scholarly journals THE PROSODY OF IMPERATIVE SENTENCES IN EVENKI AND OROCHON: PITCH

2019 ◽  
pp. 100-114
Author(s):  
Olga N. Morozova ◽  
◽  
Svetlana V. Androsova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Initial Position ◽  
Frequency Of Occurrence ◽  
Similar Frequency ◽  
Challenging Issue ◽  
Acoustic Study ◽  
Pitch Pattern ◽  
Verb Forms ◽  
Present Tense ◽  
Pitch Movement

Imperative sentences in Evenki and Orochon are undoubtedly a challenging issue of their grammar and phonetics. The aspects, on which researchers' opinions diverge, include grammar tense, neutral and inverted word order and prosodic arrangement of the sentences. It is the only type of sentences with the verb in sentences-initial position. Among 14 imperative verb forms (they change in 2 tenses with varying names, 3 persons and 2 numbers; some of them have inclusive and exclusive forms), 2nd-person forms in the Present Tense are characterized by the highest frequency of occurrence. This paper reports the results of an acoustic study of pitch movement in Evenki and Orochon imperative sentences depending on the number of words, syllables and the word order. The following results were obtained. In the Evenki material, two- and three-word syntagmas were characterized mostly by rise-fall pitch pattern while one-word syntagmas could have both rise-fall and fall patterns. Four-syllable-one word syntagmas' pattern was pitch declination while two- and three-syllable-one-word syntagmas could have both rise-fall and declination patterns with similar frequency of occurrence...

scholarly journals VO-OV-variasjon i nordsamisk: Hva kan LIA Sápmi fortelle oss?

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 33-45
Author(s):  
Kristine Bentzen
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Initial Position ◽  
Object Shift ◽  
Frequent Word ◽  
Object Movement ◽  
Verb Forms ◽  
Main Verb

In this paper I investigate the alternation between VO and OV word order in spoken North Sami, based on data from LIA Sápmi – Sámegiela hállangiellakorpus. My results show that VO in general is the most frequent word order. However, I also find many instances of SAuxOV order in my material, particularly in sentences with periphrastic verb forms where the main verb is in the infinitive (that is, modal constructions) and where the object is a pronoun. In addition, I also find some cases where the object precedes both the auxiliary and the main verb, but crucially without being topicalized to clause-initial position. Based on the account of Norwegian Object Shift in Bentzen and Anderssen (2019), I suggest that OV word order in North Sami may be analyzed as IP-internal topicalization, where objects that are familiar in the context may move to a thematic position between VP and TP. This will account for the OV pattern with periphrastic tense forms. Furthermore, I suggest that there is an additional higher IP-internal topic position, and that object movement to this position is what results in OV with finite main verbs. This higher IP-internal topic position is also the position involved in patterns where the object precedes both the finite auxiliary and the main verb.

Zum Augment neuägyptischer Verbalformen

2019 ◽  
Vol 27 ◽  
pp. 139-164
Author(s):  
Carsten Peust
Keyword(s):  
Initial Position ◽  
Definite Article ◽  
Verb Forms

“On the Augment of Late Egyptian Verb Forms” -- It is shown that the augment which is characteristic of certain nominal verb forms of Late Egyptian – and survives in a few traces up until Coptic – contains none of those vowels that were regularly admitted at the beginning of Egyptian words. Rather, it must continue a wordinternal vowel /ǝ/ that moved into the initial position by a misdivision of the proclitic definite article, which frequently preceded participles and relative forms in speech. The same vowel [ǝ] occurred as an epenthetic sound before the preposition ‹r› /r/ ~ [ǝr], from which only ǝ remained after its consonantal body got lost. These phonetic insights prove that the Late Egyptian augment cannot derive from the Old Egyptian augment, as has been contended, but is a genuine innovation of Late Egyptian. Finally, the rise of unetymological initial vowels in various other nouns such as ⲉϭⲱϣ (“Nubian”) and ⲉϩⲟⲟⲩ (Bohairic for “day”) is explained.

Clause Structure and Word Order in the History of German

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Left Periphery ◽  
Structural Factors ◽  
Clause Structure ◽  
Verb Second ◽  
Verb Forms ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Research ◽  
The Right ◽  
Theoretical Analyses

Over roughly the last decade, there has been a notable rise in new research on historical German syntax in a generative perspective. This volume presents a state-of-the-art survey of this thriving new line of research by leading scholars in the field, combining it with new insights into the syntax of historical German. It is the first comprehensive and concise generative historical syntax of German covering numerous central aspects of clause structure and word order, tracing them throughout various historical stages. Each chapter combines a solid empirical basis and valid descriptive generalizations with reference also to the more traditional topological model of the German clause with a detailed discussion of theoretical analyses couched in the generative framework. The volume is divided into three parts according to the main parts of the clause: the left periphery dealing with verbal placement and the filling of the prefield (verb second, verb first, verb third orders) as well as adverbial connectives; the middle field including discussion of pronominal syntax, order of full NPs and the history of negation; and the right periphery with chapters on basic word order (OV/VO), prosodic and information-structural factors, and the verbal complex including the development of periphrastic verb forms and the phenomena of IPP (infinitivus pro participio) and ACI (accusativus cum infinitivo). This book thus provides a convenient overview of current research on the major issues concerning historical German clause structure both for scholars interested in more traditional description and for those interested in formal accounts of diachronic syntax.

Specific Language Impairment in Swedish

2000 ◽  
Vol 43 (4) ◽  
pp. 848-864 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristina Hansson ◽  
Ulrika Nettelbladt ◽  
Laurence B. Leonard
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Language Impairment ◽  
Specific Language Impairment ◽  
Past Tense ◽  
Appropriate Use ◽  
Verb Morphology ◽  
Specific Language ◽  
New Findings ◽  
Present Tense ◽  
Mean Length Of Utterance

Several competing proposals have been offered to explain the grammatical difficulties experienced by children with specific language impairment (SLI). In this study, the grammatical abilities of Swedish-speaking children with SLI were examined for the purpose of evaluating these proposals and offering new findings that might be used in the development of alternative accounts. A group of preschoolers with SLI showed lower percentages of use of present tense copula forms and regular past tense inflections than normally developing peers matched for age and younger normally developing children matched for mean length of utterance (MLU). Word order errors, too, were more frequent in the speech of the children with SLI. However, these children performed as well as MLU-matched children in the use of present tense inflections and irregular past forms. In addition, the majority of their sentences containing word order errors showed appropriate use of verb morphology. None of the competing accounts of SLI could accommodate all of the findings. In particular, these accounts—or new alternatives —must develop provisions to explain both the earlier acquisition of present tense inflections than past tense inflections and word order errors that seem unrelated to verb morphology.

scholarly journals The development of Germanic analytical tenses

2020 ◽  
pp. 135-154
Author(s):  
Andriy Botsman ◽  
Olga Dmytruk ◽  
Tamara Kozlovska
Keyword(s):  
Language Development ◽  
Present Article ◽  
Research Method ◽  
Future Tense ◽  
Historical Method ◽  
European Languages ◽  
Verb Forms ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Present Tense ◽  
Germanic Languages

The stages that encompass the future tense development are singled out as discrete phenomena within the process of the Germanic language development. The Gothic verb system can serve as the background for the investigation of the tense transformations in question. The difficulties of tense examination in the Old Germanic languages were connected with some conceptions about the Indo-Iranian and Greek languages that used to dominate in the scientific circles for a long time. Those conceptions were based on Latin and Greek patterns and postulated the use of present, past and future tenses in all Indo-European languages. The above conceptions were ruined when the study of Tokharian and Hittite demonstrated the use of the present tense for the description of future actions. The idea of losing “the protolanguage inheritance” was proved wrong, and it was incorrect to transfer the complex tense system of Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin to other Proto-Indo-European languages. The examination of the tense differentiation in Gothic (as the main source of the Old Germanic language) demonstrates that the Gothic infinitive functioned as a no-particular-time unit, while personal verb forms were involved in performing tense functions. The Gothic present tense verbs represented present and future tenses and no-particular-time phenomena. Some periphrastic forms containing preterite-present verbs with the infinitive occurred sporadically. The periphrastic forms correlated with Greek and Latin patterns of the same future tense meaning. The periphrastic future forms in Gothic often contained some modal shades of meaning. The Gothic present tense functioned as a colony-forming archi-unit and a pluripotential (temporal) precursor. The periphrastic Gothic future forms are recognised as a monopotential (temporal) precursor with some modal meaning. The key research method used in the present article is the comparative historical method. The authors viewed it as the most reliable and appropriate for the study of tense forms.

Constructional change in Germanic

2021 ◽  
pp. 197-224
Author(s):  
Peter W. Culicover
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Initial Position ◽  
West Germanic ◽  
German Word ◽  
Case Marking ◽  
Verb Clusters

This chapter tracks several of the major changes in English and German word order and accounts for them in terms of constructional change as formulated in Chapter 3. It argues that the changes are relatively simple in constructional terms, although the superficial results are quite dramatic. Topics include clause-initial position, V2, VP-initial and VP-final verb position, the loss of V2 and case marking in English, and verb clusters in Continental West Germanic.

Khalkha Mongolian

2020 ◽  
pp. 334-349
Author(s):  
Jan-Olof Svantesson
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Central Place ◽  
Vowel Harmony ◽  
Inflectional Morphology ◽  
Writing System ◽  
Syntactic Structures ◽  
Word Structure ◽  
Case Marking ◽  
Verb Forms ◽  
Segmental Phonology

This chapter gives an introduction to the basic structures of Khalkha Mongolian, most of which are similar to those of Mongolian proper in general. Segmental phonology (vowels and consonants) and word structure are analyzed. Major changes from earlier stages of the language are described briefly, as is the writing system, based on the Cyrillic alphabet. Vowel harmony, based on pharyngeality (ATR) and rounding, has several interesting properties, including the opacity of high rounded vowels to rounding harmony. There is a rich derivational and inflectional morphology based on suffixes. Basic syntactic structures, including word order and case marking of arguments in simple and complex clauses, are described, as are the functions of different verb forms (finite verbs, converbs, and participles). The description emphasizes the central place of Mongolian proper in the typology of the Transeurasian languages.

Objects in the German prefield

2020 ◽  
pp. 15-39
Author(s):  
Markus Bader
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Language Production ◽  
Initial Position ◽  
Experimental Investigations ◽  
Demonstrative Pronoun ◽  
New Findings ◽  
The Subject ◽  
New Speakers ◽  
Referential Form ◽  
Free Word

From the perspective of language production, this chapter discusses the question of whether to move the subject or the object to the clause-initial position in a German Verb Second clause. A review of experimental investigations of language production shows that speakers of German tend to order arguments in such a way that the most accessible argument comes first, with accessibility defined in terms like animacy (‘animate before inanimate’) and discourse status (e.g. ‘given before new’). Speakers of German thus obey the same ordering principles that have been found to be at work in English and other languages. Despite the relative free word order of German, speakers rarely produce sentences with object-before-subject word order in experimental investigations. Instead, they behave like speakers of English and mostly use passivization in order to bring the underlying object argument in front of the underlying subject argument when the object is more accessible than the subject. Corpus data, however, show that object-initial clauses are not so infrequent after all. The second part of the chapter, therefore, discusses new findings concerning the discourse conditions that favour the production of object-initial clauses. These findings indicate, among other things, that the clausal position of an object is affected not only by its referent’s discourse status but also by its referential form. Objects occur in clause-initial position most frequently when referring to a given referent in the form of a demonstrative pronoun or NP.

scholarly journals The Golok Dialect and Written Tibetan past-tense verb forms

1979 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-60 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. K. Sprigg
Keyword(s):  
Past Tense ◽  
The Past ◽  
Verb Forms ◽  
Present Tense

Tibetan orthography looks phonetically challenging, to say the least; and one may well wonder whether such tongue-twisting combinations as the brj of brjes, the blt- of bltas, or the bst- of bstan ever did twist a Tibetan tongue, or whether the significance of these and other such orthographic forms might not have been morphophonemic in origin, with the letters r, l, and s in the syllable initial of forms such as these serving to associate these past-tense forms lexically with their corresponding present-tense forms; e.g. Viewed in relation to Tibetan orthography the past-tense forms of a class of verbs in the Golok dialect seem to support this hypothesis. Table 1, below, contains a number of examples of Golok verbs in their past-tense and present-tense forms to illustrate a type of phonological analysis suited to that view of the r syllable-initial unit in the Golok examples, and, indirectly, in the WT examples too (the symbols b and b will be accounted for in section (B) below).

Definiteness in Czech

1998 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 567-596
Author(s):  
George M. Cummins III
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Formal Language ◽  
Initial Position ◽  
Natural Languages ◽  
Expressive Speech

Definiteness, a subcategory of nominal determination, is a universal of natural languages. Languages lacking an overt article, such as Czech, mark definiteness using various discourse-anchored signals, such as word order and intonation. In sentence-initial position, bare NPs are definite. For discourse-anchored definite NPs in other sentence positions (these include post-rhematic themes as well as retrieved or reevaluated entities from remote discourse) and NPs in expressive speech, Czech uses a deictically neutral determiner ten 'this, that; the' for definite NPs. The resultant NP with determiner may correspond to articled or demonstrative-modified NPs in articled languages; the categories are fluid. In both colloquial and formal language ten is developing article-like functions.

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