Ergativity in Samoan

Most typological and language specific studies on so- called ergative languages are concerned with case marking patterns, particularly split ergativity, with the organization of syntactic relations as defined by syntactic operations such as coreferential deletion across coordinate conjunctions, Equi-NP-deletion and relativization , and with the notion of subject, but usually neglect the notion of valency, though the inherent relational properties of the verb , i. e. valency, play a fundamental role in the syntactic organization of sentences in ergative as well as in other languages . The following investigation of ergativity in Samoan aims to integrate the notion of valency into the description of semantic and syntactic relations and to outline the characteristic features of Samoan verbal clauses as far as they seem to be relevant to recent and still ongoing discussions on linguistic typology and syntactic theory. The main points of the definition of valency […] are: Valency is the property of the verb which determines the obligatory and optional number of its participants, their morphosyntactic form, their semantic class membership (e.g. ± animate, ± human) , and their semantic role (e.g. agent , patient , recipient). All semantic properties and morphosyntactic properties of participants not inherently given by the verb and therefore not predictable from the verb, are not a matter of valency. Valency is not a homogenous property of the verb, but consists of several exponents which show varying degress of relevance in different languages or different verb classes within a single language

Corpus linguistic and documentary approaches in writing a grammar of a previously undescribed language

Drawing on her experiences with writing a grammar in the course of the Teop language documentation project, the author explores how corpus linguistic methods can be employed for the analysis and description of a previously undescribed language. After giving a short introduction into the creation of a digital corpus and complex corpus search methods, the chapter focuses on the importance of creating a diversified corpus. It demonstrates that different text varieties such as spoken and written legends, procedural texts and descriptions of objects show different preferences for certain ways of expression and thus represent valuable resources for various grammatical phenomena. Accordingly, a grammar which is based on texts should account for this variation by incorporating a detailed description of the corpus, giving references and metadata for each example and providing information on the kind of contexts particular grammatical features are usually associated with.National Foreign Language Resource Cente

Adnominal and predicative possessive constructions in Melanesian languages

According to the present state of research, there seems to be no language which shows possessive classifiers and possessive verbs corresponding to English "to have" at the same time. In classifier languages predicative possession is expressed by verbless clauses, i.e. by existential clauses ("there is my possessed item"), equative clauses ("the possessed item is mine" "that is my possessed item") or by locative expressions ("the possessed item is near me"), in which the classifier in the case of non-inherent possession marks the nature of the relationship. While most Melanesian languages, as for instance Fijian, Lenakel, Pala and Tolai are classifier languages, Nguna, a Melanesian language spoken in Vanuatu, only shows traces of the Melanesian possessive classifier system, but, in contrast to the other Melanesian languages, it has a possessive verb, namely 'peani' "to have". In order to show how the Nguna possessive constructions deviate from the common Melanesian type, we shall start with a brief description of the Melanesian possessive constructions in general, and that of Fijian in particular

Ditransitivity and valency change in Teop – a corpus based approach

Das Teop ist eine in Bougainville, Papua Neuguinea, gesprochene ozeanische Sprache, die sich durch eine hohe Anzahl ditransitiver Verben und außerordentlich komplexer Prädikate auszeichnet, deren Valenz durch die Inkorporation von Objekten, seriellen Verben, Präpositionen und einer Applikativpartikel verändert werden kann. Der vorliegende Aufsatz beginnt mit kritischen Überlegungen zum Begriff der Valenz und zu den Methoden der Valenzanalyse und untersucht anschließend anhand eines Korpus von ca. 150.000 Wörtern die Valenz einfacher Verben, die Valenz verändernde Funktion der Applikativpartikel und der sog. Dativpräposition sowie die Interaktion von verschiedenen Valenz verändernden Prozessen innerhalb eines einzigen Prädikates. Dabei decken die Valenz verändernden Prozesse die unterschiedliche semantische Rollenstruktur ditransitiver Verben auf. Gleichzeitig werden Leistung und Grenzen des korpusbasierten Ansatzes deutlich