Predication and equation

English is one language where equative sentences and non-equative sentences have a similar surface syntax (but see Heggie 1988 and Moro 1997 for a discussion of more subtle differences). In this paper we address the fact that many other languages appear to use radically different morphological means which seem to map to intuitive differences in the type of predication expressed. We take one such language, Scottish Gaelic, and show that the real difference is not between equative and non-equative sentences, but is rather dependent on whether the predicational head in the structure proposed above is eventive or not. We show that the aparently odd syntax of “equatives” in this language derives from the fact that they are constructed via a non-eventive Pred head. Since Pred heads cannot combine with non-predicative categories, such as saturated DPs, “equatives” are built up indirectly from a simple predicational structure with a semantically bleached predicate. This approach not only allows us to maintain a strict one-to-one syntax/semantics mapping for predicational syntax, but also for the syntax of DPs. The argument we develop here, then, suggests that the interface between the syntactic and semantic components is maximally economical— one could say perfect

'Being in Being': Contesting the Ontopolitics of Indigeneity Today

This article critiques the shift towards valorizing indigeneity in western thought and contemporary practice. This shift in approach to indigenous ways of knowing and being, historically derided under conditions of colonialism, is a reflection of the ‘ontological turn’ in anthropology. Rather than indigenous peoples simply having an inferior or different understanding of the world to a modernist one, the ‘ontological turn’ suggests their importance is that they constitute different worlds, and that they ‘world’ in a performatively different way. The radical promise is that a different world already exists in potentia and that access to this alternative world is a question of ontology - of being differently: being in being rather than thinking, acting and ‘worlding’ as if we were transcendent or ‘possessive’ subjects. We argue that ontopolitical arguments for the superiority of indigenous ways of being should not be seen as radical or emancipatory resistances to modernist or colonial epistemological and ontological legacies but instead as a new form of neoliberal governmentality, cynically manipulating critical, postcolonial and ecological sensibilities for its own ends. Rather than ‘provincialising’ dominant western hegemonic practices, discourses of ‘indigeneity’ are functioning to extend them, instituting new forms of governing through calls for adaptation and resilience

Functional Heads and Interpretation

Institute for Communicating and Collaborative SystemsThis thesis examines the effect that functional heads have on the interpretation of arguments.It focuses on the functional head Agr, which is implicated in predicate-argument agreement relations; the import that other functional heads have on interpretation is a subsidiary concern.The argument of the thesis goes as follows: firstly, reference must be made to both an independently projecting functional head Agr and to a level of discourse representation in order to adequately analyse the phenomenon of predicate argument agreement. This theory sheds light on an unusual complementarity between agreement and overt arguments in Celtic because it provides a natural constraint on morphological feature checking mechanisms. The thesis shows that functional heads are therefore implicated in the interpretation of arguments

Worldwide Prevalence of Lentivirus Infection in Wild Feline Species: Epidemiologic and Phylogenetic Aspects

The natural occurrence of lentiviruses closely related to feline immunodeficiency virus (FIV) in nondomestic felid species is shown here to be worldwide. Cross-reactive antibodies to FIV were common in several free-ranging populations of large cats, including East African lions and cheetahs of the Serengeti ecosystem and in puma (also called cougar or mountain lion) populations throughout North America. Infectious puma lentivirus (PLV) was isolated from several Florida panthers, a severely endangered relict puma subspecies inhabiting the Big Cypress Swamp and Everglades ecosystems in southern Florida. Phylogenetic analysis of PLV genomic sequences from disparate geographic isolates revealed appreciable divergence from domestic cat FIV sequences as well as between PLV sequences found in different North American locales. The level of sequence divergence between PLV and FIV was greater than the level of divergence between human and certain simian immunodeficiency viruses, suggesting that the transmission of FIV between feline species is infrequent and parallels in time the emergence of HIV from simian ancestors

Do learners’ word order preferences reflect hierarchical language structure?

Previous research has argued that learners infer word order patterns when learning a new language based on knowledge about underlying structure, rather than linear order (Culbertson &Adger, 2014). Specifically, learners prefer typologically common noun phrase word order patterns that transparently reflect how elements like nouns, adjectives, numerals, and demonstratives combine hierarchically. We test whether this result still holds after removing a potentially confounding strategy present in the original study design. We find that when learners are taught a naturalistic “foreign” language, a clear preference for noun phrase word order is replicated but for a subset of modifier types originally tested. Specifically, participants preferred noun phrases with the order N-Adj-Dem (as in “mugred this”) over the order N-Dem-Adj (as in “mug this red”).However, they showed no preference between orders N-AdjNum (as in “mugs red two”) and N-Num-Adj (as in “mugs two red”). We interpret this sensitivity as potentially reflecting a asymmetry among modifier types in the underlying hierarchical structur

Explaining variability in negative concord: A sociosyntactic analysis

Cheshire’s (1982) seminal study of Reading adolescents revealed robust use of negative concord, a ubiquitous ‘vernacular universal’ of English varieties worldwide. In this chapter we analyse one aspect of the grammar of negative concord in a variety spoken in Scotland: variability in the expression of a sentential negation marker in the presence of a negative noun phrase. We develop a syntactic analysis that accounts for the quantitative patterns in our corpus, which further extends to concrete, and correct, predictions about unobserved forms. Our analysis also has implications for understanding why negative concord is a vernacular universal and accounting for differences in individual speakers’ grammars and their use

A Universal Cognitive Bias in Word Order: Evidence From Speakers Whose Language Goes Against It

There is a longstanding debate in cognitive science surrounding the source of commonalities among languages of the world. Indeed, there are many potential explanations for such commonalities—accidents of history, common processes of language change, memory limitations, constraints on linguistic representations, etc. Recent research has used psycholinguistic experiments to provide empirical evidence linking common linguistic patterns to specific features of human cognition, but these experiments tend to use English speakers, who in many cases have direct experience with precisely the common patterns of interest. Here, we highlight the importance of testing populations whose languages go against cross-linguistic trends. We investigate whether monolingual speakers of Kîîtharaka, which has an unusual way of ordering words, mirror those of English speakers. We find that they do, supporting the hypothesis that universal cognitive representations play a role in shaping word order