Masayoshi Shibatani

In their recent work, Hauser, Chomsky and Fitch (2002:1569) suggest that recursion “is the only uniquely human component of the faculty of language”. In both generative and typological studies, the relativization site has been considered to be one of the places where recursion of sentences takes place. This paper examines a number of wide-spread patterns of relativization around the globe and argues that what have been identified as relative clauses/sentences are in fact nominalized entities, lacking some crucial properties of both full clauses and sentences. It is furthermore shown that these nominalized forms are neither syntactically nor semantically subordinate to the nominal head they modify.

This article attempts to lay the conceptual foundations of voice phenomena, ranging from the familiar active/passive contrast to the ergative/antipassive opposition, as well as voice functions of split case-marking in both transitive
and intransitive constructions. We advance the claim that major voice phenomena have conceptual bases rooted in the human cognition of actions, which have evolutionary properties pertaining to their origin, development, and termination. The notion of transitivity is integral to the study of voice
as evident from the fact that the so-called transitivity parameters identified by Hopper and Thompson (1980) and others are in the main concerned with these evolutionary properties of an action, and also from the fact that
the phenomena dealt with in these studies are mostly voice phenomena. A
number of claims made in past studies of voice and in some widely-received definitions of voice are shown to be false. In particular, voice oppositions are typically based on conceptual — as opposed to pragmati— meanings,
may not alter argument alignment patterns, may not change verbal valency, and may not even trigger verbal marking. There are also voice oppositions more basic and wide-spread than the active/passive system, upon which popular definitions of voice are typically based.

Modern linguistic typology is a method in language universals research. Implicational statements in the form of ‘if X, then Y’
are drawn based on cross-linguistic distributional patterns of existing and nonexisting types. These statements constitute
language universals delimiting the range of possible human languages; for example, a language with X property but without Y
property is excluded from the possibility. A functional, as opposed to a structuralist, typological approach allows comparison
of languages in term of functional equivalence/disparity rather than in terms of categorial and structural properties, which
differ from one language to another.

Fundamental issues in syntax are reviewed including part of speech systems, phrase structures, constituency, grammatical
relations, and several syntactic constructions such as possessives, relative clauses, and nominalizations. Chomskyan generative
grammar and functional-typological approaches are illustrated and contrasted with reference to several phenomena,
including a discussion on a new approach to embedding structures and relative clauses, in particular.

... IF: [+nasal] THEN: [+voiced] MSC 7 holds only at the lexical level, since phonetically English has nasalized vowels as in camp, lent etc. ... The immediate advantage of being able to discern such constraints emerges in cases like the Turkish vowel harmony alluded to above. ...

... Mesoamerican Indian languages Jorge A. Sudrez The Papuan languages of New Guinea William A. Foley Chinese Jerry Norman The languages of Japan Masayoshi Shibatani Pidgins and Creoles (Volume I: Theory and structure; Volume II: Reference survey) John A. Holm ...