Linguistic Miscellany Thread

[bradrn]

I’ve been reading Li and Thompson’s 1976 article about subject-prominent and topic-prominent languages. In it, they distinguish four types of language:

According to our study, there are four basic types of languages: (i) languages that are subject-prominent … (ii) languages that are topic-prominent; (iii) languages that are both subject-prominent and topic-prominent; (iv) languages that are neither subject-prominent nor topic-prominent.

In the article, they discuss types (i) and (ii) quite extensively. However, they don’t seem to comment on how languages of type (iii) or (iv) work. Does anyone have any more information on this?

I’ve done a bit more reading on this, and I think I may have figured out an answer to this myself. I’ll start by listing the properties of topics, as given by Li and Thompson:

• The topic always has the same role in the sentence, namely ‘specifying the domain within which the predication holds’
• The topic does not necessarily need to be an argument of the predicate
• The topic does not play a role in grammatical processes
• Topics are always definite
• Topics are always in sentence-initial position

And those of subjects:

• The subject must be an argument of the predicate
• The subject plays a role in grammatical processes such as reflexivisation, passivisation, Equi-NP deletion, verb serialisation and imperativisation
• Subjects may be indefinite

They then proceed to define topic-prominent (Tp) and subject-prominent (Sp) languages by noting that certain sets of traits tend to occur together. Tp languages are those which have a surface coding for the topic (but not necessarily for the subject), either through syntax or a grammatical marker. Tp languages also typically share the following properties:

• Topic-comment sentences are usually more basic (less marked)
• They have ‘double subject’ constructions (where a topic is followed by a subject)
• They have extensive zero-anaphora (Li & Thompson don’t explicitly say this, but Huang (2000) does), typically controlled by the topic rather than the subject
• They lack a passive (or have only a marginal passive)
• They lack dummy subjects
• The unmarked word order is typically verb-final

Similarly, Sp languages are those which have a surface coding for the subject (but not necessarily for the topic). Sp languages also typically share the following properties:

• They lack ‘double subject’ constructions
• They have a passive
• They may have dummy subjects
• The topic (when specified) may be greatly constrained to a specific set of choices

So that gives us the (i) and (ii)-type languages. But what about types (iii) or (iv), which are the ones I asked about? Well, given that Tp languages are those which have a surface coding for the topic, and Sp languages are those which have a surface coding for the subject, after further reading I realised that type (iii) languages (both Tp and Sp) must be those which explicitly mark both topic and subject in some way. (It sounds obvious now, but I didn’t realise this when I asked.) And this is borne out by the examples given by Li and Thompson: Japanese and Korean, which are classified as being both Tp and Sp, mark both the topic and the subject. They also combine many of the typical traits listed above: Japanese and Korean are both V-final and have ‘double subject’ constructions (typical Tp properties), yet also have a passive (typical Sp property).

As for type (iv) languages (neither Tp nor Sp): using the definitions above, and reading a bit about them, I conclude that these are languages which do not consistently mark either topic or subject. The examples Li and Thompson give are all Philippine languages, which makes sense: their crazy voice systems mean that there isn’t any consistent way to define a ‘subject’ (see Schachter for details), and (like English) they don’t have any surface coding for topics either. (There is something which usually gets called the ‘topic’, but it doesn’t satisfy the criterion listed above of ‘specifying the domain within which the predication holds’.)

[bradrn]

I feel that I am obliged to link to this site I just discovered, which has hilarously awful transcriptions of Hebrew words, made by someone who clearly can’t read Hebrew properly. Highlights include ‘aneẖeno’ for אנחנו, ‘heya’ for היא, ‘reash’ for ראש, and ‘aeyfehe’ for איפה. Their phrases are even worse: שלום is apparently ‘shelom’, מזל טוב is ‘mezel ṭov’, and good luck figuring out what ‘ateh meḏever anegueleyte?’ and ‘aeyfeh ateh guere?’ mean. (It’s not too hard to figure out how they get these crazy transcriptions, but that doesn’t make them any less funny.) They also give a pronunciation guide: ק is ‘qu, as in queen’, וּ is ‘u, as in ultimate’ (perhaps they’re Irish?), and — most bafflingly of all — ח is apparently ‘sharp h, as in Hamburg’ (???).

[Kuchigakatai]

The explanation is pretty boring actually. Whoever made the Hebrew section of that site doesn't say it, but they're reading Hebrew using Egyptologists' conventions for making up pronunciations of Ancient Egyptian.

[bradrn]

The explanation is pretty boring actually. Whoever made the Hebrew section of that site doesn't say it, but they're reading Hebrew using Egyptologists' conventions for making up pronunciations of Ancient Egyptian.

That’s a lot more boring than I expected. But I suppose that just begs the question: how on Earth could someone possibly think that Egyptological conventions are at all a good way of reading Modern Hebrew‽ That is completely baffling to me.

(This also makes me think: if those transcription methods can mangle Hebrew so easily, then that just shows how unreflective of Ancient Egyptian pronunciation they must have been! My favourite data point along those lines is Tutankhamun: Wiktionary gives a reconstructed pronunciation as /təˈwaːtəʔ ˈʕaːnəχ ʔaˈmaːnəʔ/, whereas the Egyptological pronunciation is /tuːt ɑːnx imɛn/.)

[Kuchigakatai]

(This also makes me think: if those transcription methods can mangle Hebrew so easily, then that just shows how unreflective of Ancient Egyptian pronunciation they must have been! My favourite data point along those lines is Tutankhamun: Wiktionary gives a reconstructed pronunciation as /təˈwaːtəʔ ˈʕaːnəχ ʔaˈmaːnəʔ/, whereas the Egyptological pronunciation is /tuːt ɑːnx imɛn/.)

There's a fair number of reconstructed pronunciations of individual Middle and Late Egyptian words, particularly nouns and adjectives, and they're pretty much always like <jmn> ~ *[jaˈmaːnuw] > *[ʔaˈmaːnə(ʔ)] > *[ʔaˈmoːn] (showing up as [ʔaˈmuːn] in Coptic) ~ egyptological [iˈmɛn]. The word for 'god' nṯr is [nɛˈtʃɛr] in the egyptological reading, but was once *[ˈnaːcar], then [ˈnoːtə(ʔ)] and eventually [ˈnuːtə] in Coptic... I highly recommend Antonio Loprieno's Ancient Egyptian: A Linguistic Introduction if you're interested in the evolution of Egyptian phonology and grammar, or just to look at the several pretty reconstructed words linguists have been able to make. (Not that the different stages of Egyptian descend from the most prestigious previous one, since they're based on different dialects, but that's also fun!)

[bradrn]

(This also makes me think: if those transcription methods can mangle Hebrew so easily, then that just shows how unreflective of Ancient Egyptian pronunciation they must have been! My favourite data point along those lines is Tutankhamun: Wiktionary gives a reconstructed pronunciation as /təˈwaːtəʔ ˈʕaːnəχ ʔaˈmaːnəʔ/, whereas the Egyptological pronunciation is /tuːt ɑːnx imɛn/.)

There's a fair number of reconstructed pronunciations of individual Middle and Late Egyptian words, particularly nouns and adjectives, and they're pretty much always like <jmn> ~ *[jaˈmaːnuw] > *[ʔaˈmaːnəʔ] > *[ʔaˈmoːn] (showing up as [ʔaˈmun] in Coptic) ~ egyptological [iˈmɛn]. The word for 'god' nṯr is [nɛˈtʃɛr] in the egyptological reading, but was once *[ˈnaːcar], then [ˈnoːtəʔ] and eventually [ˈnuːtə] in Coptic... I highly recommend Antonio Loprieno's Ancient Egyptian: A Linguistic Introduction if you're interested in the evolution of Egyptian phonology and grammar, or just to look at the several pretty reconstructed words linguists have been able to make. (Not that the different stages of Egyptian descend from the most prestigious previous one, since they're based on different dialects, but that's also fun!)

I’ve heard that the grammatical evolution of Ancient Egyptian is really interesting, so maybe I’ll see if I can find that book then!

[Kuchigakatai]

I’ve heard that the grammatical evolution of Ancient Egyptian is really interesting, so maybe I’ll see if I can find that book then!

Yes, the language underwent some wild morphosyntactic remodelling during the Late Egyptian phase. Very notably as I mentioned recently (while imagining a parallel in Future English), the old conjugations were dropped, and then a system was built anew by grammaticalizing the auxiliary functional words that had replaced those conjugations, gaining noun incorporation at the same time to boot. It's one of the few instances of grammars significantly becoming more morphologically complex over time, along with (some subtypes of) the Qiang Sino-Tibetan languages. (Chinese could also arguably qualify as recently gaining more complex morphology with the various ways it uses derivational morphology, but it's less dramatic in that case. Maybe something could be said about Japanese verbs too.)

[masako]

Can someone please help me understand "oblique case" AND "oblique argument"?

Pretend you're explaining it to a 10 year old.

Thanks in advance.

[Travis B.]

Can someone please help me understand "oblique case" AND "oblique argument"?

Pretend you're explaining it to a 10 year old.

Thanks in advance.

"Oblique" is essentially a generic way of referring to anything which is not the primary doer (agent in linguistics terms) or, in clauses with only one core argument (intransitive clauses in linguistics terms), the primary argument of an actual word (a verb in linguistic terms). Sometimes "oblique" includes the primary thing acted upon (patient in linguistics terms), sometimes it does not.

An "oblique case" is a type of state (a case in linguistics terms) that a thing word (a noun in linguistics terms) may be marked for which expresses this quality.

[bradrn]

Can someone please help me understand "oblique case" AND "oblique argument"?

Pretend you're explaining it to a 10 year old.

Thanks in advance.

As far as I’m aware: an oblique argument is one which is the argument of an adposition. In a sentence like I like going to the beach on weekends, the oblique arguments are underlined. An oblique case, by contrast, is one which is used for the object and all oblique arguments. (Why it isn’t a case used for oblique arguments is a mystery to me.) English has an oblique case: ‘accusative’ pronouns such as me, him, them are actually oblique, as they are used for the object of verbs and the object of prepositions.

[zompist]

Oblique is fun because, like case and declension, it comes from a spatial metaphor. Latin grammarians pictured declension ('bending down') as movement clockwise along a circle, where nominative is straight up. Case < 'fall'; oblique simply means that you're no longer straight up.

It's useful in Latin grammar (and to some extent IE in general) because very often oblique cases have special roots, e.g. reg- instead of rex for 'king'.

In Hindi, the oblique root is used for adpositions. This is just a morphological convenience: Hindi doesn't have a separate accusative.

[bradrn]

I finished my exams a week or two ago, and since then I’ve been reading various resources on syntactic ergativity (including the ones recommended earlier in the thread — thanks for the recommendations everyone!) in order to write my next post on the topic. It’s going well so far, but there is one thing I don’t understand: the term ‘Ā-movement’, used to describe a particular set of constructions which occasionally get ergative alignment. Now, I believe that this is a term from X-bar theory, but that doesn’t help me too much, as I don’t know X-bar theory (and have no particular desire to learn about it if I don’t have to). So: can anyone explain to me what ‘Ā-movement’ is? Or, if it is impossible to understand this without learning X-bar theory, can someone at least recommend a decent resource for learning it?

[akam chinjir]

the term ‘Ā-movement’

I wrote up an answer to this, but it got really long, so I put it in another thread: viewtopic.php?f=4&t=655&p=31046.

[Travis B.]

It's useful in Latin grammar (and to some extent IE in general) because very often oblique cases have special roots, e.g. reg- instead of rex for 'king'.

As you must know, though, in this case reg- is regular, and rex is not, because rex is formed by the voicing assimilation of /g/ to nominative -/s/ (as opposed to the more usual nominative -/ʊs/).

[KathTheDragon]

nominative -/s/ (as opposed to the more usual nominative -/ʊs/).

-us is proper only to 2nd declension nouns, whereas rex is a 3rd declension consonant-stem and entirely regular within that subclass.

[Moose-tache]

I think the point is that it's less an "irregular" oblique stem, and more a normal voicing variation. It's like voiced versus voiceless s-plurals in English. You wouldn't say that "cats" or "dogs" are irregular, even though they are pronounced differently in a way that is phonemic in English. You'd have to be pretty thick to see reks, regem, regis, regii, and not realize that k < g.

Zompist's point that talking about obliques as separate being useful in IE grammar still holds, though. I would say the distinction becomes even more relevant in later Romance than in Latin (e.g. in Old French).

[Travis B.]

Zompist's point that talking about obliques as separate being useful in IE grammar still holds, though. I would say the distinction becomes even more relevant in later Romance than in Latin (e.g. in Old French).

Isn't that just an Old French and Old Occitan thing (I don't know enough about Romanian to say there)?

[Pabappa]

in the sentence

I sent the man home sad

is "sad" an adverb or an adjective? If adverb, does it modify man or home? If man, is this an exception to the rules that adverbs cannot modify nouns?

Or is sad neither an adjective nor an adverb, but a whole clause by itself?

Thanks.

[Linguoboy]

in the sentence

I sent the man home sad

is "sad" an adverb or an adjective? If adverb, does it modify man or home? If man, is this an exception to the rules that adverbs cannot modify nouns?

Or is sad neither an adjective nor an adverb, but a whole clause by itself?

It could be analysed as a small clause, I think.

[zompist]

I sent the man home sad

is "sad" an adverb or an adjective? If adverb, does it modify man or home?

The semantics agree with the syntax, I think. Who's sad? The man. Certainly not the home, or me.

If it were an adverb, it would modify "send" somehow, but I didn't do it sadly.

Prototypically adjectives are adjacent to nouns, but this is a nice instance where they're not. (There's a much more salient exception: predicates, as in "The man is sad.")