Aspects of the Grammar of Yagua (1985) - Chapter 3 (original) (raw)
Related papers
Nominal predication and the semantics of roots *
2018
This construction is similar to one type of nominal predication in the language, but shows different restrictions: only nouns that indicate spans of time or distance appear in the construction, and the ‘from/since’ phrase is required. Furthermore, the verb bi ‘be’ would be unexpected a case of nominal predication without an accompanying inflected preposition. Scottish Gaelic has also been claimed not to have expletive pronouns (McCloskey 1996; cf. Adger 2011). In this paper I argue the following: the pronoun in this construction is in fact referential, rather than pleonastic, and refers to the span described by the accompanying nominal; the nominal forms a predicate by merging with a null classifier that is only semantically compatible with roots that have an interpretation in the context of [SPAN];
On so-called noun incorporation in Innu
"I will argue, following Singh and Dasgupta’s (2003) and Starosta’s (2003a) analysis of compounds, and Starosta’s (2003b) analysis of incorporation, that NI is a not-so-special case of derivation by way of a suffix that looks like a noun, and that as such it is amenable to a word-based treatment, contrary to what Anderson (1992: 292 ff.) says (cf. Starosta 2003a). If we treat NI as just another case of lexical subordination (1c) rather than as a combination or translation of words or category-bearing stems – as in (1a) or (1b), which we could expect to be very productive and semantically compositional – then the limited productivity and semantic idiosyncrasy of incorporation in Innu will follow naturally. (1) a. [X]V. + [Y]N. b. [[XYt]V. [tN.]NP]VP c. /X/V. ↔ /Xabc/V. Where abc = some specified phonological material resembling a noun. Using mainly data from Drapeau (1999) and forms elicited from a native speaker, I would like to offer a word-based lexicalist account of NI in Innu that goes a step further than Mithun (1984: 847) by adopting a truly word-based theory of morphology in which it is impossible in principle to say that NI is nearly syntactic. What is more, this account also has the advantage of bringing together under the same type of formal process all three types of incorporated nominals (“medials”) recognized by Wolfart (1973: 66-67). "
Aspects of the Internal Structure of Nominalization: Roots, Morphology and Derivation
2012
This dissertation uses syntactic, semantic and morphological evidence from English nominalization to probe the interaction of event-structure and syntax, develop a typology of structural complexity within nominalization, and test hypotheses about the strict ordering of functional items. I focus on the widely assumed typology of nominalization found in Chomsky (1970). In particular, I show that derived nominals are structurally more complex than nominal gerunds; this has long been assumed to be the opposite. I provide a structural and morphological account of these forms of nominalization. In doing so, I explore a number of disparate topics such as: the importance of syncretism in apparently unrelated morphological elements for theories like Distributed Morphology; the role of prepositions in allowing or preventing binding relations and NPI-licensing, the exact nature of root-object union that allows idiomatic interpretations; the morphological reflexes of Case in the nominal system;...
Roots, naming, and locality: The structure of name predicates
Proceedings of the 39th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics, 2024
Two phenomena have yet to be considered in the syntactic literature on names. First, names inflect differently than nouns that have the same root, such as "Childs" versus "children" (Kim et al. 1994, Marcus et al. 1995, Pinker 1999, Berent et al. 2002). Second, any individual can bear any name, regardless of the "content" that the name may express or its morphological form (Lyons 1977, Borer 2005, Coates 2006, Idrissi et al. 2008). Inspired by the semantic theory of predicativism, this paper argues that names, like nouns, are property-denoting expressions (Sloat 1969, Burge 1973, Geurts 1997, Thomsen 1997, Elbourne 2005, Matushansky 2008, Ghomeshi & Massam 2009, Fara 2015, Matushansky 2015). Name predicates are proposed to minimally consist of two nominalizers, one that generates the name itself and another that converts it into a predicate. The source of regularization is the second cyclic layer, which disrupts locality between the root and higher functional projections (Arad 2003, Embick & Marantz 2008, Embick 2010). Further evidence for two nominalizers is found in languages with grammatical gender, where names that are feminine or masculine in form can be borne by any individual. The lower nominalizer hosts the grammatical gender of the name, and the higher nominalizer is valued with the natural gender of its bearer.
Special issue on lexical flexibility in Oceanic languages (E. van Lier ed.), 2017
In constrast with Nêlêmwa (Oceanic, New Caledonia) whose lexemes are most generally subcategorised as nouns or verbs and undergo category-changing derivations, in Amis (Formosan), roots are pervasively categorially neutral, yet they contain semantic features and instructions that allow or disallow combination with primary derivational affixes which specify their class and category. Lexical categories are expressed once roots are derived into morphosyntactic words and projected in a syntactic frame; they are then quite rigidly subcategorised as verbal, nominal or adjectival-modifying heads. Still, word forms display some functional flexibility; for instance, nouns and derived nouns, pronouns, numerals may be predicative in equative, ascriptive and focus constructions, simply by being in the syntactic position of the verb. Such functional flexibility is asymmetrical and does not apply to derived verb stems which must be nominalised to achieve argument function.
On holistic properties of morphological constructions: the case of Akan verb-verb nominal compounds
Acta Linguistica Hafniensia , 2017
Akan verb-verb nominal compounds exhibit unusual formal and semantic properties, including extreme formal exocentricity, where the composition of two verbs yields a noun some of whose semantic properties may not be directly coded in the constituents, and argument structure suppression, where no argument of either constituent can occur in the compound. The purpose of this paper is two-fold. First, I delineate the membership of the class, showing that some of the constructions listed in the literature as verb-verb compounds do not belong to the class; they have formal features that betray them as affix-derived nominals. Secondly, I discuss the rather idiosyncratic properties of the compound. I argue that the form class is inherited from a metaschema for compounding in Akan which bears a nominal output category. Again, it is a unique constructional property of Akan verb-verb compounds that, unlike other verb-involved compounds, they do not allow any argument of the constituents to become part of the compound. These extra-compositional holistic properties can be accounted for straightforwardly in a framework like Construction Morphology which does not assume that every property in a construction must emanate from its constituents. This study provides evidence for the view that constructions can have holistic properties.
Beyond roots and affixes: Äiwoo deverbal nominals and the typology of bound lexical morphemes
Studies in Language, 2018
This paper discusses the analysis of a particular class of morphemes in the Oceanic language Äiwoo, and argues that the difficulties in accounting for them in traditional terms such as nominalisation, compounding, relative clauses, or classifiers, is due to their status as bound lexical morphemes, also known as bound roots, an under-discussed category in linguistic literature. It proposes some parameters of variation within bound lexical morphemes as a class and shows that the Äiwoo facts can be best accounted for by reference to these parameters, both in terms of language-internal description and crosslinguistic comparability. It argues that understanding crosslinguistic morphological structure in terms of a dichotomy between "roots" and "affixes" underplays the existing variation in linguistic structure, and that a more detailed examination is necessary of forms which do not fit clearly into this dichotomy; the discussion of the Äiwoo data aims to provide a starting-point for such an examination.