Transitivity in Grammar and Discourse

Hopper, Paul J.; Thompson, Sandra A.

doi:10.2307/413757

Cited by 946 publications

(1,028 citation statements)

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“…First, a lot of "incontrovertible evidence" has piled up "that grammars are shaped in part by performance considerations" (p. 130). Publications such as Hopper and Thompson (1980), Bybee (1985), Heine and Claudi (1986), and Croft (1990) demonstrate the point. Secondly, it has also become evident that "language users are sensitive to the frequency of grammatical forms" (p. 130).…”

Section: Distinction Between Language Knowledge and Language Usementioning

confidence: 97%

Typological Generalizations and the Locus of Their Explanation (F. J. Newmeyer, Possible and Probable Languages: A Generative Perspective on Linguistic Typology)

Moriya

2008

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Section: Distinction Between Language Knowledge and Language Usementioning

confidence: 97%

Typological Generalizations and the Locus of Their Explanation (F. J. Newmeyer, Possible and Probable Languages: A Generative Perspective on Linguistic Typology)

Moriya

2008

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“…The competing hypothesis for explaining the phenomenon of DOM is the so-called Transitivity Hypothesis (Hopper and Thompson 1980;Naess 2004) which assumes an indexing or identifying function of DOM. Under this hypothesis, Differential Object Marking indexes certain (semantic) properties of the direct object, such as animacy or definiteness (often subsumed under the label of individuation) or affectedness (cf.…”

Section: Competing Motivations For Dom-systemsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Siewierska and Bakker 2008; also Naess 2004Naess , 2007. Transitivity, following Hopper and Thompson's (1980) approach, can be regarded as an essential semantic property of a grammatical construction which verbalizes an action induced from an agent and which strongly affects a patient (cf. Hopper and Thompson 1980: 251).…”

Section: Competing Motivations For Dom-systemsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Differential Object Marking in Corsican: Regularities and triggering factors

Neuburger

Stark

2014

Linguistics

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Abstract:The paper deals with Differential Object Marking in Corsican. After a short introduction, it gives an overview of the main local triggering factors for marking direct objects in general (animacy, referentiality). It then presents the few main assumptions about Corsican DOM in the literature as well as findings of a new corpus study, based on written Corsican texts. Strong personal pronouns and proper names for human referents are consistently marked by the DOM marker à, but toponyms and metonymically used proper names are marked as well. Universal and negative quantifiers with a human denotation are also DOMmarked, whereas all other pronouns are not; thus animacy plays only a minor role in Corsican. The presence of determiners, quantifiers or numerals within nominals excludes the presence of à, irrespective of the nominals' denotation. Non-specific bare nominals are never DOM-marked, also irrespective of the nominals' denotation. The discussion then explains that the Corsican DOM is triggered much more by syntactic definiteness than animacy, a hypothesis strengthened by the most prominent morphosyntactic regularity at work in Corsican: nominals in combination with determiners and quantifiers cannot be marked by the DOMmarker à, even if they denote human beings. The complementary distribution of à and prenominal functional elements requires a further detailed syntactic analysis.

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“…Kemmer's analysis of the middle makes use of Hopper and Thompson's (1980) claim that there exists a cline from canonical transitive clauses to canonical intransitives. She places the event types on a scale (see table in 3), subsuming both semantic and grammatical considerations under the semantic parameter of the 'relative distinguishability of participants'.…”

Section: The Middle Voicementioning

confidence: 99%

Estonian Middle Semantics with Evidence from Discourse

Vihman

2004

NLY

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This paper presents arguments for recognizing a middle voice in Estonian. The claim that the semantics of middle-marked verbs differs in a substantial way from the semantics of other intransitive constructions leads to the examination of the discourse pragmatics of these constructions, and the relationship between discourse patterns and their valency and argument properties. Various topicality measures show that the argument participant in middle clauses lies between that of the sole participant (S) in intransitive clauses and the O of active transitive clauses. The results regarding the discourse behaviour of middle arguments constitute new evidence for the view that middle constructions differ from ordinary intransitive verbs, despite structural similarities, and mark a unique range on the scale of transitivity exhibited by verbs in Estonian.

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Transitivity in Grammar and Discourse

Cited by 946 publications

References 0 publications

Typological Generalizations and the Locus of Their Explanation (F. J. Newmeyer, Possible and Probable Languages: A Generative Perspective on Linguistic Typology)

Typological Generalizations and the Locus of Their Explanation (F. J. Newmeyer, Possible and Probable Languages: A Generative Perspective on Linguistic Typology)

Differential Object Marking in Corsican: Regularities and triggering factors

Estonian Middle Semantics with Evidence from Discourse

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