The linguistic expression of space draws from and is constrained by basic, probably universal, elements of perceptual/cognitive structure. Nevertheless, there are considerable cross-linguistic differences in how these fundamental space concepts are segmented and packaged into sentences. This cross-linguistic variation has led to the question whether the language one speaks could affect the way ...

extended abstract 1. introduction the diversity of impersonal constructions and the different approaches used in studying them have caused different and sometimes contradictory positions about their classification and the explanation of grammatical and semantic roles of their components. this article reveals the necessity of studying them with a new approach which pursues a common basis coverin...

This paper deals with cross-linguistic variation in WH-pied-piping. In this paper, I claim that pied-piping is the result of the intermediate stages of WH-movement (i.e., the indirect feature checking movement of Chomsky (1998)) to the Spec of XP and the subsequent percolation of the WH-feature to the XP and that cross-linguistic variation in pied-piping can be explained in terms of various uni...

This paper aims to propose a new account for the cross-linguistic variation of resultative constructions in natural languages. Specifically, I shall show why certain languages like English have the typical resultatives while others like Romance languages or Japanese systemically miss them. I shall first review Washio’s (1996, 1997) typological pattern for resultative constructions as well as th...

The concern with word classes, parts ofspeech, or, as they are referred to in this paper, syntactic categories, dates back to antiquityfor better and for worse. For better, since in lingui stics, as in any other disc ipline, one sees further when standing on the shoulders of giants . But for worse, ifit is the case that the giants themselves are standing in the wrong place. Or, in the case at h...

The goal of this chapter is to present some of the interesting and important aspects of cross-linguistic comparisons which can be made between the acquisition of Japanese and of English. We d o not attempt an exhaustive review of the literature (see, for example, Clancy, in press; Iwata, 1979; Murata , 1968, 1972; Sato, 1978 for reviews of the Japanese literature). We focus instead first on the...

A quantitative0interpretative approach to the comparative linguistic analysis of media texts is proposed and applied to a contrastive analysis of texts from the English-language China Daily and the UK Times to look for evidence of differences in what Labov calls “evaluation.” These differences are then correlated to differences in the roles played by the media in Britain and China in their resp...