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On the expression of TAM on nouns: Evidence from Tundra Nenets

DOI:10.1016/j.lingua.2015.08.006
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Irina Nikolaeva at SOAS, University of London
Irina Nikolaeva
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            
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          
        
          

 !     "   
"
      #          "  
"   $"#   
              
    %      "    
            #  
#&
            
'(#"
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"  "      " 
" 
+,-./012'
... Tonhauser's criteria have been widely discussed, most notably by Nordlinger & Sadler (2008), but also by Thomas (2014), Nikolaeva (2015), and Muysken (2008). They are reported below with the same wording of Tonhauser (2008: 337-338). ...
... On nominal tense 3.1 NT and gnomic-imperfectivity Nikolaeva (2015) characterizes the predestinative marker of Tundra Nenets as both temporally-and modally-oriented. The temporal orientation is apparent in the straightforward future-orientation of (11). ...
On nominal tense
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  • Mar 2020
Nordlinger & Sadler’s (2004. Nominal tense in crosslinguistic perspective. Language 80. 776–806) seminal work fostered an intense debate on the semantics of nominal tense systems, with the side effect of widening the typological coverage of this grammatical feature. This paper aims at contributing to the ongoing debate. In contrast with work by Tonhauser, who excluded ‘tense’ as a semantic component of the Paraguayan Guaraní nominal tense system, the paper claims that all TAM dimensions are involved – temporality, aspect, modality – with different proportions in the individual markers. Most importantly, it claims that nominal tense does not presuppose a semantics of its own, other than the one needed for verbal tenses. Moreover, the paper presents evidence that the semantic component of aspect, besides being necessarily activated in any nominal tense marker, is also directly conveyed by some of them, which can legitimately be called ‘nominal aspect’ markers. This integrates Nordlinger & Sadler’s (2004) survey, in which aspect was notably absent. In addition, the paper points out possible cases of nominal actionality (a.k.a. Aktionsart). Finally, the paper suggests that the pervasive presence of aspect (and also, but rarely, actionality) among nominal tense markers finds interesting parallels in some types of deverbal nominalizations, although these belong in another grammatical drawer.
Beyond nominal tense: Temporality, aspect, and relevance in Tariana noun phrases
Article
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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 deprecatory (‘poor thing’). The latter is only applicable to humans and higher animates. The non-completed nominal past has a further semantic component of relevance of the state or property for the present time. The usage of the markers is governed by the principle of communicative necessity – in contrast to clausal, or propositional, tense-cum-evidentiality markers which are always obligatory. Having special means for expressing tense, aspect and relevance within a noun phrase – distinct from tense and aspect categories with clausal scope – constitutes a typologically rare feature of the language.
Competing ditransitive constructions in Enets
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This paper reports on a corpus study of two ditransitive constructions in Enets (Uralic, Samoyedic): the standard ditransitive construction and the so-called Destinative construction involving a specific destinative nominal morpheme. We suggest that the mutual distribution of the two competing constructions depends on referential properties of theme and information structure of the clause. The Destinative construction is used when a theme is indefinite, the standard ditransitive construction is used when a theme is definite. Most often, definiteness of a theme is also accompanied by specificity of a recipient; the combination of an indefinite theme and a non-specific recipient has not been attested at all. There is also a small number of cases when the standard ditransitive construction is used in clauses with an indefinite theme: in all such cases recipients are non-standard from the information structure point of view, they are either topical, emphatic, or extraposed. We suggest that both contexts of usage of the standard ditransitive construction can be explained if we describe its main discourse function as highlighting the known referents in discourse, be it definite themes or topical, emphatic, or extraposed recipients. The main discourse function of the destinative construction is then introducing new referents in the theme position.
Negation as an exclusively nominal category
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Negation in Tuparí (Tupían; Brazil) is an exclusively nominal category: verbs must enter into a nominalized form to accept the negator-’om and must undergo a subsequent process of reverbal-ization so as to combine with tense and evidential morphology. These category-changing processes leave-’om in a low position in the clause, and scopal evidence confirms that negation is also interpreted low. In keeping with the low structural position of-’om, the same negative strategy known from finite matrix clauses appears in nonfinite embedded contexts as well. Tuparí shows that negative phrases exhibit more crosslinguistic variation than standardly assumed: they may appear in either the nominal or verbal extended projection. This finding is not compatible with cartographic efforts to strictly circumscribe the distribution of NegP within the clause. Like nominal tense in Tupi-Guaraní and other languages, in Tuparí a grammatical category normally associated with the verbal domain instead surfaces within the nominal one. For the purpose of typological comparison, the Tuparí facts highlight the need for classifications of negation that take into account both constructional asymmetries between affirmative and negative clauses and individual negator morphemes’ selectional and categorical properties.
TAM marking on nominals in Chorote (Mataguayo, Argentine, and Paraguayan Chaco)
Article
This paper analyzes TAM marking in the nominal domain in Chorote (Mataguayo or Matacoan; Argentina and Paraguay). In this language, some of the verbal TAM markers also occur in the nominal domain, and at least three of them can have scope over only the nominal but not over the predicate of the clause: the distant past pe(j), the irrealis -a and the conjectural (epistemic or evidential) -t'ey. The phenomenon is analogous to nominal TAM as described for many languages by Nordlinger and Sadler (2004a) but the difference is that Chorote markers are clitics or independent words and not nominal inflectional morphemes. Regarding the distant past marker, we argue that it codifies tense and not aspect or any other category; however, it is syntactically a modifier of the verb or the noun and not a functional category Tense like the one found in the verbal domain of European languages.
A Grammar of Tundra Nenets
Book
Full-text available
  • May 2014
Possession and modification—a perspective from Canonical Typology
Chapter
Full-text available
  • Nov 2012
The chapter addresses a set of semantic, syntactic, and categorial criteria for canonical attributive modification and canonical inalienable possession. Canonical attributive modification is expressed by a dedicated word class (adjective) denoting a property concept, while canonical possession is inalienable possession of a relation noun (kin term, (body) part). Irina Nikolaeva and Andrew Spencer argue that modification-by-noun and alienable possession constructions can be analysed as non-canonical variants of canonical modification and possession. In many languages the same morphosyntax is used to express various combinations of the four constructions and the authors explore some of the typological variation in terms of selective violations of canonical properties. © editorial matter and organization Dunstan Brown, Marina Chumakina, and Greville G. Corbett 2013. © the chapters their several authors 2013. All rights reserved.
Nominal tense in Tundra Nenets and Northern Samoyedic
Article
Full-text available
  • Jan 2009
This is a very early version of the paper published as Nikolaeva, Irina (2015) 'On the expression of TAM on nouns: evidence from Tundra Nenets'. Lingua, (166), pp 99-126. Please refer to the latest version only.
Noun Phrase in the Generative Perspective
Book
  • Jan 2007
The goal of this book is twofold. On the one hand we want to offer a discussion of some of the more important properties of the nominal projection, on the other hand we want to provide the reader with tools for syntactic analysis which apply to the structure of DP but which are also relevant for other domains of syntax.In order to achieve this dual goal we will discuss phenomena which are related to the nominal projection in relation to other syntactic phenomena (e.g. pro drop will be related to N-ellipsis, the classification of pronouns will be applied to the syntax of possessive pronouns, N-movement will be compared to V-movement, the syntax of the genitive construction will be related to that of predicate inversion etc.). In the various chapters we will show how recent theoretical proposals (distributed morphology, anti-symmetry, checking theory) can cast light on aspects of the syntax of the NP. When necessary, we will provide a brief introduction of these theoretical proposals. We will also indicate problems with these analyses, whether they be inherent to the theories as such (e.g. what is the trigger for movement in antisymmetric approaches) or to the particular instantiations.The book cannot and will not provide the definitive analysis of the syntax of noun phrases. We consider that this would not be possible, given the current flux in generative syntax, with many new theoretical proposals being developed and explored, but the book aims at giving the reader the tools with which to conduct research and to evaluate proposals in the literature.In the discussion of various issues, we will apply the framework that is most adequate to deal with problems at hand. We will therefore not necessarily use the same approach throughout the discussion.Though proposals in the literature will be referred to when relevant, we cannot attempt to provide a critical survey of the literature. We feel that such a survey would be guided too strongly by theoretical choices, which would not be compatible with the pedagogical purposes this book has.The book is comparative in its approach, and data from different languages will be examined, including English, German, Dutch (West-Flemish), Greek, Romance, Semitic, Slavic, Albanian, Hungarian, Gungbe.