Search results for "GRAMMATICA"
showing 10 items of 182 documents
Root lexical features and inflectional marking of tense in Proto-Indo-European
2009
This paper examines early inflectional morphology related to the tense-aspect system of Proto-Indo-European. It will be argued that historical linguistics can shed light on the long-standing debate over the emergence of tense-aspect morphology in language acquisition. The dispute over this issue is well-known; it has been pursued mostly by scholars following various general linguistic approaches, from typology to acquisition, but also by historical linguists and Indo-Europeanists, who have long debated about the precedence of aspect or tense from both a synchronic and a diachronic perspective. However, so far Indo-Europeanists have rarely confronted their results in a successful way with re…
The impact of input and output domains: towards a function-based categorization of types of grammaticalization
2015
Abstract A wide variety of semantic–pragmatic processes have been linked to grammaticalization, such as pragmatic enrichment (Hopper and Traugott, 2003) and the loss of pragmatic meaning (Heine and Reh, 1984). As this example shows, not all of these subprocesses are compatible with each other. It therefore makes sense to assume that different subprocesses may be linked to different stages, different input or different output types of grammaticalization processes. In the present paper, various types of changes will be analyzed with respect to the semantic and pragmatic changes that typically accompany them, using mostly examples from English, German and the Romance languages. On this basis, …
Problems with primary vs. secondary grammaticalization: the case of East and mainland Southeast Asian languages
2015
Abstract The present paper aims at testing four criteria for the distinction between primary vs. secondary grammaticalization in East and mainland Southeast Asian languages. These languages are of special interest for research on grammaticalization because they show limitations in the coevolution of meaning and form and because pragmatic inference is very prominent (lack of obligatory grammatical markers, multifunctionality). If the four criteria work in these languages, this can be taken as a good indicator for their cross-linguistic, maybe universal relevance. The criteria are tested with three markers that stand for three different types of multifunctionality: (i) the Khmer verb baːn ‘co…
A diachronic study of the (negative) additive «anche» in italian
2016
Resum: En italià modern (IM), els mots additius negatius són elements focalitzadors que típicament se sotmeten a la concordança negativa amb una negació oracional o amb un altre element legitimador de la negació. En aquest article investiguem l’evolució diacrònica d’un element additiu negatiu, neanche ‘ni/ni tan sols’. En italià antic (IA, varietat florentina entre 1200 i 1370), no hi ha testimonis de focalitzadors additius negatius morfològicament complexos com neanche. En canvi, l’element corresponent no negatiu additiu, anche, podia combinar-se amb un marcador negatiu o amb algun altre element negatiu: né/non… anche ‘ni/ni tan sols’. Mostrem que en IA (i) el mot additiu no negatiu anche …
Evidential markers derived from visual perception in Spanish dialects : a contrastive study of por lo visto and se ve (que)
2019
Verbs of perception (PV) are known to frequently give rise to discursive uses. PVs are used, for example, as evidential markers through grammaticalization processes. This study focuses on two evidential markers of Spanish derived from the visual PVs ver ('to see'), namely, 'por lo visto' and 'se ve (que)'. Although the attention dedicated to these evidential markers in Spanish has increased considerably in recent years, contrastive studies have not taken into account the dialectal variation of this phenomenon. We aspire to take a first step in filling this gap by contrastively studying 'por lo visto' and 'se ve (que)' in different dialects of Spanish by means of a comprehensive, empirical s…
Secondary grammaticalization and the English adverbial -ly suffix
2015
Author's version of an article in the journal: Language sciences. Also available from the publisher at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.langsci.2014.10.003 This paper discusses the secondary grammaticalization of the English adverbial -ly suffix and makes claims about the concept of secondary grammaticalization. Secondary grammaticalization is defined as the development of a new grammatical function in an already grammatical element. It is shown that the development of the -ly suffix involves a number of the processes which are associated with grammaticalization, e.g. paradigmatization, specialization, obligatorification, subjectification, layering and persistence. However, none of these proces…
El sujeto de las formas no personales:problemas de caracterización y orientaciones para su enseñanza
2022
En este artículo nos ocuparemos de las formas no personales que encabezan oraciones. Tradicionalmente el infinitivo, el gerundio y el participio se han asociado con las categorías de sustantivo, adverbio y adjetivo. Sin embargo, este paralelismo no implica una equivalencia categorial, puesto que el hecho de que un infinitivo ocupe contextos similares a los de un sintagma nominal no lo convierte en un sustantivo. Veremos que las construcciones con formas no personales constituyen estructuras predicativas bimembres y, por tanto, tienen sujeto, aunque bien es cierto que condicionado por la ausencia de flexión verbal. Para entender las propiedades del sujeto de las formas no personales examinam…
El sirventès en la poesia catalana dels segles XIV-XV : un catàleg
2018
The sirventes of the troubadour era has been broadly studied, but there are not overall explanations concerning the evolution of the sirventes genre in the Catalan-speaking lands of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. This paper propounds a catalogue of sirventesos concerning its historical development, the troubadour models, rhetorical and grammatical treatises, and genre assignment in rubrics. Our catalogue contains thirty-one Catalan sirventesos , including twenty-eight extant items and three items lost. In some cases the literary motifs of the sirventes cross boundaries in a process of poetic hybridization with other moral genres which borrow out themes, images and rhetorical strate…
Rhythmic and textural musical sequences differently influence syntax and semantic processing in children.
2020
International audience; Effects of music on language processing have been reported separately for syntax and for semantics. Previous studies have shown that regular musical rhythms can facilitate syntax processing and that semantic features of musical excerpts can inZluence semantic processing of words. It remains unclear whether musical parameters, such as rhythm and sound texture, may speciZically inZluence different components of linguistic processing. In the current study, two types of musical sequences (one focusing on rhythm and the other focusing on sound texture) were presented to children who were requested to perform a syntax or a semantic task thereafter. The results revealed tha…
The relation between language and cognition in 3- to 9-year-olds: the acquisition of grammatical gender in French.
2007
International audience; The French language has a grammatical gender system in which all nouns are assigned either a masculine or a feminine gender. Nouns provide two types of gender cues that can potentially guide gender attribution: morphophonological cues carried by endings and semantic cues (natural gender). The first goal of this study was to describe the acquisition of the probabilistic system based on phonological oppositions on word endings by French-speaking children. The second goal was to explore the extent to which this system affects categorization. In the study, 3- to 9-year-olds assigned gender categorization to invented nouns whose endings were typically masculine, typically…