A Morphosyntactic Analysis of Isamal Ergatives: Movement in Ergative Structures

Isamal is an Austronesian language spoken by around 8,000 indigenous people of Samal Island, Mindanao, Philippines. Fieldwork has shown that every speaker of Isamal is bilingual in Cebuano, the most dominant language in the island with a population of 104,123 according to Philippine Census (2015). This paper deals with the morphosyntax of Isamal ergatives, and analysis is made using the Minimalist Program with focus on the movement of elements in the structure. Verb morphology is given a description to lend a hand in the analytical scrutiny of the projections of the lexical information encoded in the argument and thematic structures of the verbs. Like all ergatives, Isamal ergatives have only one argument, that is, the theme-DP. There are three primary syntactic structures that are analyzed in this paper, namely, VP, TP, and CP. With the employment of the Minimalist Program for analysis, movement in the ergative structures shows that verbs, arguments and adjuncts can move.

A morphosyntactic analysis of nominal expressive suffixes in Russian and Greek

This work investigates and compares nominal expressive suffixes in Russian and Greek within the framework of Distributed Morphology. It shows that, although the suffixes under investigation share the same expressive meaning, they differ significantly in their syntactic structure, namely in the manner and place of attachment in the syntactic tree. More specifically, in both languages expressive suffixes can attach either as heads or as modifiers and, furthermore, they may occupy various syntactic positions. This illustrates that, despite their uniformity at semantic level, expressive suffixes exhibit variation with respect to their syntactic structuring both within and across languages.

A Morphosyntactic Analysis of Some Asante Weed Names

This paper investigates the morphosyntactic features of some indigenous weed names identified among the Asante people of Ghana. Asante is a dialect of Akan and belongs to the Kwa (Congo-Niger) language family spoken mainly in Southern Ghana. This paper discusses some forty-four (44) weed names in Asante. All the data used were collected from primary sources. The data were collected from twenty (20) native speakers of Asante through unstructured interviews. The study has revealed various morphological processes in the language that include affixation, reduplication, and compounding in terms of morphological structure. The weed names were morphologically structured as single words, di-morphemic, phrases and clauses reduced to weed names. Syntactically, these sentential names can be simple, compound, and complex sentences which can function as declarative and imperative sentences.

Morphosyntactic Analysis of Onitsha Personal Names

This study examines Onitsha personal names (OPN) from a morphosyntactic perspective. The major objective of this study is to examine the syntactic and morphological structure of some OPN. Specifically, the study seeks to ascertain the morphological processes and the relation in the internal structures of the morpheme that are combined to form the names. A sample of 250 names for both male and female were used for the analysis. The data were obtained from a list of names in schools, men and women religious associations. Oral interviews were conducted with native speakers in order to get clarifications as it concerns the meaning of the names. The roots, stems, and affixes of the names were analysed using the descriptive approach and applying the word formation rules. The findings reveal the following: that most of the morphological processes in the formation of OPN are predominantly clipping, prefixing and suffixing in a hierarchical manner, such that the meaning of the names are predictable from their structural components and most of these names are derived from clauses by desententialisation process; the philosophy behind the names are often lost due to clipping; OPN at sentential level can function as statements, interrogatives, or imperatives, commands; the morphological components in terms of size, length or shape can be monomorphemic, dimorphemic, trimorphemic and polymorphemic. Structurally, they can be single stem, compound or complex.

Grammatical gender reversals: A morphosyntactic and sociopragmatic analysis

This work analyzes grammatical gender reversals (feminine to masculine and masculine to feminine) in various languages by examining them both morphosyntactically and sociopragmatically, and is, to the best of my knowledge, the first such twofold analysis of grammatical gender reversals. The morphosyntactic analysis is based on my previous works on expressive morphology. The sociopragmatic analysis is based on the sociopragmatic framework developed in Acton (Acton, Eric K. 2014. Pragmatics and the social meaning of determiners. Doctoral Dissertation. Stanford, CA: Stanford University) and presents a continuation and development of my earlier work on sociopragmatics of gender reversals (Steriopolo, Olga. 2019a. “A sociopragmatic analysis of grammatical gender reversals.” In: Con temporary means and methods in ELT and applied linguistics, eds. C. Can, P. Patsala, and Z. Tatsioka, ch. 26: 535–55. Tallinn: LIF – Language in Focus). Grammatical gender reversals result in an evaluative meaning of the noun. I argue that they crosslinguistically use the same syntactic structure, in which an evaluative head [eval] is projected above a categorized noun, n. The evaluative head [eval] changes the grammatical gender of the base to which it attaches, resulting in a gender reversal with an evaluative meaning. This meaning varies across languages and directly depends on the sociocultural context, such as how masculinity and femininity are perceived and valued within a given society. The data presented in this research are, in order of appearance, from the following languages: Russian, Israeli Hebrew, Lak, Polish, Lokono, Teop, Palestinian Arabic, Manambu, Tigre, Maasai, Oromo, Benchnon, Halkomelen, and Alamblak.

Benefactive Verbs and Causative Verbs in Madurese: Morphosyntactic Analysis

This study is aimed to analyze a morphological process in the marker of benefactive verbs and causative verbs construction of Madurese Language. The theory used in this study was of generative morphology and syntax. The object of this study was Madurese Language. The data collected in Madurese Language was from the native speakers of Madurese. The result of this research was the formation rules of benefactive verbs and causative verbs of Madurese Language by using word and paradigm approach. The results show that there were three kinds of affixation to produce the benefactive verbs. Affixation in the marker of benefactive verb was shown by prefixes a-, ma-, and n-, and suffix –aghi. Affixation in the marker of causative verb was shown by prefixes ma-. Madurese also use intransitive verb and also adjective as the root to construct benefactive verb and causative verb. Keyword: Benefactive Verbs, Causative Verbs, Generative Morphology, Madurese

Morphosyntactic Analysis of Political News on Online Tempo

<p><em>Morphology and Syntax are very important studies in learning English. Morphology learns about how the words are structured and how they are put together from smaller part. It can be considered as the grammar of words. Meanwhile, Syntax discusses how the sentence is structured. The objectives of the research are to find out inflectional morphemes, derivational morphemes, and the patterns of clause structure which are found in political news on online Tempo in January 2019. This research used qualitative design and content analysis design where the source of data was article political news on Online Tempo in January, 2019. The major instrument of this research is the researchers themselves because they actively obtained and clustered the data and the secondary data was data sheet. The findings revealed three types of morphosyntactic, firstly, the researchers found 5 patterns of inflectional morpheme with 26 words. The most dominant pattern of inflectional morpheme was singular changing to the plural. Secondly, for derivational morpheme, it identified two types of classes including class-changing and class-mantaining. There were 3 patterns with 10 words in class-changing and 1 pattern with 1 word in class-mantaining. The study also showed that the common pattern of derivational morpheme was class-changing pattern (verb to noun). Thirdly, there were 7 patterns with 15 clauses that were used in political news. The result of this study proved that the dominant pattern of clause structure was S-V- to Infinitive pattern with 4 clauses.</em></p>

A Morphosyntactic Analysis of Patient-Subject Constructions in Chinese

The exact nature and derivation of patient-subject constructions (PSC) in Chinese are still at dispute in literature. Based on the restriction of manner adverbial modification and the nonexistence of the manner reading of zenme ‘how’ observed in Chinese PSC, a morphosyntactic analysis has been provided. We argue that the seeming action verb V in PSC is not a real main verb, but a verbal root to be introduced into the derivation after syntax via external morphological merger. The real main verb of PSC in syntax is a covert light verb ∅BEC, which selects a nominal phrase (NP) as its specifier (Spec) and a resultative phrase (RP) as its complement. BECP is further selected by an aspect (Asp) head le. To satisfy the extended projection principle (EPP), the NP at [Spec, BECP] moves to the [Spec, TP] in syntax. After syntax, the resultative (R) head-moves to ∅BEC at the phonological form (PF) to satisfy the phonological requirement of ∅BEC, forming R-∅BEC; then, a bare verbal root merges with R-∅BEC at PF to denote the manner of the change of state. Due to the phonological requirement of le, V-R-∅BEC head-moves to le, producing the right order of PSC. The two elided forms of PSC can be derived similarly. This research suggests that covert light verbs and morphology may play an interactive role in the derivation of some “typical” constructions in Chinese.

KOSTA KHETAGUROV. THE FOUR SEASONS. INTERLINEAR MORPHOSYNTACTIC ANALYSIS AND TRANSLATION INTO ITALIAN.

Настоящая статья содержит многослойное издание Четырех времен года Коста Левановича Хетагурова, входящих в сборник стихотворений Осетинская лира ( Ирон фндыр ). Воспроизведение текста предусматривает, наряду с основным осетинским подлинником, сопровожденным английским и русским подстрочниками, фонетическую транскрипцию согласно международному фонетическому алфавиту, англоязычную морфосинтаксическую глоссу и перевод на итальянский язык. Итальянский перевод придерживается по возможности оригинала и, следовательно, никак не претендует на качественную передачу его метрической структуры и поэтической образности в примечаниях объясняются на итальянском языке некоторые грамматические или лексические особенности осетинского текста. Таким образом, в совместной работе трех исследователей представлены свежие материалы для ознакомления более широкого круга читателей с творчеством великого осетинского поэта и для его дальнейшего изучения. The present paper features a multi-layered edition of the Four seasons of Kosta Levanovich Khetagurov, included in the collection of poems named Ossetian lyre (Iron fandyr). Along with the main Ossetian text, accompanied by an English and Russian interlinear, the edition features a phonetic transcription according to the International Phonetic Alphabet, an English morphosyntactic gloss and a translation into Italian. The Italian translation adheres to the original as close as possible and, therefore, cannot claim in any way to qualitatively convey its metric structure and poetic imagery the notes explain some grammatical or lexical features of the Ossetian text. Thus, the joint work of three researchers offers most recent materials in order to familiarize a wider circle of readers with the work of the great Ossetian poet and for its further study.