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Multiple Exponence In The Lusoga Verb Stem
(2017-04-06) Hyman, Larry; Inkelas, Sharon; Jenga, Fred
In this paper we address an unusual pattern of multiple exponence in Lusoga, a Bantu language spoken in Uganda, which bears on the questions of whether affix order is reducible to syntactic structure, whether derivation is always ordered before inflection, and what motivates multiple exponence in the first place. In Lusoga, both derivational and inflectional categories may be multiply exponed. The trigger of multiple exponence is the reciprocal suffix, which optionally triggers the doubling both of preceding derivational suffixes and of following inflectional suffixes. In these cases, each of the doubled affixes appear both before (closer to the root) and after the reciprocal. We attribute this pattern to restructuring, arguing that the inherited Bantu stem consisting of a root + suffixes has been reanalyzed as a compound-like structure with two internal constituents, the second headed by the reciprocal morpheme, each potentially undergoing parallel derivation and inflection.
On The Margins of Language: Ideophones, Interjections and Dependencies in Linguistic Theory
(2017-05-10) Dingemanse, Mark
On the margins of language: Ideophones, interjections and dependencies in linguistic theory.
Copulas Originating From The Imperative Of 'see/Look' Verbs In Mande Languages
(2017-07-05) Creissels, Denis
This paper analyzes Mande data that suggest a grammaticalization path leading from the imperative of ‘see/look’ verbs to ostensive predicators (i.e. words functionally similar to French voici, Italian ecco, or Russian vot), and further to copulas. Clear cases of copulas cognate with ‘see/look’ verbs are found in several branches of the Mande family, and there is convincing evidence that they did not develop from the semantic bleaching of forms originally meaning ‘is seen/found’ (another plausible grammaticalization path leading from ‘see’ verbs to copulas), but from the routinization of the ostensive use of the imperative of ‘see/look’. Comparison of the Mande data with the Arabic data provided by Taine-Cheikh (2013) shows however that this is not the only possibility for imperatives of ‘see/look’ verbs to grammaticalize into copulas, since in the Arabic varieties in which the imperative form of ‘see’ has become a plain copula, the most plausible explanation is that a modal/discursive particle resulting from the grammaticalization of the imperative of ‘see’ has undergone a process of semantic bleaching in the context of an equative or locational predicative construction that initially included no overt predicator.
Multiple Argument Marking In Bantoid: From Syntheticity To Analyticity
(2017-07-05) Hyman, Larry
This paper addresses the mechanisms of change that lead from syntheticity to analyticity in the Bantoid languages of the Nigeria-Cameroon borderland area. I address the different strategies that are adopted as these languages lose applicative “verb extensions” found elsewhere in Bantu and Niger-Congo. I show that although historical recipient, benefactive, and instrumental applicative marking on verbs allowed multiple object noun phrases (send-APPL chief letter, cook-APPL child rice, cut-APPL knife meat), they have been replaced by adpositional phrases and/or serial verb constructions in all branches of Bantoid. I map out the different analytic strategies that have been adopted and reconstruct the original verbal, nominal and pronominal sources of the different grammaticalization processes. Of particular interest is the development of a recipient/benefactive preposition ‘to, for’ from the word for ‘hand’ and a comitative/instrumental preposition ‘with’ from a third person plural pronoun.
Ellipsis In Arabic Fragment Answers
(2017-12-15) Algryani, Ali
Fragment answers are short answers to questions consisting of non-sentential XPs that convey the same propositional content as complete sentential answers. This squib discusses the syntax of ellipsis in Arabic fragments answers focusing on whether or not ellipsis in fragmentary utterances contains syntactic structure and whether, if so, such fragmentary XPs can be derived via A-bar movement to a clause-initial position plus TP deletion at PF in a way similar to that of Merchant (2004). It is argued that ellipsis in Arabic fragment answers contains syntactic structure and therefore can be analysed as TP ellipsis derived by focus movement of the remnant to a left peripheral position followed by deletion of the TP constituting the background information. Such an analysis captures some morpho-syntactic effects such as morphological case-matching, preposition-stranding, and islands effects.
From Suffix To Prefix To Interposition Via Differential Object Marking In Egyptian-Coptic
(2018-04-24) Grossman, Eitan
This article argues that Differential Argument Indexing (DOI) and Differential Argument Marking (DOM) constructions in Coptic (Afroasiatic, Egypt) are reanalyzed, resulting in a set of verbs with interposed P-indexes within bipartite stems (DeLancey 1996; Nichols 2003). Basically, incorporated noun phrases with prefixed possessor indexes become parts of derived verbs with unpredictable lexical semantics, and their erstwhile possessor prefixes, entrapped within the derived verb, are reanalyzed as P-interpositions. Since this possessor prefix ultimately developed from an earlier possessor suffix, the pathway documented here, stripped down to its essentials, is suffix → prefix → interposition, and erstwhile complex construction → bipartite stem. Finally, an overt genitive prefix that marks lexical possessors of incorporated noun phrases is reanalyzed as an accusative case prefix. These changes introduce new complexity into Coptic Differential Argument Marking: not only are P arguments either indexed as suffixes, case marked, or incorporated for the majority of verbs, they can be indexed as interpositions for a lexically determined set of verbs.
Differential Object Marking In Chichewa
(2018-04-24) Downing, Laura
In most Bantu languages, an object prefix can occur on the verb. In some Bantu languages, this object prefix has a purely anaphoric function, while in others it has an additional agreement function. Since Bresnan & Mchombo, Chichewa (Bantu N.31 Malawi) has been considered a textbook example of a language where the object marker is “always an incorporated pronoun and never a non-referential marker of grammatical agreement” (Bresnan & Mchombo 1987: 755). That is, in order for an overt nominal phrase (DP) to co-occur in the same sentence with an object prefix, the DP must be a dislocated Topic. Conversely, a dislocated object DP (a Topic) must be anaphorically bound to an object prefix. In this paper I present new Chichewa data showing that in modern colloquial Chichewa there is a human/non-human asymmetry in object marking. Human object DPs commonly co-occur with an object prefix, whether the object is a dislocated Topic or not, whereas non-human ones commonly do not co-occur with an object prefix, even when they are dislocated Topics. I conclude that Chichewa shows differential object marking (or object indexation), as humanness is a more important condition on the occurrence of object prefixes than word order. The implications of the Chichewa (and other Bantu) data for recent proposals like Creissels (2006), Dalrymple & Nikolaeva (2011) and Iemmolo (2013; 2014) about the diachronic development of DOM agreement systems from anaphoric Topic marking systems are discussed, and an alternative constraints-based account is proposed.
Verbal Semantics And Differential Object Marking In Lycopolitan Coptic
(2018-04-24) Engsheden, Åke
This paper seeks to clarify the role of affectedness for the marking of direct objects through an analysis of a corpus of Lycopolitan Coptic texts (4th to 5th centuries AD). Whereas previous research has shown the importance of definiteness for the use of the direct object marker n with the so-called imperfective tenses (present and imperfect), it has proven more difficult to establish why it alternates in the non-imperfective with a zero marker. An attempt is made here to correlate the two different object constructions to Tsunoda’s verb-type hierarchy, which was conceived to capture the degree of affectedness. It appears that the more affected a direct object is, the more likely it is to receive the direct object marker; whenever the object is little affected or unaffected, the zero-marked construction is preferred.
Emergence Of Optional Accusative Case Marking In Khoe Languages
(2018-04-24) McGregor, William
A number of languages of the Khoe family – one of three genetic lineages comprising southern African Khoisan – show an accusative marker, typically a postposition which in its elsewhere form has the shape (-)(ʔ)à. In all languages for which adequate data is available, this postposition is optional on object NPs, at least in some circumstances. A few proposals have been made for the grammaticalisation of this marker, notably by Kilian-Hatz (2008: 55; 2013: 376–378). However, not only are these proposals specific to the Khwe language, but also they fail to account for the fact that (-)(ʔ)à marks the accusative and that it is optional. In this paper I widen the net to the Khoe family as a whole, and consider the synchronic situations for the usage of the marker (-)(ʔ)à and its putative cognates in those languages for which pertinent data is available. This is used to motivate a diachronic proposal concerning the grammaticalisation of (-)(ʔ)à in the modern languages. Specifically, it is proposed that the accusative marker began life as a presentative copula; this served to index an item, drawing the addressee’s attention to it. It later became an optional accusative marker via grammaticalisation processes akin to those outlined in McGregor (2008; 2010; 2013; 2017) for the development of optional ergative case markers in some Australian languages. Thus the grammaticalisation scenario proposed is consistent with pathways of development of other optional case-markers.
Dictionary Day: A Community-Driven Approach To Dictionary Compilation
(2018-05-23) Gelles, Bryan
A common component of language documentation is the compilation of a small dictionary. The method of compilation has changed very little in the last century: most documentarians elicit individual lexical items from a speaker and check the item through both translation and backtranslation with other speakers. Two major problems with this method are the absence of larger community engagement and idiosyncratic problems that come from lexical item elicitation. Animere is an endangered language spoken by around thirty speakers all aged over forty years. The speech community is located in Kecheibi, northern Volta Region, Ghana. Over a five month period I began the initial documentation of Animere with funds provided by a Small Grant from the Endangered Languages Documentation Programme, integrating Dictionary Day, one day a week when members of the community would gather to discuss lexical items. This method proved highly successful: I saved time and funds by making use of the speech community’s intuition while obtaining valuable folk linguistic information when there was disagreement. Furthermore, the speech community was not only engaged but agentive, allowing for genuine consultation between the linguist and the speech community. The major drawback, however, is lack of synergy among documentarians and other linguists when excluding prescribed data collection methods.
The Acoustic Vowel Space Of Anyi In Light Of The Cardinal Vowel System And The Dispersion Focalization Theory
(2018-05-23) Koffi, Ettien
The Cardinal Vowel System (CVS) and the Dispersion Focalization Theory (DFT) make an important assumption about the inventory of vowels in world languages. The claim is that languages organize their vowels in a certain way in the auditory-perceptual space so as to maximize intelligibility. The vowel diagrams of African languages in influential publications such as Welmers (1973: 20–45) explicitly or implicitly reflect this assumption. However, persistent confusions between [ɪ] and [e] among Anyi Morofu speakers have aroused my curiosity and led me to investigate the matter acoustically. The findings reported here show that the vowel space of Anyi Morofu is in a between and betwixt state. The data indicates that this dialect is moving from a nine-vowel system to an eight-vowel system through the merger of [ɪ] and [e]. There are also signs of the impending merger of [ʊ] and [o].
Adjectives in Lubukusu
(2018-05-23) Wasike, Aggrey
The lexical category of adjectives is proposed to be universal, but its realization varies across languages. In languages such as English, there is a clearly distinct category of adjectives. But in other languages the category of adjectives is not entirely distinct morphologically and syntactically from nouns and verbs. In this paper I show that there is a striking resemblance between adjectives and nouns in Lubukusu. In addition, stage-level predicate meanings are expressed by use of verbs rather than adjectives. Because of these facts, it is tempting to adopt an analysis that reduces Lubukusu adjectives to either nouns or verbs. However, I argue that there is not sufficient evidence to support such an analysis. Lubukusu has true adjectives in spite of the associated nominal and verbal characteristics. A verbal characteristic such as expressing adjectival meanings by use verbs is similar to languages such Mohawk and Vaeakau-Taumako. But there are significant differences between these languages and Lubukusu with regards to this verbal characteristic.
Temporal Remoteness And Vagueness In Past Time Reference In Luganda
(2018-05-23) Bochnak, Ryan; Klecha, Peter
In this paper, we point out that past time operators (PTOs) in Luganda, a language that makes three past time remoteness distinctions, are vague and context-dependent, and provide an analysis whereby PTOs contain context-sensitive measure functions akin to gradable adjectives. We call the relevant PTOs RECENT, INTERMEDIATE, and DISTANT, respectively. Luganda PTOs give rise to borderline cases, where it is difficult to decide whether a past reference time (RT) counts as ‘recent’, ‘intermediate’ or ‘distant’. What counts as ‘recent’, ‘intermediate’ or ‘distant’ is context dependent; e.g., there are contexts where REC is acceptable with an RT of a few weeks ago, and contexts where DIST is acceptable for an RT of a few minutes ago. We assume that like tenses in English, PTOs in matrix clauses in Luganda restrict the relation between utterance time (UT) and RT. However, while English past tense presupposes that RT precedes UT (e.g. Kratzer 1998), Luganda PTOs additionally encode as part of their meaning a vague, context-dependent measure function that compares the length of a time interval to a contextual standard.
Gender Instability in Maay
(2018-05-23) Paster, Mary
This paper discusses variation in the gender of nouns in Maay, a language of Somalia. Languages of the Eastern Omo-Tana subgroup of East Cushitic (including Maay, Somali, Rendille, and Tunni) have gender systems wherein every noun is masculine or feminine. Masculine nouns take k-initial variants of suffixes including the definite marker, demonstratives, and possessive markers; these suffixes are t-initial with feminine nouns. As is now well known, gender in these languages is sensitive to plurality in various ways: in some languages, gender ‘polarity’ reverses the gender of nouns in the plural; in others, feminine nouns change to masculine when their plurals are formed with certain suffixes but not others. In Maay, plurals are all masculine regardless of how they are formed, but the gender of many singular nouns is inconsistent across individuals. The masculine plural pattern makes the gender of singular nouns unrecoverable from their plurals, so nouns that are frequently plural are susceptible to gender instability. If there is uncertainty about the gender of some nouns, speakers may be inclined to guess masculine, thereby producing more feminine to masculine changes than the reverse, due to the prevalence of masculine nouns in the Maay lexicon.
Egyptian Arabic Broken Plurals in DATR
(2018-05-23) Winchester, Lindley
This paper examines plural inflectional processes in Egyptian Arabic, with specific focus on the complex broken plural system. The data used in this examination is a set of 114 lexemes from a dictionary of the Egyptian Arabic variety by Badawi & Hinds (1986) collected through comparison of singular to plural template correspondences proposed by Gadalla (2000). The theoretical side of this analysis builds upon Alain Kihm’s realizational “Root-and-Site Hypothesis”, which categorizes concatenative and non-concatenative morphological processes as approachable in the same manner when discussing inflection as not only represented in segments but also as “sites” where inflectional operations may take place (Kihm 2006: 69). To organize the data through a computational lens, I emulate Kihm’s approach in DATR, a lexical knowledge representation language, to generate the grammatical forms for a set of both broken and regular plural nouns. The hierarchically-structured inheritance of DATR allows for default templates to be defined and overridden, permitting a wide scope of variation to be represented with little code content. Overall, the analysis reveals that complex morphological phenomena, such as the broken plural, can be accounted for through a combination of theoretical and computational approaches.
A Corpus Study Of The Swahili Demonstrative Position
(2018-05-23) Mwamzandi, Mohamed
Synchronic studies on Swahili adnominal demonstratives have not addressed the interplay between syntactic position and pragmatic function of these structures. This study shows how referential givenness of discourse entities may explain Swahili word order variation in Swahili adnominal demonstratives. Class 1 (animate nouns) demonstratives are examined in the two attested word orders: NP+DEM and DEM+NP. A close analysis of dataset extracted from the Helsinki Corpus of Swahili reveals that the two structures have distinct pragmatic values. The NP+DEM order is used for active topics while the DEM+NP order reactivates semiactive/inactive topics. This study reveals how the syntax-pragmatics interplay may explain distinct structures viewed as semantic equivalents by native speakers.
Searching High And Low For Focus In Ibibio
(2018-05-23) Duncan, Philip; MAJOR, TRAVIS; Udoinyang, Mfon
This paper discusses two strategies in Ibibio for focusing verbs: contrastive verb focus and exhaustive verb focus. We demonstrate how these constructions differ crucially in the syntactic configurations and derivations that underlie each. Exhaustive verb focus is marked by the presence of the focus operator kpɔ́t ’only’, which is base-generated high in the left periphery and triggers phrasal movement of the TP containing the focused verb via piedpiping. Contrastive verb focus is marked by verb doubling produced by head movement, and it invokes a low focus phrase situated in the middle field, somewhere at the boundary of the inflectional and verbal domains. Both types of verb focus in Ibibio are thus syntacticallydriven, but the locus of each is split across the clausal spine, and each Foc head can probe independent of the other. Ibibio thus furnishes further evidence that multiple foci can occur in a single clause, and it also provides independent support for the existence of a low focus phrase.
Classification of Guébie Within Kru
(2018-05-23) Sande, Hannah Leigh
Guébie, a Kru language spoken in Côte d’Ivoire, is currently doubly classified within Eastern Kru according to Ethnologue (Lewis et al. 2013). It is listed as a dialect of two distinct subgroups, Bété and Dida. This double classification is clearly problematic, and this paper provides the initial work towards addressing the correct classification of the language. Here I compare the phonological and syntactic properties of Guébie with surrounding Bété and Dida languages in order to determine its relatedness to each subgroup. I conclude that Guébie is more closely related to Vata, a Dida language, than to Bété.
A Morphosyntactic Analysis Of Adjectives In Two Kwa Languages: Ga And Dangme
(2018-05-23) Oforiwah Caesar, Regina; Ollennu, Yvonne
The adjective category normally serves as attribute for the nouns in languages that do have them. The paper investigates the morphosyntactic properties of adjectives in two Kwa languages, Ga and Dangme. Both languages have derived and non-derived adjectives. The paper which is mainly descriptive, examines the similarities and differences that exist between these two Kwa languages in terms of their morphological and syntactic features. The paper reveals that though similarities exist in the occurrence of adjectives syntactically, there exist differences in their morphological properties. On the other hand, Ga and Dangme show agreement in terms of number with the head noun for all adjectives used attributively. The paper concludes that in both languages, adjective occur after the head noun in attributive position. Predication of adjectives can occur in nominal forms and the verbal equivalence is also employed in both languages. Plural marking in adjectives is through reduplication and affixation in Ga while in Dangme, it is only through affixation. Data for this paper were collected from both primary and secondary sources.
Factive Relative Clauses In Pulaar
(2018-05-23) Ba, Ibrahima
Drawing from Kayne (1994a), this chapter shows that Headed Relative Clauses and Factive Clauses in Pulaar are built from similar structures. Both display word order similarities, and in each case the complementizer, which is homophonous with the determiner, agrees with the (null or overt) head NP in Spec,CP. The verb form is also the same in Headed Relatives and Factive Relatives, and it undergoes the same agreement pattern. Furthermore, Headed Relatives and Factives in Pulaar both exhibit island constraints such that extraction out of either construction is impossible; this indicates that they all involve movement of some sort. The difference between these constructions is that the Headed Relative has an overt head noun whereas Factives have null head nouns.

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