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Article dans une revue Studies in Language Année : 2017

The economy of word classes in Hiw, Vanuatu: Grammatically flexible, lexically rigid

Résumé

The issue of lexical flexibility is best tackled as the articulation of two separate mappings: one that assigns lexical items to word classes; another one that associates these word classes with the syntactic functions they can access. A language may endow its lexemes with more or less multicategoriality, and its word classes with more or less multifunctionality: these are two distinct facets of lexical flexibility, which should be assessed separately. Focusing on Hiw, an Oceanic language of northern Vanuatu, I show that lexical flexibility is there mostly due to the high multifunctionality of its word classes, each of which can regularly access a broad array of syntactic functions. Conversely, Hiw ranks relatively low on the scale of multicategoriality: most of its lexemes are assigned just one word class. This is how a language can be grammatically flexible, yet lexically rigid.
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halshs-01593469, version 1 (26-09-2017)

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Alexandre François. The economy of word classes in Hiw, Vanuatu: Grammatically flexible, lexically rigid. Studies in Language, 2017, Lexical Flexibility in Oceanic Languages, 41 (2), pp.294 - 357. ⟨10.1075/sl.41.2.03fra⟩. ⟨halshs-01593469⟩
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