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Open Access Published since January 1, 1963

Linguistics

An Interdisciplinary Journal of the Language Sciences

ISSN: 1613-396X

Editor-in-Chief: Volker Gast

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Open Accces from 2022

Starting with volume 60 (2022), Linguistics is transformed into a Diamond Open Access journal thanks to our subscribers participating in the Subscribe to Open (S2O) project. All current content will be published under a Creative Commons License (CC-BY 4.0) at no cost to authors and will be freely available to readers.

All authors retain copyright, unless – due to their local circumstances – their work is not copyrighted.

Objective
Linguistics publishes articles addressing research questions of current or general relevance that make a significant contribution to our understanding of human language as a system of communication or a cognitive, social and historical phenomenon. This includes aspects of grammatical organization (phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax) as well as questions of meaning and use (semantics, pragmatics, discourse). Studies may deal with linguistic systems as instantiated in speaking, signing, writing and other modes of communication, as well as the language users themselves and their communities (e.g. psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics). The focus may be on one or several languages, the perspective may be synchronic or diachronic, the methodology may be qualitative or quantitative, and the approach may be exploratory or confirmatory. Linguistics publishes up to two special issues a year in these areas, for which it welcomes proposals.

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Your benefits:

Comprehensive overview of traditional disciplines of linguistics as well as neighboring disciplines
In-depth analysis of language within various subfields of linguistics
Ground-breaking interdisciplinary research from the language sciences
Rigorous peer-review

History

Linguistics was launched in 1963 by the Dutch publisher, Mouton (now De Gruyter Mouton) based in the Hague. It was initially called “Linguistics: An International Review”. Read more

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Ahead of Print / Just Accepted

Ahead of Print / Just Accepted

Volume 62 (2024)

Volume 61 (2023)

Volume 60 (2022)

Volume 59 (2021)

Volume 58 (2020)

Volume 57 (2019)

Volume 56 (2018)

Volume 55 (2017)

Volume 54 (2016)

Volume 53 (2015)

Volume 52 (2014)

Volume 51 (2013)

Volume 50 (2012)

Volume 49 (2011)

Volume 48 (2010)

Volume 47 (2009)

Volume 46 (2008)

Volume 45 (2007)

Volume 44 (2006)

Volume 43 (2005)

Volume 42 (2004)

Volume 41 (2003)

Volume 40 (2002)

Volume 39 (2001)

Volume 38 (2000)

Volume 37 (1999)

Volume 36 (1998)

Volume 35 (1997)

Volume 34 (1996)

Volume 33 (1995)

Volume 32 (1994)

Volume 31 (1993)

Volume 30 (1992)

Volume 29 (1991)

Volume 28 (1990)

Volume 27 (1989)

Volume 26 (1988)

Volume 25 (1987)

Volume 24 (1986)

Volume 23 (1985)

Volume 22 (1984)

Volume 21 (1983)

Volume 20 (1982)

Volume 19 (1981)

Volume 18 (1980)

Volume 17 (1979)

Volume 16 (1978)

Volume 15 (1977)

Volume 14 (1976)

Volume 13 (1975)

Volume 12 (1974)

Volume 11 (1973)

Volume 10 (1972)

Volume 9 (1971)

Volume 8 (1970)

Volume 7 (1969)

Volume 6 (1968)

Volume 5 (1967)

Volume 4 (1966)

Volume 3 (1965)

Volume 2 (1964)

Volume 1 (1963)

Linguistics publishes special and thematic issues focussed on important and emerging topics in the field of study. The journal has established a rigorous process to ensure that any special issue manuscripts follow the same high-quality standards and peer review processes as regular manuscripts. For further information on the journal’s peer review policy please see the "Instructions for Authors".

Recent Special Issues

Journal Impact Factor	1.3	2023, Journal Citation Reports (Clarivate, 2024)
5-year Journal Impact Factor	1.0	2023, Journal Citation Reports (Clarivate, 2024)
Journal Citation Indicator	0.93	2023, Journal Citation Reports (Clarivate, 2024)
CiteScore	2.3	2023, Scopus (Elsevier B.V., 2024)
SCImago Journal Rank	0.559	2023, SJR (Scimago Lab, 2024; Data Source: Scopus)
Source Normalized Impact per Paper	1.503	2023, CWTS Journal Indicators (CWTS B.V., 2024; Data Source: Scopus)

More information about journal rankings

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Submission

You can easily submit your manuscript online. Simply go to http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ling and you will be guided through the whole peer-reviewing and publishing process. Please see the Information for authors before submitting or the special guidelines for Registered Reports (Both the Information for Authors file and the Registered Reports file can be found on this website on the 'Overview' tab under the heading 'Supplementary Files'). If you have any more questions, you can contact linguistics@uni-jena.de

Your benefits of publishing with us

From 2022: open access publication through Subscribe to Open (S2O).
Accepted papers will be published online first as DOI-citable, forward-linked articles for quickest possible visibility for the scientific community.
Every article easily discoverable because of SEO and comprehensive abstracting and indexing services.
Secure archiving by De Gruyter and the independent archiving service Portico.

Submission process

Submission of your paper through ScholarOne Manuscripts online submission system.
Double-blind peer-review process (you will be guided through every step).
All articles are reviewed by at least two independent, expert peer-reviewers.
You will receive a first decision on your paper approx. 20 weeks after submission.
Articles are published approx. 18 weeks after first decision.
Publication online and in print.

Please note

Please see the De Gruyter Mouton journal style sheet for further information regarding the proper formatting of your manuscript.
All initial submissions are checked for plagiarism via Crossref Similarity Check.
Before submitting your article please have a look at our Information for authors, Publication Ethics Statement.
If you have any general questions, please visit our FAQ page for journal authors.

We look forward to receiving your manuscript!
(Deutsch)

Editorial

Editorial
Linguistics Editorial Office
Department of English and American Studies
University of Jena
Ernst-Abbe-Platz 8
D-07743 Jena
Germany
e-mail: linguistics@uni-jena.de

Editor-in-Chief
Volker Gast
University of Jena, Germany

Editorial Board

Harald Baayen, University of Tübingen, Germany
Sonia Colina, University of Arizona, USA
Östen Dahl, University of Stockholm, Sweden
Nick Enfield, University of Sydney, Australia
Ricardo Etxepare, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique/French National Centre for Scientific Research, France
Jennifer Hay, University of Canterbury, New Zealand
Beth Levin, Stanford University, USA
Yen-hui Audrey Li, University of Southern California, USA
Caroline Rowland, Max Plank Institute for Psycholinguistics, The Netherlands

Board of Consulting Editors
Patrícia Amaral, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, USA
Matthew Baerman, University of Surrey, Guildford, UK
Heike Behrens, University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland
Delia Bentley, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK
Ruth Berman, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel
Walter Bisang, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, Mainz, Germany
Denis Creissels, University of Lyon, Lyon, France
William Croft, University of New Mexico, New Mexico, USA
Henrik De Smet, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium
Stephen M. Dickey, The University of Kansas, Kansas, USA
Mark Dingemanse, Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
Dagmar Divjak, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK
Michael Dunn, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden
Sam Featherston, University of Tuebingen, Tübingen, Germany
Christiane Fellbaum, University of Princeton, New Jersey, USA
Ad Foolen, Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
Mirjam Fried, Charles University, Prague, Czechia
Matthias Gerner, Shanghai　Jiaotong University, Shanghai, China
Nancy Hedberg, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, Canada
Henriette Hendriks, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK
Daniel Hole, University of Stuttgart, Stuttgart, Germany
Sunwoo Jeong, Seoul National University, Seoul, South Korea
Andrew Jessop, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK
Zhuo Jing-Schmidt, University of Oregon, Eugene, USA
Evelien Keizer, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria
Ekkehard König, Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany
Maria Koptjevskaja Tamm, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden
Martin Kümmel, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, Tübingen, Germany
Robert Ladd, The Universty of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK
Natalia Levshina, Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
Jo-Wang Lin, Institute of Linguistics, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan
Åshild Næss, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway
Iván Ortega-Santos, University of Memphis, Memphis, Tennessee, USA
Chongwon Park, University of Minnesota Duluth, Minnesota, USA
Isabel Pérez-Jiménez, Universidad de Alcalá, Madrid, Spain
Timo Roettger, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway
Mamoru Saito, Nanzan University, Nagoya, Japan
Devyani Sharma, Queen Mary University of London, London, UK
Joanna Ut-seong Sio, Palacký University,　 Olomouc, Czech Republic
Andrew Spencer, University of Essex, Colchester, UK
Shiao Wei Tham, National University of Singapore, Singapore
Sze-Wing Tang, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, New Territories, Hong Kong, China
Jacqueline Visconti, Genoa University, Genoa, Italy
Liulin Julie Zhang, University of Hawaii, Honolulu, HI, USA

Volume 62 Issue 6

November 2024

Publicly Available November 12, 2024

Frontmatter

Page range: i-iv

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Research Articles

Open Access September 27, 2024

Processing Chinese object-topicalization structures in simple and complex sentences

Fuyun Wu, Fang Wang, Jinman Li

Page range: 1339-1378

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Abstract

Chinese has the basic word order of Subject-Verb-Object (SVO), yet it is also known as a topic-prominent language, where an object can be topicalized from within a relative clause as well as from a main clause. In parsing Topic-Subject-Verb (TSV) structures, will a Chinese comprehender have difficulties in recognizing the second noun phrase (NP2) as the subject and in integrating the initial topic noun with the verb? Experience/surprisal-based theories and memory-based theories make testable predications at the NP2 and critically, at the verb. Focusing on these two regions in three self-paced reading experiments, we compared reading time patterns between TSVs and canonical SVOs in simple or complex sentences. Converging evidence showed processing costs at or prior to the NP2 in TSVs compared to SVOs, but no retrieval or integration costs at the verb regardless of dependency lengths. Our results are not predicted by memory-based theories, but are consistent with the predictions of experience/surprisal-based theories, suggesting that Chinese TSV processing is guided by structural frequencies and a universal subject-reading bias, with completion of dependency between topic and the verb (or empty category) likely to be fundamentally semantic.

Open Access July 4, 2024

Competing constructions in Kaqchikel focus contexts

Raina Heaton

Page range: 1379-1415

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Abstract

This study provides new data on the use of agent focus (AF) versus transitive constructions in Kaqchikel. This work follows up on a study done by Heaton et al. (Heaton, Raina, Kamil Deen & William O’Grady. 2016. An investigation of relativization in Kaqchikel Maya. Lingua 170. 35–46) which found that while questioning the subject of a transitive verb regularly requires the use of AF or an antipassive, relativizing the subject of a transitive verb does not. Present findings show that AF is only common in half of the six primary syntactic contexts that allow it, which is unexpected under the assumption that AF is a last resort strategy. I suggest that the differences between these syntactic contexts in Kaqchikel are related to the presence of a preverbal lexical NP element which is available to be interpreted as the agent. Comparative descriptive evidence is also compiled demonstrating that transitive verbs are possible in syntactic contexts that traditionally have been considered to require AF across Eastern Mayan languages.

Open Access May 31, 2024

A cross-linguistic study of lexical and derived antonymy

Maria Koptjevskaja-Tamm, Matti Miestamo, Carl Börstell

Page range: 1417-1472

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Abstract

Antonymy is the lexical relation of opposition. The nature of the oppositeness may differ – e.g., contradictory (‘true’–‘false’) or gradable (‘tall’–‘short’) – and there may be variation as to the relationship in their formal encoding, whether the antonyms are expressed as distinct lexical forms (e.g., true vs. false ) or if one form is derived from the other (e.g., true vs. untrue ). We investigate the relationship between the two members of 37 antonym pairs across 55 spoken languages in order to see whether there are patterns in how antonymy is expressed and which of the two antonym members is more likely to be derived from the other. We find great variation in the extent to which languages use derivation (labeled “neg-constructed forms”) as an antonym-formation strategy. However, when we do find a derived form, this tends to target the member of the pair that is either lower in valence (positive vs. negative) or magnitude (more vs. less), in line with our hypotheses. We also find that antonyms that belong to a core set of property concepts are more likely to encode antonyms as distinct lexical forms, whereas peripheral property concepts are relatively more likely to encode the antonyms with derived forms.

Open Access April 30, 2024

Placeholders in crosslinguistic perspective: abilities, preferences, and usage motives

Tohru Seraku

Page range: 1473-1498

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Abstract

In spontaneous discourse, a speaker sometimes encounters word-formulation trouble, and she may use a ‘placeholder’ (PH) such as whatchamacallit and you-know-what , a dummy expression to be inserted into the slot of a ‘target form’ in the sentence structure of an utterance. It has been widely held that there are two types of usage motives: (i) a speaker cannot produce a target form when, e.g., she does not recall it, or (ii) a speaker does not want to produce a target form when, e.g., it is considered taboo. Previous studies have described the grammatical and functional properties of PHs in a variety of languages, but no study has examined their usage-motive patterns crosslinguistically. In this paper, I propose an implicational hierarchy relating to the usage motives of PHs based on the relevance-theoretic notions of ‘ability’ and ‘preference’ and derive several predictions from this hierarchy, which are tested against PH data in 56 languages. The predictions are mostly confirmed, with some (putative) counterexamples explained by non-cognitive–pragmatic factors (e.g., lexical-semantic factors). As an implication, the hierarchy may also serve as a basis for drawing predictions in other linguistic fields (e.g., language acquisition).

Open Access May 31, 2024

From gesture to Sign? An exploration of the effects of communicative pressure, interaction, and time on the process of conventionalisation

Vikki Janke, Lizzy Aumônier, Julia Hofweber, Marianne Gullberg, Chloë Marshall

Page range: 1499-1542

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Abstract

This study explored how non-signers exploit their gestural repertoire during a process of handshape conventionalisation. We examined how communicative context, interaction, and time affect the transition from iconically motivated representations to linguistically organised, generalised forms. One hundred non-signers undertook a silent gesture-elicitation task, describing pictures in one of four conditions: (A) in isolation; (B) with a passive recipient tasked with identifying the objects gestured; (C) with an interlocutor, sharing addressor/addressee roles; (D) with a confederate, sharing addressor/addressee roles, where the confederate restricted her handshapes to four. Analyses focused on whether participants used their hands productively (proportion of ‘hand-as-object’ responses), and whether they generalised handshapes to similarly shaped but different objects (handshape range). High communicative pressure and interaction (C, D) generated the highest proportion of hand-as-object representations. The condition lacking these, (A), generated the smallest handshape range. Results did not change over time. At this incipient stage, individuals exploit their gestural repertoire productively, intent on depicting object characteristics accurately. Communicative pressure and interaction spur this exploratory process. However, they do not yet generalise their handshapes, a development requiring a loosening of the iconic mapping between symbol and referent. This aspect of conventionalisation needs time and might be more likely to emerge in isolation.

Open Access May 3, 2024

Dialect separation and cross-dialectal influence: a study on the grammatical gender of Oromo

Tekabe Legesse Feleke

Page range: 1543-1579

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Abstract

The extent to which the grammar of one dialect influences the grammar of another and the mechanisms that bidialectal speakers employ to distinguish a target grammar from non-target grammar have not been adequately investigated. In this study, we elucidate these issues by investigating the grammatical gender of Oromo, a Cushitic language that is spoken in Ethiopia. The results from two successive offline experiments indicate that Oromo bidialectal speakers can differentiate between the grammar of their native dialect and that of a non-native dialect in both spoken and written modes. This finding implies the existence of a dual-system representation of grammar. Moreover, there is a significant amount of dialect mixing that varies across various developmental stages and modalities. The bidialectal speakers’ ability to differentiate between the grammar of their native dialect and that of a non-native dialect is constrained by the magnitude of their exposure to the non-native dialect, modalities, and a specific property of grammatical forms. Here, we propose an interactive dialect separation model that accounts for diverse dialect contexts.

Open Access May 3, 2024

Morphosyntactic stereotypes of speakers with different genders and sexual orientations: an experimental investigation

Pekka Posio, Sven Kachel, Gloria Uclés-Ramada

Page range: 1581-1625

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Abstract

Previous research has identified differences in language use between speakers representing different genders and sexual orientations, as well as stereotypical beliefs about the existence of such differences. The present paper investigates such stereotypical beliefs among speakers of two varieties of Spanish and explores whether linguistic stereotypes of gender and sexual orientation are stronger in a society with more conservative gender roles. We conducted an experiment where 252 speakers of European and Mexican Spanish were shown pairs of texts and sentences depicting the same event but differing in the use of morphosyntactic resources, creating stereotypically “masculine” and “feminine” variants of the same text or sentence. The informants were asked which of the variants was more likely uttered by a woman (rather than a man), a lesbian woman (rather than a straight woman), or a gay man (rather than a straight man). Some of the morphosyntactic features were strongly associated with speaker gender (e.g., use of first- and second-person singular) and others with lesbian (e.g., use of impersonal structures) or gay speakers (e.g., direct reported speech). Contrary to expectations, the responses did not differ according to informants’ age, gender, or nationality. While the present study did not reveal any differences between the two societies, more cross-linguistic and cultural research is needed to elucidate the effect of society on morphosyntactic variation and stereotypes thereof.

(Deutsch)

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Print ISSN: 0024-3949
Type: Journal
Language: English
Publisher: De Gruyter Mouton
First published: January 1, 1963
Publication Frequency: 6 Issues per Year
Audience: linguists, scholars and students in the field of linguistics