Семантическая обусловленность структуры конструкций с глаголами речи

Introduction. Explanatory constructions in the Buryat language, namely, those with verbs of speech as their main predicate, have not been studied in detail so far. Their systematic study involves a detailed analysis of both the semantics of the predicate of the main clause and the structure of the entire construction. The purpose of the article was to identify the correlation between the semantics of verbs of speech and the structural type of constructions. For the purpose, it was necessary i) to identify the group of verbs of speech, ii) to make an inventory of the structures in question, iii) to identify their structural types and specific characteristics, iv) to distribute verbs of speech according to structural types, and v) to study the interdependence between the semantics of verbs and the types of constructions. Original literary texts of the Buryat electronic corps served as material for the study. Linguistic observation, description, component analysis, and structural modeling were used as methods of the analysis. Research results. Buryat explanatory clauses are of the three structural types: participial, participial with postpositions, and bifinite constructions. Each of them specializes in expressing information of a particular level of abstraction: bifinite constructions introduce direct speech; participial constructions with the accusative case of the dependent predicate convey indirect speech; participial constructions with postpositions name the theme. As the analysis of the distribution of verbs of speech by structural types shows, verbs with semantics suggesting a long speech act like ‘to tell’ are more often used in bifinite and postpositional constructions. Those with the meaning of a short speech act, or of the type ‘to add’, implement the valence of the speech in constructions with direct speech and conjunction gezhe. Verbs of speech that differ in their role in communication, for example, asuu-, hura- (ask), implement the valence of the speech in bifinite constructions with gezhe and participles in the accusative case. The author concluded that the structure of the constructions under study is largely dependent on the semantics of the verbs of speech.

Israeli Russian: Case morphology in a bilingual context

The current study investigates case morphology development in a bilingual context. It is aimed at investigating potential mechanisms driving divergences in heritage language grammars as compared to the baseline monolingual standards. For the purposes of the study, 95 bilingual and monolingual children and adults were compared. Bilinguals residing in Israel acquired Russian from birth, while the age of onset of Hebrew varied. The participants completed a production task eliciting accusative case inflections. Both child and adult heritage speakers of Russian with early age of onset of Hebrew (before the age of 5) showed divergences in the production of the accusative case inflections as compared to monolingual Russian-speaking controls (adult and child), whereas grammars of Israeli heritage Russian speakers with later ages of onset of Hebrew, after the age of 5, were found to be intact. On the basis of Russian in contact with Hebrew, the study discusses how heritage language grammars differ from the baseline grammars of monolingual speakers and which mechanisms are associated with heritage language ultimate attainment. The effects of the age of onset and cross-linguistic influence from the dominant societal language are discussed as potential factors affecting the acquisition / maintenance of linguistic phenomena in heritage language grammars.

Formy znakhidnoho vidminka mnozhyny imennykiv – nazv istot v ukrayinsʹkiy narodniy i literaturniy movi

The article investigates the regularities of the use of two forms of the accusative case of the plural of the nouns – the names of creatures in the Ukrainian folk and literary language. Special attention is paid to the form that coincides with the nominative case and is a typical feature of the folk language. The history of the entry of the form of the accusative case of the plural, common with the nominative case, into the system of inflexion of nouns of the Ukrainian literary language is traced. The area of distribution of each of the forms of the accusative case of the plural is determined. The list of nouns – the names of unpersons, which in the accusative case of the plural have the form of the nominative case, is offered. The causes and consequences of the expulsing of the forms of the nominative case of the plural by the forms of the genitive case in nouns – the names of creatures in the modern Ukrainian literary language – are clarified. It is stated that valid morphological literary norm does not correspond to the grammatical traditions of the Ukrainian folk language, because the forms, common to the nominative case, predominate in the folk language, whereas the forms, identical to the genitive case, prevail in the literary standard.

Negative constructions in theory and practice: Ukrainian-Belarusian parallels

In the article the material of monumental texts of the Ukrainian language of the 16th – the first half of the 17th century (business documents, artistic, polemical, chronicle, scientific and confessional literature) and the studied monuments of the Old Belarusian language are studied the diachronic aspect of the use of case forms (generic or accusative) in negative verb constructions; their functioning in modern Ukrainian and Belarusian languages is analyzed. It has been revealed that in the monuments of the Ukrainian language of the specified period the accusative case in denial is inferior to the generic one. The use of certain syntactic models (parallel use of genitive and accusative forms in the pre- and postposition) was determined by the general style and place of writing the monuments. In studies of monuments of the Old Belarusian language in this position the genitive was fixed, and sometimes in negative constructions the accusative and the genitive were allowed at the same time. In the linguistics of the 20th – early 21st century philologists have repeatedly drawn attention to the peculiarities of the use of genitive and accusative cases in negative constructions both on the All-Slavic background and on the material of individual languages. Synchronously, it has been revealed that in the modern Ukrainian language the literary norm in negative constructions is the use of the genitive case instead of the accusative. However, there is no noticeable tendency to replace the accusative and the genitive in verbs with a negative participle not, as there are many cases of using the possessive case in literature and in everyday speech. On the other hand, there is no unanimity in the grammars of the modern Belarusian language on this issue: some scholars believe that both generic and possessive cases are possible in negative constructions, while others believe that only generic is possible. However, from a sample of analyzed works of Belarusian writers of the twentieth century, artistic and journalistic posts, as well as conversational style records, it can be argued that there are only a few cases of use of the accusative case, in particular in proverbs and sayings, and only the genitive is dominant in the negative constructions.

Subject-Verb Relation in North Dravidian Language

The main objective is to highlight some of the distinctive features pertaining to agreement phenomenon and language structure in Kisan. It is a agglutinative language having nominative-accusative case markings. The characteristics of an agglutinative language has gradually beenconverged with those of analytic language like Hindi and Odia which are the dominant languages of the region.

Case alignment in Kabyle Amazigh

This paper examines the state alternation in Kabyle, arguing that state is the morphological realization of Case. The free state is accusative case, and the construct state is nominative case. Taking morphological patterns and syntactic distribution into account, Kabyle is found to be a Type 2 marked nominative language. Both states, or cases, are morphologically marked. The free state is the default case. This analysis accounts for the bulk of the distribution of free state and construct state nouns, and situates Kabyle as belonging to a typologically rare alignment system that is concentrated in Afroasiatic and African languages.

Accusative case assignment to the verbal internal argument in the Albanian language and the corresponding case assigning model

The following paper aims at shedding some light on Albanian language case system with special focus on the assignment of accusative case. As a member of the vast Indo-European family Albanian language is characterized by an inflected case system and as so a free word order. Traditionally, we are taught and we still teach to the coming generations that accusative case is assigned mostly by the verb to that sentence noun phrase syntactically representing the direct object and semantically introducing the Theme or the Patient. Moreover in Albanian accusative is also assigned by another morphological category bearing the distinctive features [+noun;+verb], namely the preposition. Furthermore, as a researcher in the field of generative syntax I have a stake at analyzing certain exceptional cases of accusative case assignment to the subject NP of the Albanian subjunctive clause. In conclusion, I was really tempted to adopt Chomsky’s reconciling proposal in accusative case assignment under the specifier-head structural and schematic relation.

The Prosody of Harar Oromo Nouns

This paper examines the tone in Harar Oromo, a language widely spoken in Ethiopia. The focus is on tone in nouns. The examination implements acoustic analysis of tone using pitch contours, which helps in determining the type and position of tone in roots and in nominative and accusative case. The results show that roots can have either L or H tone, while case suffixes always have H tone. This suggests that tone is predictable in suffixes, but not in roots. The analysis suggests that Harar Oromo has a restricted tone system that is similar to stress-like languages.