Evidentiality in the Uto-Aztecan Languages Tim Thornes Boise State University
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Load more
Recommended publications
-
Veridicality and Utterance Meaning
2011 Fifth IEEE International Conference on Semantic Computing Veridicality and utterance understanding Marie-Catherine de Marneffe, Christopher D. Manning and Christopher Potts Linguistics Department Stanford University Stanford, CA 94305 {mcdm,manning,cgpotts}@stanford.edu Abstract—Natural language understanding depends heavily on making the requisite inferences. The inherent uncertainty of assessing veridicality – whether the speaker intends to convey that pragmatic inference suggests to us that veridicality judgments events mentioned are actual, non-actual, or uncertain. However, are not always categorical, and thus are better modeled as this property is little used in relation and event extraction systems, and the work that has been done has generally assumed distributions. We therefore treat veridicality as a distribution- that it can be captured by lexical semantic properties. Here, prediction task. We trained a maximum entropy classifier on we show that context and world knowledge play a significant our annotations to assign event veridicality distributions. Our role in shaping veridicality. We extend the FactBank corpus, features include not only lexical items like hedges, modals, which contains semantically driven veridicality annotations, with and negations, but also structural features and approximations pragmatically informed ones. Our annotations are more complex than the lexical assumption predicts but systematic enough to of world knowledge. The resulting model yields insights into be included in computational work on textual understanding. the complex pragmatic factors that shape readers’ veridicality They also indicate that veridicality judgments are not always judgments. categorical, and should therefore be modeled as distributions. We build a classifier to automatically assign event veridicality II. CORPUS ANNOTATION distributions based on our new annotations. -
Toward a Comprehensive Model For
Toward a Comprehensive Model for Nahuatl Language Research and Revitalization JUSTYNA OLKO,a JOHN SULLIVANa, b, c University of Warsaw;a Instituto de Docencia e Investigación Etnológica de Zacatecas;b Universidad Autonóma de Zacatecasc 1 Introduction Nahuatl, a Uto-Aztecan language, enjoyed great political and cultural importance in the pre-Hispanic and colonial world over a long stretch of time and has survived to the present day.1 With an estimated 1.376 million speakers currently inhabiting several regions of Mexico,2 it would not seem to be in danger of extinction, but in fact it is. Formerly the language of the Aztec empire and a lingua franca across Mesoamerica, after the Spanish conquest Nahuatl thrived in the new colonial contexts and was widely used for administrative and religious purposes across New Spain, including areas where other native languages prevailed. Although the colonial language policy and prolonged Hispanicization are often blamed today as the main cause of language shift and the gradual displacement of Nahuatl, legal steps reinforced its importance in Spanish Mesoamerica; these include the decision by the king Philip II in 1570 to make Nahuatl the linguistic medium for religious conversion and for the training of ecclesiastics working with the native people in different regions. Members of the nobility belonging to other ethnic groups, as well as numerous non-elite figures of different backgrounds, including Spaniards, and especially friars and priests, used spoken and written Nahuatl to facilitate communication in different aspects of colonial life and religious instruction (Yannanakis 2012:669-670; Nesvig 2012:739-758; Schwaller 2012:678-687). -
Number U8 - Whorf, Benjamin Lee
NUMBER U8 - WHORF, BENJAMIN LEE THE HOPI LANGUAGE. 1935 THE HOPI LANGlTAOE by Benjamin Lee Whorf l?3r> MICROFILM COLLECTION OF MANUSCRIPTS ON MIDDLE AMERICAN CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY No. W UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO LIBRARY CHICAGO, ILLINOIS 1956 TA3LE OF CONTENTS Phonology 1 Claselfication of phonemes 1 Consonants 2 Consonant-clusters h Vowels k Vowel-length 5 Accent ' 6 Sandhi 6 II. Grammatical Operations 7 1. Pure Selection 7 Parts of Speech 7 Punctual and Tensive 3 Suppletion 9 2. Modulation: its phonology 10 3. Reduplication 11 h. Nexus 11 a. Prefixation 11 b. Suffixation 11 c. Annexation 12 Compounds 13 Incorporations 1^ Subnexation 1^ d. Context nexus 15 5. Pause Techniques 15 Sentences 15 A. Unifórmale l6 Biformals l6 Triformals l6 Copulative or nominal sentences .... 16 T^Ler...-• tives 17 Imperatives 17 III. Nouns nd Pronouns and their Syntax 17 1. Basic Pronouns 17 2. Use of the Cases 20 Basic Noun Inflections 2¿ Plurals 2j 5- Oblique Cases 2U 6. Postpositions or relationals 2k 7. Place Names 25 8. Various Pronouns 25 9. Numerals 26 TABLE OF CONTENTS ^cont'd.) 1. In general , 1'J Tht Hop i Ian ¿. Verb classes '¿'J 3. Voicer, jl northeastern Ar ¡4 . Aspeóte 3'.' •'"•. Number Uo sketch records 6 . Tenses ¡: i "'. The Modes and their Syntax :<2 Mr» Ernest Naqu °> . Address Forms 31 Iion-ac Lual Forms 32 the Uto-Aztooan ^. Inceptors 3j fleotive type* V. Invariants >3 I. Phonology VI. Deri vat i on '.A 1 A. Major co 1. Verbs [from verbs] 3' !+ 2. Verbs [from nouns] 5 aeries m, n, £, 3. -
Place Names Describing Fossils in Oral Traditions
Place names describing fossils in oral traditions ADRIENNE MAYOR Classics Department, Stanford University, Stanford CA 94305 (e-mail: [email protected]) Abstract: Folk explanations of notable geological features, including fossils, are found around the world. Observations of fossil exposures (bones, footprints, etc.) led to place names for rivers, mountains, valleys, mounds, caves, springs, tracks, and other geological and palaeonto- logical sites. Some names describe prehistoric remains and/or refer to traditional interpretations of fossils. This paper presents case studies of fossil-related place names in ancient and modern Europe and China, and Native American examples in Canada, the United States, and Mexico. Evidence for the earliest known fossil-related place names comes from ancient Greco-Roman and Chinese literature. The earliest documented fossil-related place name in the New World was preserved in a written text by the Spanish in the sixteenth century. In many instances, fossil geonames are purely descriptive; in others, however, the mythology about a specific fossil locality survives along with the name; in still other cases the geomythology is suggested by recorded traditions about similar palaeontological phenomena. The antiquity and continuity of some fossil-related place names shows that people had observed and speculated about miner- alized traces of extinct life forms long before modern scientific investigations. Traditional place names can reveal heretofore unknown geomyths as well as new geologically-important sites. Traditional folk names for geological features in the Named fossil sites in classical antiquity landscape commonly refer to mythological or and modern Greece legendary stories that accounted for them (Vitaliano 1973). Landmarks notable for conspicuous fossils Evidence for the practice of naming specific fossil have been named descriptively or mythologically locales can be found in classical antiquity. -
Configurationality in Classical Nahuatl*
Configurationality in Classical Nahuatl* Jason D. Haugen Oberlin College Abstract: Some classic generativist analyses (Jelinek 1984, Baker 1996) predict that polysynthetic languages should be non-configurational by positing that the arguments of verbs are marked by clitics or affixes and relegating overt NPs/DPs to adjunct positions. Here I argue that the polysynthetic Uto-Aztecan language Classical Nahuatl (CN) was actually configurational. I claim that unmarked VSO order was derived by verb phrase (vP) fronting, from a base-generated structure of SVO. A vP constituent is evidenced by obligatory movement of indefinite object NPs with the vP, as in pseudo noun incorporation analyses given for VOS order in other predicate-initial languages such as Niuean (Polynesian) (Massam 2001) and Chol (Mayan) (Coon 2010). The CN case is interesting to contrast with languages like Chol, which lack head movement, in that the CN word order facts show the hallmarks of vP remnant movement (i.e., the fronting of the verb plus its determinerless NP object into a position structurally higher than the subject), while the actual morphology of the CN verb shows the hallmarks of head movement (including noun incorporation, tense/aspect/mood suffixes, derivational suffixes such as the applicative and causative, and pronominal agreement prefixes marked on the verb). Finally, in regard to the landing site for the fronted predicate, I argue that the placement of CN’s optional clause-introducing particle ca necessitates adopting the split-Comp proposal of Rizzi (1997), as is suggested for Welsh by Roberts (2005). Specifically, I claim for CN that ca is the head of ForceP and that the predicate fronts to a position in the structurally lower Fin(ite)P. -
The Museum of Northern Arizona Harold S
MS-223 The Museum of Northern Arizona Harold S. Colton Memorial Library 3101 N. Fort Valley Road Flagstaff, AZ 86001 (928)774-5213 ext. 256 Title P. David Seaman collection Dates 1954-1977 Extent 1.7 cm textual material, 19 vinyl records, 1 7” reel magnetic audio tape, 9 DDS-1 data cartridges, 35 CDs Name of Creator(s) Seaman, P. David Ekstrom, Jonathan O. Goossen, Irvy W. Nuvanisa, Bennie Gospel Broadcasters Mission Aides, Inc. Biographical History Dr. P. David Seaman (January 31, 1932 – ) was born in Connellsville, Pennsylvania, and grew up in a series of foster homes. He worked at the local YMCA and was a reporter for The Daily Courier in Connellsville in high school. Seaman served in the U.S. Army during the Korean War, from February 1951 to February 1954. He participated in military maneuvers at Yucca Flats, Nevada in 1952 during which a live atomic bomb test took place. In January 1953, just before leaving for Korea, he married Mary Miller of Louisville, Kentucky, and the couple later had three children: Nancy, Mark, and Don. Returning home from Korea, Seaman enrolled in Asbury College near Lexington, Kentucky in February 1954, and received his Bachelor of Arts in Psychology in May 1957. In August 1958, he completed his Master of Arts in Ancient Languages and Literatures at the University of Kentucky. He then received his Ph.D. in Linguistics from Indiana University, Bloomington in 1965. His dissertation, entitled Modern Greek and American English in Contact, was published in 1972. Seaman accepted a position at Northern Arizona University in 1967, where he was a professor of linguistics in the department of Anthropology until his retirement in 1994. -
Uto-Aztecan Maize Agriculture: a Linguistic Puzzle from Southern California
Uto-Aztecan Maize Agriculture: A Linguistic Puzzle from Southern California Jane H. Hill, William L. Merrill Anthropological Linguistics, Volume 59, Number 1, Spring 2017, pp. 1-23 (Article) Published by University of Nebraska Press DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/anl.2017.0000 For additional information about this article https://muse.jhu.edu/article/683122 Access provided by Smithsonian Institution (9 Nov 2018 13:38 GMT) Uto-Aztecan Maize Agriculture: A Linguistic Puzzle from Southern California JANE H. HILL University of Arizona WILLIAM L. MERRILL Smithsonian Institution Abstract. The hypothesis that the members of the Proto—Uto-Aztecan speech community were maize farmers is premised in part on the assumption that a Proto—Uto-Aztecan etymon for ‘maize’ can be reconstructed; this implies that cognates with maize-related meanings should be attested in languages in both the Northern and Southern branches of the language family. A Proto—Southern Uto-Aztecan etymon for ‘maize’ is reconstructible, but the only potential cog- nate for these terms documented in a Northern Uto-Aztecan language is a single Gabrielino word. However, this word cannot be identified definitively as cognate with the Southern Uto-Aztecan terms for ‘maize’; consequently, the existence of a Proto—Uto-Aztecan word for ‘maize’ cannot be postulated. 1. Introduction. Speakers of Uto-Aztecan languages lived across much of western North America at the time of their earliest encounters with Europeans or Euro-Americans. Their communities were distributed from the Columbia River drainage in the north through the Great Basin, southern California, the American Southwest, and most of Mexico, with outliers as far south as Panama (Miller 1983; Campbell 1997:133—38; Caballero 2011; Shaul 2014). -
Languages of the World--Native America
REPOR TRESUMES ED 010 352 46 LANGUAGES OF THE WORLD-NATIVE AMERICA FASCICLE ONE. BY- VOEGELIN, C. F. VOEGELIN, FLORENCE N. INDIANA UNIV., BLOOMINGTON REPORT NUMBER NDEA-VI-63-5 PUB DATE JUN64 CONTRACT MC-SAE-9486 EDRS PRICENF-$0.27 HC-C6.20 155P. ANTHROPOLOGICAL LINGUISTICS, 6(6)/1-149, JUNE 1964 DESCRIPTORS- *AMERICAN INDIAN LANGUAGES, *LANGUAGES, BLOOMINGTON, INDIANA, ARCHIVES OF LANGUAGES OF THE WORLD THE NATIVE LANGUAGES AND DIALECTS OF THE NEW WORLD"ARE DISCUSSED.PROVIDED ARE COMPREHENSIVE LISTINGS AND DESCRIPTIONS OF THE LANGUAGES OF AMERICAN INDIANSNORTH OF MEXICO ANDOF THOSE ABORIGINAL TO LATIN AMERICA..(THIS REPOR4 IS PART OF A SEkIES, ED 010 350 TO ED 010 367.)(JK) $. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH,EDUCATION nib Office ofEduc.442n MD WELNicitt weenment Lasbeenreproduced a l l e a l O exactly r o n o odianeting es receivromed f the Sabi donot rfrocestarity it. Pondsof viewor position raimentofficial opinions or pritcy. Offkce ofEducation rithrppologicalLinguistics Volume 6 Number 6 ,Tune 1964 LANGUAGES OF TEM'WORLD: NATIVE AMER/CAFASCICLEN. A Publication of this ARC IVES OF LANGUAGESor 111-E w oRLD Anthropology Doparignont Indiana, University ANTHROPOLOGICAL LINGUISTICS is designed primarily, butnot exclusively, for the immediate publication of data-oriented papers for which attestation is available in the form oftape recordings on deposit in the Archives of Languages of the World. This does not imply that contributors will bere- stricted to scholars working in the Archives at Indiana University; in fact,one motivation for the publication -
Phonetics and Phonology
46 2 Phonetics and Phonology In this chapter I describe the segmental and suprasegmental categories of CLZ phonology, both how they are articulated and how they fall into the structures of syllable and word. I also deal with phono-syntactic and phono-semantic issues like intonation and the various categories of onomatopoetic words that are found. Other than these last two issues this chapter deals only with strictly phonetic and phonological issues. Interesting morpho-phonological details, such as the details of tonal morphology, are found in Chapters 4-6. Sound files for most examples are included with the CD. I begin in §2.1 and §2.2 by describing the segments of CLZ, how they are articulated and what environments they occur in. I describe patterns of syllable structure in §2.3. In §2.4 I describe the vowel nasalization that occurs in the SMaC dialect. I go on to describe the five tonal categories of CLZ and the main phonetic components of tone: pitch, glottalization and length in §2.5. Next I give brief discussions of stress (§2.6), and intonation (§2.7). During the description of segmental distribution I often mention that certain segments have a restricted distribution and do not occur in some position except in loanwords and onomatopoetic words. Much of what I consider interesting about loanwords has to do with stress and is described in §2.6 but I also give an overview of loanword phonology in §2.8. Onomatopoetic words are sometimes outside the bounds of normal CLZ phonology both because they can employ CLZ sounds in unusual environments and because they may contain sounds which are not phonemic in CLZ. -
Universidaddesonora
U N I V E R S I D A D D E S O N O R A División de Humanidades y Bellas Artes Maestría en Lingüística Adverbial clauses in Veracruz Huasteca Nahuatl from a functional-typological approach TESIS Que para optar por el grado de Maestro en Lingüística Presenta Jesús Francisco Olguín Martínez 2016 CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ABBREVIATIONS INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER 1 Veracruz Huasteca Nahuatl: Some basic grammatical facts 5 1.1 Grammatical background 9 1.1.1 Phonological sketch 9 1.1.2 Word verb forms, noun phrases and adpositional phrases 10 1.1.2.1 Word verb forms 10 1.1.2.2 Noun phrases 13 1.1.2.3 Adpositional phrases 14 1.1.3 Simple clause 15 1.1.4 Alignment system 17 1.1.5 Primary object language 19 1.1.6 Head-marking language 20 CHAPTER 2 Adverbial clauses: Theoretical preliminaries 22 2.1 Function and form of adverbial clauses: Some basic notions 22 2.2 Adverbial clauses: A semantic and morphosyntactic analysis 30 2.2.1 Temporal clauses 30 2.2.1.1 Precedence 31 2.2.1.2 Subsequence 37 2.2.1.2.1 Subsequence: Chronological order 38 2.2.1.2.2 Subsequence: Cause/reason 40 2.2.1.3 Simultaneity 43 2.2.2 Conditional clauses 47 2.2.3 Concessive conditionals 51 2.2.4 Cause/reason 53 2.2.4.1 Agentive external cause for the event 54 2.2.4.2 Non-agentive external cause for the event 55 2.2.4.3 Eventive external reason for the action 55 2.2.4.4 Non-eventive external reason for the action 56 2.2.4.5 Eventive internal reason for the action 56 2.2.4.6 Non-eventive internal reason for the action 57 2.2.5 Concessive clauses 57 2.2.6 Purpose clauses 62 2.2.7 -
Category of Evidentiality and Mirativity in Chechen. Zarina Molochieva University of Leipzig
Conference on the Languages of the Caucasus, 7-9.12.2007, Max Planck Institute EVA, Leipzig Category of Evidentiality and Mirativity in Chechen. Zarina Molochieva University of Leipzig 0. Introduction. Chechen belongs to the Nakh branch of the Nakh-Daghestanian family. Typologically, Chechen is a head-final, case-using, ergative and dependent-marking language. Basic word order is SOV; no person agreement. The simple verbs employ gender agreement that is marked by a consonant prefix, there are 4 of them. A short outline of TAM system: Each TAM form is based upon one of the three stems, namely the infinitive stem, the present tense stem and the recent past stem. The highest level of temporal and aspectual differentiation is represented in the past-reference tenses. Table 1. TENSE/ASPECT MORPHOLOGY eeca ‘take’ Present -u oec-u Present Progressive CVBsim + cop.PRS oec-ush vu Simple Past -i ec-i Past Progressive Witnessed CVBsim + cop.PST oec-ush vara Past Witnessed -ra eci-ra Perfect -(i)na ec-na Pluperfect -(i)niera ec-niera Imperfect -ura ec-ura Inferential Progressive CVBsim + cop.PST oec-ush xilla Unwitnessed Past Inferential Unwitnessed Past CVBant + cop.PST ec-na xilla Inferential Unwitnessed Pluperfect CBVant + cop.PPL ec-na xilliera Inferential ProgressiveUnwitnessed CBVsim + cop.PPL oec-ush xilliera Pluperfect The phenomena of evidentiality in Chechen may be grouped into three types, namely the opposition of the witnessed/unwitnessed actions (Aikhenvald 2004), mirativity, and addressee-directed dative constructions. 1.1. Witnessed Past: The morphological marking of the Witnessed Past is the verbal suffix -ra. The Witnessed Past is used if the speaker directly witnessed the event. -
[.35 **Natural Language Processing Class Here Computational Linguistics See Manual at 006.35 Vs
006 006 006 DeweyiDecimaliClassification006 006 [.35 **Natural language processing Class here computational linguistics See Manual at 006.35 vs. 410.285 *Use notation 019 from Table 1 as modified at 004.019 400 DeweyiDecimaliClassification 400 400 DeweyiDecimali400Classification Language 400 [400 [400 *‡Language Class here interdisciplinary works on language and literature For literature, see 800; for rhetoric, see 808. For the language of a specific discipline or subject, see the discipline or subject, plus notation 014 from Table 1, e.g., language of science 501.4 (Option A: To give local emphasis or a shorter number to a specific language, class in 410, where full instructions appear (Option B: To give local emphasis or a shorter number to a specific language, place before 420 through use of a letter or other symbol. Full instructions appear under 420–490) 400 DeweyiDecimali400Classification Language 400 SUMMARY [401–409 Standard subdivisions and bilingualism [410 Linguistics [420 English and Old English (Anglo-Saxon) [430 German and related languages [440 French and related Romance languages [450 Italian, Dalmatian, Romanian, Rhaetian, Sardinian, Corsican [460 Spanish, Portuguese, Galician [470 Latin and related Italic languages [480 Classical Greek and related Hellenic languages [490 Other languages 401 DeweyiDecimali401Classification Language 401 [401 *‡Philosophy and theory See Manual at 401 vs. 121.68, 149.94, 410.1 401 DeweyiDecimali401Classification Language 401 [.3 *‡International languages Class here universal languages; general