Impact Factor: 0.966

Open Access Published since January 1, 1963

Linguistics

An Interdisciplinary Journal of the Language Sciences

ISSN: 1613-396X

Editor-in-chief: Volker Gast

About this journal

Open Accces from 2022

Starting with volume 60 (2022), Linguistics is transformed into a Diamond Open Access journal thanks to our subscribers participating in the Subscribe to Open (S2O) project. All current content will be published under a Creative Commons License (CC-BY 4.0) at no cost to authors and will be freely available to readers.

Objective
Linguistics publishes articles addressing research questions of current or general relevance that make a significant contribution to our understanding of human language as a system of communication or a cognitive, social and historical phenomenon. This includes aspects of grammatical organization (phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax) as well as questions of meaning and use (semantics, pragmatics, discourse). Studies may deal with linguistic systems as instantiated in speaking, signing, writing and other modes of communication, as well as the language users themselves and their communities (e.g. psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics). The focus may be on one or several languages, the perspective may be synchronic or diachronic, the methodology may be qualitative or quantitative, and the approach may be exploratory or confirmatory. Linguistics publishes up to two special issues a year in these areas, for which it welcomes proposals.

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Your Benefits

Your benefits:

Comprehensive overview of traditional disciplines of linguistics as well as neighboring disciplines
In-depth analysis of language within various subfields of linguistics
Ground-breaking interdisciplinary research from the language sciences
Rigorous peer-review

History

Linguistics was launched in 1963 by the Dutch publisher, Mouton (now De Gruyter Mouton) based in the Hague. It was initially called “Linguistics: An International Review”. Read more

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Volume 61 Issue 1

January 2023

Publicly Available January 16, 2023

Frontmatter

Page range: i-v

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Research Articles

Open Access November 16, 2022

Affix substitution in Indonesian: A computational modeling approach

Karlina Denistia, R. Harald Baayen

Page range: 1-32

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Abstract

Indonesian has two noun-forming prefixes, PE- and PEN- , that often stand in a paradigmatic relation to verbal base words with the prefixes BER- and MEN- . The central question addressed in the present study is whether the form similarities between PEN- and MEN- make PEN- easier to learn compared to PE- . To address this question, we made use of a computational model, the ‘discriminative lexicon’ (DL) model. We trained this model on 2,517 word forms that were inflected or derived variants of 99 different base words. Of these word forms, 109 were nouns with PE- and 221 words were nouns with PEN- . Both the production and the comprehension networks of the model performed with high accuracy for both prefixes. However, the model was able to provide more precise predictions for PE- as compared to PEN- , implying that PE- should have a processing advantage compared to PEN- . There are two reasons for why PE- is learned more robustly than PEN- . First, PE- words tend to be longer and hence have more discriminative triphones. Second, due to cue competition with MEN- , the prefixal triphones of PEN- are less effective cues than those of PE- . A measure of functional load is proposed that helps clarify the relative importance of the triphones in the prefixes and those straddling the boundary between prefix and stem. Our results shed further light on the productivity paradox, role of junctural phonotactics, and (dis)functionality of affix substitution.

Open Access May 17, 2022

The sound symbolism of food: the frequency of initial /PA-/ in words for (staple) food

Ian Joo

Page range: 33-46

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Abstract

In different languages around the world, morphemes representing the (cooked form of) staple food or food in general tend to begin with a [+labial] phoneme followed by a [+low] phoneme (/pa-/, /ma-/, /fa-/, /wa-/, etc.). This article provides evidence for this phonological similarity by analyzing 66 sample languages’ morphemes representing the staple food within the society where each language is spoken. About a fourth of the morphemes referring to staple food begin with a [+labial] first phoneme followed by a [+low] second phoneme, which is a much higher proportion compared to another list of basic morphemes in the same 66 languages. I further argue that the motivation for this crosslinguistic tendency is the iconic association between the mouth-opening gesture and the concept of eating.

Open Access May 18, 2022

Facing salient and non-salient time sequence orientation types expressed by adverbs in English, Mandarin and Serbian

Dušan Stamenković, Vladimir Figar, Miloš Tasić

Page range: 47-76

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Abstract

This article intends to provide insight into how speakers of English, Mandarin, and Serbian perceive spatio-temporal relations expressed by specific pairs of adverbials. In two studies participants were presented with simple sentences describing the metaphorical movement of events on the timeline (e.g., “The meeting was moved from the morning to the afternoon.”) and were asked to decide whether the event had been moved along the sagittal, vertical or transverse axis (forward/backward, up/down, left/right). The main aim of the first study, which was conducted with 104 native speakers of Serbian, was to explore the effects of axis-orientation and individual time units on participants’ preferences and response times. The target time units used were dates, hours, months, days of the week, and years. The results showed significant differences in response times between the transverse and sagittal axis conditions on the one hand (with shorter reaction times), and the vertical axis condition on the other. Moreover, the distribution of answers showed a high degree of inconsistency when it came to moving events to a previous point in time. The main aim of the second study was to identify potential differences in responses and response times to different orientations and time units between four experimental groups: native speakers of English with no second language, native speakers of English with knowledge of a second language, native speakers of Mandarin (with English as a second language), and native speakers of Serbian (also with English as a second language). The study was conducted with 126 participants. The design of the second study was largely parallel to that of the first, but it involved three trials and different time units (parts of the day, days of the week and months). The Mandarin speakers gave the quickest responses in the first two trials when deciding on the vertical axis. Moreover, reaction times were significantly shorter in the parts-of-the-day condition (e.g., “morning”, “afternoon”), across the three trials. In addition, Mandarin speakers showed an inverted trend in responses on the sagittal axis compared to the remaining three groups. While some of our results corroborate previous research on the topic, the study also provides novel empirical evidence on how Serbian speakers conceptualize time using spatial terms.

Open Access September 12, 2022

Effects of topicality in the interpretation of implicit consequentiality: evidence from offline and online referential processing in Korean

Hyunwoo Kim, Eunjin Chun

Page range: 77-105

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Abstract

There is little consensus as to whether the use of implicit causal biases is driven exclusively by verb semantics or mediated by an interaction of verb semantics and other information sources. We tested whether the topic status of a subject modulates Korean speakers’ referential choices and processing in the interpretation of implicit consequentiality information. Results from two sentence-completion tasks (Experiment 1) showed more subject reference in participants’ continuations when the preceding subject was marked by the topic rather than the nominative marker, regardless of the directionality of the implicit consequentiality bias. In a self-paced reading task (Experiment 2), Korean speakers spent shorter reading times when the referent in the consequence clause was resolved as referring to the previous subject than when it referred to the previous object, although only in the topic-marked condition and not in the nominative-marked condition. Our results suggest that the implicit consequentiality effect remains consistent regardless of the subject’s topic status in the offline tasks, but the effect interacts with the topicality effect in real-time sentence processing. We discuss the implications of our findings for assumptions concerning the underlying mechanisms of referential resolution in discourse including causal bias verbs.

Open Access January 2, 2023

Phrasal subcomparatives: a comparative coordination analysis based on evidence from Basque, Spanish, and English

Laura Vela-Plo

Page range: 107-157

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Abstract

By analyzing an understudied type of comparative, namely, subcomparatives with surface-phrasal standards of comparison, this article offers an answer to three long-debated questions regarding the internal structure and semantic composition of comparative constructions in opposition to traditional assumptions and reductionist analyses. First I offer syntactic tests evidencing the non-clausal status of the standard in these subcomparatives in Basque, Spanish and English. Second, regarding the question of the linkage type between the compared elements (either a dependence relation or a coordination relation), I present previous and novel syntactic evidence showing that phrasal subcomparatives invariably behave like common phrasal coordinates. Therefore, I defend an architecture of these comparatives involving a phrasal coordinate structure and offer a transparent mapping between the surface syntax and semantic interpretation of these constructions. Third, subcomparatives involve the obligatory omission of a measure modifier from the standard. This process known as comparative subdeletion cannot be explained as the result of wh -movement within a clause, given the non-clausal status of the standard. Alternatively, comparative subdeletion is defined not as an ad hoc deletion rule but rather as the result of an obligatory deletion operation independently attested in common coordinate structures.

Open Access January 2, 2023

About what about: the semantics and syntax of irregular wh-questions in English

Wenshan Li, Jiang Liu

Page range: 159-195

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Abstract

Although often used as diagnostic tools in discourse studies, irregular wh -questions in English, which take the form of what/how about … ? and what/how if … ? , have not received sufficient attention in terms of their semantic and syntactic properties. This article investigates irregular wh -questions from semantic and syntactic perspectives. Semantically, there is a topic-comment relationship between the wh- word and the rest of the sentence. Syntactically, an irregular wh -question neither displays an explicit matrix subject-predicate structure nor involves a fronted auxiliary. This article pursues three objectives. First, a descriptive overview of irregular wh -questions is provided, which shows that the complement of about in irregular wh -questions can belong to various syntactic categories. Second, the topic-comment structure of irregular wh -questions is compared with that of the topic-comment structure in declarative sentences, which reveals some semantic properties of irregular wh -questions. Third, a formal account of irregular wh -questions is formulated in the framework of Dynamic Syntax, which captures the interaction of the semantic and syntactic properties of the components of an irregular wh -question. Additionally, the present dynamic account of irregular wh -questions is contrasted with an existing dynamic account of the hanging topic construction in English, which highlights some merits of the current account.

Open Access December 2, 2022

Semantic transparency and Oneida morphological parts of speech

Jean-Pierre Koenig, Karin Michelson

Page range: 197-230

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Abstract

North American languages have figured prominently in discussions about parts of speech. This paper examines more closely the evidence for morphological parts of speech in one Northern Iroquoian language, Oneida, and asks what semantic properties underlie its parts of speech. We make two claims. First, inflected parts of speech in Oneida are semantically transparent in that a part of speech can be determined solely on the basis of well-established semantic distinctions. Oneida parts of speech are, in this respect, canonical, in Canonical Typology’s sense. Second, Oneida morphological parts of speech are organized along two orthogonal dimensions, an ontological dimension, i.e., the sort of entity that members of the category describe, and a semantic type dimension, i.e., the kind of semantic relation conveyed by members of the category. We show that Oneida inflection is sometimes sensitive to distinctions along the ontological semantic dimension, sometimes to distinctions along the semantic type dimension, and sometimes a single inflectional process is sensitive to distinctions along both dimensions at the same time. We then show that our bi-dimensional semantic classification of stems accounts for the mixed properties of kinship terms, i.e., which “noun”-like and which “verb”-like properties they have.

Open Access August 2, 2022

Causality and the PA/SN distinction

Patrícia Amaral, Dylan Jarrett

Page range: 231-263

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Abstract

We analyze two constructions expressing the negation of a causal relation in contemporary European Portuguese, nem por isso (lit. ‘not for this [reason]’) and não porque…mas porque (‘not because…but rather because’). We propose that the PA/SN distinction, established for adversative connectives (e.g., Spanish pero and German aber as PA, Spanish sino and German sondern as SN), can be extended to the domain of causality and provides insight on the properties of these two causal constructions. We show that their sensitivity to different types of conversational implicature as well as their interaction with negation are reminiscent of the distinction between restrictive and exclusive adversatives. Our investigation, which is the first semantic-pragmatic analysis of negated causality in European Portuguese, allows us to formulate historical predictions concerning the relation between types of negated causality and the possible development of adversative markers. Our findings provide synchronic evidence for a diachronic semantic path from negated causality to adversative meaning that has been posited for several Romance languages (e.g., Italian però , Spanish pero ). Specifically, using contemporary corpus data, we show that the properties of nem por isso provide insight into the bridging contexts for semantic change from causal to adversative meanings. In addition, we identify a type of negated causality that fits within strategies of corrective contrast not exclusive to the domain of causal relations.

Reply

Open Access November 8, 2022

Semantic Theory versus Semantic “Lumping”: Reply to Bertinetto et al. (2015) The acquisition of tense and aspect in a morphology-sensitive framework: data from Italian and Austrian-German children

Richard M. Weist

Page range: 265-274

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Abstract

The crosslinguistic investigation of child language has revealed the frequent co-occurrence of certain values of Aktionsart, aspect and tense. Specifically, dynamic-atelic predicates are likely to be observed with unbounded values of aspect in the non-past tense and dynamic-telic predicates with bounded aspect and past tense morphology. This observation has motivated theories of language acquisition that incorporate the semantic structure of predicates in relation to clause structure. Pier Marco Bertinetto and colleagues have claimed that inferences regarding the role of predicate structure in the acquisition process have been erroneously derived from “lumping” together stative and activity predicates. Furthermore, without acknowledging the prior theory of “typological bootstrapping”, they present their presumably unique theory of information processing to explain their Italian and German child language data. The purpose of this reply is to show that the stative-activity “lumping” assertion is a “straw man” argument, and a theory of morphological information processing is both well-known and compatible with semantically based theories of acquisition.

Ahead of Print / Just Accepted

Ahead of Print / Just Accepted

Volume 61 (2023)

Issue 1

Volume 60 (2022)

Volume 59 (2021)

Volume 58 (2020)

Volume 57 (2019)

Volume 56 (2018)

Volume 55 (2017)

Volume 54 (2016)

Volume 53 (2015)

Volume 52 (2014)

Volume 51 (2013)

Volume 50 (2012)

Volume 49 (2011)

Volume 48 (2010)

Volume 47 (2009)

Volume 46 (2008)

Volume 45 (2007)

Volume 44 (2006)

Volume 43 (2005)

Volume 42 (2004)

Volume 41 (2003)

Volume 40 (2002)

Volume 39 (2001)

Volume 38 (2000)

Volume 37 (1999)

Volume 36 (1998)

Volume 35 (1997)

Volume 34 (1996)

Volume 33 (1995)

Volume 32 (1994)

Volume 31 (1993)

Volume 30 (1992)

Volume 29 (1991)

Volume 28 (1990)

Volume 27 (1989)

Volume 26 (1988)

Volume 25 (1987)

Volume 24 (1986)

Volume 23 (1985)

Volume 22 (1984)

Volume 21 (1983)

Volume 20 (1982)

Volume 19 (1981)

Volume 18 (1980)

Volume 17 (1979)

Volume 16 (1978)

Volume 15 (1977)

Volume 14 (1976)

Volume 13 (1975)

Volume 12 (1974)

Volume 11 (1973)

Volume 10 (1972)

Volume 9 (1971)

Volume 8 (1970)

Volume 7 (1969)

Volume 6 (1968)

Volume 5 (1967)

Volume 4 (1966)

Volume 3 (1965)

Volume 2 (1964)

Volume 1 (1963)

5-year Impact Factor	1.118
Cite Score	1.9
European Reference Index for the Humanities
Impact Factor	0.966
Journal Citation Indicator	0.92
SCImago Journal Rank	0.477
Source Normalized Impact per Paper	1.519

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Editorial

Linguistics Editorial Office 
Department of English and American Studies
University of Jena
Ernst-Abbe-Platz 8
D-07743 Jena
Germany
e-mail: linguistics@uni-jena.de

Editor-in-Chief 
Volker Gast
University of Jena, Germany

Assistant Editor 
Ann Kelly
University of Jena, Germany

Editorial Board 

Harald Baayen, Tübingen
Sonia Colina, Tucson
Östen Dahl, Stockholm
Nick Enfield, Sydney
Ricardo Etxepare, Bayonne
Jennifer Hay, Christchurch
Beth Levin, Stanford
Yen-hui Audrey Li, Los Angeles
Caroline Rowland, Nijmegen

Board of Consulting Editors
Patrícia Amaral, Bloomington, IN
Matthew Baerman, Guildford
Heike Behrens, Basel
Delia Bentley, Manchester
Ruth Berman, Tel Aviv
Walter Bisang, Mainz
Denis Creissels, Lyon
William Croft, Albuquerque, NM
Stuart Davis, Bloomington, IN
Henrik De Smet, Leuven
Stephen M. Dickey, Lawrence, KS
Mark Dingemanse, Nijmegen
Dagmar Divjak, Sheffield
Michael Dunn, Uppsala
Sam Featherston, Tübingen
Christiane Fellbaum, Princeton, NJ
Ad Foolen, Nijmegen
Mirjam Fried, Prague
Matthias Gerner, Shanghai
Nancy Hedberg, Burnaby, BC
Henriette Hendriks, Cambridge
Daniel Hole, Stuttgart
Sunwoo Jeong, Seoul
Andrew Jessop, Liverpool
Zhuo Jing-Schmidt, Eugene, OR
Evelien Keizer, Vienna
Ekkehard König, Berlin
Maria Koptjevskaja Tamm, Stockholm
Martin Kümmel, Jena
Robert Ladd, Edinburgh
Natalia Levshina, Nijmegen
Jo-Wang Lin, Taipei
Åshild Næss, Oslo
Iván Ortega-Santos, Memphis, TN
Jonathan Owens, Bayreuth
Chongwon Park, Duluth, MN
Isabel Pérez-Jiménez, Alcalá
Timo Roettger, Oslo
Mamoru Saito, Nagoya
Devyani Sharma, London
Joanna Ut-seong Sio, Olomouc
Andrew Spencer, Colchester
Shiao Wei Tham, Singapore
Sze-Wing Tang, Hong Kong
Jacqueline Visconti, Genoa
Liulin Julie Zhang, Honolulu, HI

(Deutsch)

Online ISSN: 1613-396X
Print ISSN: 0024-3949
Type: Journal
Language: English
Publisher: De Gruyter Mouton
First published: January 1, 1963
Publication Frequency: 6 Issues per Year
Audience: linguists, scholars and students in the field of linguistics