Linguistics Department

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    Antonymous Adjectives in Disyllabic Lexical Compounds in Mandarin: A Cognitive Linguistics Perspective
    (Horizon Research Publishing,USA, 2015) Zhang, Yuan; Kemmer, Suzanne
    Corpus-based research into antonyms in English, Sweden and Japanese has gradually brought the lexical relation of antonymy into functional-cognitive linguistics in recent years. When antonymous adjectives are examined in Mandarin corpora, we find that they co-occur in both discontinuous constructions, for example, 既不热也不冷ji bure ye buleng, literally not hot also not cold, 'neither hot nor cold', and lexical compounds, often called disyllabic compounds, for example, 大小da xiao, literally big-small, 'size'. This study is a cognitive account of Mandarin disyllabic compound constructions composed of two antonymous adjective roots, such as长短chang duan, literally long-short, 'length', 左右zuo you, literally left-right, 'control', and 反正 fan zheng, literally back-face, 'anyway'. With the help of the Lancaster corpus of Mandarin Chinese (LCMC) and the corpus from the Center for Chinese Linguistics (CCL), 51 instances of antonymous adjective compounds were retrieved. When the antonymous adjectives co-occur, there are interactions between the componential semantics and the constructional semantics. While the disyllabic compound constructions may inherit the part of speech from their components, they may also have their own part of speech, functioning as nouns, adverbs and even verbs. The different categories reflect different construals of the same conceptual content. In a nutshell, by adopting a cognitive linguistics approach, we show that the different uses of these compounds are related in a systematic way.
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    Applicative constructions and suppletive verbs in Hiaki
    (Rice University, 2009-02-11) Haugen, Jason; Tubino Blanco, Mercedes; Harley, Heidi; Linguistics Department
    Several intransitive verbs of motion or posture in Hiaki exhibit verb-stem suppletion conditioned by the number of the subject. There are also a few suppletive transitive verbs conditioned by the number of the object. We argue in this paper that suppletion in these verb roots is triggered only by underlying objects, and that the intransitive members of this class of verbs are unaccusative. To show this, we exploit the properties of the Hiaki applicative morpheme, which is productive with any agentive verb, transitive or intransitive, but may not occur with verbs with the general properties of unaccusative verbs. We show that the intransitive suppletive verbs may not co-occur with the applicative/benefactive morpheme -ria, despite the fact that several of them are apparently semantically/pragmatically appropriate as potential benefactive actions.
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    Cognition, categorization and language: Cognitive Grammar meets Vantage Theory
    (Rice University, 2009-02-11) Głaz, Adam; Linguistics Department
    Cognitive linguistics becomes more credible if it gains support from independent research on cognition. The study juxtaposes a cognitive linguistic model, Ronald W. Langacker's Cognitive Grammar (CG), with a model of categorization, primarily in the color domain, called Vantage Theory (VT), proposed by Robert E. MacLaury. The study shows that in spite of different goals and scopes of application, as well as terminological differences, the two models are congruous. Moreover, they yield parallel results when applied in analyses of language data, although VT must be adapted for the purpose. The congruence results from the cognitive basis of both CG and VT, with common ground to be found in the broadly explored notions of figure vs. ground, point of view, subject-oriented nature of meaning, and active role of the conceptualizer.
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    Colloquial Singapore English never
    (Rice University, 2013-11) Leong Xue Wei, Amelia; Linguistics Department
    Negation in New Englishes has been a topic of great interest. However, although some general features of negation in New English varieties have been identified, few have investigated specific varieties and accounted for the deviations of usage patterns away from Standard English usage. This paper investigates the use of the Standard English (StdE) emphatic negator never, which has gained non-emphatic functions in Colloquial Singapore English (CSE). CSE never is regularly used to negate single past events, and can function as an aspectual or simple past marker. It is usually used with additional adverbial markers, but can occur alone if both interlocutors are well-informed of the conversational context. The various grammatical/morphosyntactic functions of CSE never were identified through a survey on Chinese CSE speakers’ assessments of the grammaticality of never in various sentences, and compared against those of Hokkien and Cantonese negative constructions bo and mo respectively (very similar to Mandarin mei you). The syntactic and semantic behavior of never in CSE was found to be highly similar to the Hokkien and Cantonese negative constructions. This is expected since the majority of CSE speakers also spoke either Hokkien or Cantonese as their native language, and could have transferred the functions of Hokkien bo and Cantonese mo to CSE never. However, the relation between the two constructs is not always apparent, and the specific functions of CSE never might arguably have arisen as a result of universal patterns of language learning rather than from substrata influence. However, although the surface structure of CSE never appears highly similar to that of never or other specific negation markers in other varieties of New Englishes, a closer look at the detailed functions and usage patterns reveals that these features of CSE never are highly complex, and bear too much resemblance to the unique grammatical patterns of Mandarin mei you to be attributable to universal patterns, or pure coincidence. Instead, the unique usage patterns of CSE never are determined by the discoursal and microlinguistic environment in which they occur, as well as the social context in which the exchange is taking place and the speakers’ motivation.
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    A Comparative Study on Japanese and Chinese NMCs: A Semantic and Discourse Approach
    (Rice University, 2012-05-21) Zhan, Fangqiong; Miao, Xiaoman; Linguistics Department
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    Complex predicates in Bangla: An event-based analysis
    (Rice University, 2010-06-24) Basu, Debarchana; Wilbur, Ronnie; Linguistics Department
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    Contrastive rhetoric of English and Persian written texts: Metadiscourse in applied linguistics research articles
    (Rice University, 2009-02-11) Rahimpour, Sepideh; Faghih, Esmail; Linguistics Department
    The present study examines a corpus of ninety discussion sections of applied linguistics research articles, with the goal of analyzing different aspects of academic written discourse. Three types of texts were considered: English texts written by native speakers of English, English texts written by Iranians (as non-natives of English), and Persian texts written by Iranians. In order to understand the cultural differences between Persian and English-speaking researchers, the following metadiscourse sub-types adapted from Hyland's (2004) model were examined: transitions, frame markers, endophoric markers, evidentials, code glosses, hedges, boosters, attitude markers, engagement markers, and self-mentions. The first five comprise interactive metadiscourse, and the rest comprise interactional metadiscourse. After the detailed analysis of the metadiscourse types in question, chi-square tests were carried out to clarify the probable differences. The analysis revealed how academic writings of these groups differed in their rhetorical strategies using metadiscourse type because of their respective mother tongues. However, the different groups were found to use all sub-types of metadiscourse. Yet, some subcategories were used differently by the writers of these two languages. In addition, interactive metadiscoursal factors (those resources which help to guide the reader through the text such as transitions, frame markers, etc.) were used significantly more than interactional metadiscoursal factors (those resources involve the reader in the argument such as hedges, boosters, etc.) by both groups.
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    Correlates of nonconfigurationality
    (Rice University, 2006-03) Bowern, Claire; Linguistics Department; NELS, UMass Amherst
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    Defining complexity: Historical reconstruction and Nyulnyulan subordination
    (Rice University, 2009-02-11) Bowern, Claire; Linguistics Department
    I use data from subordination strategies in Nyulnyulan languages (Non-Pama-Nyungan, Northern Australia) in order to investigate various alternative means of defining and quantifying 'complexity'. While Edmonds (1999) defines 48 distinct types of complexity (concentrating on social and natural sciences), in this paper I concentrate on three facets of complexity: descriptive complexity, ontological complexity, and parsimony in reconstruction. While historical linguists tend to maximise parsimony, in Nyulnyulan languages the minimization of one aspect of complexity necessarily adds complication elsewhere, and it therefore serves as an appropriate case study of the interdependencies between ontology, syntactic modelling, and language change.
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    Diachrony of complex predicates in Japanese
    (Rice University, 2009-02-11) Lanz, Linda A.; Linguistics Department
    This paper examines two types of complex predicates in Japanese from a diachronic perspective. The two-fold purpose is bring more diachronic data into the dialogue on complex predicates and to evaluate the claim by Butt and Lahiri (1998) that light verb constructions are diachronically stable. Using Japanese data it is possible to test this hypothesis. While the serial verb construction has become more restricted with time, over the centuries the light verb construction [N(-ACC) suru] has remained stable and become dramatically more frequent. Using natural written data rather than constructed examples, I demonstrate that in previous stages of Japanese - namely Old Japanese and Classical Japanese - the SVC had fewer restrictions on internal order, transitivity mismatches were possible, and motion verb grammaticalization was less developed than Modern Standard Japanese. In contrast, the suru-type light verb construction has undergone no significant changes in any attested stage of Japanese other than increase in token frequency.
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    Do psychological constructions in Persian involve complex predicates?
    (Rice University, 2009-02-11) Sedighi, Anousha; Linguistics Department
    Constructions introduced in this work have been introduced as Impersonal/Subject-less in the Persian literature involving compound verbs. I explore them from the point of view of Psychological constructions and show that they do not involve compound verbs. I capture properties of Persian psychological constructions by proposing that they contain a Tense requirement and involve Applied Arguments. I depart from previous works (Pylkkänen 2000, 2002) which argue that applicative heads can take only a vP or a DP as complement. I propose a new category of Applicative head, Super High Applicative head, which takes a TP (a full proposition) as complement. Constructions studied in this work provide further evidence for the divorce of nominative licensing and verbal agreement proposed by Haeberli (2002), Pesetsky and Torrego (2001, 2004, 2007) and Svenonius (2001), among others.
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    Evaluative lexis in science: A corpus-based study in scientific abstracts
    (Rice University, 2010-06-23) Cava, Amelia Maria; Linguistics Department
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    Fast speech phenomena in Asante Twi
    (Rice University, 2014) Nelson, Katherine; Linguistics Department
    A descriptive study is utilized to examine fast speech phenomena in Asante Twi, a Niger-Congo language, focusing on three fast speech rules: vowel deletion, vowel alternation in modifiers, and fricative voicing between sonorants. Transcribed and interlinerized texts from a field methods class at Rice University are used for this study. The morphological and phonetic levels of the language are compared to formulate the rules for this paper. All phonetic level transcriptions were aurally checked at least twice for accuracy. Results indicate that fast speech rules are conditioned both phonotactically and syntactically in Asante Twi.
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    Food Metaphors in Tunisian Arabic Proverbs
    (Rice University, 2012-05-21) Faycel, Dakhlaoui; Linguistics Department
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    Front Matter
    (Rice University, 2012-06-08) RWPL, Vol.3; Linguistics Department
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    Front Matter
    (Rice University, 2013-11) RWPL, Vol. 4; Linguistics Department
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    Front Matter, Volume 5, Fall 2014
    (Rice University, 2014) Linguistics Department
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    A functional approach to identifying compliment data
    (Rice University, 2012-05-21) Mustapha, Abolaji S.; Linguistics Department
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    Gender and Politeness: A Case Study on Advertising Discourse
    (Rice University, 2012-05-21) Vazquez-Hermosilla, Sandra; Linguistics Department