Alexandra Aikhenvald

James Cook University | JCU · LCRC

Linguistic typology is an all-embracing discipline central for inductively-based cross-linguistic generalizations, supported by language facts. Firsthand investigation of previously undescribed languages from regions known for their linguistic diversity helps expand our knowledge about the nature of language and the parameters of cross-linguistic v...

This article concludes the special issue of Stellenbosch Papers in Linguistics Plus dedicated to the diachrony of Serial Verb Constructions. The authors of the ten contributions included in the volume discuss the most important results of their studies and suggest the possible lines for future research.

The emergence and the expansion of serial verbs can be affected by language contact. This paper focuses on a case study from Tariana, a highly endangered Arawak language spoken in the multilingual Vaupés River Basin Linguistic Area in Brazilian Amazonia. Tariana has numerous types of asymmetrical and symmetrical serial verbs highly frequent in disc...

This is a brief introduction to the special issue of Stellenbosch Papers in Linguistics Plus. We present the concept of serial verb constructions (SVCs) conventionally understood as monoclausal sequences of verbs without any overt marker of coordination, subordination, or syntactic dependency. We then focus on the mechanisms at work in the evolutio...

Language and society are closely integrated and mutually supportive (rather than one being dependant on the other). An unusual (non-universal) facet of a language can relate to a specific trait of social organisation, or life-style, etc., evidenced among the society of language users. On the basis of detailed individual studies, we put forward indu...

In most Arawak languages, obligatorily possessed nouns are bound forms. They have to be accompanied by a possessor. If the possessor is unknown or irrelevant, the noun will take the non‐specified possessor suffix. A suffix of the same segmental form occurs in deverbal nominalizations with unspecified arguments, or as a nominalizer on verbs. We hypo...

Significance Around the world, more than 7,000 languages are spoken, most of them by small populations of speakers in the tropics. Globalization puts small languages at a disadvantage, but our understanding of the drivers and rate of language loss remains incomplete. When we tested key factors causing language attrition among Papua New Guinean stud...

Papua New Guinea is home to >10% of the world’s languages and rich and varied biocultural knowledge, but the future of this diversity remains unclear. We measured language skills of 6,190 students speaking 392 languages (5.5% of the global total) and modelled their future trends, using individual-level variables characterizing family language use,...

Tariana, an Arawak language from Brazil, has nominal markers which convey temporal and aspectual information about the noun phrase. Besides nominal future, there is a distinction between completed and non-completed nominal pasts. The completed nominal past has three meanings – decessive (‘late, gone’), temporal (‘former’), and commiserative or depr...

Almost all languages of the world have nominal classification devices in their grammar. The most widespread are linguistic genders (also referred to as noun classes) – grammatical classes of nouns based on core semantic properties such as sex (female and male), animacy, humanness, and also shape and size. The choice of a gender (or noun class) may...

This chapter recapitulates the essence of the concepts of phonological and grammatical word discussed throughout the volume. Defining a phonological and a grammatical word is relatively straightforward for some languages, less so for others. For instance, components of a grammatical word generally occur in fixed order; but this can be challenged by...

This chapter offers general background for the analysis of ‘phonological word’ and ‘grammatical word’ in a cross-linguistic perspective. It outlines the defining characteristics of phonological word (including segmental and suprasegmental features and phonological processes), formulates restrictions on the length of a minimal word, and places ‘word...

‘Word’ is a cornerstone for the understanding of every language. It is a pronounceable phonological unit. It will also have a meaning, and a grammatical characterization-a morphological structure and a syntactic function. And it will be an entry in a dictionary and an orthographic item. ‘Word’ has ‘psychological reality’ for speakers, enabling them...

This chapter starts with a brief discussion of phonological change in obsolescent languages, and turns to morphological and syntactic change. It explains how an obsolescent language under extreme pressure can change in unusual ways, creating typologically unique patterns, or patterns unusual for a language family. The chapter addresses dialect leve...

Yalaku is one of the smallest members of the Ndu language family of the Sepik region of New Guinea. Spoken in a hilly area off the Sepik river, Yalaku has been in intensive contact with the unrelated Kwoma for several generations. Comparison between Yalaku and closely related Manambu shows the presence of a number of grammatical patterns borrowed f...

This chapter addresses the issue of coexistence of noun categorization devices within one language. Genders and other noun categorization devices—be they numeral classifiers, or other classifiers—are generally thought of as being relatively independent from one another. Co-existing and overlapping systems of genders and classifiers are cross-lingui...

В статье сжато описываются принципы построения грамматики синтеза основы на базе толково-комбинаторного словаря морфем (ТКСМ). Описывается структура словарной статьи ТКСМ, приводится аппарат описания внутреннего синтаксиса словоформы (морфологического синтаксиса) на основе грамматики зависимостей. Приводится полный набор морфолого-синтаксических от...

Ways of talking about diseases, ailments, convalescence, and well-being vary from language to language. In some, an ailment 'hits' or 'gets' the person; in others, the sufferer 'catches' an ailment, comes to be a 'container' for it, or is presented as a 'fighter' or a 'battleground'. In languages with obligatory expression of information source, th...

Across the multilingual area of the Vaupés River Basin in north-west Amazonia, women are considered a dangerous ‘other’. In accordance with the local marriage practices, men marry women from language groups different to their own. Women are denied access to important rituals, such as the Yurupary rite, and are not supposed to hear any words associa...

In many languages of the world, a sequence of several verbs act together as one unit. They form one predicate, and contain no overt marker of coordination, subordination, or syntactic dependency of any other sort. These are conventionally referred to as serial verb constructions, or SVCs. In a recent paper entitled 'The serial verb construction: co...

Intensive contact brings about diffusion of grammatical categories. Grammaticalization of lexical items is one of the mechanisms at play as languages converge and new categories develop. In a situation of intensive contact-induced change, the forms to be grammaticalized, and semantic changes involved, may turn out to be somewhat unexpected, forcing...

These guidelines are intended for linguists working on a comprehensive grammar of a language. They provide orientation to the questions to be addressed in order to establish a complete picture of serial verb constructions. Ideally, the analysis of serial verb constructions ought to deal with as many as possible of the topics listed below. These poi...

A serial verb construction is a sequence of verbs which act together as a single predicate. Serial verbs are always monoclausal and are pronounced as a single verb would be. The components of a serial verb construction share tense, aspect, modality, reality status, evidentiality, mood, and also polarity values. A serial verb construction typically...

This chapter provides an integrated summary of the properties of serial verbs discussed throughout the book, and their parameters of variation. The definition of serial verbs with their characteristic properties is followed by the principles of argument sharing within serial verbs. In terms of their composition, serial verbs divide into symmetrical...

In terms of their composition, serial verb constructions divide into asymmetrical and symmetrical. Asymmetrical serial verbs consist of a minor component from a closed class of verbs, and a major component from an open class; this is the head of the construction. Symmetrical serial verbs consist of several components from open classes. Asymmetrical...

A single language can have more than one kind of serial verb construction. Serial verbs may differ along the parameters of wordhood and contiguity. Different types of serial verbs may differ in their meanings and the degree of their grammaticalization or lexicalization. The closer the components are in surface structure, the more likely they are to...

Serial verb constructions can express a multitude of grammatical meanings—including directionality, aspect, comparison, increasing valency, and many more. These meanings may be expressed with affixes in other languages. Using a serial verb may help express definiteness and focus. Detailed portrayal of various facets of one single event is a functio...

In many languages of the world, a sequence of several verbs act together as one unit. These sequences—known as serial verbs—form one predicate and contain no overt marker of coordination, subordination, or syntactic dependency of any sort. Serial verbs describe what can be conceptualized as one single event. They are often pronounced as if they wer...

Components of a serial verb can be contiguous or non-contiguous. A serial verb may consist of one grammatical word, or form several grammatical words. Correlations between contiguity and wordhood of serial verbs allow us to establish four types of constructions, each with its own analytical problems. The surface marking of person of the subject on...

In some languages, verb serialization is productive. Others have just a few kinds of serial verbs. Limited verb serialization can be restricted to just a few directional verbs. Serial verbs need to be kept separate from clause sequences and multi-verb constructions of other kinds including coordinate and subordinate constructions and multi-verb con...

We have identified three scenarios for the emergence of serial verb constructions: clause fusion scenario, whereby serial verbs emerge out of sequences of clauses; the verbal modification scenario, and the concurrent grammaticalization scenario. The development of serial verbs may correlate with the expansion of analytic structures and the loss of...

This chapter sets out the initial parameters for the concept of serial verbs with some initial examples and a list of definitional properties. The classification of serial verbs into symmetrical and asymmetrical is introduced. The components of a serial verb may have to be strictly contiguous. Alternatively, other constituents may intervene between...

This contribution focuses on the language situation in two different communities of the Middle Sepik area, speaking closely related languages of the Ndu family - the Manambu and the Yalaku, The two groups maintain traditional features typical of "river-dwellers" who live on the banks of the Sepik River (the Manambu) and those who live off the River...

Tariana, an endangered Arawak language of north-western Amazonia (Brazil), has a number of strategies for nominalizing verbs. These include noun classifiers as word-class changing derivational markers, in addition a number of nominalizing suffixes. Nominalizations are a subclass of nouns, with their own set of special properties. As a consequence o...

Every language has a way of saying how one knows what one is talking about, and what one thinks about what one knows. In some languages, one always has to specify the information source on which it is based—whether the speaker saw the event, or heard it, or inferred it based on something seen or on common sense, or was told about it by someone else...

A number of the world’s languages have a special morpheme marking a generic human participant or possessor, roughly translatable as ‘one’, or ‘someone’. In the course of language history, a generic marker may undergo semantic change and take on further functions—those of (a) a first person inclusive, (b) a marker of possessor coreferential with the...

The Arawak language family is the largest in South America in terms of its geographical spread, with over forty extant languages. Arawak languages are spoken in at least ten locations north of the Amazon, and in at least ten south of it, and are structurally diverse. Across the family, the expression of first person is relatively consistent. This c...

Yalaku, a Ndu language from the Middle Sepik region of the East Sepik Province of Papua New Guinea, has no dedicated comparative construction — just like an overwhelming majority of Papuan languages of New Guinea (de Vries 2015). After a brief outline of typological features of the language, we turn to the ways of expressing comparative meanings. T...

Linguistic typology identifies both how languages vary and what they all have in common. This Handbook provides a state-of-the art survey of the aims and methods of linguistic typology, and the conclusions we can draw from them. Part I covers phonological typology, morphological typology, sociolinguistic typology and the relationships between typol...

Linguistic typology identifies both how languages vary and what they all have in common. This Handbook provides a state-of-the art survey of the aims and methods of linguistic typology, and the conclusions we can draw from them. Part I covers phonological typology, morphological typology, sociolinguistic typology and the relationships between typol...

Manambu, a Ndu language from the East Sepik Province of Papua New Guinea, has a complex system of marking positive and negative imperatives. Imperative is the main means of marking directive speech acts, including orders and requests, in the language. The marking and the categories expressed in the imperative are different from declarative and inte...

Many languages of the world have genders, that is, grammatical agreement classes, based on such core semantic properties as animacy, sex and humanness, and also shape. In Manambu, a language of New Guinea, nouns are assigned genders according to the sex of a human referent, and to shape and size of any other referent. Men are assigned to the mascul...

Evidentiality - a grammatical expression of information source (Aikhenvald 2004, 2014a) - is often expressed on a clausal level, and its marking is associated with the verb. In a few languages, a noun phrase can acquire its own evidential specification. Evidentiality can be expressed autonomously, or be fused with another grammatical category, incl...

Yalaku, a previously undescribed Ndu language from the East Sepik Province of Papua New Guinea, has two core cases (nominative and accusative) and four oblique clausal cases (locative-instrumental, allative, dative, and specific locative). The comitative case is used for marking an oblique within a clause, or as a marker of linkage within a noun ph...

In many languages, terms denoting the human body and its parts constitute a closed subclass of nouns with special grammatical properties. Many if not all parts of the human body may acquire dimensions of meanings with ethnographic importance. I focus on a tri-partite division of visible and invisible parts of a human and their attributes in Manambu...

Manambu, a Ndu language from East Sepik Province in Papua New Guinea, has a complex system of demonstratives, with many typologically unusual features. Nominal demonstratives distinguish three degrees of distance: close to speaker, close to addressee, and distal from both. They can contain markers of further distance or of topographic deixis, which...

The Vaupés River Basin in northwest Amazonia is a well-established linguistic area characterized by obligatory multilingualism and exogamy based on linguistic allegiance. The core members of the area who take part in the multilingual marriage network are speakers of East Tucanoan languages and of one Arawak language, Tariana. The impact of East Tuc...

The concept of value is manifold. Something judged good, proper, and desirable in human life is judged as valuable. Being valuable may have economic connotations of worth—to do with the degree to which desirable objects may bring material benefits. In this article, I concentrate on the Tariana, a representative of the Vaupes River Basin linguistic...

The Arawak family is the largest in South America, with about forty extant languages. Arawak languages are spoken in lowland Amazonia and beyond, covering French Guiana, Suriname, Guiana, Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, Brazil, and Bolivia, and formerly in Paraguay and Argentina. Wayuunaiki (or Guajiro), spoken in the region of the Guajiro peninsula in...

Tariana is an endangered language spoken by about 100 people in a remote area of northwest Amazonia, Brazil. The language is spoken in a fascinating area where one can only marry someone who speaks a different language and who belongs to a different ethnic group. Tariana is being rapidly displaced by an unrelated language, Tucano. The article focus...

The concept of value is manifold. Something judged good, proper, and desirable in human life is judged as valuable. Being valuable may have economic connotations of worth-to do with the degree to which desirable objects may bring material benefits. In this article, I concentrate on the Tariana, a representative of the Vaupés River Basin linguistic...

When a linguist goes into the field to work with a previously undescribed language, they aim at discovering what the language is like. What we linguists take away is knowledge—reflected in our publications, presentations and scholarly reputation. What we also get is the feeling of love for the languages and for the people, and the sense of indebted...

The language families of Amazonia offer a history of great complexity, albeit with much evidence erased by the spread of Spanish and Portuguese. Homelands for the six major families and some aspects of their migration histories are suggested.

A salient feature of the Manambu of the Middle Sepik River Basin, and of many related languages, is a focus on clan ownership of ancestral names and totems. Possession of totems is expressed differently from other kinds of possessive relationships. This chapter offers an extensive analysis of numerous possessive structures in Manambu (including par...

Every language has a way of expressing possessive relationships. The marking and the conceptualization of these vary across languages and cultures. This volume aims at investigating the varied facets of possession and associated notions, including association and modification. We focus on correlations between language and culture in the ways in whi...

The notion of possession is manifold, and typically subsumes part-whole and kinship relationships, in addition to ownership proper. Based on intensive investigation of several hundred languages, this chapter investigates the expression of possession within a noun phrase, with special attention to classifiers employed within possessive constructions...

Languages of the Amazon basin are among the most fascinating in the world. This is where one finds unusual sounds, unexpected ways of classifying nouns, elaborate positional verbs, to name just a few features. Most Amazonian languages have been in contact with each other for many generations. Many people are multilingual, and the unusual patterns o...