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ispartof: Addenda. Artikelen voor Ad Foolen pages:489-495 ispartof: pages:489-495 status: published

nrpages: 154 status: published

ispartof: Signs and wonders. Liber amicorum for Kristin Davidse pages:93-96 ispartof: pages:93-96 status: published

In dieser Arbeit untersuche ich aus einer typologischen Perspektive die Bedeutung von Tempus, Modalität und Aspekt (TMA) in Nafsan (South Efate), einer ozeanischen Sprache Vanuatus. Ich konzentriere mich auf die Bedeutung des perfektiven Aspekts und der Realis/Irrealis-Modalität in Nafsan und anderen ozeanischen Sprachen, als Fallstudien zur Untersuchung der sprach-übergreifenden Merkmale dieser TMA-Kategorien. Um ihre Bedeutungen in Nafsan zu analysieren, untersuche ich die Grammatik von Nafsan (Thieberger, 2006) und den Korpus von Thieberger (1995–2018), gefolgt von meiner Feldarbeit (Krajinovic, 2017b). Meine Analysen zeigen, dass Perfekt in Nafsan alle Funktionen hat, die für das Perfekt im Englischen typisch sind, mit Ausnahme der zusätzlichen Bedeutung von Zustandsänderungen. Die Verwendung des Nafsan-Perfekts liefert einen Beitrag zu der Debatte über die sprachübergreifende Gültigkeit von Iamitive, definiert durch die Bedeutung von Zustandsänderungen (Olsson, 2013). Basierend auf den Daten aus Nafsan und anderen ozeanischen Sprachen zeige ich, dass die von Klein (1994) vorgeschlagene semantische Definition des Perfekts ausreichend ist, um zusätzliche Funktionen des Perfekts zu berücksichtigen, ohne eine neue Iamitive-Kategorie zu etablieren. Was die Unterscheidung zwischen Realis und Irrealis betrifft, so habe ich festgestellt, dass die Kategorie Realis in Nafsan semantisch unterbewertet ist, wie sie in Irrealis-Kontexten auftreten kann, die mit der Bedeutung von Realis unvereinbar sein sollten. Ich schlage vor, dass “Realis” gelegentlich Realis-Bedeutungen durch pragmatischen Wettbewerb mit Irrealis erhaltet. Indem ich das “branching-times’’ Modell annehme, das den Ausdruck von Modalität und zeitlichem Bezug vereint (Prince, 2018), zeige ich, dass Nafsan und mehrere andere ozeanische Sprachen Beweise dafür liefern, dass Irrealis als Modalitätskategorie, die sich auf nicht-aktuelle Welten bezieht, eine semantisch sinnvolle Kategorie ist. In this thesis I study the meaning of tense, mood, and aspect (TMA) expressions in Nafsan (South Efate), an Oceanic language of Vanuatu, from a typological perspective. I focus on the meanings of the perfect aspect and realis/irrealis mood in Nafsan and other Oceanic languages, as case studies for investigating the cross-linguistic features of these TMA categories, frequently disputed in the literature. In order to analyze their meanings in Nafsan, I studied the Nafsan grammar (Thieberger, 2006) and corpus by Thieberger (1995–2018), followed by storyboard and questionnaire elicitation in my fieldwork (Krajinovic, 2017b). I found that the Nafsan perfect has all the functions considered to be typical of the English-style perfect, except for the additional meaning of change of state. I place the analysis of the Nafsan perfect in the debate about the cross-linguistic validity of the newly proposed category of iamitives, defined by the meaning of change of state akin to `already' and lacking experiential and universal perfect functions (Olsson, 2013). Based on the data from Nafsan and other Oceanic languages, I show that, when language-internal processes are considered, the semantic definition of perfect proposed by Klein (1994) is sufficient to account for additional perfect functions, without the need to posit the new iamitive category. Regarding the realis/irrealis distinction, I have found that the “realis” category is semantically underspecified in Nafsan, as it can occur in irrealis contexts that should be incompatible with realis meanings. I propose that “realis” in Nafsan only occasionally receives realis meanings through pragmatic competition with the irrealis category. By adopting a branching-times model that unites the expression of modality and temporal reference (Prince, 2018), I also show that Nafsan and several other Oceanic languages provide evidence that irrealis as a mood category referring to non-actual worlds is a semantically meaningful category.

This dissertation presents a general analysis of noun phrase (NP) structures in Australian languages. I use a sample of 100 Australian languages, which represents about 40% of all Australian languages at first contact, and about 65% of all Australian languages for which relatively detailed descriptions are available. The analysis is developed in two main parts, each with a different aim and focus. The first part of the dissertation presents a general survey of NP features. In this survey, I try to develop a synthesis of the available Australianist literature, testing some of the ideas from the literature on the languages of my sample, and showing where Australian languages stand in relation to other languages in the world. The survey consists of three chapters, with domains grouped together on the basis of how well they have been described in the literature. Chapter 1 deals with nominal classification, which is the best-described aspect of NP structure for Australian languages. Chapter 2 discusses the domains of qualification and quantification, which have received some attention in the literature, but not to the same extent as classification. Chapter 3 introduces the domains of determination and NP constituency, which are most poorly understood, due to a general lack of attention in the case of determination, and a failure to test wide-ranging claims in the case of constituency. The second part of the dissertation then takes up the last two aspects, determination and NP constituency, for more detailed analysis. Chapter 4 deals with the question of NP constituency, which is a rather problematic issue in the available literature. On the basis of my sample, I show that the idea that Australian languages tend to lack clear phrasal structure is over-stated. I suggest an alternative approach to the question of NP constituency, and argue that it is more interesting to typologise languages on the basis of where and how they allow phrasal structure rather than on the basis of a simple yes-no answer to the question of NP constituency. This alternative approach is followed up in an analysis of discontinuous structures. Chapter 5, finally, investigates the domain of NP determination, which is overall the least well-studied aspect of NP structure for Australian languages. Within this domain, I focus on the syntactic status of determining elements. Australian languages generally lack ‘classic’ determiner features, like obligatory use in particular (e.g. definite) contexts or a restriction to one determiner for each NP. I show that there is good evidence to identify a determiner slot in approximately half of the languages of the sample, and I discuss which types of elements tend to occur in these slots, including some less well-studied ones like personal pronouns and quantifiers. status: published

Insubordination in Germanic: A typology of complement and conditional constructions This PhD-research deals with independent or ‘insubordinate’ (Evans 2007) complement and conditional clauses in six Germanic languages, i.e. Dutch, English, German, Swedish, Danish and Icelandic. These structures are exemplified in (1) and (2) below: both clauses have the relevant formal properties of a subordinate clause (e.g. use of subordinators and ‘subordinate’ word order in languages where this applies), but they are used independently, i.e. without an accompanying main clause. Germanic languages are particularly rich in such structures, especially in the domain of complement and conditional clauses, and therefore provide a good data base to study the phenomenon. (1) “Blessed indeed,” says the Spirit, “that they may rest from their labors, for their deeds follow them!” (Internet Corpus) (2) “Miss, if you could just show me the way? “ I led him to the door. (WordBanks) The aim of this study is twofold. In the first, descriptive part I present a constructional typology of the two types of insubordination illustrated above, showing that independent complement and conditional clauses can express a range of different meanings, like deontic, evaluative, elaborative or argumentative meanings, each of which is encoded by slightly different formal properties. In the second, theoretical part of the study I use this data set to address a number of theoretical issues concerning insubordination in general. First, I analyze to what extent all ‘independent’ complement and conditional clauses can be analyzed as instances of insubordination. I show that apparent independence is not a sufficient condition for insubordination, and that this mechanism should be distinguished from a related but distinct mechanism from the domain of clause combining, i.e. dependency shift. Second, I discuss what these data can tell us about how clusters of insubordinate structures are organized internally, both on the semantic and the constructional level. I investigate (i) in how far the different meanings expressed by insubordinate constructions can be subsumed under one common semantic denominator, and (ii) to what extent the different types can be considered instances of one schematic construction type. References Evans, Nicholas. 2007. Insubordination and its uses. In Irina Nikolaeva (ed.) Finiteness: Theoretical and empirical foundations. Oxford: University Press. 366-431. nrpages: 239 status: published