A Typological Perspective on Differential Object Marking
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Replacive Grammatical Tone in the Dogon Languages
University of California Los Angeles Replacive grammatical tone in the Dogon languages A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics by Laura Elizabeth McPherson 2014 c Copyright by Laura Elizabeth McPherson 2014 Abstract of the Dissertation Replacive grammatical tone in the Dogon languages by Laura Elizabeth McPherson Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics University of California, Los Angeles, 2014 Professor Russell Schuh, Co-chair Professor Bruce Hayes, Co-chair This dissertation focuses on replacive grammatical tone in the Dogon languages of Mali, where a word’s lexical tone is replaced with a tonal overlay in specific morphosyntactic contexts. Unlike more typologically common systems of replacive tone, where overlays are triggered by morphemes or morphological features and are confined to a single word, Dogon overlays in the DP may span multiple words and are triggered by other words in the phrase. DP elements are divided into two categories: controllers (those elements that trigger tonal overlays) and non-controllers (those elements that impose no tonal demands on surrounding words). I show that controller status and the phonological content of the associated tonal overlay is dependent on syntactic category. Further, I show that a controller can only impose its overlay on words that it c-commands, or itself. I argue that the sensitivity to specific details of syntactic category and structure indicate that Dogon replacive tone is not synchronically a phonological system, though its origins almost certainly lie in regular phrasal phonology. Drawing on inspiration from Construction Morphology, I develop a morphological framework in which morphology is defined as the id- iosyncratic mapping of phonological, syntactic, and semantic information, explicitly learned by speakers in the form of a construction. -
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. -
Two Types of Serial Verb Constructions in Korean: Subject-Sharing and Index-Sharing
Two Types of Serial Verb Constructions in Korean: Subject-Sharing and Index-Sharing Juwon Lee The University of Texas at Austin Proceedings of the 21st International Conference on Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar University at Buffalo Stefan Muller¨ (Editor) 2014 CSLI Publications pages 135–155 http://csli-publications.stanford.edu/HPSG/2014 Lee, Juwon. 2014. Two Types of Serial Verb Constructions in Korean: Subject- Sharing and Index-Sharing. In Muller,¨ Stefan (Ed.), Proceedings of the 21st In- ternational Conference on Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar, University at Buffalo, 135–155. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications. Abstract In this paper I present an account for the lexical passive Serial Verb Constructions (SVCs) in Korean. Regarding the issue of how the arguments of an SVC are realized, I propose two hypotheses: i) Korean SVCs are broadly classified into two types, subject-sharing SVCs where the subject is structure-shared by the verbs and index- sharing SVCs where only indices of semantic arguments are structure-shared by the verbs, and ii) a semantic argument sharing is a general requirement of SVCs in Korean. I also argue that an argument composition analysis can accommodate such the new data as the lexical passive SVCs in a simple manner compared to other alternative derivational analyses. 1. Introduction* Serial verb construction (SVC) is a structure consisting of more than two component verbs but denotes what is conceptualized as a single event, and it is an important part of the study of complex predicates. A central issue of SVC is how the arguments of the component verbs of an SVC are realized in a sentence. -
30. Tense Aspect Mood 615
30. Tense Aspect Mood 615 Richards, Ivor Armstrong 1936 The Philosophy of Rhetoric. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rockwell, Patricia 2007 Vocal features of conversational sarcasm: A comparison of methods. Journal of Psycho- linguistic Research 36: 361−369. Rosenblum, Doron 5. March 2004 Smart he is not. http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/smart-he-is-not- 1.115908. Searle, John 1979 Expression and Meaning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Seddiq, Mirriam N. A. Why I don’t want to talk to you. http://notguiltynoway.com/2004/09/why-i-dont-want- to-talk-to-you.html. Singh, Onkar 17. December 2002 Parliament attack convicts fight in court. http://www.rediff.com/news/ 2002/dec/17parl2.htm [Accessed 24 July 2013]. Sperber, Dan and Deirdre Wilson 1986/1995 Relevance: Communication and Cognition. Oxford: Blackwell. Voegele, Jason N. A. http://www.jvoegele.com/literarysf/cyberpunk.html Voyer, Daniel and Cheryl Techentin 2010 Subjective acoustic features of sarcasm: Lower, slower, and more. Metaphor and Symbol 25: 1−16. Ward, Gregory 1983 A pragmatic analysis of epitomization. Papers in Linguistics 17: 145−161. Ward, Gregory and Betty J. Birner 2006 Information structure. In: B. Aarts and A. McMahon (eds.), Handbook of English Lin- guistics, 291−317. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Rachel Giora, Tel Aviv, (Israel) 30. Tense Aspect Mood 1. Introduction 2. Metaphor: EVENTS ARE (PHYSICAL) OBJECTS 3. Polysemy, construal, profiling, and coercion 4. Interactions of tense, aspect, and mood 5. Conclusion 6. References 1. Introduction In the framework of cognitive linguistics we approach the grammatical categories of tense, aspect, and mood from the perspective of general cognitive strategies. -
Exploring Material Culture Distributions in the Upper Sepik and Central New Guinea
Gender, mobility and population history: exploring material culture distributions in the Upper Sepik and Central New Guinea by Andrew Fyfe, BA (Hons) Thesis submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in The Discipline of Geographical and Environmental Studies The University of Adelaide November 2008 …..These practices, then, and others which I will speak of later, were borrowed by the Greeks from Egypt. This is not the case, however, with the Greek custom of making images of Hermes with the phallus erect; it was the Athenians who took this from the Pelasgians, and from the Athenians the custom spread to the rest of Greece. For just at the time when the Athenians were assuming Hellenic nationality, the Pelasgians joined them, and thus first came to be regarded as Greeks. Anyone will know what I mean if he is familiar with the mysteries of the Cabiri-rites which the men of Samothrace learned from the Pelasgians, who lived in that island before they moved to Attica, and communicated the mysteries to the Athenians. This will show that the Athenians were the first Greeks to make statues of Hermes with the erect phallus, and that they learned the practice from the Pelasgians…… Herodotus c.430 BC ii Table of contents Acknowledgements vii List of figures viii List of tables xi List of Appendices xii Abstract xiv Declaration xvi Section One 1. Introduction 2 1.1 The Upper Sepik-Central New Guinea Project 2 1.2 Lapita and the exploration of relationships between language and culture in Melanesia 3 1.3 The quantification of relationships between material culture and language on New Guinea’s north coast 6 1.4 Thesis objectives 9 2. -
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. -
1 Noun Classes and Classifiers, Semantics of Alexandra Y
1 Noun classes and classifiers, semantics of Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald Research Centre for Linguistic Typology, La Trobe University, Melbourne Abstract Almost all languages have some grammatical means for the linguistic categorization of noun referents. Noun categorization devices range from the lexical numeral classifiers of South-East Asia to the highly grammaticalized noun classes and genders in African and Indo-European languages. Further noun categorization devices include noun classifiers, classifiers in possessive constructions, verbal classifiers, and two rare types: locative and deictic classifiers. Classifiers and noun classes provide a unique insight into how the world is categorized through language in terms of universal semantic parameters involving humanness, animacy, sex, shape, form, consistency, orientation in space, and the functional properties of referents. ABBREVIATIONS: ABS - absolutive; CL - classifier; ERG - ergative; FEM - feminine; LOC – locative; MASC - masculine; SG – singular 2 KEY WORDS: noun classes, genders, classifiers, possessive constructions, shape, form, function, social status, metaphorical extension 3 Almost all languages have some grammatical means for the linguistic categorization of nouns and nominals. The continuum of noun categorization devices covers a range of devices from the lexical numeral classifiers of South-East Asia to the highly grammaticalized gender agreement classes of Indo-European languages. They have a similar semantic basis, and one can develop from the other. They provide a unique insight into how people categorize the world through their language in terms of universal semantic parameters involving humanness, animacy, sex, shape, form, consistency, and functional properties. Noun categorization devices are morphemes which occur in surface structures under specifiable conditions, and denote some salient perceived or imputed characteristics of the entity to which an associated noun refers (Allan 1977: 285). -
The Serial Verb Construction in Chinese: a Tenacious Myth and a Gordian Knot Waltraud Paul
The serial verb construction in Chinese: A tenacious myth and a Gordian knot Waltraud Paul To cite this version: Waltraud Paul. The serial verb construction in Chinese: A tenacious myth and a Gordian knot. Lin- guistic Review, De Gruyter, 2008, 25 (3-4), pp.367-411. 10.1515/TLIR.2008.011. halshs-01574253 HAL Id: halshs-01574253 https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-01574253 Submitted on 12 Aug 2017 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. The serial verb construction in Chinese: A tenacious myth and a Gordian knot1 WALTRAUD PAUL Abstract The term “construction” is not a label to be assigned randomly, but presup- poses a structural analysis with an associated set of syntactic and semantic properties. Based on this premise, the term “serial verb construction” (SVC) as currently used in Chinese linguistics will be shown to simply refer to any multi- verb surface string i.e,. to subsume different constructions. The synchronic consequence of this situation is that SVCs in Chinese linguistics are not com- mensurate with SVCs in, e.g., Niger-Congo languages, whence the futility at this stage to search for a “serialization parameter” deriving the differences between so-called “serializing” and “non-serializing” languages. -
Object Pronouns
Grammar ® Lexia Lessons LEVEL 2 Object Pronouns PREPARE CONCEPT The ability to think and talk about VOCABULARY direct object, object pronoun, pronouns helps students understand and noun, pronoun, verb explain texts accurately and write effectively. MATERIALS Lesson reproducibles Words are categorized as pronouns if they take the place of a noun (names a person, place, thing, or idea) in a sentence. A direct object is a noun that comes after the verb and tells who or what. An object pronoun takes the place of a direct object. Object pronouns include me, you, him, her, it, us, and them. INSTRUCT ANCHOR CHART [Display Reproducible page 1.] • Introduce the Concept of this lesson. (See above.) • Explain that direct objects in sentences can be replaced by object pronouns. Explain that object pronouns help readers and listeners know who and what sentences are about without repeating the direct object nouns over and over again (e.g., Lincoln washed the dogs. Lincoln dried the dogs. Then he brushed the dogs). • Discuss that this lesson focuses on the object pronouns listed and described on the right side of the Anchor Chart. Subject pronouns will be discussed in a different lesson. PRACTICE [Display Reproducible page 2, Direct Object Match, Part A.] • Read the directions with students. • Support students in matching the object pronouns with the direct objects. [Display Reproducible page 2, Fill In the Object Pronoun, Part B.] • Read the directions with students. ® • Assist students in determining which pronoun correctly replaces the direct object in parentheses as needed. Prompt them to read the sentence aloud with their choice to see if it makes sense. -
Nilo-Saharan’
11 Linguistic Features and Typologies in Languages Commonly Referred to as ‘Nilo-Saharan’ Gerrit J. Dimmendaal, Colleen Ahland, Angelika Jakobi, and Constance Kutsch Lojenga 11.1 Introduction The phylum referred to today as Nilo- Saharan (occasionally also Nilosaharan) was established by Greenberg (1963). It consists of a core of language families already argued to be genetically related in his earlier classiication of African languages (Greenberg 1955:110–114), consisting of Eastern Sudanic, Central Sudanic, Kunama, and Berta, and grouped under the name Macrosudanic; this language family was renamed Chari- Nile in his 1963 contribution after a suggestion by the Africanist William Welmers. In his 1963 classiication, Greenberg hypothesized that Nilo- Saharan consists of Chari- Nile and ive other languages or language fam- ilies treated as independent units in his earlier study: Songhay (Songhai), Saharan, Maban, Fur, and Koman (Coman). Bender (1997) also included the Kadu languages in Sudan in his sur- vey of Nilo-Saharan languages; these were classiied as members of the Kordofanian branch of Niger-Kordofanian by Greenberg (1963) under the name Tumtum. Although some progress has been made in our knowledge of the Kadu languages, they remain relatively poorly studied, and there- fore they are not further discussed here, also because actual historical evi- dence for their Nilo- Saharan afiliation is rather weak. Whereas there is a core of language groups now widely assumed to belong to Nilo- Saharan as a phylum or macro- family, the genetic afiliation of families such as Koman and Songhay is also disputed (as for the Kadu languages). For this reason, these latter groups are discussed separately from what is widely considered to form the core of Nilo- Saharan, Central Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. -
Tonal Underspecification and Interpolation in Tommo So
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles Tonal Underspecification and Interpolation in Tommo So A thesis submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Master of Arts in Linguistics by Laura Elizabeth McPherson 2011 The thesis of Laura Elizabeth McPherson is approved. Patricia Keating Bruce P. Hayes, Committee Co-chair Russell G. Schuh, Committee Co-chair University of California, Los Angeles 2011 ii TABLE OF CONTENTS 1 Introduction 1 2 Chichewa /H/ vs. /Ø/ 3 3 Background: the phonology and phonetics of Tommo So tone 5 3.1 Lexical tone . 5 3.2 Phonetic realization of tone . 7 4 Enclitics 10 4.1 Enclitics and interpolation . 12 4.2 Phrase boundaries and boundary tones . 16 4.2.1 H ]H............................... 17 4.2.2 L ]H............................... 19 4.3 Sequences of enclitics . 20 4.4 Tone shift and specification . 22 4.5 Enclitics: a summary . 24 5 Other underspecified elements 25 5.1 Human suffixes .............................. 25 5.2 Epenthetic vowels . 29 6 Deriving underspecification: an analysis in Stratal OT 30 6.1 Level 1: stems . 31 6.2 Level 2: epenthesis and human suffixes . 37 6.3 Level 3: clitics and postlexical phonology . 41 6.4 Stratal OT summary . 45 7 Weak target analysis 46 8 Conclusion 50 iii LIST OF FIGURES 1 Examples of the interpolation of intervocalic /h/ in Farsi bihude ‘useless’ and Swedish komih˚a g att ‘remember to do something’, taken from Keating (1988:283), copyright c 1988 Cambridge University Press. Reprinted with ! the permission of Cambridge University Press. ............... 52 2 Sample pitch tracks of (a) one syllable between H2 and H3, (b) two syllables between H2 and H3, and (c) three syllables between H2 and H3 (Myers 1998:376), copyright c 1998 Cambridge University Press. -
Mian Grammar
A Grammar of Mian, a Papuan Language of New Guinea Olcher Sebastian Fedden Submitted in total fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy May 2007 Department of Linguistics and Applied Linguistics The University of Melbourne Produced on archival quality paper 2 To my parents 3 Abstract This thesis is a descriptive grammar of the Mian language of Papua New Guinea. The corpus data on the basis of which I analyzed the structures of the language and their functions was obtained during nine months of field work in Yapsiei and Mianmin, Telefomin District, Sandaun Province, Papua New Guinea. The areas of grammar I cover in this thesis are phonology (ch. 2), word classes (ch. 3), nominal classification (ch. 4 and 5), noun phrase structure (ch. 6), verb morphology (ch. 7), argument structure and syntax of the clause (ch. 8), serial verb constructions and clause chaining (ch. 9), operator scope (ch. 10), and embedding (ch. 11). Mian has a relatively small segmental phoneme inventory. The tonal phonology is complex. Mian is a word tone language, i.e. the domain for assignment of one of five tonemes is the phonological word and not the syllable. There is hardly any nominal morphology. If a noun is used referentially, it is followed by a cliticized article. Mian has four genders. Agreement targets are the article, determiners, such as demonstratives, and the pronominal affixes on the verb. The structure of the NP is relatively simple and constituent order is fixed. The rightmost position in the NP is reserved for a determiner; e.g.