By Carol Lord
ISBN-10: 9027229139
ISBN-13: 9789027229137
This paintings examines either historic and comparative facts in documenting the sweep of diachronic switch within the context of serial verb buildings. utilizing a variety of info from languages of West Africa, Asia and the Caribbean, it demonstrates how shifts in which means and utilization bring about syntactic, morphological and lexical switch. the method wherein verbs lose lexical semantic content material and advance case-marking features is defined; it truly is argued that the switch is directional, from verb to preposition (or postposition) to join, alongside a grammaticalization continuum. This comparable grammaticalization strategy is proven to lead to the improvement of complementizers, adverbial subordinators, conjunctions, adverbs and auxiliaries from verbs. powerful parallels throughout languages are present in the meanings of the verbs that turn into “defective” and within the capabilities they arrive to mark. The alterations are documented intimately, with examples from a few languages illustrating the influence of the adjustments on typology and be aware order, implications for the encoding of definiteness and point, and the relevance of notions akin to discourse subject, foreground and transitivity. With appreciate to theoretical assumptions and terminology, the writer has taken a comparatively nonpartisan strategy, and the dialogue is on the market to scholars of language in addition to of curiosity to theoreticians.
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Extra info for Historical Change in Serial Verb Constructions
Sample text
I have not found it possible to say what this word is. It is frequently untranslatable" (Ward 1952:144). A view of ní as "introducer of relevant NPs" finds some support when we look at verbs which are classified as bitransitive in other languages. In the English sentence give me threepence, the verb give is considered bitransitive; both its objects follow the verb. ' However, in the Yoruba equivalent, both nominals may not follow the verb fun 'give' unmarked. ' The prepositional particle ni occurs as a marker of the second post-verb nominal in (43).
The pronoun higher in the hierarchy, the more topical one, is more likely to occur earlier in the utterance, in subject position. If the conjunction is a fossilized verb, its former subject would be expected to occupy first position within the conjoined structure-which it does. These restrictions on case form and person for pronouns in conjoined structures are consistent with the hypothesis that the conjunction has descended from a verb ancestor. The verb source hypothesis provides a historical explanation for grammar requirements which otherwise appear peculiar and arbitrary.
Careful historical/comparative analysis may sort out the pathways via which verbs have arrived at these functional tasks. 2 Gate'with' In Ga the morpheme ke functions as a preposition 'with' introducing NPs, and as a NP conjunction. Although it does not occur as an independent verb in the language today, there is evidence that it was formerly a verb, and that the serial construction was the context in which it was reanalyzed. The morpheme ke occurs as a prepositional marker for NPs in Instrument, Manner, and Comitative roles, as in (112).
Historical Change in Serial Verb Constructions by Carol Lord
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