Cutting and Breaking

The semantic categories of cutting and breaking events: a cross-linguistic study
Asifa Majid, Melissa Bowerman, Miriam van Staden, James S. Boster

Cognitive Linguistics 18/2: 133-152

This special issue of Cognitive Linguistics explores the linguistic encoding of events of cutting and breaking. In this article we first introduce the project on which it is based by motivating the selection of this conceptual domain, presenting the methods of data collection used by all the investigators, and characterizing the language sample. We then present a new approach to examining crosslinguistic similarities and differences in semantic categorization. Applying statistical modeling to the descriptions of cutting and breaking events elicited from speakers of all the languages, we show that although there is crosslinguistic variation in the number of distinctions made and in the placement of category boundaries, these differences take place within a strongly constrained semantic space: across languages, there is a surprising degree of consensus on the partitioning of events in this domain. In closing, we compare our statistical approach with more conventional semantic analyses, and show how an extensional semantic typological approach like the one illustrated here can help illuminate the intensional distinctions made by languages.

Intonation Units and Grammatical Structure in Wardaman

Intonation Units and Grammatical Structure in Wardaman

William Croft, AJL.

The distribution of grammatical units (GUs) across intonation units (IUs) is analyzed in a corpus of 2,072 intonation units of Wardaman monologic oral narrative, and compared to a previously published study of English and several other languages. Since English and Wardaman are structurally very different languages, any common patterns in the mapping of grammatical units to intonation units would be of considerable interest as potential grammar-discourse universals. The Full GU Condition - IUs are almost always full GUs - holds in Wardaman as well as English and other languages. Both English and Wardaman employ a substantial number of grammatically independent noun phrase intonation units. Three factors constrain the occurrence of GUs in a single IU in English, in descending order of strength: parallelism, complexity and distance. All three factors also hold in Wardaman in the same order of strength. The behaviour of the IU-GU mapping in Wardaman supports critiques of the analyses of arguments as adjuncts and of modifiers as appositive phrases. On the other hand, spoken English displays more grammatical characteristics similar to Wardaman than prescriptive written English.

Ockham’s Razor

A somewhat out of date now link to an Ockham’s Razor program by David Rose (University of Sydney), which includes discussion of prehistory.

Language books: Noongar.

Kiangardarup has a post on Noongar language books.

Antipassives in Yukulta

Antipassives in Yukulta

JESSICA DENNISS

1 Introduction2

An antipassive construction in Yukulta (Australia: Tangkic, non-Pama-Nyungan) was
identified by Keen (1983) as an important syntactic construction that was used to code
certain types of propositions. This paper seeks to build on Keen’s description of the
antipassive by examining the various contexts in which it is used, and by isolating the
features which control its distribution relative to active transitive constructions.
Section 2 will define the antipassive, Section 3 will review two functional typologies
of the construction, Section 4 and 5 will focus on identifying and describing Yukulta’s
antipassive and Section 6 will discuss some of the atypical features that antipassives
have in this language.

The importance of typology in explaining recurrent sound patterns

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Author(s): Juliette Blevins ¹ * doi: 10.1515/LINGTY.2007.009

Print ISSN: 1430-0532 | Electronic ISSN: 1613-415X

Volume: 11 | Issue: 1

Cover date: July 2007

Page(s): 107-113

Abstract text     1. Recurrent sound patterns A point of consensus in phonology is that numerous sound patterns recur in the world’s languages. Recurrent sound patterns are those which recur with greater than chance frequency, and include patterns of contrast, patterns of distribution, and patterns of alternation. Recurrent sound patterns are found in synchronic and diachronic systems, and include the most common segmental and suprasegmental contrasts; the most common types of assimilation, dissimilation, metathesis, lenition, fortition; and recurrent phonotactics (Blevins 2004). Author(s): Juliette Blevins 1 * copyInnerHtmlForAuthorsHack(”AuthorsHackSource”, “AuthorsHackTarget”)     Author(s) affiliations 1Max-Planck-Institut für evolutionäre Anthropologie. blevins@eva.mpg.de *Correspondence address: Max-Planck-Institut für evolutionäre Anthropologie, Deutscher Platz 6, 04103 Leipzig, Germany

Environment and morphology in Australian Aborigines: A re-analysis of the Birdsell database

Environment and morphology in Australian Aborigines: A re-analysis of the Birdsell database

Ian Gilligan *, David Bulbeck

School of Archaeology and Anthropology, Australian National University, Canberra ACT 0200, Australia

email: Ian Gilligan (ian.g@bigpond.net.au)

^*Correspondence to Ian Gilligan, School of Archaeology and Anthropology, Australian National University, Canberra ACT 0200, Australia

setDOI(”ADOI=10.1002/ajpa.20640″)

Keywords

climatic adaptation • Bergmann’s rule • human variation

Abstract

Pursuant to his major research interest in the cultural ecology of hunter-gatherers, Birdsell collected an unparalleled body of phenotypic data on Aboriginal Australians during the mid twentieth century. Birdsell did not explicitly relate the geographic patterning in his data to Australia’s climatic variation, instead arguing that the observable differences between groups reflect multiple origins of Australian Aborigines. In this article, bivariate correlation and multivariate analyses demonstrate statistically significant associations between climatic variables and the body build of Australians that are consistent with the theoretical expectations of Bergmann’s and Allen’s rules. While Australian Aborigines in comparison to Eurasian and New World populations can be generally described as long-headed, linear in build, and characterized by elongated distal limbs, the variation in this morphological pattern across the continent evidently reflects biological adaptation to local Holocene climates. These results add to a growing body of evidence for the role of environmental selection in the development of modern human variation. Am J Phys Anthropol, 2007. © 2007 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

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Received: 18 July 2006; Accepted: 26 March 2007

Use of subpopulation data in Australian forensic DNA casework

Simon J. Walshab, R. John Mitchellc, Fraser Torpya, John S. Buckletond

Received 3 May 2007; accepted 9 May 2007. published online 18 June 2007.

 

Abstract

 

DNA profiling evidence presented in court should be accompanied by a reliable estimate of its evidential weight. In calculating such statistics, allele frequencies from commonly employed autosomal microsatellite loci are required. These allele frequencies should be collected at a level that appropriately represents the genetic diversity that exists in the population. Typically this occurs at broadly defined bio-geographic categories, such as Caucasian or Asian. Datasets are commonly administered at the jurisdictional level. This paper focuses on Australian jurisdictions and assesses whether this current practice is appropriate for Aboriginal Australian and Caucasian populations alike. In keeping with other studies we observe negligible differences between Caucasian populations within Australia when segregated geographically. However segregation of Aboriginal Australian population data along contemporary State and Territory lines appears to mask the diversity that exists within this subpopulation. For this reason datasets collated along more traditional lines may be more appropriate, particularly to distinguish the most genetically differentiated populations residing in the north of the continent.