DOCSLIB.ORG

The Increasing Importance of Animacy in the Agreement Systems of Ndengeleko and Other Southern Coastal Bantu Languages

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
The Increasing Importance of Animacy in the Agreement Systems of Ndengeleko and Other Southern Coastal Bantu Languages Language Documentation and Description ISSN 1740-6234 ___________________________________________ This article appears in: Language Documentation and Description, vol 10: Special Issue on Humanities of the lesser-known: New directions in the description, documentation and typology of endangered languages and musics. Editors: Niclas Burenhult, Arthur Holmer, Anastasia Karlsson, Håkan Lundström & Jan-Olof Svantesson The increasing importance of animacy in the agreement systems of Ndengeleko and other Southern Coastal Bantu languages EVA-MARIE STRÖM Cite this article: Eva-Marie Ström (2012). The increasing importance of animacy in the agreement systems of Ndengeleko and other Southern Coastal Bantu languages. In Niclas Burenhult, Arthur Holmer, Anastasia Karlsson, Håkan Lundström & Jan-Olof Svantesson (eds) Language Documentation and Description, vol 10: Special Issue on Humanities of the lesser-known: New directions in the description, documentation and typology of endangered languages and musics. London: SOAS. pp. 265-287 Link to this article: http://www.elpublishing.org/PID/122 This electronic version first published: July 2014 __________________________________________________ This article is published under a Creative Commons License CC-BY-NC (Attribution-NonCommercial). The licence permits users to use, reproduce, disseminate or display the article provided that the author is attributed as the original creator and that the reuse is restricted to non-commercial purposes i.e. research or educational use. See http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ ______________________________________________________ EL Publishing For more EL Publishing articles and services: Website: http://www.elpublishing.org Terms of use: http://www.elpublishing.org/terms Submissions: http://www.elpublishing.org/submissions The increasing importance of animacy in the agreement systems of Ndengeleko and other Southern Coastal Bantu languages Eva-Marie Ström 1. Introduction The aim of this paper1 is to describe and analyze ongoing grammatical changes in the noun class system of the Bantu language Ndengeleko. Semantic considerations, specifically related to animacy, are of increasing importance in the choice of agreement. Also, there is flexibility in the choice of singular/plural pairings. Based on findings regarding animacy and this flexibility, it is claimed that noun class 6 in Ndengeleko is of derivational character. Moreover, a comparison regarding animacy distinctions is made with other southern coastal languages of Tanzania and Mozambique. Ndengeleko is a noun class language. In most Bantu languages, the noun class manifests itself by the use of a noun class prefix, and by the use of 2 CLASS CONCORD (CC). Each noun class triggers a set of concord markers on 3 agreement targets. (1) di-bwa di-swanu di-ku-dia 5-dog 5-good 5-PRES-eat.FV ‘The good dog eats.’ (Petzell 2008: 48) 1 I am grateful for comments from the audience of the 41st Annual Conference of African Languages (ACAL) in Toronto 2010, and from the audience of Humanities of the Lesser-Known in Lund 2010. I also thank Jouni Maho and an anonymous reviewer for helpful comments on this paper. All mistakes remain my own. 2 I use the terminology AC (animate concord) and CC (class concord) following Wald (1975). 3 The abbreviations used in this paper are cl.1-18 = noun class number, CD = concord marker, FV = final vowel, LOC = locative, NCP = noun class prefix, OM = object marker, OPT = optative, P = plural, PERF = perfect, POSS = possessive, PRES = present, PROG = progressive, S = singular, SM = subject marker, SUBJ = subjunctive. Eva-Marie Ström 2011. The increasing importance of animacy in the agreement systems of Ndengeleko and other Southern Coastal Bantu languages. In Jan-Olof Svantesson, Niclas Burenhult, Arthur Holmer, Anastasia Karlsson and Håkan Lundström (eds.) Language Documentation and Description, Vol 10, 265-287. London: SOAS. 266 Eva-Marie Ström In the above example from Kagulu, the head noun dibwa ‘dog’ is a noun of class 5. Therefore, agreement on the adjective and verb is of class 5, as expected. ANIMATE CONCORD (AC), on the other hand, refers to the use of concords of noun classes 1 (singular) and 2 (plural) for nouns with animate referents, even when these nouns inherently belong to another noun class. That is to say, the semantics of the noun plays a more important role than the class to which the noun belongs when the head noun refers to a human being or an animal, as in the following Ndengeleko example (2). The head noun, from class 7 with a prefix ki-, refers to an animal. Therefore, the subject agreement marker on the verb is from class 1. (2) ki-pʊmbʊgʊ a-yingii mu-liɪmbwa 7-large croc 1SM-enter.PERF 18LOC-5.hole ‘The large crocodile entered into the hole.’ AC occurs in several Bantu languages, mainly along the east coast of central Africa (Wald 1975: 296). The languages closest to the coast exhibit the highest percentage of AC, while in areas further inland the percentage is much lower or non-existent. Apart from being of areal character, AC manifests itself in different ways in the languages concerned. Very few languages make use of it throughout, for example, AC for all animate nouns in all contexts requiring concord. In Matuumbi, for example, animate nouns in class 9 (which can have singular or plural reference) use the concord of class 1 in the singular, but the concord of class 9 when plural (Odden 1996: 31). Swahili, the most well- known language which exhibits AC, uses concords of classes 1 and 2 with all animate nouns, unless these are human relationship terms in attributive possessive constructions (Contini-Morava 2008). For each Bantu language which uses AC, there appears to be a specific set of rules for its application. Wald (1975) made a significant contribution in describing this phenomenon for the so-called North East Coastal Bantu languages (NECB). For the languages spoken in the coastal area to the south of Dar es Salaam, we know little about the specific rules of CC/AC concord. Maho (1999: 124) labels the phenomenon GAC (GENERAL ANIMATE CONCORD), and includes Matuumbi to the south in his study (as well as languages in completely different geographical areas such as Angola). He also notes (1999: 123), that the attested distribution is most probably an underestimation, as many grammars make no mention of the use of animate concord, possibly because it has been considered too colloquial or ‘irregular’ for mention. Ndengeleko is under heavy pressure from Swahili, and from the general multilingual setting of coastal Tanzania. Intergenerational transmission is very low, making the future of the language look bleak indeed (Ström 2009). It is The increasing importance of animacy in the agreement systems of Ndengeleko 267 therefore an urgent matter to describe the different aspects of Ndengeleko grammar, before competence in the language diminishes further. This paper contributes a description of the different nouns with human and animal referents in the language, the noun classes to which they belong and their behaviour in terms of agreement. It analyzes the differences in application of CC/AC for animate nouns, and claims that the reason for this variation is found in the area of derivation. Moreover, it gives a short comparison with certain other south-eastern Tanzanian languages, not included in previous studies of the CC/AC distinction. These languages all exhibit different behaviours in terms of CC/AC. What they have in common is a strong tendency to give more weight to the animate/inanimate distinction. This is in conflict with another tendency: to avoid breaking up the system of CC. To avoid this is more important with derived nouns, where the semantics of the class needs to be emphasized and where there is a clear noun class prefix. It is less important with nouns of class 9, which have either no prefix or an integrated nasal prefix. The languages solve this ‘conflict’ in different ways. The Ndengeleko data presented here are based on fieldwork by the author in the Rufiji area of Tanzania. The data collection has been carried out during five fieldtrips in the period 2005–2011. Elicitation is the main source of data, but examples also come from different kinds of (spoken) text. The database in Toolbox includes tales, descriptions of how to carry out certain tasks, and a few dialogues. All data are also recorded. Nine speakers have been consulted, four women and five men of different ages. The daily use of Ndengeleko is limited, especially among younger speakers, and all are fluent in Swahili. 2. The Ndengeleko noun class system Ndengeleko, like other Bantu languages, is a language in which gender distinctions play a prominent role. The nominal lexicon of Ndengeleko is divided into 16 categories, some of which have singular reference, others plural. Certain of these noun classes consist of, or include, mass nouns without a singular/plural counterpart. Nouns referring to animates, including humans, are found in most noun classes in Bantu languages in general. Humans are hereby concentrated in classes 1/2 and animals in 9/10 (Wald 1975: 272). This is also the case in Ndengeleko. In Table 1, an overview is given of the noun classes. Indication is made of which classes contain nouns with human (‘Hum’) and/or animal (‘Ani’) referents in the data. 268 Eva-Marie Ström Table 1: The Ndengeleko noun classes Noun Prefix Semantic domain Hum Ani Example Gloss class 1 mu- Human beings in x mu-lwawa ‘woman’ the singular. [nnwawa] 2 ba-/a- Human beings in x a-lwawa ‘women’ the plural. 3 mu- Miscellaneous x mu-kongo ‘tree’ nouns in singular. [ŋkongo] Also mass nouns. mu-kʊmbʊlʊ ‘baboon’ [ŋkʊmbʊlʊ] 4 mi- Nouns of class 3 x mi-kongo ‘trees’ in the plural. mi-k mb l ‘baboons’ ʊ ʊ ʊ Plural of derived x x mi-senzema ‘big mosquitoes’ class 5 nouns. 5 li- Miscellaneous li-pinga ‘egg’ nouns in singular.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Syntactic Variation in English Quantified Noun Phrases with All, Whole, Both and Half
    Syntactic variation in English quantified noun phrases with all, whole, both and half Acta Wexionensia Nr 38/2004 Humaniora Syntactic variation in English quantified noun phrases with all, whole, both and half Maria Estling Vannestål Växjö University Press Abstract Estling Vannestål, Maria, 2004. Syntactic variation in English quantified noun phrases with all, whole, both and half, Acta Wexionensia nr 38/2004. ISSN: 1404-4307, ISBN: 91-7636-406-2. Written in English. The overall aim of the present study is to investigate syntactic variation in certain Present-day English noun phrase types including the quantifiers all, whole, both and half (e.g. a half hour vs. half an hour). More specific research questions concerns the overall frequency distribution of the variants, how they are distrib- uted across regions and media and what linguistic factors influence the choice of variant. The study is based on corpus material comprising three newspapers from 1995 (The Independent, The New York Times and The Sydney Morning Herald) and two spoken corpora (the dialogue component of the BNC and the Longman Spoken American Corpus). The book presents a number of previously not discussed issues with respect to all, whole, both and half. The study of distribution shows that one form often predominated greatly over the other(s) and that there were several cases of re- gional variation. A number of linguistic factors further seem to be involved for each of the variables analysed, such as the syntactic function of the noun phrase and the presence of certain elements in the NP or its near co-text.
    [Show full text]
  • Number and Adjectives : the Case of Activity and Quality Nominals Delphine Beauseroy, Marie-Laurence Knittel
    Number and adjectives : the case of activity and quality nominals Delphine Beauseroy, Marie-Laurence Knittel To cite this version: Delphine Beauseroy, Marie-Laurence Knittel. Number and adjectives : the case of activity and quality nominals. 2012. hal-00418040v2 HAL Id: hal-00418040 https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00418040v2 Preprint submitted on 11 Jun 2012 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. 1 NUMBER AND ADJECTIVES: THE CASE OF FRENCH ACTIVITY AND QUALITY NOMINALS 1. INTRODUCTION This article is dedicated to the examination of the role of Number with regards to adjective distribution in French. We focus on two kinds of abstract nouns: activity nominals and quality nominals. Both display particular behaviours with regards to adjective distribution: activity nominals need to appear as count nouns to be modified by qualifying adjectives; concerning quality nominals, they are frequently introduced by the indefinite un(e) instead of the partitive article (du / de la) when modified. Our analysis of adjectives is based on the idea that they can have two uses, which correlate with syntactic and semantic restrictions and are distinguishable on semantic grounds. Adjectives are understood either as taxonomic, i.e.
    [Show full text]
  • Cross-Linguistic Evidence for Semantic Countability1
    Eun-Joo Kwak 55 Journal of Universal Language 15-2 September 2014, 55-76 Cross-Linguistic Evidence for Semantic Countability1 2 Eun-Joo Kwak Sejong University, Korea Abstract Countability and plurality (or singularity) are basically marked in syntax or morphology, and languages adopt different strategies in the mass-count distinction and number marking: plural marking, unmarked number marking, singularization, and different uses of classifiers. Diverse patterns of grammatical strategies are observed with cross-linguistic data in this study. Based on this, it is concluded that although countability is not solely determined by the semantic properties of nouns, it is much more affected by semantics than it appears. Moreover, semantic features of nouns are useful to account for apparent idiosyncratic behaviors of nouns and sentences. Keywords: countability, plurality, countability shift, individuation, animacy, classifier * This work is supported by the Sejong University Research Grant of 2013. Eun-Joo Kwak Department of English Language and Literature, Sejong University, Seoul, Korea Phone: +82-2-3408-3633; Email: [email protected] Received August 14, 2014; Revised September 3, 2014; Accepted September 10, 2014. 56 Cross-Linguistic Evidence for Semantic Countability 1. Introduction The state of affairs in the real world may be delivered in a different way depending on the grammatical properties of languages. Nominal countability makes part of grammatical differences cross-linguistically, marked in various ways: plural (or singular) morphemes for nouns or verbs, distinct uses of determiners, and the occurrences of classifiers. Apparently, countability and plurality are mainly marked in syntax and morphology, so they may be understood as having less connection to the semantic features of nouns.
    [Show full text]
  • A Case Study in Language Change
    Western Michigan University ScholarWorks at WMU Honors Theses Lee Honors College 4-17-2013 Glottopoeia: A Case Study in Language Change Ian Hollenbaugh Western Michigan University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/honors_theses Part of the Other English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Hollenbaugh, Ian, "Glottopoeia: A Case Study in Language Change" (2013). Honors Theses. 2243. https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/honors_theses/2243 This Honors Thesis-Open Access is brought to you for free and open access by the Lee Honors College at ScholarWorks at WMU. It has been accepted for inclusion in Honors Theses by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks at WMU. For more information, please contact [email protected]. An Elementary Ghau Aethauic Grammar By Ian Hollenbaugh 1 i. Foreword This is an essential grammar for any serious student of Ghau Aethau. Mr. Hollenbaugh has done an excellent job in cataloguing and explaining the many grammatical features of one of the most complex language systems ever spoken. Now published for the first time with an introduction by my former colleague and premier Ghau Aethauic scholar, Philip Logos, who has worked closely with young Hollenbaugh as both mentor and editor, this is sure to be the definitive grammar for students and teachers alike in the field of New Classics for many years to come. John Townsend, Ph.D Professor Emeritus University of Nunavut 2 ii. Author’s Preface This grammar, though as yet incomplete, serves as my confession to what J.R.R. Tolkien once called “a secret vice.” History has proven Professor Tolkien right in thinking that this is not a bizarre or freak occurrence, undergone by only the very whimsical, but rather a common “hobby,” one which many partake in, and have partaken in since at least the time of Hildegard of Bingen in the twelfth century C.E.
    [Show full text]
  • Unmarked Plurals
    Unmarked Plurals Yasu Sudo Lecture 1 UCL Masaryk University [email protected] 12 December, 2017 1 Number Morphology Many languages morphologically mark number in the nominal domain (nouns and pronouns):1 1.1 English English marks singular vs. plural. (1) singular plural a. room rooms b. man men c. child children d. him them ‘Singular’ actually might be a misnomer, given that some singular-looking nouns are mass nouns (we’ll come back to this). The default plural marking in English is suffixation to the singular, ‘Nsg+s’. Other crosslinguistically common ways include (cf. Corbett 2000:§5.3): • Apophony (word-internal sound change): e.g. goose vs. geese, mouse vs. mice in English • Inflectional class: common in Slavic languages, e.g. ‘room’ in Russian (2) singular plural Nom komnat-a komnat-y Acc komnat-u komnat-y Gen komnat-y komnat Dat komnat-e komnat-am Inst komnat-oj komnat-ami Loc komnat-e komnat-ax (Russian) This is different from e.g. Turkic languages where the plural morpheme can be singled out. E.g. olma ‘apple’ in Uzbek: (3) singular plural Nom olma olma-lar Acc olma-ni olma-lar-ni Gen olma-niŋ olma-lar-niŋ Dat olma-ga olma-lar-ga Abl olma-dan olma-lar-dan Loc olma-da olma-lar-da (Uzbek; Corbett 2000:p. 145) • Suppletive stems: e.g. hou[s] vs. hou[z]es in English, člověk vs. lidé ‘person’ in Czech 1Corbett (2000:§2.4) mentions Pirahã (Mura; Brazil) and Kawi (Old Javanese) as languages that might lack number marking altogether.
    [Show full text]
  • A Reference Grammar of Wanano
    A REFERENCE GRAMMAR OF WANANO by KRISTINE SUE STENZEL B.A., Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, 1983 M.A., University of Colorado, 2002 A thesis submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Colorado in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of http://www.etnolinguistica.org/tese:stenzel_2004 Doctor of Philosophy está disponível para download no seguinte endereço: Department of Linguistics Este arquivo, fornecido pela autora em agosto de 2012, 2004 Examining committee: Dr. Jule Gomez de Garcia Dr. Barbara Fox Dr. David Rood Dr. Melissa Axelrod Dr. Darna Dufour ABSTRACT Stenzel, Kristine Sue (Ph.D., Linguistics) A Reference Grammar of Wanano Thesis directed by Dr. Jule Gomez de Garcia and Dr. Barbara Fox This dissertation is a descriptive reference grammar of Wanano, an Eastern Tukano language spoken by approximately 1600 people living on the Vaupés River in northwestern Amazonia (Brazil and Colombia). Typologically, Wanano is a polysynthetic, agglutinating, nominative/accusative language whose prominent characteristics include suprasegmental nasalization and tone, an elaborate system of noun classification, and highly complex verbal morphology involving root serialization and obligatory coding of clause modality. The grammar is organized into seven chapters. Chapter 1 provides important socio- linguistic background information on the Wanano people: their location, demographics, and social organization, which is grounded in a marriage system based on linguistic exogamy. It also outlines current language maintenance efforts, which include the development of an orthography and materials for a Wanano bilingual education program. Chapter 2 discusses phonology, giving the phonemic inventory and presenting the basic features of suprasegmental nasalization and tonal phenomena.
    [Show full text]
  • DOMAINS of QUANTIFICATION and SEMANTIC TYPOI.DGY* Barbara
    DOMAINS OF QUANTIFICATION AND SEMANTIC TYPOI.DGY* Barbara H. Partee University of Massachusetts/Amherst 1. Background and central issucsl The questions I am ~oncerned with here arise from the interaction of two broad areas of current research in syntax and semantics. One area, a very old one, concerns the systematic semantic import of syntactic categories, a question requiring a· combination of theoretical work and cross-linguistic study. The other area, only recently under active investigation, concerns the structure and interpretation of expressions of quantification, including not only quantification expressed by NP's with determiners like "every" and "no" but also what Lewis 1975 called "adverbs of quantification" ("always", "in most cases", "usually", etc.), "floated" quantifiers, and quantifiers expressed by verbal affixes and auxiliaries. At the intersection of these two areas are pressing questions which seem ripe for intensive investigation. Some key questions noted by Partee, Bach, and Kratzer 1987 are the following: (1) Is the use of NP's as one means of expressing quantification universal, as proposed by Barwlse and Cooper 1981? Does every language employ some other klnd(s) of quantification? Is there some kind of quantification that every language employs? Our current hypothesis ls that the answer to the first of these questions is llQ., to the second ~; the third ls still entirely open. One goal of current research ls the formulation of a finer-grained, possibly lmplicatlonal hypothesis in place of Barwlse and Cooper's categorical universal. (2) What are the similarities and differences, within and across language.s, in the structure and interpretation of quantification expressed with NP's and quantification expressed with "floated" quantifiers, sentence adverbs, verbal affixes, auxiliaries, or other non-NP means? 1.1 ~ semantics 2.f syntactic categories: background 1.1.1 Traditional linguistics YIL.
    [Show full text]
  • The Logic of Mass Expressions David Nicolas Published in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy [Final Version, February 2013]
    The Logic of Mass Expressions David Nicolas Published in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy [Final version, February 2013] In many languages, like English, nominal expressions headed by common nouns can be divided into two subtypes, mass expressions (like wine, silverware, wisdom) and count expressions (like cat, army, idea). We first characterize what mass expressions are. Then we discuss various proposals concerning their semantics. 1. What are mass expressions? How can we identify a class of mass expressions as distinct from a class of count expressions? In order to do so, one may try to employ syntactic criteria or semantic criteria. We present them in turn. As we shall see, only the syntactic criteria are satisfactory. 1.1 Syntactic criteria At the syntactic level, there are two viable positions concerning the mass / count distinction: it applies at the level of nouns; or it only applies at the level of noun phrases. The first position is the traditional, dominant view (Weinreich 1966, Krifka 1991, Gillon 1992, etc). According to it, in a language like English (or French, German, Greek, Italian, etc), common nouns are divided into two morphosyntactic subclasses, mass nouns and count nouns. A defining characteristic of mass nouns, like milk, gold, furniture, wisdom and love, is that they are invariable in grammatical number, while count nouns, like rabbit, bottle, table, idea and set, can be used in the singular and in the plural. Depending on the language, this basic morphosyntactic difference between the two types of noun is supplemented by differences as to the determiners they can combine with. Thus, in English, mass nouns can be used with determiners like much and a lot of, but neither with one nor many.
    [Show full text]
  • Cross-Linguistic Representations of Numerals and Number Marking∗
    Proceedings of SALT 20: 582–598, 2011 Cross-linguistic representations of numerals and number marking∗ Alan Bale Michaël Gagnon Concordia University University of Maryland Hrayr Khanjian Massachusetts Institute of Technology Abstract Inspired by Partee(2010), this paper defends a broad thesis that all mod- ifiers, including numeral modifiers, are restrictive in the sense that they can only restrict the denotation of the NP or VP they modify. However, the paper concentrates more narrowly on numeral modification, demonstrating that the evidence that moti- vated Ionin & Matushansky(2006) to assign non-restrictive, privative interpretations to numerals – assigning them functions that map singular sets to sets containing groups – is in fact consistent with restrictive modification. Ionin & Matushansky’s (2006) argument for this type of interpretation is partly based on the distribution of Turkish numerals which exclusively combine with singular bare nouns. Section 2 demonstrates that Turkish singular bare nouns are not semantically singular, but rather are unspecified for number. Western Armenian has similar characteristics. Building on some of the observations in section2, section3 demonstrates that re- strictive modification can account for three different types of languages with respect to the distribution of numerals and plural nouns: (i) languages where numerals exclusively combine with plural nouns (e.g., English), (ii) languages where they exclusively combine with singular bare nouns (e.g., Turkish), (iii) languages where they optionally combine with either type of noun (e.g., Western Armenian). Ac- counting for these differences crucially involves making a distinction between two kinds of restrictive modification among the numerals: subsective vs. intersective modification. Section3 also discusses why privative interpretations of numerals have trouble accounting for these different language types.
    [Show full text]
  • Countability Distinctions and Semantic Variation
    Noname manuscript No. (will be inserted by the editor) Countability Distinctions and Semantic Variation Amy Rose Deal Abstract To what extent are countability distinctions subject to systematic semantic variation? Could there be a language with no countability distinctions–in particular, one where all nounsare count? I arguethat the answer is no: even in a languagewhere all NPs have the core morphosyntactic properties of English count NPs, such as com- bining with numerals directly and showing singular/plural distinctions, countability distinctions still emerge on close inspection. I divide these distinctions into those related to sums (cumulativity) and those related to parts (divisiveness, atomicity and related notions). In the Sahaptian language Nez Perce, evidence can be foundfor both types of distinction, in spite of the absence of anything like a traditional mass-count distinction in noun morphosyntax. I propose an extension of the Nez Perce analysis to Yudja (Tupi), analyzed by Lima (2014) as lacking any countability distinctions. More generally, I suggest that at least one countability distinction may be universal and that languages without any countability distinctions may be unlearnable. 1 Introduction Cat is a count noun; blood is not. What is this difference? Much recent work has argued that nouns like these are actually different along two dimensions related to countability, not just one. The central argument comes from the behavior of nouns like footwear and jewelry, which behave like cat in certain respects and like blood in others. In terms of pluralization, for instance, footwear behaves like blood, (1); in I would like to express my thanks to Gennaro Chierchia, Kate Davidson, Angelika Kratzer, Manfred Krifka, Sarah Murray, Greg Scontras, audiences at Berkeley, UCSC, Sinn und Bedeutung 20 in Tübin- gen, SULA 8 in Vancouver, the workshop ‘Toward a theory of syntactic variation’ in Bilbao, and the workshop on Semantic Variation in Chicago, for helpful comments and questions.
    [Show full text]
  • Investigating the Concept of Individuation and Judgment of Quantity: Evidence from Count-Mass Distinction*
    Available online at www.jlls.org JOURNAL OF LANGUAGE AND LINGUISTIC STUDIES ISSN: 1305-578X Journal of Language and Linguistic Studies, 14(2), 34-47; 2018 Investigating the concept of individuation and judgment of quantity: Evidence from count-mass distinction* Nurdan Kavaklı a * a Izmir Democracy University, The Department of English Language Teaching, 35140, Izmir, Turkey APA Citation: Kavaklı, N. (2018). Investigating the concept of individuation and judgment of quantity: Evidence from count-mass distinction. Journal of Language and Linguistic Studies, 14(2), 34-47. Submission Date:10/05/2018 Acceptance Date:22/06/2018 Abstract The present study aims to explore English as a Foreign Language (hereafter EFL) instructors‟ recognition of count-mass distinction regarding the concept of individuation and judgment of quantity. Accordingly, fifteen EFL instructors recruited from different public universities in Turkey were asked to write the plural forms of a sum of fifty count and mass nouns given in a list. Participants, then, were asked to rate the elements of aggregates (either count or mass) in order to identify their semantic mappings. Following these, the participants were also given a self-rating form to check post-experiment familiarity of those fifty nouns in a random order, and they rated how familiar they were with the items given on a basis of very familiar‟, „somewhat familiar‟ and „not familiar‟. Descriptive statistics were applied as a part of quantitative data analysis. Demographic information was given on gender and year(s) of teaching experience. As a result, it was reported that EFL instructors conceptualized count nouns as distinct individuals whereas mass nouns were regarded as non- individuals.
    [Show full text]
  • Plurality in Magahi and Reference to Count/Mass Noun
    Plurality in Magahi Language and Reference to count/mass Noun Chandan Kumar PhD Research Scholar, JNU, New Delhi Abstract The concept of the reference of number system in the language is particularized due to the different linguistic ecology. The perception particularly in the domain of additive plural, however, is not very arbitrary. A limited number of possibilities have been identified cross- linguistically; most of the languages follow two-way distinction i.e. singular versus plural. Some languages, particularly, classifier morphologically have inbuilt three-way number distinction. Magahi, a new Indo-Aryan language, uses morpho-phonetic way to mark plurality, and is purely a nominal phenomenon1. Magahi has two forms of noun, and marked noun carries ‘identifiability’ or ‘uniqueness’ property (Lyons 1999). For the present pupose, we entitle this marker as ‘discourse marker/definite determiner’2. The paper following Corbett (2000) discusses how Magahi makes three-way number distinction. The three-way number distinction is based on the fact that the marked noun in Magahi, strictly, is singular (following Jespersen 1924; Corbett 2000, etc.). Obligatoriness/optionality of the system is discussed following Drayer (2013). The plural mechanism shows a restricted regular pattern on the animacy hierarchy3. Despite having the obligatory numeral classifier system; it has regular plural system which seems to be problematic for the observation made in Aikhenvald (2000) that classifier languages don’t have regular plural system. With only few exceptions like abstract noun, mass noun, etc. the system of plurality is regular in the language. Magahi also distinguishes between the bare plural [N+PL] and marked plural [[N+DEF] +PL]]; marked plural deriving the semantics from marked singular has semantics of familiarity, identifiability, presupposition, etc.
    [Show full text]