Crosslinguistically, the development of the verb go into a future tense is a common path of grammaticalization. In contrast, the past meaning of the go-periphrasis in Catalan is unexpected. Detges (2004) claims that the process of grammaticalization of the Catalan periphrastic perfect went from inchoative to foregrounding to past. We compare data from the Corpus informatitzat del Català antic with modern Sicilian, where a similar go-periphrasis is used with a foregrounding function that resembles that of Old Catalan. This comparison confirms a foregrounding usage but fails to support the origin in an inchoative usage. We propose that the grammaticalization from movement to foregrounding does not require an intermediate inchoative stage, but that it rather results from a modal implicature of surprise and unexpectedness that was associated with the construction. Indeed, the function of go to foreground and express surprise or noteworthiness can be inferentially viewed as movement away from the speaker’s expectations. Under this usage, Catalan go-periphrasis was employed to refer to ‘surprising’ events that took place in the past. Once this additional meaning was lost, the reference to the past was generalized beyond the implicature.
{"title":"A Surprise in the Past: The Historical Origins of the Catalan go-past","authors":"Silvio Cruschina, Anna Kocher","doi":"10.5565/rev/catjl.379","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5565/rev/catjl.379","url":null,"abstract":"Crosslinguistically, the development of the verb go into a future tense is a common path of grammaticalization. In contrast, the past meaning of the go-periphrasis in Catalan is unexpected. Detges (2004) claims that the process of grammaticalization of the Catalan periphrastic perfect went from inchoative to foregrounding to past. We compare data from the Corpus informatitzat del Català antic with modern Sicilian, where a similar go-periphrasis is used with a foregrounding function that resembles that of Old Catalan. This comparison confirms a foregrounding usage but fails to support the origin in an inchoative usage. We propose that the grammaticalization from movement to foregrounding does not require an intermediate inchoative stage, but that it rather results from a modal implicature of surprise and unexpectedness that was associated with the construction. Indeed, the function of go to foreground and express surprise or noteworthiness can be inferentially viewed as movement away from the speaker’s expectations. Under this usage, Catalan go-periphrasis was employed to refer to ‘surprising’ events that took place in the past. Once this additional meaning was lost, the reference to the past was generalized beyond the implicature.","PeriodicalId":43160,"journal":{"name":"Catalan Journal of Linguistics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2022-12-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42597891","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Although undesired under a theoretical viewpoint, natural languages often show cases of “true” optionality. According to a reformulation of the Interface Hypothesis (Sorace 2006), highly complex constructions are more susceptible to optionality and change. Psych verbs that select a subject dative experiencer fall under this definition. Ibero-Romance languages use different strategies to reduce this morphosyntactic inconsistency. Whereas Catalan and Spanish reinforce the deviant construction through additional morphological markers (dative clitic doubling and subsequent grammaticalization of the clitic as subject-verb agreement marker), Portuguese avoids inherent datives at all, using structural case instead. These innovations in argument structure have significant consequences: clitic doubling with full DPs and the grammaticalization of the clitic pronouns are blocked, in contrast to Catalan and Spanish. It becomes evident that a closer look at how argument structure is codified in the lexicon is needed in order to better understand processes of language change.
{"title":"On Psych Verbs and Optional Clitic Doubling in Catalan and Other Ibero-Romance Languages","authors":"Jorge Vega Vilanova","doi":"10.5565/rev/catjl.388","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5565/rev/catjl.388","url":null,"abstract":"Although undesired under a theoretical viewpoint, natural languages often show cases of “true” optionality. According to a reformulation of the Interface Hypothesis (Sorace 2006), highly complex constructions are more susceptible to optionality and change. Psych verbs that select a subject dative experiencer fall under this definition. Ibero-Romance languages use different strategies to reduce this morphosyntactic inconsistency. Whereas Catalan and Spanish reinforce the deviant construction through additional morphological markers (dative clitic doubling and subsequent grammaticalization of the clitic as subject-verb agreement marker), Portuguese avoids inherent datives at all, using structural case instead. These innovations in argument structure have significant consequences: clitic doubling with full DPs and the grammaticalization of the clitic pronouns are blocked, in contrast to Catalan and Spanish. It becomes evident that a closer look at how argument structure is codified in the lexicon is needed in order to better understand processes of language change.","PeriodicalId":43160,"journal":{"name":"Catalan Journal of Linguistics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2022-12-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41888958","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Preface","authors":"Peter Herbeck, P. Izzo, A. Kocher","doi":"10.5565/rev/catjl.399","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5565/rev/catjl.399","url":null,"abstract":"<jats:p>Preface</jats:p>","PeriodicalId":43160,"journal":{"name":"Catalan Journal of Linguistics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2022-12-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49274025","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Although the distribution of pronominal clitics in Old Catalan has been described in general terms (Fischer 2002; Batllori et al. 2005), there are no quantitative studies detailing the frequency of preverbal or postverbal clitics nor their diachronic evolution. The clitics appearing with verbs in the future and conditional tense (FC) are worth a separate mention, since these forms originate from periphrastic structures that involve an infinitive and the auxiliary verb habere, and which could appear as an analytic (dir-li he) or a synthetic form (li diré or diré-li). This paper describes the general clitic positioning and the one encountered with FC in order to verify the claim that they display parallel distributions, using a text from the 13th century, to wit Llibre dels Fets. This article analyses the pragmatic-syntactic environments in which the clitic are found, as well as the degree of grammaticalization and univerbation of the FC. Following previous work (e.g., Bouzouita & Sentí 2022), it is argued that the FC in Catalan appear to exhibit a more advanced degree of grammaticalization than the western languages of the Iberian Peninsula.
尽管古加泰罗尼亚语中代词派系的分布已被笼统地描述(Fischer 2002;Batllori等人2005),但没有定量研究详细说明语前或语后派系的频率及其历时演变。与未来动词和条件时(FC)一起出现的集团词值得单独提及,因为这些形式源于涉及不定式和辅助动词habere的周边结构,可以作为分析形式(dir li he)或合成形式(li diré或diré-li)出现。本文描述了一般的派系定位和FC遇到的派系定位,以验证他们显示平行分布的说法,使用了13世纪的文本,即Llibre dels Fets。本文分析了集团词所处的语用句法环境,以及集团词的语法化和非言语化程度。根据之前的工作(例如,Bouzouita&Sentí2022),有人认为加泰罗尼亚语中的FC似乎比伊比利亚半岛的西方语言表现出更高级的语法化程度。
{"title":"The Syntax of Old Catalan Clitics: “Llibre dels Fets”","authors":"Andreu Sentí, Miriam Bouzouita","doi":"10.5565/rev/catjl.387","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5565/rev/catjl.387","url":null,"abstract":"Although the distribution of pronominal clitics in Old Catalan has been described in general terms (Fischer 2002; Batllori et al. 2005), there are no quantitative studies detailing the frequency of preverbal or postverbal clitics nor their diachronic evolution. The clitics appearing with verbs in the future and conditional tense (FC) are worth a separate mention, since these forms originate from periphrastic structures that involve an infinitive and the auxiliary verb habere, and which could appear as an analytic (dir-li he) or a synthetic form (li diré or diré-li). This paper describes the general clitic positioning and the one encountered with FC in order to verify the claim that they display parallel distributions, using a text from the 13th century, to wit Llibre dels Fets. This article analyses the pragmatic-syntactic environments in which the clitic are found, as well as the degree of grammaticalization and univerbation of the FC. Following previous work (e.g., Bouzouita & Sentí 2022), it is argued that the FC in Catalan appear to exhibit a more advanced degree of grammaticalization than the western languages of the Iberian Peninsula.","PeriodicalId":43160,"journal":{"name":"Catalan Journal of Linguistics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2022-12-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49120183","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In this paper, I analyze first person singular subject pronoun expression in spoken Valencian Catalan varieties. I present a quantitative and qualitative analysis of 7 interviews from the corpus Parlars, examining 1sg subject rates regarding tense markings (syncretic vs. non-syncretic forms), verb type, and discourse type (monologues vs. conversations). It will be shown that the factor of morphological syncretism as well as verb type influence 1sg subject expression rates. Differently from what has been observed in some previous studies on Spanish, cognitive verbs are not associated with particularly high 1sg subject expression rates, but verbs of saying are. Looking at frequent verb forms in the spoken interviews, it will be shown that (jo) dic ‘(I) say’ plays an important role, direct speech being a commonly used mechanism in the data examined here. Furthermore, discourse type (monologue vs. conversation) affects subject expression rates. These results suggest that 1sg subject expression is influenced by an interaction of verb morphology, verb type and specific verb forms, but that subject expression rates and the factors influencing them vary depending on particular pro-drop varieties, discourse types and the type of data. Looking at the contexts in which the strong pronoun jo ‘I’ is used with verbs of saying in spoken Valencian Catalan, I argue that subject expression triggers a perspectival, rather than referential shift in several cases.
{"title":"Variable First Person Singular Subject Expression in Spoken Valencian Catalan","authors":"Peter Herbeck","doi":"10.5565/rev/catjl.380","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5565/rev/catjl.380","url":null,"abstract":"In this paper, I analyze first person singular subject pronoun expression in spoken Valencian Catalan varieties. I present a quantitative and qualitative analysis of 7 interviews from the corpus Parlars, examining 1sg subject rates regarding tense markings (syncretic vs. non-syncretic forms), verb type, and discourse type (monologues vs. conversations). It will be shown that the factor of morphological syncretism as well as verb type influence 1sg subject expression rates. Differently from what has been observed in some previous studies on Spanish, cognitive verbs are not associated with particularly high 1sg subject expression rates, but verbs of saying are. Looking at frequent verb forms in the spoken interviews, it will be shown that (jo) dic ‘(I) say’ plays an important role, direct speech being a commonly used mechanism in the data examined here. Furthermore, discourse type (monologue vs. conversation) affects subject expression rates. These results suggest that 1sg subject expression is influenced by an interaction of verb morphology, verb type and specific verb forms, but that subject expression rates and the factors influencing them vary depending on particular pro-drop varieties, discourse types and the type of data. Looking at the contexts in which the strong pronoun jo ‘I’ is used with verbs of saying in spoken Valencian Catalan, I argue that subject expression triggers a perspectival, rather than referential shift in several cases.","PeriodicalId":43160,"journal":{"name":"Catalan Journal of Linguistics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2022-12-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41987905","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Catalan Journal of Linguistics: The First Twenty Years","authors":"Xavier Villalba","doi":"10.5565/rev/catjl.366","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5565/rev/catjl.366","url":null,"abstract":"Editorial note.","PeriodicalId":43160,"journal":{"name":"Catalan Journal of Linguistics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2021-12-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43111149","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
A recursive foot is one in which a foot is embedded inside another foot of the same type: e.g., iambic (iaσ(iaσσ́)) or trochaic (tr(trσ́σ)σ). Recent work has used such feet to model stress systems with full or partial ternary rhythm, in which stress falls on every third syllable or mora. I show here that no stress system requires recursive feet, that phonological processes in such languages likely don’t either, and that the notion of recursive foot is theoretically suspect.
{"title":"No Stress System Requires Recursive Feet","authors":"Chris Golston","doi":"10.5565/rev/catjl.333","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5565/rev/catjl.333","url":null,"abstract":"A recursive foot is one in which a foot is embedded inside another foot of the same type: e.g., iambic (iaσ(iaσσ́)) or trochaic (tr(trσ́σ)σ). Recent work has used such feet to model stress systems with full or partial ternary rhythm, in which stress falls on every third syllable or mora. I show here that no stress system requires recursive feet, that phonological processes in such languages likely don’t either, and that the notion of recursive foot is theoretically suspect.","PeriodicalId":43160,"journal":{"name":"Catalan Journal of Linguistics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2021-12-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44276909","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Whether or not phonology has recursion is often conflated with whether or not phonology has strings or trees as data structures. Taking a computational perspective from formal language theory and focusing on how phonological strings and trees are built, we disentangle these issues. We show that even considering the boundedness of words and utterances in physical realization and the lack of observable examples of potential recursive embedding of phonological constituents beyond a few layers, recursion is a natural consequence of expressing generalization in phonological grammars for strings and trees. While prosodically-conditioned phonological patterns can be represented using grammars for strings, e.g., with bracketed string representations, we show how grammars for trees provide a natural way to express these patterns and provide insight into the kinds of analyses that phonologists have proposed for them.
{"title":"Computational Perspectives on Phonological Constituency and Recursion","authors":"Kristine M. Yu","doi":"10.5565/rev/catjl.354","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5565/rev/catjl.354","url":null,"abstract":"Whether or not phonology has recursion is often conflated with whether or not phonology has strings or trees as data structures. Taking a computational perspective from formal language theory and focusing on how phonological strings and trees are built, we disentangle these issues. We show that even considering the boundedness of words and utterances in physical realization and the lack of observable examples of potential recursive embedding of phonological constituents beyond a few layers, recursion is a natural consequence of expressing generalization in phonological grammars for strings and trees. While prosodically-conditioned phonological patterns can be represented using grammars for strings, e.g., with bracketed string representations, we show how grammars for trees provide a natural way to express these patterns and provide insight into the kinds of analyses that phonologists have proposed for them.","PeriodicalId":43160,"journal":{"name":"Catalan Journal of Linguistics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2021-12-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42457185","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"És «back to my point» un marcador pragmàtic? Una investigació sobre el desenvolupament històric d’alguns marcadors de gestió del discurs metatextual en anglès","authors":"Elizabeth Closs Traugott","doi":"10.5565/rev/catjl.307","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5565/rev/catjl.307","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43160,"journal":{"name":"Catalan Journal of Linguistics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2020-12-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71035346","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}