Oliver Bond, Greville G. Corbett, Marina Chumakina, and Dunstan Brown (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- October 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780198747291
- eISBN:
- 9780191809705
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198747291.001.0001
- Subject:
- Linguistics, Syntax and Morphology, Language Families
Imagine how the discipline of linguistics would be if expert practitioners of different theories met in a collaborative setting to tackle the same challenging data—to test the limits of their model’s ...
More
Imagine how the discipline of linguistics would be if expert practitioners of different theories met in a collaborative setting to tackle the same challenging data—to test the limits of their model’s infrastructure and examine how the concrete predictions of their theories differ about the same data. This book represents the result of attempting to achieve this for syntactic theory, using data from Archi (Nakh–Daghestanian, Lezgic), an endangered language with an extremely complex agreement system. We undertake a controlled evaluation of three widely practised syntactic theories, through detailed examination of the theoretical principles underlying the mechanisms that model agreement. Our objective is to assess the tractability and predictive power of these leading models of syntax—Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG), Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG), and Minimalism—using a complete set of data on an agreement system from a language that has not hitherto been analysed in these frameworks.Less
Imagine how the discipline of linguistics would be if expert practitioners of different theories met in a collaborative setting to tackle the same challenging data—to test the limits of their model’s infrastructure and examine how the concrete predictions of their theories differ about the same data. This book represents the result of attempting to achieve this for syntactic theory, using data from Archi (Nakh–Daghestanian, Lezgic), an endangered language with an extremely complex agreement system. We undertake a controlled evaluation of three widely practised syntactic theories, through detailed examination of the theoretical principles underlying the mechanisms that model agreement. Our objective is to assess the tractability and predictive power of these leading models of syntax—Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG), Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG), and Minimalism—using a complete set of data on an agreement system from a language that has not hitherto been analysed in these frameworks.
Marina Chumakina, Oliver Bond, and Greville G. Corbett
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- October 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780198747291
- eISBN:
- 9780191809705
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198747291.003.0002
- Subject:
- Linguistics, Syntax and Morphology, Language Families
Archi is a Lezgic language spoken by about 1,200 people in the highlands of Daghestan. Even a brief overview of Archi phonology, morphology, and syntax reveals that the language exhibits a rich ...
More
Archi is a Lezgic language spoken by about 1,200 people in the highlands of Daghestan. Even a brief overview of Archi phonology, morphology, and syntax reveals that the language exhibits a rich phonological inventory, a diverse range of morphological exponents (both synthetic and periphrastic), and various paradigm shapes. In particular, agreement can target almost any part of speech, and there are a large number of agreeing non-finite verb forms that head complements and other dependent clauses. Archi syntax exhibits some degree of flexibility in the ordering of constituents, with a default head-final tendency. While morphological ergativity is evident throughout transitive clauses, there is also limited evidence that both absolutive and ergative arguments can function as a syntactically privileged argument in certain control structures.Less
Archi is a Lezgic language spoken by about 1,200 people in the highlands of Daghestan. Even a brief overview of Archi phonology, morphology, and syntax reveals that the language exhibits a rich phonological inventory, a diverse range of morphological exponents (both synthetic and periphrastic), and various paradigm shapes. In particular, agreement can target almost any part of speech, and there are a large number of agreeing non-finite verb forms that head complements and other dependent clauses. Archi syntax exhibits some degree of flexibility in the ordering of constituents, with a default head-final tendency. While morphological ergativity is evident throughout transitive clauses, there is also limited evidence that both absolutive and ergative arguments can function as a syntactically privileged argument in certain control structures.
Marina Chumakina and Greville G. Corbett
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780198723769
- eISBN:
- 9780191791109
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198723769.003.0006
- Subject:
- Linguistics, Syntax and Morphology, Theoretical Linguistics
The Nakh–Daghestanian language Archi is famous for its extensive phonological inventory and its very large paradigms, especially those for verbs. Against this background, this chapter shows that ...
More
The Nakh–Daghestanian language Archi is famous for its extensive phonological inventory and its very large paradigms, especially those for verbs. Against this background, this chapter shows that there is particular complexity in Archi’s relatively small paradigm of gender and number agreement. This system is complex on many levels: the realization of agreement involves all parts of speech apart from nouns, but in some instances it requires lexical specification, since not all lexemes behave alike (many do not agree). Specifying the position of the gender and number markers, as prefixes, suffixes, or infixes, is also not straightforward: there are items with infixes where prefixal marking would be felicitous on phonological grounds. That is, Archi exhibits the typologically rare phenomenon of ‘frivolous’ infixation. The chapter establishes the factors which determine the realization of agreement in Archi, focusing on the verbal system, and a set of interrelating factors (phonological, morphological, and part of speech) which predict the outcome in some 70 per cent of the instances; our analysis suggests that this apparently small system is genuinely\break complex.Less
The Nakh–Daghestanian language Archi is famous for its extensive phonological inventory and its very large paradigms, especially those for verbs. Against this background, this chapter shows that there is particular complexity in Archi’s relatively small paradigm of gender and number agreement. This system is complex on many levels: the realization of agreement involves all parts of speech apart from nouns, but in some instances it requires lexical specification, since not all lexemes behave alike (many do not agree). Specifying the position of the gender and number markers, as prefixes, suffixes, or infixes, is also not straightforward: there are items with infixes where prefixal marking would be felicitous on phonological grounds. That is, Archi exhibits the typologically rare phenomenon of ‘frivolous’ infixation. The chapter establishes the factors which determine the realization of agreement in Archi, focusing on the verbal system, and a set of interrelating factors (phonological, morphological, and part of speech) which predict the outcome in some 70 per cent of the instances; our analysis suggests that this apparently small system is genuinely\break complex.
