Polysynthesis in Ainu

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Bugaeva
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Heavy Element ◽  
Second Person ◽  
Noun Incorporation ◽  
Subject And Object ◽  
Single Complex ◽  
General Object

Ainu is a typical polysynthetic language in that a single complex verb can express what takes a whole sentence in most other languages. A single verb form may include more than one heavy element: up to two applicative prefixes (out of three), two causative suffixes (out of five), two incorporated objects, one lexical prefix (out of two originating in nouns ‘head’ and ‘bottom’), one verbalizing suffix (originating in the verb ‘make’), as well as reciprocal, reflexive, and general object (=antipassive) prefixes and agreement affixes for the first/second person subject and object. The degree of combinability of voice markers and noun incorporation is spectacular. Nevertheless, it has been claimed that Ainu deviates from more typical polysynthetic languages in having less freedom of word order, interrogative phrases in situ, and unrestricted morphological causatives (Baker 1996). This chapter aims to distinguish what Ainu shares with other polysynthetic languages from what is unique.

Niuean

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Diane Massam
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Argument Structure ◽  
Word Formation ◽  
Left Periphery ◽  
Sentence Structure ◽  
Noun Incorporation ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
Theta Role ◽  
Predicate Argument Structure

This book presents a detailed descriptive and theoretical examination of predicate-argument structure in Niuean, a Polynesian language within the Oceanic branch of the Austronesian family, spoken mainly on the Pacific island of Niue and in New Zealand. Niuean has VSO word order and an ergative case-marking system, both of which raise questions for a subject-predicate view of sentence structure. Working within a broadly Minimalist framework, this volume develops an analysis in which syntactic arguments are not merged locally to their thematic sources, but instead are merged high, above an inverted extended predicate which serves syntactically as the Niuean verb, later undergoing movement into the left periphery of the clause. The thematically lowest argument merges as an absolutive inner subject, with higher arguments merging as applicatives. The proposal relates Niuean word order and ergativity to its isolating morphology, by equating the absence of inflection with the absence of IP in Niuean, which impacts many aspects of its grammar. As well as developing a novel analysis of clause and argument structure, word order, ergative case, and theta role assignment, the volume argues for an expanded understanding of subjecthood. Throughout the volume, many other topics are also treated, such as noun incorporation, word formation, the parallel internal structure of predicates and arguments, null arguments, displacement typology, the role of determiners, and the structure of the left periphery.

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.

Obligatory Overt Wh-Movement in a Wh-in-Situ Language

2003 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 127-142 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Simpson ◽  
Tanmoy Bhattacharya
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Simple Explanation ◽  
Complement Clauses

Bangla has commonly been assumed to be an SOV wh-in-situ language. Here it is suggested that both of these characterizations are incorrect and that Bangla actually has obligatory overt wh-movement from a basic SVO word order. This is disguised by a conspiracy of factors but revealed in restrictions on wh-scope and certain apparently optional word order possibilities with complement clauses. Adopting a different perspective on the SOV status of Bangla allows for a simple explanation of the patterns observed and raises the possibility that other “wh-in-situ” languages may also have (obligatory) overt wh-movement.

The zoom-on-possessee construction in Kam (Dong): the anatomy of a new construction type

2005 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 307-352 ◽  
Author(s):  
MATTHIAS GERNER
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Body Part ◽  
Guizhou Province ◽  
General Definition ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
Noun Incorporation ◽  
New Construction ◽  
Construction Type ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Asian Languages

Kam, a Kadai language spoken in Guizhou province (People's Republic of China), has a family of intransitive possessive constructions with the word order ‘Possessor–Verb–Possessee’. (The basic word order in Kam is SV and AVO.) While two recent papers have featured this unique construction type for an array of other Southeast Asian languages, they fail to acknowledge its distinct semantic value in contrast to the related construction type ‘Possessee–Possessor–Verb’. The former construction type displays a so-called ‘zoom-effect’: the possessor is predicated IN, AT or THROUGH his/her/its possessee; the predication zooms from the possessor on his/her/its possessee. The latter construction, in contrast, views the possessee as an entity separated from its possessor, and the predicate as applying solely to the possessee. After illustrating the ‘zoom-effect’ for a representative sample of Kam constructions, I demonstrate that ‘zoom-effects’ do not merely exist when the possessee–possessor compound has the zero-role (=intransitive subject) as above, but also when it assumes other semantic roles (e.g. patient, force, etc.). A general definition of this construction type, called ‘zoom-on-possessee construction’, is proposed; it enables us to unify and account for an array of hitherto disparate construction types that run in the literature under labels such as ‘proprioceptive state expressions’, ‘body part locative constructions’, ‘dative of affect’, etc. Furthermore, I discuss in some detail whether zoom-on-possessee constructions are better accounted for within a multi-stratal or a mono-stratal framework and, finally, whether the concept of noun-incorporation has any relevance.

TESTING THE FUNDAMENTAL DIFFERENCE HYPOTHESIS

2009 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 323-361 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hyang Suk Song ◽  
Bonnie D. Schwartz
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
First Language ◽  
Judgment Task ◽  
Fundamental Difference ◽  
Korean Children ◽  
Polarity Items ◽  
English Child ◽  
L2 Learners ◽  
L1 English

The fundamental difference hypothesis (FDH; Bley-Vroman, 1989, 1990) contends that the nature of language in natives is fundamentally different from the nature of language in adult nonnatives. This study tests the FDH in two ways: (a) via second language (L2) poverty-of-the-stimulus (POS) problems (e.g., Schwartz & Sprouse, 2000) and (b) via a comparison between adult and child L2 learners, whose first language (L1) is the same, in terms of their developmental route (e.g., Schwartz, 1992, 2003). The phenomena under investigation are Korean wh-constructions with negative polarity items (NPIs). Korean has subject (S)-object (O)-verb (V) as its canonical word order and it is also a wh-in-situ language, but scrambling of the object to presubject position (i.e., movement that results in OSV word order) is generally optional; however, in the context of negative questions with a NPI subject (e.g., amwuto “anyone”), (a) object wh-phrases must scramble on the wh-question reading and (b) the nonscrambled order has a yes/no-question reading. These properties of Korean wh-constructions with NPIs constitute POS problems for nonnatives whose L1 is English (as well as for native Korean-acquiring children). L1-English adult L2 learners (n = 15) and L1-English child L2 learners (n = 10), independently assessed for Korean proficiency, as well as L1-Korean children (n = 23) and L1-Korean adults (n = 15) completed an elicited-production task, an acceptability-judgment task, and an interpretation-verification task. The results show that (a) high-proficiency (adult and child) L2 learners performed like the native adult controls on all three tasks, thereby demonstrating L2 POS effects; and (b) adult and child L2 learners follow the same (inferred) route to convergence, a route differing from—yet subsuming—the L1-child route. Both sets of results lead us to conclude that, contra the FDH, the nature of language is fundamentally similar in natives and (adult or child) nonnatives.

Changing EPP parameters

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lieven Danckaert
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Clause Structure ◽  
Verb Movement ◽  
Modal Verbs ◽  
The Core ◽  
History Of ◽  
Parametric Change ◽  
T Domain ◽  
The Way

This chapter starts with a description of the core facts concerning the VPAux/AuxVP alternation in the history of Latin. In the case of modal verbs and infinitives, there is a clear decline of the head-final order VPAux, whereas Late Latin BE-periphrases surprisingly prefer this order. Against the backdrop of these observations, the discussion then turns to the analysis of Classical and Late Latin clause structure. It is proposed that during the transition from Classical to Late Latin, a major parametric change took place related to the way the clausal EPP-requirement is satisfied. In the earlier grammar (‘Grammar A’), the entire VP undergoes A-movement to the high T-domain, resulting in the characteristic VPAux word order. In the later grammar (‘Grammar B’) the EPP-requirement is met by means of verb movement, with the VP staying in situ. In this grammar VPAux-orders are derived through roll-up movement, which is incompatible with the VOAux-pattern.

The Syntax of Arabic From A Generative Perspective

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elabbas Benmamoun ◽  
Lina Choueiri
Keyword(s):  
Noun Phrase ◽  
Word Order ◽  
Phrase Structure ◽  
Generative Linguistics ◽  
Subject Agreement ◽  
Linguistic Categories

Research on Arabic varieties within modern syntactic approaches has tracked the debates that have preoccupied the field of generative linguistics in its different incarnations throughout the last six decades. The debates centered on the nature of linguistic categories, syntactic configurations and their constituents, syntactic alternations and processes that alter the order of constituents, and dependencies between members of the syntactic representations. This article considers the main issues within Arabic syntax and the influential approaches that have been advanced. It focuses on debates surrounding phrase structure and word order, the syntax of the noun phrase, subjects and subject agreement, negation, long A’-dependencies, and wh-in situ constructions.

scholarly journals Actual and apparent change in Brazilian Portuguese wh-interrogatives

2019 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 165-191
Author(s):  
Malte Rosemeyer
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Brazilian Portuguese ◽  
Functional Change ◽  
Ex Situ ◽  
Frequency Increase ◽  
Usage Frequency ◽  
Replacement Process ◽  
Actual Change ◽  
Frequency Changes

ABSTRACTPrevious studies on the diachrony of wh-interrogation in Brazilian Portuguese have observed a replacement process of ex-situ-wh interrogatives by cleft-wh and in-situ-wh interrogatives in the twentieth century. The present study analyzes almost 19,000 wh-interrogatives from a corpus of theater plays dated between 1800 and 2016, demonstrating that not all of these frequency changes constitute actual change. The increase in the usage frequency of several types of wh-interrogatives is partially or entirely due to changes in the degree of orality of theater plays, or changes in word order. Moreover, only some of these changes can be characterized as changes from below, that is, changes in which high-orality texts are affected by the frequency increase first. This notion is also relevant for functional change in wh-interrogatives. Over time, the use of cleft-wh and in-situ-wh interrogatives spread from contexts in which the proposition is highly accessible to low-accessibility contexts. For cleft-wh, this change is moderated by orality, again indicating change from below.

scholarly journals The Derivation of Wh-Questions in Najrani Arabic

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (5) ◽  
pp. 181
Author(s):  
Saud A. Mushait
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Nominative Case ◽  
Case Assignment ◽  
Accusative Case ◽  
Phase Approach ◽  
Wh Questions ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Edge Feature

The study explores the derivation of wh-questions in Najrani Arabic and attempts to answer the following questions: (i) Can wh-questions in Najrani Arabic be derived in VSO or SVO or both?, and (ii) How can Najrani Arabic wh-questions be accounted for within Chomsky’s (2001,2005, 2013,2015 ) Phase approach? The objective of the study is to present a unified analysis of the derivation of wh-questions in Najrani Arabic and show the interaction between Najrani Arabic data and Chomsky’s Phase framework. It has been shown that Najrani Arabic allows the derivation of wh-questions from the argument and non-argument positions in VSO word order. Given this, we assume that VSO is the unmarked order for the derivation of wh-questions in Najrani Arabic. In VSO, the subject DP does not raise to Spec-TP because the head T does not have the EPP feature: the latter attracts movement of the former. The verb raises to the head T of TP, while the subject DP remains in-situ in Spec-vP. Moreover, in Najrani Arabic intransitive structures, the phase vP does not have a specifier because it does not have an external thematic argument whereas in transitive constructions the vP has. Concerning case assignment, the phase vP merges with an abstract tense af (fix) on the head T, which agrees with and assigns invisible nominative case to the subject wh-word man ‘who’. We assume that the phase head C is the probe and has the Edge feature which attracts the raising of the subject wh-phrase to Spec-CP. Besides, we argue that the light transitive head v has an Edged feature which attracts the raising of the object wh-phrase aish ‘what’ to be the second (outer) specifier of vP. Being the phase head, the v probes for a local goal and finds the object wh-phrase aish; the v agrees with and assigns accusative case to the object wh-phrase aish. As the TP merges with a null interrogative head C, the phase head C has an Edge feature that attracts the raising of the object wh-word aish to Spec-CP for feature valuation. Following this, the null copies of the moved entities left after movement receive a null spellout in the phonological level and, hence, cannot be accessed for any further operation.

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