Sonia Cristofaro

Grammatical Categories and Relations: Universality vs. Language-Specificity and Construction-Specificity

A long-standing assumption in linguistic analysis is that different languages and constructions can be described in terms of the same grammatical categories and relations. Individual grammatical categories and relations are in fact often assumed to be universal. Grammatical categories and relations display however different properties across different languages and constructions, which challenges the idea that the same categories and relations should actually be posited in each case. These facts have been dealt with in two major ways in the functional-typological literature. In a widespread approach, the same categories and relations are posited for different languages and constructions provided that these all have categories and relations that display some selected properties. In a more recent approach, this idea is abandoned, and grammatical categories and relations are argued to be language-specific and construction-specific. This article provides a critical review of these approaches, and a comparison is made with some generatively oriented approaches. In particular, it is argued that a distinction should be made between two views of grammatical categories and relations. In one view, grammatical categories and relations are classificatory labels indicating that a variety of linguistic elements display some selected property. In another view, grammatical categories and relations are proper components of a speakers mental grammar. While cross-linguistically valid (or possibly universal) and cross-constructionally valid categories and relations can be posited when classifying linguistic elements based on observed grammatical patterns, there is no obvious evidence that such categories and relations exist at the level of mental representation. This is, however, because of the absence of conclusive evidence about the organization of a speakers mental grammar, rather than because of the linguistic evidence as such.

The referential hierarchy: reviewing the evidence in diachronic perspective

category: Oral Theme session: ‘Typological hierarchies in synchrony and diachrony’ The referential hierarchy, 1st person pronouns > 2nd person pronouns > 3rd person pronouns > kin > human > animate > inanimate, has been accounted for in terms of a variety of factors, such as animacy, topicality, definiteness and natural attention flow (Dixon 1979 and 1994, Comrie 1989, DeLancey 1981, Corbett 2000, Song 2001, Croft 2003, among others). These explanations have been proposed based on the synchronic association between individual factors and the presence of particular constructions, independently of the diachronic processes that give rise to these constructions in individual languages. The paper discusses extensive cross-linguistic evidence about the possible diachronic origins of three major phenomena that have been described in terms of the referential hierarchy, namely alignment splits in case marking, hierarchical alignment, and the presence of singular vs. plural distinctions for different NP types. This evidence poses several challenges both for the explanations that have been proposed for the referential hierarchy on synchronic grounds, and for the very idea of a referential hierarchy, in the sense of a scalar alignment of particular NP types that is relevant for speakers and leads them to use different constructions for these NPs. In particular: (i) The various constructions involved in alignment splits, hierarchical alignment, and the encoding of singular vs. plural distinctions arise as a result of processes of context-induced reinterpretation of particular source constructions (for example, the reinterpretation of various types of source elements as markers of particular argument roles or plural markers, and the reinterpretation of cislocatives and third person markers as inverse markers). These processes are based on highly specific contextual relationships between the meaning of the source construction and that of the resulting construction, rather than general factors pertaining to different NP types on the hierarchy such as animacy, topicality, definiteness, or natural attention flow. (ii) The distributional patterns attested for individual constructions also do not appear to originate from these factors. Rather, they reflect the distribution of specific source constructions. When a construction is restricted to particular portions of the referential hierarchy (as is the case with some case or plural markers, and inverse markers), it originates from a construction that is restricted in a similar way. When the distribution of the source construction is unconstrained (as is the case with the constructions that give rise to other case or plural markers), so is the distribution of the resulting construction. (iii) Different patterns pertaining to the same grammatical domain (for example, different alignment patterns or different types of restrictions in the distribution of singular vs. plural distinctions) originate from different diachronic processes, and the same holds for the various instances of individual patterns in different languages, for example the various instances of hierarchical aligment, or the various cases where a singular vs. plural distinction is limited to human or animate nouns. This suggests that, contrary to the traditional view, the patterns described by the referential hierarchy are not amenable to a unified explanation, and the hierarchy is best regarded as a schema that is general enough to capture the outputs of several independent diachronic processes.

Semantic maps and mental representation

Semantic maps are usually assumed to describe a universal arrangement of different conceptual situations in a speakers mind as determined by perceived relations of similarity between these conceptual situations. This paper provides a number of arguments that challenge this view, based on various types of evidence from processes of semantic change and synchronic implicational universals. The multifunctionality patterns described by semantic maps may originate from processes of form-function recombination in particular contexts rather than any perceived similarity between individual conceptual components. These patterns may also originate from the fact that a particular functional principle leads to the association of a particular construction type with different conceptual situations, independently of any specific relation between these conceptual situations as such. A number of synchronic and diachronic phenomena pertaining to the very structure of individual semantic maps further reveal that, even if one assumes that these provide a representation of similarity relations between different conceptual situations, they do so only to a limited extent.

Deranking and Balancing in different Subordination Relations: a Typological Study

Subordination strategies may be classified according to one basic parameter: whether the verb is explicitely marked as dependent (deranking) or not (balancing). Cross-linguistic distribution of balancing and deranking strategies reveals the existence of implicational hierarchies concerning both different types of single subordination relations (complement, adverbial and relative relations) and different subordination relations as a whole. Such hierarchies can be explained in terms of markedness and iconicity, and confirm some functional principles illustrated by GIVÓN (1980,1990) and HOPPER & THOMPSON ( 1 9 8 4 , 1 9 8 5 ) .

Linguistic Universals, Chomskyan

This article describes the approach to linguistic universals taken within the Chomskyan approach, particularly the Principles and Parameters theory. The notion of Universal Grammar and its implications for linguistic universals are discussed in detail, with particular focus on issues such as the nature of linguistic universals and the innateness hypothesis, specific universal principles and parameters proposed within the Chomskyan approach, the relation between linguistic universals and cross-linguistic variation, and internal vs. external factors in the explanation of linguistic universals. The distinguishing features of the Chomskyan approach with respect to other approaches to linguistic universals are discussed in detail.