scholarly journals Nouns and noun phrase structure in Nubri

Gipan ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 38-53
Author(s):  
Dubi Nanda Dhakal
Keyword(s):  
Noun Phrase ◽  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Preliminary Investigation ◽  
Phrase Structure ◽  
Nominal Morphology

This paper is a preliminary investigation of the nominal morphology and noun phrase structures of Nubri, a Tibetan variety spoken in the northern Gorkha. Nubri shares a number of inflectional and derivational features with Tibetan languages, such as Kyirong Tibetan. Like its close Tibetan varieties, a number of modifiers such as, genitive-marked nouns, demonstratives, relative clauses etc. precede the head nouns, whereas some other modifiers, such as article, emphatic marker, numerals etc. follow them in the noun phrase.

Syntactic Typology

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Masayoshi Shibatani
Keyword(s):  
Noun Phrase ◽  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Head Noun ◽  
Second Person ◽  
Grammatical Relations ◽  
Abstract Entities ◽  
Usage Patterns ◽  
Gap Control ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Nominal Morphology

The major achievements in syntactic typology garnered nearly 50 years ago by acclaimed typologists such as Edward Keenan and Bernard Comrie continue to exert enormous influence in the field, deserving periodic appraisals in the light of new discoveries and insights. With an increased understanding of them in recent years, typologically controversial ergative and Philippine-type languages provide a unique opportunity to reassess the issues surrounding the delicately intertwined topics of grammatical relations and relative clauses (RCs), perhaps the two foremost topics in syntactic typology. Keenan’s property-list approach to the grammatical relation subject brings wrong results for ergative and Philippine-type languages, both of which have at their disposal two primary grammatical relations of subject and absolutive in the former and of subject and topic in the latter. Ergative languages are characterized by their deployment of arguments according to both the nominative (S=A≠P) and the ergative (S=P≠A) pattern. Phenomena such as nominal morphology and relativization are typically controlled by the absolutive relation, defined as a union of {S, P} resulting from a P-based generalization. Other phenomena such as the second person imperative deletion and a gap control in compound (coordinate) sentences involve as a pivot the subject relation, defined as an {S, A} grouping resulting from an A-based generalization. Ergative languages, thus, clearly demonstrate that grammatical relations are phenomenon/construction specific. Philippine-type languages reinforce this point by their possession of subjects, as defined above, and a pragmatico-syntactic relation of topic correlated with the referential prominence of a noun phrase (NP) argument. As in ergative languages, certain phenomena, for example, controlling of a gap in the want-type control construction, operate in terms of the subject, while others, for example, relativization, revolve around the topic. With regard to RCs, the points made above bear directly on the claim by Keenan and Comrie that subjects are universally the most relativizable of NP’s, justifying the high end of the Noun Phrase Accessibility Hierarchy. A new nominalization perspective on relative clauses reveals that grammatical relations are actually irrelevant to the relativization process per se, and that the widely embraced typology of RCs, recognizing so-called headless and internally headed RCs and others as construction types, is misguided in that RCs in fact do not exist as independent grammatical structures; they are merely epiphenomenal to the usage patterns of two types of grammatical nominalizations. The so-called subject relativization (e.g., You should marry a man who loves you) involves a head noun and a subject argument nominalization (e.g., [who [Ø loves you]]) that are joined together forming a larger NP constituent in the manner similar to the way a head noun and an adjectival modifier are brought together in a simple attributive construction (e.g., a rich man) with no regard to grammatical relations. The same argument nominalization can head an NP (e.g., You should marry who loves you). This is known as a headless RC, while it is in fact no more than an NP use of an argument nominalization, as opposed to the modification use of the same structure in the ordinary restrictive RC seen above. So-called internally headed RCs involve event nominalizations (e.g., Quechua Maria wallpa-ta wayk’u-sqa-n-ta mik”u-sayku [Maria chicken-acc cook-P.nmlzr-3sg-acc eat-prog.1pl], lit. “We are eating Maria cook a chicken,” and English I heard John sing in the kitchen) that evoke various substantive entities metonymically related to the event, such as event protagonists (as in the Quechua example), results (as in the English example), and abstract entities such as facts and propositions (e.g., I know that John sings in the kitchen).

scholarly journals Noun phrase in Enets

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 39-56
Author(s):  
Andrey Shluinsky
Keyword(s):  
Noun Phrase ◽  
Relative Clause ◽  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Phrase Structure ◽  
Head Noun ◽  
Noun Number ◽  
Linear Recursion ◽  
Number Form

The paper presents a corpus-based description of the noun phrase structure in Enets dealing with both Enets dialects – Forest Enets and Tundra Enets. An Enets noun phrase has six slots for modifiers: determiner, relative clause, possessor NP, numeral, adjective phrase, apposed NP. Determiners, relative clauses, and adjective phrases are subject to linear recursion, other modifiers are not. All modifiers precede the head NP. In Enets, there is no agreement between head noun and modifiers, but numerals have different patterns in the choice of head noun number form. Kokkuvõte. Andrej Šluinski: Noomenifraas eenetsi keeles. Artikkel esitab korpuspõhise kirjelduse eenetsi keele noomenifraasi struktuurist mõlemas eenetsi keele murdes – metsaeenetsi ja tundraeenetsi. Eenetsi noomenifraasil on kuus täiendikohta: määratleja, relatiivlause, omajat väljendav NP, numeraal, omadussõnafraas, appositsiooniline NP. Määratlejad, relatiivlaused ja omadussõnafraasid alluvad lineaarsele rekursioonile, teised täiendid mitte. Kõik täiendid eelnevad põhisõnale. Eenetsi keeles puudub põhisõna ja täiendi ühilduvus, kui numeraalid nõuavad noomenifraasi põhisõnalt erinevaid arvuvorme. Аннотация. Андрей Шлуинский: Именная группа в энецком языке. В статье представлено выполненное на материале корпуса текстов описание структуры именной группы в обоих диалектах энецкого языка – лесном тундровом. Энецкая именная группа содержит шесть позиций для модификаторов вершинного существительного: детерминатор, относительное предложение, именная группа посессора, числительное, группа прилагательного, соположенная именная группа. Детерминаторы, относительные предложения и группы прилагательного подлежат линейной рекурсии, в отличие от других модификаторов. Все модификаторы предшествуют вершинному существительному. В энецком языке отсутствует согласование между вершинным существительным и модификаторами, но представлены разные модели выбора числовой формы вершинного существительного в именных группах с числительными.

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.

scholarly journals Noun-Phrase Structure by Reprojection

Syntax ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-36 ◽  
Author(s):  
Doreen Georgi ◽  
Gereon Müller
Keyword(s):  
Noun Phrase ◽  
Phrase Structure

Noun phrase structure

2010 ◽  
pp. 151-205 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew S. Dryer
Keyword(s):  
Noun Phrase ◽  
Phrase Structure

Movement to C in German

1993 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert G. Hoeing
Keyword(s):  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Phrase Structure ◽  
Head Position ◽  
Final Structure ◽  
Movement Theory ◽  
Structure Level

ABSTRACTStandard movement theory stipulates that any X"-phrase that is moved must move to the specifier position (SPEC) of C". In this paper, however, it is argued on the basis of coordination phenomena, verb-final structure, and diachronic evidence that, in relative clauses and indirect questions, the moved pronoun or w-element functions more as a true complementizer than as a fronted X"-phrase and thus should move to the head position C. Movement to C is thus determined not by the phrase-structure level of the moved category, but by feature compatibility.

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