Volume 15, Fall 1992
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Browsing Volume 15, Fall 1992 by Subject "Syntax"
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- ItemOpen AccessCalgary Working Papers in Linguistics, Volume 15, Fall 1992(University of Calgary, 1992-09) Prevost, Margrit; Rogmans, Siv M; Rowsell, Lorna VThe editors of this issue, Siv M. Rogmans, Margrit Prevost, and Loma V. Rowsell, are pleased to present the fifteenth issue of the Calgary Working Papers in Linguistics published by the Department of Linguistics at the University of Calgary. The papers published here represent works in progress and as such should not be considered in any way final or definitive. All the contributors to this issue are or have been associated with the Department of Linguistics at the University of Calgary. The collection of essays is quite diverse, drawing from several language families and different areas of linguistic study.
- ItemOpen AccessA government and binding approach to Bella Coola(University of Calgary, 1992-09) Durrant, MichaelIn the time leading up to the work presented in this paper I was struck by the relative lack of Government & Binding (GB) treatments for American Indian languages. This paper will remedy the situation somewhat by investigating the adequacy of the GB framework for a language which has hitherto been neglected by current versions of the theory. Bella Coola is an isolated member of the Salish family, located on the Canadian west coast. It seems to have branched off before any other languages of the family, the two main branches being Coast Salish and Interior Salish. Bella Coola shows characteristics of both branches, but should not be considered any closer to Proto-Salish than any other language. The Salish family shares many characteristics with the neighbouring Wakashan and Chemakuan families, most notably VSO word order, reduplication, and a lack of clear distinction between verbs and nouns. The similarities between these language families have been attributed to a real diffusion, as genetic relations remain inconclusive.
- ItemOpen AccessMechanisms of language change constraints on reinterpretation processes as evidenced in particle reinterpretation data from Homeric Greek(University of Calgary, 1992-09) Caswell, CynthiaLightfoot (1980) claims that the mechanism for syntactic change, reinterpretation, lacks constraints. An in depth study of particle reinterpretation in Ancient Greek will be presented to demonstrate semantic constraints on the process. Particle reinterpretation involves several steps, whereby adverbial particles are associated with Kase-phrases (KP) and are eventually reinterpreted as the case-assigning head of the phrase. The constraints on the process are specific and easily identifiable, but they should not be attributed to the "the very broad constraints of UG", as Lightfoot claimed. Familiarity with Lehmann and Venneman's (1974) theory of word-order change and Baker's (1988) theory of incorporation is helpful for understanding the issue, but not absolutely necessary to follow the argument as presented here.
- ItemOpen AccessOn the acquisition of WH-questions(University of Calgary, 1992-09) Hanna, Ken; Wilhelm, AndreaThis paper is the account of a study carried out in 1990 in which we tried to gain further insight into the acquisition of subject and object wh-questions. We differentiated between two wh-words, who and what, for subject and object questions. The study consisted of a production and a comprehension task and was carried out with 11 children aged between 3;4 and 4;7 years. The results suggest that children find subject questions easier to produce and comprehend than object questions. In addition, the animate question pronoun who was used more often than the inanimate question pronoun what.