The existential in Xhosa in relation to indefiniteness: The existential copula in Xhosa in relation to indefiniteness

↓ Direkt till sidans innehåll
↓ Direkt till sidans sekundära innehåll (sidomenyn)

Sökning: WFRF:(Ström Eva) > (2020-2024) > The existential in ...

Bloom Ström, Eva-Marie,1967Gothenburg University,Göteborgs universitet,Institutionen för språk och litteraturer,Department of Languages and Literatures (författare)

The existential in Xhosa in relation to indefiniteness : The existential copula in Xhosa in relation to indefiniteness

Artikel/kapitelEngelska2020

Förlag, utgivningsår, omfång ...

2020-09-29
University of Florida George A Smathers Libraries,2020

Nummerbeteckningar

LIBRIS-ID:oai:gup.ub.gu.se/296827
https://gup.ub.gu.se/publication/296827URI
https://doi.org/10.32473/sal.v49i2.117136DOI

Kompletterande språkuppgifter

Språk:engelska

Ingår i deldatabas

SwePubSwePub

Klassifikation

Ämneskategori:ref swepub-contenttype
Ämneskategori:art swepub-publicationtype

Anmärkningar

Bare nouns in languages without articles can be semantically ambiguous between definite and indefinite interpretations. It is assumed here that speakers of such languages can still signal to the hearer when such nouns refer to unique and identifiable referents. This paper contributes to the long-standing cross-linguistic question of how bare nouns are interpreted and what means languages without articles have to disambiguate between definite and indefinite readings. This question is largely unexplored for Bantu languages. The answer is sought in the use of different word orders and morphosyntactic constructions, with a focus on the existential, in this paper. In many languages of the world, there is a restriction on definites as pivots in existential constructions, which serves as a motivation for exploring these constructions in Xhosa. Xhosa makes use of a non-verbal copula -kho(na) in prototypical existentials as well as in presentationals. The combination of a long and a short version of the copula, together with a choice between expletive and subject agreement, gives rise to four different forms which express the existence or presence of a referent. The aim of this paper is to answer the question of how these different forms map onto a difference in meaning and function, based on examples from a corpus of natural speech and checked in follow-up elicitation. It is shown that Xhosa has a dedicated existential which is used when the coda, rather than the pivot, is the perspectival center. The existential takes expletive agreement on the copula, and the copula plus pivot have a fixed word order. When the same copula agrees with the theme argument, which can be pre- or postverbal, it functions as a presentational. The existential is used with new referents, which are overwhelmingly indefinite. However, there is no strict definiteness effect. The presentational takes a wider range of referents, which are also mostly indefinite. When it comes to the use of the short and long forms of the copula, the paper reveals an unexpected analogy with the use of the so-called conjoint and disjoint forms in Xhosa tense-aspect paradigms.

Ämnesord och genrebeteckningar

HUMANIORA Språk och litteratur Studier av enskilda språk hsv//swe
HUMANITIES Languages and Literature Specific Languages hsv//eng
HUMANIORA Språk och litteratur Jämförande språkvetenskap och allmän lingvistik hsv//swe
HUMANITIES Languages and Literature General Language Studies and Linguistics hsv//eng
(in)definiteness
existential
presentational
Bantu
bare nouns
activation states

Biuppslag (personer, institutioner, konferenser, titlar ...)

Göteborgs universitetInstitutionen för språk och litteraturer (creator_code:org_t)

Sammanhörande titlar

Ingår i:Studies in African Linguistics: University of Florida George A Smathers Libraries49:2, s. 213-2390039-35332154-428X

Internetlänk

Hitta via bibliotek

Studies in African Linguistics (Sök värdpublikationen i LIBRIS)

Till lärosätets databas

Hitta mer i SwePub

Av författaren/redakt...: Bloom Ström, Eva ...

Om ämnet

HUMANIORA: HUMANIORA; och Språk och litter ...; och Studier av enski ...

HUMANIORA: HUMANIORA; och Språk och litter ...; och Jämförande språk ...

Artiklar i publikationen: Studies in Afric ...

Av lärosätet: Göteborgs universitet

Sök utanför SwePub

Sök vidare i:: Google; Google Book Search; Google Scholar

Kungliga biblioteket hanterar dina personuppgifter i enlighet med EU:s dataskyddsförordning (2018), GDPR. Läs mer om hur det funkar här.
Så här hanterar KB dina uppgifter vid användning av denna tjänst.

LIBRIS.kb.se