Emai's Variable Coding of Adjuncts

This paper examines the morphosyntactic character of clauses containing adjuncts in Emai (Edoid and West Benue Congo). In clauses differing as to discourse function, adjunct coding is variable. Some adjunct types are consistently structured as either head of a phrase or complement in a phrase headed by a verb. Other adjuncts are coded more variably. In canonical declarative clauses, they appear in postverbal position unmarked by a verb, but in one or more noncanonical clause types, their clause requires a verb otherwise latent. Resulting patterns are assessed from a perspective in Croft (2001), where adjuncts are relations with their matrix clause as argument

Reassessing gender in Ogbe-Oloma

We re-assess the gender system of Ogbe-Oloma, an Edoid village variety of Nigeria. System exponents are prefixes that define form class and reflect grammatical number. We find that eight agreement classes undergird fourteen genders, while seventeen nominal form classes frame twenty-five number inflections. Prefix mapping from inflection to gender is non-isomorphic. Mapping is however constrained by syllable shape, CV- versus V-, and alliterative sound quality of prefix consonant, not vowel. In addition, several number inflections trigger agreement in multiple genders leading to one gender that exclusively refers to nouns with human reference.Peer Reviewe

Emai's Aspect-Causative Interaction

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