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Katharina Haude - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.

  • On discourse-semantic prominence, syntactic prominence, and prominence of expression: the case of Movima
    Journal of Pragmatics, 2019
    Co-Authors: Katharina Haude
    Abstract:

    This study investigates the relationship between three types of linguistic prominence. The first type, discourse-semantic prominence, encompasses features pertaining to a discourse referent at a given moment, like topicality, person, animacy, or agentivity. The second type, syntactic prominence, is reflected by syntactic privileges of an argument. The third type, prominence of linguistic expression, occurs when a linguistic unit stands out through e.g. length and complexity. Cross-linguistically, a discourse-semantically prominent referent tends to be syntactically prominent but is encoded by a nonprominent linguistic expression (e.g. an unstressed pronoun). In Movima (isolate, Bolivia), a language with a direct-inverse system, the way the two arguments of a Transitive Clause are encoded depends on the relative discourse-semantic prominence of their referents. Interestingly, the argument representing the less prominent referent is syntactically privileged, having access to extraction constructions. This unexpected mismatch between discourse-semantic and syntactic prominence can be explained by the fact that extraction creates a prominent form of linguistic expression, which therefore applies more naturally to an argument with a discourse-semantically nonprominent referent. The Movima findings thus show that discourse-semantic and syntactic prominence do not necessarily correlate, while supporting the assumption that discourse-semantic prominence universally correlates with low prominence of expression.

  • Grammatical relations in Movima: Alignment beyond semantic roles
    2019
    Co-Authors: Katharina Haude
    Abstract:

    Movima (isolate, lowland Bolivia) contributes challenging facts to the typological discussion of grammatical relations. As is shown in this paper, there is clear evidence for grammatical relations in Movima. Formal marking of both the predicate and the arguments indicate the relation between the clausal elements, and there is a coding asymmetry: One argument of a Transitive Clause shares the formal properties of the single argument of an inTransitive Clause, and it is syntactically privileged in a number of grammatical constructions. However, this argument does not have the semantic and pragmatic properties that are cross-linguistically common of privileged arguments, such as topicality and agency: It is the argument whose referent is low in discourse topicality, and usually a patient. In this way, Movima comes close to a syntactically ergative language, while sharing properties of symmetrical-voice systems. At the same time, Movima differs from both these language types because its basis is formed by a direct-inverse system: A Transitive verb receives morphological marking – either “direct” or “inverse” – to indicate the semantic roles A vs. P/G/T of its arguments. In contrast to other languages that are known to have such systems, however, Movima core arguments are not expressed by verbal affixes, but by clausal constituents.

  • Animacy and Inverse in Movima: A Corpus Study
    Anthropological Linguistics, 2014
    Co-Authors: Katharina Haude
    Abstract:

    Coding of Transitive Clauses in Movima (lowland Bolivia) including a speech act participant reflects a person hierarchy, 1 > 2 > 3; when a lower-ranking person acts on a higher-ranking one, the verb is marked as inverse. When a Transitive Clause contains only third person arguments, direct vs. inverse marking of the verb depends on relative discourse prominence and on an animacy hierarchy; in actual discourse, the inverse never occurs in Clauses where a higher-ranking entity acts on a lower-ranking one, while the inverse is frequent when a lower-ranking entity acts on a higher-ranking one. Further research is needed to clarify the exact discourse factors involved. 1. Introduction. This article investigates the role of animacy in the direct-inverse system of Movima, an unclassified, endangered language of southwestern Amazonia (Bolivia). In Movima, there is neither case nor agreement marking; instead, the linear order of constituents in Transitive Clauses is fixed, and participant roles are assigned by verb morphology. The ordering of the arguments depends on their referential properties, which include their relative status in a hierarchy of person and animacy, and on their discourse prominence. The participant roles of the arguments are indicated by direct or inverse marking on the verb. The present study examines the conditions of argument coding in Transitive Clauses containing only third person referents. While in scenarios involving a speech-act participant, the expression of the arguments and the corresponding direct or inverse marking on the verb can be predicted from the position of the referents in Movima's person hierarchy (in which first person is highest: 1 > 2 > 3), this is not the case when two third persons are involved. Here, the question is which principles determine their occurrence in either the one or the other syntactic slot. Basically, these principles are most adequately captured by DeLancey's (1981) notions of " viewpoint, " which comprises animacy and discourse prominence of the referents, and " attention flow, " which accounts for a tendency for forms coding the actor to precede forms coding the undergoer. Analysis of a firsthand oral text corpus shows that, while speakers are, in principle , free to choose the viewpoint from which to present an event, they usually prefer that of the actor–which is then expressed in the first position after the direct-marked predicate–but that animacy also plays an important role in this choice. The remainder of this article is structured as follows. Section 2 presents the structure of pragmatically unmarked Transitive Clauses in Movima and shows

  • Undergoer orientation in Movima
    2012
    Co-Authors: Katharina Haude
    Abstract:

    This article explores the system of verbal voice morphemes in Movima (unclassified, Amazonian Bolivia) and seeks to explain why most Transitive main Clauses in Movima pattern ergatively. Movima has two basic Transitive constructions, direct and inverse, overtly distinguished by verbal morphemes. In main Clauses, the direct construction patterns ergatively and the inverse construction patterns accusatively. In terms of statistical frequency, the large majority of Transitive main Clauses in texts is direct, i.e. ergative. The direct and inverse markers, which are employed according to the relative position of the participants on a referential hierarchy, belong to a paradigm of verbal morphemes (reflexive/reciprocal, resultative, agentive, middle) that indicate the transitivity of the verb and the participant role (actor or undergoer) of its subject. The proposal of this paper is to consider the direct voice marker as a morpheme that derives a Transitive verb by simply adding a syntactic position for an actor argument, leaving the undergoer orientation of the verb untouched and thus creating an ergative structure. The inverse marker, under this view, is a secondary derivation, reversing the participant roles of the arguments of a Transitive Clause according to the referential hierarchy and discourse status.

  • The inTransitive basis of Movima Clause structure
    2010
    Co-Authors: Katharina Haude
    Abstract:

    In Movima (unclassified, lowland Bolivia), the arguments of a Transitive Clause are basically encoded according to the position of their referents in a salience hierarchy, which includes deictic, semantic, and pragmatic levels. The participant roles of the arguments (actor or undergoer) are indicated by direct and inverse marking on the predicate. The argument whose referent is lower in the hierarchy is encoded in the same way as the single argument of inTransitive Clauses, and it also has a privileged syntactic status. This results in an unusual split-ergative alignment pattern: the direct construction, which is pragmatically unmarked, patterns ergatively, and the inverse construction patterns accusatively. I propose that the system can be accounted for by the syntactic similarity of nouns and verbs and the identical encoding of the possessor and the salient argument of a Transitive Clause. Both Transitive and inTransitive Clauses may, therefore, have arisen from an inTransitive equational construction with either a monovalent/nonpossessed or a bivalent/possessed predicate nominal.

Anna Siewierska - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.

  • From third plural to passive: incipient, emergent and established passives
    Diachronica, 2010
    Co-Authors: Anna Siewierska
    Abstract:

    This paper explores the development of third person plural impersonal constructions into passive ones with the aim of determining the conditions most conducive to the emergence of a canonical passive, i.e. one which is both promotional (with an overt lexical subject) and agentive (with an overt agent). On the basis of cross-linguistic data it is argued that the required conditions are, on the one hand, the existence of a morphological alignment which does not distinguish between the O of a Transitive Clause and the S of a passive one and, on the other hand, the availability of highly grammaticalized third person plural impersonals, i.e. ones which can be used in episodic contexts and with different types of agents, among them individual and specific ones. The documented rarity of promotional passives originating from third person plural impersonal constructions is attributed to the rarity of the coincidence of the above two sets of independent factors.

  • From 3ptl-to passive : incipient, emergent and established passives
    2010
    Co-Authors: Anna Siewierska
    Abstract:

    This paper explores, in some detail, the development of third person plural impersonal constructions into passive ones with the aim of determining the conditions most conducive to the emergence of a canonical passive, i.e. one which is both promotional (with an overt lexical subject) and agentive (with an overt agent). On the basis of cross-linguistic data it is argued that the required conditions are, on the one hand, the existence of a morphological alignment which does not distinguish between the O of a Transitive Clause and the S of a passive one and, on the other hand, the availability of highly grammaticalized third person plural impersonals, i.e. ones which can be used in episodic contexts and with different types of agents, among them individual and specific ones. The documented rarity of promotional passives originating from third person plural impersonal constructions is attributed to the rarity of the coincidence of the above two sets of independent factors.

Judith Aissen - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.

  • Correlates of Ergativity in Mayan
    Oxford Handbooks Online, 2017
    Co-Authors: Judith Aissen
    Abstract:

    Since all Mayan languages are morphologically ergative, a central question concerns the role that ergativity plays in shaping the syntax. One widely accepted view is that at least those languages which exhibit constraints on the extraction of ergatives are “syntactically ergative”. Here we review the basic facts around ergative extraction in Mayan, surveying both those languages which permit it and those which do not, and identify areas of exceptionality and variation. Central to the discussion are ‘agent focus’ constructions, constructions which permit extraction of the external argument when it is blocked from a canonical Transitive Clause. We discuss two approaches this constellation of facts––one which holds that constraints on ergative extraction reflect syntactic ergativity and one which holds that they do not.

  • AGENT FOCUS and inverse in Tzotzil
    Language, 1999
    Co-Authors: Judith Aissen
    Abstract:

    Many Mayan languages use a special verb form, the AGENT FOCUS form, when extracting the subject of a Transitive Clause. These verbs have a cluster of properties that have resisted satisfactory analysis. This article suggests that in Tzotzil, agent focus verbs are INVERSE, in the sense of Algonquian linguistics, and that their distribution is determined by the relative OBVIATION status of agent and patient. Evidence for the analysis comes from syntactic constraints on agent focus verbs and on their use in discourse. The properties of these verbs provide further evidence that obviation can play a central role in languages where it is not a morphological category.

Moses Usman - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.

  • GRAMMATICAL HIERARCHIES AND THE INTERACTION OF TYPOLOGICAL PATTERNS OF THE GORONTALO LANGUAGE (A Typological Approach)
    2017
    Co-Authors: Moses Usman, M.s
    Abstract:

    If we first restrict our attention to the Gorontalo language with traditional subjects (S + A) and objects (P + T), then we find that, agreement fits the grammatical relation hierarchy. If the verb agrees with the direct object, then it agrees with the subject (see the Indonesian example). Turning to word order, die Gorontalo language follows the grammatical hierarchy. The fact that subjects generally precede objects is embodied in Greenberg’s first universal: ‘In declarative sentences with nominal subject and object, the dominant order is almost always one in which the subject precedes the object (Greenberg 1966:77). There is also animacy hierarchy. The animacy hierarchy actually involves several distinct but related grammatical dimension. If we turn to case marking, we find that the major manifestation of animacy pattern is found in , the case marking of P and G in personal pro-nouns. In the Gorontalo language, a human pronoun direct or indirect object uses preposition in P and G arguments, A non-human common noun direct object or indirect object uses preposition phrase if only the g follows the P in di-Transitive Clause.

  • GRAMMATICAL HIERARCHIES AND THE INTERACTION OF TYPOLOGICAL PATTERNS OF THE GORONTALO LANGUAGE
    2009
    Co-Authors: Moses Usman
    Abstract:

    This study is concerned with several aspects of morphosyntax of the Gorontalo language based on the typological semantic-syntactic roles approach aiming at providing a concise description of the constituent order at the Clause level and the grammatical relation as well as semantics. The procedure in analyzing the data was by identifying and classifying the data according to the constituent order which determines the basic word order and its variants with regard to syntax, and by formulizing the basic word order rules and the grammatical relations of the subject-agent-patient, and comparing them with Greenberg’s language universals. The finding indicates that the basic word order is SVO correlated with preposition and noun-adjective, (SVO-prep N-Adj). Subjects in general are filled by arguments (+human, +animate) in active inTransitive and Transitive Clause. Proper nouns are characterized by the particle ‘te’/’ti’ and personal pronouns by independent pronouns. The subject semantically plays the role of an agent. The direct objects are filled by noun phrases (-animate). If they are filled by (+human), they are characterized by the preposition olo (ole/oli) in front of the noun and characterized by particular independent pronouns. The object is semantically the patient. In bi-Transitive Clauses, the direct objects are filled by noun phrases which are semantically themes; indirect objects are filled by particular independent pronouns which are the same as the pronouns for the direct objects in Transitive Clauses; semantically the indirect objects are the goals. The type of the Gorontalo language is nominative-accusative language since the S and the A have the same marker, but in bi-Transitive Clauses the type of the language is the secondary object since the patient and the goal have the same marker.

Francesc Queixalós - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.

  • What being a Syntactically Ergative Language means for Katukina-Kanamari
    Oxford Handbooks Online, 2017
    Co-Authors: Francesc Queixalós
    Abstract:

    The structure of the basic Clause in Katukina-Kanamari is, to a significant extent, conditioned by the internal structure of the verb phrase, which is starkly parallel to that of noun and adposition phrases. Depending on its internal make up, the verb phrase generates, for the same verbs, two patterns of Transitive Clauses, ergative and accusative, neither of which is synchronically derived from the other, but the latter appears as highly restricted in distribution. It also yields two patterns of inTransitive Clauses, one primary, the other resulting from an intransitivizing voice process. Since the basic Transitive Clause shows a clear syntactic hierarchy between its two arguments, intransitivizing voice is seen as of primary formal motivation: promoting the agent participant to subject status, a far more central need in this language than the functional motivation for relegating the patient participant to either adjunct status or no expression at all.

  • Grammatical relations in Katukina-Kanamari
    2010
    Co-Authors: Francesc Queixalós
    Abstract:

    Katukina-Kanamari is a strongly ergative language, with ergative case-marking, ergative verbal cross-referencing and ergative VP constituency, plus an absolutive pivot for focalization, WH questions, and relative Clauses. An antipassive is available (and must be utilized) in order to make focalization, WH questions and relative Clauses available to the agent. A little-used nominative-accusative Transitive Clause type exists alongside the ergative Clause type. The reflexive, applicative, and noun incorporation all uniquely target the patient, providing limited domains for the expression of a nominative-accusative pattern. This creates real problems for the traditional grammatical notion of subject, which are claimed to be organized in such a way that the absolutive is the synchronic subject, leaving the ergative to be the direct object. [Disponible : http://qxls.free.fr/QxlsProf/KatBB2009Abril.pdf]