Rules and Exceptions: Using Exceptions for Empirical Research in Theoretical Linguistics

296 Pages·2014·11.736 MB·English

by  Christopher Beedham (editor), Warwick Danks (editor), Ether Soselia (editor)

This book assembles a collection of papers first presented at the Summer B
e
School and Conference on the Method of Lexical Exceptions held at the e
d S
University of St Andrews, Scotland, 2–8 September 2007, which explored h C
a TI
an area of linguistics now referred to as ‘the method of exceptions and their m S
correlations’. , D UI
G
a
n N
Recognition of the work of Saussure was impeded during his lifetime by the ks LI
Junggrammatiker (Neogrammarians) and their view of exceptions, but this a E
n V
book incorporates exceptions into a Saussurean approach. Exceptions to d I
T
rules are treated here not as something wilful and inexplicable, but as a clue S P
o RI
to what has gone wrong in the original rule. se C
l S
ia E
D
The topics covered are the passive, irregular verbs, morphology, transitivity, (e N
light verb constructions, resultative verbs, compound nouns, phonology, d
colour terms, historical–comparative reconstruction, language teaching, s) S I
E
Saussurean structuralism and the approach of the Junggrammatiker to DI
exceptions. The languages addressed are English, Arabic, Georgian, Turkish, TU RULES AND EXCEPTIONS
Russian, the Cushitic languages and German. Grammar and linguistics are S
R
Y
usually thought of as purely theoretical disciplines, but this book demonstrates U R
L
how to use exceptions to conduct ‘experiments’ in the manner of the natural E A
S R
sciences, which leads empirically to better theory. A O
N P
M
D
E USING EXCEPTIONS FOR EMPIRICAL
E T
X N
CHRISTOPHER BEEDHAM is Lecturer in the Department of German, School C O RESEARCH IN THEORETICAL LINGUISTICS
E
C
of Modern Languages, University of St Andrews. He has published on the P
T
passive and irregular verbs in English, German and Russian and is devel- IO 4 Christopher Beedham, Warwick Danks
oping a method of research in linguistics which he calls ‘the method of N 3
S .
exceptions and their correlations’. L and Ether Soselia (eds)
O
V
WARWICK DANKS is University Examinations Officer at the University of
St Andrews and holds a PhD in Arabic and Linguistics from the University
of St Andrews. His PhD thesis on the Arabic verb, in which he used ‘the
method of exceptions and their correlations’, was published in 2011 and
reviewed in Language in 2012.
ETHER SOSELIA is Professor of Linguistics at Tbilisi State University. Her
PhD thesis was on the typology of colour term systems and her mono-
graph Semantic Universals and the Kartvelian Languages: Models of Colour
Categorization was published in 2009 (in Georgian). G
N
A
ISBN 978-3-0343-0782-6 L

R
E
T
E
www.peterlang.com P
This book assembles a collection of papers first presented at the Summer B
e
School and Conference on the Method of Lexical Exceptions held at the e
d S
University of St Andrews, Scotland, 2–8 September 2007, which explored h C
a TI
an area of linguistics now referred to as ‘the method of exceptions and their m S
correlations’. , D UI
G
a
n N
Recognition of the work of Saussure was impeded during his lifetime by the ks LI
Junggrammatiker (Neogrammarians) and their view of exceptions, but this a E
n V
book incorporates exceptions into a Saussurean approach. Exceptions to d I
T
rules are treated here not as something wilful and inexplicable, but as a clue S P
o RI
to what has gone wrong in the original rule. se C
l S
ia E
D
The topics covered are the passive, irregular verbs, morphology, transitivity, (e N
light verb constructions, resultative verbs, compound nouns, phonology, d
colour terms, historical–comparative reconstruction, language teaching, s) S I
E
Saussurean structuralism and the approach of the Junggrammatiker to DI
exceptions. The languages addressed are English, Arabic, Georgian, Turkish, TU RULES AND EXCEPTIONS
Russian, the Cushitic languages and German. Grammar and linguistics are S
R
usually thought of as purely theoretical disciplines, but this book demonstrates U RY
L
how to use exceptions to conduct ‘experiments’ in the manner of the natural E A
S R
sciences, which leads empirically to better theory. A O
N P
M
D
E USING EXCEPTIONS FOR EMPIRICAL
E T
X N
CHRISTOPHER BEEDHAM is Lecturer in the Department of German, School C O RESEARCH IN THEORETICAL LINGUISTICS
E
of Modern Languages, University of St Andrews. He has published on the P C
T
passive and irregular verbs in English, German and Russian and is devel- IO
4 Christopher Beedham, Warwick Danks
oping a method of research in linguistics which he calls ‘the method of N 3
S .
exceptions and their correlations’. L and Ether Soselia (eds)
O
V
WARWICK DANKS is University Examinations Officer at the University of
St Andrews and holds a PhD in Arabic and Linguistics from the University
of St Andrews. His PhD thesis on the Arabic verb, in which he used ‘the
method of exceptions and their correlations’, was published in 2011 and
reviewed in Language in 2012.
ETHER SOSELIA is Professor of Linguistics at Tbilisi State University. Her
PhD thesis was on the typology of colour term systems and her mono-
graph Semantic Universals and the Kartvelian Languages: Models of Colour
Categorization was published in 2009 (in Georgian). G
N
A
L

R
E
T
E
www.peterlang.com P
RULES AND EXCEPTIONS
CONTEMPORARY STUDIES
IN DESCRIPTIVE LINGUISTICS
VOL. 34
Edited by
DR GRAEME DAVIS & KARL A. BERNHARDT
PETER LANG
Oxford • Bern • Berlin • Bruxelles • Frankfurt am Main • New York • Wien
Christopher Beedham, Warwick Danks
and Ether Soselia (eds)
RULES AND EXCEPTIONS
USING EXCEPTIONS FOR EMPIRICAL RESEARCH
IN THEORETICAL LINGUISTICS
PETER LANG
Oxford • Bern • Berlin • Bruxelles • Frankfurt am Main • New York • Wien
Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche National-
bibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available on the Internet at
http://dnb.d-nb.de.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2014930604
ISSN 1660-9301
ISBN 978-3-0343-0782-6 (print)
ISBN 978-3-0353-0595-1 (eBook)
© Peter Lang AG, International Academic Publishers, Bern 2014
Hochfeldstrasse 32, CH-3012 Bern, Switzerland
[email protected], www.peterlang.com, www.peterlang.net
All rights reserved.
All parts of this publication are protected by copyright.
Any utilisation outside the strict limits of the copyright law, without
the permission of the publisher, is forbidden and liable to prosecution.
This applies in particular to reproductions, translations, microfilming,
and storage and processing in electronic retrieval systems.
This publication has been peer reviewed.
Printed in Germany
Contents
List of Figures vii
List of Tables ix
Preface xi
Christopher Beedham
1 Exceptions and their Correlations:
A Methodology for Research in Grammar 1
Warwick Danks
2 Evaluation and Adaptation:
Applying the Method of Exceptions and their
Correlations to Modern Standard Arabic 41
Christian Bassac
3 Rules and Exceptions: Neogrammarians and the Lexicon 61
Marine Ivanishvili and Ether Soselia
4 Passive in Georgian 91
Ether Soselia
5 On the Specification of Basic Colour Terms in Georgian 101
Marina Jikia
6 On Compounds in Georgian of the Type cxenip’aria
‘horse stealer’ 115
vi
Rusudan Asatiani
7 A Cognitive Approach to Exceptional Ditransitive
Verb Forms in Georgian 125
Манана Каркашадзе
8 Грузинский медиоактивный глагол 141
Marine Ivanishvili
9 Lexical Exceptions in the Comparative Reconstruction
of the Kartvelian Languages: Words for ‘oak’ 151
Marina Jikia
10 The Non-Suf fixal Derivation of Intensive Forms in Turkish 161
Christopher Gledhill
11 On the Discourse Functions and Contrastive Phraseology
of Equivalent Light Verb Constructions Involving
‘make’ and ‘take’ 175
Juhani Rudanko
12 On a Class of Resultatives in English, with Evidence from
Electronic Corpora 229
Pierre Rucart
13 Prefix Verbs in Cushitic are not Exceptions 253
Notes on Contributors 269
Index 273
Figures
Figure 2.1 Selected data for co-occurrences of verbal stems. 45
Figure 3.1 Grimm’s law as a drag chain phenomenon. 70
Figure 3.2 Underspecification, default rule application and
regularization in Kiparsky 1995. 82
Figure 7.1 A conceptual model of simple preverbs. 130
Figure 7.2 Complex preverb with mo-: Ego Space includes
Alter Space. 130