Linguistic Categorization: Proceedings of an International Symposium in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, April 10-11, 1987

357 Pages·1989·30.35 MB·English

by  Roberta Corrigan

LINGUISTIC CATEGORIZATION
AMSTERDAM STUDIES IN THE THEORY AND
HISTORY OF LINGUISTIC SCIENCE
General Editor
E.F. KONRAD KOERNER
(University of Ottawa)
Series IV - CURRENT ISSUES IN LINGUISTIC THEORY
Advisory Editorial Board
Henning Andersen (Buffalo, N.Y.); Raimo Anttila (Los Angeles)
Thomas V. Gamkrelidze (Tbilisi); Hans-Heinrich Lieb (Berlin)
J. Peter Maher (Chicago); Ernst Pulgram (Ann Arbor, Mich.)
E.Wyn Roberts (Vancouver, B.C.); Danny Steinberg (Tokyo)
Volume 61
Roberta Corrigan, Fred Eckman and Michael Noonan (eds)
Linguistic Categorization
LINGUISTIC
CATEGORIZATION
Edited by
ROBERTA CORRIGAN, FRED ECKMAN
and
MICHAEL NOONAN
JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING COMPANY
AMSTERDAM/PHILADELPHIA
1989
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Linguistic categorization / edited by Roberta Corrigan, Fred Eckman, and Michael
Noonan.
p. cm. ֊- (Amsterdam studies in the theory and history of linguistic science.
Series IV, Current issues in linguistic theory, ISSN 0304-0763; v. 61)
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1. Categorization (Linguistics) I. Corrigan, Roberta. II. Eckman, Fred R. III. Noonan,
Michael (Michael P.) IV. Series.
P128.C37L56 1989
401' .43~dc 20 89-15193
ISBN 90 272 3558 9 (alk. paper) CIP
© Copyright 1989 - 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.
CONTENTS
Preface vii
Introduction: Linguistic and non-linguistic categorization: Structure
and process 1
R. Corrigan
I. Prototype effects in language 29
A lexical model of color space 31
J. Archibald
Preliminaries to a theory of phonological substance: The substance of
sonority 55
G. Nathan
Categorizing phonological segments: The inadequacy of the sonority
hierarchy 69
D. Maisch & R. Fulcher
Experimental evidence for syllable-internal structure 81
M. Dow & B. Deriving
Phonological categories and constituents 93
G. Iverson & D. Wheeler
Are thematic relations discrete? 115
B. Rozwadowska
Category restrictions in markedness relations 131
J. Gundel, . Houlihan & G. Sanders
The acquisition of the past participle: Discourse-based vs form-based
categories 149
C. Moder
II. Categorization processes 161
Category learning in a connectionist model: Learning to decline the
German definite article 163
R. Taraban, J. McDonald, & . MacWhinney
vi CONTENTS
Competition and lexical categorization 195
B. MacWhinney
III. Cross-linguistic categorization 243
A discourse approach to the cross-linguistic category 'Adjective' 245
S. Thompson
Pronominality: A noun-pronoun continuum 267
N. Sugamoto
On Humboldt on the Dual 293
F. Plank
Index of names 335
Language Index 343
Subject Index 347
PREFACE
On April 10-11 1987, the Sixteenth Annual University of Wisconsin-
Milwaukee Linguistics Symposium was held on the U.W.M. campus. This
volume represents a selection of the papers presented at this symposium.
The volume also contains contributions which were solicited from authors
who did not attend the conference, but whom we believed had something to
add to the volume.
The paper by Sandra Thompson, one of the invited speakers for the
symposium, has appeared elsewhere, and is reprinted here with permission.
As always, the U.W.M. Linguistics Symposium is a collective endeavor
with many sponsors. Those units supporting this year's conference include:
The College of Letters and Science
The Graduate School
Master of Arts in Foreign Language and Literature
The School of Education
Department of Communication
Department of Comparative Literature
Department of German
Department of Linguistics
Department of Philosophy
Department of Slavic Languages
Department of Spanish and Portugese
Department of Speech Pathology and Audiology
To all of these units, we gratefully acknowledge their support.
The objectives of the symposium were to address two fundamental
questions: (1) What is the nature of the categories that underlie the struc­
tures of human language; and (2) what is the nature of the extrahnguistic
categories that are reflected in language? The papers in this volume address
these questions from the perspective of a variety of disciplines, using many
different methodologies, and focusing on many different aspects of lan-
Viii PREFACE
guage including morphology, syntax, semantics, phonology and discourse.
Following the introductory chapter, the volume is divided into three sec­
tions: Prototype effects in language, categorization processes, and cross-lin­
guistic categorization. We hope that our colleagues in Linguistics,
Psycholinguistics, and Psychology will find the papers in the volume useful.
Roberta Corrigan
Fred Eckman
Michael Noonan
INTRODUCTION
LINGUISTIC AND NON-LINGUISTIC
CATEGORIZATION: STRUCTURE AND PROCESS1
ROBERTA CORRIGAN
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
A major debate in Linguistics, Philosophy, and Psychology concerns the
nature of the relationship between language and thought. The position
accepted by many linguists (e.g., Chomsky 1980) is that language and other
cognitive systems require separate mental faculties. The hypothesized lan­
guage faculty is defined by Chomsky (1986:xxvi) as "the innate component
of the mind/brain that yields knowledge of language when presented with
linguistic experience." The language faculty is believed to have specific,
unique characteristics that place universal constraints on the form that lan­
guage can take across cultures. An alternative point of view is that cogni­
tions (thoughts, intentions, and meanings) and the underlying cognitive
structures and operations that direct those cognitions are responsible for
language (Cromer 1974:234; 1976). Many cognitive scientists who work at
modeling systems of knowledge seem to assume that language is, by defini­
tion, a cognitive faculty and therefore operates via the same general cogni­
tive processes that govern other cognitive faculties (for example, Anderson
1983, Schank & Birnbaum 1984, Winograd 1983).
In this paper, I address the relationship between language and cogni­
tion by looking at a fundamental human ability, categorization. Although
the present volume is devoted to 'linguistic categorization', categorization
in language probably bears systematic relationships to categorization in
other cognitive domains. I will therefore examine the structure of human
categories, both linguistic and non-linguistic, and the process by which
those categories may be formed to determine whether the same mental