The canonical approach in typology*

Corbett, Greville G.

doi:10.1075/slcs.72.03cor

Cited by 196 publications

(40 citation statements)

References 9 publications

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“…They represent an extreme situation because English violates two conditions on canonical agreement (in the sense of Corbett 2005Corbett , 2006Corbett , 2007. First, agreement markers usually form sets across word classes.…”

Section: Pronominal Gender Systemsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gender assignment and gender agreement: Evidence from pronominal gender languages

Audring

2008

Morphology

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In research on grammatical gender, assignment and agreement are the two central notions. Genders are defined as systems of agreement classes, and the assignment of nouns to genders is reflected in the agreement they consistently trigger on associated elements. Yet, gender assignment and gender agreement are often discussed quite separately. This paper investigates the possibility that gender agreement is not only an overt manifestation of gender assignment, but that properties of agreement systems can themselves constrain the assignment systems they express. The paper discusses typological and diachronic evidence for the fact that not every type of assignment system can be expressed in every type of agreement system.

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Section: Pronominal Gender Systemsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gender assignment and gender agreement: Evidence from pronominal gender languages

Audring

2008

Morphology

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“…As Corbett (2005) observes, canonical typology can help us avoid inadvertently treating distinct phenomena as the same, since this approach leads us to examine how attested 21 Work by the author on Matsigenka, the language most closely related to Nanti, suggests that the two obligatory verbal inflectional categories for this language are reality status and temporal definiteness, raising the possibility that the two categories can co-exist in a single language.…”

Section: She Observes Thatmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…I then consider the responses to these critiques, which leads fairly directly to reframing the question in terms of Corbett's (2005) canonical typology approach. Bybee et al's (1994) critique of the validity of 'realis' and 'irrealis' as cross-linguistic categories is based on their examination of TAM systems in 76 languages.…”

Section: The Reality Status Debatementioning

confidence: 99%

“…The aim of this paper is to describe the Nanti reality status system, and to argue that it constitutes a good candidate for prototypical or canonical reality status system, providing a possible anchor for the study of reality status within the framework of canonical typology (Corbett 2003(Corbett , 2005(Corbett , 2007. In this respect, this paper seeks to contribute to the debate regarding the typological validity of reality status as a grammatical category, in dialogue with critical surveys of the notions of 'realis' and 'irrealis'…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Nanti reality status system: Implications for the typological validity of the realis/irrealis contrast

Michael¹

2014

Linguistic Typology

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TitleThe Nanti reality status system: Implications for the typological validity of the realis/irrealis contrast The Nanti reality status system: Implications for the typological validity of the realis/irrealis contrast Lev Michael University of California, BerkeleyAbstract This paper describes the reality status system of Nanti (Arawak) and argues that it constitutes an instance of a canonical reality status system. The relevance of such a system is examined in the light of literature that casts doubt on the typological validity of reality status as cross-linguistic grammatical category. It is shown that reality status in Nanti is an obligatory inflectional category, and that the distribution of realis and irrealis marking across Nanti construction types hews closely to expectations based on a notional understanding of the 'realis' and 'irrealis' categories grounded in a contrast between 'realized' and 'unrealized' situations. It is also shown that the Nanti reality status system does not exhibit evidence of being based, either synchronically or diachronically, on semantically narrower notions that could account for the distribution of reality status marking in the language, without recourse to the more generalized notions of realized and unrealized events. It is suggested that the Nanti reality status system might serve as a suitable canonical system around which a canonical typology of reality status might be built.

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“…14 See Matthews (1972: 162); Matthews uses 'morphosyntactic category' while we prefer 'morphosyntactic feature'. 15 The canonical approach has been suggested as a way to make progress in some of the areas of language which prove difficult for typology (Corbett 2005, forthcoming a). The basic technique is to define carefully a theoretical space, and only then to situate the language phenomena within it.…”

Section: Distinguishing Morphological Featuresmentioning

confidence: 99%

Prolegomena to a typology of morphological features

Corbett

Baerman

2007

Morphology

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Morphological features characterize variations in morphological form which are independent of syntactic context. They contrast with morphosyntactic features, which characterize variations in form correlated with different syntactic contexts. Morphological features account for formal variation across lexemes (inflectional class), as well as morphosyntactically incoherent alternations within the paradigm of a single lexeme. Such morphological features are not available to the syntax, as is made explicit in the principle of 'morphology-free syntax'. Building on work on stress patterns in Network Morphology and on stems in Paradigm Function Morphology, we take initial steps towards a typology of these morphological features. We identify four types: inflectional class features (affixal and prosodic), stem indexing features, syncretic index features and morphophonological features. Then we offer a first list of criteria for distinguishing them from morphosyntactic features (independently of the principle of morphology-free syntax). Finally we review the arguments demonstrating the need to recognize morphological features. © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2007

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The canonical approach in typology*

Cited by 196 publications

References 9 publications

Gender assignment and gender agreement: Evidence from pronominal gender languages

Gender assignment and gender agreement: Evidence from pronominal gender languages

The Nanti reality status system: Implications for the typological validity of the realis/irrealis contrast

Prolegomena to a typology of morphological features

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