59 research outputs found
New approaches to the typology of gender
No full textNominal classification remains a fascinating topic. To make further progress in this area we need greater clarity of definition and analysis. We use canonical gender as an ideal against which we can measure the great variety of the actual gender systems we find in the languages of the world. Starting from previous work on canonical morphosyntactic features, particularly on how they intersect with canonical parts of speech, we establish the distinctiveness of gender, reflected in the Canonical Gender Principle: In a canonical gender system, each noun has a single gender value. We develop three criteria associated with this principle, which together ensure that canonically a noun has exactly one gender value. We give examples of non-canonicity for each criterion, and this establishes a substantial typological space, which accommodates the various non-canonical gender systems in the languages featured in this volume.</p
Sebastian Fedden, Jenny Audring & Greville G. Corbett. 2018. Non-Canonical Gender Systems
No full textLe livre Non-Canonical Gender Systems, édité par Sebastian Fedden, Jenny Audring et Greville G. Corbett traite du genre : pas de l’identité genrée comme propriété humaine et sociale, mais de la catégorie grammaticale, plus spécifiquement du genre grammatical. Il ne s’agit ainsi pas vraiment d’un livre qui est immédiatement utile pour mieux comprendre les liens entre le langage, les représentations mentales et les réalités extralinguistiques tels qu’ils sont généralement explorés dans la revue..
Overt gender marking depending on syntactic context in Ripano
No full textBased on dedicated fieldwork, this chapter analyses the gender system of Ripano (Italo-Romance), showing that it displays overt gender marking, but only depending on syntactic context. While overt gender per se and the syntactic dependency of gender marking via agreement on targets have both been described for several languages, the Ripano system is unprecedented, and deserves thorough description: thus, the chapter presents the phonological, morphological, and morphosyntactic prerequisites as well as the syntactic conditions which constrain overt gender marking. It places this peculiarity of Ripano in perspective, describing the many other quite extraordinary properties of this dialect: not only does it mark—unusually for Indo-European—gender/number agreement on finite verbs, but also on several other agreement targets, including non-finite verb forms, complementizers, wh-words, and even nouns, which in certain syntactic constructions cumulate the usual inherent gender specification with highly unusual contextual gender marking, determined via agreement with the clause subject
A grammar of Mian, a Papuan language of New Guinea
No full text© 2007 Dr. Olcher Sebastian FeddenThis is a descriptive grammar of the eastern dialect of the Mian language, spoken by approximately 1,800 people in Papua New Guinea. The grammar comprises chapters on the segmental and tonal phonology, morphology, and syntax and concludes with a text collection. (For complete abstract open document
A Grammar of Mian
No full textMian is a non-Austronesian ('Papuan') language of the Ok family spoken in the Highlands fringe in western Papua New Guinea. Mian has approximately 1,400 speakers and is highly endangered. This grammar is the first comprehensive description of the language. It is based on primary field data consisting of a text corpus that covers different genres of the oral tradition, namely myths and ancestor stories, historical accounts, accounts of the initiation ritual, conversations, and procedural texts. The corpus was recorded by the author during a total of eleven months of field work from 2004 to 2008. The book provides a thorough description of all areas of Mian grammar and gives an in-depth analysis of many points of typological interest, such as the complex system of lexical tone, the interaction between a gender system and a system of classificatory prefixes on verbs of object movement, manipulation or handling, which allows the highlighting of certain characteristics of a referent in a given situation, the complex verbal morphology which allows fine-grained tense-aspect-mood distinctions, and a switch-reference system in which switch-reference suffixes on medial verbs are homophonous with and derived from suffixes functioning as tense and aspect markers in final verbs. The book is rounded off by a collection of traditional and contemporary texts (fully glossed and translated) and a word list comprising some 1,600 items, giving lexical tone, word class and meaning
Morphology of Trans New Guinea Languages
No full textInternational audienceThe aim of this article is to present the morphology and morphosyntax of Trans New Guinea TNG languages to a wide audience of linguists. The TNG languages are a family of several hundred languages which are spoken across much of the New Guinea mainland. The morphology of Trans New Guinea languages shows a high degree of diversity, from mildly polysynthetic to almost isolating. I present language data from virtually all subgroups of TNG, giving preference to recent descriptions and new data. TNG languages display a clear categorial divide between nouns and verbs. In terms of word formation, they typically allow N-N and V-V compounding. Category-changing derivational processes usually involve overt morphological means. TNG languages are rich in nominalization processes, verbalization processes are less common. Valency-changing derivational processes (causatives, applicatives) are widespread and involve affixation or verb serialization. Many TNG languages have a reduced inventory of verb roots, in extreme cases comprising only as few as 60 recorded roots. Serial verb constructions and light-verb constructions are used to increase the expressive power of the verb lexicon. Besides nouns and verbs, TNG languages have sizeable classes of adjectives, small classes of adverbs, and pronouns, directionals, numerals, postpositions and conjunctions. Nouns have restricted inflectional morphology, with inflection for the possessor being the most widespread. Nominal number is expressed less often and gender is very rare. Peripheral case roles are signaled by postpositions. Many TNG languages show optional ergativity where transitive subjects can be marked by a special case depending on certain semantic or pragmatic factors, such as animacy, agentivity or focus. Verb morphology is extensive, yielding large paradigms. TNG languages use verbal affixes to express core arguments. Subjects are almost universally indexed with a suffix on the verb. The majority of TNG languages also indexes the object on the verb, either with a prefix or a suffix. 1 The majority alignment pattern in the clause is accusative. Most TNG languages employ distinct constructions for bodily and mental processes, depending on whether they are controlled by an animate agent (e.g. think) or whether they are manifestations of a stimulus beyond the control of the experiencer (e.g. be angry). Tense, aspect and mood categories can all be found in TNG languages with one of them usually being dominant. For the expression of aspect, serial verb constructions are common in which the last verb in the serialization has undergone grammaticalization into an aspect marker, e.g. a progressive marker which has developed from the verb 'stay'
Nouvelle thèse sur le khroskyabs de Wobzi
No full textLai Yunfan a hier soutenu avec succès sa thèse sur le khroskyabs de Wobzi, codirigée par Pollet Samvelian et moi, avec dans son jury Hilary Chappel, Scott DeLancey, Sebastian Fedden, Nathan Hill. Cette thèse de plus de 800 pages sera très bientôt disponible sur son site après quelques corrections mineures
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