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There was a tendency, in the nineteenth century, for Europeans to denigrate the customs of dark-skinned peoples, and to put forward the uninformed opinion that their languages were ‘primitive’. To counter this mistaken idea, the first pages of textbooks and the first lectures of freshman courses in linguistics have emphasised, as loud as was possible, that ‘no language spoken in the world today is primitive’ and then ‘that all languages are about equal in complexity’. But surely they are not all of exactly equal worth. The present volume is the first serious attempt to address this question, in a measured and scientific manner. It is intended for students of linguistics and, beyond that, for a wide general audience. In essence, it presents a succinct portrait of the discipline of linguistics, pared down to its essentials. I work on the principle that if something can be explained, it should be explainable in everyday language, which any intelligent person can understand, although of course a degree of concentration and thoughtfulness is required. The use of technical terms has been kept to a minimum. Examples are quoted from a wide range of languages; these have been chosen to be simple (although not simplified), avoiding additional complexities which are irrelevant to the point being made. The book will be accessible to anyone with an interest in how languages work.

In virtually every bilingual situation empirically studied, borrowed items make up the overwhelming majority of other-language material, but short shrift has been given to this major manifestation of language contact. As a result, scholars have long been divided over whether borrowing is a process distinct from code-switching, leading to long-standing controversy over how best to theorize language mixing strategies. This volume focuses on lexical borrowing as it actually occurs in the discourse of bilingual speakers, building on more than three decades of original research. Based on vast quantities of spontaneous performance data and a highly ramified analytical apparatus, it characterizes the phenomenon in the speech community and in the grammar, both synchronically and diachronically. In contrast to most other treatments, which deal with the product of borrowing, this work examines the process: How speakers incorporate foreign items into their bilingual discourse, how they adapt them to recipient-language grammatical structure, how these forms diffuse across speakers and communities, how long they persist in real time, and whether they change over the duration. It proposes falsifiable hypotheses about established loanwords and nonce borrowings and tests them empirically on a wealth of unique datasets on a wide variety of typologically similar and distinct language pairs. A major focus is the detailed analysis of integration, the principal mechanism underlying the borrowing process. Though the shape the borrowed form assumes may be colored by community convention, we show that the act of transforming donor-language elements into native material is universal.

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.

Causation is a topic of great interest to a number of different domains related to the study of natural language, from philosophy to cognitive ontology to argument structure. However, these domains have historically seen little interaction. This volume collects research from experts in the fields of linguistics, philosophy, and psychology, making explicit their assumptions and key questions, with the aim of arriving at a more sophisticated understanding both of how causal concepts are expressed in causal meanings and of how those meanings in turn are organized into structures. The research presented here addresses some of the most exciting current questions related to the way causation is expressed in grammatical structures, using data from both familiar and less familiar languages.

Understanding the properties of questions and their embedding predicates has been a central project in theoretical syntax and semantics over the last fifty years. This book examines the semantic interpretation of various types of nominal complements in so-called concealed question (CQ) constructions, providing new results about the nature of CQs, their interaction with quantification, and the semantics of attitude ascriptions. Over the past forty years, several accounts have emerged (question-based accounts: Harris 2007, Aloni 2008, Roelofsen and Aloni 2008, Percus 2009; proposition-based accounts: Romero 2005, Nathan 2006; de-re analyses: Frana 2006, Schwager 2008; individual concept accounts: Heim 1979, Romero 2005, Frana 2010a, 2013), all of which successfully derive the intuitive meaning of sentences with simple definite CQs (e.g. John knows the price of milk). However, examination of these simple sentences does not discriminate one CQ-theory from another, nor does it tell us much about what ingredients are necessary for the proper treatment of CQs in natural language. For this reason, many authors have recently started investigating the interpretation of more complex CQ-constructions. This book can be located within this line of research. Its main result is to provide genuinely new analyses for a range of CQ data that seemed problematic for existing analyses, including (i) the presence (or absence) of so-called pair-list and set readings in sentences with quantified CQs and (ii) the interaction between this type of ambiguity with the ambiguity between so-called question and meta-question readings of sentences with nested CQs (as in Heim 1979?s famous sentence John knows the price that Fred knows).

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 argues that major patterns of variation across languages are structured by general principles of efficiency in language use and communication. Evidence for these comes from languages permitting structural choices from which selections are made in performance, e.g. between competing word orders and between relative clauses with a resumptive pronoun versus a gap. The preferences and patterns of performance within languages are reflected in the fixed conventions and variation patterns across grammars, leading to a ‘‘Performance–Grammar Correspondence Hypothesis.’’ The general theory that is laid out in Hawkins’s Efficiency and Complexity in Grammars (OUP) is extended and updated. New areas of grammar and of performance are discussed, new research findings are incorporated that test Hawkins’s earlier predictions, and new advances in the contributing fields of language processing, linguistic theory, historical linguistics, and typology are addressed. This efficiency approach to variation has far-reaching theoretical consequences of relevance for many current issues in the language sciences. These include the notion of ease of processing and how to measure it, the role of processing in language change, the nature of language universals and their explanation, the theory of complexity, the relative strength of competing and cooperating principles, and the proper definition of fundamental grammatical notions such as ‘dependency.’ The book also gives a new typology of VO and OV languages and their correlating properties seen from this perspective, and a new typology of the noun phrase and of argument structure.

The main purpose of the book is to advance an analysis of case and argument structure that can help to explain variation in the syntactic behavior of external arguments across languages. The focus is on properties of ergative case-marked arguments, and the book proposes an analysis of ergative arguments as prepositional phrases in some languages (but not in others), to explain variations in syntactic properties first in ergative case marking languages as compared to non-ergative ones, and second, between PP-ergative languages as compared to DP-ergative languages. The book also covers a range of other topics within ergativity, and it touches on quite a large range of languages including, Chukchi, Georgian, Salish languages, Mayan languages, Polynesian languages, Avar, and Tsez.

Default-based analyses of linguistic data are most prevalent in morphological descriptions because morphology is pervaded by idiosyncrasy and irregularity, and defaults allow for a representation of the facts by construing regularity not as all or nothing but as a matter of degree. Defaults manifest themselves in a variety of ways in a group of morphological theories that have received much attention in the last few years, and whose main ideas and claims have been recently consolidated as important monographs. In May 2012 a workshop was convened at the University of Kentucky in Lexington to show-case default usage in four prominent theories of morphology. The presenters were key proponents of the theories, in most cases a theory’s author. The role of defaults was outlined in Construction Morphology, Network Morphology, Paradigm Function Morphology, and Word Grammar. With reference to these theories, as well as the lexical syntactic framework of HPSG, this book addresses questions about the role of defaults in the lexicon, including: (1) Does a defaults-based account of language have implications for the architecture of the grammar, particularly the proposal that morphology is an autonomous component? (2) How does a default differ from the canonical or prototypical in morphology? (3) Do defaults have a psychological basis? (4) How do defaults help us understand language as a sign-based system that is flawed, where the one to one association of form and meaning breaks down in the morphology?

This book argues that definite descriptions refer to or range overindividuals, as claimed by Frege and Strawson. Working within asituation semantics framework, Elbourne maintains that definitedescriptions combine with a situation variable in the syntax; at thesemantic level, the whole expression is of type e and contains a locallyfree situation variable that can be either referential or bound by somehigher operator. The resulting theory is tested against a wide range ofdata from the literature, including problems related to the following:presupposition projection; the referential/attributive distinction;descriptions in predicative position; c-commanded and donkey anaphora;the de re/de dicto distinction and other modal issues; existenceentailments in embedded contexts; and incompleteness. Comparisons aredrawn between this theory and other theories that find contemporaryadvocates. Particular attention is paid to the relative merits of thecurrent theory and the Russellian theory. The penultimate chapterexamines the semantics of pronouns and argues that they too arebasically Fregean definite descriptions.

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.

Diagnosis is an essential part of scientific research. It refers to the process of identifying a phenomenon, property, or condition on the basis of certain signs and by the use of various diagnostic procedures. This book considers the use of diagnostics in syntactic research and focuses on the five core domains of natural language syntax — ellipsis, agreement, anaphora, phrasal movement, and head movement. Each empirical domain is considered in turn from the perspectives of syntax, syntax at the interfaces, neuropsycholinguistics, and language diversity. The book presents current thoughts on, and practical answers to, the question: What are the diagnostic signs, techniques, and procedures that can be used to analyse natural language syntax?

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 develops a model of language which can be characterized as functionalist, usage-based, dynamic, and complex-adaptive. Its core idea is that linguistic structure is not stable and uniform, but continually refreshed and in fact reconstituted by the feedback-loop interaction of three components: usage, i.e. the interpersonal and cognitive activities of speakers in concrete communication; conventionalization, i.e. the social processes taking place in speech communities; and entrenchment, i.e. the cognitive processes taking place in the minds of individual speakers. Extending the so-called Entrenchment-and-Conventionalization Model, the book shows that what we call the Linguistic System is created, sustained, and continually adapted by the ongoing interaction between usage, conventionalization, and entrenchment. The model contributes to closing the gap in usage-based models concerning how exactly usage is transformed into collective and individual grammar and how these two grammars in turn feed back into usage. The book exploits and extends insights from an exceptionally wide range of fields, including usage-based cognitive linguistics, psycholinguistics, interactional linguistics and pragmatics, historical linguistics, sociolinguistics and the sociology and philosophy of language, as well as quantitative corpus linguistics. It makes numerous original suggestions about, among other things, how cognitive processing and representation are related and about the manifold ways in which individuals and communities contribute to shaping language and bringing about language variation and change. It presents a coherent account of the role of forces that are known to affect language structure, variation, and change, e.g. economy, efficiency, extravagance, embodiment, identity, social order, prestige, mobility, multilingualism, and language contact.

This book provides a discussion concerning cyclic syntax by examining the characteristics of syntactic edges and their interactions with linearization and movement. In particular, it contributes to the current debate over how cyclic Spell-out affects the (re)ordering of elements in scrambling. The chapter develops a proposal that accounts for certain peculiarities associated with syntactic edges by exploring three major factors in cyclic syntax. Specifically, it shows that the probe-goal theory of movement restricts certain types of movement out of edges—namely that, (sub-)extraction from an inner edge to an outer edge of the same head is impossible. The book argues that this ordering restriction for syntactic edges is preserved in the subsequent stages of derivation due to cyclic Spell-out and linearization at the interface. Furthermore, it proposes that the edges of a predicational structure in general show the same ordering restrictions, which can be best captured under the thesis that a predicational unit undergoes cyclic Spell-out. Evidence for the book's proposal is drawn from sub-extraction and (re)ordering patterns out of edges in various types of predicational domain. A wide range of scrambling data in Korean and Japanese (with some reference to Russian) are explained by the current proposal. In particular, the consequences of cyclic Spell-out for (sub-)scrambling, types of quantifier floating, predicate fronting, types of argument structure, and secondary predicates are examined in this book.

This book presents theoretical and empirical research on the syntax of events within the broader framework of generative grammar. A central theoretical concern is how conceptual meaning interacts with narrow syntactic computation in the derivation of the information of an event. A set of Integration Conditions are proposed. Building on the Conceptual-Intentional Interface Conditions proposed in Chomsky’s (1995, 2000, 2001) Minimalist Programme, the Integration Conditions require that the content of the predicate be licensed by theta-role information generated by narrow syntax. Another theoretical component concerns the functional structure of events, which is related to such issues as the parallel between the event and nominal domains, the mapping of a predicate onto an entity, as well as the grammatical foundation of verb classification. The theoretical framework is applied in three areas: (1) the syntax of resultatives in English and Chinese, which exhibits how a theory of the syntax of events can address the thematic relationship between core arguments and predicates; (2) variation of resultatives at cross-linguistic and diachronic levels, which shows how the universal functional structure of events can be compatible with, and even contribute to, the theory of parametric variation in the generative tradition; and (3) applicative constructions, which extend the analysis of core arguments to non-core arguments, and shed light on the typology of verb/satellite-framed languages (Talmy 1991, 2000) and the analyticity parameter proposed in Huang (2015).

This book is about the processes by which novel words are coined. Ten distinctions are drawn between processes based on implicit knowledge and those deployed with varying levels of consciousness. The rationale for this distinction is that the former operate on grammatical principles and yield the abstract hierarchical structures of core morphology. The latter apply templatic or other prosodic structures to output representations, and yield the non-hierarchical constructs of expressive or playful morphology. Core morphology includes affixation, compounding, conversion, recursivity, semantic and other feature change, and various types of apophony (sing, sang, sung) and consonant gradation. Some of these are employed in expressive morphology but with different properties, except in the case of compounding, where the abstract grammatical principles apply in blending and neoclassical formations to yield the same compound types. A syntactic theory of morphology is invoked to account for the most difficult of the recent English formations. For instance, antisymmetry explains the absence of verbs like *to truck-drive when truck-driver is derived from truck-drive plus -er in a c-commanding position. Phase theory accounts for the fixer-upper type. The different syntactic positions of particles explain the cookout vs. outcook types. And so on. Expressive morphology includes truncation, sound-symbolically motivated constructs (onomatopoeia, synesthesia, etc.), and conjunctive and reduplicative formations, all of which have distinct formal properties. A word so produced, when institutionalized, can lose its expressive or iconic motivation and be lexicalized like an output of core morphology.

Within formal semantics, research on the expression of modality in natural language has traditionally focused on verbs. This book brings together novel work on the semantics and pragmatics of some nominal expressions that also convey modality. The book focuses on indefinites that can convey ignorance on the part of the speaker with respect to which individual satisfies the existential claim that they make. Despite the fact that epistemic indefinites have attracted some attention in the recent semantics literature, we still do not have a good understanding of the phenomenon: there is currently no agreement as to what the source of their epistemic component is, we lack sufficient cross-linguistic data to develop a semantic typology of these items, and the parallelisms and differences between epistemic indefinites and other expressions that convey epistemic modality have not been explored in depth. In this volume, the reader will find novel empirical observations on and important theoretical insights into epistemic indefinites, together with discussions of related topics (e.g. modal free relatives, modified numerals, and epistemic modals). This brings us one step closer to developing a semantic typology of epistemic indefinites that explores the place of these expressions within a general typology of modal items.

This book is an exploration of the syntax of external arguments in transitivity alternations from a cross-linguistic perspective. The empirical focus is the causative/anticausative alternation and the formation of (adjectival) Passives. The bulk of the discussion, couched within Distributed Morphology, is devoted to the properties of the (anti-)causative alternation, which the text takes to be a Voice alternation. It offers a detailed discussion of the morphological realization of anticausatives across languages, and argues that marked anticausatives involve expletive Voice and are not reflexive predicates. In the discussion of Passives, the book argues that the fact that Passives in German and English—unlike their counterparts in Greek, where Passives are syncretic with anticausatives—are morphologically unique reflects the fact that they are also structurally unique. Passives in English and German involve Passive Voice, while they involve Middle Voice in Greek. The text furthermore shows that the distinction between target and resultant state participles is an important one in order to understand the contribution of Voice in adjectival Passives. Importantly, the study provided tools to probe into the morpho-syntactic structure of verbs and participles, and to identify the properties of verbal alternations across languages.