Compounding and Incorporation in the Ket Language: Implications for a More Unified Theory of Compounding

Compounding in the world’s languages is a complex word-­‐formation process that is not easily accounted for. Moreover, incorporation is equally complex and problematic. This examination of compounding and incorporation in the Ket language seeks to identify the underlying logic of these processes and to work towards a typology that captures generalizations among the numerous ways in which languages expand their lexicons through these processes. Canonical Typology provides a framework that does just this. A preliminary canonical typology of compounds is proposed here, one that subsumes a range of compounds as well as incorporation. For this reason, the Ket language, which relies heavily on compounding and incorporation, will be used as a test case. The aim is to define the canonical co

The middle as a voice category in Bantu : setting the stage for further research

The main goal of our paper is to give a first, general description of middle voice in Bantu. As will be shown, this language group has a set of verbal derivational morphemes that challenges some of the concepts related to the middle domain. First of all, as of yet no description has been found of a language having more than one middle marker, yet many Bantu languages have up to four or five derivational morphemes that cover several parts of the semantic domain of the middle. Secondly, provided that the polysemy patterns of these morphemes only partially cover what is generally considered the “canonical” middle domain, we will call these “quasi-middle” markers. The fact that these verbal morphemes also convey notions that are usually not considered to belong to the domain of the canonical middle calls for a reassessment of what constitutes the semantic core of this voice category cross-linguistically. Although the theoretical implications of these new data are not the central focus of our paper, the basic description that we aim to provide of the middle in Bantu can nevertheless contribute to further discussion on this intricate voice category

Constraints on the causative derivation in early Vedic: Evidence for a diachronic typology of transitivity

This paper demonstrates the relevance of the semantic approach to transitivity (going back to Hopper and Thompson 1980) for the analysis of Vedic causative verbs. It argues that in terms of this approach it is possible to explain a number of constraints on causative derivation (which cannot be explained in terms of the traditional, syntactic, definition) and to offer a unified account of the semantics of these verbs. It also briefly discusses some theoretical implications of this analysis of causative verbs in Vedic for a diachronic typology of transitivity

Bound person forms in ditransitive clauses revisited.

In a recent article Gensler (2003) has argued that little can be said about the ordering of bound person markers of the T(heme) and R(ecipient) relative to each other or relative to the verb stem apart from the fact that the outer markers are likely to be the result of a second-level cliticization process. We take issue with this claim and document that quite successful predictions with respect to the ordering of the T and R markers can be made on the basis of morphological alignment. Taking as our point of departure the typology of ditransitive alignment outlined in Haspelmath (2004; 2005), we show that the ordering patterns in which the R is placed closer to the verbal stem than the T are favoured in all relevant alignment types apart from the indirective, which exhibits a preference for positioning the T closer to the verbal stem than the R. These preferences for the ordering of the R and T are argued to relate directly to the frequency of use of the relative person forms and thus are seen as constituting yet another piece of evidence for the usage-based model of grammar being developed within the functional-cognitive typological paradigm (cf. e.g. Barlow & Kemmer 2000; Bybee & Hopper 2001; Tomasello 2003)

On the analysis of non-selected datives in Maltese

This paper provides a descriptive overview of extra-argumental or non-selected datives in Maltese, poorly described in existing grammars. We outline an LFG approach to the facts we describe building on existing LFG work and in particular on Kibort (2008)?s approach to dative arguments, extending her approach to the various subclasses of non-selected dative arguments