Tag Meaning › Direction of Transitivity Or Possession (2›3 May Mean 2
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Studies on Language Change. Working Papers in Linguistics No. 34
DOCUMENT RESUME ED 286 382 FL 016 932 AUTHOR Joseph, Brian D., Ed. TITLE Studies on Language Change. Working Papers in Linguistics No. 34. INSTITUTION Ohio State Univ., Columbus. Dept. of Linguistics. PUB DATE Dec 86 NOTE 171p. PUB TYPE Reports - Evaluative/Feasibility (142) -- Collected Works - General (020) EDRS PRICE MF01/PC07 Plus Postage. DESCRIPTORS Arabic; Diachronic Linguistics; Dialects; *Diglossia; English; Estonian; *Etymology; Finnish; Foreign Countries; Language Variation; Linguistic Borrowing; *Linguistic Theory; *Morphemes; *Morphology (Languages); Old English; Sanskrit; Sociolinguistics; Syntax; *Uncommonly Taught Languages; Word Frequency IDENTIFIERS Saame ABSTRACT A collection of papers relevant to historical linguistics and description and explanation of language change includes: "Decliticization and Deaffixation in Saame: Abessive 'taga'" (Joel A. Nevis); "Decliticization in Old Estonian" (Joel A. Nevis); "On Automatic and Simultaneous Syntactic Changes" (Brian D. Joseph); "Loss of Nominal Case Endings in the Modern Arabic Sedentary Dialects" (Ann M. Miller); "One Rule or Many? Sanskrit Reduplication as Fragmented Affixation" (Richard D. Janda, Brian D. Joseph); "Fragmentation of Strong Verb Ablaut in Old English" (Keith Johnson); "The Etymology of 'bum': Mere Child's Play" (Mary E. Clark, Brian D. Joseph); "Small Group Lexical Innovation: Some Examples" (Christopher Kupec); "Word Frequency and Dialect Borrowing" (Debra A. Stollenwerk); "Introspection into a Stable Case of Variation in Finnish" (Riitta Valimaa-Blum); -
Animacy and Alienability: a Reconsideration of English
Running head: ANIMACY AND ALIENABILITY 1 Animacy and Alienability A Reconsideration of English Possession Jaimee Jones A Senior Thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for graduation in the Honors Program Liberty University Spring 2016 ANIMACY AND ALIENABILITY 2 Acceptance of Senior Honors Thesis This Senior Honors Thesis is accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for graduation from the Honors Program of Liberty University. ______________________________ Jaeshil Kim, Ph.D. Thesis Chair ______________________________ Paul Müller, Ph.D. Committee Member ______________________________ Jeffrey Ritchey, Ph.D. Committee Member ______________________________ Brenda Ayres, Ph.D. Honors Director ______________________________ Date ANIMACY AND ALIENABILITY 3 Abstract Current scholarship on English possessive constructions, the s-genitive and the of- construction, largely ignores the possessive relationships inherent in certain English compound nouns. Scholars agree that, in general, an animate possessor predicts the s- genitive while an inanimate possessor predicts the of-construction. However, the current literature rarely discusses noun compounds, such as the table leg, which also express possessive relationships. However, pragmatically and syntactically, a compound cannot be considered as a true possessive construction. Thus, this paper will examine why some compounds still display possessive semantics epiphenomenally. The noun compounds that imply possession seem to exhibit relationships prototypical of inalienable possession such as body part, part whole, and spatial relationships. Additionally, the juxtaposition of the possessor and possessum in the compound construction is reminiscent of inalienable possession in other languages. Therefore, this paper proposes that inalienability, a phenomenon not thought to be relevant in English, actually imbues noun compounds whose components exhibit an inalienable relationship with possessive semantics. -
Tutorial in Greek Syntax
View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Hochschulschriftenserver - Universität Frankfurt am Main On the morphosyntax of (anti-)causative verbs Artemis Alexiadou1 Universität Stuttgart [email protected] 1. Setting the stage As is well known, in many languages change of state verbs participate in the so called (anti-) causative alternation; this is illustrated in (1) with an English example. Such verbs permit both transitive/causative and intransitive/anticausative construals: (1) a. John broke the window Causative b. The window broke Anticausative2 The paradigm in (1) has been the subject of much discussion in linguistic theory, as its existence raises a number of intriguing questions. In this paper, I address three of them. The first question is whether we are actually dealing with a causative formation or a detransitivization process. Both views have been proposed in the literature: proponents of the causative formation approach claim that the intransitive form is basic (e.g. Dowty 1979; Pesetsky 1995 and others), while proponents of the detransitivization process claim that it is the transitive that is basic, and intransitive one is derived (e.g. Levin & Rappaport Hovav 1995, Chierchia 1989, Reinhart 2000 and others). Recently, a third proposal has been advanced, namely that the two alternates do not stand in a derivational relationship (Alexiadou & al. 2006, Doron 2003). The second question concerns the morphological form of the alternation, namely whether morphological marking plays a role in determining the directionality of the derivation. Derivational approaches typically assume an iconic reasoning; the derived form is expected to be morphologically marked. -
Toward a Shared Syntax for Shifted Indexicals and Logophoric Pronouns
Toward a Shared Syntax for Shifted Indexicals and Logophoric Pronouns Mark Baker Rutgers University April 2018 Abstract: I argue that indexical shift is more like logophoricity and complementizer agreement than most previous semantic accounts would have it. In particular, there is evidence of a syntactic requirement at work, such that the antecedent of a shifted “I” must be a superordinate subject, just as the antecedent of a logophoric pronoun or the goal of complementizer agreement must be. I take this to be evidence that the antecedent enters into a syntactic control relationship with a null operator in all three constructions. Comparative data comes from Magahi and Sakha (for indexical shift), Yoruba (for logophoric pronouns), and Lubukusu (for complementizer agreement). 1. Introduction Having had an office next to Lisa Travis’s for 12 formative years, I learned many things from her that still influence my thinking. One is her example of taking semantic notions, such as aspect and event roles, and finding ways to implement them in syntactic structure, so as to advance the study of less familiar languages and topics.1 In that spirit, I offer here some thoughts about how logophoricity and indexical shift, topics often discussed from a more or less semantic point of view, might have syntactic underpinnings—and indeed, the same syntactic underpinnings. On an impressionistic level, it would not seem too surprising for logophoricity and indexical shift to have a common syntactic infrastructure. Canonical logophoricity as it is found in various West African languages involves using a special pronoun inside the finite CP complement of a verb to refer to the subject of that verb. -
Argument Marking in Harakmbut
Argument marking in Harakmbut: Looking for referential transparency An Van linden ([email protected]) University of Leuven & Research Foundation Flanders (FWO) SLW6, Pavia, 9/09/2014 1. Introduction − Harakmbut is a language from the Peruvian Amazon, spoken in ‘native communities’ in the departments of Madre de Dios and Cusco − Genetic affiliation: − Formerly classified as an Arawakan or Maipuran language by McQuown (1955) (see Hart 1963: 6) and Matteson (1972); but this has found little acceptance (Adelaar 2007: 39). − Wise (1999: 307) states that Harakmbut is commonly accepted to be a (single language) isolate (cf. WALS; Fonseca 2002; Vergara 2007) − Adelaar (2000, 2007) proposes that it is genetically related to the Brazilian Katukina family (included in Guaporé-Mamoré linguistic area), which may be further linked to Macro-Ge − Some grammatical features are shared with Ese Eja (Tacanan family) (Pozzi-Escot 1998: 93), which is proposed to belong to the Guaporé-Mamoré linguistic area in southwest Brazil and eastern Bolivia, close to the border with Peru (Crevels & van der Voort 2008) − Previous linguistic work: focus on Amarakaeri dialect (Hart 1963; Helberg 1984, 1990; Tripp 1976ab, 1995) − Own work: two fieldwork stays in Puerto Luz, San José and Shintuya (all Amarakaeri informants): Jul-Aug 2010, Aug-Sept 2011 − Orthographic conventions: <’>: glottal stop; <¨>: nasal vowel; underlined sounds carry word stress − Agglutinating language − Synthetic verbal morphology, especially with respect to mood and argument marking 2. Mood marking − Argument marking interacts with mood marking: Harakmbut distinguishes between three mood types: indicative, dubitative and imperative mood, each of which has a distinct set of argument markers (cf. -
Form, Function and History of the Present Suffix -I/-Ën in Albanian and Its Dialects
M.A. Lopuhaä Form, function and history of the present suffix -i/-ën in Albanian and its dialects Master Thesis, July 1, 2014 Supervisor: Dr. M.A.C. de Vaan Contents 1 Introduction 4 2 Conventions and notation 5 3 Background and statement of the problem 7 3.1 The Albanian verbal system ................................... 7 3.2 The Proto-Albanian verbal system ............................... 8 3.3 Main research questions ..................................... 9 3.4 Previous work on the subject .................................. 9 4 Morphological changes from Old Albanian to Modern Albanian 11 4.1 Verbal endings in Old and Modern Albanian .......................... 11 4.2 Present singular .......................................... 12 4.3 Present plural ........................................... 12 4.4 Imperfect and subjunctive .................................... 13 5 Proto-Albanian reconstruction 14 6 Proto-Indo-European reconstruction 17 6.1 Vocalic nasals in Albanian .................................... 17 6.2 The reality of a PIE suffix *-n-ie/o- ............................... 18 7 Dialectal information 20 7.1 Buzuku .............................................. 23 7.2 Northwestern Geg ........................................ 23 7.3 Northern Geg ........................................... 24 7.4 Northeastern Geg ......................................... 25 7.5 Central Geg ............................................ 26 7.6 Southern Geg ........................................... 27 7.7 Transitory dialects ....................................... -
Serial Verb Constructions Revisited: a Case Study from Koro
Serial Verb Constructions Revisited: A Case Study from Koro By Jessica Cleary-Kemp A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Associate Professor Lev D. Michael, Chair Assistant Professor Peter S. Jenks Professor William F. Hanks Summer 2015 © Copyright by Jessica Cleary-Kemp All Rights Reserved Abstract Serial Verb Constructions Revisited: A Case Study from Koro by Jessica Cleary-Kemp Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics University of California, Berkeley Associate Professor Lev D. Michael, Chair In this dissertation a methodology for identifying and analyzing serial verb constructions (SVCs) is developed, and its application is exemplified through an analysis of SVCs in Koro, an Oceanic language of Papua New Guinea. SVCs involve two main verbs that form a single predicate and share at least one of their arguments. In addition, they have shared values for tense, aspect, and mood, and they denote a single event. The unique syntactic and semantic properties of SVCs present a number of theoretical challenges, and thus they have invited great interest from syntacticians and typologists alike. But characterizing the nature of SVCs and making generalizations about the typology of serializing languages has proven difficult. There is still debate about both the surface properties of SVCs and their underlying syntactic structure. The current work addresses some of these issues by approaching serialization from two angles: the typological and the language-specific. On the typological front, it refines the definition of ‘SVC’ and develops a principled set of cross-linguistically applicable diagnostics. -
Aktionsart and Aspect in Qiang
The 2005 International Course and Conference on RRG, Academia Sinica, Taipei, June 26-30 AKTIONSART AND ASPECT IN QIANG Huang Chenglong Institute of Ethnology & Anthropology Chinese Academy of Social Sciences E-mail: [email protected] Abstract The Qiang language reflects a basic Aktionsart dichotomy in the classification of stative and active verbs, the form of verbs directly reflects the elements of the lexical decomposition. Generally, State or activity is the basic form of the verb, which becomes an achievement or accomplishment when it takes a directional prefix, and becomes a causative achievement or causative accomplishment when it takes the causative suffix. It shows that grammatical aspect and Aktionsart seem to play much of a systematic role. Semantically, on the one hand, there is a clear-cut boundary between states and activities, but morphologically, however, there is no distinction between them. Both of them take the same marking to encode lexical aspect (Aktionsart), and grammatical aspect does not entirely correspond with lexical aspect. 1.0. Introduction The Ronghong variety of Qiang is spoken in Yadu Township (雅都鄉), Mao County (茂縣), Aba Tibetan and Qiang Autonomous Prefecture (阿壩藏族羌族自治州), Sichuan Province (四川省), China. It has more than 3,000 speakers. The Ronghong variety of Qiang belongs to the Yadu subdialect (雅都土語) of the Northern dialect of Qiang (羌語北部方言). It is mutually intelligible with other subdialects within the Northern dialect, but mutually unintelligible with other subdialects within the Southern dialect. In this paper we use Aktionsart and lexical decomposition, as developed by Van Valin and LaPolla (1997, Ch. 3 and Ch. 4), to discuss lexical aspect, grammatical aspect and the relationship between them in Qiang. -
Tagalog Pala: an Unsurprising Case of Mirativity
Tagalog pala: an unsurprising case of mirativity Scott AnderBois Brown University Similar to many descriptions of miratives cross-linguistically, Schachter & Otanes(1972)’s clas- sic descriptive grammar of Tagalog describes the second position particle pala as “expressing mild surprise at new information, or an unexpected event or situation.” Drawing on recent work on mi- rativity in other languages, however, we show that this characterization needs to be refined in two ways. First, we show that while pala can be used in cases of surprise, pala itself merely encodes the speaker’s sudden revelation with the counterexpectational nature of surprise arising pragmatically or from other aspects of the sentence such as other particles and focus. Second, we present data from imperatives and interrogatives, arguing that this revelation need not concern ‘information’ per se, but rather the illocutionay update the sentence encodes. Finally, we explore the interactions between pala and other elements which express mirativity in some way and/or interact with the mirativity pala expresses. 1. Introduction Like many languages of the Philippines, Tagalog has a prominent set of discourse particles which express a variety of different evidential, attitudinal, illocutionary, and discourse-related meanings. Morphosyntactically, these particles have long been known to be second-position clitics, with a number of authors having explored fine-grained details of their distribution, rela- tive order, and the interaction of this with different types of sentences (e.g. Schachter & Otanes (1972), Billings & Konopasky(2003) Anderson(2005), Billings(2005) Kaufman(2010)). With a few recent exceptions, however, comparatively little has been said about the semantics/prag- matics of these different elements beyond Schachter & Otanes(1972)’s pioneering work (which is quite detailed given their broad scope of their work). -
The Moods of Verbs Reteaching
Name Date Lesson 5 The Moods of Verbs Reteaching The mood of a verb indicates the status of the action or condition it describes. Some actions and conditions are factual, while others exist only as possibilities or ideas. Indicative mood is used to make statements and ask questions about factual actions and conditions. STATEMENT Variety shows were popular in the early days of television. QUESTION Were ventriloquists more popular than acrobats? Imperative mood is used to give a command or make a request. The understood subject in a command is you. COMMAND Pick a flower from this bunch. Subjunctive mood is used primarily to express a wish or to refer to actions or conditions that are contrary to fact. The subjunctive form of a verb matches the past form of that verb. The subjunctive form of be is were. If a variety show were popular now, I might appear as a juggler. Another subjunctive form is used in formal writing to refer to a request or command. The top-rated singer insisted that we give him a better dressing room. A. Identifying the Mood of a Verb Indicate the mood of each underlined verb by labeling it with IND for indicative, IMP for imperative, or SUBJ for subjunctive. 1.Call your parents when you will be late. ____________ 2. Harry Truman became president after the death of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. ____________ 3. Take a moment to look over your term paper before you pass it in. ____________ CHAPTER 4 4. The Faculty Advisor urges that the meetings be over by 3:30. -
A Cross-Linguistic Study of Grammatical Organization
Complement Clauses and Complementation Systems: A Cross-Linguistic Study of Grammatical Organization Dissertation zur Erlangung des akademischen Grades eines Doctor philosophiae (Dr. phil.) vorgelegt dem Rat der Philosophischen Fakultät der Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena von Karsten Schmidtke-Bode, M.A. geb. am 26.06.1981 in Eisenach Gutachter: 1. Prof. Dr. Holger Diessel (Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena) 2. Prof. Dr. Volker Gast (Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena) 3. Prof. Dr. Martin Haspelmath (MPI für Evolutionäre Anthropologie Leipzig) Tag der mündlichen Prüfung: 16.12.2014 Contents Abbreviations and notational conventions iii 1 Introduction 1 2 The phenomenon of complementation 7 2.1 Introduction 7 2.2 Argument status 9 2.2.1 Complement clauses and argument-structure typology 10 2.2.2 On the notion of ‘argument’ 21 2.3 On the notion of ‘clause’ 26 2.3.1 Complementation constructions as biclausal units 27 2.3.2 The internal structure of clauses 31 2.4 The semantic content of complement clauses 34 2.5 Environments of complementation 36 2.5.1 Predicate classes as environments of complementation 37 2.5.2 Environments studied in the present work 39 3 Data and methods 48 3.1 Sampling and sources of information 48 3.2 Selection and nature of the data points 53 3.3 Storage and analysis of the data 59 4 The internal structure of complementation patterns 62 4.1 Introduction 62 4.2 The morphological status of the predicate 64 4.2.1 Nominalization 65 4.2.2 Converbs 68 4.2.3 Participles 70 4.2.4 Bare verb stems 71 4.2.5 Other dependent -
05. Verbal Vp-Modifiers in Samoan Verb Serialization
VERBAL VP-MODIFIERS IN SAMOAN VERB SERIALIZATION* Jens Hopperdietzel University of Manchester [email protected] This study provides a first investigation of the syntactic and semantic properties of resultative serial verb constructions in the Polynesian language Samoan. Based on syntactic and semantic evidence, I demonstrate that the manner V1 functions as an adjoined event modifier to the causative V2, with further implications for the typology of vP-internal modification. 1. Introduction In Samoan resultative serial verb constructions (henceforth: RSVCs), the initial verb (henceforth: V1) denotes the manner of a causing action, which leads to a change-of-state of the object in which the result state is encoded by a non-initial causative verb (henceforth: V2). The causative verb is derived by the prefix fa’a- (Collins 2017, Mosel 2004, Mosel & Hovdhaugen 1992). (1) a. Sā solo fa’a-mamā e Pita le laulau. SAMOAN PST wipe CAUS-clean ERG Peter ART table.ABS ‘Peter cleaned the table by wiping it.’ b. Sā lamu fa’a-malū e Malia le mea ai. PST chew CAUS-soft ERG Mary ART food.ABS ‘Mary softened the food by chewing it.’ This observation contrasts with RSVCs in other Polynesian languages, such as Niuean (Massam 2013) or Tongan, in which the result state is realized by a stative verb. (2) a. Ne hifi-kū e ia haaku ulu. NIUEAN PST cut-short ERG 3SG GEN.1SG hair ‘She cut my hair short.’ (Massam 2013: 66) b. Kuo vali kulokula e pasikala. TONGAN PRF paint red ABS bicycle ‘The bicycle was painted red.’ (Shumway 1971: 219) * I would like to thank not only Artemis Alexiadou, James Collins, Vera Hohaus, Fabienne Martin, Diane Massam, John Mayer, Florian Schäfer, Giorgos Spathas, Rebecca Tollan and Malte Zimmermann, as well as the audience of ALFA 27 for helpful discussions of this project, but especially Ropeti Ale, Luafata Simanu-Klutz, and Fa’afetai Lēsa, as well as Grant Muāgutui’a, for their patience and for sharing their beautiful language with me.