This paper examines Ute clitic pronouns and contrasts them with other reference-coding devices, such as demonstratives, independent pronouns, zero anaphora, and flexible word-order. It concludes that most independent pronouns are used in contexts of referential discontinuity and most zero and… read more
In the grammaticalization of verbs, a small group of lexical verbs is particularly prominent, invariably found on the short-list of ‘light verbs’ (Wilson 1999) that display peculiar grammatical properties. This chapter describes the behavior of a small group of such verbs in Ute. In addition to the… read more
The mechanisms via which subordinate clauses arise are relatively well explored, involving two major diachronic pathways (Givón 2009): first, via clause-chaining constructions, as in many Niger-Congo, Papua-New Guinea, Southeast Asian, Athabaskan, or Southern Arawak languages; and second, via… read more
This paper deals with Ute case-marking and its reconstructed diachrony, demonstrating once again that synchronic data from a single language can serve, via Internal Reconstruction (IR) and a theoretically informed approach to grammaticalization, to reconstruct older diachronic states. The… read more
In this paper I will discuss the diachronic rise of the so-called ‘Ethical Dative’ (henceforth ED). In examining first data from Spanish or Hebrew, a multi-step diachronic progression seems to lead to the ED construction:ALLATIVE > DATIVE > BENEFACTIVE >REFLEXIVE-BENEFACTIVE > EDSome people may be… read more
A diachronic typology of relative clauses points toward two major pathways towards embedded (restrictive) REL-clauses. The first starts from chained (conjoined) clauses, the second from parenthetical non-restrictive RELclauses. In both pathways, embedded (restrictive) REL-clauses start their life… read more
This paper investigate the acquisition of V-complement constructions (complex VPs) by English-speaking children ca. age 1;8-to-2;9. It suggests that the child acquires these constructions during intensive epistemic or deontic modal negotiations with the adult. In the earliest stage, the… read more
This paper investigates the diachronic pathways that lead to the rise of complex predications. It suggests that the great variety of complex predicate constructions can be traced back to two major pathways. Both pathways begin their life as paratactic verb-complement constructions (complex VPs)… read more
The functional correlates of grammatical constructions can be given heuristically as (i) “the discourse context within which the grammatical construction is used”. They can also be given as the more cognitive-sounding (ii) “the communicative intent of the speaker using the construction”. In this… read more
The paper first recapitulates a point made repeatedly elsewhere (Givón 1981, 1994 ed., 1995, 2001, 2002): that a syntactic typology of any clause-type, including the passive, is meaningless unless clause-types are first characterized as functional domains. Using as examples six widely-attested… read more
This paper undertakes to begin to perform the overdue task of de-objectivizing the key pragmatic notion of ‘context’. This notion will be re-interpreted in terms of mental models, which correspond to that portion of ‘reality’ that is relevant for information processing. For this purpose, a variety… read more
This paper suggest that in order to understand the cross-language distribution of the subjunctive mood one needs to understand the cross-grammar distribution of the irrealis modality, as well as have a general theory of modality, within which irrealis takes its rightful natural place. The… read more
This paper suggests that text coherence is a multi-factored affair that, ultimately, pertains to the mental organization of episodic memory, most likely as a partially-hierarchic mental structure. What text researchers usually describe as coherence is merely an artifact of the cognitive phenomenon.… read more