Adjacency and Case Morphology in Scottish Gaelic

2020 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. 521-552
Author(s):  
Jason Ostrove
Keyword(s):  
Scottish Gaelic ◽  
Case Assignment ◽  
Case Morphology

Legate (2008) proposes that the postsyntactic component of the grammar plays an important role in morphological case phenomena. Therefore, it is predicted that postsyntactic processes like Linearization may affect morphological case assignment. I argue that this prediction is correct by demonstrating that prepositional case in Scottish Gaelic is assigned solely under linear adjacency with P. To account for this, I propose that Morphological Case Assignment is a postsyntactic process derivationally ordered after Linearization, as in Arregi and Nevins 2012 . This accounts for several typologically rare properties, such as the presence of closest conjunct case.

scholarly journals Language is land, land is language: The importance of Indigenous languages

2021 ◽  
pp. 194277862110228
Author(s):  
Susan Chiblow ◽  
Paul J. Meighan
Keyword(s):  
Traditional Ecological Knowledge ◽  
Lived Experiences ◽  
Language Immersion ◽  
Indigenous Languages ◽  
Indigenous Language ◽  
Ecological Knowledge ◽  
Scottish Gaelic ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Ojibwe Language ◽  
Humanitarian Crises

This collaborative opinion piece, written from the authors’ personal perspectives (Anishinaabe and Gàidheal) on Anishinaabemowin (Ojibwe language) and Gàidhlig (Scottish Gaelic language), discusses the importance of maintaining and revitalizing Indigenous languages, particularly in these times of climate and humanitarian crises. The authors will give their personal responses, rooted in lived experiences, on five areas they have identified as a starting point for their discussion: (1) why Indigenous languages are important; (2) the effects of colonization on Indigenous languages; (3) the connections/responsibilities to the land, such as Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK), embedded in Indigenous languages; (4) the importance of land-based learning and education, full language immersion, and the challenges associated with implementing these strategies for Indigenous language maintenance and revitalization; and (5) where we can go from here.

scholarly journals N-effects are not-P-effects

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Madeline Bossi
Keyword(s):  
Similar Pattern ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Scottish Gaelic ◽  
Negative Appraisal

AbstractThis paper analyzes pronominal competition and its pragmatic consequences in Scottish Gaelic (Celtic). In cases of competition cross-linguistically, use of a particular pronoun can trigger pragmatic effects like negative appraisal (N-effects). Although Scottish Gaelic exhibits a superficially similar pattern of competition and negative appraisal, I show that existing accounts based on referential potential (Sichel and Wiltschko 2020) and structure (Patel-Grosz and Grosz 2017) are unable to capture the Scottish Gaelic pattern. Instead, I argue that negative appraisal in Scottish Gaelic stems from the absence of positive appraisal, signaled via use of exempt anaphors. Following Charnavel (2020), I propose that exempt anaphors are anteceded by a null prolog introduced by a logophoric operator, which requires its complement to be evaluated from the perspective of prolog’s antecedent. By using an exempt anaphor, a speaker adopts the perspective of the pronoun’s referent, indicating positive appraisal since they are willing to take the referent’s point of view. Yet when a speaker chooses not to use an exempt anaphor, they refuse to make this perspective shift, which translates as negative appraisal. Apparent N-effects in Scottish Gaelic are, then, better characterized as not-P-effects.

scholarly journals The aerodynamic puzzle of nasalized fricatives: Aerodynamic and perceptual evidence from Scottish Gaelic

2015 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Natasha Warner ◽  
Daniel Brenner ◽  
Jessamyn Schertz ◽  
Andrew Carnie ◽  
Muriel Fisher ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Scottish Gaelic ◽  
Trade Off ◽  
Instrumental Data ◽  
The World ◽  
Perceptual Evidence ◽  
Better Than ◽  
Do So

AbstractScottish Gaelic is sometimes described as having nasalized fricatives (/ṽ/ distinctively, and [f̃, x̃, h̃], etc. through assimilation). However, there are claims that it is not aerodynamically possible to open the velum for nasalization while maintaining frication noise. We present aerodynamic data from 14 native Scottish Gaelic speakers to determine how the posited nasalized fricatives in this language are realized. Most tokens demonstrate loss of nasalization, but nasalization does occur in some contexts without aerodynamic conflict, e.g., nasalization with the consonant realized as an approximant, nasalization of [h̃], nasalization on the preceding vowel, or sequential frication and nasalization. Furthermore, a very few tokens do contain simultaneous nasalization and frication with a trade-off in airflow. We also present perceptual evidence showing that Gaelic listeners can hear this distinction slightly better than chance. Thus, instrumental data from one of the few languages in the world described as having nasalized fricatives confirms that the claimed sounds are not made by producing strong nasalization concurrently with clear frication noise. Furthermore, although speakers most often neutralize the nasalization, when they maintain it, they do so through a variety of phonetic mechanisms, even within a single language.

scholarly journals Language Legislation and Policy in the uk and Ireland: Different Aspects of Territoriality in a ‘Celtic’ Context

2016 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 454-484 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Dunbar
Keyword(s):  
United Kingdom ◽  
Language Policy ◽  
Indigenous Languages ◽  
Scottish Gaelic ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Language Legislation ◽  
The Uk

In spite of the long-term dominance in Britain and Ireland of English, other indigenous languages continue to be spoken, and in relatively recent years several of those languages have benefited not only from a more coherent and supportive language policy but also from significant language legislation. One of the interesting features of these other indigenous languages is that, although strongly associated with rural ‘heartlands’ in the particular jurisdictions with which they are associated, they are also spoken in other parts of those jurisdictions, and, indeed, in other parts of the United Kingdom and Ireland. In this article, the ways in which the concept of territoriality has impacted upon legislation and on broader policy for two of these languages, Irish and Scottish Gaelic, will be considered.

Case morphology and word order in second language Turkish: Evidence from Greek learners

2011 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 173-204 ◽  
Author(s):  
Despina Papadopoulou ◽  
Spyridoula Varlokosta ◽  
Vassilios Spyropoulos ◽  
Hasan Kaili ◽  
Sophia Prokou ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Word Order ◽  
Second Language Learners ◽  
First Language ◽  
Matching Task ◽  
L2 Acquisition ◽  
Case Morphology ◽  
L2 Development ◽  
Order Constraints ◽  
On Line

The optional use of morphology attested in second language learners has been attributed either to a representational deficit or to a ‘surface’ problem with respect to the realization of inflectional affixes. In this article we contribute to this issue by providing empirical data from the early interlanguage of Greek learners of Turkish. Three experiments have been conducted, a cloze task, a sentence picture matching task and an on-line grammaticality judgement task, in order to investigate case morphology and its interaction with word order constraints. The findings of all three experiments point towards a variable use of case morphology, which is also observed in previous studies of Turkish as a second language (L2). Moreover, they show clearly that the learners face difficulties with non-canonical word orders as well as with the interaction of word order constraints and Case. On the other hand, the learners performed well on verbal inflections. On the basis of these findings, we argue that the developmental patterns in the early stages of L2 acquisition cannot be attributed to a global lack of functional categories but rather to more localized difficulties, which seem to be related to (a) whether the features in the L2 are grammaticalized in the first language and (b) the way these features are encoded in the morphosyntax of the first language. Moreover, we claim that processing factors and the specific properties of the morphological paradigms affect L2 development.

Long distance Case assignment and intervention

Lingua ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 148 ◽  
pp. 309-336
Author(s):  
Pauli Brattico
Keyword(s):  
Long Distance ◽  
Case Assignment

The role of case in A-bar extraction asymmetries

2014 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 179-242 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessica Coon ◽  
Pedro Mateo Pedro ◽  
Omer Preminger
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Data ◽  
Case Assignment ◽  
Special Construction ◽  
Agent Focus ◽  
Family Based ◽  
Focus Questions

Many morphologically ergative languages display asymmetries in the extraction of core arguments: while absolutive arguments (transitive objects and intransitive subjects) extract freely, ergative arguments (transitive subjects) cannot. This falls under the label “syntactic ergativity” (see, e.g. Dixon 1972, 1994; Manning 1996; Polinsky to appear(b)). These extraction asymmetries are found in many languages of the Mayan family, where in order to extract transitive subjects (for focus, questions, or relativization), a special construction known as the “Agent Focus” (AF) must be used. These AF constructions have been described as syntactically and semantically transitive because they contain two non-oblique DP arguments, but morphologically intransitive because the verb appears with only a single agreement marker and takes an intransitive status suffix (Aissen 1999; Stiebels 2006). In this paper we offer a proposal for (i) why some morphologically ergative languages exhibit extraction asymmetries, while others do not; and (ii) how the AF construction in Q’anjob’al circumvents this problem. We adopt recent accounts which argue that ergative languages vary in the locus of absolutive case assignment (Aldridge 2004, 2008a; Legate 2002, 2008), and propose that this variation is present within the Mayan family. Based primarily on comparative data from Q’anjob’al and Chol, we argue that the inability to extract ergative arguments does not reflect a problem with properties of the ergative subject itself, but rather reflects locality properties of absolutive case assignment in the clause. We show how the AF morpheme -on circumvents this problem in Q’anjob’al by assigning case to internal arguments.

Lardil “Case Stacking” and the Timing of Case Assignment

Syntax ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 42-76 ◽  
Author(s):  
Norvin Richards
Keyword(s):  
Case Assignment

scholarly journals Typological Shift in Bilinguals’ L1: Word Order and Case Marking in Two Varieties of Child Quechua

Languages ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan E. Kalt ◽  
Jonathan A. Geary
Keyword(s):  
Children And Adolescents ◽  
Speech Production ◽  
Word Order ◽  
Noun Phrases ◽  
Case Marking ◽  
New Information ◽  
Sentence Level ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Case Morphology ◽  
Grammatical Roles

We compare speech production and find morphosyntactic change among children and adolescents speaking two closely related varieties of Quechua in Cuzco, Peru, and Chuquisaca, Bolivia. Quechua languages traditionally employ Object-Verb (OV) word order in main clauses, but robust case marking permits other orders, especially to focalize new information through constituent fronting. In Chuquisaca, but not Cuzco, we find that schoolchildren often omit the accusative suffix -ta from direct objects while retaining a prosodic trace of -ta. In other varieties, loss of accusative marking is associated with a shift towards Verb-Object (VO) word order, as in Spanish. However, we find that Chuquisaqueños use more canonical OV and possessor-possessed order in declarative sentences than do Cuzqueños, who employ a wide range of word orders at the sentence level and deviate from the possessor-possessed norm for Quechua noun phrases. Our finding of more rigid word order in Chuquisaca highlights the complex factors contributing to typological shift in word order and morphology: Omission of case morphology places a greater burden on word order to identify grammatical roles. Further, we find that Chuquisaqueño schoolchildren alone have begun to use huk, “one,” to mark indefiniteness, perhaps to replace determiner-like functions ascribed to -ta and to obsolescent markers such as evidentials.

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