D vs. n nominalizations within and across languages

In ‘D vs. n nominalizations within and across languages’ Alexiadou, based on cross-linguistic and inner language variation, discusses two types of nominalizations: D-based vs. n-based. Building on Hiraiwa (2005) and Wiltschko (2014), Alexiadou assumes that there is a common skeleton for the nominal and verbal domain. This allows then the formation of mixed categories and the inclusion of layers of the same semantic basis, which can be interchanged. The chapter shows that not all noninalizations are equally verbal, although they have a verbal core. Importantly, however, nominalizations are not derived transformationally from clauses. Rather, both verbal and nominal clauses are assembled in the syntax, share functional layers, and thus show similar properties. Finally, Alexiadou discusses de-nominal verbalization and proposes that it is not possible in languages such as English, as licensing of case on nominal internal arguments blocks it. <139>

Pinning down text complexity

In this article, we present the results of a corpus-based study where we explore whether it is possible to automatically single out different facets of text complexity in a general-purpose corpus. To this end, we use factor analysis as applied in Biber’s multi-dimensional analysis framework. We evaluate the results of the factor solution by correlating factor scores and readability scores to ascertain whether the selected factor solution matches the independent measurement of readability, which is a notion tightly linked to text complexity. The corpus used in the study is the Swedish national corpus, called Stockholm-Umeå Corpus or SUC. The SUC contains subject-based text varieties (e.g., hobby), press genres (e.g., editorials), and mixed categories (e.g., miscellaneous). We refer to them collectively as ‘registers’. Results show that it is indeed possible to elicit and interpret facets of text complexity using factor analysis despite some caveats. We propose a tentative text complexity profiling of the SUC registers.

Legal Nature of the Contract of Succession as a Special Institute of Civil Law of the Russian Federation

In this paper, the authors analyse a new institution for the Russian legal system, namely, the contract of succession institution. It is a qualitatively new way to transfer property, which was legislated as a supplement to the existing grounds of succession. It is noted that one of the advantages of this type of succession is that this type of agreement enables a property owner not only to outline the circle of successors during his/her lifetime but also to stipulate clear conditions for their entry into rights of succession. That is, thanks to this agreement, it becomes possible to determine to whom and what kind of property will be transferred after the death of the owner, and what conditions must be met for this. In this paper, the authors correlate a contract of succession with mixed categories: they compare (only by some criteria) a contract of succession with a unilateral transaction - a last will and testament. The authors conclude that the institution of the contract of succession is a symbiosis of succession and contractual legal relations (mixed nature), which may lead to certain problems in the future during the enforcement of the current legislation.

Forms and Meanings of Stative Verbs in Progressive Tense: a Corpus Linguistics Research

Semantics is the field of linguistic concerned with the study of meaning in language. The aims of the research are to analyze the forms and meanings of the stative verbs in progressive tense in corpora. The data of this research were obtained from Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) and British National Corpus (BNC). The data of the corpora used descriptive qualitative. The result of the research shows that the stative verbs are found and used in progressive tense. The stative verbs appeared in all types of progressive tense except future perfect progressive. The use of the stative verbs in progressive tense took place due to overgeneralization in the use of the native speakers’ form of American and British English. The stative verbs in progressive tense used to express temporariness, emotiveness, comprehension and mixed categories of meaning; temporariness and emotiveness, temporariness and tentativeness. Temporariness meaning almost appeared in all types of progressive. Stative verbs in progressive tense indirectly stated temporariness in stative sense of meaning, is contrary to the rules of English grammar.

Typological and theoretical implications

This chapter briefly considers the evidence for transitive nouns and adjectives in early Indo-Aryan in both a typological and a theoretical perspective. The fact that most transitive nouns and adjectives in early Indo-Aryan fall under the traditional heading of ‘agent nouns’ (subject-oriented formations) is typologically notable, since while action nouns with verbal government are well-known, the possibility of relatively verbal agent nouns has not always been acknowledged. The theoretical analysis is framed within Lexical-Functional Grammar, and makes use of the concept of ‘mixed’ categories to effect a clear formalization of transitive nouns and adjectives which captures their transitivity while allowing them to remain fundamentally nouns and adjectives in categorial terms.

Denominal adjectives as mixed categories

Many languages have morphological devices to turn a noun into an adjective. Often this morphology is genuinely derivational in that it adds semantic content such as ‘similar-to-N’ (similitudinal), ‘located-on/in’ (locational) and so on. In other cases the denominal adjective expresses no more than a pragmatically determined relationship, as in preposition-al phrase (see the synonymous preposition phrase), often called ‘relational adjectives’. In many languages relational adjectives are noun-to-adjective transpositions, that is, adjectival forms (‘representations’) of nominals. In some languages and constructions they retain some of the noun-related properties of the base. For example, the base can be modified by an attribute as though it were still a syntactically represented noun, giving rise to what we will call ‘syntagmatic category mixing’. We also find instances of ‘paradigmatic category mixing’ in which the derived adjectival form retains some of the inflectional morphology (case and/or number and/or possessive) of its base noun, as in a number of Uralic and Altaic languages. We address this kind of categorial mixing within the descriptive framework for lexical relatedness proposed in Spencer (2013) . A true transposition has a complex ‘semantic function’ (sf) role, consisting of the semantic function role of the derived category overlaid over that of the base. We explain how the complex semantic structure role of noun-to-adjective transpositions maps onto c-structure nodes, using the syntactic framework of Lexical Functional Grammar.

Participles, gerunds and syntactic categories

The phenomenon of so-called ‘mixed’ categories, whereby a word heads a phrase which appears to display some features of one lexical category, and some features of another, raises questions regarding the criteria used for distinguishing syntactic categories. In this paper I critically assess some recent work in LFG which provides ‘mixed category’ analyses. I show that three types of evidence are typically utilized in analyses of supposed mixed category phenomena, and I argue that two of these are not, in fact, crucial for determining category status. I show that two distinct phenomena have become conflated under the ‘mixed category’ heading, and argue that the term ‘mixed category’ should be reserved for only one of these.