Referential hierarchies and alignment

An overview

Datos Bibliográficos

ID3988425
AutoresKatharina Haude (0000-0003-1706-7060, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, autor de correspondencia), Alena Witzlack-Makarevich (0000-0003-0138-4635, Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel)
Año2016
Volumen54
Número3
Fecha de publicación2016-01-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaLinguistics (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0024-3949 • E-ISSN: 1613-396X
EditorialWalter de Gruyter GmbH (PUBLISHER • DE)
DOI10.1515/ling-2016-0008
OpenAlexW2352202623
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas17
Referencias citadas8

A referential hierarchy is a scalar representation of types of referents or referring expressions that are ranked according to their deictic, semantic, and/or dis- course-pragmatic properties. 1 The first representation of this kind was Silverstein ’ s (1976: 113) “ hierarchy of inherent lexical content ” , 2 which predicts tendencies of the distribution of accusative vs. ergative alignment patterns in languages with ergative traits. Silverstein ’ s suggestion was that entities high in the hierarchy are more prototypical agents and entities low in the hierarchy are more prototypical patients. The concept of referential hierarchies soon became very popular, both as a tool for explaining morphosyntactic patterns and as an object of research itself (see Comrie 1981 and DeLancey 1981 for early examples; see Bornkessel-Schlesewsky et al. 2015 for a selection of recent studies). 3 One version of Silverstein ’ s referential hierarchy is given in (1) (from Dixon 1979: 85)

Animacy · Hierarchy · Linguistics · Political science · Term (time) · Computer Science · Lexicography and Language Studies · Natural Language Processing Techniques · Philosophy · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation