John Hewson

From case to adposition : the development of configurational syntax in Indo-European languages

In the historical development of many languages of the IE phylum the loss of inflectional morphology led to the development of a configurational syntax, where syntactic position marked syntactic role. The first of these configurations was the adposition (preposition or postposition), which developed out of the uninflected particle/preverbs in the older forms of IE, by forming fixed phrases with nominal elements, a pattern later followed in the development of a configurational NP (article + nominal) and VP (auxiliary + verbal). The authors follow this evolution through almost four thousand years of documentation in all twelve language families of the Indo-European phylum, noting the resemblances between the structure of the original IE case system and the systemic oppositions to be found in the sets of adpositions that replaced it. Quite apart from its theoretical analyses and proposals which in themselves amount to a new look at many traditional problems, this study has a value in the collected store of information on cases, and on adpositions and their usage. There is also a considerable store of etymological information that is relevant to the description of the systemic development.

Tense and aspect in Indo-European languages : theory, typology, diachrony

This monograph presents a general picture of the evolution of IE verbal systems within a coherent cognitive framework. The work encompasses all the language families of the IE phylum, from prehistory to present day languages. Inspired by the ideas of Roman Jakobson and Gustave Guillaume the authors relate tense and aspect to underlying cognitive processes, and show that verbal systems have a staged development of time representations (chronogenesis). They view linguistic change as systemic and trace the evolution of the earliest tense systems by (a) aspectual split and (b) aspectual merger from the original aspectual contrasts of PIE, the evidence for such systemic change showing clearly in the paradigmatic morphology of the daughter languages. The nineteen chapters cover first the ancient documentation, then those families whose historical data are from a more recent date. The last chapters deal with the systemic evolution of languages that are descended from ancient forbears such as Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin, and are completed by a chapter on the practical and theoretical conclusions of the work.

Determiners as heads

The purpose of this paper is to examine the ways that determiners differ from adjectives and to collect a variety of evidence to demonstrate that determiners, äs linguists of different theoretical persuasions have claimed, play the role of head in the Noun Phrase to which they belong. Two important insights from Gustave Guillaume are introduced: (1) the distinction between suppletive and completive pronouns, and (2) the principle of incidence äs the basis of a dependency grammar. These allow us to make a cognitive analysis (in the sense of Langacker 1985 and Lakoff 1987) of the binary internal structure of the noun and to conclude that determiners are completive pronouns within the integral syntactic unit of the Noun Phrase. Such units äs De terminer + Noun represent a level of prefabricated syntax, with a rigid ordering, that is a typical feature of a configurational typology.

Beothuk and Algonkian: Evidence Old and New

1.1. Our information on Beothuk, the language of the aboriginal inhabitants of Newfoundland, comes from four vocabularies: (1) the eighteenth century vocabulary of John Clinch of Trinity, from an unknown informant, (2) that of John Leigh of Twillingate, from the Indian woman Mary March (Demasduit) captured in 1819. (3) the King vocabulary, of unknown provenance, (4) the Cormack vocabulary, taken down from Shanawdithit, who, with her mother and sister, came into voluntary captivity in 1823 because of starvation, and dying in June 1829, is presumed to be the last of the Beothuk.

The ideal sentence as a linguistic datum

Abstract The definition of a sentence as an ‘ideal’ string of words underlying any utterance stems directly from the faulty positivist definition of a community language as a set of sentences. No child, for example, in learning his community language, learns a set of sentences, and the set of possible (i.e. ideal) sentences is so vast to be unlearnable. It is a totally imaginary, fictive set, which has no existence in experience, and the term competence , whivh is defined as knowledge of this set, leads to an untenable isomorphic contrast between ideal sentences (competence) and their realization (performance). This isomorphic competence/performance distinction, which is based upon the ideal/real contrast, is therefore totally unrelated to the langue/parole distinction, which is not isomorphic, and simply distinguishes real means of production from real product, neither of them ideal or imaginary.

Person hierarchies in Algonkian and Inuktitut

Much has been written in recent years on grammatical persons and the hierarchical roles they play in a variety of linguistic structures, verbal and nominal. This paper makes explicit the complex nature of third-person roles, which accounts for unusual agreement patterning in certain Inuktitut forms, which is in turn paralleled by the proximate vs. obviative distinction in Algonkian languages. The question of a common morphology for POSSESSION and VERBAL AGREEMENT, common to a great variety of languages, is also addressed in terms of the universal iconic hierarchies of person and a justification proposed for this motivated syncretism.

The cognitive system of the French verb

This study is based on the writings and teaching of Gustave Guillaume (1883-1960), one of the earliest proponents of what is today called Cognitive Linguistics. It offers (1) a much needed presentation in English of Guillaume’s view of the French system, (2) the clarifications added by his successors, and (3) much empirical detail added by the author from his own extensive experience with the material. The word system in this work, as explained in the very first chapter, is intended in the Saussurian sense of a closed set of contrasts. The method is first briefly applied to English, in order to familiarize the reader with the methodological concepts and terminology, and comparisons are made with the general outline of the French system. The major sub-systems of the French verb are analysed in the four central chapters (4-7) entitled Aspect, Voice, Tense, Mood, followed by a chapter on systemic comparison, and two final chapters of detailed analysis of the verbal morphology and its relevance to the cognitive system.

Factors affecting the efficiency of second language learning

Abstract In a recent issue of System (System 9:1–3) Walter Apelt listed 10 leading principles in foreign language teaching, concentrating on fundamental issues and urgent problems. The purpose of this paper is to add a complementary list, of factors that affect the efficiency of second language learning. Many different studies have investigated different individual factors, but without providing a general overview or resume of all the different factors and how they relate to each other.

More on Spanish selo

We are still a long way from a final elucidation of the Spanish clitic system, and the present paper suggests only some tentative steps forward in the continuing debate. It accepts Gar das (1975) position that the clitics are to be explained in terms of an underlying content system. It also accepts Brakels (1979) criticism that Garcias explanation of certain constraints as due to inferential overburdening is unsatisfactory. It brings evidence to indicate, however, that Brakels other claims (i.e. that selo is an historically justified variant of *lelo, and the Spanish clitics are just like Portuguese clitics, etc.) are not tenable. Finally it suggests that the possible combinations of clitic pronouns may be explained more simply in terms of dependencies, and that the constraints on clitic combinations arise when the system of depencies fails to operate. A great deal has been written on the clitic pronouns of Romance languages during the past few years. Perlmutter (1971) attempts to deal with the problems that they present with what he called Surface Structure Constraints, a strategy that has since been criticised by several writers, along with Perlmutters claim that such accommodations are explanatory (Suner 1973: 149-150; Garcia 1975: 489ff; Brakel 1979: 660-661). It now seems to be generally agreed that Surface Structure Constraints are an ad hoc solution that is simply taxonomic and explains