Linguistics Vanguard最新文献

This paper investigates the degree of semantic precision in derivational processes, a crucial yet underexplored aspect of word-formation semantics that influences our understanding of compositionality, competition, and polysemy in derivation. The study focuses on the case of verb-to-noun derivation in French, using both manual analysis and computational techniques to determine the level of semantic granularity that best captures the semantic properties of derivational processes. A sample of 2,190 derived nouns formed with 30 deverbal processes is manually analyzed, distinguishing between ontological and relational semantic types, with three levels of granularity applied to each. The various combinations of semantic types and granularities are tested against computational representations of derivational processes generated from distributional semantic models. The results indicate that not only relational but also ontological types participate in the semantics of derivational processes, and that derivation operates at a fine level of semantic granularity. More broadly, the study illustrates how expert analysis of large datasets can be fruitfully associated with computational methods to address key research questions in theoretical linguistics. It also advocates for a close integration of lexical semantics and derivational morphology in the study of complex words.

This study investigates directional constraints on diachronic tone chain shifts and their applicability to non-chain shifts. Twenty-eight chain shift changes from 12 Sino-Tibetan, Kra-Dai, Austronesian, and Otomanguean languages were compared to a sample of 118 non-chain shifts (including merger) from 54 Asian tone languages. Significant overlap was found: the reported chain shift changes were also the most frequently occurring changes in non-chain shifts. Recurring patterns emerged in both chain shifts and non-chain shifts: (1) tonal alignment slides rightward, with effects on contour shape, f0 excursion and f0 onset height; and (2) falling tones become higher while rising tones lower. These crosslinguistic diachronic trends show parallels to tone variation in connected speech, which suggests that the direction of diachronic tone change is phonetically grounded, constrained by articulatory and cognitive biases in speech production and perception.

We present a new paradigm investigating social meaning through strategic action. More precisely, we present an experimental technique (a textual role-playing game developed with the Ren'Py engine), which we view as an enrichment of the matched-guise technique (MGT). In this paradigm the explicit response scales of the MGT are substituted for strategic choices in a video game. We argue that studying social meaning experimentally through looking at its effects on participants' actions is more interactive than the classic paradigm. We compare the results from both the video game and a more classic version of the paradigm based on scales, conducted with the same linguistic materials, and we show that researchers who use only the MGT may be missing some crucial aspects of the social meanings of the linguistic phenomena they are studying. We also argue that a paradigm based on strategic action is better equipped to study the social, political, and economic outcomes for the users of those linguistic variants, and therefore to contribute to understanding phenomena like linguistic discrimination.

We investigate the degree to which mispronounced signs can be accommodated by signers of French Sign Language (LSF). Using an offline judgment task, we examine both the individual contributions of three parameters - handshape, movement, and location - to sign recognition, and the impact of the individual features that were manipulated to obtain the mispronounced signs. Results indicate that signers judge mispronounced handshapes to be less damaging for well-formedness than mispronounced locations or movements. In addition to this macro-effect of parameter, individual features are found to carry different weights during sign recognition, mirroring what has been reported for phonological features in spoken languages. Together, these results thus further support an underlying a-modal phonological architecture for human language, including feature-based phonological representations.