Annual Review of Linguistics - Volume 1, 2015

Suppletion (wholly unpredictable alternations such as good∼better or go∼went) stands as the epitome of morphological irregularity. In the formal theoretical tradition, with a few exceptions, suppletion has long languished in obscurity, widely considered unlikely to be informative of deeper properties of grammar. This article reviews recent studies that find, as it were, order in chaos—robust patterns of regularity that emerge as significant, arguably universal generalizations in large, cross-linguistic samples. These patterns are indicative of the nature of abstract grammatical representation and, in particular, of constraints that regulate the interaction among the atomic elements that build these representations. Far from sitting in an obscure corner of the grammar and representing nothing more than the detritus of history, suppletive alternations may yet shed light on the nature of the mental representations that constitute grammars, thus providing indirect evidence for aspects of Universal Grammar in the broad sense.

Ditransitive constructions are syntactic constructions with three arguments, an agent (A), a theme (T), and a recipient (R), which express an event of possessive transfer (‘give,’ ‘lend,’ etc.) or an event of cognitive transfer (‘tell,’ ‘show,’ etc.). Their cross-linguistic study has revealed three major alignment types: indirective alignment (with the R treated in a special way, distinct from monotransitive P), secundative alignment (with the T treated in a special way), and neutral alignment (or double-object construction). Alignments may be construction specific, that is, different in argument coding and behavioral properties. Languages sometimes exhibit alignment alternations (multiple constructions with roughly the same meaning), and they often exhibit alignment splits (different constructions under different conditions). The splits are always based on the referential prominence of the R and the T, and show more explicit formal coding for less expected scenarios. Constituent order is also typically sensitive to the topic-worthiness of the objects. Object–object primacy is often based on linear order, but may also be determined by topic-worthiness, with the R having primacy over the T. Ditransitive verbs expressing ‘give’ show a stronger tendency for neutral alignment than do others with a more spatial meaning such as ‘bring’ or ‘send.’

At first glance, the syntax of quotation appears to be a rather straightforward matter of transitivity and complementation. However, quotation raises a number of intriguing and perplexing questions for the functioning, structure, and development of syntactic systems, and for their interactions with the semantic–interpretative interface. The purpose of this review is to articulate and exemplify these challenges as raised in the literature of various linguistic domains, and to highlight the ways in which quotation evokes a range of empirical and theoretical implications. This article begins by discussing the issues faced by traditional syntactic analyses of quotation, then examines the types of changes implicated by this sector: grammaticalization, lexicalization, and systemic change and variation. The view that emerges is that approaches that privilege the syntax as the sole structure-building component of the grammar are insufficient for accounting for the linguistic and discourse–pragmatic facts; advances in understanding this linguistic system necessarily require a more holistic approach that incorporates both intrinsic and extrinsic factors.

After setting out the challenges posed by argument alternations for linguistic theory, this article reviews the development of accounts of argument alternations over the past 50 years, documenting a shift from accounts that are primarily syntactic in nature to accounts with semantic and pragmatic components. The remainder of this review consists of case studies of the developing understanding of the semantics and pragmatics of the dative alternation and the causative alternation. Each case study stresses the interplay of semantic and contextual factors in characterizing the relation between the two variants that make up the alternation and in determining the choice of variant in a given context.

If we inspect the role of events or situations in formal semantic theories of natural languages, a general strategy common to several theories emerges: Assume that certain linguistic constructions involve a reference to events or situations and appeal to their metaphysical properties to account for semantic properties of the constructions. I concentrate on some paradigmatic cases that illustrate this way of pursuing explanatory tasks in semantics: perception reports, adverbial modification, telicity, and attitude reports.

Vagueness is a pervasive feature of natural language, which has been studied from a range of perspectives. This review focuses on recent empirical insights into vagueness that have come out of the field of linguistic semantics, as well as the theoretical developments that these have prompted. Topics covered include the distinction between vagueness and imprecision, or what I refer to as Type 1 and Type 2 vagueness; the complex manifestations of vagueness in the adjectival domain; and recent experimental findings regarding “ordinary” speakers’ use and interpretation of vague language. Also briefly discussed is the broader question of why language is vague.

Tense, the grammaticalized marking of location in time, has played a central role in analyses of temporal reference even since before the inception of the formal study of meaning. However, research on a wide range of typologically diverse languages over the past 40 years has revealed that many languages do not have tenses and that there are a variety of other means, both linguistic and contextual, that affect temporal reference besides tense. These empirical findings refute the universality of tense and have significant implications for the role of tense in theoretical analyses of temporal reference. This review catalogues the means that affect temporal reference across tensed and tenseless languages, and offers a theoretical perspective on temporal reference that deemphasizes the centrality of tense.

Information structure has been one of the central topics of recent linguistic research. This review discusses a wide range of current approaches with particular reference to African languages, as these have been playing a crucial role in advancing our knowledge about the diversity of and recurring patterns in both meaning and form of information structural notions. We focus on cross-linguistic functional frameworks, the investigation of prosody, formal syntactic theories, and relevant effects of semantic interpretation. Information structure is a thriving research domain that promises to yield important advances in our general understanding of human language.

It is well established that meanings associated with linguistic expressions evolve in systematic ways across time. We have little precise understanding, though, of why and how this happens. We know even less about its implications for our models of grammar, communication, and cognition. This article reviews developments and results from grammaticalization, typology, and formal semantics/pragmatics that can be brought to bear on addressing the problem of semantic change. It deconstructs the notion of grammaticalization paths and offers a set of questions for systematic investigation, following which I contextualize the small body of literature at the intersection of formal semantics/pragmatics and language change. The approach I take is programmatic rather than survey oriented, given the emergent nature of the domain of investigation and the limited body of existing literature that pertains directly to the questions raised here.

Archaeological evidence and linguistic evidence converge in support of an origin of Indo-European languages on the Pontic-Caspian steppes around 4,000 years BCE. The evidence is so strong that arguments in support of other hypotheses should be reexamined.

We review a number of recent studies that have identified either correlations between different linguistic features (e.g., implicational universals) or correlations between linguistic features and nonlinguistic properties of speakers or their environment (e.g., effects of geography on vocabulary). We compare large-scale quantitative studies with more traditional theoretical and historical linguistic research and identify divergent assumptions and methods that have led linguists to be skeptical of correlational work. We also attempt to demystify statistical techniques and point out the importance of informed critiques of the validity of statistical approaches. Finally, we describe various methods used in recent correlational studies to deal with the fact that, because of contact and historical relatedness, individual languages in a sample rarely represent independent data points, and we show how these methods may allow us to explore linguistic prehistory to a greater time depth than is possible with orthodox comparative reconstruction.

Dialectometry applies computational and statistical analyses within dialectology, making work more easily replicable and understandable. This survey article first reviews the field briefly in order to focus on developments in the past five years. Dialectometry no longer focuses exclusively on aggregate analyses, but rather deploys various techniques to identify representative and distinctive features with respect to areal classifications. Analyses proceeding explicitly from geostatistical techniques have just begun. The exclusive focus on geography as explanation for variation has given way to analyses combining geographical, linguistic, and social factors underlying language variation. Dialectometry has likewise ventured into diachronic studies and has also contributed theoretically to comparative dialectology and the study of dialect diffusion. Although the bulk of research involves lexis and phonology, morphosyntax is receiving increasing attention. Finally, new data sources and new (online) analytical software are expanding dialectometry’s remit and its accessibility.

Since the 1990s, the field of sign language typology has shown that sign languages exhibit typological variation at all relevant levels of linguistic description. These initial typological comparisons were heavily skewed toward the urban sign languages of developed countries, mostly in the Western world. This review reports on the recent contributions made by rural signing varieties, that is, sign languages that have evolved in village communities, often in developing countries, due to a high incidence of deafness. With respect to a number of structural properties, rural sign languages fit into previously established typological classifications. However, they also exhibit unique and typologically marked features that challenge received views on possible sign languages. At the same time, the shared features of geographically dispersed rural signing varieties provide a unique window into the social dynamics that may shape the structures of modern human languages.

Theories addressing the biological basis of language must be built on an appreciation of the ways that molecular and neurobiological substrates can contribute to aspects of human cognition. Here, we lay out the principles by which a genome could potentially encode the necessary information to produce a language-ready brain. We describe what genes are; how they are regulated; and how they affect the formation, function, and plasticity of neuronal circuits. At each step, we give examples of molecules implicated in pathways that are important for speech and language. Finally, we discuss technological advances in genomics that are revealing considerable genotypic variation in the human population, from rare mutations to common polymorphisms, with the potential to relate this variation to natural variability in speech and language skills. Moving forward, an interdisciplinary approach to the language sciences, integrating genetics, neurobiology, psychology, and linguistics, will be essential for a complete understanding of our unique human capacities.

Neanderthal language abilities cannot be directly observed, but indirect evidence is available in their anatomy, archeology, and DNA. Neanderthal anatomy shows possible speech adaptations, and their archeology contains enough indicators of behavioral modernity, including symbols and ornaments, to conclude that their minds could handle symbolic communication. Neanderthal DNA, finally, indicates both that they possessed some of the language-relevant genes found in modern humans and that they could and did have children with modern humans. From the consilience of evidence from anatomy, archeology, and DNA, one can conclude that some language abilities, if not necessarily full modern syntactic language, were present in Neanderthals.

Evidence of children’s sensitivity to statistical features of their input in language acquisition is often used to argue against learning mechanisms driven by innate knowledge. At the same time, evidence of children acquiring knowledge that is richer than the input supports arguments in favor of such mechanisms. This tension can be resolved by separating the inferential and deductive components of the language learning mechanism. Universal Grammar provides representations that support deductions about sentences that fall outside of experience. In addition, these representations define the evidence that learners use to infer a particular grammar. The input is compared with the expected evidence to drive statistical inference. In support of this model, we review evidence of (a) children’s sensitivity to the environment, (b) mismatches between input and intake, (c) the need for learning mechanisms beyond innate representations, and (d) the deductive consequences of children’s acquired syntactic representations.

Computational semantics has long been considered a field divided between logical and statistical approaches, but this divide is rapidly eroding with the development of statistical models that learn compositional semantic theories from corpora and databases. This review presents a simple discriminative learning framework for defining such models and relating them to logical theories. Within this framework, we discuss the task of learning to map utterances to logical forms (semantic parsing) and the task of learning from denotations with logical forms as latent variables. We also consider models that use distributed (e.g., vector) representations rather than logical ones, showing that these can be considered part of the same overall framework for understanding meaning and structural complexity.

The use of two or more languages is common in most of the world. Yet, until recently, bilingualism was considered to be a complicating factor for language processing, cognition, and the brain. The past 20 years have witnessed an upsurge of research on bilingualism to examine language acquisition and processing, their cognitive and neural bases, and the consequences that bilingualism holds for cognition and the brain over the life span. Contrary to the view that bilingualism complicates the language system, this new research demonstrates that all of the languages that are known and used become part of the same language system. The interactions that arise when two languages are in play have consequences for the mind and the brain and, indeed, for language processing itself, but those consequences are not additive. Thus, bilingualism helps reveal the fundamental architecture and mechanisms of language processing that are otherwise hidden in monolingual speakers.

We review the development of methodologies and technologies of empirical linguistic work done outside traditional academic laboratories. The integration of such results with contemporary language documentation and linguistic theory is an increasingly important component of language analysis. Taking linguistic inquiry out of the lab and away from well-described and familiar data brings challenges in logistics, ethics, and the definition of variability within language use. In an era when rapidly developing technologies offer new potential for collecting linguistic data, the role of empirical or experimental work in theoretical discussions continues to increase. Collecting linguistic data on understudied languages raises issues about its aim vis-à-vis the academy and the language communities, and about its integration into linguistic theory.