Recently I read an article about argument structure by Thompson and Hopper - based on a study of a conversational corpus, they argue that 1) conversational English mostly employs intransitive predicates and 2) a vast amounts of the total number of predicates don't fit into the theory of argument structure because they can't be said to take place on a scene where one of more participants may be present. Of course they give a number of examples to back up their claims, but the strength of corpus linguistics as opposed to traditional approaches, is that 1) they only cite actually occurring speech and 2) they can tell us the exact percentage, that is the probability of usage - I find this highly appealing in a linguistic argument - its like when I try to find out if some expression that I want to use is commonly used in English by Googling the exact phrase and comparing numbers of hits - only here we're talking about spoken speech which in my view, and in that of Thompson and Hopper and many others, is closer to the language humans have stored in their brains than written language.
This has given me further inspiration to go ahead with something that I have had in the planning for a while - namely the creation of a corpus of Sierra de Zonglica Nawatl - I have a number of recordings available - both my own and those of others, and I plan to transcribe, translate and interlinearize them using Toolbox so that they will become searchable and exportable to other media. This will become a powerful tool for doing corpus linguistics AND other kinds of linguistic investigations for that matter - and I belive that it will be the first spoken corpus of a Nawatl dialect.
The only downside, of course, is that transcribing is highly time consuming so it will take a while before the corpus grows large - but ones it does, it'll be worth it!
Friday, November 12, 2010
Sunday, March 7, 2010
Danish Verbal Complements with the modal verb "skulle" 'to have to'
In Danish, as in English, verbal complements may have an infinitival form as its head, as in (1)
(1) It's no fun to have to stay at home.
In Danish, the equivalent to the above example is as in (2)
(2) Det er ikke sjovt at skulle blive hjemme.
it to_be.pres.ind not fun to have_to stay at_home
However, I have observed a non-standard variant which employs a present indicative conjugation on the modal verb resulting in the construction in (3).
(3) Det er ikke sjovt at skal blive hjemme.
This non-standard form seems isolated to this single verb and to some, as of yet, undefined segment of the speech community. A simple Google search revealed that it is not solely a speech phenomenon, i.e. it is also used by people in writing, though by a small group. Thus, only 3 % of cases of at skulle + infinitive employed the present indicative while the other 97 % used the standard infinitive relative clause initiation. This number is bound to be higher in spoken language.
Interesting questions posed by this random observation are:
1. How large is the segment which uses this construction?
2. What is the time depth of this change, and is it winning territory or the contrary?
3. Is there a correlation between this variation and social variables?
(1) It's no fun to have to stay at home.
In Danish, the equivalent to the above example is as in (2)
(2) Det er ikke sjovt at skulle blive hjemme.
it to_be.pres.ind not fun to have_to stay at_home
However, I have observed a non-standard variant which employs a present indicative conjugation on the modal verb resulting in the construction in (3).
(3) Det er ikke sjovt at skal blive hjemme.
This non-standard form seems isolated to this single verb and to some, as of yet, undefined segment of the speech community. A simple Google search revealed that it is not solely a speech phenomenon, i.e. it is also used by people in writing, though by a small group. Thus, only 3 % of cases of at skulle + infinitive employed the present indicative while the other 97 % used the standard infinitive relative clause initiation. This number is bound to be higher in spoken language.
Interesting questions posed by this random observation are:
1. How large is the segment which uses this construction?
2. What is the time depth of this change, and is it winning territory or the contrary?
3. Is there a correlation between this variation and social variables?
Friday, February 5, 2010
MA thesis update
It is now the beginning of February and there is about 7 weeks left until my thesis is due. Much has happened in my head and in the thesis since November and I feel more confident about the product of this writing process. But I have also come to realize things such as that I DID bite off a bit more than I could chew in setting out to give a "complete description and analysis" of verbal constructions in Sierra de Zongolica Nawatl. I have now limited the scope of the undertaking to include certain aspects of verbal constructions.
Monday, January 18, 2010
The morpheme
What is a morpheme? How do we understand the concept?
In traditional formalist views of language, the morpheme is the smallest meaningful part of a word, that is, it is not divisible any further without loosing its meaning.
The English noun meaningfulness can be divided as follows: mean-ing-ful-ness
In that example, the hyphens are meant to represent morpheme breaks or boundaries and the four parts each represent a morpheme. The first one, mean is the root of the noun while the other three are derivational suffixes. In this case, the root is verbal from the verb mean as in:
(1) I really mean what I said!
The next, -ing- derives a noun from the verb resulting in mean-ing, the next suffix -ful- derives an adjective from the noun and finally -ness- turns the adjective into a noun.
Of the four morphemes, the verbal root can be said to be a free morpheme because, as we saw in (1). The derivational suffixes are bound morphemes because, although they carry individual meaning, they cannot occur alone and still be meaningful. While we can pronounce such sequences as *ful-ness but they do not make any sense because this combination is not grammatical in the English langauge. Ungrammaticality is shown by an asterisk in front of a word.
However, we do not understand such morphemes as mean in (1) just based on their structure. We need to see all of the context in (1) in order to know that we are dealing with a verb mean and not, say, an adjective akin to evil or another adjective akin to avarage. Likewise, we do not know whether the morpheme -s in plumber-s (in spoken language) signifies possession or plurality.
Furthermore, just as morphemes are meaningless outside of their context, so are most utterances. Consider for instance example (2).
(2) I gave it to him, but he still won't tell me how to get there.
We can deduce that in (2) some object was given by somebody who is of male sex, and that the first person grammatical subject who gave it has a desire to go somewhere, and was expecting the recipient of the object, to tell him how to get there. However, since we have no knowledge of the context of utterance, there are many missing pieces in the puzzle, as shown by the vagueness of my previous deduction.
In traditional formalist views of language, the morpheme is the smallest meaningful part of a word, that is, it is not divisible any further without loosing its meaning.
The English noun meaningfulness can be divided as follows: mean-ing-ful-ness
In that example, the hyphens are meant to represent morpheme breaks or boundaries and the four parts each represent a morpheme. The first one, mean is the root of the noun while the other three are derivational suffixes. In this case, the root is verbal from the verb mean as in:
(1) I really mean what I said!
The next, -ing- derives a noun from the verb resulting in mean-ing, the next suffix -ful- derives an adjective from the noun and finally -ness- turns the adjective into a noun.
Of the four morphemes, the verbal root can be said to be a free morpheme because, as we saw in (1). The derivational suffixes are bound morphemes because, although they carry individual meaning, they cannot occur alone and still be meaningful. While we can pronounce such sequences as *ful-ness but they do not make any sense because this combination is not grammatical in the English langauge. Ungrammaticality is shown by an asterisk in front of a word.
However, we do not understand such morphemes as mean in (1) just based on their structure. We need to see all of the context in (1) in order to know that we are dealing with a verb mean and not, say, an adjective akin to evil or another adjective akin to avarage. Likewise, we do not know whether the morpheme -s in plumber-s (in spoken language) signifies possession or plurality.
Furthermore, just as morphemes are meaningless outside of their context, so are most utterances. Consider for instance example (2).
(2) I gave it to him, but he still won't tell me how to get there.
We can deduce that in (2) some object was given by somebody who is of male sex, and that the first person grammatical subject who gave it has a desire to go somewhere, and was expecting the recipient of the object, to tell him how to get there. However, since we have no knowledge of the context of utterance, there are many missing pieces in the puzzle, as shown by the vagueness of my previous deduction.
Monday, November 16, 2009
MA thesis
I'm writing my MA thesis at the University of Copenhagen at the moment. The topic is Verb Constructions in Sierra de Zongolica Nawatl and the aim is a complete description and analysis. Is this biting off more than I can chew? I guess we'll see about that in a couple of months. The thesis is due at the end of March 2010.
My theoretical approach is functionalist and as such should focus on the connection between the utterance and the intention of the speaking individual. Or in my case the narrating individual I guess, since much of my data are stories from La Sierra de Zongolica.
Currently I have rough drafts for sections on: future, imperfect past and pluperfect. I have also written something up on the existing studies of this particular Nawa dialect.
One of the sources which I am using, although not as much as I would like, is radio recordings. Need I say more than: Time consuming! Oh yes, and students only have six months for an MA thesis of 60-80 pages.
My theoretical approach is functionalist and as such should focus on the connection between the utterance and the intention of the speaking individual. Or in my case the narrating individual I guess, since much of my data are stories from La Sierra de Zongolica.
Currently I have rough drafts for sections on: future, imperfect past and pluperfect. I have also written something up on the existing studies of this particular Nawa dialect.
One of the sources which I am using, although not as much as I would like, is radio recordings. Need I say more than: Time consuming! Oh yes, and students only have six months for an MA thesis of 60-80 pages.
Thursday, October 22, 2009
The linguistics lab
Through this blog I wish to communicate my thoughts (experiments) about the languages of the world and the science that describes, compares and analyzes them - linguistics.
I do not claim to have answers, nor do I claim to be able to obtain answers.
This lab is merely a space for me to try on different theories or methodologies or simply mind experiments, and let everybody else look over my shoulder in the process.
I am in the process of writing my MA thesis on the Nawatl spoken in the Zongolica Mountains in Veracruz, Mexico. This topic is also related to my work on the Project for Documentation of the Languages of Mesoamerica (PDLMA) in which my role is to continue the compilation and, eventually, publication of a farily extensive dictionary of this Nawatl dialect.
I invite anyone with similar interests to engage in a productive dialog with me for the benefit of all.
I do not claim to have answers, nor do I claim to be able to obtain answers.
This lab is merely a space for me to try on different theories or methodologies or simply mind experiments, and let everybody else look over my shoulder in the process.
I am in the process of writing my MA thesis on the Nawatl spoken in the Zongolica Mountains in Veracruz, Mexico. This topic is also related to my work on the Project for Documentation of the Languages of Mesoamerica (PDLMA) in which my role is to continue the compilation and, eventually, publication of a farily extensive dictionary of this Nawatl dialect.
I invite anyone with similar interests to engage in a productive dialog with me for the benefit of all.
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