SKY Journal of Linguistics, vol. 15:2002
Abstracts
Marija M. Brala: The Semantics and Grammar of ‘Motion'.
Evidence from Croatian Prefixes vs. Prepositions.
Departing from Talmy's (1975, 1985) findings relative to the typological contrast
in the lexicalisation of motion events, this paper explores the lexical patterns of a
series of Croatian motion verbs and their subcategorisation requirements. While some
of Talmy's findings are reinforced, others are challenged. In particular, we focus on
Talmy's satellites and the long standing view that Slavic prefixes express Aspect.
We propose a revised reading of these particles, whereby Aktionsart is put forward as
the core semantic element lexicalised by Slavic prefixes. In the final part of the
paper, we relate the findings stemming from the analysis of the Croatian prefixed motion
verbs to a set of English dynamic prepositions, and suggest that the English
preposition ‘to' conflates the Aktionsart element of a second or ‘target state' within
the TT. This, in turn, yields a more complete understanding of the concept of motion.
Since the elements proposed in this paper are viewed as shared between language and
other sub-systems of human cognition, all the hypotheses put forward should, if correct,
be valid crosslinguistically.
Magdalena Charzyñska-Wójcik: The Syntax of Old English Experiencer Verbs
The paper offers a new classification of the syntactic
frames OE Experiencer verbs can appear in. The characteristics of individual
construction types seen against the background of the variation exhibited
by individual verbs found in them allow us to propose that the fifteen
attested structures are in fact only variants of three basic types.
The discussion reveals that OE clausal arguments are Case-marked in the same
way as NP arguments. A further observation is that OE lexicon is relatively
insensitive to category distinction but sensitive to Case.
Kimmo Granqvist: Finnish Romani Phonology and Dialect Geography
In this paper, I will provide a short sketch of the Finnish
Romani phonology, including the vowel system, the consonant inventory,
phonotactics, the most crucial phonological processes, syllable structure,
and to some extent, the suprasegmentals. Moreover, I will present some
guidelines of the dialect geography. The focus is also on the influence
of the contact languages on the phonological structure of Finnish
Romani, in particular the Finnish effect that manifests itself especially
in the form of several articulatory reduction rules. The paper is mainly
based on a 140,000-word corpus of Finnish Romani, collected by the Research
Institute for the Languages of Finland, mostly during the years 2000 and 2001.
Ekaterina Gruzdeva: The Linguistic Consequences of Nivkh Language Attrition
The paper outlines various changes that have occurred in Nivkh
as a result of language attrition. Nivkh (Paleosiberian, isolate) is heavily
endangered, and is being currently replaced by Russian, which totally dominates
in all spheres of communication. After a discussion of political and social
factors relevant Nivkh obsolescence, the paper considers a number of linguistic
features that have been disrupted in consequence of language decay, such
as: (a) loss of specific lexical items, (b) simplification of language devices
used for spatial deixis, (b) elimination of contrast between velar and uvular
consonants, (d) collapse of some morphophonological alternations, (e) changes
in the use of some locative cases, (f) radical reduction in the elaborated
system of cardinal numerals, (g) loss of first person pronominal and imperative
dual imperative forms. Nivkh data, which are based on the author's
own fieldwork, appear to conform to the reasonably well established hypothesis
that language obsolescence results in a general simplification and reduction
of a language system, especially with regard to the linguistic features
which are not shared by Nivkh and the dominant Russian language.
Jarmo Jantunen: Comparable Corpora in Translation Studies: Strengths and Limitations
This article deals with the advantages and limitations of so-called
comparable corpora in Translation Studies. Comparable corpora are text collections
in two separate subsets in the same language: one subcorpus consists of non-translated
(original) material in language A, and the other consists of translations produced
into the same language. This article will focus on phenomena such as
representativeness, objectivity, applications in translation training and translators'
work as well as linguistic approaches in translation studies. Two translational
corpora, namely the Translational English Corpus (TEC) and the Corpus of Translated
Finnish (CTF), are studied as examples of corpora that have already been used in
analyses in the field of Corpus-based Translation Studies. Keywords: Corpus-based Translation Studies, Translational English Corpus,
Corpus of Translated Finnish, comparable corpus, representativeness
Juhani Järvikivi & Jussi Niemi: Allomorphs as paradigm indices:
On-line experiments with Finnish free and bound stems
Two masked priming experiments investigated the role of stem allomorphs
and the status of the nominative singular in lexical processing of Finnish
inflected nouns. The results show that, first, free standing allomorphs significantly
prime the corresponding nominative singular, e.g., saappaa-saapas. Second, the results
also show, that inflected nouns, e.g., sudelle, are equally strongly primed
by the nominative singular, susi, than by an inflected form with a different
stem, e.g., sutta. We will argue that the stem allomorphs are
separately represented at the form level and that the nominative singular does
not enjoy a special status vis-à-vis other stem forms. The results
are discussed in a decompositional framework that assumes separate levels
of modality specific form representation and abstract lemma representation. Key words: Finnish, morphology, allomorph, processing
William McGregor: Structural Changes in Language Obsolescence:
A Kimberley (Australia) Perspective
This paper discusses structural changes in three obsolescent languages
from the Kimberley region in the far north-west of Australia, Gooniyandi, Nyulnyul,
and Warrwa. The changes — which are all comparable with changes attested in
language obsolescence situations elsewhere in Australia and the world — include a
few quite restricted phonological changes, and some more obvious morphological,
syntactic, and lexical changes. These are mainly processes of
simplification — losses of forms and levelling of systemic distinctions;
also discernible is remodelling of systems bringing them closer to the systems
of the dominant language. The range and extent of changes differs amongst
the three languages, correlating with the different synchronic and diachronic
conditions of the language obsolescence situations.
Helka Riionheimo: How to Borrow a Bound Morpheme?
Evaluating the Status of Structural Interference in a Contact between
Closely-related Languages
This article has a twofold aim: firstly, to evaluate on the basis of a
structural analysis of language contact data whether the observed Estonian-based
pattern is gaining an integrated status in immigrant Ingrian Finnish, and
secondly, to discuss the ways in which morphological borrowing may occur
between languages. It is concluded that the use of the pattern probably
exemplifies a mixing of the two morphological systems during speech processing
rather than represents a permanently borrowed feature. It also becomes evident
that applying the intermediate categories proposed for lexical borrowing
(viz. code-mixing and nonce borrowing) is problematic, and it is suggested
that the intermediate stage between code-switching and structural borrowing
may be termed code-blending. All in all, the article shows that grammatical
borrowing and its mechanisms differ from lexical borrowing and ought to be
investigated in their own right.
Pauli Salo: Lexical Atomism and the Principle of
(Psycho)semantic Compositionality
What is the constitution of meaning of morphemes (lexical concepts)?
Most theories conjecture that they are constituted by molecular or holistic internal
structure: prototypes, exemplars, semantic networks, complex schemata,
scripts or even classical definitions. Recently, however, a growing opposition has
arisen in cognitive science claiming that psychological evidence suggests rather
the opposite, namely, that lexical concepts are not internally structured,
but that they are primitive unstructured atoms. I will examine these claims in
this paper, arguing that such an atomistic hypothesis might indeed be a more
plausible alternative.
Nikolai Vakhtin: Language Death Prognosis: A Critique of Judgement
The present paper analyzes and challenges the ability of linguists
to judge about the degree of language endangerment. It demonstrates that
our prognostications about language obsolescence, although they may be true,
are not necessarily true due to certain characteristics of the sources
of the data on perceived linguistic vitality crucial for diagnosing
language attrition. The information about language circumstances is based
on one of the three sources of data: claims by the speakers; observations by
the scholars; and statements by indigenous scholars. Each of the three sources
of information contains a trap that makes the data difficult to rely upon.
Claims by the speakers are determined by the situation in the language
community. In a language shift situation characteristics of linguistic proficiency
in many cases reflects not the actual language proficiency, but rather the
person's position on the generation scale and community expectations concerning
language proficiency determined by age. Observations by the researcher are
determined by the current theoretical paradigm, in the core of which there
lies the concept of language attrition. Scholars observing and reporting language
loss reflect, to some extent, not so much the real processes but rather
their own expectations determined by the theoretical paradifm. Finally,
statements by indigenous scholars often combine both tendencies. Prognostications
made on the basis of these sources are thus far from trustworthy.
Doris Wagner: Papier-Bier: Adjektive zur Beschreibung des Bieres
in der deutschen Bierplakat-Werbung
This paper analyses adjectives used to describe beer in advertising.
The corpus used consists of about 1600 German posters advertising beer;
all adjectives were analysed, those in the headline as well as those in the
slogan. Beer is assumed to be a very central part of German culture.
This thesis is supported by the existence of a very large number of proverbs
and phrases connected with beer. Today about 1200 breweries produce about
5000 different kinds of beer. What are the strategies used when advertising
beer? Which qualities of the beer are emphasized? On the basis of the
adjectives – they are above all related to the taste or the colour
of the beer – some conclusions concerning German beer culture can be drawn.
The long tradition of brewing, the existence of monastery breweries,
the many different types of beer, regional differences and stereotypes,
all of these different aspects ar reflected in the choice of adjectives.
The intended group of consumers and their way of living is also reflected
in the use of adjectives, but you can also notice an attempt to get away
from the image of beer as a cheap drink for the masses and to make it
socially more acceptable.