker (2006, forthcoming). Based on a corpus study of examples from spoken New Zealand English, the current paper provides a detailed analysis of the formal and discoursal properties of several sub-types of inferentials (positive, negative, as if and like inferentials). We show that despite their apparent formal differences from the prototypical cleft, inferentials are nevertheless best analysed as a type of cleft, though this requires a minor reinterpretation of “cleft construction.” We show how similar the contextualized interpretations of clefts and inferentials are and how these are a function of their lexis and syntax

Sociolinguistic variation at the grammatical/discourse level Demonstrative clefts in spoken British English

This paper brings together the study of sociolinguistic variation and the area of grammatical analysis by investigating demonstrative cleft constructions in spoken British English such as That’s what I wanted to talk about and This is where I saw him. Using the Spoken BNC2014S, I ask whether speaker characteristics, including gender, age, education and occupation, might be correlated with the use of demonstrative clefts and with various aspects of their structure (preference for the distal or proximal demonstrative pronoun, use of negative polarity, and use of stance adverbs). Findings suggest that in British English, demonstrative cleft use is more likely to be present in the speech of males compared to females, working adults in higherskilled occupations compared to semi-skilled adults, and in adults of middle age compared to younger adults. This work shows that even highly abstract grammatical constructions can be sensitive to speaker preferences and linguistic communicative style

The Crucible of Language: How Language and Mind Create Meaning

Among the chief qualities of The Crucible, apart from the charming writing style, is its ability to bring to light, in a highly readable form for a non-expert audience, the complex problems that researching language raises. The Crucible is therefore a worthy and long-awaited addition to current works on language, and one which is sure to bring much joy and excitement to anyone who has ever wondered about how meaning arises. The book is also testament to the fact that no explanation of any complex phenomenon can ever be done on neutral territory; each such explanation is anchored in a particular approach or belief, and seen through the lens of a particular theoretical leaning– and researching language is no exception

Testing the boundaries of the middle voice: Observations from English and Romanian

The middle voice has received ample attention in the literature, yet the precise boundary between middle voice and other related constructions still remains elusive. For example, do sentences like Mary slept (*herself) well last night and Mary washed (herself) thoroughly and expertly belong to the middle voice or the reflexive domain, or are they simply intransitive one-participant structures? While ambiguity between reflexive and middles has been noted by (Kemmer, Suzanne. 1993. The middle voice. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.), I show that the problem is more widespread. Depending on the marking patterns available in a given language, such ambiguities can occur between middles and prototypical intransitive one-participant events, or between middles and reflexives. Using data from two languages with distinct marking patterns – English (a language with a reflexive marker but no middle marker) and Romanian (a language with one marker of each type) – I discuss the possibility of distinguishing middles from other related constructions. In English, it is shown that the him/herself test can be used to distinguish direct middles from intransitive one-participant events. In Romanian, we see middle and reflexive markers used together in the same construction without contradiction, bringing together both middle and reflexive semantics (as well as marking). In agreement with (Maldonado, Ricardo. 2000. Spanish reflexives. In Zygmunt Frajzyngier & Traci Walker (eds.), Reflexives: Forms and functions, 153–185. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.) and (Manney, Linda. 2001. Middle voice in Modern Greek: Meaning and function of a morphoyntactic category. Amsterdam &Philadelphia: John Benjamins.), the account given here supports the view of the middle voice as a unified phenomenon, and following (Maldonado, Ricardo. 2009. Middle as a basic voice system. In Lilian Guerrero, Ibáñez Sergio & Belloro Valeria (eds.), Studies in role and reference grammar. México: Instituto de Investigaciones Filológicas, UNAM.), the main function of the middle is to profile the core properties of events (but not necessarily to reduce the relative elaboration of participants, as proposed by Kemmer, Suzanne. 1993. The middle voice. Amsterdam &Philadelphia: John Benjamins.). So, unlike active and passive voice which concern the focusing of various participants (namely, Agents and Patients, respectively), the middle voice focuses the event itself

Just because. Constructions in spoken and written New Zealand English

Just because (JB) is widely used and has been a target of commentary and humorous use by English speakers and aroused some interest among linguists, who have investigated its syntax, semantics, and derivation. Some, based on researcher constructed data, have proposed construction analyses (Hirose 1991, Bender and Kathol 2001). Another (Hilpert 2005: 97), using a diachronic corpus, proposes that JB has been grammaticalized as a concessive marker via "the discourse function of inference denial." Our study, based on a corpus of New Zealand written and spoken English, demonstrates, amongst other significant findings, that JB occurs in a far broader set of grammatical contexts than the earlier literature recognizes, that JB constructions are significantly more frequent in spoken than in written English, that JB adverbial clauses are more likely to occur in pre-posed than in post-posed position, that the meaning of just because affects this distribution, that just because is far more likely to be followed by a clause than a prepositional phrase, and that JB constructions are extremely likely to occur in the discourse context of a negator

Perception and flagging of loanwords – A diachronic case-study of Māori loanwords in New Zealand English

This paper combines a quantitative and qualitative analysis of a diachronic corpus of New Zealand newspapers built to analyse the use of Māori loanwords in New Zealand English. We report findings in relation to flagging (marking of loanwords as being foreign material in a given language) and show that it is (weakly) predicated by frequency-of-use and by semantic category of the loanword (core loans are flagged more than cultural ones), but not by listedness. Alongside this trend, we note that perceptions of writers using the words vary enormously in regard to which loans are integrated and familiar, matching neither listedness nor frequency-of-use patterns. This indicates that in NZE, loanword use remains strongly tied up with socio-political identity and language ideology, rather than rooted in linguistic factors (such as, bilingualism or filling in lexical gaps)

Hybrid Hashtags: #YouKnowYoureAKiwiWhen Your Tweet Contains Māori and English

Twitter constitutes a rich resource for investigating language contact phenomena. In this paper, we report findings from the analysis of a large-scale diachronic corpus of over one million tweets, containing loanwords from te reo Maori, the indigenous language spoken in New Zealand, into (primarily, New Zealand) English. Our analysis focuses on hashtags comprising mixed-language resources (which we term hybrid hashtags), bringing together descriptive linguistic tools (investigating length, word class, and semantic domains of the hashtags) and quantitative methods (Random Forests and regression analysis). Our work has implications for language change and the study of loanwords (we argue that hybrid hashtags can be linked to loanword entrenchment), and for the study of language on social media (we challenge proposals of hashtags as “words,” and show that hashtags have a dual discourse role: a micro-function within the immediate linguistic context in which they occur and a macro-function within the tweet as a whole)

The use of Māori words in National Science Challenge online discourse

New Zealand English is well-known for its heavy borrowing of words from Māori. This lexical component, unique to New Zealand English alone has been studied intensely over the last 50 years, particularly in newspaper media. Current research suggests the use is still increasing today, primarily in Māori-related contexts. Here, we analyse a surprising and unexpected use of Māori loanwords in science digital discourse (neither genre being previously investigated), where we discover a strong presence of Māori borrowings in National Science Challenge website and Twitter content. Using corpus linguistics methods, we argue that the use of Māori loanwords in this genre functions as a national identity building tool, used by various authors to signal that the ‘challenges’ the country faces are uniquely New Zealand’s ‘challenges’