Language Typology and Syntactic Description, Volume I: Clause Structure, Second edition
Download 1.59 Mb. Pdf ko'rish
|
Lgg Typology, Synt Description v. I - Clause structure
Parts-of-speech systems 59 It is also true of general negation in Hausa, in which low-tone b`a precedes and high-tone b´a follows the constituent being negated, thus very neatly indicating the scope of the negation. For example: (188) a. B`a Halima ta yi b´a neg Halima she.perf do neg ‘It’s not the case that Halima did it’ b. Halima b`a-ta yi b´a Halima neg-she.perf do neg ‘Halima didn’t do it’ c. B`a Halima b´a ta yi neg Halima neg she.perf do ‘It’s not Halima who did it’ Languages that do not use negators may express negation by means of a verbal affix, as in Akan ɔ -n-k ɔ (he-negative-go) ‘he doesn’t go’ or Tonkawa yakp-ape-n-o (strike-negative-progressive-3rd person-present-declarative) ‘he is not striking him’. There are also languages in which negation is expressed by an auxiliary verb – cf. section 2.3 for examples. The last closed parts-of-speech class to be discussed is the class of polite- ness markers. These are words which are added to sentences to express a deferential attitude toward the person addressed. In Tagalog, for example, there are two politeness markers, po and ho, either of which may be added to any sentence the speaker wishes to render polite. ( Po is more polite than ho; to borrow the terminology of Kuno (1973), po may be called ‘superpo- lite’.) In some other languages, such as Japanese, the expression of polite- ness involves, instead of markers, a special polite vocabulary: for exam- ple ee ‘yes (polite)’, hai ‘yes (superpolite)’ vs un ‘yes (informal)’; boku ‘I (polite or informal)’, watakusi ‘I (polite or superpolite)’ vs ore ‘I (informal)’. (Japanese also has a special polite affix, -mas-, which is added to a verb in polite speech: e.g. ake-mas-u (open-polite-present) ‘open (polite)’ vs ake-ru (open-present) ‘open (informal)’.) The use of special polite forms for ‘you’ is particularly common: for example Spanish usted ‘you (polite-singular)’, ustedes ‘you (polite-plural)’ vs t´u ‘you (informal-singular)’, vosotros ‘you (informal-plural)’. This concludes our survey of closed parts-of-speech classes, as well as of parts-of-speech classes in general. While certain minor classes have been ignored, the great majority of the parts of speech encountered in the lan- guages of the world have been covered, and on the basis of the material presented here, the field worker investigating an unfamiliar language should be reasonably well prepared for whatever parts-of-speech system he or she meets. |
Ma'lumotlar bazasi mualliflik huquqi bilan himoyalangan ©fayllar.org 2024
ma'muriyatiga murojaat qiling
ma'muriyatiga murojaat qiling