Complex Predicates in Oceanic Languages
Complex Predicates in Oceanic Languages

Author: Isabelle Bril

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter

Published: 2012-04-17

Total Pages: 412

ISBN-13: 3110913283

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Serial verbs and complex predicates have a long history of research, yet there is comparatively little documentation on Oceanic languages. This volume presents new data for further typological studies. While previous research on serial verbs in Oceanic languages was mostly devoted to "core" serial constructions (with non-contiguous sV(o)sV(o) nuclei), this volume contributes a more detailed investigation of the "nuclear" type of complex predicates involving contiguous sVV(o) nuclei. Complex predicates of the form VV may correspond to two different syntactic structures, either co-ranking or hierarchized (head-modifier). Though the VV pattern does evidence a tendency towards structural compression, often entailing the fusion of the argument structures of two or more nuclei, yet it cannot be reduced to cases of co-lexicalization, compounding or grammaticalization. The data also show the "nuclear" type to be compatible with all types of basic word orders (VSO, VOS, SVO, SOV), with no evidence that this results from any word order change. This challenges the claim that "nuclear" serialization correlates with verb-final order, and "core" serialization with verb-medial order.

Argument Realisation in Complex Predicates and Complex Events
Argument Realisation in Complex Predicates and Complex Events

Author: Brian Nolan

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company

Published: 2017-01-26

Total Pages: 464

ISBN-13: 9027266123

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This book offers a comprehensive investigative study of argument realisation in complex predicates and complex events at the syntax-semantic interface across a wide variety of the world’s languages, ranging over languages such as German, Irish, Sicilian and Italian, Lithuanian, Estonian and other Finno-Ugric languages, Pitjantjatjara, Yankunytjatjara and Ngaanyatjarra from Australia’s Western Desert region, Japanese, Tepehua (Totonacan, Mexico), Cheyenne, Mexican Spanish, Boharic Coptic, and Persian. This volume examines the syntactic variation of complex events, complex predicates and multi-verb constructions within a single clause where the clause is view as representing a single event, studying their semantics and syntax within functional, cognitive and constructional frameworks, to arrive at a better understanding of their cross linguistic behaviour and how they resonate in syntax. These constructions manifest considerable variability in cross-linguistic comparisons of complex predicate formation. In European languages, for example, typically one of the verbs in a verb-verb construction highlights a phase of an underspecified event while the matrix verb specifies the actual event. In contrast, serial verbs require each verb to provide a sub-event dimension within a complex event that is viewed holistically as unitary in syntax. This book contributes to an understanding of complex events, complex predicates and multi-verb constructions across languages, their syntactic constructional patterns and argument realisation.

Complex Predicates
Complex Predicates

Author: Mengistu Amberber

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2010-04-22

Total Pages: 331

ISBN-13: 1139487485

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Complex predicates are multipredicational, but monoclausal structures. They have proven problematic for linguistic theory, particularly for proposed distinctions between the lexicon, morphology, and syntax. This volume focuses on the mapping from morphosyntactic structures to event structure, and in particular the constraints on possible mappings. The volume showcases the 'coverb construction', a complex predicate construction which, though widespread, has received little attention in the literature. The coverb construction contrasts with more familiar serial verb constructions. The coverb construction generally maps only to event structures like those of monomorphemic verbs, whereas serial verb constructions map to a range of event structures differing from those of monomorphemic verbs. The volume coverage is truly cross-linguistic, including languages from Australia, Papua New Guinea, Southeast Asia, the Indian subcontinent, East Africa and North America. The volume establishes a new arena of research in event structure, syntax, and cross-linguistic typology.

The Munda Languages
The Munda Languages

Author: Gregory D.S. Anderson

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2015-04-08

Total Pages: 1277

ISBN-13: 1317828852

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The Munda group of languages of the Austroasiatic family are spoken within central and eastern India by almost ten million people. To date, they are the least well-known and least documented languages of the Indian subcontinent. This unprecedented and original work draws together a distinguished group of international experts in the field of Munda language research and presents current assessments of a wide range of typological and comparative-historical issues, providing agendas for future research. Representing the current state of Munda Linguistics, this volume provides detailed descriptions of almost all of the languages in the family, in addition to a brief chapter discussing the enigmatic Nihali language.

Multi-verb constructions in Eastern Indonesia
Multi-verb constructions in Eastern Indonesia

Author: Volker Unterladstetter

Publisher: Language Science Press

Published: 2020

Total Pages: 480

ISBN-13: 3961102163

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Constructions with multiple verbal elements have posed a long-standing challenge to linguistic analysis. Most studies of verb serialisation have been confined to single languages rather than looking at crosslinguistic patterns. This book provides the first in-depth account into the areal characteristics of multi-verb constructions (MVCs) in Eastern Indonesia. By collating published data as well as corpus data from 32 Austronesian and Papuan languages, the study traces commonalities as well as differences in MVC use across the area. Analysis takes place on two levels: first, the morpho-syntactic behaviour of MVCs is taken into account. As this plane of analysis arguably does not provide any meaningful insights into why MVCs are construed and used the way they are, a semantic account of MVCs is presented. One of the main hypotheses advanced in this book is that the crucial driving force behind multi-verb construals is semantic interaction between the verbs, leading to four principal techniques of event formation: merging, staging, modification, and free juxtaposition. The study aims at showing that while all four techniques are, to varying degrees, in use in Eastern Indonesian languages, the morpho-syntactic output does not necessarily mirror these underlying differences in event conception. Applying insights from Davidsonian event semantics as well as from predicate decomposition, the book provides a model of event interaction that helps to explain differences in MVC behaviour such as issues in constituent order or operator assignment.

Form and Function in Language Research
Form and Function in Language Research

Author: Johannes Helmbrecht

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 363

ISBN-13: 3110216124

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Language description enriches linguistic theory and linguistic theory sharpens language description. Based on this assumption, the volume presents theoretical and empirical studies that explore the explanatory power of functional-typological linguistics for the investigation of the world's languages.

New Perspectives in Role and Reference Grammar
New Perspectives in Role and Reference Grammar

Author: Wataru Nakamura

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2011-09-22

Total Pages: 375

ISBN-13: 1443834270

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New Perspectives in Role and Reference Grammar presents a broad picture of current developments in Role and Reference Grammar (RRG), a version of parallel structure grammar with an emphasis on typological adequacy. Since its inception, RRG has been applied to a wide range of languages, in particular to case marking, complex clauses (e.g. control, raising, and serial verb constructions), unaccusativity/unergativity, and the interplay between syntax and information structure. The present book is a continued investigation of the intermodular correspondence in a variety of languages and comprises 13 papers, which not only contribute to the further development of the theory, but also investigate controversial areas of linguistic theory including inflectional and derivational morphology, verbal semantics and argument structure (anticausative and serial verb constructions), the argument-adjunct distinction, an extended typology of complex clauses, the syntax-information structure interface, and interactions between the lexicon and constructions. In addition, three papers illustrate how RRG may be applied to sign languages, language acquisition, and machine translation from Arabic to English.

Complex Predicates in Q’anjob’al (Maya)
Complex Predicates in Q’anjob’al (Maya)

Author: Eladio Mateo Toledo

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2022-10-17

Total Pages: 315

ISBN-13: 9004289984

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In this volume, Eladio Mateo Toledo provides a description and analysis of resultatives, end-states, monitoring constructions, ditransitives, causatives, and directional constructions. Although causatives and directionals are explored in Mayan languages, this is the first coherent account of a series complex predicates in a Mayan language.

Documenting Endangered Languages
Documenting Endangered Languages

Author: Geoffrey Haig

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter

Published: 2011-11-30

Total Pages: 365

ISBN-13: 3110260026

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The rapid decline in the world's linguistic diversity has prompted the emergence of documentary linguistics. While documentary linguistics aims primarily at creating a durable, accessible and comprehensive record of languages, it has also been a driving force in developing language annotation and analysis software, archiving architecture, improved fieldwork methodologies, and new standards in data accountability and accessibility. More recently, researchers have begun to recognize the immense potential available in the archived data as a source for linguistic analysis, so that the field has become of increasing importance for typologists, but also for neighbouring disciplines. The present volume contains contributions by practitioners of language documentation, most of whom have been involved in the Volkswagen Foundation's DoBeS programme (Dokumentation Bedrohter Sprachen). The topics covered in the volume reflect a field that has matured over the last decade and includes both retrospective accounts as well as those that address new challenges: linguistic annotation practice, fieldwork and interaction with speech communities, developments and challenges in archiving digital data, multimedia lexicon applications, corpora from endangered languages as a source for primary-data typology, as well as specific areas of linguistic analysis that are raised in documentary linguistics.

Verb-Verb Complexes in Asian Languages
Verb-Verb Complexes in Asian Languages

Author: Taro Kageyama

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2021-02-20

Total Pages: 624

ISBN-13: 0191077437

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This volume is the first to present a detailed survey of the systems of verb-verb complexes in Asian languages from both a synchronic and diachronic perspective. Many Asian languages share, to a greater or lesser extent, a unique class of compound verbs consisting of a main verb and a quasi-auxiliary verb known as a 'vector' or 'explicator'. These quasi-auxiliary verbs exhibit unique grammatical behaviour that suggests that they have an intermediate status between full lexical verbs and wholly reduced auxiliaries. They are also semantically unique, in that when they are combined with main verbs, they can convey a rich variety of functional meanings beyond the traditional notions of tense, aspect, and modality, such as manner and intensity of action, benefaction for speaker or hearer, and polite or derogatory styles in speech. In this book, leading specialists in a range of Asian languages offer an in-depth analysis of the long-standing questions relating to the diachrony and geographical distribution of verb-verb complexes. The findings have implications for the general understanding of the grammaticalization of verb categories, complex predicate formation, aktionsart and event semantics, the morphology-syntax-semantics interface, areal linguistics, and typology.