Verbal categories & simple clauses Flashcards
what is the interaction between tense and modality?
it is more common to have a 2way tense contrast where there is a future marker, but no past. This might be because the future has not happened yet and thus belongs to an unreal (irrealis) world, while the past and present both belong to the real (realis) world.
explain the difference between perfective aspect and perfect tense.
Perfective is an aspect, looking at the internal structure of the event - is it ongoing or already completed? Perfect tense relates the event in time, specifically combining pas and present - it took place before ‘now’ but is till relevant to the present situation.
what are the two forms of aspect?
perfective (unmarked - picture): perspective from outside the course of the event, presented as a whole with no beginning, course or end.
Imperfective (film): perspective from inside the course of the event. Are events iterative, progressive or habitual?
what is the difference between Aspect and Aktionsart?
Aspect is grammatical and deals with the perspective taken on an event, whereas Aktionsart is a lexical, semantic specification dealing with the inner structure of the event.
what are the three identifiers of Aktionsart?
punctual/durative
relic/atelic
dynamic/stative
what is the difference between mood and modality?
Mood has to do with the actuality of the event.
Modality has to do with the speaker’s attitude (propositional modality & event modality)
what are the two different moods?
realis mood, vs. irrealis mood - whether the event is realised or not.
explain why the realis/irrealis opposition is essentially the same as the indicative/subjunctive opposition.
The realis and the indicative both reflect factual statements that interact with tenses as the past or non future and hold a certain validity. The irrealis and the subjunctive both reflect tentativeness or hypothetical situations, and interact with tenses as the future or nonpast. Assertion about their validity is not possible.
what is propositional modality and what are its subcategories?
Propositional modality has to do with a speaker’s attitude toward the truth value of the information given in the proposition. the two main subcategories are
1. Evidentials (experiential/inference)
2. epistemic modality (speculative/deductive/assumptive)
What is event modality and what are its subcategories?
Event modality has to do with potential action in various ways. the events or actions have not been realised yet, but are possibilities or probabilities. the two main subcategories are:
1. deontic
2. dynamics
Explain deontic modality and its subgroups
with deontic modality, external factors are those initiating or conditioning the action.
1. directives are used when the speaker tries to initiate action (obligatives, permissives, imperatives)
2. commissives are used when a speaker certifies that an action will take place.
Explain dynamic modality and its subgroups
with dynamic modality internal factors, such as ability, are those initiating or conditioning the action.
1. volitives denote willingness on the part of the subject
2. ability denotes capacity on the part of the subject.
what are pragmatic roles?
pragmatic roles denote how the sentence is structure in terms of information status and information packaging.
what is alignment?
mark grammatical relations and lump different types of arguments together. Different language may have different alignment systems. I.e. what does S pattern with, is it marked like A, or like O/P?
what are the forms of alignment systems?
nominative-accusative alignment (S=A)
ergative-absolutive alignment (S=P)
split systems (S=A v S=P)
explain isomorphism
a process that languages tend to group together items with similar roles, so that elements that have similar kinds of functions also end up looking formally similar.
what is valency?
How many arguments a verb obligatorily has to take.
what are the most common valency alternating strategies?
Increasing valency:
Causatives, applicatives
Decreasing valency:
Passives, antipassives, noun incorporation, anticausatives
What does transposing valency entail?
With valency transposing devices, the number of arguments of a clause is not change, but the roles between them is somehow altered. Their respective semantic roles get swapped.
what are transposing valency devices?
Inversion & dative shift
What are causative constructions and what are its three subtypes?
they merge two separate events into one single complex event which in turn increases the valency.
lexical causatives
morphological causatives
analytic causatives
What are applicative constructions?
applicatives increase the valency of a base clause by one by turning an adjunct into an obligatory argument through a marker on the base clause verb.
What is a passive construction?
A passive construction accounts for a decrease in valency by ‘demoting the agent’.
What is an anti passive construction?
reduces the P argument of the active clause to an adjunct, turning a predicate with two arguments into one with one argument, ‘demotion of the patient’.
what is a dative shift?
Dative shift is also a ‘double object’ construction, where the indirect object is promoted to a second direct object.
What is an anticausative construction?
An anticausative construction starts with a causative base and adds an element to take out the sense of causation, reducing the valency by one. –> the causer is no longer needed. The clause becomes more of a process, often with an inanimate entity taking the subject position.
What is the difference between markedness and unmarkedness
unmarked member is the default, most frequent member, most simple and basic form. Marked member is the exception from the rule (functional notion) and therefore needs explicit formal marking.
what are ambitransitives?
verbs that are both intransitive and transitive. The verb may or may not require a direct object. There are ambitransitives that align as S=P and those that align as S=A
What is inversion?
the alignment between the arguments in the base (or direct) clause has been exchanged (or inverted). The verbal ending agrees with whichever argument is higher on the animacy hierarchy.
What is the cognitive basis for alignment?
The cognitive basis for lumping together different arguments as expressive device is that there are semantic and pragmatic similarities between argument types, and therefore they express them the same.
How can isomorphism explain alignment?
Isomorphism entails that form follows function, and elements with similar functions start to formally look similar as well. If languages have semantic and pragmatic reasons for lumping together arguments with the same function, and S and A hold this similar function, they will also look the same. Same goes for lumping together S and P. Or splitting the system.
