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.

Latvian agent nouns: their meaning, grammar, and use

2013 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 79-131
Author(s):  
Nicole Nau
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Ad Hoc ◽  
Morphological Process ◽  
European Languages ◽  
Concept Building ◽  
Referential Function ◽  
Colloquial Style ◽  
Verbal Arguments

This article explores semantic and grammatical properties of Latvian agent nouns that are derived from verbs by the suffix -ēj- (for primary verbs) or -tāj- (for secondary verbs). These formations show several peculiarities that distinguish them from agent nouns in other European languages and from similar Latvian nouns formed by other means. They are specialized in meaning, highly regular and transparent. They show verbal features such as aspectuality and combinability with adverbs, and they may inherit verbal arguments. The productivity of the formation is almost unlimited, and many ad hoc formations are found in colloquial style, for example in social media. In discourse, agent nouns often have a referential function, either as the only function or in combination with a concept-building function. The focus of the article is on less institutionalized tokens which show the potential of this morphological process that challenges traditional views about the functions of derivation or its delimitation.

scholarly journals The development of Germanic analytical tenses

2020 ◽  
pp. 135-154
Author(s):  
Andriy Botsman ◽  
Olga Dmytruk ◽  
Tamara Kozlovska
Keyword(s):  
Language Development ◽  
Present Article ◽  
Research Method ◽  
Future Tense ◽  
Historical Method ◽  
European Languages ◽  
Verb Forms ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Present Tense ◽  
Germanic Languages

The stages that encompass the future tense development are singled out as discrete phenomena within the process of the Germanic language development. The Gothic verb system can serve as the background for the investigation of the tense transformations in question. The difficulties of tense examination in the Old Germanic languages were connected with some conceptions about the Indo-Iranian and Greek languages that used to dominate in the scientific circles for a long time. Those conceptions were based on Latin and Greek patterns and postulated the use of present, past and future tenses in all Indo-European languages. The above conceptions were ruined when the study of Tokharian and Hittite demonstrated the use of the present tense for the description of future actions. The idea of losing “the protolanguage inheritance” was proved wrong, and it was incorrect to transfer the complex tense system of Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin to other Proto-Indo-European languages. The examination of the tense differentiation in Gothic (as the main source of the Old Germanic language) demonstrates that the Gothic infinitive functioned as a no-particular-time unit, while personal verb forms were involved in performing tense functions. The Gothic present tense verbs represented present and future tenses and no-particular-time phenomena. Some periphrastic forms containing preterite-present verbs with the infinitive occurred sporadically. The periphrastic forms correlated with Greek and Latin patterns of the same future tense meaning. The periphrastic future forms in Gothic often contained some modal shades of meaning. The Gothic present tense functioned as a colony-forming archi-unit and a pluripotential (temporal) precursor. The periphrastic Gothic future forms are recognised as a monopotential (temporal) precursor with some modal meaning. The key research method used in the present article is the comparative historical method. The authors viewed it as the most reliable and appropriate for the study of tense forms.

scholarly journals Decoding Middle Welsh clauses or “Avoid Ambiguity”

2014 ◽  
Vol 119 (1) ◽  
pp. 125-148
Author(s):  
Axel Harlos ◽  
Erich Poppe ◽  
Paul Widmer
Keyword(s):  
Present Article ◽  
Word Order ◽  
Morphological Features ◽  
Syntactic Ambiguity ◽  
Verb Agreement ◽  
Lower Tier ◽  
Grammatical Relations ◽  
Narrative Context ◽  
Free Word

Abstract Middle Welsh is a language with a restricted set of morphosyntactic distinctions for grammatical relations and with relatively free word order in positive main declarative causes. However, syntactic ambiguity rarely, if ever, arises in natural texts. The present article shows in a corpus-based study how syntactic ambiguity is prevented and how morphological features interact with two referential properties, namely animacy and accessibility, in order to successfully identify grammatical relations in Middle Welsh. Further lower-tier factors are the semantics of the verb and the wider narrative context. The article complements recent insights suggesting that subject-verb agreement is not only determined by wordorder patterns, but also by referential properties of subjects.

Late Placement of the Finite Verb in Old Norse Fornyrðislag Meter

2012 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 233-269 ◽  
Author(s):  
Haukur Þorgeirsson
Keyword(s):  
Present Article ◽  
Word Order ◽  
Old Norse ◽  
West Germanic ◽  
Subordinate Clauses ◽  
Syntactic Difference ◽  
Finite Verb

In Old Norse poetry, there is a syntactic difference between bound clauses (subordinate clauses and main clauses introduced by a con-junction) and unbound clauses (main clauses not introduced by a conjunction). In bound clauses, the finite verb is often placed late in the sentence, violating the V2 requirement upheld in prose. In unbound clauses, the V2 requirement is normally adhered to, but in fornyrðislag poetry, late placement of the finite verb is occasionally found. Hans Kuhn explained these instances as a result of influence from West Germanic poetry. The present article argues that these instances can be explained as a remnant of the Proto-Norse word order, and that this explanation is better supported by the data.*

Why worser is better: The double comparative in 16th- to 17th-century English

2001 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 193-208 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julia Schlüter
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Present Article ◽  
17Th Century ◽  
Written Language ◽  
Corpus Studies ◽  
Early Modern English ◽  
Corpus Data ◽  
Diachronic Development

In Early Modern English, double comparatives were often encountered in both spoken and written language. The present article investigates the redundantly marked comparative worser in relation to its irregular, but etymologically justified, counterpart worse. My aim is to examine the diachronic development of the form as well as its distribution in the written language of the 16th and 17th centuries. Two detailed corpus studies are used to reveal the set of parameters underlying the variation between worse and worser, which include system congruity, semantics, and standardization effects. However, the focus here is on the tendency to maintain an alternation of stressed and unstressed syllables, known as the Principle of Rhythmic Alternation. This prosodic principle (which has been argued to be particularly influential in English) turns out to be responsible for most of the results obtained in the analysis of the corpus data.

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.

scholarly journals Non-Verbal Clauses with Demonstrative Identifiers in the History of Croatian

Fluminensia ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 85-101
Author(s):  
Ana Šimić
Keyword(s):  
Recent Literature ◽  
Slavic Languages ◽  
European Languages ◽  
The Status ◽  
History Of ◽  
Diachronic Study ◽  
Diachronic Development ◽  
The Universe ◽  
Universe Of Discourse ◽  
Main Change

The paper presents a corpus-based typological and diachronic study of nonverbal clauses with demonstrative identifiers in Croatian. As one of the four types of demonstratives proposed by H. Diessel, demonstrative identifiers occur in copular and non-verbal clauses. They are used to focus the hearer’s attention on entities in the surrounding situation or in the universe of discourse. The paper reviews the typologies of demonstratives discussed in recent literature with respect to the status of demonstrative identifiers. Furthermore, it investigates the history of non-verbal clauses with demonstrative identifiers in Croatian: 1. se človêkь 2. evo čovjeka DEM man-NOM.SG DEM man-GEN.SG ‘Here is the man!’ ‘Here is the man!’ The main change occurred in the case marking on the argument. In the first Croatian literary language, Croatian Church Slavonic (1), the argument appears in the nominative case. In contemporary Croatian (2), the demonstrative identifier is predominantly followed by a genitive argument. Apart from shedding some light on the diachronic development of non-verbal clauses with demonstrative identifiers and their constituents in Croatian, the paper shows how they differ from similar constructions in other Slavic languages, as well as in some major European languages. In addition, they are compared to other non-verbal constructions with genitive and nominative arguments in Croatian.

From obligation to future? A diachronic sketch of the syntax and the semantics of the auxiliary verb dang ???

2011 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. v-188 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara MEISTERERNST ◽  
Barbara MEISTERERNST
Keyword(s):  
Syntactic Constraints ◽  
Modal Values ◽  
Auxiliary Verb ◽  
Diachronic Development

In this paper the syntax and the semantics of the modal auxiliary verb dāng ??? and its diachronic development from a full verb into a modal auxiliary verb, and a future marker are at issue. It will be demonstrated that dang predominantly expresses the root modal values of obligation and necessity and that epistemic and future readings are subject to different syntactic constraints. Additionally, the data will show that although dang seems to exhibit typical features of grammaticalisation in its development from a full verb into a modal auxiliary verb and eventually into a future marker, its development differs considerably from the grammaticalisation processes proposed in the linguistic literature.

Grammatical Relations in Tariana

1994 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 201-217 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald
Keyword(s):  
Unusual Case ◽  
Personal Pronouns ◽  
Case Marking ◽  
Grammatical Relations ◽  
Case System ◽  
Case Marker

This article deals with the marking of grammatical relations in Tariana, North-Arawakan, and how this marking interrelates with topicality, definiteness and other discourse characteristics of nominal constituents. The following four case-marking systems are distinguished in Tariana: (i) a subject vs object case system, used with personal pronouns with animate reference; (ii) a case system characterized by an enclitic -nuku for marking topicalized and referential non-subjects, used with all types of nominal constituents; (iii) an ergative case-marking used with all types of nominal constituents under emphasis in A function, the ergative case marker being the same as instrumental; (iv) a system of peripheral cases – locative and instrumental, used with all types of nominal constituents, but obligatory only with pronouns. The overt case-marking in Tariana is related to such parameters as topicality, definiteness and emphasis, and consequently is dependent on the structure of discourse. I will argue that the unusual case-marking patterns in Tariana corroborate cross-linguistic generalizations on a dependency between case-marking and topical properties of NPs in languages with an opposition between marked and unmarked case forms.

An introduction to Caodaism I. Origins and early history

1970 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 335-349 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. B. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Present Article ◽  
Early History ◽  
Victor Hugo ◽  
Local Power ◽  
Modern History ◽  
Political Movement ◽  
Walt Disney ◽  
European Languages ◽  
Real Nature ◽  
History Of

Few phenomena in the modern history of Asia can have been so completely misunderstood by Westerners as the Vietnamese religious (and political) movement known in European languages as ‘Caodaism’. Based upon a syncretic approach to religion, in which a key role is played by spirit-séances, it has inevitably been regarded by Christian writers with the same suspicion (if not contempt) as occidental ‘spiritualism’; and this initial lack of sympathy is compounded by the fact that the spirits who have revealed themselves at Caodaist séances include such familiar figures as Victor Hugo and Jeanne d'Arc. Then there is the show-piece temple of the Caodaists at Tây-Ninh, which drew forth Mr. Graham Greene's description of ‘Christ and Buddha looking down from the roof of the Cathedral on a Walt Disney fantasia of the East, dragons and snakes in Technicolor’. This superficial notion of the religious element in Caodaism fitted in very well with the cynicism of political observers, notably Bernard Fall, who saw in Caodaism no more than a political movement anxious to preserve its private armies and local power, using its religious ideas merely to dupe a credulous peasantry. In these circumstances, it is perhaps not surprising that the real nature and origins of Caodaism have been lost from view, and even its history has never been adequately summarized in any Western language. The present article will attempt to fill the historical gap, by tracing the history of the religion from 1925 to 1936, and then looking at its origins and antecedents. A subsequent article (to appear in BSOAS, XXXIII, 3, 1970) will analyse the various beliefs which have been incorporated into this essentially syncretic cult.

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