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| 22. |
- Toyota, Junichi, et al.
(författare)
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Grammatical Voice and Tense-Aspect in Slavic
- 2006
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Ingår i: Passivization and Typology. - 90 272 2980 5
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Bokkapitel (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In this paper, we analyse the prototypicality of the passive voice in the Slavic languages. We argue that there are some variations in the periphrastic passive, which stem from the historical development of the tense-aspect system, particularly from an earlier resultative construction in the case of Indo-European languages. The periphrastic construction in some languages has abandoned the earlier tense-aspectual features, while in other languages they are still preserved. The periphrastic construction in every branch of Slavic has been considered passive in previous works. However, we claim that it is a case of the passive in East and some of West Slavic, while that in South Slavic it is better considered as a resultative. This diversity motivates the continuum of tense-aspect and passive in Slavic.
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| 23. |
- Toyota, Junichi
(författare)
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History of Indo-European languages: alignment change as a clue
- 2008
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- Grammatical structure of Indo-European (IE) languages may appear to be diverse, but it is in fact more systematic than one may think. What is significant in explanation is alignment, i.e. differences represent different stages in the alignment change from active one to accusative one. This means that the grammatical structure was earlier organised by aspectual differences between perfective and imperfective aspect, but it has changed into a transitivity-based structure. There are varying degrees of changes and some languages still carry much residues of earlier active alignment. For instance, sensitivity to aspectual distinction in Slavic languages is one of such residues. On the contrary, some languages have developed new structures, such as the passive voice in English. There are a number of constructions useful for identifying archaicness of languages, which include impersonal verbs, the middle voice/reflexive, grammatical gender (especially neuter), number (especially treatment of mass nouns), case marking, agreement, word order, etc. By comparing them, one can identify how much each language has developed, which allows us to explain the diversity in the Indo-European grammar more systematically. Alignment change has not been given its deserved attention, but this paper proves that it is significant in historical analysis.
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| 24. |
- Toyota, Junichi
(författare)
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History of ‘yes’ and ‘no’: evidence from Proto-Uralic and beyond
- 2008
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- Little is known the evolution of ‘yes’ and ‘no’ in human language, and in this paper, an attempt is made to make a first step in revealing how our ancestor came up with these words. Our analysis starts with Proto-Uralic, and then we compare its developmental path to other languages in the Indo-European family. It has been documented that in Proto-Uralic (ca. 4,000 BC) there existed e ‘no’, but not word for ‘yes’ (cf. Décsy 1977: 81-82). Our hypothesis proposed in this paper is that human languages initially managed without ‘yes’ and ‘no’. Answers were given by repeating a verb, e.g. Are you happy – I am (for ‘yes’) and I am not (for ‘no’). The ‘no’-word was created by dropping a verb (e.g. not from I am not), and it stood on its on at the initial stage and later became an independent word. Since the negative answer can be given with ‘no’, its affirmative counterpart is somehow required, given a rise of ‘yes’. This line of argument is related to the binary features commonly found in the grammar of proto-languages (what Toyota 2004 terms kaleidoscopic grammar). Binary features are often cognitively less demanding and they suited the basic frame of emergent grammatical structures. In this sense, the presence of ‘no’ on its own in Proto-Uralic is considered to have forced its opposition ‘yes’ to appear in the course of forming the modern Uralic languages. It is true that it is much easier to find a linkage between the negative marker and ‘no’, and the word for ‘yes’ is often difficult to trace historically. For instance, in Slavic languages, the common ‘yes’-‘no’ pair is da/tak ‘yes’ and nie/ni/ne ‘no’, except in Slovak, e.g. áno ‘yes’/nie ‘no’. The binary feature can be found beyond linguistic features. For instance, pre-historic artefacts, such as spearhead, axes, cave paintings, etc., are normally binary in shape or design. This suggests that emergence of complex patterning is reasonably late in human evolution. One possible exception is the Celt: earlier artefacts from their civilisation involve a complex ternary or quaternary patterning. Interestingly, Celtic languages do not have the ‘yes’-‘no’ words, and they still repeat verbs in reply. This specific case needs further analysis, but it seems to suggest that the longer period for binary features is required for the development of ‘yes’ and ‘no’. This clearly shows that there is relationship between binary features of human cognition and the development of ‘yes’ and ‘no’. So, the study of the origin of these words should deserve more attention.
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| 25. |
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| 26. |
- Toyota, Junichi, et al.
(författare)
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Impact of religion on understanding the world: development of tense and modality
- 2008
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- This paper analyses an impact of religious practice on the development of the tense system, in particular the future tense. There have been rich typological studies on the tense, which reveal that a basic tense distinction is either past vs. non-past or past vs. present vs. future in most languages. From evolutionary/historical perspectives, the former case is older than the latter one, i.e. the formation of the future tense is reasonably late in human language. What could have affected the development? We argue that the religious practice, including primitive practices such as shamanism, can be a good indicator of the development cross-linguistically. Our working hypothesis is that languages spoken in a culture where rich religious practices and mythology are found tend to develop the future tense earlier in the development. Some intermediate stages can be found in languages where the future tense is expressed with auxiliaries, and world languages are at varying stages in the development. What our initial study shows is a co-relation between a certain way of dealing with afterlife and the presence/absence of the future tense. In some cultures, people’s life is more or less destined even after death, in a sense that their life in the future or after death, is already set and people are believed to be on a constant, often cyclic, journey. So although the afterlife is not known to us, i.e. it belongs to the irrealis mood, speakers have a fairly good idea about what it looks like and they tend to treat it as something that belong to the realis world, not irrealis one. So this idea does not encourage the development of the future form. When the fate or destination of afterlife is kept ambiguous, such as not knowing whether one goes to heaven or hell, the future tense starts to emerge earlier in the development, and the tense system later grows into the future vs. present vs. past distinction. This is so, because speakers are dealing with concepts that belong to the irrealis mood. Our finding does not necessarily have to be a definition and one should expect some exceptions. However, based on our initial research, it seems promising that a strong connection can be found between religion/mythology and the tense system in human language, reflecting on speaker’s cognitive development in dealing with events in the irrealis modality.
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| 27. |
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| 28. |
- Toyota, Junichi
(författare)
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Minority languages and their value to linguistic studies: beyond sociolinguistics
- 2009
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- Language diversity and minority languages are closely connected and documentation of minority languages is particularly valuable in respect to historical studies, i.e. less-documented languages which are on the verge of extinction often present valuable pieces of information to indicate what languages in the past might have looked like (cf. uniformitarian principle). For instance, the development of earlier verbal inflection often consisted of gerund or verbal noun form used along with the copula verbs. The tense-aspectual inflection was made only on the copula, but rarely on the main verbs themselves. This grammatical state can be hinted from the development of words corresponding ‘yes’ and ‘no’ – a word for ‘yes’ is often derived from the copula verb. Judging from the fact that some languages in the world lack such words and they simply repeat the verb for reply, the copula was earlier used more frequently than in modern languages. This line of development is actually visible in, for instance, minority languages such as the Celtic languages. Without such languages, our argument remains highly speculative, but thanks to documentation and analysis of these languages, one can make a large step forward in different field of linguistic analysis. This suggests that one should re-appreciate the value of minority languages.
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