Proper names and case markers in Sinyar (Chad/Sudan)

2019 ◽  
Vol 72 (4) ◽  
pp. 467-503
Author(s):  
Pascal Boyeldieu
Keyword(s):  
Proper Names ◽  
Semantic Content ◽  
The Other ◽  
Personal Pronouns ◽  
Case Marking ◽  
Case Marker ◽  
Case Markers

Abstract Sinyar, an alleged Central Sudanic language of Western Darfur, is characterized by two distinct and complementary case marker (sub)systems, the distribution of which provides a morphosyntactic justification of the distinction between common nouns and proper names. The paper considers the two case marking types as well as the semantic content of the category of names. It further presents and tries to explain the behavior of several nouns that may also be marked as names. It finally reviews two types of units that show formal affinities with the marking of names, namely absolute locative nouns on one side, and demonstratives and personal pronouns on the other side.

How the accusative became the relative

2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 72-92
Author(s):  
Michael Fortescue
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
First Person ◽  
Firm Conclusion ◽  
Genetic Link ◽  
Accusative Case ◽  
Case Marking ◽  
Case Marker ◽  
Relative Case

Abstract The Eskimo-Uralic hypothesis of a genetic link between Eskimo-Aleut and the Uralic languages is now reaching its second centenary. Two major problems with its advancement since Bergsland’s (1959) summary of its status are addressed in this article. The first of these is the lack of an obvious correlate of the ubiquitous Eskimo-Aleut (EA) relative case marker -m in Uralic; the other is the lack of an m-initial first person singular morpheme in EA to correlate with that of the Uralic languages. That the EA singular genitive/relative marker -m — as well as the instrumental/accusative singular -mək based on it — might be cognate with Uralic singular accusative -m was suggested already by Sauvageot (1953), but no firm conclusion on the matter has since been reached. This has remained a tantalizing possibility, despite the conflicting semantics. However, the remarkable morphosyntactic parallels between Eskimo-Aleut and Samoyedic in particular have grown more apparent with recent publications. A solution is proposed, linking the emergence of ergativity in the Eskimo-Aleut family with a reanalysis of the original nominative-accusative case marking system.

scholarly journals Ellipsis of case-markers and information structure in Japanese

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yo Sato ◽  
Wai Lok Tam
Keyword(s):  
Information Structure ◽  
Argument Position ◽  
Case Marking ◽  
Case Marker ◽  
Case Markers

This paper presents an HPSG formalisation of how the ellipsis of case-marking affects the focus of the clause in Japanese. We restrict our attention to the nominative and accusative markers ga and o, and in view of the fact that the ellipsis effects on focushood vary between 1) ga and o and 2) different argument structures of the head verb, develop an essentially lexicalist account that combines both aspects, in which the implicit focus argument position is specified in the predicate. We argue that if a constituent is an implicit focus it does not, while if one is not it does, require a case-marker to be focused.

Nouns

2020 ◽  
pp. 45-63
Author(s):  
Gerjan van Schaaik
Keyword(s):  
Proper Names ◽  
Statistical Information ◽  
The Other ◽  
Huge Number ◽  
Linguistic Rules ◽  
Nominal Inflection ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Case Markers ◽  
Short Section

This chapter elaborates on the difference between the two stem forms nouns may have and it is argued that linguistic rules which derive one stem from the other do not work. A plausible explanation is based on statistical information and is further motivated by the huge number of exceptions typical for such rules. A case is put up for just memorizing nouns with two stems. Next, the types of suffix that may be added to nominal stems are discussed together with the order in which they must appear. Sections on nominal inflection instantiating these types follow: plural, possessive, and case markers. Since the six case markers fulfil several non-related functions in the sentence, relatively much space is given to this topic. A short section on the spelling of proper names in relation to suffixation concludes this chapter.

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.

Oblique case marking on core arguments in Korean

2010 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 602-635 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jong-Bok Kim ◽  
Peter Sells
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Direct Object ◽  
Thematic Role ◽  
Accusative Case ◽  
The Core ◽  
Case Marking ◽  
Theoretical Approaches ◽  
Case Markers ◽  
Semantic Properties

In this paper we present data from Korean in which the core arguments (subject and direct object) of a transitive clause may be suffixed with oblique postpositional markers rather than the usual nominative or accusative case markers. Unlike familiar cases of oblique arguments, such as dative subjects, we argue that the oblique case marking surveyed here does not indicate a particular thematic role, but rather brings out something different: other semantic properties of the argument in one instance, and a special interpretation imparted to the whole clause in the other. We present a description of the data against a background of current theoretical approaches to case marking, and conclude with some consequences for grammatical theory.

A Dual Act Analysis of Slurs

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elisabeth Camp
Keyword(s):  
Semantic Content ◽  
The Other ◽  
Conventional Implicature ◽  
Clear Cases ◽  
Perlocutionary Effect ◽  
Communicative Role

Slurs are incendiary terms—many deny that sentences containing them can ever be true. And utterances where they occur embedded within normally “quarantining” contexts, like conditionals and indirect reports, can still seem offensive. At the same time, others find that sentences containing slurs can be true; and there are clear cases where embedding does inoculate a speaker from the slur’s offensiveness. This chapter argues that four standard accounts of the “other” element that differentiates slurs from their more neutral counterparts—semantic content, perlocutionary effect, presupposition, and conventional implicature—all fail to account for this puzzling mixture of intuitions. Instead, it proposes that slurs make two distinct, coordinated contributions to a sentence’s conventional communicative role.

Ergative, antipassive and other verb derivational morphemes in Gaahmg

2014 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy M. Stirtz
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Case Marking ◽  
Derivational Morphemes ◽  
As If

AbstractGaahmg has ergative traces in a predominately nominative-accusative system. Clauses with object focus demonstrate ergative case marking on postverbal noun and pronoun agents, and an ergative morpheme is also bound to verbs. Other evidence for ergativity is that the ergative morpheme is morphologically and syntactically distinct from the passive morpheme. Ergative morphemes and constructions in Gaahmg are similar to those of other Nilo-Saharan languages, including Luwo, Päri, and Shilluk. The Gaahmg antipassive also resembles that of other Nilo-Saharan languages. Yet, unlike other languages with ergativity and antipassives, Gaahmg readily combines the antipassive with ergative, passive, and causative morphemes in the same verb form. The Gaahmg antipassive occurs in nominative-accusative structures, as well as in object-focus clauses with ergative-absolutive structures. Further, the antipassive co-occurs with the passive, as if both the nominative-accusative and ergative-absolutive structures are simultaneously present in the same clause, and the language is currently shifting from one structure to the other.

scholarly journals Isomorphism and language-specific devices in comprehension of Korean suffixal passive construction by Mandarin-speaking learners of Korean

2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gyu-Ho Shin ◽  
Sun Hee Park
Keyword(s):  
Native Speakers ◽  
Reaction Times ◽  
The Other ◽  
L2 Acquisition ◽  
Verbal Morphology ◽  
Passive Voice ◽  
Passive Construction ◽  
Case Marking

Abstract Across languages, a passive construction is known to manifest a misalignment between the typical order of event composition (agent-before-theme) and the actual order of arguments in the constructions (theme-before-agent), dubbed non-isomorphic mapping. This study investigates comprehension of a suffixal passive construction in Korean by Mandarin-speaking learners of Korean, focusing on isomorphism and language-specific devices in the passive. We measured learners’ judgment of the acceptability of canonical and scrambled suffixal passives as well as their reaction times (relative to a canonical active transitive). Our analysis generated three major findings. First, learners uniformly preferred the canonical passive to the scrambled passive. Second, as proficiency increased, the judgment gap between the canonical active transitive and the canonical suffixal passive narrowed, but the gap between the canonical active transitive and the scrambled suffixal passive did not. Third, learners (and even native speakers) spent more time in judging the acceptability of the canonical suffixal passive than they did in the other two construction types. Implications of these findings are discussed with respect to the mapping nature involving a passive voice, indicated by language-specific devices (i.e., case-marking and verbal morphology dedicated to Korean passives), in L2 acquisition.

scholarly journals A taxonomy of antonymy in Arabic: Egyptian and Saudi proverbs in comparison

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 200-222
Author(s):  
Hamada Hassanein ◽  
Mohammad Mahzari
Keyword(s):  
Main Clause ◽  
The Other ◽  
Subordinate Clause ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Case Marking ◽  
News Discourse ◽  
Discourse Functions ◽  
Syntactic Frames

Abstract This study has set out to identify, quantify, typify, and exemplify the discourse functions of canonical antonymy in Arabic paremiography by comparing two manually collected datasets from Egyptian and Saudi (Najdi) dialects. Building upon Jones’s (2002) most extensive and often-cited classification of the discourse functions of antonyms as they co-occur within syntactic frames in news discourse, the study has substantially revised this classification and developed a provisional and dynamic typology thereof. Two major textual functions are found to be quantitatively significant and qualitatively preponderant: ancillarity (wherein an A-pair of canonical antonyms project their antonymicity onto a more important B-pair) and coordination (wherein one antonym holds an inclusive or exhaustive relation to another antonym). Three new functions have been developed and added to the retrieved classification: subordination (wherein one antonym occurs in a subordinate clause while the other occurs in a main clause), case-marking (wherein two opposite cases are served by two antonyms), and replacement (wherein one antonym is substituted with another). Semicanonical and noncanonical guises of antonymy are left and recommended for future research.

The processing of case in near-native Spanish

2015 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 281-307 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jill Jegerski
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Sentence Comprehension ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
First Language ◽  
Differential Object Marking ◽  
L2 Processing ◽  
Case Marker ◽  
Object Marking ◽  
Case Markers ◽  
Ditransitive Constructions

This article reports a study that sought to determine whether non-native sentence comprehension can show sensitivity to two different types of Spanish case marking. Sensitivity to case violations was generally more robust with indirect objects in ditransitive constructions than with differential object marking of animate direct objects, even among native speakers of Spanish, which probably reflects linguistic differences in the two types of case. In addition, the overall outcome of two experiments shows that second language (L2) processing can integrate case information, but that, unlike with native processing, attention to a case marker may depend on the presence of a preverbal clitic as an additional cue to the types of postverbal arguments that might occur in a stimulus. Specifically, L2 readers showed no sensitivity to differential object marking with a in the absence of clitics in the first experiment, with stimuli such as Verónica visita al/el presidente todos los meses ‘Veronica visits the[ACC/NOM]president every month’, but the L2 readers in the second experiment showed native-like sensitivity to the same marker when the object it marked was doubled by the clitic lo, as in Verónica lo visita al/el presidente todos los meses. With indirect objects, on the other hand, sensitivity to case markers was native-like in both experiments, although indirect objects were also always doubled by the preverbal clitic le. The apparent first language / second language contrast suggests differences in processing strategy, whereby non-native processing of morphosyntax may rely more on the predictability of forms than does native processing.

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