The Livonian jussive: person and function (original) (raw)
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Variation in the construction of the negative imperative across romance languages
Editura Academiei Române, 2018
Abstract. Negative imperatives in Romance languages are expressed in different ways, but variation seems to be controlled by the distinction between true and suppletive imperatives. In this paper I attempt to formulate a hypothesis which accounts for the nature of this distinction. The structure of the paper is the following. In the first section I present relevant data, then I describe three attempts that cope with this issue and I give a critical evaluation of these attempts; in the last section I propose my own hypothesis.
Linguistics Beyond and Within (LingBaW), 2020
The relation between morpho-syntactic structure and its externalization into interpretive levels is the topic of this article. In many languages, typically in Romance and Albanian varieties, modal contexts, specifically imperative and infinitive, and negation, give rise to phenomena of clitic reordering and an interesting micro-variation. Imperative differs from declarative sentences in selecting enclisis except in negative contexts. Moreover, in Albanian mesoclisis appears in the 2nd plural person of imperative, between the verbal base and the person inflection. A similar distribution characterizes Calabro-Lucanian varieties spoken in Lausberg area, in contact with Arbëresh (Italo-Albanian) dialects. This article proposes to analyze the influence of modal contexts on the lexicalization of object clitics (OCls) and their different behavior in connection to their referential properties. Our descriptive and theoretical starting point is the representational morpho-syntactic approach a...
Imperatives and Negation in Romance Languages: Verbalisation, De-verbalisation and Marking
Proceedings of the International Conference on Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar
The topic of this paper is the expression of negative directives in several Romance languages. The majority of Romance languages do not express negative directives by adding (pre-verbal) negation to the positive imperative form, but by using a different verb form (infinitive, subjunctive or something else), to which negation is attached. The present analysis shows that (some) directive verbal forms in Romance lost some hallmarks of their verbhood. The phenomenon is taken as witnessing different stages of de-verbalisation. De-verbalisation makes directive verb forms similar to interjections. The variation documented in the Romance imperatives with respect to the compatibility/incompatibility with negation may thus seen as tendencies of different degrees of the imperatives to come closer either to the verb, or to the interjection. In the context of these tendencies, the incompatibility between negation and imperatives may be explained through the concept of marking. Put briefly, imper...
Imperative Characteristics in Romance varieties spoken in Italy
We examine Romance varieties spoken in Italy to determine if a correlation exists between an imperative verb's morphology and the presence of characteristics unique to the imperative, as suggested by Rivero (1994a), Zanuttini (1994, 1997), and others. This paper calls into question the validity of considering unique morphology as the defining characteristic of 'true' imperatives (vs. 'surrogate' imperatives). The data show that there is no correlation between 'true' imperatives and imperative characteristics such as negative ineffability, postverbal position of clitic pronouns, stress shift in imperative verb + enclitic constructions, and the use of a special clitic pronoun. We find that forms with syncretic morphology also exhibit imperative traits, and forms with unique imperative morphology may lack imperative traits. However, another robust generalization emerges which holds for all of the data we examine: there is a hierarchy of participation in imperative characteristics. The 1pl form may exhibit imperative traits only if they are present in the 2pl, and the 2pl may exhibit imperative traits only if they are present in the 2sg. *
What is the jussive for? A study of third person commands in six Caucasian Languages
Linguistics, 2000
The form whose main function is to express indirect commands, called the "third person Imperative", "Jussive" or "Exhortative", when compared to the prototypical (second person) Imperative, shows semantic and formal similarities and distinctions at the same time. The study describes formal and functional patterns of Jussive and places this category within the typology of the related categories, such as Imperative and Optative, based on data from six East Caucasian languages (Archi, Agul, Akhvakh, Chechen, Icari and Kumyk). Five formal patterns of Jussive are attested in these languages, including a specialized form, constructions derived from 'want', from 'tell him to do' and from 'make him do' and the Optative. Jussive forms may express such meanings as third person command, indirect causation, permission, indifference towards the accomplishment of an action and an assumption. While the Jussive is crucially different from the second person Imperative in that it introduces a third participant, this article shows that it is the addressee, not a third person, who is the central participant of a Jussive situation from both formal and functional points of view. Unauthenticated Download Date | 4/12/16 2:25 PM Unauthenticated Download Date | 4/12/16 2:25 PM
Ksero oti o Janis agapai ti Maria. know-1SG that the Janis love-3SG the Maria 1 'I know that John loves Maria.' (2) Lipame pu i Maria den agapai to Jani. regret-1SG that the Maria NEG love-3SG the Jani 'I regret that Maria doesn't love John.' (3) I Eleni bori na agapai to Jani. the Eleni may-3SG SUBJ love-3SG the Jani 'Eleni may love John.' Focusing on na-clauses in particular, they occur as complements to modal, aspectual and volitional verbs, namely under the verbs in (4a-c) (Roussou 2009). Other verbs, e.g. in (4d-i), may optionally take na-clauses as complements, with potential subtle semantic effects (see Roussou op.cit. for This work reports results from the project 'Documentation and analysis of an endangered language: aspects of the grammar of Griko'. For details see: http://griko.project.uoi.gr/. The project has been funded by the John S. Latsis Public Benefit Foundation, whose support is hereby gratefully acknowledged. In addition to the Latsis Foundation, we thank our informants in Calimera, Corigliano d'Otranto, Martano and Sternatia. For their extensive assistance and support, we are particularly grateful to Giuseppe De Pascalis, Carmine Greco, Adriana Spagnolo and Luigi Tommasi. The sole responsibility for the content of this work lies with its authors. 1 We follow common glossing conventions. In verb forms, the gloss of the endings indicates person (1, 2, 3) and number
Embedded Imperatives in Kajkavian Dialects of Croatian
Rasprave Instituta za hrvatski jezik i jezikoslovlje, 2019
Embedded imperatives are cross-linguistically very rare. They are attested, for instance, in modern languages such as Slovenian and High German and historical languages such as Ancient Greek and Old Scandinavian. In the literature, it has long been established that imperatives can also be embedded in some Kajkavian dialects of Croatian, but to date, this phenomenon has not been thoroughly analyzed. The paper deals with the material collected by field research and analyses it within the framework of Medeiros’ (2015) minimalist approach to embedded imperatives, according to which the embedding of imperatives is possible only in the languages in which imperative morphology does not depend on the directive operator. In the researched Kajkavian dialects, embedded imperatives can occur only in complement clauses, but older texts show that in the written language, embedded imperatives are also possible in relative clauses. Unlike many other languages in which imperatives may be embedded, i...
Preliminary of the Imperative in the Japreria language
Research in University Of New Mexico, 1998
Durbind and Seijas (1975) and Villalón (1987) fail to point out that Japreria may be a language different from Yukpa, the other Cariban language spoken in "Sierra de Perijá". They classify Japreria as a dialect of Yukpa. But , in my paper "Is Japreria a dialect of Yukpa ? (1998) , I try to demonstrate that Japreria has developed independently from Yukpa with regard to submorphemic units of the kinship system , the pronominal system, and the lexicon. The aim in this work is to describe the use of the imperative in Japreria and to compare its structure to the interrogative form. I analyzed twenty verbs in Japreria language. In the interrogative form in the present tense the addressee is manifested but not in the imperative form, contrary to the explanation of Manning (1996 :7) who wrote : " For semantic reasons certain grammatical processes will universally pick out this notion of (deep) subject regardless of the surface pivot of the Language. This the addressee of imperative ." The prominence of the addressee in the Japreria interrogative form constitutes the difference with regard to the structure of the imperative. My tentative conclusion is that in the imperative construction of the Japreria language the prominence of the addressee is pragmatic.
Crossing Form and Function: First and Second Person Plural Imperatives in the Dialect of Mesocco
Folia Linguistica, 2006
This paper proposes an explanation for the rise and fall of a 1PL imperative ending in the dialect of Mesocco, a Northern Italo-Romance variety from southern Switzerland. This ending cannot be explained with inherited 1PL morphology: rather, it is best accounted for by assuming the reanalysis of a 2PL imperative hosting a 1SG pronominal object clitic. This reanalysis, it is suggested, must have occurred in the syntactic context provided by the 'ethical' dative construction. It has been prompted by several factors, among which the crucial one is functional in nature, viz. the pragmatic homology between 1PL imperative-unmarkedly inclusive in meaning-and the ethical dative construction with a 2PL imperative. Comparative evidence is also adduced from studies in linguistic typology, showing that similar crossovers between 1st and 2nd person plural morphology, although unattested in Romance (or, more precisely, in the better-known standard Romance languages), are not without parallels cross-linguistically. Finally, a functional motivation is provided for the deacquisition of this 1PL imperative form in the dialect of the younger generations.
Baltic Linguistics 12(1), 2021
In general linguistics, the functions of the perfective and the imperfective aspect have been thoroughly investigated in the domain of realis, especially in the past tense. However, there are languages which exhibit this sort of contrast in other domains, for example, in the imperative. The functions of the aspectual grams in the imperative may differ significantly from those documented in the realis. In the present paper, I argue that this is the case in Lithuanian. I build on the studies of the aspectual contrast in the imperative documented for Russian and Slavonic in general. I test whether the functional contrasts found there exist in Lithuanian as well. The results of this pilot study suggest that with regard to the use of the aspectual grams in the imperative, Lithuanian converges to a large extent with the NorthEastern subgroup of Slavonic.