Videos by Randy J. LaPolla 羅仁地
This was a keynote presentation to the 13th Online Conference of the Korean Association for Lingu... more This was a keynote presentation to the 13th Online Conference of the Korean Association for Linguistic Typology on 15 Jan 2021. As the theme of the conference was "Can Asian languages contribute to typology" I discuss some of the concrete contributions that Asian languages have already made to typology. 312 views
For the conference I Encuentro RELIF, hosted by Red de Lingüistas en Formación (Linguists in Trai... more For the conference I Encuentro RELIF, hosted by Red de Lingüistas en Formación (Linguists in Training Network) (RELIF) in Argentina, Randy J. LaPolla was asked to make a short video to answer two or more of the following questions:
Which topics do you consider should be investigated in the next 10 years?
Which are the trending topics in the area?
Which are the great milestones in the discipline in the last 20 years?
What are the challenges in the area?
What advice would you give to someone who is starting out on linguistic research?
What are the contributions of a linguist to society?
In the video Prof. LaPolla tries to answer as many of the questions as possible in a cohesive way, focused mainly around the change from rationalist to empiricist linguistics. 142 views
Presentation as part of the Distinguished Lecture series at the Escuela Nacional Preparatoria of ... more Presentation as part of the Distinguished Lecture series at the Escuela Nacional Preparatoria of the UNAM, 2020-21, "The Meaning of Meaning"
11 November 2020 239 views
Papers by Randy J. LaPolla 羅仁地
This paper uses the example of passages of the DàoDé Jīng to make the point that when one is work... more This paper uses the example of passages of the DàoDé Jīng to make the point that when one is working with Old Chinese texts, it is important to pay attention to the rhyming patterns in the texts, as they give clues to the proper segmentation of lines and larger segments and to the proper pronunciation of some characters, and can alert us to where characters have been changed due to taboo or scribal error.
The Cambridge Handbook of Language Contact, 2022
This paper discusses the migrations of what we think of as the Chinese people and the language co... more This paper discusses the migrations of what we think of as the Chinese people and the language contact that has influenced the development of their languages.
Systemic Functional Language Description, 2019
This paper presents the concepts of theme-rheme as discussed by the early Prague School and by Mi... more This paper presents the concepts of theme-rheme as discussed by the early Prague School and by Michael Halliday, and then, using the facts of Tagalog, argues that, unlike these two approaches, which conflate topic-comment and theme-rheme because all of the languages they looked at happened to have this configuration, we should expand the typology to allow for languages where topic (what the clause is about) and theme (defined as the speaker’s starting point) are not conflated. The latter is important because of the phenomenon known as “projection”, and it is also argued that typologists should consider the different mechanisms that speakers of different languages have conventionalized in order to help the addressee project the speaker’s intention.
ICSTLL45, 2012
Background: After Bauman’s (1975) initial suggestion that pronominal marking on the verb in some ... more Background: After Bauman’s (1975) initial suggestion that pronominal marking on the verb in some Tibeto-Burman languages might be reconstructed to Proto-Sino-Tibetan, Scott DeLancey (1980a, 1980b, 1983, 1988, 1989a, 1989b) and George van Driem (e.g. 1993) tried to argue for this position and to argue that the system of suffixes found represents a split ergative system. The essential characteristics of the suffixal system, according to DeLancey 1989b: 317 are “the personal suffixes 1st person *-ŋa, 2nd person *-na, and a split ergative agreement pattern in which agreement is always with a 1st or 2nd person argument in preference to 3rd person, regardless of which is subject or object.”
Asian Languages and Linguistics, 2020
This paper argues that linguistic typology, and linguistics more generally, got off to a good sta... more This paper argues that linguistic typology, and linguistics more generally, got off to a good start in the 19th century with scholars like Wilhelm von Humboldt and Georg von der Gabelentz, where the understanding was that each language manifests a unique world view, and it is important to study and compare those world views. This tradition is still alive, but was sidelined and even denigrated for many years due to the rise of Structuralism, which attempted to study language structures divorced from their linguistic and socio-cultural contexts. The paper reviews the understandings the early scholars had and points out their similarities with cutting edge current views in cognitive linguistics, construction grammar, and interactional linguistics, which had to be rediscovered due to the influence of Structuralism for so many years. It then argues that we should make linguistic typology (and linguistics more generally) more modern, scientific, and empirical by returning to our roots.
Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area, 2016
There have been challenges to the received view of the structure of the Sino-Tibetan language fam... more There have been challenges to the received view of the structure of the Sino-Tibetan language family. This is all well and good, as we should constantly challenge our most basic assumptions. In this paper I look at the arguments presented with a view to convincing us to change our conception of Sino-Tibetan and to change the name of the family to “Trans-Himalayan”, and find them less than convincing, due to problems of fact and argumentation.
Linguistic Typology, 2016
This paper argues that in doing both description and comparison we should work inductively, stayi... more This paper argues that in doing both description and comparison we should work inductively, staying true to the facts of the languages as manifested in natural data, and not resort to abstractions that lead to classifying languages or constructions in a way that ignores the actual facts of the languages. A non-Structuralist alternative view of communication and typological description is also presented.
Linking syntax and semantics in simple sentences
Structure, Meaning and Function
Semantic representation, II: macroroles, the lexicon and noun phrases
Structure, Meaning and Function
Semantic representation, I: verbs and arguments
Structure, Meaning and Function
Introduction In the previous chapter we presented a theory of morphosyntactic structure which elu... more Introduction In the previous chapter we presented a theory of morphosyntactic structure which elucidated the structure of simple sentences and noun phrases. At many points in the discussion we made crucial reference to predicates and their arguments and to the semantic representation of sentences. Our task in this chapter and the next is to present a theory of just these things. We begin by presenting a classification of the kinds of events, actions and situations that sentences express and of the roles that the participants in these states of affairs may play. We then turn to the problem of representing the relevant semantic properties of verbs and other predicates that code these states of affairs; these representations will in turn form the basis of the semantic representations of clauses and sentences. From these we will derive the representation of the arguments of the verbs and other predicates, arguments which denote the participants in the states of affairs. In the next chapter we will present the notion of ‘semantic macrorole’ and investigate the semantic representation of adjuncts, operators and noun phrases. A typology of states of affairs and their participants In chapter 1 we pointed out that the general perspective from which this book is written maintains that the communicative functions of language are central to the analysis of its structure, and one (but not the only) function of language is reference and predication, that is, representing things that happen in the world (or a possible, fictional world) and the participants involved in those situations.
Syntactic structure, I: simple clauses and noun phrases
Structure, Meaning and Function
Grammatical relations
Structure, Meaning and Function
Information structure
Structure, Meaning and Function
The goals of linguistic theory
Structure, Meaning and Function
Introduction This book is about some of the devices users of human languages employ to put meanin... more Introduction This book is about some of the devices users of human languages employ to put meaningful elements together to form words, words together to form phrases, phrases together to form clauses, clauses together to form sentences, and sentences together to form texts. The emphasis here will be on the construction of units larger than words, in particular clauses and sentences. This has often been viewed primarily as the domain of syntax . ‘The term “syntax” is from the Ancient Greek sýntaxis , a verbal noun which literally means “arrangement” or “setting out together”. Traditionally, it refers to the branch of grammar dealing with the ways in which words, with or without appropriate inflections, are arranged to show connections of meaning within the sentence.’ (Matthews 1982:1). The expressions of a language involve a relationship between a sequence of sounds and a meaning, and this relationship is mediated by grammar, a core component of which is syntax. In English and many other languages, the arrangement of words is a vital factor in determining the meaning of an utterance, as illustrated in (1.1). (1.1) a. The man saw the woman. b. The woman saw the man. In Dyirbal (Australia; Dixon 1972) and many other languages, however, the order of words is irrelevant to the determination of the meaning of a sentence; it is, rather, the inflectional form of a phrase which is the crucial factor determining the interpretation of the sentence, as shown in (1.2). (The base forms of each noun are italicized.)
Linking syntactic and semantic representations in simple sentences
Exploring the Syntax–Semantics Interface
Cognitive Linguistic Studies in Cultural Contexts, 2015
ABSTRACT Language Structure and Environment is a broad introduction to how languages are shaped b... more ABSTRACT Language Structure and Environment is a broad introduction to how languages are shaped by their environment. It makes the argument that the social, cultural, and natural environment of speakers influences the structures and development of the languages they speak. After a general overview, the contributors explain in a number of detailed case studies how specific cultural, societal, geographical, evolutionary and meta-linguistic pressures determine the development of specific grammatical features and the global structure of a varied selection of languages. This is a work of meticulous scholarship at the forefront of a burgeoning field of linguistics.
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Videos by Randy J. LaPolla 羅仁地
Which topics do you consider should be investigated in the next 10 years?
Which are the trending topics in the area?
Which are the great milestones in the discipline in the last 20 years?
What are the challenges in the area?
What advice would you give to someone who is starting out on linguistic research?
What are the contributions of a linguist to society?
In the video Prof. LaPolla tries to answer as many of the questions as possible in a cohesive way, focused mainly around the change from rationalist to empiricist linguistics.
11 November 2020
Papers by Randy J. LaPolla 羅仁地
Which topics do you consider should be investigated in the next 10 years?
Which are the trending topics in the area?
Which are the great milestones in the discipline in the last 20 years?
What are the challenges in the area?
What advice would you give to someone who is starting out on linguistic research?
What are the contributions of a linguist to society?
In the video Prof. LaPolla tries to answer as many of the questions as possible in a cohesive way, focused mainly around the change from rationalist to empiricist linguistics.
11 November 2020