Olga Krasnoukhova | Leiden University (original) (raw)
Papers by Olga Krasnoukhova
Linguistic typology, 2023
This study compares standard negation in the indigenous languages of South America to the rest of... more This study compares standard negation in the indigenous languages of South America to the rest of the world. We show that South American languages not only prefer postverbal negation to preverbal negation and negative morphology to syntax, but postverbal morphological negation to any other negation strategy. The predominance of this strategy makes South America distinct from other macro-areas. The study also considers the areal distribution of negation on the South American continent. It shows that negation strategies each have their own concentration area. Postverbal morphological negation, which is the dominant strategy, turns out to be concentrated in the northwest of the continent, with the highest density around the boundaries between Colombia, Peru and Brazil. We suggest that the preference for postverbal morphological negation in South America is likely to be the result of language-internal mechanisms of negation renewal, coupled with language contact.
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Linguistics (Open Access), 2022
The article deals with attributive modification in South American languages. It focuses on descri... more The article deals with attributive modification in South American languages. It focuses on descriptive terms that denote properties. First of all, it is observed that attributive modification with property terms is possible in most, but not all South American languages. The typology of attributive constructions is argued to constitute a continuum, from syntactically loose nominal expressions, on the one hand, to morphologically complex structures which are ambiguous between compounding and derivation, on the other hand. The latter involves the use of lexico-grammatical means such as classifiers. The paper also raises the question of a possible diachronic link – at least for some languages – between intransitive clauses and postnominal property terms, which are often verbal in nature.
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Boletim do Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi. Ciências Humanas, 2022
In the Jê languages standard negators tend to take a post-verbal position. This paper asks why th... more In the Jê languages standard negators tend to take a post-verbal position. This paper asks why this should be the case and therefore discusses earlier accounts relating Jê standard negators to either negative verbs or privative postpositions. We argue that these accounts do not have to exclude each other. In particular, we propose that an existential negator can be reanalyzed as a privative one. We also argue that if the origin of the standard negator is a verb with the meaning 'finish', we may be dealing with a scenario that is similar to the 'Negative Existential Cycle'. In both, the existential negator denies the existence of a state of affairs and then turns into a standard negator. But whereas in the Negative Existential Cycle the non-existence of a state of affairs is modelled on the non-existence of an object, in the 'new' scenario the non-existence of a state of affairs derives from the fact that a process or event has come to an end.
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Krasnoukhova, Olga. 2022. In Paolo Acquaviva & Michael Daniel (eds.) Number in the World’s Languages. A Comparative Handbook. [Comparative Handbooks of Linguistics, 5]. De Gruyter Mouton., 2022
This chapter offers a typological overview of the number category in the indigenous languages of ... more This chapter offers a typological overview of the number category in the indigenous languages of South America (SA). The focus is placed on number in independent personal pronouns and on nouns, as well as on verbal number. The discussion is centered around tendencies and patterns that SA languages show in number marking in the (pro)nominal and verbal domains. Whenever relevant, SA data are situated in a larger cross-linguistic context. The section on verbal number constitutes a first comparative account of this phenomenon in SA languages. It is shown that both types of verbal number (i.e. event number and participant number) are widespread in SA, occurring in most language families surveyed. Teasing apart verbal number (of the participant plurality type) and nominal number manifested on the verb (argument indexing) turns out to be an interesting challenge for SA, with many intermediate cases.
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by Olga Krasnoukhova, Johan van der Auwera and Mily Crevels , 2021
The paper sketches the state of affairs of our understanding of postverbal negation. It departs f... more The paper sketches the state of affairs of our understanding of postverbal negation. It departs from the typological finding that there is a crosslinguistic
preference for a negator to precede the verb. Nevertheless, a sizable proportion of the world’s languages adhere to a pattern with a negator following the verb, and such negators are typically morphologically bound. The existence of this pattern, unfavorable from a functional perspective, calls for a diachronic explanation. The paper takes stock of
diachronic processes that can lead to postverbal negation, in general, and suffixal negation, in particular. Furthermore, a language may acquire a pattern with postverbal negation through language contact, and this is yet another perspective that the paper addresses. Finally, we introduce the contributions to this volume, highlighting the new insights.
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Italian Journal of Linguistics, 2021
In the Tupi-Guarini languages the ancestral 'thing' word has developed a fair number of grammatic... more In the Tupi-Guarini languages the ancestral 'thing' word has developed a fair number of grammatical uses, either on its own or together with other material. The paper surveys these uses and their diachronies, with respect to both general issues of grammaticalization from a 'thing' source or to debates specific to Tupi-Guarani languages. We first survey pronominal uses (indefinite, interrogative, and negative) and discourse particle uses. Then we turn to morphological functions serving incorporation, intransitivization and nominalization. We also deal with negative and privative functions.
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Revista Brasileira de Linguística Antropológica, 2019
The paper revisits negation in the Zaparoan languages Arabela, Iquito and Zaparo. For Iquito, whi... more The paper revisits negation in the Zaparoan languages Arabela, Iquito and Zaparo. For Iquito, which exhibits single, double as well as triple negation, we adopt a Jespersen Cycle perspective and find it to have explanatory force. For Zaparo and Arabela another Cycle hypothesis proves enlightening, i.e., the Negative Existential Cycle. We hypothesize that both in Iquito and Zaparo there is a diachronic link between the formal expression of negation and of the concept for ‘leave’/‘go’. We addressed the internal subclassification of the Zaparoan languages, showing that, at least for the structural feature of negation, the position of Arabela is closer to Zaparo than to Iquito.
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rkadiev, P., Pakerys, J., Šeškauskienė, I. & Žeimantienė, V. (eds) Studies in Baltic and Other Languages. A Festschrift for Axel Holvoet on the occasion of his 65th birthday. Vilnius: Vilnius Univiersity, 45-66, 2021
With negative indefinite pronouns the Balto-Slavic languages all exhibit strict negative concord.... more With negative indefinite pronouns the Balto-Slavic languages all exhibit strict negative concord. In this study we investigate how negative concord functions in a context in which a connective negator ('neither ... nor') combines either phrases or clauses. We show that there are various types of non-concordant patterns.
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Studies in Baltic and other languages. A Festschrift for Axel Holvoet on the occasion of his 65th birthday. Ed. by Peter Arkadiev, Jurgis Pakerys, Inesa Šeškauskienė & Vaiva Žeimantienė, 2021
With negative indefinite pronouns the Balto-Slavic languages all exhibit strict negative concord.... more With negative indefinite pronouns the Balto-Slavic languages all exhibit strict negative concord. In this study we investigate how negative concord functions in a context in which a connective negator (‘neither ... nor’) combines either phrases or clauses. We show that there are various types of non-concordant patterns.
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The Oxford Handbook of Negation. Viviane Déprez & M. Teresa Espinal (eds.) Oxford: Oxford University Press, 91-116., 2020
This chapter discusses a number of central phenomena in the typology of negation, building on sta... more This chapter discusses a number of central phenomena in the typology of negation, building on state-of-the-art typological research. The focus lies on standard negation, prohibitive negation, existential negation, and the negation of indefinites. Cross-linguistic variation is central in the discussion, and for most phenomena the question is addressed as to what extent a certain pattern is frequent or rare. As far as it is possible, observed patterns are provided with explanations, which are often diachronic. Thus we discuss the Jespersen and Negative Existential Cycles and we venture a hypothesis on the existence of an 'Ascriptive negation cycle'. For a number of phenomena we also discuss areality.
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Folia Linguistica Historica, 2019
The study deals with clausal negation in Awa Pit, a Barbacoan language spoken in South America. B... more The study deals with clausal negation in Awa Pit, a Barbacoan language spoken in South America. By bringing together the data on negation from different varieties of the language, we present an analysis of synchronic patterns of negation marking. Based on the variation we suggest a number of innovations in the negation system, for which we put forward diachronic scenarios. Some innovations are likely to be contact-induced, whereas others are products of language-internal diachronic processes. The latter involve mechanisms associated with a classical 'Jespersen Cycle'. However, Awa Pit offers us very non-classical Jespersen Cycles-at best. The case of Awa Pit is instructive as some of the scenarios that we suggest are likely to be relevant for other languages or languages families.
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LIAMES , 2020
This paper surveys the form and the position of the negators of declarative verbal main clauses i... more This paper surveys the form and the position of the negators of declarative verbal main clauses in the Chibchan languages. It attempts to describe the similarities and the differences, and it ventures hypotheses about the diachrony, primarily with an appeal to the Jespersen and Negative Existential Cycles. It sketches if and how the negators fit more general areal patterning, in particular, the Columbian Central American linguistic area. keywords: Negation; Jespersen Cycle; Negative Existential Cycle; Columbian Central American linguistic area. resumen: Este artículo presenta una panorámica de la forma y la posición de los negadores de oraciones prin-cipales declarativas en las lenguas chibchas. Pretende describir las similitudes y las diferencias, y propone hi-pótesis sobre la diacronía, principalmente en relación con el Ciclo de Jespersen y el Ciclo Existencial Negativo. Apunta de qué manera los negadores encajan en mecanismos más amplios de organización areal, en particular en el área centroamericana colombiana. palabras clave: Negación; El Ciclo de Jespersen; El Ciclo Negativo Existencial; El Área Colombiano-Cen-troamericana.
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Journal of Historical Linguistics, 2019
This study reconstructs the development of a negative existential and a negative pro-sentence in ... more This study reconstructs the development of a negative existential and a negative pro-sentence in the Arawan language Kulina (Brazil-Peru). We demonstrate that the two elements forming the negative existential construction nowe (hi)ra- are involved in a double polarity swap: an originally neutral lexical item (the dynamic verb nowe ‘show’) has become negative through contamination, and an originally negative element (hi)ra-, which was responsible for the contamination, is bleaching into a semantically neutral auxiliary. This lexeme nowe, with the auxiliary used only optionally, also functions as a negative pro-sentence now. Thus, synchronically we have a negative pro-sentence that has its origin in a semantically-neutral lexical item. Neither the source of the negative pro-sentence nor this diachronic path has surfaced in the literature on negation so far and thus they are instructive from diachronic and typological perspectives. The hypothesis enriches the literature on both the Jespersen Cycle and the Negative Existential Cycle.
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This paper deals with the Noun Phrase in indigenous languages of South America, focusing on the p... more This paper deals with the Noun Phrase in indigenous languages of South America, focusing on the phenomenon of semantically rich demonstrative systems which are found in these languages.
Before focusing on the topic of demonstratives, I will present a general profile of Noun Phrases (NPs) in South American languages. Here I discuss word order tendencies, expression and realization of adjectives, cardinality, attributive possession, (in)alienability, nominal classification, and discuss the areal component in the distribution of these features.
The rest of the paper gives special attention to demonstratives. I show that the range of semantic features reported in Diessel (1999) can be extended with the following features, if we look at South American languages: perceived physical properties, posture, possession, and temporal distinctions. On the basis of the data, I suggest that although the languages vary in the richness of their demonstrative systems, this variation seems to be highly structured. The semantic features encoded by demonstratives represent a continuum running from prototypically nominal categories to prototypically verbal categories. The languages spoken in the Chaco and the Southwest Amazon region stand out for encoding a number of verbal categories by demonstratives.
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This dissertation presents the first cross-linguistic study of the Noun Phrase in the indigenous ... more This dissertation presents the first cross-linguistic study of the Noun Phrase in the indigenous languages of South America. It builds upon a considerable amount of data that have recently become available for languages in this continent. Based on a sample of 55 languages, this study gives a novel account of the syntactic, morphosyntactic, and semantic properties of the NP. For example, the analysis shows that personal pronouns commonly receive the same possessive markers as nominal possessors, which implies that a fully grammaticalized category of possessive pronouns is rare in South American languages. In addition, the new South American data only partly confirm typological claims for tendencies in the NP domain. For instance, a morphologically distinct class of adjectives is found in many languages of the sample; however, this class is often small, and the dominant way to encode property concepts is with verbs. Finally, this study also includes a discussion of the geographic patterning of structural features in the NP, evaluating the assumption that there is a major typological split between so-called Andean and Amazonian languages. The analysis shows that most of the features cannot be attributed to either of these larger areas. It also demonstrates, however, that there is some evidence for a broad structural division of languages into the western part of the continent (corresponding to the Andean sphere) and the rest of the continent. One of the features that define this split is the parameter of alienability.
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Linguistic typology, 2023
This study compares standard negation in the indigenous languages of South America to the rest of... more This study compares standard negation in the indigenous languages of South America to the rest of the world. We show that South American languages not only prefer postverbal negation to preverbal negation and negative morphology to syntax, but postverbal morphological negation to any other negation strategy. The predominance of this strategy makes South America distinct from other macro-areas. The study also considers the areal distribution of negation on the South American continent. It shows that negation strategies each have their own concentration area. Postverbal morphological negation, which is the dominant strategy, turns out to be concentrated in the northwest of the continent, with the highest density around the boundaries between Colombia, Peru and Brazil. We suggest that the preference for postverbal morphological negation in South America is likely to be the result of language-internal mechanisms of negation renewal, coupled with language contact.
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Linguistics (Open Access), 2022
The article deals with attributive modification in South American languages. It focuses on descri... more The article deals with attributive modification in South American languages. It focuses on descriptive terms that denote properties. First of all, it is observed that attributive modification with property terms is possible in most, but not all South American languages. The typology of attributive constructions is argued to constitute a continuum, from syntactically loose nominal expressions, on the one hand, to morphologically complex structures which are ambiguous between compounding and derivation, on the other hand. The latter involves the use of lexico-grammatical means such as classifiers. The paper also raises the question of a possible diachronic link – at least for some languages – between intransitive clauses and postnominal property terms, which are often verbal in nature.
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Boletim do Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi. Ciências Humanas, 2022
In the Jê languages standard negators tend to take a post-verbal position. This paper asks why th... more In the Jê languages standard negators tend to take a post-verbal position. This paper asks why this should be the case and therefore discusses earlier accounts relating Jê standard negators to either negative verbs or privative postpositions. We argue that these accounts do not have to exclude each other. In particular, we propose that an existential negator can be reanalyzed as a privative one. We also argue that if the origin of the standard negator is a verb with the meaning 'finish', we may be dealing with a scenario that is similar to the 'Negative Existential Cycle'. In both, the existential negator denies the existence of a state of affairs and then turns into a standard negator. But whereas in the Negative Existential Cycle the non-existence of a state of affairs is modelled on the non-existence of an object, in the 'new' scenario the non-existence of a state of affairs derives from the fact that a process or event has come to an end.
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Krasnoukhova, Olga. 2022. In Paolo Acquaviva & Michael Daniel (eds.) Number in the World’s Languages. A Comparative Handbook. [Comparative Handbooks of Linguistics, 5]. De Gruyter Mouton., 2022
This chapter offers a typological overview of the number category in the indigenous languages of ... more This chapter offers a typological overview of the number category in the indigenous languages of South America (SA). The focus is placed on number in independent personal pronouns and on nouns, as well as on verbal number. The discussion is centered around tendencies and patterns that SA languages show in number marking in the (pro)nominal and verbal domains. Whenever relevant, SA data are situated in a larger cross-linguistic context. The section on verbal number constitutes a first comparative account of this phenomenon in SA languages. It is shown that both types of verbal number (i.e. event number and participant number) are widespread in SA, occurring in most language families surveyed. Teasing apart verbal number (of the participant plurality type) and nominal number manifested on the verb (argument indexing) turns out to be an interesting challenge for SA, with many intermediate cases.
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by Olga Krasnoukhova, Johan van der Auwera and Mily Crevels , 2021
The paper sketches the state of affairs of our understanding of postverbal negation. It departs f... more The paper sketches the state of affairs of our understanding of postverbal negation. It departs from the typological finding that there is a crosslinguistic
preference for a negator to precede the verb. Nevertheless, a sizable proportion of the world’s languages adhere to a pattern with a negator following the verb, and such negators are typically morphologically bound. The existence of this pattern, unfavorable from a functional perspective, calls for a diachronic explanation. The paper takes stock of
diachronic processes that can lead to postverbal negation, in general, and suffixal negation, in particular. Furthermore, a language may acquire a pattern with postverbal negation through language contact, and this is yet another perspective that the paper addresses. Finally, we introduce the contributions to this volume, highlighting the new insights.
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Italian Journal of Linguistics, 2021
In the Tupi-Guarini languages the ancestral 'thing' word has developed a fair number of grammatic... more In the Tupi-Guarini languages the ancestral 'thing' word has developed a fair number of grammatical uses, either on its own or together with other material. The paper surveys these uses and their diachronies, with respect to both general issues of grammaticalization from a 'thing' source or to debates specific to Tupi-Guarani languages. We first survey pronominal uses (indefinite, interrogative, and negative) and discourse particle uses. Then we turn to morphological functions serving incorporation, intransitivization and nominalization. We also deal with negative and privative functions.
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Revista Brasileira de Linguística Antropológica, 2019
The paper revisits negation in the Zaparoan languages Arabela, Iquito and Zaparo. For Iquito, whi... more The paper revisits negation in the Zaparoan languages Arabela, Iquito and Zaparo. For Iquito, which exhibits single, double as well as triple negation, we adopt a Jespersen Cycle perspective and find it to have explanatory force. For Zaparo and Arabela another Cycle hypothesis proves enlightening, i.e., the Negative Existential Cycle. We hypothesize that both in Iquito and Zaparo there is a diachronic link between the formal expression of negation and of the concept for ‘leave’/‘go’. We addressed the internal subclassification of the Zaparoan languages, showing that, at least for the structural feature of negation, the position of Arabela is closer to Zaparo than to Iquito.
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rkadiev, P., Pakerys, J., Šeškauskienė, I. & Žeimantienė, V. (eds) Studies in Baltic and Other Languages. A Festschrift for Axel Holvoet on the occasion of his 65th birthday. Vilnius: Vilnius Univiersity, 45-66, 2021
With negative indefinite pronouns the Balto-Slavic languages all exhibit strict negative concord.... more With negative indefinite pronouns the Balto-Slavic languages all exhibit strict negative concord. In this study we investigate how negative concord functions in a context in which a connective negator ('neither ... nor') combines either phrases or clauses. We show that there are various types of non-concordant patterns.
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Studies in Baltic and other languages. A Festschrift for Axel Holvoet on the occasion of his 65th birthday. Ed. by Peter Arkadiev, Jurgis Pakerys, Inesa Šeškauskienė & Vaiva Žeimantienė, 2021
With negative indefinite pronouns the Balto-Slavic languages all exhibit strict negative concord.... more With negative indefinite pronouns the Balto-Slavic languages all exhibit strict negative concord. In this study we investigate how negative concord functions in a context in which a connective negator (‘neither ... nor’) combines either phrases or clauses. We show that there are various types of non-concordant patterns.
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The Oxford Handbook of Negation. Viviane Déprez & M. Teresa Espinal (eds.) Oxford: Oxford University Press, 91-116., 2020
This chapter discusses a number of central phenomena in the typology of negation, building on sta... more This chapter discusses a number of central phenomena in the typology of negation, building on state-of-the-art typological research. The focus lies on standard negation, prohibitive negation, existential negation, and the negation of indefinites. Cross-linguistic variation is central in the discussion, and for most phenomena the question is addressed as to what extent a certain pattern is frequent or rare. As far as it is possible, observed patterns are provided with explanations, which are often diachronic. Thus we discuss the Jespersen and Negative Existential Cycles and we venture a hypothesis on the existence of an 'Ascriptive negation cycle'. For a number of phenomena we also discuss areality.
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Folia Linguistica Historica, 2019
The study deals with clausal negation in Awa Pit, a Barbacoan language spoken in South America. B... more The study deals with clausal negation in Awa Pit, a Barbacoan language spoken in South America. By bringing together the data on negation from different varieties of the language, we present an analysis of synchronic patterns of negation marking. Based on the variation we suggest a number of innovations in the negation system, for which we put forward diachronic scenarios. Some innovations are likely to be contact-induced, whereas others are products of language-internal diachronic processes. The latter involve mechanisms associated with a classical 'Jespersen Cycle'. However, Awa Pit offers us very non-classical Jespersen Cycles-at best. The case of Awa Pit is instructive as some of the scenarios that we suggest are likely to be relevant for other languages or languages families.
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LIAMES , 2020
This paper surveys the form and the position of the negators of declarative verbal main clauses i... more This paper surveys the form and the position of the negators of declarative verbal main clauses in the Chibchan languages. It attempts to describe the similarities and the differences, and it ventures hypotheses about the diachrony, primarily with an appeal to the Jespersen and Negative Existential Cycles. It sketches if and how the negators fit more general areal patterning, in particular, the Columbian Central American linguistic area. keywords: Negation; Jespersen Cycle; Negative Existential Cycle; Columbian Central American linguistic area. resumen: Este artículo presenta una panorámica de la forma y la posición de los negadores de oraciones prin-cipales declarativas en las lenguas chibchas. Pretende describir las similitudes y las diferencias, y propone hi-pótesis sobre la diacronía, principalmente en relación con el Ciclo de Jespersen y el Ciclo Existencial Negativo. Apunta de qué manera los negadores encajan en mecanismos más amplios de organización areal, en particular en el área centroamericana colombiana. palabras clave: Negación; El Ciclo de Jespersen; El Ciclo Negativo Existencial; El Área Colombiano-Cen-troamericana.
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Journal of Historical Linguistics, 2019
This study reconstructs the development of a negative existential and a negative pro-sentence in ... more This study reconstructs the development of a negative existential and a negative pro-sentence in the Arawan language Kulina (Brazil-Peru). We demonstrate that the two elements forming the negative existential construction nowe (hi)ra- are involved in a double polarity swap: an originally neutral lexical item (the dynamic verb nowe ‘show’) has become negative through contamination, and an originally negative element (hi)ra-, which was responsible for the contamination, is bleaching into a semantically neutral auxiliary. This lexeme nowe, with the auxiliary used only optionally, also functions as a negative pro-sentence now. Thus, synchronically we have a negative pro-sentence that has its origin in a semantically-neutral lexical item. Neither the source of the negative pro-sentence nor this diachronic path has surfaced in the literature on negation so far and thus they are instructive from diachronic and typological perspectives. The hypothesis enriches the literature on both the Jespersen Cycle and the Negative Existential Cycle.
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This paper deals with the Noun Phrase in indigenous languages of South America, focusing on the p... more This paper deals with the Noun Phrase in indigenous languages of South America, focusing on the phenomenon of semantically rich demonstrative systems which are found in these languages.
Before focusing on the topic of demonstratives, I will present a general profile of Noun Phrases (NPs) in South American languages. Here I discuss word order tendencies, expression and realization of adjectives, cardinality, attributive possession, (in)alienability, nominal classification, and discuss the areal component in the distribution of these features.
The rest of the paper gives special attention to demonstratives. I show that the range of semantic features reported in Diessel (1999) can be extended with the following features, if we look at South American languages: perceived physical properties, posture, possession, and temporal distinctions. On the basis of the data, I suggest that although the languages vary in the richness of their demonstrative systems, this variation seems to be highly structured. The semantic features encoded by demonstratives represent a continuum running from prototypically nominal categories to prototypically verbal categories. The languages spoken in the Chaco and the Southwest Amazon region stand out for encoding a number of verbal categories by demonstratives.
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This dissertation presents the first cross-linguistic study of the Noun Phrase in the indigenous ... more This dissertation presents the first cross-linguistic study of the Noun Phrase in the indigenous languages of South America. It builds upon a considerable amount of data that have recently become available for languages in this continent. Based on a sample of 55 languages, this study gives a novel account of the syntactic, morphosyntactic, and semantic properties of the NP. For example, the analysis shows that personal pronouns commonly receive the same possessive markers as nominal possessors, which implies that a fully grammaticalized category of possessive pronouns is rare in South American languages. In addition, the new South American data only partly confirm typological claims for tendencies in the NP domain. For instance, a morphologically distinct class of adjectives is found in many languages of the sample; however, this class is often small, and the dominant way to encode property concepts is with verbs. Finally, this study also includes a discussion of the geographic patterning of structural features in the NP, evaluating the assumption that there is a major typological split between so-called Andean and Amazonian languages. The analysis shows that most of the features cannot be attributed to either of these larger areas. It also demonstrates, however, that there is some evidence for a broad structural division of languages into the western part of the continent (corresponding to the Andean sphere) and the rest of the continent. One of the features that define this split is the parameter of alienability.
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