This study investigates prosodic (noun length) and lexical-semantic (animacy) influences on determiner use in the spontaneous speech of three children acquiring French, Austrian German and Dutch. In support of typological and language-specific hypotheses from the Germanic-Romance contrast, an advantage of monosyllabic nouns and of inanimate nouns…

This short report draws attention to an interesting kind of configuration in the lexicon that seems to have escaped theoretical or systematic descriptive attention. These configurations, which we dub SEMPLATES, consist of an abstract structure or template, which is recurrently instantiated in a number of lexical sets, typically of different form…

This thesis is a comprehensive study of lexical and clause-linkage properties of converbs in an underdescribed language, Sakha (aka Yakut). Following Haspelmath (1995b) a converb is defined as a non-finite verb form which mainly indicates an adverbial subordination. Converbs are attested in diverse languages of the world, but are used extensively…

In this study, we explore native and non-native syntactic processing, paying special attention to the language distance factor. To this end, we compared how native speakers of Basque and highly proficient non-native speakers of Basque who are native speakers of Spanish process certain core aspects of Basque syntax. Our results suggest that…

This study analyzes the acquisition of relative clauses in Japanese to determine the semantic and functional characteristics of children's relative clauses in spontaneous speech. Longitudinal data from five Japanese children are analyzed and compared with English data (Diessel & Tomasello, 2000). The results show that the relative clauses produced…

This dissertation is a comprehensive description of the grammar of Sierra Popoluca (SP, aka Soteapanec), a Mixe-Zoquean language spoken by approximately 28,000 people in Veracruz, Mexico. This grammar begins with an introduction to the language, its language family, a typological overview of the language, a brief history of my fieldwork, and the…

Even before it became a common place to assume that "the Eskimo have a hundred words for snow" the languages of hunting and gathering people have played an important role in debates about linguistic relativity concerning geographical ontologies. Evidence from languages of hunter-gatherers has been used in radical relativist challenges to…

More than 4,500 entries are included in this Ibibio dictionary which is intended for general use by field workers in the Ibibio (Nigeria) area or by professional linguists and anthropologists. Most noun entries include the following subentries: (1) noun phrases in which the head noun is qualified, resulting in a change or clarification of meaning,…

The typology of planned languages, the number of such linguistic projects, and the most commonly used morphemes for these created languages are discussed. A total of 11 morpheme types are identified. (14 references) (Author/LB)

Across languages, clauses expressing possession, location, and existence exhibit many similarities. To capture their evident affinity, it is often claimed that possessives derive--synclironically or diaclironically--from expressions of location/existence. This localist account obscures a basic contrast between two broad classes of possessive…

Revised version of a paper presented at the Caribbean Linguistics Conference, University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica, April 1971; research assisted by a grant from the Ford Foundation for the Dialect Survey of Guyana. (DD)

Properties of the input, such as raw frequency and syntactic diversity, have been shown to play a role, to different extents, in the acquisition of nouns and verbs. This study investigated the relationship between three properties of the input (input frequency, syntactic diversity, and variety in noun-type co-occurrence) and age of acquisition of…

An introduction to the Russian phonemic system leads to a model classification of verb forms derived from the infinitive and present stems of selected verbs. Correspondences between the two sets of verb forms are listed. A brief history of attempts at verb classification concentrates on the theory of Meyer, Berneker, and Bloomfield. A complete…

Summarizes findings of recent studies which suggest that there is no evidence for including Haida in the Na-Dene grouping. (Author/AM)