Polymorphous Linguistics

by Mufwene, Salikoko S.; Francis, Elaine J.; Wheeler, Rebecca S.

• ISBN13: 9780262562096
• ISBN10: 026256209X
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-06-01
• Publisher: Bradford Books

Summary

James McCawley (1938-1999) was one of the most significant linguists of the latter half of the twentieth century. His legacy to a generation of linguists encompasses not only his work in phonology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, and the philosophy of language but also his emphasis on bridging research in linguistics with that in other disciplines, from anthropology and psychology to physics and biology. This book, written by his former students-all now scholars in their own right-pays tribute to McCawley by pursuing questions about language that engaged him during his career. The variety of perspectives in these essays reflects McCawley's eclecticism as well his belief that what is important in scholarly work is not the analytic framework used but the insights reached. The book considers topics in phonology; syntax, with several essays on Indic languages (in which McCawley had a special interest) as well as one on African-American English; tense, aspect, and mood; semantics and pragmatics, with essays in these areas grouped together to reflect the intertwining of McCawley's work on these subjects; knowledge of language; and the treatment of language, with its implicit colonial biases, in the 11th edition of Encyclopedia Britannica.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	ix
Jim McCawley: Scholar, Teacher, Inspiration	xi
Salikoko S. Mufwene
Publications	xvii
Jim McCawley
Introduction	1	(24)
PART I Phonology	25	(20)
Sequential Voicing and Lyman's Law in Old Japanese	27	(18)
Timothy J. Vance
PART II Syntax	45	(202)
NP Gaps in Tamil: Syntactic versus Pragmatic	47	(22)
E. Annamalai
Vacya, Prayoga, and Hindi Sentences without Grammatical Subjects	69	(14)
Michael C. Shapiro
The Grammaticalization of Aspect in Tamil and Its Semantic Sources	83	(26)
Harold F. Schiffman
Causation and Tense in Subordinate Clauses: Conjunctive Participles and Conditionals in Bangla and Hindi	109	(26)
Tista Bagchi
Independence in Subordinate Clauses: Analysis of Nonrestrictive Relative Clauses in English and Japanese	135	(26)
Etsuyo Yuasa
Syntactic Mimicry as Evidence for Prototypes in Grammar	161	(22)
Elaine J. Francis
Gerundive Modifiers in English and Korean	183	(20)
Geoffrey J. Huck
Multiple Mechanisms Underlying Morphological Productivity	203	(22)
Yoko Sugioka
How Many Bes Are There in English?	225	(22)
Salikoko S. Mufwene
PART III Tense, Aspect, and Mood	247	(80)
On McCawley on Tense	249	(12)
Robert I. Binnick
On the Fuzzy Boundary between Tense and Aspect in Japanese	261	(22)
Wesley M. Jacobsen
Counterfactuality in Burmese	283	(12)
Lynn Nichols
Retrospective Mood in Korean: A Constraint-based Approach	295	(32)
Suk-Jin Chang
PART IV Semantics and Pragmatics	327	(104)
An Un-paper for the Unsyntactician	329	(38)
Laurence R. Horn
Semantic Noun Phrase Typology	367	(22)
Donka F. Farkas
The Paradox of Mass Plurals	389	(22)
Almerindo E. Ojeda
Everything That Linguists Have Always Wanted to Know about Ironic Presuppositions and Implicatures but Were Ashamed to Ask	411	(20)
Katharine Beals
PART V Knowledge of Language	431	(72)
Deficits in Pronoun Interpretation: Clues to a Theory of Competence and Acquisition	433	(22)
William O'Grady
Why Verb Agreement Is Not the Poster Child for Any General Formal Principle	455	(24)
Jerry L. Morgan
Georgia M. Green
A Cognitively Plausible Model of Linguistic Intuition	479	(24)
Barbara J. Luka
PART VI Encyclopedia and Language	503	(28)
Language and Languages in the Eleventh Britannica	505	(26)
Peter T. Daniels
Abbreviations	531	(6)
Contributors	537	(8)
Index	545