Linguistics Beyond and Within, 2015, Vol. 1
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- ItemA case for two voices in Old Church Slavonic – reflexively marked OCS verbs(Wydawnictwo KUL, 2015) Malicka-Kleparska, AnnaOld Church Slavonic data manifest significant similarities in the distribution and formal properties of anticausatives, reflexives, subject experiencer verbs, statives, and reciprocals, while their semantics may also be viewed as partly uniform. The structures representing the said classes of verbs are very frequent in the language, while passive structures, formed with analytic morpho-syntactic constructions, are relatively infrequent. Consequently, the expressions headed by anticausatives, reflexives, subject experiencer verbs, statives, and reciprocals (as well as dative impersonal structures) encroach on the area of semantics belonging in Modern Slavic to be the realm expressed in terms of passive morpho-syntax. The conclusion that can be drawn from this state of affairs is that Old Church Slavonic is characterized by the opposition of active and middle voices, while the passive voice is in its infancy.
- ItemA comparison of the modal dać się structure with the dispositional middle in Polish(Wydawnictwo KUL, 2015) Bondaruk, AnnaThe paper compares the modal dać się structure with the dispositional middle in Polish. It is argued that the two structures are similar as regards argument realization, i.e. in both constructions, the theme argument appears in the structural subject position. The two structures also have a dispositional meaning in common. However, they show a number of differences. They differ in the presence of a syntactically active agent, their aspectual properties, the availability of episodic interpretations, the obligatory presence of an adverbial modifier, and verb class restrictions. Although these differences seem to argue against a common syntactic derivation for the two structures analysed here, they do not preclude classifying the modal dać się structure as a subtype of the dispositional middle. If middles are seen as a notional category, understood as a special meaning that different grammatical structures can have, along the lines postulated by Condoravdi (1989), then the modal dać się structure can be subsumed under the label of middle. In fact, it is argued that the modal dać się structure represents Type II middles in Ackema and Schoorlemmer’s (2005) typology, and it shows properties typical of lassen-middles in German (Pitteroff 2014).
- ItemAd hoc properties and locations in Maltese(Wydawnictwo KUL, 2015) Dalmi, GréteThis paper aims to show that the four-way BE-system of Maltese can best be accommodated in a theory of non-verbal predication that builds on alternative states, without making any reference to the Davidsonian spatio-temporal event variable. The existing theories of non-verbal predicates put the burden of explaining the difference between the ad hoc vs. habitual interpretations either solely on the non-verbal predicate, by postulating an event variable in their lexical layer (see Kratzer 1995; Adger and Ramchand 2003; Magri 2009; Roy 2013), or solely on the copular or non-copular primary predicate, which contains an aspectual operator or an incorporated abstract preposition, responsible for such interpretive differences (Schmitt 2005, Schmitt and Miller 2007, Gallego and Uriagereka 2009, 2011, Marín 2010, Camacho 2012). The present proposal combines Maienborn’s (2003, 2005a,b, 2011) discourse-semantic theory of copular sentences with Richardson’s (2001, 2007) analysis of non-verbal adjunct predicates in Russian, based on alternative states. Under this combined account, variation between the ad hoc vs. habitual interpretations of non-verbal predicates is derived from the presence or absence of a modal OPalt operator that can bind the temporal variable of non-verbal predicates in accessible worlds, in the sense of Kratzer (1991). In the absence of this operator, the temporal variable is bound by the T0 head in the standard way. The proposal extends to non-verbal predicates in copular sentences as well as to argument and adjunct non-verbal predicates in non-copular sentences.
- ItemContent with content: A content-based instruction approach to curriculum design and course assessment in academic English for business(Wydawnictwo KUL, 2015) Kirkham, DeakThis article reports on the successful implementation of a content-based instruction (CBI) approach to a 6-month pre-sessional academic English for business and management course at a UK university. While recognising that CBI is not a ‘cure-all’ and indeed that the approach brings with it particular issues, such as instructor competence in the content, the article argues CBI offers both significant and wide-ranging benefits as a language teaching approach and as such should be given greater prominence in the language teaching industry.
- ItemDerivatives based on participles in Irish and Polish and the inflection–derivation distinction(Wydawnictwo KUL, 2015) Bloch-Trojnar, MariaGreenberg’s Universal 28 says that ‘if both the derivation and inflection follow the root, or they both precede the root, the derivation is always between the root and the inflection’ (Greenberg 1966: 93). Booij (1994: 27) undermines this by allowing inherent inflection to feed derivation. There is abundant literature showing that inherent inflection can feed derivation in Germanic, Romance and Slavic languages (Booij 1994, 1996, Chapman 1996, Rainer 1996, Cetnarowska 1999). The aim of this paper is to describe and compare derivational categories related to participle forms in Irish and Polish. These include among others agent nouns, adjectives of tendency/inclination, resultative passive adjectives and facilitative adjectives. Stump (2005: 52) points out that the terms present and past participle are, in fact, misnomers since participles are uninflected for tense, and they should be regarded as stems conveying aspect information plus the lexical information of the root. The existence of derivatives based on inflected forms is usually taken as evidence against the inflection-derivation dichotomy, and in favour of a tripartition into contextual inflection, inherent inflection and derivation. The paper addresses the theoretical ramifications of the existence of such derivatives for inferential-realisational approaches (Stump 2001), such as for example Beard’s (1995) Lexeme-Morpheme Base Morphology, which separates the operations on the grammatical (morpholexical and morphosyntactic) features and operations responsible for the morphophonological modification of the root/stem.
- ItemIs there a method in this… madness? On variance between two manuscript copies of a Middle English Psalter(Wydawnictwo KUL, 2015) Lis, KingaThe objective of the paper is to determine the extent and the possible sources of the intertextual lexical variation between two manuscript copies of a single Middle English Psalter known, among other names, as the Middle English Glossed Prose Psalter. The purpose of the paper can be understood only if one approaches the variance from a medieval perspective on text with respect for the inherent features of manuscript culture and an understanding of the exceptional character of the text analysed in the study, which topics are briefly discussed within the paper. The extent of the variance is measured in relation to the nominal choices attested in the two copies of the text, the rationale behind the variation being sought separately in each case, taking into account the contextual intricacies of all the occurrences of the nouns under analysis.
- ItemOn the semantic history of selected terms of endearment(Wydawnictwo KUL, 2015) Grząśko, AgnieszkaThe present paper attempts to discuss the semantic history of a handful of terms of endearment (aka pet names, sweet talk, affectionate talk, soft words, terms of affection or sweet words) and the role of the cognitive mechanisms in the changes of their meaning. We focus the reader’s attention on a few lexical items which represent such mechanisms as foodsemy (e.g. honey, sugar), which seems to be one of the most prolific ones, plantosemy (pumpkin) or zoosemy (pet). Furthermore, we trace the semantic development of terms which from the beginning of their existence have been employed as pet names (sweetheart), words which are no longer endearments, because they underwent the process of meaning amelioration or pejoration (mopsy, bully) and – last but not least – nouns whose semantic shift is based on the pattern (POSITIVE) EMOTIONS → ENDEARMENTS (joy).
- ItemSelected aspects of amount relatives: The Romanian-English connection(Wydawnictwo KUL, 2015) Grosu, Alexander; Giurgea, IonThe inter-related goals of this paper are: (i) To contribute to a better understanding of the semantic and morphological properties of amount relatives in Romanian, (ii) to compare and contrast these constructions with their English counterparts, and (iii) to bring into bolder relief than has so far been done in the literature the fact that amount relatives in general are compatible not only with an amount denotation of the complex DPs that contain them, but with an entity denotation as well.
- ItemThe Information Status of Old English Constructions with Titles and Proper Names(Wydawnictwo KUL, 2015) Sielanko-Byford, ElżbietaThe paper examines the information status of Old English structures consisting of proper names and titles. The nominal constructions under discussion fall into three categories: the Ælfred cyning type of structure, where the title appears without any determiner and follows the proper name, the Ælfred se cyning type, where the title appears with a determiner and follows the proper name, and the se cyning Ælfred type, where the title with a determiner precedes the proper name. It is demonstrated that the se cyning Ælfred construction is mainly used anaphorically: an overwhelming majority of the examples of the structure in the Old English texts examined here refer back to an entity mentioned in the preceding discourse. Moreover, most of the antecedents of the se cyning Ælfred structures appear to be local, that is they occur in the same or in the immediately preceding structural unit. It is argued that the anaphoric nature of the se cyning Ælfred constructions may be responsible for their distribution in Old English texts.
- ItemVocabulary research in 1983: A bibliometric analysis(Wydawnictwo KUL, 2015) Meara, PaulThis paper belongs to a series of studies devoted to L2 vocabulary research which has been published in the last fifty years. It follows on directly from my earlier analysis of the 1982 data, and attempts to broaden the base line on which the later research developed. The paper presents a brief bibliometric analysis of L2 vocabulary research published in 1983. The analysis identifies a number of research clusters that were not present in the 1982 research but will become significant in later years, and highlights the volatility of vocabulary research at this time.
- ItemWhat makes you move? A minimalist study of object displacement in English Double Object Construction(Wydawnictwo KUL, 2015) Bartczak-Meszyńska, AleksandraThe aim of this paper is to analyse the displacement phenomena the direct and indirect objects in the English Double Object Construction (DOC) can undergo. The focus is on the movement out of the DOC to the sentence initial position. The analysis concerns not only globally acceptable Goal-Theme object sequence but also the Theme-Goal DOC, which grammaticality is restricted only to a few British English dialects. The processes affecting the objects in the Prepositional Construction are also mentioned. The initial part of the paper is devoted to the underlying syntactic representations of the DOC in English. Following, e.g. Citko (2011), Cuervo (2003), Pylkkännen (2002, 2008), a representation with the Low Applicative Phrase has been adopted. The exact case valuation mechanism for relevant objects (as proposed by Bondaruk and Bartczak-Meszyńska (2014)) has been established. The remaining part of this paper contains a detailed discussion of the derivation of particular object initial sentences with the DOC in the active and in the passive and the interplay between passivisation and topicalisation, as the triggers of the object fronting.
- ItemWhen focus goes wild: An empirical study of two syntactic positions for information focus(Wydawnictwo KUL, 2015) Jiménez-Fernández, Ángel L.My goal in the present paper is to carry out an analysis of the syntactic and discourse properties of Information Focus (IF) in Southern Peninsular Spanish (SPS) and Standard Spanish (SS) varieties. Generally, it has been argued that IF tends to occur last in a sentence since new information is placed in final position, following the End-Focus Principle as well as the Nuclear Stress Principle (Zubizarreta 1998). Focus fronting has been hence reserved for those cases in which a clear contrast between two alternatives is established, namely Contrastive Focus (CF) and Mirative Focus (MF) (cf. Cruschina 2012). The starting hypothesis here is that IF can appear as a fronted element in a sentence and that SPS speakers show a higher degree of acceptability and grammaticality towards such constructions, as opposed to SS speakers. This points toward a certain degree of microparametric variation in Spanish syntax (an understudied area), which will be tested by means of a grammaticality judgement task run among both SPS and SS speakers.