Functional Categories Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
The use of functional groups, such as trophic categories, is more useful for ecological interpretation of differences in community structure than the simple comparison of lists of names. Using these trophic categories demonstrates that... more
The use of functional groups, such as trophic categories, is more useful for ecological interpretation of differences in community structure than the simple comparison of lists of names. Using these trophic categories demonstrates that bat assemblages from Andean cloud forests show greater taxonomic and functional simplicity than those from lowland rainforests. This altitudinal decrease has been interpreted as a consequence of the reduction of available resources. However, this is not manifested proportionally in all functional groups or trophic guilds or even in all taxa within the same guild. The insectivore guild seems to be directly responsible for the decrease, showing a high correlation with total bat species richness, while on the contrary, the rest of the functional categories decrease in other ways. Diet has a large influence on the metabolic rate of these mammals and therefore on their thermoregulatory capacities. Bats whose diet is based on protein (insects) in general have lower metabolic rates than those whose diet is comprised primarily of carbohydrates (fruit and nectar). In contrast to lowland forests where insectivores dominate bat communities, frugivores constitute the most important trophic category in cloud forests. I here postulate that the explanation for this difference in internal richness of these functional groups is found in the differential response capacities of each species to the thermoregulatory demands of the environment, which are directly related to their dietary regime. All these facts lead us to believe that the decrease of species richness with altitude is due to the inefficient thermoregulation of species of tropical origin, which make up most of the insectivore guild. Apparently, all insectivores of Neotropical origin have a «ceiling» in their vertical distribution which prevents them reaching the higher altitudinal belts, whereas the only bats reaching these high forests belong to the Vespertilionidae family of Neartic origin as well as a few representatives of the Molossidae.
Variability is one of the characteristics in the acquisition of functional heads in language acquisition. One of the theories that attempts to give answers is the Prosodic Licensing Hypothesis. This theory examines functional heads in the... more
Variability is one of the characteristics in the acquisition of functional heads in language acquisition. One
of the theories that attempts to give answers is the Prosodic Licensing Hypothesis. This theory examines
functional heads in the Phonology/Syntax Interface. In this paper we will present briefly the theories that
try to explain the variability in the acquisition of functional heads, the Phonology/Syntax Interface, the
main characteristics of the theory and data from existing surveys in that framework. In addition we will
present data from Greek that confirms Prosodic Licensing Hypothesis in the acquisition of determiners,
negation and clitics.
Adverbs and Functional Heads: a Cross-Linguistic perspective (Cinque, Guglielmo. 1999. Adverbs and functional heads: A cross-linguistic perspective. New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press)—one of the founding works of “Syntactic... more
Adverbs and Functional Heads: a Cross-Linguistic perspective (Cinque, Guglielmo. 1999. Adverbs and functional heads: A cross-linguistic perspective. New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press)—one of the founding works of “Syntactic Cartography”—combines some of the developments in Syntactic Theory from the 1980s and 1990s with insightful contributions from Linguistic Typology. This paper has two interrelated goals. First, it aims to review the fundamental theses of Cinque’s monography of 1999—which are far from controversial among scholars working in Cartography—; at the same time it provides conceptual support to them. Secondly, it aims to explore some methodological tools of Syntactic Cartography presented and discussed by Cinque, Guglielmo. 1999. Adverbs and functional heads: A cross-linguistic perspective. New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press, namely the so-called precedence-and-transitivity tests—after a brief discussion on methodology used to recognise the functional ca...
Adverbs and Functional Heads: a Cross-Linguistic perspective (Cinque, Guglielmo. 1999. Adverbs and functional heads: A cross-linguistic perspective. New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press)-one of the founding works of "Syntactic... more
Adverbs and Functional Heads: a Cross-Linguistic perspective (Cinque, Guglielmo. 1999. Adverbs and functional heads: A cross-linguistic perspective. New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press)-one of the founding works of "Syntactic Cartography"-combines some of the developments in Syntactic Theory from the 1980s and 1990s with insightful contributions from Linguistic Typology. This paper has two interrelated goals. First, it aims to review the fundamental theses of Cinque's monography of 1999-which are far from controversial among scholars working in Cartography-; at the same time it provides conceptual support to them. Secondly, it aims to explore some methodological tools of Syntactic Cartography presented and discussed by Cinque, Guglielmo. 1999. Adverbs and functional heads: A cross-linguistic perspective. New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press, namely the so-called precedence-and-transitivity tests-after a brief discussion on methodology used to recognise the functional categories, namely the criterion by Jackendoff, Ray. 1972. Semantic interpretation in generative grammar. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press-and the use of the hierarchies as tools to detect intra and interlinguistic variation. With regard to this latter issue, the paper gathers data from Brazilian Portuguese, Canadian English and Colombian Spanish on verb raising. The discussion of the data not only favours Cinque, Guglielmo. 2017. On the status of functional categories (heads and phrases). Language and Linguistics 18(4). 521-576 recent updates of his theoretical approach to the cartography of the clause but I would like to thank Guglielmo Cinque,
In Jarawara, a language of the Arawá family of southwestern Amazonia, there is a particular use of the inalienably possessed noun ihi/ehene 'result of' which might possibly be analyzed as an impersonal construction. The features of the... more
In Jarawara, a language of the Arawá family of southwestern Amazonia, there is
a particular use of the inalienably possessed noun ihi/ehene 'result of' which might possibly be analyzed as an impersonal construction. The features of the phenomenon are described, including the various syntactic contexts in which it occurs. Ultimately it is determined that it is probably not an impersonal construction, at least as far as the verb is concerned, although the possessed noun does permit a certain amount of ambiguity. The expression ihi/ehene iti 'kill some person(s) or animal(s)' is also examined, and assimilated to the more general analysis of the phenomenon with
ihi/ehene.
In the process of analyzing these constructions, it is proposed that ihi/ehene is one of a set of three inalienably possessed nouns that can also function as postpositions, the other members of the set being tabiyo 'lack of' and namoni 'bringing a report of'. As postpositions, these words mark a phrase as an adjunct. In this use, but not in their use as possessed nouns, these three words have a function similar to that of prepositions in English. In the constructions which are the main focus of the paper, though, ihi/ehene is not a postposition but a possessed noun, and the phrases it occurs in are arguments such as subjects and objects, not adjuncts. This approach is somewhat different than that of Dixon (2004), who, while recognizing a dual function of ihi/ehene, does not recognize that tabiyo and namoni are in the same class.
Adverbs and Functional Heads: a Cross-Linguistic perspective (Cinque, Guglielmo. 1999. Adverbs and functional heads: A cross-linguistic perspective. New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press)—one of the founding works of “Syntactic... more
Adverbs and Functional Heads: a Cross-Linguistic perspective (Cinque, Guglielmo. 1999. Adverbs and functional heads: A cross-linguistic perspective. New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press)—one of the founding works of “Syntactic Cartography”—combines some of the developments in Syntactic Theory from the 1980s and 1990s with insightful contributions from Linguistic Typology. This paper has two interrelated goals. First, it aims to review the fundamental theses of Cinque’s monography of 1999—which are far from controversial among scholars working in Cartography—; at the same time it provides conceptual support to them. Secondly, it aims to explore some methodological tools of Syntactic Cartography presented and discussed by Cinque, Guglielmo. 1999. Adverbs and functional heads: A cross-linguistic perspective. New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press, namely the so-called precedence-and-transitivity tests—after a brief discussion on methodology used to recognise the functional ca...
SUMMARY The use of functional groups, such as trophic categories, is more useful for ecological interpretation of differences in community structure than the simple comparison of lists of names. Using these trophic categories demonstrates... more
SUMMARY The use of functional groups, such as trophic categories, is more useful for ecological interpretation of differences in community structure than the simple comparison of lists of names. Using these trophic categories demonstrates that bat assemblages from Andean cloud forests show greater taxonomic and functional simplicity than those from lowland rainforests. This altitudinal decrease has been interpreted as a
This paper addresses the following questions: is (external) merge, the binary operation that combines two elements into a constituent in every variant of the Minimalist Program (Chomsky, 1993, 1995 and related works), an unconstrained... more
This paper addresses the following questions: is (external) merge, the binary operation that combines two elements into a constituent in every variant of the Minimalist Program (Chomsky, 1993, 1995 and related works), an unconstrained operation? If so, what avoid generating ill-formed structures? I will argue here for a simple functional / lexical constraint on Merge, assuming a possible principled binary opposition for the items which enter the syntactic derivation. I will basically follow Kayne (2009), who assumes that the class of nouns (or L-roots) is the only open (lexical) class in grammar, updating the intuitions of Hale and Keyser (1993). This proposal leads to interesting structural and typological consequences.
SUMMARY The use of functional groups, such as trophic categories, is more useful for ecological interpretation of differences in community structure than the simple comparison of lists of names. Using these trophic categories demonstrates... more
SUMMARY The use of functional groups, such as trophic categories, is more useful for ecological interpretation of differences in community structure than the simple comparison of lists of names. Using these trophic categories demonstrates that bat assemblages from Andean cloud forests show greater taxonomic and functional simplicity than those from lowland rainforests. This altitudinal decrease has been interpreted as a consequence of the reduction of available resources. However, this is not manifested proportionally in all functional groups or trophic guilds or even in all taxa within the same guild. The insectivore guild seems to be directly responsible for the decrease, showing a high correlation with total bat species richness, while on the contrary, the rest of the functional categories decrease in other ways. Diet has a large influence on the metabolic rate of these mammals and therefore on their thermoregulatory capacities. Bats whose diet is based on protein (insects) in ge...