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Annual Review of Linguistics - Volume 7, 2021
Volume 7, 2021
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Linguistics Then and Now: Some Personal Reflections
Vol. 7 (2021), pp. 1–11More LessBy mid-twentieth century, a working consensus had been reached in the linguistics community, based on the great achievements of preceding years. Synchronic linguistics had been established as a science, a “taxonomic” science, with sophisticated procedures of analysis of data. Taxonomic science has limits. It does not ask “why?” The time was ripe to seek explanatory theories, using insights provided by the theory of computation and studies of explanatory depth. That effort became the generative enterprise within the biolinguistics framework. Tensions quickly arose: The elements of explanatory theories (generative grammars) were far beyond the reach of taxonomic procedures. The structuralist principle that language is a matter of training and habit, extended by analogy, was unsustainable. More generally, the mood of “virtually everything is known” became “almost nothing is understood,” a familiar phenomenon in the history of science, opening a new and exciting era for a flourishing discipline.
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The Respiratory Foundations of Spoken Language
Vol. 7 (2021), pp. 13–30More LessWhy is breathing relevant in linguistics? In this review, we approach this question from different perspectives. The most popular view is that breathing adapts to speech because respiratory behavior has astonishing flexibility. We review research that shows that breathing pauses occur mostly at meaningful places, that breathing adapts to cognitive load during speech perception, and that breathing adapts to communicative needs in dialogue. However, speech may also adapt to breathing (e.g., the larynx can compensate for air loss, breathing can partially affect f0 declination). Enhanced breathing control may have played a role in vocalization and language evolution. These views are not mutually exclusive but, rather, reveal that speech production and breathing have an interwoven relationship that depends on communicative and physical constraints. We suggest that breathing should become an important topic for different linguistic areas and that future work should investigate the interaction between breathing and speech in different situational contexts.
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Cracking Prosody in Articulatory Phonology
Vol. 7 (2021), pp. 31–53More LessArticulatory Phonology advances an account of phonological structure in which dynamically defined vocal tract tasks—gestures—are simultaneously and isomorphically units of cognitive representation and units of physical action. This paradigm has fundamentally altered our understanding of the linguistic representation of words. This article reviews the relatively recent incorporation of prosody into Articulatory Phonology. A capsule review of the Articulatory Phonology theoretical framework is presented, and the notions of phrasal and prominence organization are introduced as the key aspects of linguistic prosodic structure under consideration. Parameter dynamics, activation dynamics, and prosodic modulation gestures, such as the π-gesture, are outlined. The review is extended to touch on rhythm, intonation, and pauses and to consider innovations for integrating multiple aspects of prosodic structure under this dynamical approach. Finally, a range of questions emerges, crystallizing outstanding issues ranging from the abstract and theoretical to the interactive and functional.
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Prosody and Sociolinguistic Variation in American Englishes
Vol. 7 (2021), pp. 55–68More LessThough scholarly understandings of sociolinguistic variation have undergone a significant expansion in the last 70 years, variables in the realm of prosody remain severely underdescribed. It is necessary to examine variation at these levels both because of its perceptual salience and utility for speakers and listeners and because of what it can illuminate about cross-variety sociolinguistic differences. This article reviews some of the key methodologies that have been used to study prosody in phonological research and discusses the limited body of sociophonetic literature that has examined such variables. It concludes with a discussion of the future of sociophonetic studies in the twenty-first century and the importance of examining prosodic variables for a more comprehensive understanding of the nature of variation itself.
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The Motivation for Roots in Distributed Morphology
Vol. 7 (2021), pp. 69–88More LessWithin Distributed Morphology, it has been proposed that the lexical vocabulary consists of Roots: category-less primitives. The motivation for Roots is connected with a line of argument reaching back to Chomsky's “Remarks on Nominalization” concerning the representation of lexical categories and their role in syntax. At the center of the theory of Roots is the Two Domains Intuition: the idea that there are two different types of domains in which grammatical interactions (form: allomorphy; meaning: allosemy) occur. Roots are posited as part of an argument against lexicalist approaches to the Two Domains Intuition that reduce it to a modular distinction between the lexicon and the syntax. In place of the modular distinction, Root-based approaches hypothesize that domain differences are derivative of syntactic locality effects in a way that connects with the phase theory of Minimalist syntax. This review examines developments leading to current versions of a Roots-and-contexts theory. A particular focus is on the idea that separating lexical Roots from the morphemes that categorize them is essential to defining the distinct locality domains that are posited to explain the effects subsumed under the Two Domains Intuition.
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The Morphome
Vol. 7 (2021), pp. 89–108More LessThe term morphome (to be distinguished from morpheme), and the notion that there exist autonomous morphological phenomena synchronically independent of phonological or functional conditioning, has occupied a central place in morphological theory. This article reviews some characteristics of morphomic (i.e., autonomously morphological) structures that are assumed in recent studies. Taking a diachronic perspective, it asks whether these properties (typological uniqueness, phonological heterogeneity, syncretism, systematicity, predictiveness) are inherent or only contingent. It concludes that typological uniqueness is not inherent and that the belief that it is so is a misunderstanding. Phonological heterogeneity, a repeatedly observed concomitant of some of the best-known types of morphome, proves merely contingent since alternations firmly anchored in a particular phonological form can be morphomic. Syncretism may be a precondition for, but is not necessarily characteristic of, the historical emergence of morphomes. Contrary to widely held assumptions, systematicity and predictiveness are acquired (not inherent) characteristics of morphomes.
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Serial Verb Constructions
Vol. 7 (2021), pp. 109–130More LessIn a serial verb construction (SVC), two or more verbs combine in a single clause without any morphosyntactic marking of linking or subordination. However, the way in which different linguists interpret and diagnose this description is a continual source of controversy. There are different assumptions about the nature of verbhood and clausehood as well as disagreements over how to interpret morphosyntactic marking in particular languages. Despite the fuzzy nature of the category, SVCs are often found to have similar functions in many languages—for example, to express closely linked sequences of events; to indicate directional and prior motion; to show concurrent aspects of a single event, such as posture, alongside another activity; and to express particular semantic roles or aspectual meaning. The morphosyntactic complexity and diversity found in SVCs continue to challenge conceptions of the clause that are assumed in both generative and comparative approaches to syntax.
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Logophoricity, Perspective, and Reflexives
Vol. 7 (2021), pp. 131–155More LessThe notion of logophoricity is used to characterize linguistic elements sensitive to perspective. The goal of this review is to examine this notion by focusing on the behavior of so-called exempt reflexives. It has long been observed that reflexives can be exempt from Condition A of Binding Theory under perspectival conditions. The distribution of exempt reflexives can thus be examined to identify what perspectival properties are grammatically relevant and thereby specify the definition of logophoricity. In this article, I first review various proposals about this issue; in particular, the grammatical relevance of perspective for exempt reflexives has been explored in comparison with so-called logophoric pronouns as well as in the context of literary and philosophical studies. Second, after providing tools for exploring the perspectival properties of exempt reflexives crosslinguistically, I present my own hypothesis explaining why reflexives can superficially be exempt from Condition A under logophoric conditions.
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Noncanonical Passives: A Typology of Voices in an Impoverished Universal Grammar
Vol. 7 (2021), pp. 157–176More LessNoncanonical passives crosslinguistically exhaust the space of possible variation, supporting an approach whereby Universal Grammar is underspecified for the characteristics of voice and the properties of any particular construction are learned through experience. Languages considered include Passamaquoddy and Oji-Cree (Algonquian); Dutch and Icelandic (Germanic); Ukrainian (Slavic); Welsh and Irish (Celtic); Hindi (Indo-Aryan); Acehnese, Indonesian, and Manggarai (Malayo-Polynesian); Sason Arabic (Arabic); Bemba and Kirundi (Bantu); Lithuanian (Baltic); Turkish (Turkic); and Mandarin (Sinitic).
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Resumptive Pronouns in Language Comprehension and Production
Vol. 7 (2021), pp. 177–194More LessAlthough the grammatical status of resumptive pronouns varies from one language to the other, these elements occur in spontaneous speech cross-linguistically, giving rise to a long-held intuition that resumption has a processing function, facilitating production and/or comprehension. In this review, I examine the central threads of thought related to resumption and processing and consider the prominent theories and findings that have shaped the discussion on this issue. I review grammatical and grammaticalization-based approaches to resumption and present the evidence suggesting that resumptive pronouns are a production artifact as well as the evidence that speaks in favor of or against the idea that resumptive pronouns aid comprehension. While the theory that resumption aids the producer receives straightforward support, the findings backing the claim that resumption helps the comprehender are much more equivocal, suggesting that in some cases resumption is not helpful and may even be detrimental to comprehension.
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Syntactic Structure from Deep Learning
Tal Linzen, and Marco BaroniVol. 7 (2021), pp. 195–212More LessModern deep neural networks achieve impressive performance in engineering applications that require extensive linguistic skills, such as machine translation. This success has sparked interest in probing whether these models are inducing human-like grammatical knowledge from the raw data they are exposed to and, consequently, whether they can shed new light on long-standing debates concerning the innate structure necessary for language acquisition. In this article, we survey representative studies of the syntactic abilities of deep networks and discuss the broader implications that this work has for theoretical linguistics.
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Evidentiality, Modality, and Speech Acts
Vol. 7 (2021), pp. 213–233More LessEvidential constructions have two main semantic effects: They contribute information about an individual's source of evidence, and they potentially modify the force of a sentence. In this article, I review the at-issue status of the evidential information, the indexical and anaphoric properties of evidentials, their force-modifying effect, and the connection throughout to epistemic modality. In some languages, evidentials occur as part of the grammatical morphology, but evidential information can be expressed through a variety of constructions across languages. As such, the study of evidentiality highlights the important role of cross-linguistic semantics and the collaboration between language typology and linguistic semantics.
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Shifty Attitudes: Indexical Shift Versus Perspectival Anaphora
Vol. 7 (2021), pp. 235–259More LessIn cases of indexical shift, so-called indexical pronouns like I, you, here, and now refer to the speaker, addressee, location, and time of some context other than the utterance context. In cases of perspectival anaphora, an anaphor tracks the perspective of some individual other than the utterance speaker [or addressee(s)]. Thus, both phenomena involve referential obviation of a pronoun or anaphor from the utterance context. Such obviation also occurs under strikingly similar grammatical conditions—for instance, in the scope of an attitude predicate (e.g., say, think, perceive). In this review, I introduce the core properties of both phenomena and show that they actually stand in a subset–superset relation. The availability of indexical shift in a given environment entails that of perspectival anaphora, but not vice-versa. I describe a plausible way to make sense of these insights within a unified model of attitude shift, which in turn helps chart out clear avenues for future research.
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Frames at the Interface of Language and Cognition
Vol. 7 (2021), pp. 261–284More LessThis article reviews the work on frames in the last decade by a Düsseldorf research group. The research is based on Barsalou's notion of frames and the hypothesis that the frame is the general format of categorization in human cognition. The Düsseldorf frame group developed formal definitions and interpretations of Barsalou frames and applied the theory in linguistics, philosophy, and psychology. This review focuses on applications of the theory in semantics. The Düsseldorf approach grounds the analysis of composition in deep decomposition of lexical meanings with frames. The basic mechanism of composition is unification, which has deep repercussions on semantic theory and practice: Composition produces structured meanings and is not necessarily deterministic. The interaction of semantic and world knowledge can be modeled in an overall frame model across levels of linguistic analysis. The review concludes with a brief report on the development of hyperframes for dynamic verbs and for cascades, a model for multilevel categorization of action.
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The Linguistics of the Voynich Manuscript
Vol. 7 (2021), pp. 285–308More LessThe Voynich Manuscript is a fifteenth-century illustrated cipher manuscript. In this overview of recent approaches to the Voynich Manuscript, we summarize and evaluate current work on the language that underlies this document. We provide arguments for treating the document as natural language (rather than a medieval hoax) and show how statistical arguments can be made about the phonology, morphology, and structure of the document even though the contents remain undecipherable.
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Syntactic Change in Contact: Romance
Vol. 7 (2021), pp. 309–328More LessLanguage change as a result of language contact is studied in many different ways using a number of different methodologies. This article provides an overview of the main approaches to syntactic change in contact (CIC), focusing on the Romance language group. Romance languages are widely documented both synchronically and diachronically. They have been in extensive contact with other language families both in bilingual contexts and in creolization contexts. Furthermore, they present great microvariation. They are therefore ideal to tackle language change in contact. Given the breadth of studies targeting Romance languages in contact, only a selection of facts is considered here, namely pro-drop, differential object marking (DOM), and deixis. The article shows that microcontact, i.e., contact between minimally different grammars, is a necessary dimension to be considered within contact studies, as it provides insights that are often radically different from those provided by the observation of contact between maximally different languages.
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The Classification of South American Languages
Vol. 7 (2021), pp. 329–349More LessWith some 108 independent genealogical units, South America is the linguistically most diverse region of our planet and presents a particular challenge to linguists seeking to understand the genealogical relationships among human languages. Recent years have seen a resurgence of interest in the internal classification of South American language families, and this article provides a critical overview of research in this very active area, focusing on the seven largest language families of the continent: Arawakan, Cariban, Jê, Panoan, Quechuan, Tukanoan, and Tupian. The strengths and weaknesses of major classification proposals are examined, and directions for future research discussed. Several long-distance relationship proposals that South Americanists are actively debating, including Tupi-Cariban, Pano-Takanan, Quechumaran, TuKaJê, and Macro-Jê, are also examined.
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The Origin and Dispersal of Uralic: Distributional Typological View
Vol. 7 (2021), pp. 351–369More LessRecent progress in comparative linguistics, distributional typology, and linguistic geography allows a unified model of Uralic prehistory to take shape. Proto-Uralic first introduced an eastern grammatical profile to central and western Eurasia, where it has remained quite stable. Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Uralic had no connection, either genealogical or areal, until the spreading Indo-Iranian branch of Indo-European came into contact with the already-diverged branches of Uralic about 4,000 years ago. A severe and widespread drought beginning about 4,200 years ago cleared the way for a rapid spread of Uralic-speaking people along the Volga and across southwestern Siberia. It also contributed to the sudden rise of the Seima-Turbino bronze-trading complex, one component of the Uralic spread mechanism. After the initial spread, the Uralic daughter languages retained their Volga homelands remarkably stably while also extending far to the north in a recurrent Eurasian pattern.
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Cognacy Databases and Phylogenetic Research on Indo-European
Vol. 7 (2021), pp. 371–394More LessRepeatedly in recent years, phylogenetic analyses of linguistic data have reached the world's leading scientific journals, but in ways hugely controversial within linguistics itself. Phylogenetic analysis methods, taken from the biological sciences, have been applied to date and track how major language families dispersed through prehistory, with implications also for archaeology and genetics. As this approach is extended to ever more language families worldwide, this review offers methodological perspectives and cautionary tales from the most high-profile and hotly disputed case of all: Indo-European. This article surveys the checkered history of these phylogenetic methods and of the cognacy databases they have relied on for their linguistic input data. It clears up cross-disciplinary misconceptions about this new methodology, identifies major flaws in the current state of the art (hence its highly inconsistent results), diagnoses the causes, and outlines new solutions that might bring the field closer to living up to its potential.
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