Ontological categories

This paper examines ontological categories (OC), a type of category that seems to exist in all languages. Following current trends in linguistic research, we claim that these categories belong to a closed class of functional nouns and that they make up a particular functional domain in UG. Working within the nanosyntactic approach, we claim that such a functional domain should be seen as a functional sequence (fseq) of syntactico-semantic heads. Our paper is organized as follows. In section 1.2 we present the main notion of ontological category. We then briefly introduce our theoretical framework, the main hypothesis, as well as the methodology behind our nanosyntactic analysis. In sections 1.3 and 1.4, we present and discuss the relevant data, namely syncretism and morphological containment, in more than 39 languages belonging to 23 different language families. Section 1.5 discusses the nature of some of the counterintuitive results we arrive at, with some implications of the fseq we are proposing.

本文聚焦本体论范畴（ontological categories, OC）——一种似乎普遍存在于所有语言中的范畴类型。顺应语言学研究的当前趋势，本文主张此类范畴属于功能名词的封闭类，且构成普遍语法（Universal Grammar, UG）中的特定功能域。本文采用微句法学（nanosyntactic）研究路径，提出此类功能域应被视为由句法-语义中心语构成的功能序列（functional sequence, fseq）。

本文结构安排如下：第1.2节将阐述本体论范畴的核心概念；随后简要介绍本文的理论框架、核心假说，以及微句法分析所依托的研究方法。第1.3节与第1.4节将呈现并讨论相关语料，即取自23个不同语系的39种以上语言中的形态合流与形态包含现象。第1.5节将探讨我们得出的部分反直觉结论的本质，并阐释本文所提出的功能序列（fseq）的相关理论启示。