› › Complex Predicates In Q Anjob Al Maya

The Family of Complex Predicates in Q'anjob'al (Maya)

Author : Eladio Mateo Toledo

Publisher :

Page : 1096 pages

File Size : 19,59 MB

Release : 2008

Category : Kanjobal language

ISBN :

Get eBook

Book Description

This dissertation describes six syntactic complex predicates in Q'anjob'al (Maya) spoken in Santa Eulalia, Huehuetenango, Guatemala: the Directional Construction (DIRC), Verbal Resultative Predicate (resultative V1V2), Causative Predicate (causative V1V2), Complement-like Predicate (complement-like V1V2), Preverbal Resultative Predicate (R2°P), and Positional Resultative Construction (PRC). They resemble resultatives, serial verbs, and causatives in other languages. The dissertation describes their monoclausal structure, meaning, event and argument structure, and lexical restrictions. These translate into five parameters: (a) they have a single value of time, aspect, modality and polarity, (b) they have a single set of arguments, (c) they have one intonational contour, (d) the elements denote a single event or subparts of a macro event, and (e) the elements minimally involve argument sharing, but could also involve argument fusion, or composition. Q'anjob'al complex predicates have two main features: (a) they are of an asymmetric type in that one element functions as the 'primary' element, and (b) they always have a verbal element (V) with another element that can be verbal or nonverbal (NV). Thus, these complex predicates always have a verbal 'primary' element. Regarding their structure, complex predicates involve four constructions: (a) a nonverbal-verbal construction used by the R2°P and shared by depictives (where it is a non-complex predicate and multi-headed clause), (b) a verb-verb construction used for causative, resultative, and complement-like V1V2s and shared by DIRCs, (c) a verbdirectional construction, a serial verb type, where V is the main verb and DIR corresponds to up to three motion verbs, and (d) a verb-positional construction used by the PRC. In their argument structure, resultatives and causative V1V2s, PRCs, and R2°Ps involve argument fusion, complement-like V1V2s involve raising, and DIRCs may involve argument sharing or fusion depending on the particular type. Regarding event structure, resultative V1V2s, and aspectual DIRCs denote a single event, and other complex predicates denote macro events. Finally, lexical semantics is central for distinguishing complex predicates from each other and from other multi-headed clauses. This dissertation contributes to the documentation of Q'anjob'al and advances the syntactic and semantic analysis of Mayan languages. It also contributes to our understanding of complex predicates through a case study.



Complex Predicates in Q’anjob’al (Maya)

Author : Eladio Mateo Toledo

Publisher : BRILL

Page : 315 pages

File Size : 16,28 MB

Release : 2022-10-17

Category : Language Arts & Disciplines

ISBN : 9004289984

Get eBook

Book Description

In this volume, Eladio Mateo Toledo provides a description and analysis of resultatives, end-states, monitoring constructions, ditransitives, causatives, and directional constructions. Although causatives and directionals are explored in Mayan languages, this is the first coherent account of a series complex predicates in a Mayan language.



Complex Predicates in Q'anjob'al

Author : Eladio Mateo Toledo

Publisher : Brill Academic Pub

Page : 0 pages

File Size : 41,15 MB

Release : 2022

Category : Language Arts & Disciplines

ISBN : 9789004289703

Get eBook

Book Description

In this book, Eladio Mateo Toledo presents a description and analysis of resultatives, end-states, monitoring constructions, causatives, and directional constructions in the Mayan language Q'anjob'al spoken in the northwest of Guatemala. Although causatives (analyzed as clause union) and directionals (analyzed as serial verbs) have long been studied in Mayan languages, no Mayan language has been shown to have an extensive list of complex predicates. This volume contains the first coherent account of a series of complex predicates in a Mayan language. The book shows that complex predicates in Q'anjob'al use one of two predicative frames, a verb+verb frame or a nonverbal+verb frame, and that only five general parameters explain their formal and semantic properties.



The Acquisition of Inflection in Q’anjob’al Maya

Author : Pedro Mateo Pedro

Publisher : John Benjamins Publishing Company

Page : 160 pages

File Size : 20,78 MB

Release : 2015-08-15

Category : Language Arts & Disciplines

ISBN : 9027268304

Get eBook

Book Description

Most studies on the acquisition of verbal inflection have examined languages with a single verb suffix. This book offers a study on the acquisition of verb inflections in Q’anjob’al Maya. Q’anjob’al has separate inflections for aspect, subject and object agreement, and status suffixes. The subject and object inflections display a split ergative pattern. The subjects of intransitive verbs with aspect markers take absolutive markers, whereas the subjects of aspectless intransitive verbs take ergative markers. The acquisition of three types of clauses is explored in detail (imperatives, indicatives, and aspectless complements). The data come from longitudinal spontaneous speech of three monolingual Q’anjob’al children aged 1;8–3;5. This book contributes unique data to the debate on the acquisition of finite and non-finite verbs as well as adding to our understanding of the acquisition of split ergative patterns. The book is of interest to researchers and students working on linguistics and language acquisition.



The Mayan Languages

Author : Judith Aissen

Publisher : Routledge

Page : 902 pages

File Size : 29,12 MB

Release : 2017-05-12

Category : Foreign Language Study

ISBN : 1351754793

Get eBook

Book Description

The Mayan Languages presents a comprehensive survey of the language family associated with the Classic Mayan civilization (AD 200–900), a family whose individual languages are still spoken today by at least six million indigenous Maya in Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, and Honduras. This unique resource is an ideal reference for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students of Mayan languages and linguistics. Written by a team of experts in the field, The Mayan Languages presents in-depth accounts of the linguistic features that characterize the thirty-one languages of the family, their historical evolution, and the social context in which they are spoken. The Mayan Languages: provides detailed grammatical sketches of approximately a third of the Mayan languages, representing most of the branches of the family; includes a section on the historical development of the family, as well as an entirely new sketch of the grammar of "Classic Maya" as represented in the hieroglyphic script; provides detailed state-of-the-art discussions of the principal advances in grammatical analysis of Mayan languages; includes ample discussion of the use of the languages in social, conversational, and poetic contexts. Consisting of topical chapters on the history, sociolinguistics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, discourse structure, and acquisition of the Mayan languages, this book will be a resource for researchers and other readers with an interest in historical linguistics, linguistic anthropology, language acquisition, and linguistic typology.



New Perspectives in Mayan Linguistics

Author : Heriberto Avelino

Publisher : Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Page : 380 pages

File Size : 31,94 MB

Release : 2010-08-11

Category : Language Arts & Disciplines

ISBN : 144382481X

Get eBook

Book Description

New Perspectives in Mayan Linguistics is a collection of papers synthesizing the research on Mayan languages at the beginning of the 21st century. One of the most prominent features of the articles included in this book is the balance between the use of the most recent linguistic theories and the empirical data from which analyses are drawn. A definitive characteristic of the book is that all of the papers provide rich and new descriptive material gathered in the field by their respective authors. The findings reported in this book have implications for a deeper understanding not only of particular aspects of the individual grammars of the Mayan family, but might have consequences for linguistic theory as well as for typological and universal generalizations. The volume brings together linguists of diverse areas of specialization phonetics, phonology, syntax, semantics, epigraphy, lexicography and anthropological linguistics to discuss recent analyses and data from a variety of Mayan languages. For its broad scope summarizing the recent methodologies, theoretical models and findings of research in Mayan languages, the volume is of particular interest to the academic community at large, including researchers, teachers and students alike.



When Arguments Merge

Author : Elise Newman

Publisher : MIT Press

Page : 231 pages

File Size : 42,91 MB

Release : 2024-10-15

Category : Language Arts & Disciplines

ISBN : 0262549107

Get eBook

Book Description

A novel theory of argument structure based on the order in which verbs and their arguments combine across a variety of languages and language families. Merge is the structure-building operation in Chomsky’s Minimalist Program. In When Arguments Merge, Elise Newman develops a new Merge-based theory of the syntax of argument structure, taking inspiration from wh- questions. She uncovers new connections between disparate empirical phenomena and provides a unified analysis of patterns across many languages and language families, from Mayan to Bantu to Indo-European languages (among others). The result is a syntactic theory with a small inventory of features and categories that can combine in a limited number of ways, capturing the range of argument configurations that we find cross-linguistically in both declarative and interrogative contexts. Newman’s novel approach to argument structure is based on the time at which different kinds of arguments merge and move in the verbal domain. Assuming that all kinds of Merge are driven by features, she proposes that subset relationships between elements bearing different sets of features can constrain the distribution of arguments in unexpected ways and that different feature bundles can predict unusual interactions between arguments in many contexts. The positions of arguments in different contexts have consequences for agreement alignment and case assignment, which are reflected in the Voice of the clause. Examining the order in which verbs and their arguments are combined, she explores the consequences of different orders of combination for the kinds of utterances observed across languages.



Handbook of Quantifiers in Natural Language: Volume II

Author : Denis Paperno

Publisher : Springer

Page : 1012 pages

File Size : 29,4 MB

Release : 2017-06-30

Category : Language Arts & Disciplines

ISBN : 3319443305

Get eBook

Book Description

This work presents the structure, distribution and semantic interpretation of quantificational expressions in languages from diverse language families and typological profiles. The current volume pays special attention to underrepresented languages of different status and endangerment level. Languages covered include American and Russian Sign Languages, and sixteen spoken languages from Africa, Australia, Papua, the Americas, and different parts of Asia. The articles respond to a questionnaire the editors constructed to enable detailed crosslinguistic comparison of numerous features. They offer comparable information on semantic classes of quantifiers (generalized existential, generalized universal, proportional, partitive), syntactically complex quantifiers (intensive modification, Boolean compounds, exception phrases, etc.), and several more specific issues such as quantifier scope ambiguities, floating quantifiers, and binary (type 2) quantifiers. The book is intended for semanticists, logicians interested in quantification in natural language, and general linguists as articles are meant to be descriptive and theory independent. The book continues and expands the coverage of the Handbook of Quantifiers in Natural Language (2012) by the same editors, and extends the earlier work in Matthewson (2008), Gil et al. (2013) and Bach et al (1995).



Antipassive

Author : Katarzyna Janic

Publisher : John Benjamins Publishing Company

Page : 655 pages

File Size : 14,91 MB

Release : 2021-03-15

Category : Language Arts & Disciplines

ISBN : 9027260265

Get eBook

Book Description

This book provides a comprehensive treatment of the morpho-syntactic and semantic aspects of the antipassive construction from synchronic, diachronic, and typological perspectives. The nineteen contributions assembled in this volume address a wide range of aspects pertinent to the antipassive construction, such as lexical semantics, the properties of the antipassive markers, as well as the issue of fuzzy boundaries between the antipassive construction and a range of other formally and functionally similar constructions in genealogically and areally diverse languages. Purely synchronically oriented case studies are supplemented by contributions that shed light on the diachronic development of the antipassive construction and the antipassive markers. The book should be of central interest to many scholars, in particular to those working in the field of language typology, semantics, syntax, and historical linguists, as well as to specialists of the language families discussed in the individual contributions.



Aspects of Split Ergativity

Author : Jessica Coon

Publisher : Oxford University Press

Page : 289 pages

File Size : 48,81 MB

Release : 2013-08-07

Category : Language Arts & Disciplines

ISBN : 0199858756

Get eBook

Book Description

Aspects of Split Ergativity argues that aspect-based split ergativity does not mark a split in how Case is assigned, but rather, a split in sentence structure. The contexts in which we find the appearance of a nonergative pattern in an otherwise ergative language-namely, the nonperfective aspects-involve an intransitive aspectual matrix verb and a subordinated lexical verb.