Review of Saeed, Somali (Language 77, 2001)

Language 87: 830-844, 2011

2017

This thesis provides answers to a number of questions not adequately addressed by existing literature regarding the Somali verbal complex (VC) structure and its component pre-verbal clitics. Firstly, this thesis identifies three aspects of the VC structure that are underdescribed or contentious: the composition and ordering of the pre-verbal clitics in clitic slots, the alignment of pronominal object clitics to object functions, and the function of clitics belonging to a particular slot as adpositional or applicative. Using original data elicited from two native Somali-speaking language consultants, this thesis draws the following conclusions. With regards to the VC clitic slots, the data indicates that the clitics soo ‘towards (the speaker)’ and sii ‘away (from the speaker)’ occupy a DEIC slot which is distinct from the ADV slot of the clitics wada ‘together, all’ and kala ‘separately, apart’, and additionally, that there is a strongly preferred overall clitic order of SUBJ-OBJ1-APPL-OBJ2-DEIC-ADV in the VC. With regards to the alignment of OBJ1 and OBJ2 clitic slots with object functions — such as direct and applied objects in applicative constructions — the data shows that a sentence may be ambiguous, but the preferred interpretation is determined by pragmatic and logical factors, rather than syntactic ones. Furthermore, and in direct contrast to existing literature, the data shows that for a VC containing both first person and second person object arguments, only structures with the first person object argument in the OBJ1 slot and the second person object argument in the OBJ2 slot are considered grammatical, and not vice-versa. Finally, with regards to whether the clitics u (DAT/BEN), ku (LOC/INS), ka (ABL/REF) and la (COM) are best described as adpositional or applicative, the data shows that the effect of these clitics on verb valency and argument structure has more in common with prototypical applicative affixes than with prototypical adpositions. These findings are significant as they differ considerably from existing descriptions, and hence are an important contribution to the wider literature on the Somali VC clitics.

2007

This book presents a comprehensive survey of the various subfields of linguistics, as envisaged from a cognitive grammar perspective. It is divided into two parts; the first half is the ''basic specifications'': issues related to psycholinguistics, acquisition, language and the brain, and evolution of language. The second part elaborates on the ''building blocks'' of language, namely words, sentences, meaning, et cetera ending finally with ''a crash course in cognitive grammar''. Broadly, the book provides some critical insights into the existing rationalist trend in linguistics-the generative approach-and suggests alternatives to developing ''psychologically realistic'' grammatical models. One underlying theme of the book is the relevance of interdisciplinary research and its benefits for linguistic theorizing. As the author notes in her introduction, that though linguistics is often defined as 'the branch of cognitive science dealing with language', ''most linguists hasten to add, it is an 'independent branch', by which they mean that language can, and should, be studied in its own terms, without reference to psychological or neurological concepts and theories'' (p. 1). This problem, as the author laments, becomes more telling with generativist linguists' obsession with linguistic competence rather than performance. This lopsidedness begets linguistic theories which are neither psychologically nor biologically real, thus endangering the (apparently) more desirable course of the discipline toward becoming an empirical science-a science whose theories base on actual usage of language, rather than being motivated by formal elegance.

Biolinguistics, 2014

This book, part of the Oxford Studies in Biolinguistic series, presents a state-ofthe-art overview of the field, more specifically, on psycho-and neurolinguistics and their relation to models of syntax, semantics, and morpho-phonology, while advancing its limits with cutting-edge research. A distinctive feature of the piece is the strong presence of interdisciplinary work and the internal coherence of the volume, integrating computational science, cognitive science, neurology and psycholinguistics, as well as syntax, semantics, and morpho-phonology; an integration that is most welcomed as it triggers debate and productive revisiting of the machinery assumed within all aforementioned sub-disciplines of linguistics. The volume is organized around the notion of garden path sentences, relative clauses, and their relations at the processing level; this includes major problems of natural language processing and the relations between syntax, semantics, and morpho-phonology from a more general point of view as well. The editors have chosen to open the book with a reprinted article by Thomas Bever, from 1970 (which becomes a recurrent motif to which the contributors refer once and again as a departing point, thus giving structural and thematic unity and coherence to the book as a whole), a locus classicus for the psycholinguistic and neurocognitive approaches to ambiguity resolution, parsing (sentence perception, at the moment) strategies, and so-called 'garden path sentences' (GPS), the best known example being The horse raced past the barn fell, even if, as Tanenhaus claims in the Afterword, none of those is the prime theme of the work (but it is mostly about the relation between language and general cognitive strategies, an early plea for holism). The opening seems appropriate, since it provides the reader with an overall perspective on the studies of language as a concept analogous to those of "species or organ, as they are used in biological science" (p. 2). The article makes a case of distinguishing language as a mental/biological entity from language as a behavior; but, crucially, language structure and development are not to be isolated from the development of other cognitive capacities. Choosing this particular article is a statement in itself: Perceptual mechanisms, cognitive structures (including counting and number approximation, visual patterns and 2-D/3-D illusions), and linguistic structures (grammatical role assignment, abstraction of a structural pattern like 'active' or

2011

In this paper it is emphasized that human language has two rather different dimensions corresponding to two different language systems: lexical/semantic and grammatical. These two language systems are supported by different brain structures (temporal and frontal), and based in different learning strategies (declarative and procedural). In cases of brain pathology, each one can be independently impaired (Wernicke aphasia and Broca aphasia). While the lexical/semantic language system may have appeared during human evolution long before the contemporary man, the grammatical language system probably represents a relatively recent acquisition. Language grammar may be the departing ability for the development of the metacognitive executive functions and is probably based in the ability to internally represent actions.

Annual Review of Psychology, 2001

▪ Cross-linguistic studies are essential to the identification of universal processes in language development, language use, and language breakdown. Comparative studies in all three areas are reviewed, demonstrating powerful differences across languages in the order in which specific structures are acquired by children, the sparing and impairment of those structures in aphasic patients, and the structures that normal adults rely upon most heavily in real-time word and sentence processing. It is proposed that these differences reflect a cost-benefit trade-off among universal mechanisms for learning and processing (perception, attention, motor planning, memory) that are critical for language, but are not unique to language.

Cross-linguistic studies are essential to the identification of universal processes in language development, language use and language breakdown. Comparative studies in all three areas are reviewed, demonstrating powerful differences across languages in the order in which specific structures are acquired by children, the sparing and impairment of those structures in aphasic patients, and the structures that normal adults rely upon most heavily in real-time word and sentence processing. It is proposed that these differences reflect a cost-benefit trade-off among universal mechanisms for learning and processing (perception, attention, motor planning, memory) that are critical for language, but are not unique to language.

This chapter addresses the dialectic relation between E (= external) language and I (= internal) language. On the one hand, E-language is the product of the I-language of individual speakers; at the same time, the I-language of individual speakers is the product of their exposure to E-language. Given this relation, it is argued that certain features of E-language need to be incorporated into, and form an essential part of Ilanguage: the frequency of occurrence of its various items, their collocations and co-occurrence patterns, their contextual situatedness, and the ubiquity of the idiomatic and the formulaic. I use the metaphor of the ‘mental corpus’ as a way of characterizing the nature of what it is that speakers of a language have learned and what they access in language performance. The approach is contrasted with what is perhaps the dominant view of I-language, which seeks to compartmentalize linguistic knowledge into the lexicon and a set of rules for combining items from the lexicon.

Biolinguistics 8. 142-162.

This book, part of the Oxford Studies in Biolinguistic series, presents a state-ofthe-art overview of the field, more specifically, on psycho-and neurolinguistics and their relation to models of syntax, semantics, and morpho-phonology, while advancing its limits with cutting-edge research. A distinctive feature of the piece is the strong presence of interdisciplinary work and the internal coherence of the volume, integrating computational science, cognitive science, neurology and psycholinguistics, as well as syntax, semantics, and morpho-phonology; an integration that is most welcomed as it triggers debate and productive revisiting of the machinery assumed within all aforementioned sub-disciplines of linguistics. The volume is organized around the notion of garden path sentences, relative clauses, and their relations at the processing level; this includes major problems of natural language processing and the relations between syntax, semantics, and morpho-phonology from a more general point of view as well.

2018