Raul Aranovich
Biographic Data
| ID | 739854 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Raul Aranovich |
| GIVEN NAMES | Raul |
| FAMILY NAME | Aranovich |
| SIGNATURE | ARANOVICH R |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of California, Davis |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-6438-8815 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 9 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 1 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 9 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1995 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Charles Hockett’s “Two Models of Grammatical Description”
Charles Hockett’s “Two Models of Grammatical Description” (1954) gave us insightful characterization of the methods of structural linguistics, becoming a springboard for those who proposed alternative approaches. I explore the article connections to the Structuralist past and its influence on two models that followed: Transformational Grammar (Hockett's paper is repeatedly cited in Chomsky's Syntactic Structures) and word-based models of morpholo…
Saussure’s Cours and the Monosyllabic Myth
Ferdinand de Saussure’s Cours de linguistique générale reproduced a misconception of Chinese as a monosyllabic language without complex words. In this paper, we investigate the sources of this misconception in Western thought. We also show that the misconception about Chinese was already known to be inaccurate in Saussure’s time, and that he had many missed opportunities to find out. While Saussure reproduced the empirical errors of Comparatists …
Language as a complex algebra
In Item-and-Arrangement models of inflection, morphemes are associations of form and meaning stored in a mental lexicon. Saussure’s notion of the linguistic sign as a unit of an acoustic image (signifier) and a concept (signified) immediately suggests such a model. But close examination of the examples of inflectional morphology throughout the Cours brings Saussure’s ideas more in line with Process morphology, a model in which recurrent elements …
Realizational morphology beyond the lexicon
Transitivity and polysynthesis in Fijian
This article argues for a three-way structural characterization of Fijian objects: common nouns can be incorporated or dislocated, but pronouns and proper nouns occur inside the VP as complements. These facts support an analysis of Fijian as a polysynthetic language, since it is a pronominal argument language with incorporated objects. Having complement nominals inside the VP, however, puts Fijian outside the scope of Baker’s (1996) polysynthesis…
Feature-based argument mapping and animacy optimization in impersonal passives
Analysis of the alternation between impersonal reflexives and reflexive passives in Spanish shows that higher animacy makes an argument less marked as an object. This generalization supports Hopper and Thompson's (Transitivity in grammar and discourse, 1981) “transitivity hypothesis”, since it is entailed by their claim that objects tend to be highly individuated. The article proposes an optimality-theoretic implementation of the analysis, using …
The semantics of auxiliary selection in Old Spanish
Old Spanish had a split auxiliary system in the perfect tense, reminiscent of what is found in Modern French and Modern Italian. In this paper, I trace the progress of the displacement of ser ‘be’ by haber ‘have’ with intransitive and reflexive verbs in the history of Spanish. The data support the hypothesis that predicates that have a more patient-like subject are the last ones to lose their ability to select ser , regardless of their syntactic …
Negative Contexts
This research emphasizes semantic, syntactic and pragmatic considerations illustrating a wide array of linguistic approaches. Written from within the theoretical framework of Generalized Quantifiers, the three main areas considered are collocations, polarity items and multiple negations
Spanish Casi as a Scalar Operator
Proceedings of the Twenty-First Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society: General Session and Parasession on Historical Issues in Sociolinguistics/Social Issues in Historical Linguistics (1995)
Feature-based argument mapping and animacy optimization in impersonal passives
Analysis of the alternation between impersonal reflexives and reflexive passives in Spanish shows that higher animacy makes an argument less marked as an object. This generalization supports Hopper and Thompson's (Transitivity in grammar and discourse, 1981) “transitivity hypothesis”, since it is entailed by their claim that objects tend to be highly individuated. The article proposes an optimality-theoretic implementation of the analysis, using …
Spanish Casi as a Scalar Operator
Proceedings of the Twenty-First Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society: General Session and Parasession on Historical Issues in Sociolinguistics/Social Issues in Historical Linguistics (1995)
Negative Contexts
This research emphasizes semantic, syntactic and pragmatic considerations illustrating a wide array of linguistic approaches. Written from within the theoretical framework of Generalized Quantifiers, the three main areas considered are collocations, polarity items and multiple negations
The semantics of auxiliary selection in Old Spanish
Old Spanish had a split auxiliary system in the perfect tense, reminiscent of what is found in Modern French and Modern Italian. In this paper, I trace the progress of the displacement of ser ‘be’ by haber ‘have’ with intransitive and reflexive verbs in the history of Spanish. The data support the hypothesis that predicates that have a more patient-like subject are the last ones to lose their ability to select ser , regardless of their syntactic …
Feature-based argument mapping and animacy optimization in impersonal passives
Analysis of the alternation between impersonal reflexives and reflexive passives in Spanish shows that higher animacy makes an argument less marked as an object. This generalization supports Hopper and Thompson's (Transitivity in grammar and discourse, 1981) “transitivity hypothesis”, since it is entailed by their claim that objects tend to be highly individuated. The article proposes an optimality-theoretic implementation of the analysis, using …
Transitivity and polysynthesis in Fijian
This article argues for a three-way structural characterization of Fijian objects: common nouns can be incorporated or dislocated, but pronouns and proper nouns occur inside the VP as complements. These facts support an analysis of Fijian as a polysynthetic language, since it is a pronominal argument language with incorporated objects. Having complement nominals inside the VP, however, puts Fijian outside the scope of Baker’s (1996) polysynthesis…
Realizational morphology beyond the lexicon
Language as a complex algebra
In Item-and-Arrangement models of inflection, morphemes are associations of form and meaning stored in a mental lexicon. Saussure’s notion of the linguistic sign as a unit of an acoustic image (signifier) and a concept (signified) immediately suggests such a model. But close examination of the examples of inflectional morphology throughout the Cours brings Saussure’s ideas more in line with Process morphology, a model in which recurrent elements …
Saussure’s Cours and the Monosyllabic Myth
Ferdinand de Saussure’s Cours de linguistique générale reproduced a misconception of Chinese as a monosyllabic language without complex words. In this paper, we investigate the sources of this misconception in Western thought. We also show that the misconception about Chinese was already known to be inaccurate in Saussure’s time, and that he had many missed opportunities to find out. While Saussure reproduced the empirical errors of Comparatists …
Charles Hockett’s “Two Models of Grammatical Description”
Charles Hockett’s “Two Models of Grammatical Description” (1954) gave us insightful characterization of the methods of structural linguistics, becoming a springboard for those who proposed alternative approaches. I explore the article connections to the Structuralist past and its influence on two models that followed: Transformational Grammar (Hockett's paper is repeatedly cited in Chomsky's Syntactic Structures) and word-based models of morpholo…
Linguistics (7 works) · Philosophy (7 works) · Computer Science (6 works) · Mathematics (5 works) · Psychology (4 works) · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation (4 works) · Artificial Intelligence (3 works) · Epistemology (3 works) · Historical Linguistics and Language Studies (3 works) · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies (3 works)