Referential hierarchies: A new look at some historical and typological patterns

Gildea, Spike; Zúñiga, Fernando

doi:10.1515/ling-2016-0007

Cited by 56 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…Cross-linguistic evidence shows that inverse systems are often partly idiosyncratic (Jacques and Antonov 2014;Gildea and Zúñiga 2016;Witzlack-Makarevich et al 2016) A summary of core argument marking in Yukulta, for TRMCs and NTRMCs, is given in Table 3, where 'XDAT' indicates XDAT marking on full DPs and use of the dative form of pronouns, 'Ø' indicates absence of overt marking on full DPs, and for pronouns the use of the basic-stem form.…”

Section: Main Clauses In Yukultamentioning

confidence: 99%

Rara and theory testing in typology: The natural evolution of non‐canonical agreement

Round¹

2021

Preprint

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In typology, rara provide valuable tests for theoretical hypotheses. Here I consider the rarum of PERSON inflection in Kayardild, which has only two surface contrasts but is found across all words in complementized subordinate clauses. I introduce a general schema for reasoning about the diachronic emergence of rara, and reconstruct the evolution of Kayardild subordinate PERSON agreement, from an earlier state in which a main‐clause inverse system was coupled to a system of complementizing CASE agreement. Serendipitously, the same synchronic facts have been analysed twice earlier without the benefit of the full diachronic backstory, and so present a retrospective case study in what diachrony offers for the analysis of rara, structures which by definition are difficult to contextualize using synchronic typology alone. I argue that since rara are so valuable for the testing of typological theories, and since diachrony may offer the only source of convincing explanation for them, it follows that typological science will need to refer to diachrony for the successful development of theory. It cannot rely on synchrony alone .

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Section: Main Clauses In Yukultamentioning

confidence: 99%

Rara and theory testing in typology: The natural evolution of non‐canonical agreement

Round¹

2021

Preprint

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“…Hence, they conclude that such hierarchical effects are prone to areal diffusion. Furthermore, Gildea and Zúñiga (2016) explain these effects on the basis of their historical source rather than underlying cognitive principles.…”

Section: Dubois 1987mentioning

confidence: 99%

Ergativity and Other Alignment Types in Neo-Aramaic

Noorlander¹

2021

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This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the cc by-nc-nd 4.0 license. chapter 1 1.2.1Above the Tigris: Northeastern Neo-Aramaic (nena) Dialect Bundle With about 150 dialects (Khan 2011), Northeastern Neo-Aramaic (nena) is by far the largest subgroup. Although the internal differentiation of nena is to some extent comparable to that of a language family and many dialects are not mutually intelligible, it is a common practice to speak of nena in terms of dialects. nena constitutes a notoriously complex dialect continuum, which itself is part of a larger continuum that also includes Neo-Aramaic dialects in Ṭur ʿAbdin (see §1.2.2). These dialects are spoken by Jewish (J.) and Christian (C.) communities in West and Northwest Iran (Iranian Kurdistan and Iranian Azerbaijan), North Iraq (Dohuk, Arbel, Sulaymaniyyah) north of the river Tigris and in Southeast Turkey (Hakkari, Van, Bohtan), many of whom have fled the area in the previous century. They are primarily named after the town where they are or used to be spoken with the additional specification of the religious affiliations of the speakers, since the dialects of the Jewish and Christian communities from the same town could differ greatly. Map 1 below displays the locations of several towns known to have (had) nena-speaking communities at least in the previous century, whose dialects will be discussed in this monograph. The names of the towns are generally Aramaic and do not necessarily reflect their equivalents in other regional languages.3 The Christian varieties in Bohtan (Southeast Turkey) and the Jewish varieties east of the Greater Zab river (Northeast Iraq and Northwest Iran) reveal particularly complex alignment types not found in the core nena area.After the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the emergence of new nations such as Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey and the beginning of the Kurdish struggle for autonomy, the Aramaic speakers found themselves largely in the cross-fire between Kurds and central governments and left their traditional territory. Most of the Jewish community left the region in the 1950s and settled in the young state of Israel. During the First World War most Christians fled present-day Turkey, where an ethnic cleansing occurred in 1915. Since the 1960s the exodus of the Christian community began, taking refuge in Europe, the US, Canada, Australia and South America. Following the American invasion and occupation of Iraq, the instability in the area reached a catastrophic climax in the turmoil of the Syrian Civil War and Islamic State's (Daesh's) reign of terror in Syria and Iraq, until Islamic State was ultimately defeated in the battles of Mosul (July, 2017) and Raqqa (October, 2017). Many Christians chose to return and remain in Iraq, although the material damage alone is enormous.Thus, due to ongoing displacement in the Middle East and beyond, the dialectology of nena is for a large part a historical reconstruction of the once vibrant tapestry of variation before 1915.

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“…This is a shared phenomenon with other South Siberian Turkic languages such as Shor and Khakas, but a clear deviation from the standard Turkic pattern (Schönig 1998: 408-409). Especially these splits are important for the categories of animacy and person inasmuch as the hierarchy of the first and second person is highly debated in linguistic research (Corbett 2000: 64-66;Gildea & Zúñiga 2016). Dolgan and Chulym Turkic, thus, give independently from each other evidence for the first person being indeed hierarchically higher than the second person.…”

Section: Number and Animacymentioning

confidence: 99%

Typology of number systems in languages of Western and Central Siberia

Däbritz

2021

FUF

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This paper investigates the linguistic expression of number in seven languages from Western and Central Siberia. In a first step the number system of each language is described in detail, and afterwards the most relevant convergences and divergences of the languages are dealt with. Three particularly interesting phenomena are discussed in more detail: First, it is shown that the concept of general number, denoting noun forms underspecified for number, is able to account for a range of related phenomena (unmarked noun forms after numerals, nouns denoting paired objects). Second, singulatives in Selkup, Ket and partly Eastern Khanty are analyzed, whereby it is argued that their similar morphosyntactic and grammaticalization patterns allow for analyzing them as a contact phenomenon. Third, two splits on the animacy hierarchy between the first and second person in Dolgan as well as Chulym Turkic are presented. Finally, the results are evaluated against a broader areal-typological background, whereby it is shown that the category of number does not support any larger areal groupings within Western and Central Siberia, but that the analyzed languages rather adhere to patterns of number marking present all over Northern Eurasia.

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Referential hierarchies: A new look at some historical and typological patterns

Cited by 56 publications

References 13 publications

Rara and theory testing in typology: The natural evolution of non‐canonical agreement

Rara and theory testing in typology: The natural evolution of non‐canonical agreement

Ergativity and Other Alignment Types in Neo-Aramaic

Typology of number systems in languages of Western and Central Siberia

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