While many languages have voluntary desiderative constructions expressing the intention of an agent argument to engage in an activity or action, a few languages have dedicated impulsative constructions expressing an urge or feeling to engage in an activity or action. Hungarian has developed an impulsative construction by reanalyzing a series of individual verbal affixes associated with the morphosyntactic properties potential, conditional and agreement, for example sír-hat-n-ék ‘I could cry’, into a composite nominalizing affix which means ‘an urge to Verb’ as in the derived noun sír-hatnék ‘an urge to cry’. On the basis of historical corpora we argue that this construction emerges from the interaction of several large and otherwise independent systemic changes in Hungarian grammar as well as by commonly attested cross-linguistic conversational implicatures concerning modal markers.

The past few years have led to the widespread recognition that morphology is an independent domain of language functioning in dynamic interdependence with more familiar domains such as phonology and syntax. This has permitted nuanced research into the organization of morphological systems as well as the development of hypotheses concerning factors responsible for such organization. In this chapter we compare two classes of hypotheses adaptive explanations and neutral ones - for attested differences in morphological complexity claimed to correspond with sociocultural and demographic factors. While both examine language change as a (cultural) evolutionary process, we argue that much recent work on adaptive hypotheses for morphological complexity has been uncritically adaptationist, neglecting key results and lessons from population genetics about how to study evolutionary systems. Finally, we argue that neutral explanations are presently more likely explanations for the apparent association of morphological complexity and smaller, historically more isolated populations and should a priori be preferred over adaptive explanations unless and until a high evidential burden has been met.

Abstract Aronoff (2016) argues for the value of interpreting different approaches to the analysis of morphology as reflecting the sensibilities of foxes and hedgehogs as characterized in Berlin (1997). It is argued that Berlin also provides a way to go beyond these oppositional sensibilities and the morphological theories they develop by exploring a complex systems perspective on morphological organization of the sort adumbrated by certain late 19th century and early 20th century linguists: systems that arise from the dynamic co-activity of surprisingly many factors. The kind of view they envisioned is now quantitatively and computationally practicable and can benefit from research on complex behaviors within the developmental sciences. A view of this sort is motivated by two types of empirical evidence, one concerning implicative paradigm organization in Māori and Baale, the other concerning the dynamic relation between diachrony and synchrony as attested in Mari and Beserman Udmurt.

There has been a broad resurgence in word-based approaches and the reconceptualization of classical ‘word and paradigm’ (WP) approaches as general models of morphological analysis. WP models are well adapted to the description and analysis of complex morphological patterns, most transparently clear in inflection. Modern WP models demonstrate how morphological organization is fundamentally implicational: the central role of words (and paradigms) reflects their predictive value in a morphological system. Understanding the nature of morphological organization, within and across languages, requires exploration of the fundamental elements of implicational relations. Descriptively this involves identifying the internal structure of words and the ways this structure facilitates an external organization into patterns of relatedness. Theoretically, it is necessary to identify analytic tools appropriate for specifying and quantifying word-internal and word-external organization. This type of analytic approach encourages the investigation of the types of learning theories that may play a role in determining the patterns observed to occur and thereby help to explain their learnability.

Previous work demonstrates that a word's status as morphologically-simple or complex may be reflected in its phonetic realisation. One possible source for these effects is phonetic paradigm uniformity, in which an intended word's phonetic realisation is influenced by its morphological relatives. For example, the realisation of the inflected word frees should be influenced by the phonological plan for free, and thus be non-homophonous with the morphologically-simple word freeze. We test this prediction by analysing productions of forty such inflected/simple word pairs, embedded in pseudo-conversational speech structured to avoid metalinguistic task effects, and balanced for frequency, orthography, as well as segmental and prosodic context. We find that stem and suffix durations are significantly longer by about 4–7% in fricative-final inflected words (frees, laps) compared to their simple counterparts (freeze, lapse), while we find a null effect for stop-final words. The result suggests that wordforms influence production of their relatives.

Abstract The chapter examines classes of grammatical markers that can serve more than one function, polyfunctional markers, spoiling the one-to-one form and function relation which is what morphology tends to do. There are areas of the grammar more prone to this behaviour suggesting that there may be at work principles of morphological organization that lie orthogonally to sign-based principles such as Transparency. The distributions attested in Tundra Nenets provide a fertile ground for exploration because they combine polyfunctionality with cumulative exponence, where a single paradigm indexes two sets of features. Recasting Blevins’ (2016) abstractive analysis as a default inheritance hierarchy the analysis is guided by insights from Paradigm Function Morphology and Sign Based Construction Grammar, and treats polyfunctionality as the realization of a unifying morphomic feature that abstracts away what is common between different morphosyntactic configurations.

This paper examines the syntactic and semantic behavior of object arguments in Moro, a Kordofanian language spoken in central Sudan. In particular, we focus on multiple object constructions (ditransitives, applicatives, and causatives) and show that these objects exhibit symmetrical syntactic behavior; e.g., any object can passivize or be realized as an object marker, and all can do so simultaneously. Moreover, we demonstrate that each object can bear any of the non-agentive roles in a verb's semantic role inventory and that the resulting ambiguities are an entailment of symmetrical object constructions of the type found in Moro. Previous treatments of symmetrical languages have assumed a syntactic asymmetry between multiple objects and have developed theoretical analyses that treat symmetrical behaviors as departures from an asymmetrical basic organization of clausal syntax. We take a different approach: we develop a Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar account that allows a partial ordering of the argument structure (ARG-ST) list. The guiding idea is that languages differ with respect to the organization of their ARG-ST lists and their consequences for grammatical function realization: there is no privileged encoding, but there is large variation within the parameters defined by ARG-ST organization. This accounts directly for the symmetrical behaviors of multiple objects. We also show how this approach can be extended to account for certain asymmetrical behaviors in Moro.

Recent developments in the Word and Pattern approach to complex morphology have argued that words and the patterned relations between words are primary objects of morphological analysis. The primacy of words has two part/whole dimensions: the nature of their internal structure and the nature of their external relations to one another. Words consist of constitutive parts and words themselves are parts of larger patterns of systemic relatedness. We argue that internal structure is essentially discriminative, rather than morphemic, i. e., what is crucial for morphological organization is the ability to discriminate (patterns of) words from one another and all types of internal distinctions suffice to facilitate the necessary discriminability to establish patterns of words. The value and the operation of a discriminative perspective on the internal structure of words is also evident in the analysis of an entirely different phenomenon. Greenberg's (1963) Universal 34 states that "No language has a trial number unless it has a dual. No language has a dual unless it has a plural." We present an associative model of the acquisition of grammatical number based on the Rescorla-Wagner learning theory Rescorla & Wagner (1972) that predicts this generalization. Number as a real-world category is inherently structured: higher numerosity sets are mentioned less frequently than lower numerosity sets, and higher numerosity sets always contain lower numerosity sets. Using simulations, we demonstrate that these facts, along with general principles of probabilistic learning, lead to the emergence of Greenberg's Number Hierarchy. The value of a discriminative perspective for language analysis (Ramscar & Yarlett 2007, Ramscar et al. 2010, 2013) becomes clear in both word-based morphology and its explanatory role addressing a typological conundrum.

Beyond caricatures: Commentary on Evans 2014 Farrell Ackerman and Robert Malouf The language myth: Why language is not an instinct. By Vyvyan Evans. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Pp. xi, 304. ISBN 9781107619753. $29.99. ‘In order to understand what another person is saying you must assume it is true, and try to imagine what it might be true of.’ —George Miller, quoted by Ross (1982:8) As will be familiar to a Language audience, many of the central questions of language study were identified by luminaries of language—Wilhelm von Humboldt, Hermann Paul, Ferdinand de Saussure, Mikołaj Kruszewski, William Dwight Whitney, Edward Sapir, Leonard Bloomfield, John R. Firth, Roman Jakobson, and Charles Hockett, among others—who preceded both mainstream generative grammar (MGG) and modern cognitive/functional approaches.1 These earlier generations of linguists were both awed and challenged by the intriguing properties of human languages. How can they be understood as biological, physiological, cognitive, and/or social objects? What is the relation between the synchronic and diachronic aspects of language, and how does this impact the definition of the linguistic objects to be explained? What is the nature of the different (sub)systems that make up language, and how are they learned so quickly, without explicit instruction? Are there unifying properties underlying the obvious diversity of languages? Can an understanding of other animal communication systems provide insight into human language? How does language development, both in communities and in individuals, relate to issues concerning phylogenetic and ontogenetic development of other traits and behaviors in different complex adaptive systems? Today, theoretical linguists largely agree that these and other big mysteries present challenges for the scientific study of human language. Divergences among modern approaches largely come down to the different bets they make about the best ways to address these questions. Disagreements concern different hypotheses about appropriate analytic assumptions, relevant methodologies of inquiry, effective theoretical constructs, the relevance of empirical crosslinguistic data to favorite theoretical assumptions and theory construction, and the relations between linguistic inquiry and research in other disciplines that explore the phylogeny and ontogeny of other natural complex phenomena. So, one could argue, it is not the fundamental questions that distinguish different approaches, but rather the variety of hypotheses marshaled to address them. In this context, theoretical linguistics should exhibit vigorous, substantive cross-theoretical debate about both [End Page 189] analyses of particular phenomena and the general assumptions and methodologies that guide competing analyses. If this was the state of discourse among the more commanding voices in the field, we doubt that Evans’s The language myth (TLM) would have been written. The book reflects the combat rather than the convergences (both acknowledged and not) concerning ideas and methodologies that have begun to characterize modern research in grammar. Many linguists are collaborating and synthesizing across research traditions and theories that have conventionally ignored one another or paid just enough attention to disparage each other, largely by misrepresentation and triumphal dismissal. The new pluralistic and interdisciplinary research is moving beyond the caricatures of familiar theoretical paradigms. TLM and the responses from MGG that it has generated, however, seem set on perpetuating the culture of caricature. This diminishes a focus on the necessarily multidisciplinary qualitative and quantitative study of language and, thereby, impoverishes efforts to popularize its real mysteries and results. We suspect that many readers will find the tone of TLM to be baitingly belligerent and occasionally obnoxious: for example, E employs sometimes recurring dismissive phrases (‘the language-as-instinct crowd’, ‘Chomsky and co.’, ‘self-dubbed evolutionary psychologists’, ‘swathes of fervent followers’, etc.) and makes irritating references to ‘supermodels’ in language examples throughout. He intends to deliver a drubbing and does so in a way that likely would leave a critical but naive reader wondering what is wrong with this unfamiliar field called linguistics. It is a jeremiad against perceived inequity, if not iniquity, in the house of language analysis.2 E places a vigorous focus on ‘debunking the myths’, as he understands them: While I, and a great many other professional linguists, now think the old view is wrong, nevertheless, the old view—Universal Grammar [(UG)]: the eponymous ‘language myth’—still lingers; despite being completely wrong, it is...

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In this article, we argue that insights concerning the word-based nature of morphology, especially the hypothesis that periphrastic expressions are cross-linguistically common exponents of lexical relations, permit a novel lexical constructional analysis of periphrastic predicates that preserves the restriction of morphosyntactic mapping operations, such as passive, to the lexicon. We do this in the context of the periphrastic Thai thuuk passive, justifying in detail the monoclausal status of the construction, its flat phrase structure, the semantics of affectedness associated with it, and its paradigmatic opposition with other passive constructions in the language. Building on the proposal of Bonami & Webelhuth (2013) and Bonami (2015) that a periphrase relies on a form of the main verb that selects collocationally for an auxiliary element, we develop an analysis of Thai periphrastic passives in which the surface syntax of these predicates is mediated by appropriate lexical representations. Crucially, the rearrangement of arguments in the passive is done lexically, via lexical rule, rather than in the syntax. The resulting analysis is consistent with the classical tradition of Word and Paradigm morphology, which posits periphrastic expression as one of several encoding strategies for the realization of morphosyntactic information within words.

Greenberg’s (1963) Universal 34 states that “No language has a trial number unless it has a dual. No language has a dual unless it has a plural.” We present an associative model of the acquisition of grammatical number based on the RescorlaWagner learning theory (Rescorla & Wagner, 1972) that predicts this generalization. Number as a real-world category is inherently structured: higher numerosity sets are mentioned less frequently than lower numerosity sets, and higher numerosity sets always contain lower numerosity sets. Using simulations, we demonstrate that these facts, along with general principles of probabilistic learning, lead to the emergence of Greenberg’s Number Hierarchy.

This paper addresses the formation of wh-questions in Thetogovela Moro, a Kordofanian language spoken in the Nuba Mountains of Sudan. Moro has both in-situ and ex-situ wh-questions, but exhibits a subject/non-subject asymmetry: while non-subjects may employ either construction, subjects must appear in the ex-situ form. Ex-situ wh-questions are analyzed as wh-clefts, and they share several properties with clefts and relative clauses. The fronted element is marked with a cleft particle and for noun phrases, a demonstrative that we analyze as a relative pronoun is used. Verbal tone patterns are those that are found in dependent clauses rather than main clauses. Subject questions, clefts and relative clauses are marked with a verbal prefix e-, while non-subject questions, clefts and relative clauses are marked with a verbal prefix partial derivative-. We analyze these prefixes as dependent clause markers and provide evidence of additional dependent clause uses in the language. Finally, non-subject wh-questions bear an optional particle n partial derivative-on the subject and/or verb. We offer several arguments that this is best analyzed as a complementizer.

One dimension of this task is segmentation. For example, how can learners separate the stems from the affixes that signal a particular morphosyntactic property? If this information was all that learners had, they might hypothesize that zavod has the lexical meaning ‘factory’, and the –ov suffix signals genitive plural. A large body of experimental research addresses this syntagmatic, structural challenge of identifying recurrent partial forms (e.g., Saffran et al. 1996; Finley and Newport 2011; Aslin and Newport 2012). However, there is also a paradigmatic aspect to the problem. For example, the table below shows some alternative possibilities for how a plural form might be realized with different cases in Russian (Baerman et al. 2009).

The past few years have witnessed increased attention within lexicalist frameworks such as Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG) and Head Driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG) to the analysis of predicates expressed by syntactically independent pieces. The recognition of such phenomena, primarily represented in the literature by analytic or periphrastic causatives, raises central questions concerning the domain in which such complex predicates are composed. Given evidence for syntactic separability of the pieces of these predicates, is it compelling to assume that they must be formed in phrasal structure? Alternatively, are there reasons to argue that such compositions are still lexical, despite the obvious fact of surface independence for the pieces used to express these predicates? In related fashion, what would be the basis for a lexicalist perspective on such compositions and in what way would such a lexicalist approach differ from standard lexicalism?