Morphology in Australian Languages

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brett Baker
Keyword(s):  
Category Membership ◽  
Social Categories ◽  
Gender Agreement ◽  
Complex Predicate ◽  
European Languages ◽  
Case System ◽  
Single Argument ◽  
Noun Class ◽  
Multiple Levels ◽  
Australian Languages

The languages of Australia, generally recognized as falling into two groups, Pama-Nyungan and non-Pama-Nyungan, are remarkable for their phonological and morphological homogeneity. All Australian languages exhibit a range of suffixation for grammatical and derivational categories, typically with a high index of agglutination, along with widespread patterns of compounding and reduplication, in the latter case, often of unusual types. In some Pama-Nyungan languages, case suffixation forms complex constructions indexing multiple levels of relations within the clause and across clauses, including agreement of nouns with verbs for erstwhile cases which have developed into tense-aspect-modality systems. Non-Pama-Nyungan languages tend to have more elaborate verbal structures, including such features as incorporation of nouns and adverbs, cross-referencing of multiple participants, valence-changing morphology, and systems of noun class/gender agreement across the clause, typically of four to five classes. Many languages from both subgroups have complex predicate formations, which typically inhabit a region between phrasal and compound status. Finite verbs commonly inflect for a smallish number of tense-aspect-mood categories and can often be classified into a number of conjugation classes. Nouns by contrast rarely (if ever) inflect in patterns characteristic of declension classes in European languages. Words appear to be largely right-headed, based on the evidence of noun-adjective compounds. Gender/noun class systems in some languages have been co-opted by the case system to mark case relations, and in others to realize derivational meanings such as association or part-whole relations. Pronominal agreement systems in both PN and NPN languages can reach Baroque levels of complexity in incorporating distinctions based on social categories such as sibling, social category membership (such as moeity) and kinship. Bound pronominal agreement with a single argument is exceedingly rare: if there is a verbal or clitic agreement system, it almost always agrees with at least two arguments.

The development of person agreement and the cliticization of personal pronouns in Batsbi

2019 ◽  
Vol 72 (2) ◽  
pp. 275-296
Author(s):  
Yasuhiro Kojima
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Strong Influence ◽  
Personal Pronoun ◽  
Personal Pronouns ◽  
Gender Agreement ◽  
Finite Form ◽  
Indirect Object ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Noun Class ◽  
Person Agreement

Abstract Most Nakh-Daghestanian languages have gender (or noun class) agreement in the verb, but do not have person agreement. This is the case with Chechen and Ingush, which are genetically the closest to Batsbi. Batsbi, by contrast, has developed person agreement with the subject in the verb along with gender agreement. This is assumed to be due to the strong influence of Georgian, which has long been the second language of Batsbi speakers. In Georgian, the verb shows person agreement with the subject as well as with the direct or indirect object. Present-day Batsbi, presumably inspired by the polypersonal agreement of Georgian, further develops the cliticization of non-subject personal pronouns. To put it simply, it seems as though Batsbi attempts to express what a Georgian verb may encode in a single, finite form by means of a verb and a personal pronoun that is cliticized to it.

scholarly journals Gender Resolution in Croatian, Slavic and Proto-Indo-European

Fluminensia ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-29
Author(s):  
Ranko Matasović
Keyword(s):  
Gender Agreement ◽  
Historical Explanation ◽  
Feminine Gender ◽  
Slavic Languages ◽  
European Languages ◽  
Resolution Rule ◽  
The Common ◽  
Gender System ◽  
Germanic Languages ◽  
Masculine Gender

This paper deals with the origin and development of the gender resolution rule according to which the predicate adjective agrees with the masculine antecedent when there is agreement with a conjunction of subjects at least one of which denotes a male person. Apart from Croatian, such a rule exists (or existed) in the other Slavic languages, as well as in Baltic languages, so it can safely be posited for Proto-Slavic and Proto-Balto-Slavic. We further show that most contemporary and ancient Indo-European languages had such a gender resolution rule. Where such a rule does not exist (as in Germanic languages), there is a plausible historical explanation. In Hittite, which preserves the most ancient gender system of Indo-European (with only common and neuter genders, and no feminine gender), the default agreement is with the common gender noun. Recent advances in our understanding of the development of gender in Indo-European allow us to show that the rule taking the masculine as the default gender has developed from the rule taking the common gender as default. This is because the morphemes showing gender agreement on adjectives and pronouns of the masculine gender have developed from Early Proto-Indo-European morphemes expressing the common gender.

scholarly journals Serialization in Complex Predicates in MalakMalak

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dorothea Hoffmann
Keyword(s):  
Argument Structure ◽  
Complex Predicates ◽  
Distinctive Features ◽  
Complex Predicate ◽  
Closed Class ◽  
Verb Constructions ◽  
Two Systems ◽  
Complex Verbs ◽  
Australian Languages

<p>While complex verbs are well attested in Australian languages and elsewhere, in MalakMalak two systems of multi-verb constructions combine in a typologically rare setup: First, complex predicates consist of an uninflecting open-classed coverb and an inflecting verb (IV) of a closed class of six. Second, coverbs combine in serial constructions as part of a complex predicate with up to four coverbs encoding multiple or single events. This overlap provides a unique opportunity to examine shared and distinctive features. I argue for an analysis of MalakMalak’s complex predicates’ argument structure in terms of argument unification (Bowern 2010) of coverb and IV. </p>

scholarly journals The role of gender in the acquisition of the Serbian case system

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 896
Author(s):  
Stefan Pophristic ◽  
Kathryn Schuler
Keyword(s):  
Sufficient Evidence ◽  
Single Gender ◽  
Tolerance Principle ◽  
Case System ◽  
Noun Classes ◽  
Noun Class ◽  
Abstract Categories ◽  
Categorization System

Serbo-Croatian is marked for seven cases and has a noun class vs. gender distinction. Given the complexity of the inflectional system, we look at Serbo-Croatian as a case study in case acquisition. We explore different correlations  available in the input that children could leverage to acquire the case system in Serbo-Croatian. We ask three main questions: 1) does a noun’s gender predict the noun’s nominative singular suffix? 2) does a noun’s nominative singular suffix predict the noun’s gender? and 3) does a noun’s noun class predict the noun’s gender? Specifically, we ask whether the language input provides children with sufficient evidence to form these three productive generalizations. To test this, we apply the Tolerance Principle (Yang, 2016) to a corpus of 270 inflected Serbian nouns. Within this set of data, we find that: 1) all nominative singular suffixes productively predict a gender; 2) all genders productively predict a nominative singular suffix (with the exception of the neuter gender which predicts two suffixes); and 3) two of the three noun classes predict a single gender. We conclude that the input provides sufficient evidence for these productive correlations and we argue that children can leverage these generalizations to infer the declension patterns or gender of novel nouns. We discuss how, given these findings, children could acquire most of the inflectional system by focusing on gender as a categorization system for nouns, without needing to posit abstract categories of noun class.

From case to topology

2021 ◽  
Vol 74 (2) ◽  
pp. 278-307
Author(s):  
Bjarne Simmelkjær Sandgaard Hansen
Keyword(s):  
Noun Phrase ◽  
Language Contact ◽  
Gender Agreement ◽  
Case System ◽  
Multiple Processes ◽  
Constituent Order ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Sign Relations ◽  
Indexical Sign ◽  
Internal Agreement

Abstract The Scanian dialect of Middle Danish underwent a range of changes and reductions in its case system. I argue that these changes were caused neither by phonological developments nor by language contact as often assumed, but by multiple processes of grammaticalisation. The present paper focuses on one of these factors: that the relatively predictable constituent order within the Middle Danish noun phrase made case marking redundant in its function of marking noun-phrase internal agreement between head and modifier(s). This redundancy caused the case system to undergo a regrammation where the indexical sign relations changed so that the expression of morphological case no longer indicated this noun-phrase-internal agreement, leaving only topology (as well as morphologically marked number and gender agreement) as markers of this type of agreement. This factor contributed to the subsequent degrammation of the entire case system.

scholarly journals Semantic and (morpho)syntactic constraints on anticausativization: Evidence from Latin and Old Norse-Icelandic

Linguistics ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 53 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Michela Cennamo ◽  
Thórhallur Eythórsson ◽  
Jóhanna Barðdal
Keyword(s):  
Present Article ◽  
Old Norse ◽  
Grammatical Relations ◽  
European Languages ◽  
Case System ◽  
Syntactic Constraints ◽  
Diachronic Development ◽  
Verbal Arguments

AbstractThe diachrony of valency patterns is generally an understudied phenomenon. The present article investigates anticausativization from a diachronic perspective, highlighting the parameters determining the morphosyntactic encoding of this type of intransitivization in two early Western Indo-European languages, Latin and Old Norse-Icelandic. It is shown that the structural and lexical aspects of a verb’s meaning and their interplay with the inherent and relational characteristics of verbal arguments affect the synchronic distribution and the diachronic development of the anticausativation strategies in the languages investigated. These features interact, in the course of time, with changes in the encoding of voice and grammatical relations, such as the demise of the synthetic mediopassive and the recasting of the case system.

scholarly journals Acquisition of Case System in Romani Language

2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 216-227
Author(s):  
Христо Кючуков
Keyword(s):  
Natural Environment ◽  
Indian Languages ◽  
Community Members ◽  
Indian Language ◽  
European Languages ◽  
Case System ◽  
Case Marker ◽  
Longitudinal Observation ◽  
Case Markers ◽  
The City

Introduction. The paper presents observations of the author on acquisition of case markers in the Romani language of two Roma children from Bulgaria. This is the first study ever done on acquisition of case system of Romani by children in their natural environment. The study is done in one of the biggest Roma settlement of Bulgaria in the city of Sofia. Romani being a new-Indian language has some features from the Indian languages but also adapted some features from some European languages. It has the ability to express one and the same idea either with a preposition or with a case marker. Methods. The author uses the longitudinal observation of the children in their natural environment, where a woman – representative of the community, was trained to audio record the interviews between parents, family members, community members and the children. This method is known from other studies in field of sociolinguistics and psycholinguistics (Labov, 1973) Results. The study is investigating what is used more frequently by the children - prepositions or case markers. For this purpose, the utterances of the parents and the children with case markers and with the prepositions have been analyzed. It was found that in the age between 1 to 2   parents and respectively their children use more case markers. In the age from 2 to 3 children use more prepositions. It seems that Roma children need more experience with the language in order to connect the case marker with the function of the preposition in the Romani language.

scholarly journals Normative social role concepts in early childhood

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily Foster-Hanson ◽  
Marjorie Rhodes
Keyword(s):  
Early Childhood ◽  
Social Role ◽  
Category Membership ◽  
Social Categories ◽  
Conceptual Representations ◽  
Continuity And Change ◽  
Age Related ◽  
Category Labels ◽  
Adults And Children ◽  
Dual Character

The current studies (N = 255, children ages 4-5 and adults) explore patterns of age-related continuity and change in conceptual representations of social role categories (e.g., “scientist”). In Study 1, young children’s judgments of category membership were shaped by both category labels and category-normative traits, and the two were dissociable, indicating that even young children’s conceptual representations for some social categories have a “dual character.” In Study 2, when labels and traits were contrasted, adults and children based their category-based induction decisions on category-normative traits rather than labels. Study 3 confirmed that children reason based on category-normative traits because they view them as an obligatory part of category membership. In contrast, adults in this study viewed the category normative-traits as informative on their own (not only as a cue to obligations). Implications for continuity and change in representations of social role categories will be discussed.

Fuzzy gender categories: How emotional expression influences typicality *The authors would like to thank Fieke Harinck for her help in conducting Study 3 and an anonymous reviewer for his helpful suggestions.

2001 ◽  
Vol 60 (3) ◽  
pp. 179-191 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luciano Arcuri ◽  
Luigi Castelli ◽  
Stefano Boca ◽  
Fabio Lorenzi-Cioldi ◽  
Anne-Claude Dafflon
Keyword(s):  
Emotional Expression ◽  
Category Membership ◽  
Emotional Expressions ◽  
Social Categories ◽  
Response Latencies ◽  
Gender Categorization ◽  
Gender Categories

Social categories are conceived of as broad classes in which some instances are better exemplars than others, and non-necessary features are assumed to modulate typicality. This research investigated how various emotional expressions impact on gender categorization. Two concurrent measures - response latencies and prototypicality judgments - were collected and compared in three experiments. The results showed that emotional expressions of any kind are highly relevant in modulating females' category membership, while they are of less relevance in making a male more or less prototypical. These findings provide new insights into the relation between gender and emotional expressions.

Gender Assignment and Agreement in L2 Spanish: The Effects of Morphological Marking, Animacy, and Gender

2010 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Irma V. Alarcón
Keyword(s):  
Production Task ◽  
Gender Agreement ◽  
Gender Assignment ◽  
Correct Assignment ◽  
Meaningful Context ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
Noun Class ◽  
L2 Spanish ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractThis study investigates the relationship between second language (L2) Spanish gender assignment and agreement and specific noun categories by distinguishing the effects of noun morphology (overt, non-overt, or deceptive), noun class (semantic or non-semantic), and gender (masculine or feminine). Specifically, assuming the correct acquisition of gender assignment, how do noun morphology, class and gender affect correct gender agreement when using the same type of noun? One hundred and seven English-speaking learners of Spanish at three proficiency levels completed an assignment and agreement written production task, in which they were first asked the gender of a noun (assignment), and then to provide an agreeing adjective in a meaningful context (agreement). Results showed that the probability of producing correct agreement given correct assignment was significantly higher with semantic than with non-semantic nouns, with overt rather than non-overt and/or deceptive nouns, and with masculine rather than feminine nouns. The discussion provides insights concerning how animacy (semantic gender) overrides morphology when establishing correct gender agreement in L2 Spanish.

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