Day 1

In this study we present a multimodal, interactional linguistic analysis, based on video -recordings of naturally occurring everyday conversations, of Hebrew clauses opening with ma she- ‘what that’ and French clauses opening with ce que ‘this that’ in what traditionally has been considered to be part of pseudo-cleft structures.

In line with existing research (e.g., Hopper/Thompson 2008, Günthner 2011, Pekarek Doehler 2011, Maschler/Fishman forthc.), we argue that, rather than being viewed as the first part of a bi-clausal structure, the Heb. ma she- / Fr. ce que clause is better understood as a projecting construction (Auer 2005): it often occurs in talk-in-interaction without any syntactic link to subsequent talk, serving to frame the following talk as an action/event/rephrasal or to display the speaker’s stance towards his/her upcoming talk. We show that this projecting construction has become grammatically and lexically sedimented for specific interactional purposes in a similar fashion across the two languages.

We further show that the embodied conduct of speakers employing these sedimented constructions manifests some consistencies across the two languages as a function of the particular sequential contexts in which the construction appears – the more highly grammaticized projecting constructions tend to occur at major frame shifts (Goffman 1981), accompanied by prominent embodied conduct, as, e.g., in the following Hebrew excerpt:

115 Alon: ...#/ne/red 'al ha-boker.#

go_down.fut.1pl on def.art-morning

.../we/ will go down [first thing] in the morning.

{#lying, leaning head on right hand#}

116 ...mts

117 (#inhales)

{#raises head}

118 ...*be-gadol,

at-large

...in general,

{*lifts head off right hand, begins turning head to right}

119 #ma she-'ani xayav lehaspik la'asot?,#

what that-I must.prs.m.sg get_done.inf do.inf

what I must manage to get done?,

{#sweeping right hand motion from left to right----#}

120 Hillel: ...m--?

The previous sequence is closed (115), and Alon returns to a topic they were engaged in 100 intonation units earlier – errands he must accomplish. Following a discourse marker cluster (116-118) comes part A of the pseudo-cleft-like structure, a syntactically unintegrated ma she- clause (119) projecting the list of errands, accompanied by Alon’s prominent embodied behavior (see transcription). We argue that it is the strong projection of part A, accompanied by the speaker’s pronounced embodied conduct, that draw recipients’ enhanced engagement and enable the speaker’s following long stretch of talk.

Our findings shed new light on cross-linguistic consistencies in the grammaticization of projecting constructions and on the interface of embodied conduct and complex syntax.

This study is part of an interactional linguistic (Couper-Kuhlen & Selting 2018) investigation of clicks ([ʘ], [|], [!], etc.) in audio- and video-recordings from the Haifa (Multimodal) Corpus of Spoken Hebrew (Maschler et al. 2020a,b). We find clicks serving a wide range of functions, including negation, repair initiation (Schegloff, Jefferson & Sacks 1977), and transformative responses (Stivers & Hayashi 2010). We focus here on an additional function – constructing diverse frame shifts (Goffman 1981) in interaction.

Wright (2005, 2011) described “new sequence indexing” clicks in English, which “demarcate the onset of new and disjunctive sequences,” adopting Schegloff’s definition of sequences as “courses of action implemented through talk” (2007:3). E.g., she shows clicks separating the greeting sequence opening a phone call from the reason-for-call. A significantly more prominent frame shift occurs in the following Hebrew example:

245 Alon: ..ʔoyoyoyoy.

{singing}

246 ...(kisses baby)

247 (inhales, straightens back and looks up, then at Hillel)

248 ...[|]

249 ..ze ma šeʔani carix.

“that’s what I need.”

250 Hillel: (looks up at Alon)

251 Alon: ...xala?,

“challah?,”

252 ...šilav?,

“Shilav [baby goods store]?,”

253 ...sidur rexev.

“car errand.”

Alon and Hillel are in their living room with their baby. Alon is singing to the baby (245-246), and Hillel is looking down. Alon renews the conversation with an inbreath and marked change in posture and orientation (247), followed by a click (248) and a reversed pseudocleft (249, cf. Hopper & Thompson 2008). Precisely at this moment, Hillel displays attention by looking at Alon (248), who proceeds to list his chores for the weekend (251-253). The actions pursued before and after this click could hardly be more distinct, rendering this a major interactional frame shift.

Clicks in Hebrew are also found, however, in more subtle frame shifts, such as switches from one reported speaker to another in constructed dialogue (Tannen 1989), where the parts delimited clearly belong to the same “course of action.” In such contexts clicks typically coincide with less marked resources, in terms of both grammar and embodied conduct.

In our talk we characterize several types of frame shift which routinely feature clicks, in varying orders of magnitude (cf. Maschler 1997). Significant shifts, as in our example, are indicated by multiple marked resources, such as clicks, complex syntax and pronounced changes in gaze and posture. In subtle frame shifts, a click may be the only liminal linguistic element signaling the repositioning.

This study is part of an interactional linguistic (Couper-Kuhlen & Selting 2018) investigation of clicks ([ʘ], [|], [!], etc.) in audio- and video-recordings from the Haifa (Multimodal) Corpus of Spoken Hebrew (Maschler et al. 2020a,b). We find clicks serving a wide range of functions, including negation, repair initiation (Schegloff, Jefferson & Sacks 1977), and transformative responses (Stivers & Hayashi 2010). We focus here on an additional function – constructing diverse frame shifts (Goffman 1981) in interaction.

Wright (2005, 2011) described “new sequence indexing” clicks in English, which “demarcate the onset of new and disjunctive sequences,” adopting Schegloff’s definition of sequences as “courses of action implemented through talk” (2007:3). E.g., she shows clicks separating the greeting sequence opening a phone call from the reason-for-call. A significantly more prominent frame shift occurs in the following Hebrew example:

245 Alon: ..ʔoyoyoyoy.

{singing}

246 ...(kisses baby)

247 (inhales, straightens back and looks up, then at Hillel)

248 ...[|]

249 ..ze ma šeʔani carix.

“that’s what I need.”

250 Hillel: (looks up at Alon)

251 Alon: ...xala?,

“challah?,”

252 ...šilav?,

“Shilav [baby goods store]?,”

253 ...sidur rexev.

“car errand.”

Alon and Hillel are in their living room with their baby. Alon is singing to the baby (245-246), and Hillel is looking down. Alon renews the conversation with an inbreath and marked change in posture and orientation (247), followed by a click (248) and a reversed pseudocleft (249, cf. Hopper & Thompson 2008). Precisely at this moment, Hillel displays attention by looking at Alon (248), who proceeds to list his chores for the weekend (251-253). The actions pursued before and after this click could hardly be more distinct, rendering this a major interactional frame shift.

Clicks in Hebrew are also found, however, in more subtle frame shifts, such as switches from one reported speaker to another in constructed dialogue (Tannen 1989), where the parts delimited clearly belong to the same “course of action.” In such contexts clicks typically coincide with less marked resources, in terms of both grammar and embodied conduct.

In our talk we characterize several types of frame shift which routinely feature clicks, in varying orders of magnitude (cf. Maschler 1997). Significant shifts, as in our example, are indicated by multiple marked resources, such as clicks, complex syntax and pronounced changes in gaze and posture. In subtle frame shifts, a click may be the only liminal linguistic element signaling the repositioning.

In order to unravel the evolutionary origins of language we need to carefully disentangle, piece by piece, the biological from the cultural factors that shape grammar. A particularly challenging piece is how grammars express agents in terms of case-marking (ergative? unmarked?) and word order (initial? medial? final?).

To what extent is this grammar shaped by species-wide (neuro-)biological conditions? To what extent is it shaped by variable cultural norms and frequency patterns in language use? In other words, does grammar adapt to our brain, or do our brains adapt to the vagaries of linguistic diversification?

In my presentation I review cross-linguistic EEG evidence that partially favors biological factors because, at least for human referents, the comprehension system transiently assumes initial unmarked nouns to be agents even when grammar and usage frequency directly speak against this. In turn, initial unmarked nouns allow (neurophysiologically detectable) delays in sentence plan commitments, which helps in rapid dialogue.

Furthermore, eye-tracking evidence shows that specific grammars can modulate, but not override, prefential attention to agents in sentence planning and in visual event apprehension. Together, these findings point to a biologically rooted agent preference, possibly homologous to what has been found in some other species. This suggests that the current cross-linguistic dominance of grammars with unmarked initial agents reflects a genuine bias in the language faculty, and not just the way languages happen to have spread and evolved in human history (and the effects this has had on our standard subject populations).

This paper investigates the typology of negated quantifier constructions such as Not all cats meow. The main finding is that negated quantifier constructions develop out of a particular type of ellipsis construction called not-stripping.

Definitions:

(1) A NEGATED QUANTIFIER CONSTRUCTION is a construction distinct from standard negation in which a negative marker is adjacent to a quantifier phrase.

(2) STANDARD NEGATION is a construction that is employed to negate main, declarative, unquantified, verbal clauses. (Miestamo 2005)

For example, standard negation is expressed in English by a construction in which the negative particle not follows the auxiliary or copular verb (3a). In a negated quantifier construction, not precedes the quantifier phrase (3b).

(3) a. John did not see Mary. b. Not everyone saw Mary.

not-stripping is an ellipsis construction found mostly in coordination where everything is deleted from the conjoined clause except for one constituent and the negative marker (Hankamer & Sag 1976: 409). The remaining constituent can be a proper name (4a), a quantifier phrase (4b), etc.

(4) a. Some of the students laughed, but not John.

b. Some of the students laughed, but not all of them.

Methodology: Negated quantifier constructions are not often described in grammars. Therefore, I use translations of the New Testament as a parallel corpus. The sample consists of 112 languages from around the world, and for 43 of these languages diachronic data are also available.

Results: The results establish several novel linguistic universals, including the ones in (5) and (7).

(5) Universal 1A

If a language has a negated quantifier construction, it also allows not-stripping with a remaining quantifier phrase, but not vice versa.

For example, Greek allows óxi óli ‘not all’ to occur in stripping (6a) but not in an independent clause (6b).

(6) Modern Greek

a. Esís íste katharí, allá óxi óli.

you are clean but NEG all

‘And you are clean, though not all of you.’ [John 13:10]

b. *Óxi óli íste katharí.

NEG all you.are clean

(‘Not all of you are clean.’)

Universal 1B is demonstrated by Albanian, where the negative marker jo is used both in stripping and in negated quantifier constructions, while standard negation is expressed by nuk.

(7) Universal 1B

If a language has a negated quantifier construction, the negative marker that is used in this construction is the same marker that is used in not-stripping.

The most plausible explanation for the aforementioned universals is that negated quantifier constructions develop out of not-stripping by syntactic reanalysis

Cross-linguistic studies that have addressed counterfactual conditionals have tended to consider one variable at a time (e.g. Haiman & Kuteva 2001). However, one variable hardly ever accounts for a significant portion of the variability in a sample (Wulff et al. 2014: 276-277). Therefore, our current understanding of the typology of counterfactual conditionals is underspecified and fragmented. In the present study, we seek to address these issues. We apply multifactorial statistical methods to determine which morphosyntactic features pattern together within counterfactual conditional constructions. To this end, we consider a genetically and areally balanced sample of 106 languages.

We focus on three parameters:

(i) the symmetric and asymmetric patterns of counterfactual conditionals, i.e. whether the verbs in the protasis and the apodosis are encoded by the same Tense-Aspect-Mood (TAM) values, as in (1), or different TAM values, as in (2)

(ii) the range of TAM values that tend to appear in the protasis and apodosis of counterfactual conditional constructions (e.g. past tense marking, irrealis marking)

(iii) the range of clause-linking devices used in the encoding of counterfactual conditionals (e.g. juxtaposition, free subordinators).

Based on these factors, we apply two statistical analyses to the database. First, we test which factors lead to symmetric vs. asymmetric systems using Classification and Regression Tree (CART) analysis. Next, we test which TAM values tend to distinguish the protasis from the apodosis through an analysis of contingency (adapted from Gries & Stefanowitsch 2004).

Quiegolani Zapotec (Black 1994: 44)

(1) che-bel ny-oon=t Min, ny-oon=t

when-if cf-cry=neg Yazmin cf-cry-neg

Lawer.

Laura

‘If Jazming had not cried, Laura would have cried.’

Imonda (Seiler 1985: 206)

(2) ka heulõ-ta-ba, ne-m, ka 1sg.sbj hear-irr-top 2sg.obj-gl 1sg.sbj eg-t.

follow-cf

‘If I had heard you, I would have followed you.’

Results of the CART analysis show that the most important predictor of symmetry is the type TAM-marking on the protasis and apodosis. Symmetric counterfactual conditionals are more common in languages in which both the protasis and apodosis appear with TAM values expected to occur in non-actualized situations (e.g. irrealis, counterfactual mood), as in (1). The contingency analysis shows that actualized TAM values (e.g. past tense, perfective) are distinctively associated with the protasis, while non-actualized TAM values (e.g. irrealis, counterfactual mood) are associated with the apodosis.

These findings suggest that languages overwhelmingly prefer grounded, actualized protases and ungrounded, non-actualized apodoses. In other words, languages prefer to assert conditions and speculate about the consequences.

Phonological resemblance can exert an influence on two constructions leading them to converge (see e.g. Van de Velde & Van der Horst 2013). In this talk we will look into one particular case of formal attraction, which we call ‘constructional contamination’ (see Pijpops & Van de Velde 2016; Pijpops, De Smet & Van de Velde 2018; Van de Velde & Pijpops 2018).

More concretely, constructional contamination arises when a construction has two slightly different formal variants, like He liked to please/meet other people (…) vs. He liked pleasing/meeting other people, and the distribution of the variants is skewed as a result of formal resemblance with another construction. In the case at hand, we have an alternance between to-infinitives and -ing forms as complements of like, and constructional contamination with object-referring nominalizations or gerunds would boost the use of the -ing alternant. This effect would measurably show up if, controlling for (known) semantic-syntactic factors the skew was found to be larger for those verbs that are more likely to occur as -ing forms in other contexts: the fact that meeting has a lexicalized meaning, as opposed to pleasing, would lead us to expect that the distribution of like to INF and like V-ING would be more skewed towards the latter variant with meet than with please (provided pleasing is not more frequent than (to) please for other reasons). In essence, constructional contamination is the paradigmatic version of what in syntagmatic contexts has been referred to as β-persistence by Szmrecsanyi (2005), and is related to structural priming (Bock 1986).

In this talk, we will argue that constructional contamination is ubiquitous. The reason is that language users sometimes employ shallow parsing (Ferreira, Bailey and Ferraro 2002; Ferreira and Patson 2007; Dąbrowska 2014). What is distinct for linguists need not be distinct for language users, who are more likely to be influenced by superficial phonetic resemblance.

We will present five cases of constructional contamination, and show that the effect is statistically robust.

Borrowability is a central notion in language contact research. It reflects the idea that some linguistic items or categories (e.g., sounds, word classes) are more easily borrowed than others. Generalizations about borrowability have typically been formulated as ‘borrowing hierarchies’ or ‘scales’ (Haugen 1950, Weinreich 1953, Muysken 1999, Matras 2009), e.g. NOUNS > VERBS, suggesting that nouns are more ‘borrowable’ than verbs. However, such hierarchies have multiple interpretations (Haspelmath 2009).

Crucially, the notion of borrowability has never been properly defined. A typical assumption is that categories are ‘more likely’ to be borrowed if they are borrowed more frequently in cross-linguistic comparison (Matras 2009: 154). In phonology, for example, it is observed that consonants are borrowed more frequently than vowels, but it has been suggested that this is merely a result of languages typically having more consonants than vowels (Matras 2007: 37).

We show that the empirical frequency of borrowing depends, to a large extent, on the probability of a contact situation that permits borrowing to occur. We propose a definition of borrowability that takes this bias into account:

Borrowability is the probability of a given item/category to be borrowed, given a contact situation that permits borrowing.

We illustrate this by examining phonological segment borrowing. When a language is said to borrow a phonological segment from another language, it is assumed to have lacked this segment beforehand, while the donor language is assumed to have had it. That is, a contact situation that permits the borrowing of a phonological segment is one in which a language that has a certain segment is in contact with a language lacking it.

In mathematical terms, if a segment’s typological frequency is fS, the probability of a language to have it is fS, and the probability of a language to lack it is 1 − fS. The probability of a contact situation that permits borrowing to occur is then the product of both probabilities, fS · (1 − fS).

If we express the borrowability of a segment S as bS, the probability of a segment to be borrowed can be expressed as (fS − fS 2 ) · bS, which yields:

(1) P = bS · fS − bS · fS^2

This equation results in a series of quadratic functions of fS. From their form we predict that the most frequently borrowed segments will be segments that occur in around 50% of the world’s languages, since they are the most probable to occur in an appropriate contact situation to begin with. Data from a new typological database of borrowed segments confirm this prediction.

The data are then used to assess borrowability scores of various segments, showing that the most borrowable segments are /ʕ/ and /f/. We also calculate average borrowability scores of several phonological classes, showing that consonants are more borrowable than vowels, even when taking into account the differences in their typological distributions. Results also show that fricatives are more borrowable than affricates, which are more borrowable than stops.

This study provides the first explicit operationalization of ‘borrowability’ in phonology as distinct from the empirical frequency of borrowing. This allows us to quantitatively assess the borrowability of phonological segments and classes and to make predictions about what will likely be borrowed in language contact situations.

In this study we present a multimodal, interactional linguistic analysis, based on video -recordings of naturally occurring everyday conversations, of Hebrew clauses opening with ma she- ‘what that’ and French clauses opening with ce que ‘this that’ in what traditionally has been considered to be part of pseudo-cleft structures.

In line with existing research (e.g., Hopper/Thompson 2008, Günthner 2011, Pekarek Doehler 2011, Maschler/Fishman forthc.), we argue that, rather than being viewed as the first part of a bi-clausal structure, the Heb. ma she- / Fr. ce que clause is better understood as a projecting construction (Auer 2005): it often occurs in talk-in-interaction without any syntactic link to subsequent talk, serving to frame the following talk as an action/event/rephrasal or to display the speaker’s stance towards his/her upcoming talk. We show that this projecting construction has become grammatically and lexically sedimented for specific interactional purposes in a similar fashion across the two languages.

We further show that the embodied conduct of speakers employing these sedimented constructions manifests some consistencies across the two languages as a function of the particular sequential contexts in which the construction appears – the more highly grammaticized projecting constructions tend to occur at major frame shifts (Goffman 1981), accompanied by prominent embodied conduct, as, e.g., in the following Hebrew excerpt:

115 Alon: ...#/ne/red 'al ha-boker.#

go_down.fut.1pl on def.art-morning

.../we/ will go down [first thing] in the morning.

{#lying, leaning head on right hand#}

116 ...mts

117 (#inhales)

{#raises head}

118 ...*be-gadol,

at-large

...in general,

{*lifts head off right hand, begins turning head to right}

119 #ma she-'ani xayav lehaspik la'asot?,#

what that-I must.prs.m.sg get_done.inf do.inf

what I must manage to get done?,

{#sweeping right hand motion from left to right----#}

120 Hillel: ...m--?

The previous sequence is closed (115), and Alon returns to a topic they were engaged in 100 intonation units earlier – errands he must accomplish. Following a discourse marker cluster (116-118) comes part A of the pseudo-cleft-like structure, a syntactically unintegrated ma she- clause (119) projecting the list of errands, accompanied by Alon’s prominent embodied behavior (see transcription). We argue that it is the strong projection of part A, accompanied by the speaker’s pronounced embodied conduct, that draw recipients’ enhanced engagement and enable the speaker’s following long stretch of talk.

Our findings shed new light on cross-linguistic consistencies in the grammaticization of projecting constructions and on the interface of embodied conduct and complex syntax.

The study of the diachronic origin of clause-linking devices is by no means new territory in linguistic typology (e.g. Heine & Kuteva 2002). However, while much of the typological research on the diachrony of clause-linking devices has been concerned with adverbial subordinators (e.g. Kortmann 1997) and coordinators (e.g. Mithun 1988), only a few studies have explored the diachrony of sequential devices, like that in (1) (e.g. Bourdin 2008; Lichtenberk 2014; Frajzyngier 1996).

Gooniyandi (Bunuban: Australia; McGregor 1990: 428)

(1)

yoowooloo

garndiwangooddoo-ngga

gardboowooddarni,

men

many-erg

they.fought.together

‘Many men fought together,

niyi-nhingi

nardawooddarni

thiddi-nhingi-ngga.

that-abl (and then)

they.cried.together

fight-abl-erg

and then they cried together afterwards.’

This presentation aims at contributing to the study of the origin of sequential devices by taking into account a genetically balanced sample of 300 languages. In pursuing this goal, the guiding question is: Which syntactic categories do the worldʼs languages most frequently draw upon in the formation of sequential devices? In this regard, the syntactic categories that are the most common sources of sequential devices in the sample are: (a) adverbs meaning ‘now’, (b) verbs meaning ‘to go’, ‘to do’, and ‘to finish’, (c) topic and focus markers, (d) demonstratives, and (e) ablative markers. We show that sequential devices derived from some of the syntactic categories mentioned above are characteristic of particular macro-areas. For instance, different Australian languages not genetically related have sequential devices that have been derived from demonstratives and ablative markers, as can be seen in the Gooniyandi example in (1). These findings provide additional support for Diessel’s (2006: 480) argument that demonstratives tend to grammaticalize into sentence connectives because this is motivated by their communicative function which is to focus the interlocutor’s attention on the linguistic elements in the unfolding speech stream.

After discussing the diachronic origin of sequential device, we briefly concentrate on the additional functions of sequential devices. Sequential devices encode a semantic relation between two or more states of affairs. However, sequential devices may do more than expressing a temporally subsequent event and may have a non-connecting function. In this regard, they may also be used: (i) to express same-subject and different-subject between clauses, (ii) to introduce new topics, and, (iii) to express expected and unexpected situations, among others. This is in line with other studies that have shown that clause-linking devices may also have a non-connecting function (e.g. Ariel & Mauri 2018).

This study discusses previously unexplained usages of the postpositional particle am in Yami, a Batanic (Austronesian) language spoken on Orchid Island, Taiwan. Previously, am had been regarded by Rau & Dong (2006; 2018) as a topic marker following a topicalized NP as shown in (1), and additionally as a marker of subordinate clauses by Young (2019), which co-occurs with a subordinating particle such as the temporal marker no in (2) below.

However, it has been noticed in spoken data that many occurrences of am do not correspond to either of the previously established functions. This observation is borne out in our survey of 563 tokens of am taken from a corpus of transcribed narratives, in which topic-marking am is represented by a mere 110 tokens (19.5%) and subordinating am by 123 tokens (21.8%). The remaining 330 tokens of am (58.6%) instead correspond to a third distinct category, in which am appears to function as a discourse marker.

We analyze the occurrences of discourse am and find that it is used as a connective to link adjoining clauses in two ways. The first function of discourse am takes on a sequential function, in which a temporal relationship is marked between the clauses, as shown below in (3); this usage is highly similar to that of subordinating am with a temporal clause (such as (2)), and suggests that this usage may have developed from temporal subordination. The second function of discourse am is an additive function, in which no temporal relationship is inferred between the clauses, but am signals that additional information regarding a discourse topic is expected to follow, as shown below in (4). It is possible that the looser connection of additive am is enabled by exploiting the tighter temporal relationship of sequential am.

This multifunctionality of am and its trajectory toward robust discourse usages is reminiscent of that of discourse connectives in other languages, such as Mandarin ranhou (Wang & Huang 2006). We thus hope to demonstrate the necessity of discourse data for a comprehensive understanding of grammatical particles.

(1)

o ta~tlo a-ka mehakay ori am,

NOM RDPL~three LK-CONJ male DEM.MED AM

to sira ng-alam a.

CONT 3PL.NOM AV-walk FP

‘Those three boys, they kept walking.’

(2)

no m-aep am, maci-itkeh jia o ino.

when AV-night AM AV.COM-sleep 3SG.LOC NOM dog

‘At night, the dog would sleep together [with him].’

(3)

karo-an na no totoo rana ori am,

leave-LV 3SG.GEN GEN owl already DEM.MED AM

kalat do rako a mao.

climb LOC big LK rock

‘The owl left, and [he] climbed onto a big rock.’

(4)

amian so rako a kayo am, aro o asi no

EXIST OBL big LK tree AM many NOM fruit GEN

moa~moa da…

RDPL~plant 3PL.GEN

‘There was a big tree, it bore a lot of fruit.’