Non-culmination in two Bantu languages

Persohn, Bastian

doi:10.1075/sl.20051.per

Cited by 4 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 33 publications

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“…As already seen in (97) above, Southern Ndebele allows for nonculmination readings with the perfective aspect. Persohn (2021) discusses in detail the phenomenon of non-culminating accomplishments in Xhosa, first noted by Savić (2017). In the case of verbs of consumption, destruction and what Persohn terms "transitive change-of-state verbs" (e.g.…”

Section: Studies In Africanmentioning

confidence: 92%

“…(101) Xhosa (Persohn 2021) Context: Yesterday I come home from work and lit up a cigarette. I took only one puff, then I put it out again.…”

Section: Studies In Africanmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This restriction is illustrated in (102, 103). 28 (102) Xhosa: Verb of creation (Persohn 2021) Visual stimulus: a quarter of a circle. # Ndi-zobe isangqa, kodwa a-nd-a-si-gqib-a.…”

Section: Studies In Africanmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Notes on actionality in two Nguni languages of South Africa

Crane¹,

Persohn

2021

sal

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This paper presents some key findings of studies of actionality and the verbal grammar–lexicon interface in two Nguni Bantu languages of South Africa, Xhosa and Southern Ndebele. We describe interactions between grammatical tense marking (and other sentential bounding elements) and lexical verb types, arguing for the salience of inchoative verbs, which lexically encode a resultant state, and, in particular, a sub-class of inchoative verbs, biphasal verbs, which encode both a resultant state and the “coming-to-be” phase leading up to that state. We further discuss other important features of actional classes in Xhosa and Southern Ndebele, including topics such as the role of participant structure and the relative importance of cross-linguistically prominent distinctions such as that between Vendlerian activities and accomplishments. Although differences between Xhosa and Southern Ndebele are evident both in the behaviour of individual tense-aspect forms and in the interpretive possibilities of specific verbs, the general patterns are quite similar. This similarity suggests that the patterns are likely to extend to other Nguni languages, as well, and that cross-linguistic comparison of particular lexical items across these languages are both feasible and likely to bear fruit.

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Section: Studies In Africanmentioning

confidence: 92%

“…(101) Xhosa (Persohn 2021) Context: Yesterday I come home from work and lit up a cigarette. I took only one puff, then I put it out again.…”

Section: Studies In Africanmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Notes on actionality in two Nguni languages of South Africa

Crane¹,

Persohn

2021

sal

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What can be said?

Crane,

Lubambo,

Mabena

et al. 2024

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We employ a cluster approach to explore the comparative semantic maps of several markers of modal possibility – the “potential” prefix nga‑ and expressions meaning, roughly, ‘know how to’ and ‘be able to’ – in four South African Nguni languages: isiNdebele, isiZulu, isiXhosa, Siswati. We also compare the Nguni results with results from Xitsonga, a closely related language outside of the Nguni clade. The languages exhibit cross-linguistic differences in the expansion of core meanings, some of which do not appear to follow the cross-linguistically common diachronic pattern in which goal-oriented modality precedes deontic modality. In addition, the distinction between inherent and learned ability is salient in several of these languages. Semantic maps of the markers’ functional distributions further show the diversity of modal systems that can be found even in closely related languages in significant contact with one another.

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A star is drawn: Testing the culmination inferences of Russian perfective accomplishments

Kasher,

Hacohen

2023

Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics

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It is a widely established view in the event-semantics literature that perfective (PFV) accomplishments denote culmination. It has also been increasingly recognized over the past decades that non- culminating interpretations of PFV accomplishments are more widely available than previously assumed. Hence, in many languages, the culmination inference carried by PFV accomplishments is defeasible.The Slavic PFV, on the other hand, has been consistently argued throughout the literature to enforce strict culmination requirements on telic accomplishments within its scope, such that non-culminating interpretations are entirely disallowed for such forms. Furthermore, in Slavic languages such as Russian, culmination is taken to be semantically entailed by PFV accomplishments, rather than defeasibly implicated. This is then used to explain the supposed contradiction created in (1), between the entailed culmination of the first clause, and its cancellation in the second clause.(1)      Masha s’ela                   buterbrod          (#no kusočeck      ostavila).            Masha PFV-ate-SG-F   sandwich-ACC    but piece.small   left.            ‘Masha ate the/a sandwich (#but left a small piece).’To our knowledge, there exists no prior attempt to systematically probe Russian speakers' actual judgments regarding this assumed contradiction. The current study aims to fill this gap.Results from a gradable acceptability judgment task reveal that Russian speakers do in fact exhibit some degree of tolerance when presented with PFV accomplishments as descriptions of partially completed events. Moreover, these speakers provide high acceptability ratings for sentences in which the PFV accomplishment is followed by a cancellation phrase.

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Non-culmination in two Bantu languages

Cited by 4 publications

References 33 publications

Notes on actionality in two Nguni languages of South Africa

Notes on actionality in two Nguni languages of South Africa

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A star is drawn: Testing the culmination inferences of Russian perfective accomplishments

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