Waja

2020 ◽  
pp. 506-520
Author(s):  
Ulrich Kleinewillinghöfer
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Head Noun ◽  
Vowel Harmony ◽  
Verbal Nouns ◽  
Basic Word ◽  
Phonological Features ◽  
Verb Forms ◽  
Genetic Unit ◽  
Noun Class ◽  
Basic Motion

Waja is spoken in Southern Gombe State, NE Nigeria. It is the largest language of the Tula-Waja group. Waja is one of the few “Adamawa” noun class languages and also one of the key languages validating the notion of an “Adamawa-Gur” genetic unit. In Waja, noun class markers are suffixed to the nouns, while the basic pattern of concord marking is bilateral affixation/cliticization. Verbs have three basic forms: two contrasting aspectual verb forms, “definite” and “indefinite”, and verbal nouns. Productive verb extensions are pluractional, altrilocal-ventive, passive/intransitive, applicative, directional, and benefactive. Basic motion and posture verbs form their own verb class, and they require copy pronouns. The basic word order in clauses is SVO; the head noun generally precedes modifiers. Notable phonological features of Waja are ATR vowel harmony with twelve phonetic and nine phonemic vowels, and prenasalized and labialized stops.

Turkish and the Southwestern Turkic (Oghuz) languages

2020 ◽  
pp. 392-410
Author(s):  
Jaklin Kornfilt
Keyword(s):  
Structural Properties ◽  
Word Order ◽  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Vowel Harmony ◽  
Modern Greek ◽  
Basic Word ◽  
Embedded Clauses ◽  
Modern Standard

The Southwestern (Oghuz) branch of Turkic consists of languages that are largely mutually intelligible, and are similar with respect to their structural properties. Because Turkish is the most prominent member of this branch with respect to number of speakers, and because it is the best-studied language in this group, this chapter describes modern standard Turkish as the representative of that branch and limits itself to describing Turkish. The morphology of Oghuz languages is agglutinative and suffixing; their phonology has vowel harmony for the features of backness and rounding; their basic word order is SOV, but most are quite free in their word order and are wh-in-situ languages; their relative clauses exhibit gaps corresponding to the clause-external head, and most embedded clauses are nominalized. Fully verbal embedded clauses are found, too. The lexicon, while largely Turkic, also has borrowings from Arabic, Persian, French, English, and Modern Greek and Italian.

Khalkha Mongolian

2020 ◽  
pp. 334-349
Author(s):  
Jan-Olof Svantesson
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Central Place ◽  
Vowel Harmony ◽  
Inflectional Morphology ◽  
Writing System ◽  
Syntactic Structures ◽  
Word Structure ◽  
Case Marking ◽  
Verb Forms ◽  
Segmental Phonology

This chapter gives an introduction to the basic structures of Khalkha Mongolian, most of which are similar to those of Mongolian proper in general. Segmental phonology (vowels and consonants) and word structure are analyzed. Major changes from earlier stages of the language are described briefly, as is the writing system, based on the Cyrillic alphabet. Vowel harmony, based on pharyngeality (ATR) and rounding, has several interesting properties, including the opacity of high rounded vowels to rounding harmony. There is a rich derivational and inflectional morphology based on suffixes. Basic syntactic structures, including word order and case marking of arguments in simple and complex clauses, are described, as are the functions of different verb forms (finite verbs, converbs, and participles). The description emphasizes the central place of Mongolian proper in the typology of the Transeurasian languages.

scholarly journals Temne

2010 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 247-253 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sullay M. Kanu ◽  
Benjamin V. Tucker
Keyword(s):  
Sierra Leone ◽  
Word Order ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
South Atlantic ◽  
Semantic Structure ◽  
Class Membership ◽  
Class System ◽  
Basic Word ◽  
Southern Branch ◽  
Noun Class

Temne belongs to the South Atlantic Group of Niger-Congo (formerly the Southern Branch of the Atlantic Group of Niger-Congo; Blench 2006, Childs 2010) spoken in the northern part of Sierra Leone. According to Ethnologue (ISO 639–3: tem, Lewis 2009), Temne has a population of about 1.2 million native speakers. Like other South Atlantic languages, Temne is a tonal language with a noun class system, prefixed noun class markers and agreeing prefixes on dependent elements. Features determining class membership include number and animacy. Temne also features extension suffixes which alter the valency or the semantic structure of simple verb stems. The basic word order is Subject–Verb–Object.

scholarly journals Avatime noun classes and concord

1995 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 123-150
Author(s):  
Russell G. Schuh
Keyword(s):  
Head Noun ◽  
Vowel Harmony ◽  
Active Systems ◽  
Bantu Languages ◽  
Noun Classes ◽  
Per Se ◽  
Noun Class ◽  
Low Tone

Avatime is one of 14 "Central-Togo" (or "Togo Remnant") languages, spoken in Ghana, Togo, and Benin. These languages differ from their nearest Kwa group relatives in that they have active systems of noun classes and concord. Avatime has 13 noun classes, each with a distinct nominal prefix. Prefixes (as well as most other affixes) agree in [ATR] vowel harmony with the host noun root. Some classes impose invariable low tone on the prefix while prefix tone of other classes may be any of three lexically determined tones. Definiteness is marked by a set of suffixes. The ultimate segmental shapes and tones of these suffixes depend on the interaction of the respective class prefix shapes and coalescence phenomena with stem final vowels. There are correlations between noun class and nominal semantics, and nominal derivation is done in part through class choice. A number of attributive modifiers show class concord with the head noun. In the variety of Avatime studied here, such concord is only though vocalic prefixes on attributive modifiers, not by full CV prefixes as is typical of Bantu languages. Some attributives also have "tonal concord", which is not class concord per se, but refers to the tone of the head noun's prefix. Not all attributive modifiers have overt concord marking.

scholarly journals A typological overview of Eegimaa (Jóola Banjal)

2019 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-53
Author(s):  
Serge Sagna
Keyword(s):  
Vowel Harmony ◽  
Semantic Categorization ◽  
Class System ◽  
Phonological Features ◽  
Shape Encoding ◽  
Noun Class ◽  
Plural Marking ◽  
Linguistic Means

This paper presents some of the most prominent properties of Eegimaa, a Jóola/Diola2 language spoken in the Basse-Casamance (Southern Senegal). The phonological features examined include [ATR] vowel harmony, backness harmony, lenition, and Eegimaa’s typologically unusual geminate consonants. Most of the paper, however, focuses on Eegimaa morphology. My analysis of the noun class system separates morphological classes from agreement classes (genders), and presents the most important principles of semantic categorization, including shape encoding. I also show that Eegimaa classifies nouns and verbs by the same overt linguistic means, namely, noun class prefixes. I argue that this overt classification of nouns and verbs reflects parallel semantic categorization of entities and events. Other prominent typological features include associative plural marking and nominal TAM marking with the inactualis suffix, which also expresses alienability contrasts.

Clause Structure and Word Order in the History of German

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Left Periphery ◽  
Structural Factors ◽  
Clause Structure ◽  
Verb Second ◽  
Verb Forms ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Research ◽  
The Right ◽  
Theoretical Analyses

Over roughly the last decade, there has been a notable rise in new research on historical German syntax in a generative perspective. This volume presents a state-of-the-art survey of this thriving new line of research by leading scholars in the field, combining it with new insights into the syntax of historical German. It is the first comprehensive and concise generative historical syntax of German covering numerous central aspects of clause structure and word order, tracing them throughout various historical stages. Each chapter combines a solid empirical basis and valid descriptive generalizations with reference also to the more traditional topological model of the German clause with a detailed discussion of theoretical analyses couched in the generative framework. The volume is divided into three parts according to the main parts of the clause: the left periphery dealing with verbal placement and the filling of the prefield (verb second, verb first, verb third orders) as well as adverbial connectives; the middle field including discussion of pronominal syntax, order of full NPs and the history of negation; and the right periphery with chapters on basic word order (OV/VO), prosodic and information-structural factors, and the verbal complex including the development of periphrastic verb forms and the phenomena of IPP (infinitivus pro participio) and ACI (accusativus cum infinitivo). This book thus provides a convenient overview of current research on the major issues concerning historical German clause structure both for scholars interested in more traditional description and for those interested in formal accounts of diachronic syntax.

The relative verb forms of Cuwabo (Bantu P34) as contextually oriented participles

Linguistics ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 463-491
Author(s):  
Rozenn Guérois ◽  
Denis Creissels
Keyword(s):  
Noun Phrase ◽  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Head Noun ◽  
Bantu Languages ◽  
Verb Forms ◽  
The Subject ◽  
North Western

AbstractCuwabo (Bantu P34, Mozambique) illustrates a relativization strategy, also attested in some North-Western and Central Bantu languages, whose most salient characteristics are that: (a) the initial agreement slot of the verb form does not express agreement with the subject (as in independent clauses), but agreement with the head noun; (b) the initial agreement slot of the verb form does not express agreement in person and number-gender (or class), but only in number-gender; (c) when a noun phrase other than the subject is relativized, the noun phrase encoded as the subject in the corresponding independent clause occurs in post-verbal position and does not control any agreement mechanism. In this article, we show that, in spite of the similarity between the relative verb forms of Cuwabo and the corresponding independent verb forms, and the impossibility of isolating a morphological element analyzable as a participial formative, the relative verb forms of Cuwabo are participles, with the following two particularities: they exhibit full contextual orientation, and they assign a specific grammatical role to the initial subject, whose encoding in relative clauses coincides neither with that of subjects of independent verb forms, nor with that of adnominal possessors.

Word Order Universals: Refinements and Clarifications

1988 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 209-230 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lyle Campbell ◽  
Vit Bubenik ◽  
Leslie Saxon
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Supplementary Data ◽  
Basic Word ◽  
Language Sample

Studies of word-order universals have had great impact in modern linguistics, thanks to Greenberg’s (1963) work and to Hawkins’s (1983) refinements. Greenberg’s conclusions were based on a sample of 30 languages “for more detailed information” and 142 languages “for certain limited cooccurrences of basic word order” (Hawkins 1983:xi; cf. Greenberg 1963:74–75). Hawkins expanded the 142 “to some 350 languages”, and for “between one-third and one-half of these supplementary data have been collected of the type that Greenberg listed in his 30-language sample” (Hawkins 1983:xi-xii). Hawkins proposed extensive revisions in Greenberg’s universals based on this expanded sample.

scholarly journals Cyclicity and Connectivity in Nez Perce Relative Clauses

2016 ◽  
Vol 47 (3) ◽  
pp. 427-470 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amy Rose Deal
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Relative Clause ◽  
Crucial Role ◽  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Head Noun ◽  
Intermediate Position ◽  
Nez Perce ◽  
The Core ◽  
New Evidence ◽  
Relative Pronouns

This article studies two aspects of movement in relative clauses, focusing on evidence from Nez Perce. First, I argue that relativization involves cyclic Ā-movement, even in monoclausal relatives: the relative operator moves to Spec,CP via an intermediate position in an Ā outer specifier of TP. The core arguments draw on word order, complementizer choice, and a pattern of case attraction for relative pronouns. Ā cyclicity of this type suggests that the TP sister of relative C constitutes a phase—a result whose implications extend to an ill-understood corner of the English that-trace effect. Second, I argue that Nez Perce relativization provides new evidence for an ambiguity thesis for relative clauses, according to which some but not all relatives are derived by head raising. The argument comes from connectivity and anticonnectivity in morphological case. A crucial role is played by a pattern of inverse case attraction, wherein the head noun surfaces in a case determined internal to the relative clause. These new data complement the range of existing arguments concerning head raising, which draw primarily on connectivity effects at the syntax-semantics interface.

Word Order and Agreement in Tagoi

2020 ◽  
Vol 51 (1) ◽  
pp. 161-174
Author(s):  
Suzan Alamin
Keyword(s):  
Noun Phrase ◽  
Word Order ◽  
Class System ◽  
Order Types ◽  
Sentence Level ◽  
Constituent Order ◽  
Noun Class ◽  
South Kordofan

Abstract This study provides a detailed description of word order types, agreement patterns and alternations found in Tagoi, a Kordofanian language traditionally spoken in South Kordofan. After a brief presentation of the language (section 1), the noun class system is introduced (section 2) and the word order and agreement patterns are examined at the noun phrase level (section 3). Section 4 gives information about the constituent order at clause and sentence level, while Section 5 summarizes the findings and conclusion of the paper. All in all, the paper aims at contributing to a better understanding of the grammar, structure and typological features of Tagoi.

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