Project description
Linguistic categories, like noun, verb, and adjective, are key to any kind of language description. Yet, it remains debatable what exactly a linguistic category is. Does a word’s category derive from its position (distribution) and how it looks (form)? Or from what it means (semantics) and how it’s used (pragmatics)? These questions represent the two main perspectives on categories and have led to distinct lines of research and theorizing (generative and cognitive-functional, respectively). Often, the two positions are painted as contradictory, but this project takes the strong stance that they are complementary and explores what that means for a unified theory of linguistic categories.
Much of the discussion of categories focuses on simple, straightforward cases, but there are many cases where the category of a word is hard to figure out. One example is quantifier nouns, words that look like nouns but also like quantifiers (counting words). If we say, “a heap of dung”, we are referring to heaped-up dung that we can touch or see; but, if we say “a heap of questions”, suddenly there is no physical pile, only many questions. Speakers can get very creative with quantifier nouns too, evoking imagery for otherwise untouchable things: “a flood of questions”, “a mountain of debt”, “a fountain of conversation”.
This project focuses on the hard cases of categorization, collectively referring to them as ‘the periphery (of a category)’. We hypothesize that the periphery arises from language change, when a word from one category (like noun) shifts into something else (like a quantifier). This project investigates the steps of this process, integrating the two perspectives described above. Nouns are the starting point, and five languages will be investigated (English, Norwegian, Polish, Spanish, and one to be determined), with data gathered primarily through corpora, but also by consulting with native speakers.
Funded by Norwegian Research Council (project number 361855).
