subcategorisation, alignment, config, marking Flashcards
definition
Subcategorisation of verbs
the division of verbs into subcategories based on number and syntactic category (phrase type) of the complements they appear with
3 subcategories/transivity
Intransitive verbs
Transitive
Ditransitive
Intransitive verbs
- 0 NP/CP complements = 0 direct objects
- subject
- eg. Sam laughs. Sam listens to music
Transitive verbs
Transitive subcategorise for 1 complement
Transitive verbs
- 1 NP/CP complement
- subject
- eg. Sam collected… Sam thinks…
Ditransitive verbs
Ditransitive verbs
- 2 complements (2NP, NP+ CP, NP+ PP
- subject
- Sam gave Pat a dollar. Sam gave a dollar to Pat.
- Sam told Pat im a clown.
Grammatical relations is
the different types of syntactic relationships that constituents can have with the predicate that require them
2 grammatical relations
- subject
- object
these are defined morphosyntactically (form and bheaviour in sentences) and language-internally
ENGLISH CASE
Nominative accusative, possessive
subject, object
S and A are marked nominative
P is accusative
subjects - 1SG i, we, you, 3SG he, she it, 3PL they
objects - me, us, you, them
possessive - my our your, their, his her
English subjects
before verb
- precede (before) the main verb
- appears in nominative case
- verb agrees with person and number
- is obligatory
subjects - agreement
Verb changes its form based on person + number of one of its constituents (SUBJECT)
I am eating burgers
You are eating burgers
subject - case
morphological case- constituent marked to show role in the clause
English - in pronouns only
- I kissed the dog = 1SG subject
- the dog kissed me = 1SG object
- Bob kissed my dog = 1SG possessor
subjects obligatory
all clauses require a subject
- eg. wombats sheltered under my house
- its raining (pleonatic subject) *raining
English objects
after verb
- constituent that appears in accusative case if a pronoun
- follows the main verb
the dog kissed me, us, them
objects in word order
‘humans love making errors’
- making = verb
- errors = object
english indirect objects
complements that are PP
‘the bird placed the egg in the nest
Morphosyntactic alignment
how S, A, and P are treated morphosyntactially (form, structure of words in sentence)
universal primes of S A P
**S **= intransitive - expressed argument of intransitive verbs, subject
**A **= transitive - most agent-like expressed argument (subject) of transitive/ditransitive verb
P = object - other arguement of di/transitive verb
Nominative accusative
like English
S and A behave the same
Ergative absolutive
like Warlmanpa
S and P behave the same
Tripartite
S , A , P behave differently
-Ø morpheme
absence of a suffix
- nominative
typology
design space of language
morphological type is
classifying languages based on their overall morphological profiles
MORPHOLOGICAL TYPE HAS
2 parameters:
- Synthesis
- Fusion
Synthesis
number of morphemes per word
synthetic and isolating
Synthetic **= many words are multimorphemic
- combining many morphemes per word
- Mudburra
**Isolating **= many words are monomorphemic
- 1-1-1 morpheme word meaning correpondence
- to add new meaning(tense, plural) add another word
- Vietnamese
Fusion
number of meanings per morpheme
segmentability of words into units
Agglutinating languages
- one meaning per morpheme
- clear boundaries between morphemes
- words >1 morpheme
- eg Turkish - man (adam) adam, adami, adamlar, adamlari
Fusional languages
- multiple meanings per morpheme
- boundaries are hard to determine
- Russian
morphological types english examples
isolating - will, have, a, for
agglutinating - anti-dis-establish
fusional - she (3rd person singular), brought (past tense bring)
polysynthetic - glue-sniffing
Word order typology
= constituent order
languages classified according to how S, O, V are arranged
predicting order
VO prepositions - P-NP, N-AdjP, Aux-VP head-dependent
VO postpositions - NP-P, AdjP-N, VP-Aux dependent head
Configurationality
VO - right branching
- head-initial
- English
OV - left branching
- head-final
- Japanese
Non-configuration
no strict ordering to elements in clauses
- Warlpiri
Consituents role within its phrase of clause.
morphology on the head/dep
- Head marking
nature of the relationship between a head and its dependents are indicated on the head
VERBS ARE CONSIDERED THE HEADS OF CLAUSE
- Dependent marking
nature of the relationship between a head and its dependents are indicated on the dependents
English marking
bit of both
- pronomial case - dependent marking
- i saw them, they saw me
- verb agreement - head-marking
- the bird is swooping
- the birds are swooping
- i am swooping
- –> here, head tense (verb BE, is, are, am) is changing
