Polysemy and Apparent Polyfunctionality of the Sakhalin Ainu Prefixes e- and ko-

The present study focuses on the polysemous verbal prefixes e- and ko- of Sakhalin Ainu and proposes their analysis as markers of high transitivity. The author takes a compositional approach to argument structure and event structure in order to account for the main use of e- and ko- as applicative markers as well as for their less common use as markers of resultative-completive and intensive aspect. Ultimately, the analysis shows that the apparent polyfunctionality of e- and ko- arises from two separate applications at the syntax-semantics level of one same underlying function of the prefixes. The author also comments on how the Sakhalin Ainu case fits in with other cases of valence-aspect conceptual overlapping cross-linguistically and on the implications of his findings for Ainu studies specifically.

A Grammar of Nahavaq (Malakula, Vanuatu)

<p>This thesis is a descriptive grammar of Nahavaq, an Oceanic language spoken by about 700 people in the Sinesip cultural area of Malakula, Vanuatu. Nahavaq was previously undescribed, and this grammar is based on data collected by the researcher over a total of nine months in the Sinesip area. The thesis includes a sociolinguistic overview of the Nahavaq-speaking community and descriptions of phonetics, phonology, mophology, syntax, semantics, and discourse. Noteworthy features of Nahavaq include: (i) two classes of bilabial consonants, which are distinguished by palatalisation and velarisation; (ii) two reduplicative verbal prefixes, which partially overlap in function; (iii) a base-20 numeral system with subbases of five and ten; (iv) nouns which include an accreted article; (v) serial verb constructions; and (vi) nine different surface forms for expressing possession relationships. The attached DVD contains a Nahavaq-English glossary, along with recordings and transcriptions of Nahavaq texts for reference purposes.</p>

A Grammar of Nahavaq (Malakula, Vanuatu)

<p>This thesis is a descriptive grammar of Nahavaq, an Oceanic language spoken by about 700 people in the Sinesip cultural area of Malakula, Vanuatu. Nahavaq was previously undescribed, and this grammar is based on data collected by the researcher over a total of nine months in the Sinesip area. The thesis includes a sociolinguistic overview of the Nahavaq-speaking community and descriptions of phonetics, phonology, mophology, syntax, semantics, and discourse. Noteworthy features of Nahavaq include: (i) two classes of bilabial consonants, which are distinguished by palatalisation and velarisation; (ii) two reduplicative verbal prefixes, which partially overlap in function; (iii) a base-20 numeral system with subbases of five and ten; (iv) nouns which include an accreted article; (v) serial verb constructions; and (vi) nine different surface forms for expressing possession relationships. The attached DVD contains a Nahavaq-English glossary, along with recordings and transcriptions of Nahavaq texts for reference purposes.</p>

Evaluativity of degree achievements and verbal prefixes: Evidence from Czech morphology

The telicity behavior of degree achievements has been a puzzling problem to many linguists. The most successful and currently standard theory (Kennedy & Levin 2008) treats them as degree expressions lexicalizing different types of scales, which in turn influence the resulting evaluative or non-evaluative interpretation. While it may account for English, this theory does not hold up cross-linguistically. We challenge the scalar theory with new Slavic data and show that verbal prefixes influence the (non-)evaluative interpretation of degree achievements more than their underlying scales do. This proposal is formalised as an addition of two type shifters, morphosyntactically realised as prefixes, which, in result, have an evaluative/non-evaluative effect on the given degree achievement.

The status of sibilant harmony in Diné Bizaad (Navajo)

This article presents an acoustic phonetic study of contemporary Diné Bizaad (Navajo) sibilant harmony, with a focus on the realization of /s/ and /ʃ/ in two verbal prefixes and one nominal prefix. Data come from wordlists and connected speech recorded in interviews with 50 Diné Bizaad–English bilinguals, aged 18–75 years. The frequency of harmony in each prefix is calculated for speakers of different ages, then acoustic measurements of spectral center of gravity are measured and statistically compared to those in sibilants occurring in harmony-triggering and non-harmony triggering conditions. Results show no significant intergenerational differences in the phonetic or phonological realization of sibilant harmony; speakers consistently and categorically harmonize the two verbal prefixes analyzed here, but rarely harmonize the nominal prefix. This study contributes new phonetic documentation of a typologically rare phonological process and suggests that, in contrast to findings from other studies on endangered languages, sibilant harmony is not undergoing attrition or contact-induced change.

On the Concept of an Anatolian-Greek Language Area

This paper aims at presenting some thoughts on the hypothesis of an Anatolian-Greek language area in the second millennium bc comparing different approaches both in the theoretical frames and in the analysis of the linguistic facts. For this purpose, it is necessary to introduce some terminological premises, followed by a selection of methodological issues, which will help explore the putative features that characterize the Anatolian-Greek area (morphological traits such as actionality markers, particles, verbal prefixes as well as special morphological forms; morphosyntactic traits, such as modal particles, sentence particles, absolute participial constructions; lexical units and phonetic features).

A Grammatical Description of Leteh Nominal Morphology

The paper describes Leteh nominal morphology within the framework of Basic Linguistic Theory (Dixon 2010; Dryer 2006). The nominal morphology is described in the context of two phenomena: number marking and noun classification. Leteh is a South-Guan language from the Niger-Congo family of languages. The morphology of Leteh is largely agglutinative. Güldemann and Fiedler (2019) argue that current analyses of gender systems are heavily influenced by those in Bantu languages and not cross-linguistically applicable. They propose an alternative analysis that includes the notions agreement class and nominal form class. In this paper I adopt the notion of nominal form class to classify nouns in Leteh. The nouns are grouped into four major classes based on the plural morphemes that they take. These classes are subdivided based on the singular forms with which they are paired. Key words: verbal prefixes, Kwa, tense/ aspect, negation, person, mood, motion Note: Changes were made to the title and abstract of this article after publication, on 9/20/2021.

Is Lithuanian a polysynthetic language?

This paper reviews the definitions and operationalisations of the notion of “polysynthesis” proposed in the typological literature and applies them to Lithuanian (verbal) morphology. It is shown that while Lithuanian falls short of polysynthesis in terms of morphemes-to-words ratio and lacks such features as polypersonalism and incorporation, it still possesses certain properties associated with polysynthesis. These include the so-called lexical affixes (it is argued that Lithuanian verbal prefixes are an example of these) and, to a limited extent, “productive non-inflectional concatenation”, i.e. morphemes with a high combinatory potential and compositional meanings, including successively applying verbalisers and nominalisers. These observations not only shed novel light on some well-known facts of Lithuanian grammar, but also further underscore the multifactorial and vague nature of polysynthesis.

FUNCTIONAL SPECIFICITY OF THE VERBS AND VERBAL PREFIXES IN RUSSIAN: CORPUS ANALYSIS (BASED ON MATERIAL OF VERBS WITH PREFIX PRED-)

Введение. Современная корпусно-ориентированная лингвистика позволяет изучать явления языка, расширяя базу данных, на которой строятся исследования, привлекая для анализа широкие возможности текстовой и метатекстовой разметки корпусов. Цель – на основе данных Национального корпуса русского языка описать функциональное своеобразие русских глагольных префиксов (на материале глаголов с приставкой пред-), «отвечающих» за использование префиксального глагола в текстах определенной сферы функционирования и тематики. Материал и методы. Объектом данного исследования являются префикс пред- с проспективной семантикой «заранее совершить действие» и глаголы с ним, образованные по модели, привнесенной в русский язык из старославянского языка. Исходя из положения, что приставка, обладающая относительной самостоятельностью в структуре глагола по сравнению с суффиксом, способна не только модифицировать значение глагола, но и менять сферу его употребления, предлагается сравнительный анализ функционирования глагола с префиксом пред- и соответствующего ему бесприставочного глагола посредством анализа сферы функционирования и тематики текстов, в которых реализуются указанные единицы. Анализируются вхождения рассматриваемых глаголов в текстах девяти сфер функционирования (художественной, церковно-богословской, учебно-научной и т. д.) и 42 тематик (право, наука и технология, политика и общественная жизнь и т. д.). Результаты и обсуждение. Сделано предположение, что глаголы с приставкой пред- в силу ее старославянского происхождения и в современном русском языке оказываются задействованными в текстах церковно-религиозной сферы, а также в текстах тех сфер употребления, которые коррелируют с «прогнозирующей» функцией проспективных глаголов. Исходя из данного предположения рассматриваются пары единиц предсказать/сказать, предвидеть/видеть, предназначить/назначить, предшествовать/шествовать, предписать/писать; рассчитывается процент их употребления в текстах определенной сферы функционирования и тематики по отношению к количеству текстов в данной сфере и тематике; выявляются наиболее значимые для пред-единиц сферы функционирования (церковно-богословская, учебно-научная, художественная, производственно-техническая) и тематики текстов (философия, филология, астрономия, физика и т. п.), в которых зафиксированы исследуемые единицы. Заключение. Обращение к данным Национального корпуса русского языка позволило выявить изменение по сравнению с бесприставочными единицами сферы употребления глаголов с префиксом пред- (реже тематики текстов). Это позволяет утверждать, что приставка действительно способна влиять на употребление глаголов с ней. Introduction. Modern corpus-oriented linguistics allows us to study the phenomena of language, expanding the database on which research is based, attracting for analysis the wide possibilities of text and metatext markup of corpus. The aim of this work is to describe, based on the data of the Russian National Corpus, the functional peculiarity of Russian verb prefixes (based on the material of verbs with the prefix pred-), which are «responsible» for the use of the prefixal verb in texts of a certain sphere of functioning and subject matter. Material and methods. The object of this study is the prefix pred- with the prospective semantics «to do an action in advance» and verbs with it, formed according to the model introduced into the Russian language from the Old Slavic language. Based on the statement that the prefix, which has a relative independence in the structure of the verb in comparison with the suffix, is able not only to modify the meaning of the verb, but also to change the scope of its use, the article offers a comparative analysis of the functioning of the verb with the prefix pred- and the corresponding non-prepositional verb by analyzing the sphere of use and the subject of texts in which these units are realized. The article analyzes the occurrences of the verbs in the texts of 9 spheres of functioning (artistic, church-theological, educational-scientific, etc.) and 42 subjects (law, science and technology, politics and public life, etc.). Results and discussion. We suggest that verbs with the prefix pred-, due to its Old Slavic origin, are involved in the texts of the church-religious sphere in modern Russian, as well as in the texts of those spheres of use that correlate with the “predictive” function of prospective verbs. Based on this assumption, we consider pairs of units to predict/say, foresee/see, destine/assign, precede/march, prescribe/write; the percentage of their use in texts of a certain sphere of functioning and subject matter is calculated in relation to the number of texts in this sphere and subject matter; we identify the most significant areas of functioning (church-theological, educational-scientific, artistic, industrial-technical) and subjects of texts (philosophy, philology, astronomy, physics, etc.) in which the studied units are realized. Conclusion. The reference to the data of the Russian National Corpus revealed a change in the sphere of use of verbs with the prefix pred- (less often the subject of texts), which allows us to assert that the prefix is really able to influence the use of verbs with it.

MEANS AND METHODS OF EXPRESSING THE SENSES IN ENGLISH PREFIXAL VERBS

The paper dwells upon the systematic description of English verbal prefixes. The verbal prefix is to be treated in the paradigmatic and syntagmatic plane of the language. It is asserted in this article that the meaning of a prefix is identical to that of the preposition – the relationship between two objects in space extrapolating on two consecutive states of the subject/object in time, and when generalized, form the two types of senses. Such prefix features as origin, transporting opportunity, negation and valency are considered, as well as semantic features (such as polysemy and chains of synonyms). In semantic analysis we deal with semes as the meaning constituents defining basic and secondary semes. The process of the formation of different senses has been distinguished by means of semantic opposition and combinations of semes that form the invariant meaning of the verbal prefix.