Australian Journal of Linguistics最新文献

{"title":"‘A very pleasant, safe, and effectual medicine’: The serial comma in the history of English","authors":"J. Calle-Martín, Miriam Criado-Peña","doi":"10.1080/07268602.2022.2123700","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/07268602.2022.2123700","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The present paper traces the historical development of the serial comma in the history of English until its eventual decline over the course of the twentieth century. The serial comma (also known as the Oxford comma or Harvard comma) refers to the existence of a pause immediately before the conjunctions and/or (and sometimes nor) in a series of three or more elements in a clause. Although the use of this mark of punctuation is no longer a desideratum in Present-day British English, it was a disseminated practice among seventeenth-, eighteenth- and nineteenth-century writers. In light of this, this work has been conceived with the following objectives: (a) to study the use and distribution of the serial comma in the period 1500–1999; (b) to evaluate its distribution in the two types of writing, i.e. handwriting and printing, and the level of variation across text types; and (c) to ascertain whether the number of elements in the series participates in its deployment. The source of evidence comes from The Málaga Corpus of Early English Scientific Prose (MCEESP), the corpus of Early English Medical Writing (CEEM) and A Representative Corpus of Historical English Registers (ARCHER 3.2).","PeriodicalId":44988,"journal":{"name":"Australian Journal of Linguistics","volume":"42 1","pages":"165 - 183"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47820489","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Tradition and innovation: Using sign language in a Gurindji community in Northern Australia","authors":"Jennifer Green, F. Meakins, C. Algy","doi":"10.1080/07268602.2022.2105137","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/07268602.2022.2105137","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In the Gurindji community of Kalkaringi in Northern Australia the shared practices of everyday communication employed by both hearing and deaf members of the community include conventionalized manual actions from the lexicon of Indigenous sign as well as some recent visual practices derived from contact with both written English and with Auslan. We consider some dimensions of these multimodal practices, including kinship signs and signs for time-reference, and discuss several notable features in these domains. The first is gender-motivated use of the left and right sides of the body in several kinship signs. The second is the use of celestial anchoring in some signs for time. The use of spatially accurate pointing also contributes to the indexical richness of these communicative practices, as do some introduced semiotic resources, such as air-writing, and Auslan fingerspelling. As the first description of Gurindji sign, we establish a basis for further understandings of how tradition and innovation are incorporated into these shared practices.","PeriodicalId":44988,"journal":{"name":"Australian Journal of Linguistics","volume":"42 1","pages":"139 - 164"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47594233","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"When past meets future in Persian: A construction grammar approach to futurity","authors":"S. H. Mousavi","doi":"10.1080/07268602.2022.2073545","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/07268602.2022.2073545","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In Persian, two of the verbal constructions used for expressing futurity – the Past Simple and the Future Simple – are built around the past form of the main verb. This paper seeks to demystify this connection between the past and the future by investigating how these past forms contribute to the expression of futurity and setting this within an overall analysis of the future constructions in this language. Based on the form of the main verb in 940 sentences with verbal future constructions, six constructions were identified and categorized into future-oriented past constructions (FPST), which include the Past Simple and the Future Simple, and future-oriented present constructions (FPRT), which include the Present Simple, the Present Progressive, the Present Subjunctive and the WANT construction. A construction grammar approach together with Reichenbach and neo-Reichenbach terminology was then utilized to distinguish the differing relations between tense, aspect, mood and speaker perspective, and assign syntactic-semantic maps in terms of features such as level of formality, perfectness, intended future, certainty and inner aspect (aktionsart) to each of the FPST and FPRT constructions. It is argued that the use of the past form of the main verb in the Past Simple and the Future Simple (FPST constructions) owes much to aspectual and ontological factors, with the past element indicating certainty, perfectness and a speaker perspective of looking back.","PeriodicalId":44988,"journal":{"name":"Australian Journal of Linguistics","volume":"42 1","pages":"105 - 138"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46648149","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The ethnopragmatics of English stage-of-life words as forms of address","authors":"Gian Marco Farese","doi":"10.1080/07268602.2022.2043824","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/07268602.2022.2043824","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This paper examines the nominal category of stage-of-life words used in English address practices and presents an analysis of their interactional uses and meanings made adopting the principles and methods of ethnopragmatics. The paper has a twofold aim: (i) to highlight the polysemous nature of English stage-of-life words and make a clear distinction between their reference and address meanings; and (ii) to show that the address meanings of stage-of-life words reflect their sociopragmatic function in discourse. Using Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) methodology, separate semantic explications are produced for the meanings expressed by each address noun in different interactional contexts. More generally, the present study highlights the interface between semantics, pragmatics and cultural assumptions, showing how this connection can be used as the starting point to conduct a proper ethnography of speaking.","PeriodicalId":44988,"journal":{"name":"Australian Journal of Linguistics","volume":"42 1","pages":"1 - 23"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41946963","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Barngarla place names and regions in South Australia","authors":"Petter A. Næssan, G. Zuckermann","doi":"10.1080/07268602.2022.2052015","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/07268602.2022.2052015","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Barngarla is a Thura-Yura Pama-Nyungan language originally spoken on the Eyre Peninsula, South Australia and adjacent northern hinterlands. This paper proposes various etymologies and supports the Barngarla language reclamation. Reflecting Barngarla epistemology and traditional ecological knowledge, toponyms are intimately connected to place name reclamation and language reclamation. Delineating hunting, foraging and fishing places, geographical features, and sites embedded in oral history, toponyms also provide windows into broader diachronic processes within grammar and phonology. Oral history recorded by the German missionary Clamor Wilhelm Schürmann indicates naming practices dating back to the late-Pleistocene showing some similarities to other, non-Barngarla groups. Several named band areas seem focused on floristic regions. Barngarla toponyms exhibit signs of diachronic processes both regarding phonology and grammar. We explore the extent to which post-invasion Barngarla names are identifiable, propose evidence for Thura-Yura lenition of an original gabi ‘water’ form, and discuss a locative form -la unrecorded by Schürmann.","PeriodicalId":44988,"journal":{"name":"Australian Journal of Linguistics","volume":"42 1","pages":"24 - 56"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47315036","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Argumentality and the distribution of nominalizers in Lhasa Tibetan","authors":"Jie Cheng, Lin Chen","doi":"10.1080/07268602.2022.2060705","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/07268602.2022.2060705","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The relationship between the distribution of nominalizers in Lhasa Tibetan and the argument/adjunct property of relevant syntactic elements is approached from a generative perspective. The distribution of nominalizers in Lhasa Tibetan demonstrates a regular pattern. Some nominalizers are bi-functional in that they can mark both participant and event nominalizations while others are uni-functional in that they can only mark participant nominalizations. It is found that the difference between the two types of nominalizers correlates to whether the nominalizer (NML) is argument-associated or adjunct-associated. An account of the correlation is developed in the theoretical framework of generative grammar. It is argued that the syntactic derivation of an NML-phrase gives rise to a binding relationship between the nominalizer and the suppressed element in the source constituent Aspect Phrase (AspP) or the AspP itself, leading to a condition on its semantic interpretation. The condition is satisfied in a participant NML-phrase headed by a nominalizer of either type and in an event NML-phrase headed by a bi-functional nominalizer. It is not in an event NML-phrase headed by a uni-functional nominalizer for the reason that in the calculation of event semantics arguments align with events while adjuncts align with predicates. Specifically, a bi-functional nominalizer, being argument-associated, semantically matches both a suppressed argument in a participant NML-phrase and the source constituent AspP, whereas a uni-functional one, being adjunct-associated, semantically matches a suppressed adjunct in a participant NML-phrase but not the source constituent AspP. Consequently, no event NML-phrase headed by an adjunct-associated nominalizer is found in this language. The findings of this study have implications for both analyzing the distribution of nominalizers in other Tibeto-Burman languages and the syntactic and semantic mechanisms that constrain them, and for classifying the argument/adjunct asymmetry, which is fundamental in most current linguistic frameworks as well as research on human sentence processing.","PeriodicalId":44988,"journal":{"name":"Australian Journal of Linguistics","volume":"42 1","pages":"75 - 104"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48412918","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Iconic bias in Italian spatial demonstratives","authors":"Ian Joo, Yu-Yin Hsu, Emmanuele Chersoni","doi":"10.1080/07268602.2022.2056410","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/07268602.2022.2056410","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT An iconic pattern across spoken languages is that words for ‘this’ and ‘here’ tend to have high front vowels, whereas words for ‘that’ and ‘there’ tend to have low and/or back vowels. In Italian, there are two synonymous Italian words for ‘here’, namely qui and qua, and two synonymous words for ‘there’, lì and là. Qui ‘here’ and là ‘there’ are iconic because qui has the high front vowel /i/ and là has the low vowel /a/, whereas qua ‘here’ and lì ‘there’ are counter-iconic, since their vowels are the opposite. Based on corpus, survey and computational data, we demonstrate that (i) qui ‘here’ and là ‘there’ have been consistently used more frequently throughout history compared to qua ‘here’ and lì ‘there’, respectively; and (ii) in present-day Italian, qui ‘here’ tends to refer to a location that is closer to the speaker than qua ‘here’ does, whereas là ‘there’ tends to refer to a location that is further away from the speaker than lì ‘there’ does. In summary, the iconic demonstrative pronouns (qui and là) are used more frequently and are closer to the prototypical meanings of ‘here’ and ‘there’. We argue that their frequency and prototypicality are motivated by their iconic power. This case study shows how iconicity may work as pressure on language use and language change.","PeriodicalId":44988,"journal":{"name":"Australian Journal of Linguistics","volume":"42 1","pages":"57 - 74"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43746447","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"On the syntax of wan ‘finish/complete’ in Mandarin Chinese","authors":"I. Woo","doi":"10.1080/07268602.2021.1995698","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/07268602.2021.1995698","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In this study, I revisit the linguistic properties of wan ‘finish/complete’ in Chinese and provide a syntactic account. I demonstrate that wan is undergoing a process of grammaticalization from being a lexical item to a functional one. I also argue that because of this process, wan is found in different places in syntax. As a main predicate, it is projected in the head of the VP; in contrast, while functioning as a telic morpheme, it is in the head of the Inner Aspect Phrase between the vP and VP. This study sheds light on the Chinese aspectual system and suggests that Chinese uses at least two different mechanisms to mark telicity: resultative complements and overt telic morphemes.","PeriodicalId":44988,"journal":{"name":"Australian Journal of Linguistics","volume":"41 1","pages":"408 - 433"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42281769","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Beyond ‘Macassans’: Speculations on layers of Austronesian contact in northern Australia","authors":"A. Schapper","doi":"10.1080/07268602.2021.2000365","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/07268602.2021.2000365","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article seeks to identify traces of language contact between speakers of Australian languages and speakers of Austronesian languages other than Macassans. I put forward evidence for lexical borrowing into northern Australian languages from Austronesian languages in South and East Sulawesi, Maluku and Timor-Rote, as well as from Austronesian languages of the Sama-Bajau and Oceanic subgroups. Although the evidence is fragmentary, the presence of these borrowings could be taken to indicate a more varied history of contact with Australia than the Macassan-dominated linguistic data suggest.","PeriodicalId":44988,"journal":{"name":"Australian Journal of Linguistics","volume":"41 1","pages":"434 - 452"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42683520","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Indigenizing say in Australian Aboriginal English","authors":"Madeleine Clews, Celeste Rodríguez Louro, Glenys Collard","doi":"10.1080/07268602.2021.2007046","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/07268602.2021.2007046","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The quotative system – lexical and morphosyntactic strategies for the direct reporting of speech and thought – has undergone a major transformation in mainstream World Englishes. Diachronic studies of quotation in Australian, British, Canadian and New Zealand English have all documented the same trends: a relatively stable system, using a small number of quotative variants, becomes more varied and complex, with a decline in the frequency of canonical say correlating with an increasing tendency to quote thought. This study, modelled on two foregoing sociolinguistic analyses of mainstream West Australian and New Zealand Englishes, examines quotation in recordings of 26 speakers of Australian Aboriginal English born between 1907 and 1961, including 16 oral histories. The results indicate that, unlike their settler English-speaking counterparts, these speakers have not only preserved the dominance of say: they have come to use it in distinctive ways, with semantic and grammatical innovations not observed in other varieties, in a system which serves to enrich narrative in a speaker population unique for its millennia of oral tradition. The findings suggest processes of grammaticalization and, observed alongside similar expanding frequency and versatility of be like in mainstream Englishes, may signal a parallel evolutive effect in a different language ecology.","PeriodicalId":44988,"journal":{"name":"Australian Journal of Linguistics","volume":"41 1","pages":"453 - 476"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49621628","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}