Pluractionality in Lithuanian: A tale of two suffixes

The Traditional Arab Grammarians (TAGs) (Sībawayhi 8th century) assigned somewhat similar terminology for the inflectional states of Standard Arabic (SA) verbs and nouns. Verbs could be either marfūʕ ‘Indicative’, manṣūb ‘Subjunctive’, majzūm ‘Jussive’, or mabnī ‘uninflected for mood’, making reference to so-called ‘mood’ endings. Likewise, nouns could be either marfūʕ ‘Nominative’, manṣūb ‘Accusative’, majrūr ‘Genitive’, or mabnī ‘uninflected for case’, making reference to case endings. Thus, TAGs named Ind-marked verbs and Nom-marked nouns marfūʕ, and Sub-marked verbs and Acc-marked nouns manṣūb, in reference to the morphological similarity between the relevant nominal and verbal suffixes. Nonetheless, this similarity is observed between 10 out of the 14 sets of verbal and nominal suffixes in the Ind-Nom paradigm, and between only 4 out of the 14 sets of verbal and nominal suffixes in the Sub-Acc paradigm. In other words, the presumed morphological similarity in terms of suffixes is not perfect. Therefore, this paper aims to show that, at some stage in word formation, the two sets of verbal suffixes, indicative and subjunctive, are identical to the two sets of nominal suffixes, Nom and Acc, respectively, for the verbs and nouns that encode the same number and gender features. After that stage, verbal forms undergo certain word formation operations (feature movement and feature deletion) that affect their structure, resulting in the known surface forms. This account is based on a novel analysis of the SA imperfective paradigm. Both accounts will be presented in purely descriptive terms, without making reference to any available morphological framework.

The Proto-Slavic Suffix *-tajь in the Light of Comparative DataThe author considers anew the origin of the Slavic suffix *-tajь, taking into account new Tocharian data which feature the agentive suffix -tau (e.g. Toch. B. olyitau ‘boatman’ : Toch. AB olyi; Toch. B käryorttau ‘trader, merchant’ : karyor ‘buying, business negotiation’), as well as the iterative-frequentative feature of the verbal suffix *-teh₂- in the Indo-European languages. The iterative-frequentative aspect of the Indo-European suffix *-teh₂- is securely preserved in the Latin verbal system, cf. Lat. eō, īre ‘to go, walk, move, pass’, Gk. εἶμι ‘id.’ (< PIE. *h₁ei- ‘to go’) vs. Lat. itō, itāre (verbum iterativum vel intensivum) ‘to go, march’, Gk. ἰτητέον (adiectivum verbale) (< PIE. *h₁i-teh₂- ‘to go frequently’). It is suggested that the iterative-frequentative (and perhaps intensive) meaning of the suffix *-teh₂- was adopted from Indo-European verbal formations and introduced into a number of nominal forms, e.g. agent nouns (nomina agentis) with the (verbal) suffix *-teh₂-, e.g. PIE. *h₂erh₃-i̯e-ti ‘he ploughs’   PIE. *h₂erh₃-teh₂-i̯e-ti ‘he frequently (or constantly) ploughs’  PIE. *h₂erh₃-teh₂-s m. ‘a man who frequently (or constantly) ploughs the earth’, i.e. ‘ploughman, farmer’  PIE. dial. *h₂erh₃-teh₂-i̯o-s m. ‘id.’. The author concludes that the Proto-Indo-European archetype *h₂erh₃-teh₂-(i̯o)-s originally denoted ‘a person who frequently (or constantly) ploughs the earth’. Put differently, the Indo-European nominal suffix *-teh₂-, attested in certain agent nouns in Baltic, Greek, Slavic and Tocharian, was characterized by the iterative-frequentative aspect taken over from the corresponding verbs in *-teh₂-. The original semantic difference, reconstructible for the Indo-European proto-language, has been completely forgotten in most of the daughter languages. This is why the Ancient Greek noun ἀρότης m. ‘plougman, farmer’ (< PIE. *h₂erh₃-téh₂-s m.), which originally denoted ‘a person who frequently or constantly ploughs the earth’, seems to be fully synonymous with ἀροτήρ m. ‘plougman, farmer’ (< PIE. *h₂erh₃-tér-s m.) which originally indicated a man who is ploughing currently but not constantly. The same semantic difference must have existed in Baltic (e.g. Lith. artójas ‘ploughman, farmer’, OPruss. artoys ‘farmer’ vs. Lith. arėjas m. ‘plougman’, Latv. arẽjs m. ‘ploughman, farmer’), as well as in Slavic (e.g. Pol. rataj ‘ploughman, farmer’ vs. oracz m. ‘ploughman’).

Affix verbs in the Saluan language can be added to basic word or basic form in the form of verbs, nouns, adjectives, and numerals. The affix has various forms and functions. This study examines the forms and function of verb affixes in the Saluan language. Related with that, this paper aims to describe the forms and function of verb affixes in the Saluan language. The data of this study were obtained using the litterary method. The data is processed using the intralingual equivalent method through a change technique. The results of this study indicate that there are five verb affixes in the Saluan language, namely prefix, suffix, confix, infix, and combinations of affixes. There are nine verb prefixes, namely moN-, pino-, i-, o-, ba-, po-, ko-, maha-, and mompo-. The moN prefix has four allomorphs, namely mom-, mong-, mo-, and mon-. There are two verb suffixes, namely -onon and-kon. There are four verb confixes, namely kino-an, kina-mo, kina-anmo, and maha-an. The verb infix is only one, namely -in-. Different case with a combination of affixes. The combination of verb affixes is nine, namely moN-akon, moN-kon, moN-i, i-akon, i-kon, pino-akon, pinokon, i-i, -in-an, -in-akon, and iin-kon. There are five functions of the affix form, namely changing the word category in its basic form, forming bitransitive verbs, forming transitive verbs, reciprocal verbs, and forming passive verbs.

Leelo Keevallik, From interaction to grammar: Estonian finite verb forms in conversation. Uppsala: Uppsala Universitet, 2003. Pp. 270. Hb $57.50. This book – presented as a Ph. D. thesis at the University of Uppsala, Sweden – comprises analyses of eleven frequently occurring epistemic expressions in present-day spoken Estonian. The constitutive elements in these expressions are finite verb forms in any of the three persons – for example, ma arvan ‘I guess’, ütleme ‘let's say’, kule ‘listen!’, on ju ‘(it) is surely’. In addition to the verb form, which is either in the indicative or imperative mood, there may be another element, typically a personal pronoun or verbal suffix (1st or 2nd person), and even a clitic particle (on+ ju ). Semantically, most of the verbs denote human cognition or speaking. An exception is the verb olla ‘to be’ (cf. on ju above).

Soninke, a West Mande language spoken in Mali, Mauritania, Gambia, and Senegal, provides crucial support to the view that accusative languages may have fully productive antipassive derivations. In Soninke, the distinction between transitive and intransitive predication is particularly clearcut. The alignment between transitive and intransitive predication is neutral in indexation, but accusative in flagging, and accusative alignment is found in constituent order too. Soninke has two verbal suffixes that can be involved in antipassivization defined as a morphologically marked alternation by which transitive verbs are converted into intransitive verbs whose sole core argument fulfills the same semantic role as the A argument of the transitive verbs from which they derive. One of these two suffixes is a dedicated antipassive suffix, whereas the other is a multifunction detransitivizing suffix acting as an antipassive marker with a limited number of verbs. In Soninke, there is no interaction between antipassive and aspect, and there is no constraint restricting the use of the antipassive form of transitive verbs to the encoding of habitual events or stereotyped activities either. Antipassive constructions can refer to specific events, provided no specific patient is mentioned. In Soninke, null objects are not allowed, only a tiny minority of transitive verbs can be used intransitively with a subject representing their agentive argument, and the high productivity of antipassive derivation follows from the use of derived intransitive verbs as the preferred strategy for not specifying the patientive argument of transitive verbs. Diachronically, there is evidence that the multipurpose detransitivizing suffix acting as an antipassive marker with a limited number of verbs was originally a reflexive marker, whereas the dedicated antipassive suffix results from the grammaticalization of a verb ‘do’ in a cross-linguistically common type of antipassive periphrasis.

The present article examines the marker guža (гужа) in Andi, a language of the Avar-Andic branch of the Nakh-Daghestanian family. This marker often co-occurs with finite verb forms, so one may think of analysing it as a verbal suffix that derives converbs from finite verbs. However, as I show with examples taken from Andi texts, guža functions as a more general adverbializer that produces adverbials from both clauses and constituents of various types, namely noun phrases, postpositional phrases and adverbs. Thus, guža is not a verbal suffix as such, but rather a syntactic marker which is placed in the rightmost element of a constituent or a clause.

Aphasia in Turkish: Speech production in Broca's and Wernicke's patients

Starting from the analysis of constructions employed to express the category of reflexive in Hittite, encoded both by the verbal ending set of the middle and by the pronominal marker -za with both active and middle verbal forms, we present a typological parallelism with the Baltic languages that has consistently developed, from a pronominal, a verbal strategy to mark reflexivity. It is also shown that a development regarding the ways of encoding reflexivity involve other Indo-European languages as well. The Anatolian languages attest the reflexes of the original set of endings referring to the semantic categories of Reflexive, Middle and “Resultative”, while the other Indo-European languages attest an innovated “mixed morphology” for the category of Middle and Reflexive as opposed to the proper endings of the historical perfect. Within such a theoretical framework, the development of alternative strategies, using pronominal devices or particles, aims to disambiguate a wide polysemous ending set. A ‘Wackernagel’ (2P) particle in Hittite, namely -z, is particularly active in disambiguating reflexivity. Lithuanian -si, an original pronoun that developed at first into a 2P particle and subsequently into a verbal suffix, extends its functional field and takes over the place of the original middle, as in other Baltic and Slavonic languages.

Starting from the analysis of constructions employed to express the category of reflexive in Hittite, encoded both by the verbal ending set of the middle and by the pronominal marker - za with both active and middle verbal forms, we present a typological parallelism with the Baltic languages that has consistently developed, from a pronominal, a verbal strategy to mark reflexivity. It is also shown that a development regarding the ways of encoding reflexivity involve other Indo-European languages as well. The Anatolian languages attest the reflexes of the original set of endings referring to the semantic categories of Reflexive, Middle and “Resultative”, while the other Indo-European languages attest an innovated “mixed morphology” for the category of Middle and Reflexive as opposed to the proper endings of the historical perfect. Within such a theoretical framework, the development of alternative strategies, using pronominal devices or particles, aims to disambiguate a wide polysemous ending set. A ‘Wackernagel’ (2P) particle in Hittite, namely -z , is particularly active in disambiguating reflexivity. Lithuanian -si , an original pronoun that developed at first into a 2P particle and subsequently into a verbal suffix, extends its functional field and takes over the place of the original middle, as in other Baltic and Slavonic languages.

In Inuktitut, la is a morpheme that marks direct speech. A syllable la also occurs within several verbal morphemes, notably in imperative forms and in negative forms. The distribution of la in the verbal paradigms has remained unexplained to our knowledge.Here we show that, in those two contexts, la, despite the fact that it has different grammatical properties, has a common semantic value: the fragment of discourse to which la is postposed, is construed as emanating from a discourse source distinct from the speaker. This is true of la both as a free, productive morpheme and as intervening in verbal suffixes in which it is integrated.The opposition between the indicative and attributive modes has remained poorly understood until now. In our discussion, we clarify it in terms of the interpretation of la and also explain the distribution of la in negative verbal forms and in imperatives.Theoretically, we take la as evidence that the speaker can present speech as emanating from a different source. This is not specific to Inuktitut and has been labeled “enunciation” and “polyphony.” We review the “polyphony theory” and show how the facts of Inuktitut fit well into it.

In French, regardless of stem regularity, inflectional verbal suffixes are extremely regular and paradigmatic. Considering the complexity of the French verbal system, we argue that all French verbs are polymorphemic forms that are decomposed during visual recognition independently of their stem regularity. We conducted a behavioral experiment in which we manipulated the surface and cumulative frequencies of verbal inflected forms and asked participants to perform a visual lexical decision task. We tested four types of verbs with respect to their stem variants: a. fully regular (parler “to speak,” [parl-]); b. phonological change e/E verbs with orthographic markers (répéter “to repeat,” [répét-] and [répèt-]); c. phonological change o/O verbs without orthographic markers (adorer “to adore,” [ador-] and [adOr-]); and d. idiosyncratic (boire “to drink,” [boi-] and [buv-]). For each type of verb, we contrasted four conditions, forms with high and low surface frequencies and forms with high and low cumulative frequencies. Our results showed a significant cumulative frequency effect for the fully regular and idiosyncratic verbs, indicating that different stems within idiosyncratic verbs (such as [boi-] and [buv-]) have distinct representations in the mental lexicon as different fully regular verbs. For the phonological change verbs, we found a significant cumulative frequency effect only when considering the two forms of the stem together ([répét-] and [répèt-]), suggesting that they share a single abstract and under specified phonological representation. Our results also revealed a significant surface frequency effect for all types of verbs, which may reflect the recombination of the stem lexical representation with the functional information of the suffixes. Overall, these results indicate that all inflected verbal forms in French are decomposed during visual recognition and that this process could be due to the regularities of the French inflectional verbal suffixes.

Study of verb formation holds a high position in the Finno-Ugric linguistics. In spite of works on the verb formation in other dialects of the Khanty language there are many gaps and uncovered issues in description of the Kazym dialect. Goal and tasks of the research. The main goal of the research is to find suffixes with the meaning of action semelfactiveness in the Kazym dialect of the Khanty language, to specify the list of suffixes and the meanings given to the verb. According to the goal stated the following tasks are completed in the work: 1. To collect factual material: verbs with the meaning of semelfactiveness using the sources of literature, colloquial and dialect speech. 2. To analyze and specify morphological characteristic of the semelfactive verbs 3. To detect productivity of the verb suffixes being studied and compare their semantics with other dialects of the Khanty language. Academic novelty. In this work we have examined considerable layer of semelfactive verbs that allows us to specify the meanings of suffixes, detect their productivity. Topicality of this research is explained by the fact that the issue of action semelfactiveness using the example of the Kazym dialect of the Khanty language has not been specially studied.

Esamojo laiko formantas <em>-st-</em> išvestiniuose latvių kalbos veiksmažodžiuose

Previous research has shown that the production of morphologically complex words in isolation is affected by the properties of morphologically, phonologically, or semantically similar words stored in the mental lexicon. We report five experiments with Dutch speakers that show that reading an inflectional word form in its linguistic context is also affected by analogical sets of formally similar words. Using the self-paced reading technique, we show in Experiments 1-3 that an incorrectly spelled suffix delays readers less if the incorrect spelling is in line with the spelling of verbal suffixes in other inflectional forms of the same verb. In Experiments 4 and 5, our use of the self-paced reading technique shows that formally similar words with different stems affect the reading of incorrect suffixal allomorphs on a given stem. These intra- and interparadigmatic effects in reading may be due to online processes or to the storage of incorrect forms resulting from analogical effects in production.

This paper documents the formation of auxiliary verbs and suffixes in Quechua and examines how processes of language evolution and contact introduce new aspectual contrasts expressed through verbal periphrases. Quechuan languages provide an excellent opportunity to examine the interaction of internal and external motivations for change because the auxiliation process suggests sequences of regular developments and also provides evidence for changes induced by contact with Spanish. The creation of numerous auxiliaries, coupled with stimulation of their productivity, enlarges the role for grammatical expression through periphrasis. Additionally, the contact-induced obstruction of verbal suffix formation weakens the sustainability of polysynthesis via renewal. Although the initial effects are minor, these contact phenomena initiate a shift toward an increasingly analytic, less polysynthetic morphology.