Adjectives in Thai: Implications for a functionalist typology of word classes

Tai languages are often described as “lacking” a major lexical class “adjectives”; accordingly, they and other area languages are frequently cited as evidence against adjectival universality. This article brings the putative lack under examination, arguing that a more complete distributional analysis reveals a pattern: overlap is highest among semantically peripheral adjectives and verbs and in constructions prototypically associated to both classes crosslinguistically, and lowest among semantically core adjectives and verbs and in constructions prototypically associated to only one or the other class. Rather than “lacking” adjectives, data from Thai thus in fact support functional-typological characterizations of adjectival universality such as those of Givón (1984), Croft (2001), and Dixon (2004). Finally, while data from Thai would fail to falsify an adaptation of Enfield's (2004) Lao lexical class-taxonomy (in which adjectives are treated as a verbal subclass) on its own terms, this article argues that in absence of both universally-applicable criteria for the evaluation of categorial taxonomies crosslinguistically and evidence for the cognitive reality of categorial taxonomies so stipulated, even this more limited sense of a “lack” of adjectives in Thai is less radical a challenge to adjectival universality than has sometimes been supposed.

Microstates in language-related brain potential maps show noun-verb differences

Brain processing of grammatical word class was studied analyzing event-related potential (ERP) brain fields. Normal subjects observed a randomized sequence of single German nouns and verbs on a computer screen, while 20-channel ERP field map series were recorded separately for both word classes. Spatial microstate analysis was applied, based on the observation that series of ERP maps consist of epochs of quasi-stable map landscapes and based on the rationale that different map landscapes must have been generated by different neural generators and thus suggest different brain functions. Space-oriented segmentation of the mean map series identified nine successive, different functional microstates, i.e., steps of brain information processing characterized by quasi-stable map landscapes. In the microstate from 116 to 172 msec, noun-related maps differed significantly from verb-related maps along the left–right axis. The results indicate that different neural populations represent different grammatical word classes in language processing, in agreement with clinical observations. This word class differentiation as revealed by the spatial–temporal organization of neural activity occurred at a time after word input compatible with speed of reading.

Loose but normal: a semantic association study.

An abnormal facilitation of the spreading activation within semantic networks is thought to under-lie schizophrenics' remote associations and referential ideas. In normal subjects, elevated magical ideation (MI) has also been associated with a style of thinking similar to that of schizotypal subjects. We thus wondered whether normal subjects with a higher MI score would judge "loose associations" as being more closely related than do subjects with a lower MI score. In two experiments, we investigated whether judgments of the semantic distance between stimulus words varied as a function of MI. In the first experiment, random word pairs of two word classes, animals and fruits, were presented. Subjects had to judge the semantic distance between word pairs. In the second experiment, sets of three words were presented, consisting of a pair of indirectly related, or unrelated nouns plus a third noun. Subjects had to judge the semantic distance of the third noun to the word pair The results of both experiments showed that higher MI subjects considered unrelated words as more closely associated than did lower MI subjects. We conjecture that for normal subjects high on MI "loose associations" may not be loose after all. We also note that the tendency to link uncommon, nonobvious, percepts may not only be the basis of paranormal and paranoid ideas of reference, but also a prerequisite of creative thinking.