Human linguisticality and the building blocks of languages

This paper discusses the widely held idea that the building blocks of languages (features, categories, and architectures) are part of an innate blueprint for Human Language, and notes that if one allows for convergent cultural evolution of grammatical structures, then much of the motivation for it disappears. I start by observing that human linguisticality (=the biological capacity for language) is uncontroversial, and that confusing terminology (“language faculty,” “universal grammar”) has often clouded the substantive issues in the past. I argue that like musicality and other biological capacities, linguisticality is best studied in a broadly comparative perspective. Comparing languages like other aspects of culture means that the comparisons are of the Greenbergian type, but many linguists have presupposed that the comparisons should be done as in chemistry, with the presupposition that the innate building blocks are also the material that individual grammars are made of. In actual fact, the structural uniqueness of languages (in lexicon, phonology, and morphosyntax) leads us to prefer a Greenbergian approach to comparison, which is also more in line with the Minimalist idea that there are very few domain-specific elements of the biological capacity for language

Verbal noun or verbal adjective? : the case of the latin gerundive and gerund

It is the aim of this paper to present and elaborate a new solution to the old syntactic problems connected with the Latin gerundive and gerund, two verbal categories which have been interpreted variously either as adjective (or participle) or noun (or infinitive). These questions have been much discussed for quite a number of years […] but for the most part from a philological or purely diachronic point of view. All these linguists try to explain the peculiarities of these categories and their syntax by showing that the gerund is historically prior to the gerundive. [...] It is our thesis […] that in order to arrive at a unified account of gerundive and gerund we do not have to go back to prehistoric times. Even for the classical language gerund and gerundive represent the same category, in the sense that the gerund can be shown to be a special case of the gerundive. Additional evidence from a parallel construction in Hindi is adduced to make the Latin facts more plausible. It is only in the post-classical language that certain tendencies which had shown up already in Old Latin poetry become stronger and finally lead to a reanalysis of the gerundive and a split into two distinct syntactic constructions. The propositional meaning of the gerundive in its attributive use is explained with reference to a conflict between syntactic and cognitive principles. Special constructions which are the effects of such conflicts can be found in other parts of grammar. Languages differ with respect to the degree of syntacticization (or conventionalization) of these special constructions

Ergativity and depth of analysis

In this paper, I argue that “depth of analysis” does not deserve the prestige that it is sometimes given in general linguistics. While language description should certainly be as detailed as possible, general linguistics must rely on worldwide comparison of languages, and this cannot be based on language-particular analyses. Rigorous quantitative comparison requires uniform measurement, and this implies abstracting away from many language-particular peculiarities. I will illustrate this on the basis of ergative patterns, starting out from I.A. Mel’čuk’s (1981) proposal for Lezgian. This proposal was not successful, but why not? And why is Baker’s (2015) theory of dependent case likewise unsuccessful? By contrast, quantitative worldwide research has found striking similarities of ergative coding patterns, which can be explained by the efficiency theory of asymmetric coding. I will argue that this success is due to a more cautious approach to understanding Human Language, which does not rely on the Mendeleyevian vision for grammar (that all grammars are made from the same innate building blocks)

Grammatikalisierung: Von der Perfomanz zur Kompetenz ohne angeborene Grammatik

Innerhalb der Linguistik wird die Frage kontrovers diskutiert, ob es eine angeborene Universalgrammatik hinter den 5500 verschiedenen lebenden Sprachen gibt, mithin, ob die Kompetenz zum großen Teil in den menschlichen Genen festgelegt ist. Vorliegender Beitrag argumentiert gegen den Nativismus chomskyscher Prägung und für eine konstruktivistische Position, derzufolge Grammatik als Nebenprodukt des Sprechens in sozialer Interaktion entsteht

Subject diffuseness in Maltese : on some subject properties of experiential verbs

Like many other languages, Maltese shows some peculiarities in the behavior of its experiential verbs. While the case-marking and agreement properties of these verbs point to (direct or indirect) object status of the experiencer argument, several behavioral properties make the experiencer argument appear more similar to subjects. Different sub-types of experiential verbs can be distinguished, and a number of individual verbs (most notably the possessive verb ghandulkellu ‘have’, well-known from the earlier literature) show further peculiarities. The various groups of verbs or individual verbs can be arranged on a continuum which shows an increasing number of subject properties of the experiencer (or possessor) argument. Thus, subject properties are not distributed in a clear-cut manner, and we observe a certain amount of “subject diffuseness”.peer-reviewe

Subject diffuseness in Maltese : on some subject properties of experiential verbs

Like many other languages, Maltese shows some peculiarities in the behavior of its experiential verbs. While the case-marking and agreement properties of these verbs point to (direct or indirect) object status of the experiencer argument, several behavioral properties make the experiencer argument appear more similar to subjects. Different sub-types of experiential verbs can be distinguished, and a number of individual verbs (most notably the possessive verb ghandulkellu ‘have’, well-known from the earlier literature) show further peculiarities. The various groups of verbs or individual verbs can be arranged on a continuum which shows an increasing number of subject properties of the experiencer (or possessor) argument. Thus, subject properties are not distributed in a clear-cut manner, and we observe a certain amount of “subject diffuseness”.peer-reviewe

The periphrastic perfect in Ancient Greek: a diachronic mental space analysis

In the present article, I apply Fauconniers mental spaces theory to the diachronic analysis of the Ancient Greek periphrastic perfect. I argue that the periphrastic construction started out as a resultative perfect, with FOCUS and EVENT located in the same mental space. I show that, contrary to what is sometimes believed, the construction was not limited to a purely stative meaning, but underwent the cross-linguistically attested semantic shift from resultative to anterior, whereby an additional non-FOCUS EVENT-space was constructed. In fourth-century Classical Greek, we witness the further extension of the periphrastic construction with regard to semantics, morphology and discourse context. I close the article with some remarks on the possible aoristicisation of the periphrastic perfect

Prog imperfective drift in ancient Greek? Reconsidering eimi 'be' with present participle

In this paper, I reconsider the diachrony of the Ancient Greek periphrastic construction of eimi 'be' with present participle by means of Bertinetto’s recently proposed model for the development of progressive grams (a process called ‘PROG imperfective drift’). While Bertinetto’s proposal sheds new light on the diachronic development of the construction, at the same time the evidence from Ancient Greek brings to light the need for modification and further refinement of the model (most importantly with regard to the role of what I call the ‘stative’ function, next to the diachronic source(s) of the construction). I furthermore show that eimi with present participle never fully developed a (focalized) progressive function, which can be explained in terms of ‘constructional competition’