https://refubium.fu-berlin.de/handle/fub188/32521 Thu, 30 Apr 2026 06:28:28 GMT 2026-04-30T06:28:28Z https://refubium.fu-berlin.de/handle/fub188/48700 Fillers: Hesitatives and placeholders Pakendorf, Brigitte; Rose, Françoise Synopsis: Fillers are non-silent linguistic devices used in disfluencies to gain time while searching for words. In addition, they are frequently used intentionally to avoid words for reasons of politeness, ‘conspirational’ motivations, or rhetorical purposes. Two syntactically distinct types of conventionalized fillers can be distinguished: placeholders and hesitatives (also called hesitators). Placeholders are referential and morphosyntactically integrated, while hesitatives are neither. Strikingly, even though fillers are cross-linguistically widespread, dedicated studies of such items in particular languages are still largely lacking. This collective volume comprises in-depth descriptions of conventionalized fillers in a substantial variety of languages from Eurasia, Papunesia, Australia, and the Americas, hoping to stimulate typological research on fillers, both hesitatives and placeholders. The book aims to contribute to a better visibility of the topic among general linguists, to make data and analyses accessible that will be useful for further typological studies on the topic, and to provide models for descriptive linguists. The introductory chapter discusses issues emerging from the previous literature and offers a new typology of fillers. It also highlights the major findings of the eleven remaining chapters. Each of these contains a detailed and typologically informed analysis of fillers in one or several underdescribed languages, based on corpora of natural speech and focusing on lexical fillers rather than on phenomena below the word-level (phonetic lengthening, truncation) or above the word-level (such as idioms and discourse markers like ‘you know’, or rhetorical questions like ‘what’s the word for that?’). The chapters cover a large amount of diversity, both in terms of languages and with respect to the type of filler. They focus on (i) the criteria for identification of the various types of fillers and the terminology used, keeping in mind that the domain is still largely under construction, (ii) a detailed analysis in terms of morphosyntactic distribution and, if possible, (iii) frequency in speech, and (iv) some reflection on the diachronic development of these disfluency markers. Wed, 01 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMT https://refubium.fu-berlin.de/handle/fub188/48700 2025-01-01T00:00:00Z https://refubium.fu-berlin.de/handle/fub188/49943 Locative and existential predication Däbritz, Chris Lasse; Budzisch, Josefina; Basile, Rodolfo Synopsis Locative and existential predications are fundamental linguistic constructions that exhibit significant formal overlap while serving distinct communicative functions. Locative clauses typically anchor a definite referent to a spatial context, whereas existential clauses introduce new, often indefinite, referents into discourse. Despite their central role in syntactic and typological research, the cross-linguistic diversity of these predications remains largely underexplored. This collective volume originates from workshops held in 2023 at the Annual SLE Meeting in Athens and the International Conference on Historical Linguistics in Heidelberg. It brings together in-depth analyses of locative and existential predications across a wide range of languages, drawing on diverse methodological and theoretical approaches. Rather than imposing a single framework, the volume deliberately allows for variation in how these constructions are defined and analyzed, reflecting the complexity and diversity of linguistic structures. A key theme of the book is the relationship between locative, existential, and possessive predication. Many of the included studies highlight the formal and functional connections between these domains, illustrating how different languages encode possession through structures that overlap with locative and existential constructions. The volume also challenges conventional assumptions about structural distinctions between these predications, showing that in many languages, such boundaries are blurred or even nonexistent. The introductory chapter reviews key findings from prior research and offers a refined typology of locative and existential predications. It also highlights the major insights from the remaining chapters, each of which provides a detailed empirical analysis of these constructions in one or several underdescribed languages. The contributions address (i) the structural and functional properties of locative and existential clauses, (ii) criteria for distinguishing these constructions in languages where formal differentiation is minimal, (iii) their frequency and usage in natural discourse, and (iv) grammaticalization pathways that link locative, existential, and possessive predication. By integrating data from a broad range of languages and perspectives, this volume advances our understanding of locative and existential predication and offers a foundation for future research in typology, syntax, and historical linguistics. Wed, 01 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMT https://refubium.fu-berlin.de/handle/fub188/49943 2025-01-01T00:00:00Z https://refubium.fu-berlin.de/handle/fub188/51844 Negation in the world's languages I: Africa Miestamo, Matti; Veselinova, Ljuba Synopsis: The three-volume work Negation in the world's languages constitutes a major step forward in the comparative study of negation. It includes 43 chapters describing the negation system of one language each, following a typologically and functionally oriented questionnaire. The questionnaire is a comparative tool organized according to functional subdomains of negation. It highlights aspects of negation that have been found salient in typological research, such as standard negation, negation in non-declaratives, negation of stative predications and negative indefinite pronouns. At the same time it aims at a comprehensive coverage of the domain of negation and also allows room for language specific features to be highlighted. By using the questionnaire, the chapters have produced comparable datasets of the negation systems of a wide variety of languages from different families and areas. The contributions are also good examples of the fruitful cooperation between typologists and descriptive linguists in the context of diversity linguistics. On the one hand, typological knowledge is essential for language description as it helps descriptive linguists see their data in a broader perspective, ask new questions and come up with new analyses. On the other hand, typologists are crucially dependent on work done by descriptive linguists for their data collection. The selection of languages is mainly a result of the response to an open call for papers, originally launched for the workshop on negation organized in connection with the Syntax of the World's Languages VIII conference in Paris in 2018. To balance the representation of different continents, authors working on languages from the areas that were initially least covered were invited to take part. The languages are distributed across the three volumes according to geography, following the macroareal divisions in the Glottolog. The first volume includes languages from Africa, the second one covers languages from Eurasia, and the third one brings together languages from Papunesia, Australia, North America and South America. This book is complemented by volume II available at https://langsci-press.org/catalog/book/496 and volume III available at https://langsci-press.org/catalog/book/497. Wed, 01 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMT https://refubium.fu-berlin.de/handle/fub188/51844 2025-01-01T00:00:00Z https://refubium.fu-berlin.de/handle/fub188/51845 Negation in the world's languages II: Eurasia Miestamo, Matti; Veselinova, Ljuba Synopsis: The three-volume work Negation in the world's languages constitutes a major step forward in the comparative study of negation. It includes 43 chapters describing the negation system of one language each, following a typologically and functionally oriented questionnaire. The questionnaire is a comparative tool organized according to functional subdomains of negation. It highlights aspects of negation that have been found salient in typological research, such as standard negation, negation in non-declaratives, negation of stative predications and negative indefinite pronouns. At the same time it aims at a comprehensive coverage of the domain of negation and also allows room for language specific features to be highlighted. By using the questionnaire, the chapters have produced comparable datasets of the negation systems of a wide variety of languages from different families and areas. The contributions are also good examples of the fruitful cooperation between typologists and descriptive linguists in the context of diversity linguistics. On the one hand, typological knowledge is essential for language description as it helps descriptive linguists see their data in a broader perspective, ask new questions and come up with new analyses. On the other hand, typologists are crucially dependent on work done by descriptive linguists for their data collection. The selection of languages is mainly a result of the response to an open call for papers, originally launched for the workshop on negation organized in connection with the Syntax of the World's Languages VIII conference in Paris in 2018. To balance the representation of different continents, authors working on languages from the areas that were initially least covered were invited to take part. The languages are distributed across the three volumes according to geography, following the macroareal divisions in the Glottolog. The first volume includes languages from Africa, the second one covers languages from Eurasia, and the third one brings together languages from Papunesia, Australia, North America and South America. This book is complemented by volume I available at https://langsci-press.org/catalog/book/495 and volume III available at https://langsci-press.org/catalog/book/497. Wed, 01 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMT https://refubium.fu-berlin.de/handle/fub188/51845 2025-01-01T00:00:00Z