| 11. |
- Toyota, Junichi
(författare)
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Disagreement of feminine gender: historical perspectives
- 2012
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Ingår i: Text & Talk: an interdisciplinary journal of language, discourse & communication studies. - : Walter de Gruyter GmbH. - 1860-7349 .- 1860-7330. ; 32:1, s. 63-82
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In this paper a particular case of grammatical gender agreement system is discussed, concerning the referent of young females or small children. These referents are grammatically treated as neuter nouns, disregarding their biological sex. This is termed gender disagreement. It is argued here that this is due to the older classification of nouns based on active and inactive distinction, stemming from the active alignment. What decides the distinction is the ability to reproduce, which was once a characteristic of active nouns. This criterion has not been given much attention in analyzing modern languages, but it has been very persistent in spite of various sociocultural factors that forced changes in other parts of grammar Thus, it can be claimed that gender disagreement is a result of a shift of gender agreement criteria and persistency of a specific criterion, i.e., the ability to reproduce proves to be still an important criterion in gender agreement system in modern languages.
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| 12. |
- Toyota, Junichi, et al.
(författare)
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Emergence of future tense based on socio-cognitive factors
- 2009
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- It can be claimed that the emergence of the future tense is closely related to cognitive and cultural artefacts from our earlier civilisations, such as burial practices and concepts of afterlife. In this paper, we present one such specific case concerning the concept of zero. The zero and nothingness have haunted earlier thinkers, philosophers and theologians alike, since the idea of ex nihil ‘out of nothing’ interfered with basic religious doctrine. In a number of civilisations, astronomy developed independently, and trained people could forecast seasonal changes such as dry and rainy periods, by having observed changes in the moon, or even the sun, for many years. This ability to forecast is a significant step in the development of human cognition, but it was not powerful enough to force a specific form referring to the future in grammar to appear. What seems to be a clue, among a few others, is the numerical value of zero as null. Many civilisations had a complex counting system, but they often lacked the concept of zero, except in Babylonia and the Ancient Maya culture. In Babylonia, the zero was used as a place holder in the documentation of counting, and there was no numerical value attached to it, but in Maya, the zero had a full-fledged numerical value. In Old Mayan languages, even in reconstructed Proto-Maya, it is possible to assume the presence of a specific future tense. Grammatically speaking, this was quite an innovation at that time. Judging from these facts, it is possible to assume a close linkage between the concept of zero and the presence of future tense in a language. They may not appear to be connected, but an important link is the understanding of the irrealis world, i.e. the world that speakers cannot perceive directly. As presented in this paper, it is possible to explain certain linguistic changes based on non-linguistic factors, and the evolution of human cognition seems to play an important role in revealing the history of human language.
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| 13. |
- Toyota, Junichi
(författare)
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Emotion and perception from typological perspectives
- 2009
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- Emotion and perception are expressed in every language, but their linguistic analysis is surprisingly sparse at typological level. In this paper, an initial attempt is made to describe typological characteristics of emotion and perception and form an initial classification. Verbal constructions expressing emotion and perception normally have a slightly different argument structure in comparison with other verbs. This is so, because emotion or perception happens spontaneously from a viewpoint of experiencer. Because of this, the middle voice is often used for this structure, and if not, the outer stimulus is realised as a grammatical subject and experiencer as an end point of stimulus. So structures like 'This likes to me' are common crosslinguistically. However, there are some variations, and once constructions are seen from historical perspectives, differences can be attributed to the change of alignment. In other words, emergence of accusative/ergative alignment, which assumes a higher degree of transitivity in grammar, altered structure. A historically older structure is sensitive to spontaneity, i.e. ‘This likes to me’ type, but newer ones form exceptions. So emotion and perception are closely connected to alignment change and development of transitivity.
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| 14. |
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| 15. |
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| 16. |
- Toyota, Junichi
(författare)
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Globalisation and language contact: impact on historical change and exceptions
- 2008
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- Language contact through globalisation has indeed influenced various changes in a number of human languages in different corners of the world. In recent years, some scholars have focused particularly on language contact as a reason behind historical changes, and some even consider that the language contact is the major force. In this paper, however, it is argued that language contact can be negligible in some cases and changes can be triggered by other factors, such as human cognitive faculty. A particular case analysed in this paper is English and other Indo-European languages, starting from its ancestral language, Proto-Indo-European. Seeing from the time span of 6,000 years or more, it is possible to see that there is a cycle involving binary grammatical features. These features become complex at some stage, i.e. ternary or quaternary, and then become binary again. Binary opposition is beneficial to our cognition, since it is much easier to process information. Ternary or quaternary choices force us to use wider capacity and cognitive load to deal with informational input. As our society develops, information we need to communicate become more and more complex, and languages have developed in order to cope with this complexity. This is how languages develop ternary or quaternary system of grammatical structure. The complex structures, interestingly, often return to their original, simpler, binary structure. So, it is argued here that various changes observable in English and other Indo-European languages can be considered closely related to human cognitive ability, especially in relation to the retention of binary features. Binary features allow us to ease the load on our cognition and it has proven to be useful. This factor can be considered more significant than the language contact in historical changes and this can leave out influence from the language contact in diachronic changes.
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| 17. |
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| 18. |
- Toyota, Junichi
(författare)
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Globalisation, language contact and historical change: a case of Slavic languages and beyond
- 2009
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- In recent years, contact-induced language changes have been hotly discussed (e.g. Heine 2003; Heine and Kuteva 2005), and in this paper, a similar line of argument is presented concerning the Slavic languages, and a similar developmental path is applied to minority languages. Based on analogy, future state of minority languages is predicted. Some languages in the Indo-European family are known to have preserved archaic structures, e.g. Celtic, Baltic and Slavic. What is common among them is that the areas where these languages are spoken did not go through some cultural changes such as Renaissance or the age of enlightenment. These cultural movements allowed people in Europe to have more contact among people which forced the changes in the languages they speak. Similar changes can be found elsewhere in the world, such as in Japan, where the opening of the market in the 18th century accelerated changes in the language. Following this line of argument, what would be the fate of minority languages in the ever growing globalisation? It seems quite plausible to argue that some of these languages are bound to change due to the exposure to neighboring different languages an inevitable language contact. However, those isolated languages can maintain the current structure, as in the case of Celtic, Baltic and Slavic languages. Therefore, the language contact can have a significant impact on the future of minority languages.
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