This paper summarizes current findings in the cross‐linguistic study of meteorological constructions. It provides both a typology of weather events and a typology of encoding formats used for the expression of weather in and across languages. The discussion shows that there is a correlation between these two parameters: there are clear tendencies in the distribution of the various encoding types across the various event types. This gives rise to a typology of languages which explains linguistic variation in the encoding of meteorological events.
This paper is a cross-linguistic investigation of meteorological expressions (such as it is snowing or the wind blows). The paper proposes a three-fold typology of meteorological constructions according to the element primarily responsible for the coding of weather. In the predicate type, a predicate expresses the meteorological event, while an argument has other functions. In the argument type, an argument is responsible for expressing weather, while any eventual predicate is semantically rather vacuous. In the argument-predicate type, finally, both a predicate and an argument are involved. All types include subtypes, depending on the syntactic valency and the parts of speech of the elements involved. Building upon the typology of constructions, a typology of languages is also proposed based on the coding of precipitation and temperature.
In a substantial number of languages negation of non-verbal predicates diverges from standard negation. In this paper I approach this phenomenon from a typological perspective, and claim that non-standard negation of non-verbal predicates can be described through a generalization I refer to as DNA (Direct Negation Avoidance), which means that the non-verbal predicates avoid being in the direct scope of negation. DNA can be subcategorized into various DNA strategies, and in the first half of the paper I list and describe these strategies. In the second half I argue how the DNA generalization may be extended to also include languages with standard negation of their non-verbal predicates, and that further research might reveal DNA to be a language universal.
All modern linguistic science – all theoretical frameworks and approaches – at one point or another becomes linguistic typology. Sooner or later they ask the fundamental typological questions: What are the universal features of human language? How do we explain their universality? And how do we explain those features of human language which are not universal, but which vary from language to language? How do variation and universality relate to each other? The methodology of linguistic typology – to approach these questions by mapping and comparing language data globally – is not necessarily shared by all linguists, but the basic questions remain the same.
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; margin: 0cm 14.15pt 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;" lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">In some languages with expletive subjects, these subjects are either optionally or mandatorily left out of the sentence if they cannot occur in its initial position, a phenomenon which will here be referred to as expletive dropping. Expletive dropping in Faroese is traditionally described as optional, but the author’s fieldwork disclosed a number of conditions which either favour or disfavour expletive dropping. In this paper these fieldwork data, and the research results extracted from them, are outlined in detail, in light and support of the author’s theory that expletive subjects are referential items which refer to “the world”, i.e. the stage of the event.</span></span></p>
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