Typology of Concessive Constructions

Viktor S. Xrakovskij (ed.)
Russian Academy of Sciences, Institute of Linguistic Research, Saint-Petersburg

This collective monograph by the Language Typology Workshop of the St. Petersburg Institute of Linguistic Research (Russian Academy of Sciences) proposes a study of concessive constructions in different languages from a single theoretical perspective. The monograph was prepared under a general research program adopted in the Laboratory as of the 1960s and focused on the grammatical verb categories related to the semantic and syntactic sentence structure. It continues the earlier collective monographs published under this program.

The volume consists of two parts and two appendices. Part 1 includes one chapter which sets forth the theoretical concept underlying all linguistic analyses provided in the collective monograph. The concept was developed as a device to describe concessive constructions in any language in a form which makes it possible to explicitly show both the common (above all, semantic) properties and typological (above all, formal) differences among concessive sentences attested in both related and unrelated languages. In addition, Chapter 1 provides a description of prototypical and marginal types of concessive constructions and proposes two multidimensional calculus classifications for concessive and concessive-conditional constructions.

Part 2 consists of three sections and 20 chapters on concessive constructions in various natural languages. The descriptions are to a large extent uniform, since they are based on the same typological questionnaire. The languages addressed in detail include: Bulgarian, Armenian, Early Latin, French, English, Finnish, Estonian, Hungarian, Hausa, Indonesian, Cambodian, Vietnamese, Ancient Chinese, Ancient Greek, Turkic languages, Even, Evenki, Eskimo, Japanese, and Agul (a Daghestanian language). Appendix 1 proposes a study of a concessive-conditional construction in Russian.

Appendix 2 presents a universal typological questionnaire on concessive constructions used as a yardstick for all descriptions provided in Part 2. The questionnaire has several sections, each addressing a separate set of issues with a preliminary brief description of those issues illustrated with examples from various languages and followed with relevant questions.

Other collective monographs by the Language Typology Workshop published earlier by LINCOM Studies in Theoretical Linguistics include: Xrakovskij V. S. (ed.). Typology of Iterative Constructions. LINCOM EUROPA, 1997; Xrakovskij V. S. (ed.). Typology of Imperative Constructions. LINCOM EUROPA 2001; and Xrakovskij V. S. (ed.). Typology of Conditional Constructions. LINCOM EUROPA, 2005.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface

Abbreviations

PART ONE

Chapter 1. Concessive constructions: meaning, syntax, and typology
Viktor S. Xrakovskij

PART TWO

Section one

Languages with prototypical concessive and concessive conditional constructions structured as complex sentence

Chapter 1. Concessive constructions in Bulgarian
Ruselina Nicolova

Chapter 2. Concessive constructions in Armenian
Natalia A. Kozintseva

Chapter 3. Concessive constructions in Early Latin
Margarita K. Sabaneyeva

Chapter 4. Concessive constructions in Modern French
Elena E. Kordi

Chapter 5. Concessive constructions in Modern English (some problems of description)
Victor A. Stegnij

Chapter 6. Concessive constructions in Finnish
Hannu Tommola

Chapter 7. Concessive constructions in Estonian
Katrin Karu, Irina P. Külmoja

Chapter 8. Concessive constructions in Hungarian
Katalin Palásti

Chapter 9. Concessive constructions in Hausa
Myrrah A. Smirnova, Nikolaj A. Dobronravin

Chapter 10. Expression of concessive meaning in Indonesian
Svetlana G. Kramarova, Alexander K. Ogloblin

Chapter 11. Concessive constructions in Cambodian
Natalya M. Spatari

Chapter 12. Concessive constructions in Vietnamese
Igor’ S. Bystrov, Nonna V. Stankevich

Chapter 13. Concessive constructions in Ancient Chinese
Tamara N. Nikitina

Section two

Languages with prototypical concessive constructions structured as semi-complex sentences, and prototypical concessive conditional constructions structured as complex sentences

Chapter 14. Concessive constructions in Ancient Greek (in Ionic and Attic prose of V–IV centuries B.C.)
Ildar I. Ibragimov

Section three

Languages with prototypical concessive and concessive conditional constructions structured as semi-complex sentences

Chapter 15. Concessive constructions in Turkic Languages
Dmitrij M. Nasilov, Xoršid F. Isxakova, Irina A. Nevskaya

Chapter 16. Concessive constructions in Even
Andrey L. Malchukov

Chapter 17. Concessive constructions in Evenki
Igor’ V. Nedjalkov

Chapter 18. Concessive constructions in Modern Japanese
Vladimir M. Alpatov, Tatiana V. Andronova

Chapter 19. Concessive constructions in Asiatic Eskimo
Nikolaj B. Vakhtin

Chapter 20. Concessive constructions in Agul
Nina R. Dobrushina, Solmaz R. Merdanova

Appendix 1

Concessive constructions in Russian: a case study of a non-finite conditional plus “focus particle” construction
Vera I. Podlesskaya

Appendix 2

A questionnaire on concessive constructions
Viktor S. Xrakovskij REFERENCES

INDEX OF SUBJECTS

INDEX OF LANGUAGES AND DIALECTS

INDEX OF AUTHORS

ISBN 9783862885107 (Hardbound). LINCOM Studies in Theoretical Linguistics 50. 584pp. 2012.

Morphology in Toulouse

Selected Proceedings of Décembrettes 7 (Toulouse, 2-3 December 2010)

Nabil Hathout, Fabio Montermini, Jesse Tseng (editors)

This volume contains a selection of the papers presented at the 7th Décembrettes, an international conference on linguistic morphology held at the University of Toulouse – Le Mirail on December 2-3, 2010. Since 2002, the Décembrettes have brought specialists of morphology to Southwestern France on a biannual basis, and have become one of the major conferences for scholars in this discipline. Over the years particular attention has been paid to the relationship of morphology to other disciplines, including linguistic typology, computational linguistics, psycholinguistics and neurolinguistics. Overall, twenty-six talks and posters were presented at this seventh edition, reflecting the variety of approaches and methodologies to be found in present-day morphology. The papers presented here propose studies of both inflectional and derivational morphology drawing on data from a wide range of typologically diverse languages. They propose synchronic and diachronic analyses, combining theoretical and empirical methods.
They include empirical studies of large amounts of data, theoretical discussions of fundamental issues, typological and experimental studies.

Introduction: Morphology in Toulouse
Nabil Hathout, Fabio Montermini, Jesse Tseng

Inflection class interactions
Matthew Baerman

Bare N(ominal) N(ominal) concatenations in Turkish: Compounds or syntactic fallacies?
Metin Bağrıaçık, Angela Ralli

Causative light verbs in Mandarin (and beyond)
Bianca Basciano

Prefix units in the mental lexicon
Hélène Giraudo, Madeleine Voga

-iser and -ifier suffixation in French: Verify data to ‘verize’ hipotheses
Stéphanie Lignon

Natural selection in self-organizing morphological systems
Mark Lindsay, Mark Aronoff

Stage level and individual level readings of dispositional nouns
Fabienne Martin

Adjectival bases of French -aliser and -ariser verbs: Syncretism or under-specification?
Fiammetta Namer

On the structure of reduplicants: Iconicity and preferred form in reduplication
Thomas Schwaiger

Selkup denominal adjectives: A generalized paradigm function analysis
Andrew Spencer

ISBN 9783862884124 (Hardbound). LINCOM Studies in Theoretical Linguistics 51. 252pp. 2013.

La struttura dell’informazione nel sintagma nominale: DP = CP?

Francesca Ramaglia
Università degli Studi Roma Tre

Questo volume propone un’analisi strutturale del sintagma nominale all’interno del quadro teorico offerto dalla Grammatica Generativa. In particolare, il lavoro esplora il parallelismo fra nome e verbo, così come quello fra le proiezioni estese di queste due categorie lessicali, sulla base di dati empirici tratti soprattutto da lingue tipologicamente e geneticamente diverse come il somalo, l’ungherese e l’italiano. Vengono analizzate in modo specifico costruzioni nominali marcate dal punto di vista dell’articolazione dell’informazione, tramite le quali si intende esaminare la cosiddetta “periferia sinistra” del sintagma nominale.

L’analisi proposta è supportata da numerosi esempi e resa più esplicita per mezzo di diagrammi e strutture ad albero. Il volume si propone dunque come contributo sia a livello descrittivo, relativamente alle diverse strutture nominali prese in esame, sia a livello esplicativo, in quanto l’analisi è basata su un apparato teorico solido e rigoroso.

Il presente lavoro può essere considerato di interesse per studenti di linguistica, e in particolare di sintassi, a livello avanzato, nonché per ricercatori interessati allo studio del sintagma nominale e del suo parallelismo con la struttura della frase. La presenza di dati tratti da lingue tipologicamente diverse rende inoltre questo testo utile per studiosi che si occupano di strutture nominali in una prospettiva comparativa.

ISBN 9783862884476. LINCOM Studies in Theoretical Linguistics 52. 130pp. 2013.

Studies on Grammaticalization and Lexicalization

Estudos de Gramaticalização e Lexicalização

José Pinto de Lima
Universidade de Lisboa

Preface by Christian Lehmann

This book includes twelve papers that deal with grammaticalization (and, subsidiarily, lexicalization) phenomena. It is divided in five parts. In the first part, the peculiar process that has led to the emergence of the Portuguese concessive conjunction embora ('although') is depicted and the question of the use of the subjunctive with concessive clauses is discussed; also, there is a study of the emergence of Pt. mal as a temporal conjunction, in a process that, apparently, does not agree with the normal grammaticalization cline.

The subject of the second part is the periphrastic future: in a theoretical paper, it is argued that concepts such as metaphor and metonymy are not really adequate to explain the change of Eng. go from full verb to future auxiliary; a second paper discusses the emergence of the Portuguese verb ir as a future auxiliary. Part III focuses on the related phenomena of subjectification and pragmaticalization, as exemplified by the development of Pt. pois into a phatic marker and by the way a conditional clause of Portuguese gave rise to an adverb of epistemic modality. Evidentiality makes up part IV, which features contrastive analyses of German and Portuguese verbs that have developed evidential readings, namely Ger. scheinen, drohen and versprechen, and Pt. parecer, ameaçar and prometer. Finally, part V includes two papers which broadly have to do with the formation of new grammatical paradigms: one is about the passive construction with Pt. ver ('see') and the other about Portuguese complex prepositions.

ISBN 9783862885169. LINCOM Studies in Theoretical Linguistics 53. 218pp. 2014.

Problems of Historical Linguistics

Bohumil Vykypěl
Academy of Sciences, Brno

In the present volume, the author deals with various problems of historical linguistics such as the noetic value of historical-comparative linguistics, the question of linguistic relationship and evolutionary typology of language, the concept of language contact in the Prague School, the emblematic elements in morphology or the explanatory exclusivity of history.

Contents: Zur Noetik der historischen und vergleichenden Sprachwissenschaft; Zum Begriff der genetischen Sprachverwandtschaft; Das Problem der sprachlichen Elementarverwandtschaft; Josef Miloslav Kořínek und sein Beitrag zur Erforschung der sprachlichen Symbolik; Emanuel Kovář’s contribution to evolutionary typology of languages; Prager Schule und Sprachkontakt; Alltäglicher und feiertäglicher Sprachkontakt; Slavonic articles in areal context; Scheinprobleme in contact linguistics; Emblematismen in der Morphologie; (Old Church) Slavonic etymology and Indo-European studies; Indogermanen und Indogermanistik; Language influenced and influencing; Against the explanatory exclusivity of history

ISBN 9783862886166. LINCOM Studies in Theoretical Linguistics 54. 96pp. 2015.

ESTUDOS DE DESCRIÇÃO FUNCIONALISTA: OBJETOS E ABORDAGENS

Edson Rosa Francisco de Souza (Org.)
Universidade Estadual Paulista - UNESP/IBILCE

This book presents eleven texts written by Brazilian and foreign authors that deal with the description and analysis of various linguistic facts (such as lexical, textual, pragmatic, semantic, morphosyntactic and phonological) in Portuguese and in several other languages, from different functionalist theoretical approaches (Theory of Grammaticalization, Systemic Functional Linguistics, Rhetorical Structure Theory, Textual-Interactive Grammar and Typological-Functional Theory). This book consists of two parts: The first one, entitled Functional Description of Languages, presents six texts that discuss the following subjects: (i) grammaticalization of words and constructions, (ii) Application of the Rhetorical Structure Theory, (iii) and connectives and conditional and additive clauses, and (iv) pragmatic aspects of the textual organization (interactional aspects). The four texts that integrate the second part, entitled Typological-Functional Description of Languages, discuss (i) systemic functional morphology issues, (ii) categories of tense, aspect and mood in indigenous languages, (iii) lexicography (grammar bilingual dictionaries) and (iv) grammaticalization of verbs.

The book is intended for both undergraduate and graduate students, and professors of Linguistics as far as students and professionals from other related areas that take the language and its different levels of organization as an object of study and reflection.

SUMÁRIO

Apresentação
Edson Rosa Francisco de Souza

PARTE I – Descrição funcionalista de línguas

Renovação e inovação em interrogativas de conteúdo
Michel Gustavo Fontes

A RST e suas aplicações na linguística e no processamento de línguas naturais
Juliano Desiderato Antonio
Mikel Iruskieta

Os conectivos condicionais complexos “na condição (de) que” e “na eventualidade (de) que” no português escrito
Flávia Bezerra de Menezes Hirata-Vale
Daniel William Ferreira de Camargo

A oração de adição em português
Taísa Peres de Oliveira

The discourse marker porque ‘because’: discussing adverbial (non)subordination in functional discourse grammar
Joceli Catarina Stassi-Sé

Uma análise textual-interativa do processo de estruturação de segmentos tópicos mínimos em mini-sagas narrativas
Andréia Dias de Souza

PARTE II – Descrição tipológico-funcional de línguas

Systemic functional morphology: the Lexicogrammar of the word
Christian M. I. M. Matthiessen

Tempo, Aspecto e Modo na língua ofayé
Jeniffer Elen da Silva

As relações semânticas de escopo entre tempo e aspecto nas línguas indígenas da família Pano: uma abordagem discursivo-funcional
Edson Rosa Francisco de Souza
Paulo Henrique da Silva Pereira

Gramática nos dicionários bilíngues de línguas brasileiras
Vitória Regina Spanghero

Serial verb constructions and the expression of third arguments in african, asian and creole languages
Edson Rosa Francisco de Souza

O organizador

Os autores

ISBN 9783862886197 (Hardbound). LINCOM Studies in Theoretical Linguistics 55. 306pp. 2015.

Phonological disorders in the acquisition of Farsi and Optimality Theory

Froogh Shooshtaryzadeh
Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi

The present study considers and compares phonological acquisition in typically developing children (TD) and the children with functional (non-organic) phonological disorder (PD) who are acquiring Farsi as their first language.

The main hypothesis of this study is that ‘phonological acquisition in the children with phonological disorder is different from typically developing children both in terms of the time needed to acquire language and in terms of the organization of their internalized grammar’. To test this hypothesis, data are collected from five TD children (2;6 to 4) and five PD children (4;6 to 6) through two types of tests, i.e. Naming-Picture task and Action-Picture task. The productions of each child were recorded and then were listened to carefully by judges and were transcribed using the IPA. There was also a 15-30 minutes free recording for each child. The data was analysed and the results were considered in Optimality Theory (OT) (Prince and Smolensky, 1993/2004; McCarthy and Prince, 1994, 1995). This study has concluded that phonological development in children with functional phonological disorder is different from the typically developing children not only in the amount of the time needed for phonological acquisition, but also in the organization of their internalized grammar.

Key words: typical phonological acquisition, phonological disorder, Farsi, Optimality Theory

ISBN 9783862886326. LINCOM Studies in Theoretical Linguistics 56. 270pp. 2015.

Das Konzept der Objektrelation und das Kontinuum ihrer Varianten: Ein muttersprachlicher Zugang

„Object“ is captured in this work as a relation between two equipollent poles: Pole1 (verb) as an instance of influential action upon a Pole2 (noun) as an instance of „sovereignty“ and detachment from the verb’s influence. A bidirectional continuum spans between the two poles: In one direction, the influential force of the verb (Pole1) is gradually weakened as we move from Pole1 to Pole2. In the other direction, „sovereignty“ and detachment are strongest at Pole2, and are gradually weakened as we move toward Pole1.

Gradience in the two opposite directions is observable and is confirmed by the native speakers of the three languages under study, viz. Standard Modern German, Modern Greek, and Japanese.

It is reflected by morpho-syntactic and semantic facts. As a result, we found an array of positions along the continuum (called „techniques“). As an example, one particular technique may be characterized by a plus in influential power, coupled by a minus in „sovereignty“, being „more like Pole1“. A neighboring technique characterized by opposite markings may be „more like Pole2“. All positions on the continuum are considered to be contracting an object relation.

This view stands in contradistinction to current theorizing for which „Object“ is considered to be a dependent of the valency of the verb. Its definition is based on such tests as passivizing or accessibility to comparable operations. Our continuum extends beyond the reach of the traditional direct or indirect object relation. It includes such cases where valency and corresponding tests are no longer decisive, but where the regularities of the continuum still are in force.

An important insight states that morpho-syntactic markings and semantic specifications signaling a „more like Pole1“ or a „more like Pole2“ may differ from one language to another. Thus, e.g. a technique of „strong agentivity“ as coupled with „weak sovereignty“ is represented in German by a preference for a weak article plus object noun, in Modern Greek by a zero article plus object noun, and in Japanese by incorporation of the object noun.

What ultimately matters, then, is the dynamics of moving along the continuum from the „more like Pole1“ toward the „more like Pole2“ and conversely type. As a consequence of this variability in the markings we were lead to consider borderline cases between object- and non-object relations. (written in German)

Die vorliegende Studie ist ein Versuch, sich einer postulierten Universalität des Begriffs der Relation „Objekt im Satzgefüge“ auf vergleichend-einzelsprachlichem Wege zu nähern. Die drei nach Verfügbarkeit ausgewählten Einzelsprachen sind Deutsch, Neugriechisch und Japanisch. Für sie sind, je Sprache, die drei Co-Autoren als Muttersprachler zuständig.

Es ist bekannt, dass „Objekt“ in den Einzelsprachen nicht als Monolith, sondern in mehreren Erscheinungsformen auftritt, und dass es von Sprache zu Sprache nicht immer dieselben Erscheinungsformen sind. Unsere Grundhypothese besagt, dass sich, zunächst in einer Einzelsprache, die dort feststellbaren Erscheinungsformen in einer kontinuierlichen Abfolge zwischen zwei Polen ordnen lassen und dass dadurch erst ihr Status als Varianten erwiesen werden kann. Wenn in einer prätheoretischen Annahme das Konzept „Objektrelation“ bestimmt werden kann als BETREFFEN einer ENTITÄT, so ist der eine Pol eben das BETREFFEN – im Prinzip ein Vorgang (Verb), der andere Pol die ENTITÄT – im Prinzip eine Wesenheit (Nomen).

Es geht jetzt um den Nachweis einer kontinuierlichen Abfolge einzelsprachlicher Ausdrücke zwischen den zwei Polen. Maßstab ist der Begriff der Prominenz: Prominenz der ENTITÄT nimmt zu von Pol1 („links“) nach Pol2 („rechts“) und nimmt ab in entgegengesetzter Richtung. Für BETREFFEN gilt das Umgekehrte. Zum Nachweisen der kontinuierlichen Abfolge ist es nicht nötig, dass in einer Sprache alle „Stationen“ eines Kontinuums vertreten sind. Partielle Kontinua sind aussagekräftig, wenn sie semantisch bzw. pragmatisch dieselben Eigenschaften der Prominenz entweder „mehr nach Pol1“ oder „mehr nach Pol2“ aufweisen. Mit in die Argumentation einzubeziehen sind Beobachtungen des kookkurrenten Verhaltens der Verben sowie der Subjekte im Satz. Hier gelten oft feine semantische oder pragmatische Unterschiede, weshalb das Wissen eines Muttersprachlers unabdingbar ist.

ISBN 9783862886425 (Hardbound). LINCOM Studies in Theoretical Linguistics 57. 153 S. 2015.

Typology of Taxis Constructions

Viktor S. Xrakovskij (ed.)

Russian Academy of Sciences

This collective volume by the Language Typology Workshop of the St. Petersburg Institute for Linguistic Studies (Russian Academy of Sciences) addresses taxis (relative tense) constructions in languages of different structure. It continues the Workshop’s earlier studies under a general research program launched in the 1960s and focused on the grammatical verb categories related to the semantic and syntactic structure of the sentence. The Workshop’s earlier publications in English include: Nedjalkov V. P. (ed.). Typology of Resultative Constructions. Amsterdam, 1988; Xrakovskij V. S. (ed.). Typology of Iterative Constructions, LINCOM, München, 1997; Xrakovskij V. S. (ed.). Typology of Imperative Constructions. LINCOM München, 2001; Xrakovskij V. S. (ed.). Typology of Conditional Constructions. LINCOM, München, 2005; Nedjalkov V. P. (ed.). Reciprocal Constructions. Amsterdam; Philadelphia, 2007; and Xrakovskij V. S. (ed.). Typology of Concessive Constructions. LINCOM, München, 2012. This volume consists of two parts and an appendix.

Part 1 provides a background on taxis studies and sets forth the underlying theoretical concept. The proposed theoretical concept makes it possible to describe taxis constructions in a form that allows to demonstrate both their common (above all, semantic) properties and typological (above all, grammatical) differences between both related and unrelated languages. The concept establishes a typology of taxis verb forms, provides a characterization of prototypical and peripheral taxis constructions, and proposes calculi for taxis meanings and taxis constructions.

Part 2 consists of two sections and 20 chapters on taxis constructions in various languages. The descriptions are to a large extent uniform as they are based on a common questionnaire.

The contributors to this collective volume are: Alpatov V. M., Barentsen A. (Netherlands),  Bystrov I. S. , Dmitrenko S. Yu., Ibragimov I. I., Iskhakova X. F., Kordi E. E. , Kramarova S. G., Malchukov A. L., Nasilov D. M., Nedjalkov I. V., Nevskaya I. A.,   Nicolova R. (Bulgaria), Nikitina T. N., Nikitina T. V., Ogloblin A. K., Orosz A. (Hungary), Spatari N. M., Stankevich N. V., Tommola H.  (Finland), Wiemer B.  (Germany), Xrakovskij V. S., and Zorikhina-Nilsson N. (Sweden).

ISBN 9783862887224 (Hardbound). LINCOM Studies in Theoretical Linguistics 58. 710pp. 2016.