Projects per year
Abstract
We examine the role of referential properties and lexical stipulation in three closely related languages of eastern Indonesia, the Alor-Pantar languages Abui, Kamang and Teiwa. Our focus is on the continuum where event properties (e.g. volitionality, affectedness) are highly important at one extreme or play virtually no role at the other. These languages occupy different points on this continuum. In Abui event semantics play the greatest role, while in Teiwa they play the least role (the lexical property animacy being dominant in the formation of verb classes). Kamang occupies an intermediate position. Teiwa has conventionalized the relation between a verb and its class along the lines of animacy so that classes become associated with the animacy value of the objects with which the verbs in a given class typically occur. Paying attention to a lexical property like animacy, in contrast with event properties, has meant greater potential for arbitrary classes to emerge.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 44-79 |
| Number of pages | 36 |
| Journal | Studies in Language |
| Volume | 38 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 2014 |
Bibliographical note
© 2014, authors. This is an author-produced version of the published paper. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher’s self-archiving policy. Further copying may not be permitted; contact the publisher for details.Keywords
- affectedness
- agreement
- Alor-Pantar
- animacy
- inflectional classes
- lexical stipulation
- volitionality
Profiles
Projects
- 1 Finished
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Combining Gender and Classifiers in Natural Language
1/04/13 → 31/03/16
Project: Research project (funded) › Research