Language Typology and Syntactic Description, Volume I: Clause Structure, Second edition
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Lgg Typology, Synt Description v. I - Clause structure
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Parts-of-speech systems 55 (172) Audu ne Audu cop ‘It’s Audu’ As was noted in section 1.2, there are languages that do not use copulas (or copulative verbs) to indicate the relation between a subject and a predicate nom- inal or adjective. In such languages the relation is indicated by juxtaposition, as in the following Ilocano examples: (173) a. Ina daydyay babae mother that woman ‘That woman is a mother’ b. Napintas daydyay babae beautiful that woman ‘That woman is beautiful’ There are also languages that use juxtaposition to express the relation in the present, but for non-present times use a tense-marked copulative verb, as in the following Swahili examples: (174) a. Hamisi mpishi Hamisi cook ‘Hamisi is a cook’ b. Hamisi alikuwa atakuwa mpishi ‘Hamisi was will be a cook’ Emphasis markers are words that emphasize a predicate. (Words that empha- size a nominal are here called contrast markers, and are included in the category of discourse markers treated in section 2.2 – cf. example (108).) Examples from Vietnamese and Thai respectively, are: (175) Ong Ba co xem quyen truyen ay Mr Ba emph read book story that ‘Mr Ba did read that novel’ (176) Naarii, kin Kaaw sia Nari rice eat emph ‘Nari, do eat your rice’ The usual English equivalent of an emphasis marker is a stressed auxiliary verb, as in the translations of (175) and (176), but in colloquial English so and too 56 Paul Schachter and Timothy Shopen are sometimes used as emphasis markers contradicting something that has been said or implied: (177) I am so/too telling the truth Languages that do not have emphasis markers may be able to express the seman- tic equivalent by means of stress, and even in languages with emphasis markers this means may be available. Thus in Thai, according to Warotamasikkhadit (1972), the use of the emphasis marker sia, as in (176), is equivalent to placing emphatic stress on the verb. Existential markers are words which are equivalent to English there is/are, etc. Examples, from Hausa and Spanish respectively, are: (178) Akwai littafi a kan tebur exist book at top. of table ‘There is a book on the table’ (179) Hay muchos libros en la biblioteca exist many books in the library ‘There are many books in the library’ Some languages also have distinct negative existential markers, as in the fol- lowing Hausa example: (180) Babu littafi a kan tebur exist.neg book at top. of table ‘There isn’t a book on the table’ Languages that do not have existential markers often use verbs meaning ‘be (located)’ to express equivalent meanings, as in the following examples from Akan and Japanese: (181) Sika bi w ɔ me foto mu money some is.located my bag in ‘There is some money in my bag’ (182) Yama ni ki ga aru mountain on tree subj is ‘There are trees on the mountain’ It is also quite common for there to be a close relation between existential and possessive constructions. For example, a word-by-word translation of the French existential idiom il y a is ‘it there has’, and in Tagalog the same words are used as existential and possessive markers: |
