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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. -
Basic Linguistic Theory, 2
Basic Linguistic Theory 2 Basic Linguistic Theory R. M. W. Dixon The three volumes of Basic Linguistic Theory provide a new and fundamental characterization of the nature of human languages and a comprehensive guide to their description and analysis. The first volume addresses the methodology for recording, analysing, and comparing languages. Volume 3 (which will be published in 2011) examine and explain every underlying principle of gram- matical organization and consider how and why grammars vary. Volume 1 Methodology Volume 2 Grammatical Topics Volume 3 Further Grammatical Topics (in preparation) AcompletelistofR.M.W.Dixon’sbooksmaybefoundonpp.488–9 Basic Linguistic Theory Volume 2 Grammatical Topics R. M. W. DIXON The Cairns Institute James Cook University 1 3 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6dp Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York ©R.M.W.Dixon2010 Themoralrightsoftheauthorhavebeenasserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 2010 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. -
Corpus Study of Tense, Aspect, and Modality in Diglossic Speech in Cairene Arabic
CORPUS STUDY OF TENSE, ASPECT, AND MODALITY IN DIGLOSSIC SPEECH IN CAIRENE ARABIC BY OLA AHMED MOSHREF DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics in the Graduate College of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2012 Urbana, Illinois Doctoral Committee: Professor Elabbas Benmamoun, Chair Professor Eyamba Bokamba Professor Rakesh M. Bhatt Assistant Professor Marina Terkourafi ABSTRACT Morpho-syntactic features of Modern Standard Arabic mix intricately with those of Egyptian Colloquial Arabic in ordinary speech. I study the lexical, phonological and syntactic features of verb phrase morphemes and constituents in different tenses, aspects, moods. A corpus of over 3000 phrases was collected from religious, political/economic and sports interviews on four Egyptian satellite TV channels. The computational analysis of the data shows that systematic and content morphemes from both varieties of Arabic combine in principled ways. Syntactic considerations play a critical role with regard to the frequency and direction of code-switching between the negative marker, subject, or complement on one hand and the verb on the other. Morph-syntactic constraints regulate different types of discourse but more formal topics may exhibit more mixing between Colloquial aspect or future markers and Standard verbs. ii To the One Arab Dream that will come true inshaa’ Allah! عربية أنا.. أميت دمها خري الدماء.. كما يقول أيب الشاعر العراقي: بدر شاكر السياب Arab I am.. My nation’s blood is the finest.. As my father says Iraqi Poet: Badr Shaker Elsayyab iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I’m sincerely thankful to my advisor Prof. Elabbas Benmamoun, who during the six years of my study at UIUC was always kind, caring and supportive on the personal and academic levels. -
Serial Verb Constructions: Argument Structural Uniformity and Event Structural Diversity
SERIAL VERB CONSTRUCTIONS: ARGUMENT STRUCTURAL UNIFORMITY AND EVENT STRUCTURAL DIVERSITY A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE DEPARTMENT OF LINGUISTICS AND THE COMMITTEE ON GRADUATE STUDIES OF STANFORD UNIVERSITY IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Melanie Owens November 2011 © 2011 by Melanie Rachel Owens. All Rights Reserved. Re-distributed by Stanford University under license with the author. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution- Noncommercial 3.0 United States License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/us/ This dissertation is online at: http://purl.stanford.edu/db406jt2949 ii I certify that I have read this dissertation and that, in my opinion, it is fully adequate in scope and quality as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Beth Levin, Primary Adviser I certify that I have read this dissertation and that, in my opinion, it is fully adequate in scope and quality as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Joan Bresnan I certify that I have read this dissertation and that, in my opinion, it is fully adequate in scope and quality as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Vera Gribanov Approved for the Stanford University Committee on Graduate Studies. Patricia J. Gumport, Vice Provost Graduate Education This signature page was generated electronically upon submission of this dissertation in electronic format. An original signed hard copy of the signature page is on file in University Archives. iii Abstract Serial Verb Constructions (SVCs) are constructions which contain two or more verbs yet behave in every grammatical respect as if they contain only one. -
Syntactic Change and the Rise of Transitivity
Bucknell University Bucknell Digital Commons Faculty Journal Articles Faculty Scholarship 2017 Syntactic Change and the Rise of Transitivity James Lavine Bucknell University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.bucknell.edu/fac_journ Part of the Linguistics Commons Recommended Citation Lavine, James. "Syntactic Change and the Rise of Transitivity." Studies in Polish Linguistics (2017) : 173-198. This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Faculty Scholarship at Bucknell Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty Journal Articles by an authorized administrator of Bucknell Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Studies in Polish Linguistics vol. 12,11, 2017,2016, issue 3, pp. 173–198 doi:10.4467/23005920SPL.17.009.720110.4467/23005920SPL.17.006.7199 www.ejournals.eu/SPL James E. Lavine Bucknell University Syntactic Change and the Rise of Transitivity: The Case of the Polish and Ukrainian -no/-to Construction1 Abstract This paper analyzes the historical divergence of predicates marked with old passive neuter -no/-to in Polish and Ukrainian. It is argued that the locus of change leading to the rise of the transitivity property involved a rearrangement of morphologically-eroded voice mor- phology. Despite the surface similarity of the Polish and Ukrainian constructions, their di- vergent distribution in the modern languages indicates that grammaticalization of the old passive morpheme proceeded along different pathways, implicating the internal structure of vP, and creating new accusative case-assigning possibilities. Keywords syntactic change, voice, passive, -no/-to construction, v-heads, accusative, natural force causers, Polish, Ukrainian Streszczenie Artykuł przedstawia analizę różnic w rozwoju form predykatów z wykładnikami strony biernej w rodzaju nijakim -no/-to w języku polskim i ukraińskim. -
Problems in Defining a Prototypical Transitive Sentence Typologically
PROBLEMS IN DEFINING A PROTOTYPICAL TRANSITIVE SENTENCE TYPOLOGICALLY Seppo Kittilei Department of General Linguistics Horttokuja 2 20014 University of Turku FINLAND Email: [email protected] ABSTRACT This paper is trying to show that the concept of the prototypical transitive sentence is very useful in the study of transitivity, but is as such not so unproblematic as has often been assumed. This is achieved by presenting examples from different languages that show the weaknesses of the "traditional" prototype. The prototype proposed here remains, however, a tentative one, because there are so many properties that cannot be described typologically because of their language-specific nature. 1. INTRODUCTION Transitivity has been defined in many different ways during the history of linguistics. Traditionally transitivity was understood to be a semantic phenomenon: Transitive sentences were sentences which describe events that involve a transfer of energy from subject to object (e.g. 'he killed the man'). Structurally these are mostly sentences with a grammatical subject and a direct (accusative) object (at least in the languages that were the targets of description). In the golden era of formal grammars transitivity became a purely formal concept: Verbs (or more rarely sentences) with a direct object were classified as transitive and those without one as intransitive without taking their semantics into account (see e.g. Jacobsen 1985:89 [4]). Formal definitions very rarely allow any intermediate forms, i.e. every transitive sentence is equally prototypical (because there are no adequate criteria by means of which the prototypicality could be measured). Therefore, the concept of a prototypical transitive sentence is irrelevant in the formal descriptions. -
Transitivity and Transitivity Alternations in Rawang and Qiang Randy J
Workshop on Tibeto-Burman Languages of Sichuan November 21-24, 2008 Institute of Linguistics, Academia Sinica Transitivity and transitivity alternations in Rawang and Qiang Randy J. LaPolla La Trobe University [email protected] 1. Introduction This paper is more about presenting phenomena and questions related to the concept of transitivity in Tibeto-Burman languages that I hope will stimulate discussion, rather than presenting strong conclusions. Sections 2 and 3 present alternative analyses of transitivity and questions about transitivity in two Tibeto-Burman languages I have worked on. In Section 4 I discuss some general issues about transitivity. 2. Rawang 2.1 Introduction • Rawang (Rvwang [r'w]): Tibeto-Burman language spoken in far north of Kachin State, Myanmar. Data from the Mvtwang (Mvt River) dialect.1 (Morse 1962, 1963, 1965; LaPolla 2000, 2006, to appear a, to appear b; LaPolla & Poa 2001; LaPolla & Yang 2007). • Verb-final, agglutinative, both head marking and dependent marking. • Verbs can take hierarchical person marking, aspect marking, directional marking (which also marks aspect in some cases), and tense marking. • All verbs clearly distinguished (even in citation) by their morphology in terms of what has been analysed as transitivity, and there are a number of different affixes for increasing or decreasing valency (see LaPolla 2000 on valency-changing derivations). Citation form is third person non- past affirmative/declarative: • Intransitives: non-past affirmative/declarative particle () alone in the non past (e.g. ngø 'to cry') and the intransitive past tense marker (-ı) in past forms (with third person argument); they can be used transitively only when they take valency-increasing morphological marking (causative, benefactive). -
Loan Verb Integration in Michif
journal of language contact 12 (2019) 27-51 brill.com/jlc Loan Verb Integration in Michif Anton Antonov inalco-crlao, paris [email protected] Abstract This paper looks at the different ways French (and English) loan verbs are being inte- grated in Michif, a mixed language (the noun system is French, the verbal one is Cree) based upon two dictionaries of the language. The detailed study of the available data has shown that loan verbs are almost exclusively assigned to the vai class, i.e. a class of verbs whose single core argument is animate. This seems natural enough given that the overwhelming majority of them do have an animate core participant in the donor language as well. Still, quite a few of them can be transitive. This is accounted for by claiming that vai is the most ‘neutral’ inflectional class of Cree as far as morphology and argument structure are concerned as verbs in this class can be syntactically both intransitive and transitive. Finally, all of the loan verbs examined have Cree equivalents and so the claim that they were borrowed because of the lack of a corresponding Cree verb in the language is difficult to accept at face value. Keywords loan verbs – valency – transitivity – animacy – direct/inverse – hierarchical agreement – Algonquian – Cree – Michif 1 Introduction This paper deals with French and English loan verbs in Michif, and in particu- lar the ways in which they have been integrated into the almost exclusively Cree (i.e. Algonquian) verbal system of that language. It is especially con- cerned with the ways in which the argument structure of the original verb has been mapped onto the existing valency patterns. -
Transitivity and Its Reflections on Some Areas of Grammar Eğitim Fakültesi Dergisi
A. Can / Eğitim Fakültesi Dergisi XXI (1), 2008, 43-68 Eğitim Fakültesi Dergisi http://kutuphane. uludag. edu. tr/Univder/uufader. htm Transitivity and its Reflections on Some Areas of Grammar Abdullah Can Uludağ Üniversitesi Eğitim Fakültesi [email protected] Abstract. Traditionally verbs can be classified into transitive and intransitive verbs according to complementation and consistent with this classification, verbs that do not require an obligatory object complement while forming clauses are labeled as intransitive verbs. In early 1980s, as a further classification, intransitive verbs were divided into separate sub- classes on the basis of their semantic and syntactic aspects. This study briefly explores the distinctive characteristics of two sub-classes of intransitive verbs, namely unergatives (e.g. “walk”, “smile”, “dream”, “swim”) and unaccusatives (e.g., “appear”, “emerge”, “exist”, “occur”) by comparing and contrasting their “Lexical-Semantic Representations” and “Argument Structures”, and examines how these differences between two sub-classes of intransitives affect various areas of grammar such as formation of -er nominals, adjectives and interpretation of pronoun “they”. At the end of the review, the findings are connected with grammar teaching briefly within the framework of Ausubel’s Meaningful Learning Theory. Key Words: Transitivity, unaccusative verbs, English Grammar. Özet. Fiiller geleneksel biçimde, aldıkları tamamlayıcılara göre geçişli ve geçişsiz olarak sınıflandırılırken, zorunlu tamamlayıcı olarak nesne almadan -
Aspects of Chintang Syntax
Zurich Open Repository and Archive University of Zurich Main Library Strickhofstrasse 39 CH-8057 Zurich www.zora.uzh.ch Year: 2015 Aspects of Chintang syntax Paudyal, Netra P Posted at the Zurich Open Repository and Archive, University of Zurich ZORA URL: https://doi.org/10.5167/uzh-113367 Dissertation Published Version Originally published at: Paudyal, Netra P. Aspects of Chintang syntax. 2015, University of Zurich, Faculty of Arts. Aspects of Chintang Syntax Thesis presented to the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences of the University of Zurich for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Netra Prasad Paudyal Accepted in the fall semester 2013 on the recommendation of the doctoral committee: Prof. Dr. Balthasar Bickel (main advisor) Prof. Dr. John M. Peterson Zurich 2015 Table of Contents Acknowledgements vii Notational conventions and abbreviations ix List of figures xii List of tables xiii 1 Introduction 1 1.0 The linguistic situation in Nepal 1 1.1 The Chintang people and their language 3 1.2 The Chintang village profile 6 1.3 The ethnic and religious situation 7 1.4 Genetic affiliation 8 1.5 Sources of data and the fieldwork 9 1.6 Goals and overview of the dissertation 10 2 Phonology 13 2.0 Introduction 13 2.1 Consonants 13 2.1.1 Stop consonants 16 2.1.2 Fricatives 17 2.1.3 Nasals 17 2.1.4 Glides 17 2.1.5 Aspiration 18 2.1.6 Distribution of consonant phonemes 18 2.1.7 Consonant clusters and geminate consonants 20 2.2 Vowel phonemes 23 2.2.1 Monophthongs 23 2.2.2 Diphthongs 24 2.2.3 Vowel sequences 27 2.3 Syllable structure 28 2.4 Basic -
Conjugation Class and Transitivity in Kipsigis Maria Kouneli, University of Leipzig [email protected]
April 22nd, 2021 Workshop on theme vowels in V(P) structure and beyond University of Graz Conjugation class and transitivity in Kipsigis Maria Kouneli, University of Leipzig [email protected] 1 Introduction • Research on conjugation classes and theme vowels has mostly focused on Indo- European languages, even though they are not restricted to this language family (see Oltra-Massuet 2020 for an overview). • The goal of this talk is to investigate the properties of inflectional classes in Kip- sigis, a Nilotic language spoken in Kenya: – in the nominal domain, the language possesses a variety of thematic suffixes with many similarities to Romance theme vowels; the theory in Oltra-Massuet & Arregi (2005) can account for their distribution – in the verbal domain, the language has two conjugation classes, which I will argue spell out little v, and are closely related to argument structure, espe- cially the causative alternation • Recent syntactic approaches to the causative alternation treat it as a Voice alterna- tion: – the causative and anticausative variants have the same vP (event) layer, but differ in the presence vs. absence of an external argument-introducing Voice head (e.g., Marantz 2013, Alexiadou et al. 2015, Wood 2015, Kastner 2016, 2017, 2018, Wood & Marantz 2017, Nie 2020, Tyler 2020). (1) a. The cup broke. Anticausative b. Mary broke the cup. Causative • I show that the causative alternation in Kipsigis cannot be (just) a Voice alterna- tion: (in)transitivity in the language is calculated at the little v level for most verbs that participate in the alternation. Roadmap: 2: Inflectional classes in Kipsigis 3: Theories of the causative alternation (with a focus on morphology) 4: More on the causative alternation in Kipsigis 5: The challenge for Voice theories 6: Conclusion 1 Maria Kouneli Theme vowels in VP structure 2 Inflectional classes in Kipsigis 2.1 Language background • Kipsigis is the major variety of Kalenjin, a dialect cluster of the Southern Nilotic branch of Nilo-Saharan. -
UC Berkeley Dissertations, Department of Linguistics
UC Berkeley Dissertations, Department of Linguistics Title An Updated Typology of Causative Constructions: Form-function Mappings in Hupa (California Athabaskan), Chungli Ao (Tibeto-Burman) and Beyond Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4556v4g6 Author Escamilla, Ramón Publication Date 2012 eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California An Updated Typology of Causative Constructions: Form-Function Mappings in Hupa (California Athabaskan), Chungli Ao (Tibeto-Burman) and Beyond By Ramón Mahew Escamilla, Jr. 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: Professor Eve Sweetser, Chair Professor Richard A. Rhodes Professor Johanna Nichols Fall 2012 Abstract An Updated Typology of Causative Constructions: Form-Function Mappings in Hupa (California Athabaskan), Chungli Ao (Tibeto-Burman) and Beyond by Ramón Mahew Escamilla, Jr. Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics University of California, Berkeley Professor Eve Sweetser, Chair Taking up analytical issues raised primarily in Dixon (2000) and Dixon & Aikhenvald (2000), this dissertation combines descriptive work with a medium-sized (50-language) typological study. Chapter 1 situates the dissertation against a concise survey of typological-functional work on causative constructions from the last few decades, and outlines the major research questions. Chapter 2 presents a case study of causative encoding in Hupa (California Athabaskan). I describe the morphosyntax and semantics of the Hupa syntactic causative construction, and analyze its distribution with respect to Dixon’s (2000) proposals for a typology of causative constructions. I demonstrate that causee control (Dixon’s parameter 3) over the caused microevent is a significant semantic factor in licensing this construction.