Table Of Content
Lexical
Polycategoriality
Cross-linguistic, cross-theoretical
and language acquisition approaches
Edited by
Valentina Vapnarsky
Edy Veneziano
Lexical Polycategoriality
Studies in Language Companion Series (SLCS)
issn 0165-7763
This series has been established as a companion series to the periodical
Studies in Language.
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University of Vienna / University of Munich
Editors
Werner Abraham Elly van Gelderen
University of Vienna / University of Munich Arizona State University
Editorial Board
Bernard Comrie Christian Lehmann
University of California, Santa Barbara University of Erfurt
William Croft Marianne Mithun
University of New Mexico University of California, Santa Barbara
Östen Dahl Heiko Narrog
University of Stockholm Tohuku University
Gerrit J. Dimmendaal Johanna L. Wood
University of Cologne University of Aarhus
Ekkehard König Debra Ziegeler
Free University of Berlin University of Paris III
Volume 182
Lexical Polycategoriality
Cross-linguistic, cross-theoretical and language acquisition approaches
Edited by Valentina Vapnarsky and Edy Veneziano
Lexical Polycategoriality
Cross-linguistic, cross-theoretical
and language acquisition approaches
Edited by
Valentina Vapnarsky
CNRS & Université Paris Nanterre
Edy Veneziano
Université Paris Descartes & CNRS
John Benjamins Publishing Company
Amsterdam / Philadelphia
TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
8
the American National Standard for Information Sciences – Permanence
of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1984.
doi 10.1075/slcs.182
Cataloging-in-Publication Data available from Library of Congress:
lccn 2017003697 (print) / 2017030054 (e-book)
isbn 978 90 272 5947 9 (Hb)
isbn 978 90 272 6595 1 (e-book)
© 2017 – John Benjamins B.V.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any
other means, without written permission from the publisher.
John Benjamins Publishing Company · https://benjamins.com
In memoriam to Melissa Bowerman
Table of contents
Acknowledgments ix
List of contributors xi
Lexical Polycategoriality – Cross-linguistic, cross-theoretical and
language acquisition approaches. An introduction 1
Valentina Vapnarsky and Edy Veneziano
Part I. Polycategoriality: The where and how of flexibility?
The flexibility of the noun/verb distinction in the lexicon of Mandinka 35
Denis Creissels
Derivationally based homophony in French 59
Françoise Kerleroux
Categorial flexibility as an emergent phenomenon: A comparison of
Arabic, Wolof, and French 79
Alain Kihm
Part II. Polycategoriality across Amerindian languages: From words to roots
Polycategoriality and hybridity across Mayan languages: Action nouns
and ergative splits 101
Ximena Lois, Valentina Vapnarsky, Cédric Becquey and
Aurore Monod Becquelin
Polycategoriality and zero derivation: Insights from Central Alaskan
Yup’ik Eskimo 155
Marianne Mithun
What determines constraints on the relationships between roots
and lexical categories? Evidence from Choctaw and Cherokee 175
Marcia Haag
viii Table of contents
Part III. Polycategoriality across Austronesian and Australian languages:
Function and typology
Lexical and syntactic categories in Nêlêmwa (New Caledonia)
and some other Austronesian languages: Fluid vs. rigid categoriality 207
Isabelle Bril
Two classes of verbs in Northern Australian languages: Implications for
the typology of polycategoriality 243
Eva Schultze-Berndt
Part IV. Linguistic analysis in the light of acquisition data
The ontology of roots and the emergence of nouns and verbs in Kuikuro:
Adult speech and children’s acquisition 275
Bruna Franchetto and Mara Santos
Flexibles and polyvalence in Ku Waru: A developmental perspective 307
Francesca Merlan and Alan Rumsey
Word class distinctiveness versus polycategoriality in Modern Hebrew:
Typological and psycholinguistic perspectives 343
Ruth A. Berman
Part V. Lexical categories and polycategoriality in acquisition
Noun and Verb categories in acquisition: Evidence from fillers and
inflectional morphology in French-acquiring children 381
Edy Veneziano
Semantic discrimination of Noun/Verb categories in French children
aged 1;6 to 2;11 413
Christophe Parisse and Caroline Rossi
The acquisition of action nouns in Yucatec Maya 443
Barbara Pfeiler
Author index 467
Language index 473
Subject index 475
Acknowledgments
Most of the research reported here was developed within the international project
POLYCAT – Categorial polyvalence: A universal parameter? Gramatical, seman-
tic and cognitive approaches (2006–2010), funded by the Agence Nationale de la
Recherche, France, and coordinated by Valentina Vapnarsky and Ximena Lois.
Many chapters of this book are based on papers presented at the International
Conference How flexible are lexical categories? held in Paris, at the Ecole Normale
Supérieure at the conclusion of the project. We thank all the participants in the
project and the conference for their insightful contributions to the issues discussed
in this volume. This includes Claire Moyse-Faurie, Harriet Jisa and Elsa Gomez,
who offered further insights as discussants at the conference. Special thanks go to
Richard Carter for having inspired the project since its very beginnings, for hav-
ing animated all along the discussions with stimulating and original questions,
and for his generous help in the careful reading of the manuscript. We thank also
Dana Cohen for her English reading and copy editing of the chapters, and Cédric
Becquey for his editorial help. Finally, we wish to express our posthumous thanks
to Melissa Bowerman, who gave a very inspiring talk at the conference. She passed
away a few months later, and her contribution chapter could not be ready for in-
clusion in the volume. We dedicate the whole volume to her. A special thought
goes also to Françoise Kerleroux, who unfortunately followed Melissa just a couple
of years later. Both of them remain vividly present in our minds, and so do their
long-standing contributions to our comprehension of the mechanisms of human
languages. Finally, we wish to thank all the reviewers1 for the time and expertise
they devoted to this project. Their contribution was essential to the overall quality
of the volume.
1. Gilles Authier, Dominique Bassano, Ellen Basso, Penelope Brown, Richard Carter, Denis
Creissels, Jan Don, William Foley, Michel de Fornel, Bernard Fradin, Marcia Haag, Hariet
Jisa, Alain Kihm, Michel Launey, Jean Leo Leonard, Yonata Levy, Susana Lopez Ornat, Marc
Antoine Mahieu, Francesca Merlan, Mariannne Mithun, Ann Peters, Barbara Pfeiler, Clifton
Pye, Francesc Queixalos, Stéphane Robert, Valentina Vapnarsky, Edy Veneziano.
