Published by De Gruyter Mouton

Volume 51 Issue 3 -

Issue of Folia Linguistica

Contents
Journal Overview

Publicly Available November 26, 2017

Frontmatter

Page range: i-v

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November 25, 2017

Testing Vocabular Clarity in insular Scandinavian

Haukur Þorgeirsson

Page range: 505-526

Abstract

Vocabular Clarity is a proposed restriction on the behaviour of inflectional classes and affixes grounded in the idea of synonymy avoidance. The proponents of Vocabular Clarity claim that it holds true for Icelandic and Faroese nominal inflections. In this article, data from these languages is examined and difficulties which have not been previously addressed are pointed out. It is argued that the Vocabular Clarity approach is somewhat vaguely specified. In particular, it needs a clear operational method for distinguishing affixes and stem allomorphy. Without this, it remains uncertain whether it makes any testable predictions. The paper shows that while the theory is intuitively appealing, it is – even under fairly generous assumptions – difficult to reconcile with the insular Scandinavian data.

November 25, 2017

Vocabular Clarity and insular Scandinavian: A response to Ϸorgeirsson

Hans-Olav Enger

Page range: 527-536

November 25, 2017

Vocabular Clarity and insular Scandinavian: A brief response to Enger’s response

Haukur Þorgeirsson

Page range: 537-538

November 25, 2017

Inflecting an infinitive or a finite verb? The case of Portuguese nominal complement clauses

Anton Granvik

Page range: 539-585

Abstract

This paper investigates the contrast between two kinds of clausal complements in the shell noun construction in Portuguese, namely finite clause complements introduced by the conjunction que ‘that’, as in a ideia de que éramos vigiados ‘the idea that we were being watched’, and inflected infinitive complements, as in a idéia de tomarem chá ‘the idea (for them) to have tea’. The aim is to reveal which factors motivate the choice of either the finite complement or the inflected infinitive construction. Three successively more detailed quantitative corpus analyses were carried out: a collostructional analysis, a distinctive collexeme analysis, and a logistic regression analysis. The results show significant differences in the constructional preferences for most nouns, but also reveal 13 nouns that frequently combine with the two complement clause constructions. With these 13 nouns, it was found that a higher degree of complement clause autonomy, complexity, and verbality favored the use of the finite clause alternative.

November 25, 2017

Adjectival antonyms in discourse: A corpus study of scalar and complementary antonyms

Nataša Kostić

Page range: 587-610

Abstract

In the structuralist view, the distinction between scalar and complementary adjectival antonyms plays an important role in definitions and classifications of antonyms. Scalar adjectival antonyms are gradable and can be combined with degree modifiers ( very cold, rather long ), whereas complementary adjectival antonyms are mutually exclusive and can only be used with totality modifiers ( completely dead, absolutely wrong ). This theoretical classification, which is mostly based on researchers’ intuitions, can be complemented if we take a corpus-based approach to the study of antonyms and examine actual language data. Studies in different languages have found that antonyms perform various discourse functions in corpora of both spoken and written language. The aim of this study is to examine the question whether the categorization into scalar and complementary adjectival antonyms is reflected in actual usage in texts. The analysis is based on examples retrieved from the largest electronic corpus of Serbian; it includes twelve pairs of adjectival antonyms, occurring in a total of 5,296 sentences. The conclusion questions the necessity of making theoretical distinctions based on gradability, as examples from real language use show that adjectival antonyms are used similarly in written texts, irrespective of the property of gradability.

November 25, 2017

The position of determiners in Ancient Greek and Luwian: Between syntax and information flow

Federico Giusfredi

Page range: 611-637

Abstract

The present paper explores the positional (and syntactic) behavior of determiners in Luwian, a very archaic article-free Indo-European Anatolian language which relied on a limited set of demonstratives, as well as in some specific constructions of Ancient Greek, an Indo-European language with definite articles and with a relatively “free” word order. Its aim is to highlight the structural differences and analogies between these languages. The present contribution will employ a framework-independent approach in investigating aspects of the combinatory constraints of determiners and determiner phrases. It will interpret these constraints as syntactic filters that regulate the interaction between syntax and information flow. The results will highlight how this model of interpretation can be applied even to languages that resort to different strategies to encode definiteness.

November 25, 2017

Young white Afrikaans speakers in South Africa: A case of liminal identity?

Pedro Álvarez-Mosquera

Page range: 639-670

Abstract

Studies on post-apartheid South Africa have revealed the persistence of important social challenges in this country. From a sociolinguistic viewpoint, the ethnic diversity and the co-existence of the eleven official languages seem to play an important role in the identity formation of South Africans and the development of intergroup relations. Against the background of key socio-historical events, this article investigates the situation of young white Afrikaans South Africans. It is hypothesized that individuals belonging to this particular ethno-linguistic group represent a case of liminality or liminal identity. Data from two recent research projects on social categorization and language preferences (2012–2014) together with the results of an ongoing study on the role of social distance in the South African context (2014–present) are used to illustrate the current social situation of the young white Afrikaans group and analyse implications for its identity.

November 25, 2017

The perception of sandhi-blocking in Polish vowel-initial words

Geoffrey Schwartz

Page range: 671-693

Abstract

This paper presents data from two experiments on the perception of phrase-medial word-initial vowels in Polish. Previous research has suggested that Polish resembles German in its resistance to the types of sandhi linking processes found in English or French. In production, glottalization frequently intervenes to block such processes involving vowel-initial words. In the listening tests described here, glottalization had an impact on response time only in the word monitoring task, in which other top-down factors may have played a role. It is therefore suggested Polish listeners have only minimal perceptual sensitivity to glottalization, a feature that is prevalent in production. This largely negative result may be interpreted as evidence that when it appears, glottalization in Polish is not due to the insertion of a boundary marker, which would be perceptually more salient. Rather, glottalization reflects the preservation of the prosodic well-formedness of vowel-initial syllables in Polish, as formulated in the Onset Prominence representational framework.

November 25, 2017

Agentivity marking in Spanish nominalisations: The use of por ‘by’ vs. de ‘of’

Henrik Høeg Müller

Page range: 695-744

Abstract

The first objective of this paper is to provide justification for the claim that variation between the prepositions por ‘by’ and de ‘of’ introducing the subject argument in Spanish nominalisations should not be explained as primarily paralleling sentence-level voice or aspectual distinctions. The strongest arguments against assuming a direct analogy between the clausal and the phrasal levels with respect to these functional categories are, on the one hand, that the use of agentive por -phrases is far from limited to nominals which can reasonably be claimed to bear a resemblance to a passive structure and, on the other, that de -marking of the Agent is fully compatible with an activity reading of the nominal, as opposed to a result reading. Secondly, as an alternative, it is proposed that the use of por vs. de relates to the perceived degree of agentivity of the subject referent, correlated with the degree of affectedness experienced by the object referent, and that por functions as a semantic marker overtly signalling agentivity rather than a syntactic marker of subjective Case.

Book Review

November 25, 2017

Matthew K. Gordon: Phonological typology

Erich R. Round

Page range: 745-755

About this journal

Objective
Folia Linguistica and Folia Linguistica Historica are the peer-reviewed journals of the Societas Linguistica Europaea (SLE). Each volume consists of two issues of Folia Linguistica, one issue of Folia Linguistica Historica, and one Special Issue. Folia Linguistica is devoted to empirically based linguistic topics and covers all non-historical areas in the traditional disciplines of general linguistics. The journal welcomes work from various theoretical perspectives, but contributions should be directed towards a general linguistic audience, in other words the argument should be understandable to linguists with other theoretical backgrounds. The domain of interest of Folia Linguistica includes sociological, discoursal, computational and psychological aspects of language and linguistic theory. Other areas of central concern are grammaticalization, language typology, and variation within and across languages. Folia Linguistica Historica is exclusively devoted to empirically based diachronic linguistics of all language families (including both historical and comparative linguistics).

Topics
Folia Linguistica

non-historical areas in general linguistics
grammaticalization
language typology
language variation
language varieties
sociological, discoursal, computational and psychological aspects of language and linguistic theory

Folia Linguistica Historica

diachronic linguistics (including both historical and comparative linguistics)
linguistic reconstruction (both internal and external) and language phylogeny
computational approaches to linguistic variation and change

Article formats
Research articles, Review articles, Book reviews, Miscellanea (reports and discussion notes)