| 1. |
- Agbetsoamedo, Yvonne, 1974-
(författare)
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Aspects of the Grammar and Lexicon of Sεlεε
- 2014
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis is a description of some aspects of the grammar of Sɛlɛɛ, a Ghana-Togo-Mountain (GTM) language, based on my own fieldwork. The thesis consists of an introduction and five papers.Paper (I), Noun classes in Sεlεε, describes the noun class system of Sɛlɛɛ. It consists of eight noun class prefixes, four marking singular and four plural. They are paired in irregular ways to form eight genders (singular-plural pairs). Nouns agree with determiners, numerals and interrogative qualifiers within the noun phrase and can be indexed on the predicate. Nouns are allocated to classes/genders based partly on semantic notions.Paper (II), Sεlεε (with Francesca Di Garbo), details the morphological encoding of diminution in Sɛlɛɛ either by the suffixes -bi, -bii, -mii, -e or -nyi alone or in combination with noun class shift. Augmentation is not expressed morphologically.Paper (III), The tense and aspect system of Sεlεε: A preliminary analysis, shows that Sɛlɛɛ, unlike most Kwa languages, has a rather elaborate tense system encompassing present, hodiernal, pre-hodiernal and future tenses. The aspectual categories are progressive, habitual and perfect. Both categories often amalgamate with first person singular subject clitics.Paper (IV), Standard negation in Sεlεε, deals with the negation of declarative verbal main clauses. This is primarily encoded by a high tone, sometimes combined with segmental morphemes, portmanteau negative tense-aspect morphemes and vowel lengthening. Each tense-aspect category has at least one particular negation strategy.Paper (V), Unravelling temperature terms in Sεlεε (with Francesca Di Garbo), investigates the grammatical constructions employed for temperature evaluations. Personal feeling is only encoded via subjects, while ambient and tactile evaluations are construed attributively and predicatively.A comparison of Selee and other GTM languages revealed similar noun morphologies but very different verbal morphologies.
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| 3. |
- Asfawwesen, Desalegn, 1982-
(författare)
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The inceptive construction and associated topics in Amharic and related languages
- 2016
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis investigates the syntactic features, functions, and diachrony of a complex predicate called ‘the inceptive construction’ which is based on a grammaticalised use of the converbs ‘get up’, ‘pick up’, ‘grasp’, and ‘take’. The languages under investigation are Amharic, Argobba, Harari, Zay, and Selt’i. The data collection that was analized consists of elicitations, audio recordings, and written texts. The analysis shows that the converbs identify the initial phase of the event encoded by a following verb. The converbs are further associated with nuances like volition, surprise, and emphasis. The rise of such interpretations as surprise and emphasis appears to depend mainly on context, while volition is inherent to the construction. The languages generally do not show much variation. However, there is a notable difference in some co-occurrence restrictions. Moreover, there is a difference in the presence/absence of certain converbs mainly in Harari and Zay, which is clearly a matter of preference between individual consultants. Regarding the origin of the inceptive construction, collocation, frequency, and speakers’ conception of the action of the converbs are possible factors that lead the verbs to grammaticalize into markers of the inception phase. Only some traces of the construction are found in an old Amharic text from the 15th century.The converb is the main verb form used in the inceptive construction, although other verb forms are allowed which may take a coordinating conjunction (in the cases of Amharic and Argobba) and an iterative/simultaneity marker (‘while’). The Amharic conjunction =nna ‘and’ links the light verb with the reference verb in the inceptive construction, but is also used in causal(purposive) and conditional coordination. The criteria of tense iconicity and variable positions indicate that =nna is a coordinating conjunction in the former, but a subordinator in the latter. Lastly, the converb in Amharic is shown to become insubordinated, i.e. the main verb or auxiliary it depends on gets ellipsed over time and it comes to function as a main verb. An insubordinated converb is used in the expression of surprise/exclamation, interrogation, rhetorical questioning, wishing, and the resultative/perfective. The point is it is still possible to use the notion of ‘converb’ in the inceptive construction as this is a separate historical process.
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| 4. |
- Boyd, Sally, 1949, et al.
(författare)
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Grundlöst om språkdöd
- 2006
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Ingår i: Språkvård. - 0038-8440. ; 2006:4, s. 36-40
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Tidskriftsartikel (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)
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| 5. |
- Brosig, Benjamin, 1983-
(författare)
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Aspect, evidentiality and tense in Mongolian : From Middle Mongol to Khalkha and Khorchin
- 2014
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The present thesis consists of an introduction and the following papers:The aspect-evidentiality system of Middle Mongol. Ural-Altaic Studies, 13. (forthcoming)The tense-aspect system of Khorchin Mongolian. In: Pirkko Suihkonen & Lindsay Whaley (eds.), Typology of Languages of Europe and Northern and Central Asia. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. (forthcoming)Aspect and epistemic notions in the present tense system of Khalkha Mongolian. Acta Linguistica Petropolitana. (forthcoming)Factual vs. evidential? - The past tense forms of spoken Khalkha Mongolian. In: Ad Foolen, Helen de Hoop, & Gijs Mulder (eds.), Empirical Approaches to Evidentiality. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. (under review)Its purpose is to give an account of tense, aspect and evidentiality in three Mongolian varieties: Middle Mongol (MM) as spoken in the Mongol Empire, Khalkha Mongolian as spoken in the Mongolian state, and Khorchin Mongolian as spoken in eastern Inner Mongolia, China. MM started out with a tripartite tense distinction and a medium-sized aspectual system. Its past evidential system was tripartite with suffixes for firsthand, non-firsthand and evidentially neutral information. In Khorchin, which developed under the influence of Mandarin and Manchu, evidentiality was lost, and tense was simplified into a past / non-past distinction, alongside with a discontinuous proximal future / past marker. The aspect system underwent some changes, but retained its complexity. Khalkha, which developed under the influence of Turkic and Tibetan, underwent some shared innovations with Khorchin, but retained participles as a multifunctional unit within finite predicates, so that its aspectual system grew more complex. The past evidentiality distinctions of MM were basically retained, but the introduction of present tense evidentiality brought a number of changes: the evidentially neutral value shifted to signaling assimilated knowledge, and discontinuous future uses were introduced for all past markers.
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| 6. |
- Bruce, Gösta, et al.
(författare)
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Svensk prosodi - rytm och melodi
- 2010
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Ingår i: Sveriges nationalatlas. Språken i sverige. - 9789187760570 ; , s. 60-65
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Bokkapitel (populärvet., debatt m.m.)
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| 7. |
- Carling, Gerd, et al.
(författare)
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Regeringen bör erkänna älvdalska
- 2021
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Ingår i: Språktidningen. - 1654-5028. ; :2021-04-28
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Tidskriftsartikel (populärvet., debatt m.m.)
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| 8. |
- Carlsson, Yvonne, 1968-
(författare)
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Genericitet i text
- 2012
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This dissertation examines genericity from a textual perspective. The material consists of popular science texts about species of animals. The investigation concerns both the distribution of different forms of generic noun phrases and the boundary between generic and non-generic noun phrases. The analytical tools are taken from Accessibility Theory and Blending Theory.Two separate studies have been undertaken. The results of the first study indicate that generic reference on the whole follows the same principles of accessibility as non-generic reference, although there are some differences that can be attributed to the distinction between generic and non-generic reference. Some results suggest that our mental representations of generic referents are generally less accessible than those of non-generic referents. Factors other than accessibility influencing the choice of generic noun phrases are also identified.While genericity is generally treated as an all-or-nothing phenomenon, an important experience of this first study concerns the difficulties facing anyone who tries to distinguish between generic and non-generic noun phrases in authentic texts. These difficulties are the centre of attention in the second study, which shows that genericity is an extremely context-dependent phenomenon. The sentence context may clearly indicate a particular, non-generic reference, while the wider context of the text reveals that the noun phrase in question is in fact generic. Not infrequently, chains of reference involve a great deal of shifting and slithering between a generic and a non-generic meaning, although the references are seemingly coreferential. It is sometimes difficult to decide on the real referents intended. At times there are also clear cases where the noun phrase must be analysed as referring to both generic and non-generic entities at the same time. This implies that it is unlikely that we actually decide for every reference if it is generic or non-generic.
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| 10. |
- Dahl, Östen
(författare)
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An exercise in a posteriori language sampling
- 2008
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Ingår i: Sprachtypologie und Universalienforschung. - : Walter de Gruyter GmbH. - 1867-8319. ; 61:3, s. 208-220
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- A central methodological issue in language typology is sampling – how to choose a representative set of languages for a typological investigation. Most proposed typological sampling methods are a priori in the sense that they are based on assumed, rather than observed, effects of biasing factors – such as genealogical and areal proximity.The advent of the World Atlas of Language Structures (WALS) creates for the first time a chance to attempt a posteriori sampling. The basic idea is to create a sample byremoving from the set of available languages one member of each pair of languages whose typological distance – as defined in terms of the features in WALS – does not reach a predefined threshold. Inthis way, a sample of 101 languages was chosen from an initial set of the 222 languages that are best represented in WALS.The number of languages from different macroareas in this sample can be taken as an indication of the internal diversity of the area in question.Two issues are discussed in some detail: (i) the high diversity of the indigenous languages of the Americas and the tendency for these to be underrepresented by previous sampling methods; (ii) the extreme areal convergence of Mainland South East Asian languages. It is concluded that areal factors cannot be neglected in typological sampling, and that it must be questioned whether the creation of elaborate sampling algorithms makes sense.
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