Language and Linguistics Compass最新文献

The formal semantic analysis of African languages is still a young subfield within theoretical linguistics. Starting with general overviews of the quantifier systems of individual African languages around two decades ago, there now exists a substantial body of fieldwork-based and autochthonous formal semantic research conducted by both African and non-African scholars. A major objective of these studies is to describe and analyse semantic phenomena in under-researched African languages. A second important aim is to examine the extent to which leading semantic theories—mostly developed on the basis of European languages—can be applied to non-European languages, and to determine what broader theoretical insights can be gained from formal semantic analyses of African languages. Research in this field has fostered the emergence of a new generation of African semanticists who will carry this enterprise forward. This is the first of two articles on formal semantics of African languages. The central aim of these articles is to provide scholars with a background in formal semantics with a general overview of semantic research activities focused on African languages. At the same time, the two articles will also be valuable to readers with a broader interest in African languages, offering them a range of empirical and theoretical questions as well as diagnostic tools to begin their own semantic investigations in the languages of their choice. This first article begins with a brief historical sketch of semantic research on African languages and then introduces formal-semantic approaches to interpretive phenomena associated with the nominal domain (NP, DP), such as definiteness, indefiniteness, universal quantification, and number.

The last three decades have seen a large increase in attempts to explain phonetic and phonological patterns using information theoretic properties such as frequency and predictability. One recurring theme is the attempt to explain phonetic and phonological weakening as following directly from low information content. I argue that the actuation of weakening processes is not consistent with a direct causal route, but is consistent with indirect causal route in which low information content is causally related only to durational reduction, and that downstream effects of low information content may actually hinder communicative efficiency. These findings contradict the expectations of many authors, including my own, going back at least to Zipf.

Scholarship in the field of sign historical linguistics has made important progress in recent years. Here we survey this progress in three areas of research that have received the most attention to date, namely, (i) qualitative approaches to understanding the typical pathways of diachronic change in signed languages, (ii) quantitative approaches to signed language classification, and (iii) archival approaches to historical sociolinguistic research on signing communities and their languages. We also discuss how early work on sign historical linguistics has shaped the field's current questions and approaches, and we look forward to future advances that can tap into underutilized sources of historical video data on signed languages.

This two-part guide/research report introduces the Generalised Linear Mixed Model (GLMM) tree analysis technique to variationist sociolinguistics using (ING) variation in Canadian Maritime English (CME) as a test case. GLMM tree analysis combines the advantages of tree-based recursive partitioning with the ability to include random effects in statistical modelling. In this, Part 1, the GLMM tree technique reveals a more nuanced pattern for age, gender, and education effects on variation between [ɪn] and standard [ɪŋ] for (ING) than simple mixed-effect regression modelling alone. Linguistic constraints on (ING) variation in this data, as well as the GLMM tree analysis's merits for testing (multi-)collinear predictors are explored in Part 2.

Language diversification and change can be studied using phylogenetic modelling of families over thousands of years, or by close observation of changes unfolding over a few decades at the community level. While the phylogenetic approach uses data from hundreds of languages to make cross-linguistic generalisations, community-level studies of sociolinguistic variation have until recently been limited to a very narrow language sample. However this is now changing, with variationist studies published on a wider range of languages. In this article I assemble a sample of variationist studies encompassing 63 languages from 26 families, and explore potential patterns regarding rates of change in linguistic features, and which features are associated with social identity signalling, which may lead to diversification. These observations largely converge with results obtained from phylogenetic methods, suggesting that more systematic meta-analysis of variationist studies will provide a new way to investigate the evolutionary dynamics of language.

Similarly to language, play is an essential component of human behaviour and culture. However, the links between play and language have been underexamined and often neglected beyond the aesthetic uses of language as found in literature. But playing pervades language. In this paper, we provide an overview of the central role of play in shaping language structure, use, acquisition, and evolution. Accordingly, many aspects of language structure can be related to playing, in part because of the human proclivity for order, regularity and symmetry, but also because ‘playful’ structures and playing with language can be expected to facilitate language acquisition, as well as other functions of language, particularly those related to social fitness. From an evolutionary perspective, in parallel with the increase of our playing behaviour (more time devoted to play and more diversity in types) as a result of biological and cultural changes, play can be argued to have provided a scaffolding for the emergence of more complex linguistic structures, as found in modern languages, and more complex uses of language, as found in modern pragmatics. More complex language use supports the emergence of more complex playing behaviour, which in turn enables more complex playing behaviour, enabling more complex language structures, in a feedback loop. Compared to other accounts, our paper provides a more nuanced view of the nature and origins of language structure and patterns of use, as a result of broader changes in human cognition and behaviour (particularly, on our proclivity to play) as we evolved towards more prosocial behaviour.

This paper provides a focused review of truth-value judgment tasks (TVJTs) as a method for eliciting interpretations in adult second language learners. We present the historical perspectives, the rationale for their use, the nature of the knowledge they target, and critical design considerations. Additionally, we discuss their effectiveness in uncovering how second language learners access and compute meaning, as well as emerging directions for research and pedagogy using this method. We advocate for refining TVJTs to more accurately capture linguistic competence by empirically validating relevant crucial design features. Moreover, we highlight some of the advantages of incorporating web-based TVJT experiments, which enhance transparency, facilitate replication, and accommodate a diverse learner population.

Within formal semantics, languages with no exponent of tense, or with optional tense, have begun to be incorporated into the theory of temporality only in the last couple decades. This article traces the development of their study, identifying empirical arguments that arbitrate between competing analyses of tenselessness. How future and past reference is established for root clauses, both in information-seeking exchanges and in narratives, requires differentiating at least three types of tenseless languages. Their temporal systems vary in whether they make use of a topic time, distinct from the eventuality and utterance times, and how they do so. While human language seems to allow for some variation in the temporal interpretation of tenseless clauses, it remains to be seen how constrained this variation is.