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Open Access
October 21, 2009
Abstract
Non-Teleological Approaches to Metathesis: Evidence from Dialects of Polish This paper discusses metathesis and other related processes attested in the North Mazovian dialects of Polish. Recently proposed functional approaches to sound change provide a framework for this analysis. It is argued that the transposition of segments with elongated phonetic cues is best analyzed as an instance of phonetically-based sound change. Copying a consonant across a rhotic finds a similar perceptual explanation involving the reinterpretation of the acoustic signal. In addition to perceptual metathesis, I consider cases that fall under coarticulatory metathesis and arise from varying degrees of gestural overlap. In comparison to previous approaches to metathesis, the role of syllable structure in driving metathesis is considerably diminished but not refuted. Structural optimization presumably operates in tandem with phonetic and perceptual factors. Language processing is called to attention in accounting for the long-distance transposition of similar segments. A connectionist approach that makes reference to activation and competition in a neural network of linguistic units is invoked to define this type of metathesis. On the whole, the Polish dialectal data support the hypothesis that sound change is fundamentally diachronic and non-optimizing.
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October 21, 2009
Abstract
The Adessive Case in Polish: A Cognitive Perspective On Some Locative Prepositions The aim of this paper is to show that what is considered in Polish as one heterogeneous LOCATIVE case in the "formal" approach only on the surface seems rather complex and appears to lack any natural order. Due to the limited size of the paper, focus will be laid only on one locative case, the ADESSIVE, representing the static external locative, expressing different aspects of a relationship outside an entity and describing the "location ‘on top of’ or ‘near’, ‘owner’ or ‘instrument’ by means of which an action is performed" (Karlsson 1999: 115). It has no single linguistic equivalent in Polish; instead it is represented by several prepositions, such as na + LOC ‘on’, przy + LOC ‘by’ and u + GEN ‘at’, etc., reflecting different aspects of proximity and coincidence in space. Taking just the case of the ADESSIVE relation, data observations based on the IPI PAN Corpus of Polish allow us to claim that although each preposition is responsible for a different aspect of the external spatial relation, they complement one another and are related in a family resemblance fashion, expressing an adessive relation.
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Open Access
October 21, 2009
Abstract
A Typology of the Path of Deictic Motion Verbs as Path-Conflating Verbs: The Entailment of Arrival and the Deictic Center This paper analyzes deictic motion verbs in various languages using Talmy's framework, and isolates the Path of motion expressed by these verbs. It is argued that the different interpretations of the Path so discovered are attributable to the lexical meaning of deictic motion verbs as well as locative phrases. Furthermore, deictic motion verbs are claimed to be lexically specified for the entailment of arrival only if they express the Path eventually directed to the deictic center. The arrival-time and departure-time interpretations of cooccurring point-of-time expressions are shown to coincide with the entailment of arrival, or the lack thereof, which is inherent to the semantics of deictic motion verbs.
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Open Access
October 21, 2009
Abstract
Transitivity in Natural Syntax: Accusative Languages The framework of this paper is Natural Syntax initiated by the author in the tradition of (morphological) naturalness as established by †Willi Mayerthaler and Wolfgang U. Dressler. Natural Syntax is a developing deductive theory. The naturalness judgements are couched in naturalness scales, which follow from the basic parameters (or "axioms") listed at the beginning of the paper. The predictions of the theory are calculated in what are known as deductions, the chief components of each being a pair of naturalness scales and the rules governing the alignment of corresponding naturalness values. Natural Syntax is exemplified here with language data (all taken from Hopper & Thompson 1980) bearing on transitivity phenomena in accusative languages.
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October 21, 2009
