Weather sentences in a cross-linguistic perspective

Abstract

This dissertation investigates from a typological perspective the syntactic variation of meteorological expressions in non-metaphorical contexts. The cross-linguistic research starts from a 99 language-sample and is based on two general classes of meteorological phenomena: dynamic, represented by precipitation and static, such as temperature and light conditions. Meteorological expressions are considered zero-valency constructions because no genuine semantic participant can be identified. After analysing the encoding patterns, a new morpho-syntactic classification of these constructions is proposed, according to the type of subject, which can be the weather phenomenon itself, a null subject, an expletive pronoun or an abstract entity. Each of these subject types can allow a certain range of syntactic combinations, and the verbs they combine with can vary both semantically and in terms of valency. Moreover, this novel classification of weather sentences according to the type of subject allowed me to identify certain geographical and genetic consistencies, as well as some correlations between the linguistic mechanisms employed and the type of weather event. I observed that the encoding variation of weather phenomena has a semantic basis, and I have shown that in the case of precipitation, which is a dynamic kind of weather phenomena, the most common expression is a construction in which the subject is the weather phenomenon itself and a verb of motion, since it is a phenomenon that involves something material that can be perceived as a moving subject, whereas for temperature and light conditions, representing a static kind of weather event, the most recurrent pattern is a null or expletive subject and a meteo verb (the predicate is the one that carries the meaning of the weather event) and the semantic reason lies in the fact that there are no tangible elements that can be perceived as subjects and therefore, it is expected that the sentence is impersonal and there is no subject. Finally, by crossing the subject type in the two classes of phenomena, I demonstrate that languages usually select different types of subjects for precipitation and temperature and light conditions.