Over the 100 years since IJAL's inaugural issue, research on semantics in indigenous languages of... more Over the 100 years since IJAL's inaugural issue, research on semantics in indigenous languages of the Americas has advanced the field in at least three major ways. It has greatly expanded our empirical knowledge of semantics in non-European languages, it has provided methodological breakthroughs, and it has had significant impact on linguistic theory. This paper provides an overview of contributions and progress in these three areas over the past century, focusing in particular on languages of the Pacific Northwest. It concludes with thoughts about what needs to be done in the next century.
There is a long-standing debate on the nature of definiteness in natural language: does it involv... more There is a long-standing debate on the nature of definiteness in natural language: does it involve familiarity, uniqueness, or both? This paper contributes to the debate by providing a semantic analysis of the definite article nʊ in Akan (Kwa). We provide evidence that nʊ strictly encodes familiarity; it introduces a presupposition that the relevant discourse referent is present in the common ground between speaker and hearer. In almost every respect it parallels German 'strong' definite articles as analyzed by Schwarz (2009), and thus provides cross-linguistic support for Schwarz's claim that there are definite articles which encode pure familiarity. Following other researchers, we observe that nʊ can also be used as a third-person singular (animate) pronoun. We argue that in both its determiner and pronominal uses nʊ contributes the same core semantics: familiarity. This is in line with the close parallel between determiners and third person pronouns (cf. Postal, 1966).
'Out of control'marking as circumstantial modality in St'át'imcets* Henry Dav... more 'Out of control'marking as circumstantial modality in St'át'imcets* Henry Davis, Lisa Matthewson & Hotze Rullmann University of British Columbia This paper provides a unified semantic analysis of the so-called 'out-of-control' circumfixka- -a in St'át'imcets (Lillooet Salish). ka- -a ...
The Salish language family is of special interest for syntactic and semantic theory because it ha... more The Salish language family is of special interest for syntactic and semantic theory because it has been argued to differ radically from Indo-European languages in both structure and interpretation (see, eg, Kinkade 1983; Jelinek and Demers 1994; Jelinek 1995; Ritter and Wiltschko ...
Over the 100 years since IJAL's inaugural issue, research on semantics in indigenous languages of... more Over the 100 years since IJAL's inaugural issue, research on semantics in indigenous languages of the Americas has advanced the field in at least three major ways. It has greatly expanded our empirical knowledge of semantics in non-European languages, it has provided methodological breakthroughs, and it has had significant impact on linguistic theory. This paper provides an overview of contributions and progress in these three areas over the past century, focusing in particular on languages of the Pacific Northwest. It concludes with thoughts about what needs to be done in the next century.
There is a long-standing debate on the nature of definiteness in natural language: does it involv... more There is a long-standing debate on the nature of definiteness in natural language: does it involve familiarity, uniqueness, or both? This paper contributes to the debate by providing a semantic analysis of the definite article nʊ in Akan (Kwa). We provide evidence that nʊ strictly encodes familiarity; it introduces a presupposition that the relevant discourse referent is present in the common ground between speaker and hearer. In almost every respect it parallels German 'strong' definite articles as analyzed by Schwarz (2009), and thus provides cross-linguistic support for Schwarz's claim that there are definite articles which encode pure familiarity. Following other researchers, we observe that nʊ can also be used as a third-person singular (animate) pronoun. We argue that in both its determiner and pronominal uses nʊ contributes the same core semantics: familiarity. This is in line with the close parallel between determiners and third person pronouns (cf. Postal, 1966).
'Out of control'marking as circumstantial modality in St'át'imcets* Henry Dav... more 'Out of control'marking as circumstantial modality in St'át'imcets* Henry Davis, Lisa Matthewson & Hotze Rullmann University of British Columbia This paper provides a unified semantic analysis of the so-called 'out-of-control' circumfixka- -a in St'át'imcets (Lillooet Salish). ka- -a ...
The Salish language family is of special interest for syntactic and semantic theory because it ha... more The Salish language family is of special interest for syntactic and semantic theory because it has been argued to differ radically from Indo-European languages in both structure and interpretation (see, eg, Kinkade 1983; Jelinek and Demers 1994; Jelinek 1995; Ritter and Wiltschko ...
A compositional analysis is provided of temporal perspective and orientation (Condoravdi 2002) of... more A compositional analysis is provided of temporal perspective and orientation (Condoravdi 2002) of modals in Dutch, English, Gitksan (Tsimshianic) and St'át'imcets (Lillooet Salish). Modals interact freely with the tense-aspect architecture in each language. Temporal perspective is determined by an operator scoping over the modal, usually tense, while temporal orientation is determined by aspectual operators below it (and further restricted by the diversity condition). In contrast to much of the literature, it is argued that epistemic modals can scope under past tense. Modal-temporal interactions behave in predictable ways in Dutch, Gitksan and St'át'imcets, whereas the English system is more idiosyncratic and partly lexicalized. *
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Papers by Lisa Matthewson