Nexus and the birth of syntax

Abstract

Extract 0. Recent discussion about the status of time within nexusFootnote 1 Thanks are especially due to Carl Ebeling and Frederik Kortlandt for stimulating discussions and correspondence. deserves a more general treatment. In the following sections, nexus will be defined and analyzed as a development from less complex syntactic structures. The discussion focuses on the referential mechanisms responsible for the time depth presented by nexus. More generally, if the use of speech as a symbolic system derives from “the power of the higher apes to solve specific problems by abstracting general forms or schemata from the details of given situations” (Sapir 1985: 14), it may be feasible to reconstruct a succession of mental abstractions in the development of syntax. To take Sapir's conjecture to its logical consequences, his abstracted “schemata” will serve as a conceptual starting point from which the more complex referential mechanisms observable in language have evolved. The lack of material evidence for this development does not allow the description of successive stages to be conclusive in any way. Instead, the account aims at being maximally plausible as a link between ordinary perception and linguistic semantics and syntax.

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