Language Typology and Syntactic Description, Volume I: Clause Structure, Second edition
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Lgg Typology, Synt Description v. I - Clause structure
Parts-of-speech systems 39 (banana four classifier) ‘four bunches of bananas’, kluay sii bai (banana four classifier) ‘four bananas’, the meaning difference is obviously conveyed by the distinct classifiers. As the examples from Thai have suggested, the classifier or classifiers that may occur with a given noun are selected by that noun. Thus the classifier khon is selected by deg ‘boy’ while the classifier tua is selected by maa ‘dog’. But although the selection of classifiers is in part semantically based (thus khon is used only for humans), there is not always any obvious semantic basis for the selection of a particular classifier by a particular noun, and ‘sometimes native speakers themselves are not sure which classifier is to be used in agreement with a certain noun’ (Warotamasikkhadit (1972:23)). Evidently the situation is rather similar to that found in the inflectional grammatical-gender systems of Indo-European or Bantu languages, where there are some generalizations that can be made about the semantic correlates of the genders, but where there are also many cases in which the gender classification appears to be semantically arbitrary (see section 1.1, above). The last group of noun adjuncts to be considered is the group of articles. Under this heading we wish to include, in addition to the words usually iden- tified as definite and indefinite articles (e.g. English the, a), words that are sometimes identified as demonstrative adjectives or modifiers (e.g. this in this man, that in that woman). The reasons for grouping the demonstrative modifiers together with the (other) articles are both syntactic and semantic. Syntactically, demonstrative and other articles usually constitute a single distributional class, occurring in the same position in relation to the noun and other elements of the noun phrase, and not co-occurring in a single noun phrase: compare a small woman, this small woman; Akan ɔ bea ketewa bi (woman small a) ‘a small woman’, ɔ bea ketewa yi (woman small this) ‘this small woman’. (There are exceptions, however. For example, in Hebrew the equivalent of the definite arti- cle is a prefix, and this prefix can co-occur with a demonstrative: e.g. ha-ish ha-ze (the-man the-this) ‘this man’.) And semantically, demonstrative modifiers are like definite articles in being reference indicators. (Thus this often indicates that the referent of the following noun is close at hand, just as the often indi- cates that the referent of the following noun is assumed to have already been established.) In a good many languages, in fact, there are single words which may be translated ‘the’ or ‘that’ according to the context: for example German die Frau (the/that woman) ‘the/that woman’; Akan ɔ bea no (woman the/that) ‘the/that woman’. (While the demonstrative modifiers are here grouped with the articles, for the reasons just indicated, it is also true that they usually have a close relation, both semantically and morphologically, to the demonstrative pronouns discussed in section 2.1.) Articles may or may not show agreement with the nouns they modify. In Akan, for example, although nouns and (certain) adjectives are inflected 40 Paul Schachter and Timothy Shopen for number, the definite article and demonstrative no is invariable: cf. ɔ bea ketewa no (woman small the/that) ‘the/that small woman’, mmea nketewa no (women plural-small the/that) ‘the/those small women’. In German, on the other hand, the definite article and demonstrative der/die, etc., varies in form with the number, gender, and case of the noun it modifies: der Mann (the/that-nominative-singular-masculine man) ‘the/that man’, die Frau (the/that-nominative-singular-feminine woman) ‘the/that woman’, das Buch (the/that-nominative-singular-neuter book) ‘the/that book’, etc. Languages that do not have articles may express equivalent meaning mor- phologically. For example, in Yuma, the demonstrative suffixes -va, -n y , and -sa are placed between the noun stem and the case marker: e.g. ʔ a ·ve-va-c (snake- this-nominative) ‘this snake’, ʔ a ·ve-n y -c (snake-that-nominative) ‘that snake’, ʔ a ·ve-sa-c (snake-that(distant)-nominative) ‘that (distant) snake’. Similarly, in Tonkawa, a meaning of definiteness is expressed by a suffix - ʔ a · before the case suffix on a noun, while a meaning of indefiniteness is expressed by the lack of this - ʔ a ·: for example k w a ·n- ʔ a ·-la (woman-the-nominative) ‘the woman’, k w a ·n-la (woman-nominative) ‘a woman’. The morphological indication of definiteness may be tonal rather than affixal. Thus in Bambara definiteness is expressed by a low final tone on the noun: for example k´afˆe ‘the coffee’ (cf. k´af´e ‘coffee’ – the falling tone at the end of k´afˆe results from the addition of a low final tone to an inherently high tone). There are also languages in which the definite–indefinite distinction is, in some instances at least, expressed by the case system. Thus in Southern Lappish (see Wickman (1955)) a definite direct object is in the accusative case while an indefinite direct object is in the nominative case, as in the following example: (111) a. j˙uktie treaewg ə jd ə dojt ə m ə when skis(acc) one. has. made ‘when one has made the skis’ b. j˙uktie treaewgah dajt jh when skis(nom) they. make ‘when they make skis’ 2.3 Verb adjuncts This section is concerned with two classes of words that form phrasal con- stituents with verbs: auxiliaries and verbal particles. (The label auxiliaries seems preferable to the perhaps more common auxiliary verbs from a cross- linguistic point of view, since it allows for the inclusion of non-verbs in the class. While most auxiliaries are probably derived from verbs historically, and many can reasonably be identified as a subclass of verbs synchronically, there |
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