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Chapter 11. Insubordination in Aleut
Abstract
The phenomenon of insubordination can be defined diachronically as the recruitment of main clause structures from subordinate structures, or synchronically as the independent use of constructions exhibiting characteristics of subordinate clauses. Long marginalised as uncomfortable exceptions, insubordinated clause phenomena turn out to be surprisingly widespread, and provide a vital empirical testing ground for various central theoretical issues in current linguistics – the interplay of langue and parole, the emergence of structure, the question of where productive syntactic rules give way to constructions, the role of prosody in language change, and the question of how far grammars are produced by isolated speakers as opposed to being collaboratively constructed in dialogue. This volume – the first book-length treatment on the topic – assembles studies of languages on all continents, by scholars who bring a range of approaches to bear on the topic, from historical linguistics to corpus studies to typology to conversational analysis.
... The reason for these similarities is that many verbal inflections arose historically from nominalizations (Jacobson 1982;Woodbury 1985;Mithun 2008;Berge 2016). This is an example of a process known as insubordination, where subordinate clauses or noun phrases are reanalyzed as main clauses (Mithun 2008;Evans 2007;Evans and Watanabe 2016). ...
This chapter is a survey of word classes in indigenous North American languages, with the aim of providing an introduction to the study of parts of speech, and of highlighting the unique place and contribution of North American indigenous languages in this research. Section 2 defines lexical vs. grammatical and open vs. closed classes, and how these distinctions are realized in North American languages. Section 3 summarizes the prominent themes in word classes research in North America: 1) at what level a word is categorized (root, stem, or inflected word), 2) whether a given language distinguishes noun and verb, and 3) whether a given language has an adjective category. The chapter concludes that North American languages present serious challenges to the definition and status of word classes in linguistic theory, and that the development of distinct lexical categories in a language is not necessarily a given.
This volume comprises a selection of papers that were presented at the 24th International Conference on Historical Linguistics (ICHL24), which took place at the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra from 1-5 July, 2019. The volume’s aim is to reflect the breadth of research presented at the conference, with each chapter representative of a workshop or themed session. A striking aspect of ICHL24 was the three-day workshop on computational and quantitative approaches to historical linguistics and two of the chapters represent different aspects of this workshop. A number of chapters present research that explores mechanisms and processes of change within specific domains of language, while others explore interactions of change across linguistic domains. Two chapters represent a common theme at the conference and consider the role of historical linguistics in explaining non-linguistic histories of language diversification.
This paper provides a detailed analysis of conjunctive, disjunctive, and adversative coordination in the Pribilof Islands variety of Unangam Tunuu (Aleut). Although Unangam Tunuu prefers clause-chaining to coordinate structures, it nevertheless makes frequent use of coordination; and while Unangax̂ coordination is not typologically unusual, there are many subtleties in the use and distribution of particular coordinating particles. In this paper, I compare clause-chaining and coordination as strategies for expressing coordination in Unangam Tunuu; I examine the varieties of Unangax̂ coordinating particles, their sources and functions, their uses in different types of coordinating structures, and the effects of coordination on syntax.; and I show some ways in which syntactic, semantic, pragmatic and idiolectal factors affect the use of coordination or of a particular coordinating strategy.
This article examines several grammatical developments that have received relatively little attention, but that may be more pervasive than previously recognized. They involve the functional extension of markers of grammatical dependency from sentence-level syntax into larger discourse and pragmatic domains. Such developments are first illustrated with material from Navajo and Central Alaskan Yup'ik, then surveyed more briefly in several other unrelated languages. In some cases, secondary effects of such changes can reshape basic clause structure. An awareness of these processes can accordingly aid in understanding certain recurring but hitherto unexplained arrays of basic morphological and syntactic patterns, exemplified here with cases of homophonous grammatical markers and of ergative/accusative splits. Like developments described by Gildea (1997, 1998) and Evans (2007), they involve the use of dependent clauses as independent sentences, but the processes described here differ from those in both the mechanisms at work and their results.
This book explores the nature of finiteness, one of most commonly used notions in descriptive and theoretical linguistics but possibly one of the least understood. Scholars representing a variety of theoretical positions seek to clarify what it is and to establish its usefulness and limitations. In doing so they reveal cross-linguistically valid correlations between subject licensing, subject agreement, tense, syntactic opacity, and independent clausehood; show how these properties are associated with finiteness; and discuss what this means for the content of the category. The issues explored include how different grammatical theories represent finiteness; whether the finite/nonfinite distinction is universal; whether there are degrees of finiteness; whether the syntactic notion of finiteness has a semantic corollary; whether and how finiteness is subject to change; and how finiteness features in language acquisition. Irina Nikolaeva opens the book by describing the history of finiteness and its place in current thinking and research. She then introduces the chapters of the book, comparing the authors’ perspectives and showing what they have in common. The book is then divided into four parts. Part I considers the role finiteness plays in formal syntactic theories and Part II its deployment in functional theories and as the subject of research in typology. Parts III and IV look respectively at the finite/nonfinite opposition in individual languages and at the role finiteness plays in linguistic change and linguistic development. The book is written and structured to appeal to scholars and students of syntax and general linguistics at graduate level and above.
The volume is a major grammar of Central Alaskan Yupik (CAY). It is the culmination of the author's linguistic studies done in Alaska and elsewhere since around 1960, with assistance of many native speakers. Central Alaskan Yupik is currently the most vigorous of the nineteen remaining Native Alaskan languages. Descriptive in nature, extensive and deep, this grammar is of typological and of ethnological/anthropological interest. Given the severely endangered state of the language, this much of descriptive linguistic material is without comparison in the field.
This work is comprised of a set of papers focussing on the extreme polysynthetic nature of the Eskaleut languages which are spoken over the vast area stretching from Far Eastern Siberia, on through the Aleutian Islands, Alaska, and Canada, as far as Greenland. The aim of the book is to situate the Eskaleut languages typologically in general linguistic terms, particularly with regard to polysynthesis. The degree of variation from more to less polysynthesis is evaluated within Eskaleut (Inuit-Yupik vs. Aleut), even in previously insufficiently explored domains such as pragmatics and use in context – including language contact and learning situations – and over typologically related language families such as Athabascan, Chukotko-Kamchatkan, Iroquoian, Uralic, and Wakashan.
L'A. analyse le systeme morphologique derivationnel eskimo, organise autour de la distinction entre noms et verbes. Il examine de maniere critique differentes etudes qui se sont basees sur l'hypothese que la distinction entre verbe et nom etait faible, voire manquante, en langue eskimo
Role and Reference Grammar (RRG) was inspired by both typological and theoretical concerns. The motivating questions for it were: What would a linguistic theory look like if it were based on the analysis of languages with diverse structures, such as Lakhota, Tagalog, Dyirbal, and Barai, rather than the analysis of English? How can the interaction of syntax, semantics, and pragmatics in different grammatical systems be best captured and explained? This chapter is organized as follows. Section 28.2 discusses the organization of RRG. Section 28.3 describes the linking between syntax and semantics. Section 28.4 provides a brief summary. © 2010 editorial matter and organization Bernd Heine and Heiko Narrog. All rights reserved.
Sentence types and clause subordination
- Huddleston
- Berge
A chapter on the Alaskan Central Yupik subordinative mood
- Miyaoka
- Haspelmath