Right Node Raising, coordination and the dynamics of language processing

The dynamics of agreement and conjunction

“…Thus conjunctions do not project their own tree nodes, and no terminal nodes are associated with words like na or and. This analysis of conjunction is consistent with the treatment of right-node raising structures in Cann et al (2005), where it is equally assumed that conjunctions license a LINK structure, resulting in an asymmetrical configuration, based on evidence from asymmetries involving case assignment, subcategorisation, and the licensing of negative polarity items.…”

“…9 Parsing na thus updates the tree as in (19): The next word to be scanned, Nayla, has a lexical entry analogous to Haroub, and the information can thus be inserted into the tree at the LINKed node: 9 A more general formulation of this is to say that the second node has a requirement for an expression of the same type as the first node, so that the LINK analysis of conjunction can be extended to other conjunction types (cf. Cann et al, 2005). This treatment of conjunction as not introducing a constituent but merely relating the conjuncts is akin to the analysis of conjunction developed in Cremers (1993) and more generally consistent with the view that conjunctions do not project their own phrasal structure (cf.…”

“…On the other hand, the introduction of LINKed and unfixed nodes at the right periphery is much more restricted (cf. Cann et al, 2001Cann et al, , 2005. Partial agreement is thus predicted to result, by and large, only from the process described here.…”

Niche construction, social cognition, and language: hypothesizing the human as the production of place

“…It is the internalized materiality of the sign which allows the human mind to perform precise mathematical tasks (Clark 2006; Dehaene et al 1999). And, importantly, this same capacity for sequencing, through material language, is reflected in the way that words allow us to place ourselves, as both mind and matter, in time (Hawkins 2004; Cann et al 2005; Bakhtin 1993). It is this possibility of our self-placing in the ceaseless flow of time, through the materiality of words, which points also to our capacity to sustain long-term identity and with that the responsibility and inimitability we can associate with human particularity (Williams 2014).…”

Parameters of morphosyntactic variation in Bantu1

“…In general, we have tried to select and formulate parameters that are 1) meaningful in the sample, that is, those which actually differentiate between different languages of the sample; 2) ascertainable, that is, for which the value in the relevant language can be given by reference to published sources or field-material without involving undue subsidiary assumptions about data or analysis -this means that we have deliberately taken a descriptive approach to morpho-syntax, couched in more or less traditional grammatical terminology, which we felt was appropriate for the data at hand, and which may be replaced by a more theoretically informed perspective in due course; 3) binary, that is, for which a given language can be said to either have a positive value or a negative one -as we will see below, in some areas this has led us to postulate a range of related parameters; and 4) transferable, that is, which can be related to structures found outside of Bantu, so that our results can feed into larger comparative studies, for example on the similarities between Bantu and Romance, a topic which has recently attracted increased attention (e.g. de Cat fcmg., Cocchi 2001, Cann et al 2005. As we will show below, it is not always easy to formulate parameters that fulfil these criteria.…”