Agreement in Languages of the Caucasus

The three language families indigenous to the Caucasus exhibit a range of diverse, unusual, and highly complex agreement phenomena. Nakh-Daghestanian languages are dominated by ergative-aligned gender agreement in which the absolutive argument controls agreement on the verb, and potentially other clausal elements like adverbs or even pronouns. Special agreement patterns like long-distance and biabsolutive agreement emerge in certain syntactic configurations. Northwest Caucasian is polysynthetic; its verbs register features from each of their arguments in a distinct templatic slot. These languages also have special agreement for arguments that undergo A̅-extraction. Kartvelian agreement is not straightforwardly linked to syntactic roles, and morphemes exhibit many complex blocking relationships. Dative-subject constructions “invert” the normal morpheme–role mappings, adding another dimension of complexity to the languages’ agreement systems. This chapter describes typologically and theoretically notable agreement phenomena found in these three language families, highlighting micro- and macro-variation, drawing parallels to other language families, and citing relevant theoretical and experimental studies. For reference, the chapter concludes with an appendix of agreement paradigms.

Malayalam Morphosyntax: Inflectional Features and their Acquisition

Malayalam, which belongs to the South-Dravidian language family, is an agglutinative language with rich inflectional morphology. The aim of the thesis is to analyse the grammar and acquisition of Malayalam verbal inflections (tense, aspect and mood) and nominal inflections (case, number, and gender). Within the larger discussion of inflectional morphology and its acquisition, particular attention is paid to two complex morphological processes, a) the past tense formation of verbs and b) case assignment of subjects and objects.In particular, the thesis will show the following: a) that the past tense marker selection is determined by different grammatical principles in underived and derived stems; specifically, phonotactics in the former and the lexical feature of transitivity in the latter; b) that the dative nominals of a class of predicates (variously labelled experiencer or dative subject or psych predicates) are in fact subjects using an array of empirical tests involving binding, control, accusative marking, and predicate alternation; and c) that inflections for number and object case rest on lexical features of the noun (stem) and the allomorphy is governed by these featural requirements. In looking at the developing grammar in the two subjects, the thesis will show that Malayalam inflectional grammar has quite direct consequences for the acquisition of inflectional morphology. Specifically, acquisition proceeds unobstructed when the mode of selection is phonological and offers more challenges when the mode of selection is morphological, i.e., when the selection depends on the learning of the lexical or grammatical features of the noun and verb stems.Thus, using the interplay between acquisition and the grammatical description, we establish that in addition to the established factors that guide acquisition, mode of selection of an inflection plays a key role in determining the relative ease/difficulty in the acquisition of inflectional morphology. This follows quite neatly from the fact that children are phonologically competent even before much language is produced and that this module-competence could facilitate the acquisition of morphology. The thesis will argue that this is indeed the case.

Malayalam Morphosyntax: Inflectional Features and their Acquisition

Malayalam, which belongs to the South-Dravidian language family, is an agglutinative language with rich inflectional morphology. The aim of the thesis is to analyse the grammar and acquisition of Malayalam verbal inflections (tense, aspect and mood) and nominal inflections (case, number, and gender). Within the larger discussion of inflectional morphology and its acquisition, particular attention is paid to two complex morphological processes, a) the past tense formation of verbs and b) case assignment of subjects and objects.In particular, the thesis will show the following: a) that the past tense marker selection is determined by different grammatical principles in underived and derived stems; specifically, phonotactics in the former and the lexical feature of transitivity in the latter; b) that the dative nominals of a class of predicates (variously labelled experiencer or dative subject or psych predicates) are in fact subjects using an array of empirical tests involving binding, control, accusative marking, and predicate alternation; and c) that inflections for number and object case rest on lexical features of the noun (stem) and the allomorphy is governed by these featural requirements. In looking at the developing grammar in the two subjects, the thesis will show that Malayalam inflectional grammar has quite direct consequences for the acquisition of inflectional morphology. Specifically, acquisition proceeds unobstructed when the mode of selection is phonological and offers more challenges when the mode of selection is morphological, i.e., when the selection depends on the learning of the lexical or grammatical features of the noun and verb stems.Thus, using the interplay between acquisition and the grammatical description, we establish that in addition to the established factors that guide acquisition, mode of selection of an inflection plays a key role in determining the relative ease/difficulty in the acquisition of inflectional morphology. This follows quite neatly from the fact that children are phonologically competent even before much language is produced and that this module-competence could facilitate the acquisition of morphology. The thesis will argue that this is indeed the case.

A Semantic Analysis of Experiential Construction in Hokkien

In this article the author discusses the analysis of the experience of construction and the subject of experiencer (dative) in Hokkien. In Semantic studies, experiential construction is a process or method used to form meaning that has experiencer as a human participant who accidentally experiences a mental or physical state. The concept of experience explains 5 subdomains of experiential verbs, namely bodily sensations (thirst, hunger, pain, itching), emotions (anger, pleasure, fear), desire (want), cognition (thinking, knowing, remembering), and perception (see, feel, hearing), as well as forms of experiential adjectives, namely curious, clever, forgetful, and confused. Each language has terms that are bad, good, and neutral emotions and can be described through symptoms outside the body, such as red and pale. This research is a qualitative descriptive study and was compiled using the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) theory. The author analyzes the data in this article by using data collection methods from respondents with referring, engaging, and proficient techniques. The research data is taken from written and verbal sources. The experiential construction in Hokkien may use both transitive and intransitive experiential verbs in experiential assignment as object and or subject datives. In Hokkien, subject experiencer is taking the position of direct subject, while the object experiencer is taking the position as dative subject.

Between the historical languages and the reconstructed language

The “dative of agent” construction in the Indo-European languages is most likely inherited from Proto-Indo-European (Hettrich 1990). Two recent proposals (Danesi 2013; Luraghi 2016), however, claim that the construction contains no agent at all. Luraghi argues that it is a secondary development from an original beneficiary function, while Danesi maintains that the construction is indeed reconstructable. Following Danesi, we analyze the relevant data in six different Indo-European languages: Sanskrit, Avestan, Ancient Greek, Latin, Tocharian, and Lithuanian, revealing similarities at a morphosyntactic level, a semantic level, and to some extent at an etymological level. An analysis involving a modal reading of the predicate, with a dative subject and a nominative object, is better equipped to account for the particulars of the construction than the traditional agentive/passive analysis. The proposal is couched within Construction Grammar, where the basic unit of language is the construction, i. e. a form-function correspondence. As constructions are by definition units of comparanda, they can be successfully utilized in the reconstruction of a proto-construction for Proto-Indo-European.

Alignment and orientation in Kartvelian (South Caucasian)

The small Kartvelian family is one of the three endemic language families of the Caucasus. The Kartvelian languages are double marking, with nominal case and two sets of person markers in the verb. Since the 17th century, linguists have attempted to accommodate the complexities of Georgian morphosyntax within the descriptive categories of their time, successively describing the language as nominative, (split) ergative, and active/inactive. In the present chapter, I will argue that its alignment can be most accurately described as split-intransitive, once the considerable number of monovalent dative-subject verbs are brought into consideration. Proto-Kartvelian would have had split-intransitive verb agreement, absolutively aligned verbal plurality marking, and incipient ergative-absolutive case assignment. Also discussed is the morphosyntactic orientation of the Kartvelian languages and dialects, that is, the distribution of morphological and syntactic privileges among the clausal arguments.

Dative subjects in Germanic

One of the functions of the dative is to mark non-prototypical subjects, i. e. subjects that somehow deviate from the agentive prototype. The Germanic languages, as all subbranches of Indo-European (cf. Barðdal et al. 2012. Reconstructing constructional semantics: The dative subject construction in Old Norse‐Icelandic, Latin, Ancient Greek, Old Russian and Old Lithuanian.

Motion Verbs in Old Saxon with the Oblique Subject Construction: A Semantic Analysis

An interesting fact about Old Saxon is that certain verbs of motion can occur with a dative pronoun which shows certain properties often considered to be indicative of subject status, making these verbs part of the dative subject construction. The dative marked argument is always animate and usually human. Punctuality and telicity are also often overtly marked in the clause. The dative occurs with verbs of motion in Old Saxon when the participant is salient in the discourse. In some instances, a nominative subject earlier in the discourse can trigger verb agreement, but very often a nominative simply is not present. Additionally, the dative pronoun is in subject position next to the finite verb. Thus the dative with verbs of motion exhibits the subject properties of linear subject position, topicality, animacy, definiteness and discourse salience. Semantic subject properties include volitionality, initiation of action, telicity and punctuality. Our analysis concludes that the dative argument with verbs of motion is related, but not identical, to other non-nominative subjects attested in Old Saxon.