Bernard Comrie

The Slavonic languages

P.Cubberley, University of Melbourne, A.Schenker, Yale University, K. Polanski, Katowice, D.Huntley, University of Toronto, E.Scatton, SUNY, V.A.Friedman, University of North Carolina, D.Short, University of London, G.Stone, University of Oxford, R.A.Rothstein, University of Massachusetts, and R.Sussex, University of Queensland

The Typology of Reflexives

The series is a platform for contributions of all kinds to this rapidly developing field. General problems are studied from the perspective of individual languages, language families, language groups, or language samples. Conclusions are the result of a deepened study of empirical data. Special emphasis is given to little-known languages, whose analysis may shed new light on long-standing problems in general linguistics.

Approaches to the Typology of Word Classes

This book approaches word classes and their categorial manifestations from the perspective of typology and language universals research. The authors in this volume discuss word class categorization in general (Part I) as well as word classes and word class systems of individual languages (Part II) from a typological-universal viewpoint and from diachronic and cross-linguistic perspectives.

Grammatical gender systems: a linguist's assessment.

The notion of grammatical gender is defined and criteria for assigning nouns to genders are discussed, in particular semantic and formal criteria. Data from child language acquisition show that both semantic and formal criteria can be the basis of childrens overgeneralizations, although the question of to what extent more opaque semantic or formal gender assignment criteria are available to children remains to be ascertained.

TENSE IN INDIRECT SPEECH

However, in order to answer this question, it turns out that a number of other more important questions must be considered, such äs the nature of deixis. Thus, in a broader sense, because of the interaction with other facets of the grammar of English, this question turns out to be much more important. It is also important in another sense, namely that it forces the linguist to sharpen bis concept of linguistic argumentation. A priori, there are at least two reasons why one might think was is in the past tense in (1): the first is because it has past time reference: the second is because it follows a main clause verb in the past tense. One of the main aims of this paper is to show how, for English, one can come up with clearcut arguments in favor of the second of these suggestions and against the first. This paper concentrates almost exclusively on data from English, although in a few places I have included data from Bussian, which provides interesting contrasts to Bnglish precisely in the use of tense in indirect speech. This typological contrast of English and Bussian does, of course, introduce a typological dimension to the investigation, but I would emphasize that this paper does not claim to be a general typology of tense in indirect speech across the worlds languages, nor to exhaust the possibilities that are found across the worlds languages with respect to this phenomenon. Its aim is rather

THE MAJOR LANGUAGES OF EASTERN EUROPE

Introduction Bernard Comrie 1. Indo-European Languages Philip Baldi, Pennsylvania State University 2. Slavonic Languages Bernard Comrie 3. Russian Bernard Comrie 4. Polish Gerald Stone, University of Oxford 5. Czech and Slovak David Short, University of London 6. Serbo-Croat Greville Corbett, University of Surrey 7. Greek Brian D. Joseph, Ohio State University 8. Uralic Languages Robert Austerlitz, Columbia University 9. Hungarian Daniel Abondolo, University of London 10. Finnish Michael Branch, University of London 11. Turkish and the Turkic Languages Jaklin Kornfilt, Syracuse University Language Index

Semantic role universals and argument linking: Theoretical, typological and psycholinguistic perspectives

Semantic roles have long played a major role in all domains of linguistic explanation on account of their undisputed suitability as interface representations between syntax and semantics. By focusing on semantic roles and argument linking from such diverse perspectives as grammatical theories, language typology, psycho-/neurolinguistics and language disorders, the present volume encourages a new degree of cross-fertilisation in this important linguistic domain.

The Acquisition of Relative Clauses in Relation to Language Typology

The articles that constitute the body of this journal issue present rich empirical evidence and theoretical reasoning that relate to the acquisition of relative clauses (RCs). Most are concerned with SLA, more specifically with the acquisition of East Asian languages (in particular, Japanese and Korean) by those who are already speakers of other languages, including European languages. The article by Yip and Matthews (this issue) is slightly different in that it documents the bilingual acquisition of Cantonese and English by children, with English being acquired with a slight lag relative to Cantonese, but, like the other articles, it also provides evidence of the confrontation of European and East Asian languages in the general area of language acquisition.

When agreement gets trigger-happy

A number of cases are examined in which more than one controller is available for a particular agreement slot, a phenomenon that is referred to as ‘trigger-happy’ agreement. It is argued that trigger-happy agreement is a reasonably well-defined phenomenon, although it does form one end of a cline—essentially of grammaticalisation—that has ‘well behaved’ agreement at the other end. It is shown that trigger-happy agreement shares a number of general properties with agreement in general, in particular sensitivity to topicality and topicworthiness. Possible alternative analyses of trigger-happy agreement are considered and rejected as a general solution.

INVERSE VERB FORMS IN SIBERIA:EVIDENCE FROM CHUKCHEE, KORYAK, AND KAMCHADAL

0. This article is concerned with what might, at first sight, seem a problem of minor and parochial interest: the verbal prefix nein Chukchee and Koryak. However, comparative analysis of this prefix in the languages of the Chukotko-Kamchatkan family suggests a common origin äs a marker of inverse verb forme, i.e. of verb forms where the sub ject is lower in animacy than the ob ject (section 2). Hitherto, special inverse forms have been reported in particular for North American Indian languages (section 1), but have never before been isolated in languages of the ChukotkoKamchatkan family. The existence of inverse verb forms in both Siberia and North America thus constitutes a typological parallel, although the manner of forming inverse verb forms is rather different in the two areas (section 3). The Chukotko-Kamchatkan family, so called because its member languages are spoken in the Chukotka and Kamchatka peninsulas in the far east of Siberia, consists of the three languages Chukchee, Koryak, and Kamchadal (the last also known äs Itelmen). Kerek and Alutor are sometimes considered separate languages, sometimes dialects; in the respects to be discussed below, they do not differ from Koryak other than in phonetic detail. 1. Inverse verb forms in North America are perhaps most familiär from the Algonquian languages, though similar phenomena are also found in Navaho and Chinookan (Bloomfield 1946; Frishberg 1972; Silverstein 1976). Of the kinds of basic Situation that can be referred