Alinhamento interpessoal, representacional e morfossintático na Gramática Discursivo-Funcional

Este artigo se debruça sobre o mapeamento entre os Níveis Interpessoal, Representacional e Morfossintático da gramática, o chamado alinhamento, segundo o arcabouço da Gramática Discursivo-Funcional (GDF). Propõe uma tipologia das línguas baseada no que a sua organização morfossintática codifica: distinções pragmáticas (p.ex. em Tagalo), distinções semânticas (p.ex. em Achém), ou distinções inerentes à morfossintaxe (p.ex. em Inglês, Basco ou a língua Kham). A inclusão tanto do Sujeito como do Objeto e de línguas tanto acusativas como ergativas no tratamento do alinhamento morfossintático permitiu-nos abranger tipos tipologicamente mais variáveis e demonstrar o potencial da GDF para a análise contrastiva das línguas.<br>Within the framework of Functional Discourse Grammar (FDG), alignment concerns the relations between the Interpersonal, Representational and Morphosyntactic Levels of grammar. This article proposes a typology of languages based upon what we find to be encoded in their morphosyntactic organization: pragmatic distinctions (as in Tagalog), semantic distinctions (as in Acheh), or distinctions inherent to the morphosyntax (as in English, Basque and Kham). By including both subject and object, and both accusative and ergative languages in our treatment of morphosyntactic alignment, we provide a better coverage of typological variation and show the potential of FDG for cross-linguistic analysis

The Algonquian Online Interactive Linguistic Atlas

The Algonquian On-line Interactive Linguistic Atlas is a collaborative participatory action research project with partners involved in the documentation and revitalization of languages of the Algonquian language family in North America. It was started in 2005 with a number of Cree, Innu and Naskapi communities, and is currently being expanded to other languages of the same family: Western Cree, Métis Cree, Michif and Ojibwe dialects. The Linguistic Atlas (www.atlas-ling.ca) is based on a phrase-book template (the East Cree conversation CD and manual) that is being used to develop similar second- language acquisition material across dialects. The atlas currently contains 21 topics of conversation in over 15 languages and dialects within the Algonquian family. It offers interactive maps, pedagogical activities, and downloadable texts with corresponding sound files of Cree, Michif, Naskapi, and Innu dialects. The atlas uses a Google map populated by an on-line relational database, allowing visualization and understanding of language diversity and unity within the Algonquian family. Central to the Atlas is the marrying of dialectal variation documentation with training and support for native speakers in language preservation and documentation, using information technology (IT). The central database is web-based, allowing collaboration at a distance between multiple university and language community members. On the academic side, the atlas project also turns out to be a hub for exchange and support between linguists engaged in developing on-line Algonquian dictionaries. In this multimedia presentation, we first show and discuss the tools, technology, and methods used to implement this wide-reaching documentation effort, then we focus on its pedagogical applications. Pedagogical applications include language acquisition via downloadable language lessons and linguistic training via the discovery of the characteristics of this language family, as well as the variation between languages and dialects at the phonological, morphological and lexicological levels. Our goal is to make linguistic principles accessible to students, lexicographers, terminologists and language teachers, facilitating the understanding of both the diversity and the deep unity of the Algonquian family of languages

Verb-based restrictions on noun incorporation across languages

Although some characteristics of incorporating verbs and non-incorporating verbs have been proposed in previous studies, little systematic cross-linguistic research has been done on restrictions on the types of verbs that incorporate nouns. Knowledge about possible verb-based restrictions on noun incorporation may, however, provide important insights for theoretical approaches to noun incorporation, in particular regarding the question to what extent incorporation is a lexical or a syntactic process, and whether and how languages may vary in this respect. This paper therefore investigates to what extent languages restrict noun incorporation to particular verbs and what types of restrictions appear to be relevant cross-linguistically. The study consists of two parts: an explorative typological survey based on descriptive sources of 50 incorporating languages, and a more detailed investigation of incorporating verbs in corpus data from a sample of eight languages, guided by a questionnaire. The results demonstrate that noun incorporation is indeed restricted in terms of which verbs allow this construction within and across languages. The likelihood that a verb can incorporate is partly determined by its degree of morphosyntactic transitivity, but the attested variation across verbs and across languages shows that purely lexical restrictions play an important role as well