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Noon is a West-Atlantic language of the Cangin subgroup, spoken by 25 000 people in central Senegal, in and around the town of Thies. The aim of this study is to provide a full grammatical description of Noon, since no such study has been done on the language. We have not followed a specific linguistic model as framework, but rather tried to work from the classical approach of presenting the structures in the grammatical units of the language, from morphology to discourse, All analysis is presented with language examples from data collected in the Thies area over the years 1994-1998. The study is divided into 11 chapters, followed by a short interlinearised text sample with a free translation. The first chapter presents a brief overview of the phonology and the morphophonological processes that take place in affixation. Another important feature described in this section is the restricted regressive vowel harmony process, based on the ATR feature. In chapters 2-3, the nominal system is described, including the noun class system of 6 basic classes with which most nominals are in agreement. There is also a threefold locative distinction present in determined nominals. This locative distinction is further elaborated in the demonstratives. Chapter 4 treats prepositions and adverbs. In chapters 5-6, verbal morphology and the verb phrase are presented, A major feature of the Noon verb is the derivational affixation which, apart from carrying aspectual information, also has bearing on the valency of the verb. The conjugational system is based on affixation, but also on the use of auxiliaries and particles. Chapter 7 deals with conjunctions, particles and interjections, and chapter 8 treats clause structures: independent ones, both verbal and non-verbal, but also dependent clauses. In chapter 9, different simple sentence types are described, followed by the complex sentences, including serial and reduplicative types. Chapter 10 depicts some important features that occur on the discourse level such as the wider use of spatial deixis in temporal and textual references. Finally, in chapter 11 is presented a comparative view of some of the major dialect differences in Noon.
Linguists and specialists on Siberia are generally familiar with the name Ket, which designates a small ethnic group on the Yenisei and their language, widely regarded as a linguistic enigma in many respects. Ket is a severely endangered language with today less than 500 native speakers. Together with Yugh, Kott, Arin, Assan and Pumpokol, all of which are completely extinct, it forms the Yeniseic family of languages, which has no known linguistic relatives. This Grammar of Ket constitutes the first book of its kind in English and is structured as follows: (1) Introduction; (2) The Kets and their Language; (3) Phonology; (4) Morphology; (5) References. A second volume is planned on Ket syntax, supported by a collection of original texts with translations and annotations.
Syncretism - where a single form serves two or more morphosyntactic functions - is a persistent problem at the syntax-morphology interface. It results from a 'mismatch' whereby the syntax of a language makes a particular distinction but the morphology does not. This pioneering book provides a full-length study of inflectional syncretism, presenting a typology of its occurrence across a wide range of languages. The implications of syncretism for the syntax-morphology interface have long been recognised: it argues either for an enriched model of feature structure (thereby preserving a direct link between function and form), or for the independence of morphological structure from syntactic structure. This book presents a compelling argument for the autonomy of morphology and the resulting analysis is illustrated in a series of formal case studies within Network Morphology. It will be welcomed by all linguists interested in the relation between words and the larger units of which they are a part.
The study of morphology is central to linguistics, and morphotactics – the general principles by which the parts of a word form are arranged – is essential to the study of morphology. Drawing on evidence from a range of languages, this is a comprehensive and up-to-date account of the principles of morphotactic analysis. Stump proposes that the arrangement of word forms' grammatically significant parts is an expression of the ways in which a language's morphological rules combine with one another to form more specific rules. This rule-combining approach to morphotactics has important implications for the synchronic analysis of both inflectional and derivational morphology, and it provides a solid conceptual platform for understanding both the processing of morphologically complex words and the paths of morphological change. Laying the groundwork for future research on morphotactic analysis, this is essential reading for researchers and graduate students in linguistics, and anyone interested in understanding language structure.
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This volume focuses on detailed studies of various aspects of Construction Morphology, and combines theoretical analysis and descriptive detail. It deals with data from several domains of linguistics and contributes to an integration of findings from various subdisciplines of linguistics into a common model of the architecture of language. It presents applications and extensions of the model of Construction Morphology to a wide range of languages. Construction Morphology is one of the theoretical paradigms in present-day morphology. It makes use of concepts of Construction Grammar for the analysis of word formation and inflection. Complex words are seen as constructions, that is, pairs of form and meaning. Morphological patterns are accounted for by construction schemas. These are the recipes for coining new words and word forms, and they motivate the properties of existing complex words. Both schemas and individual words are stored, and hence there is no strict separation of lexicon and grammar. In addition to abstract schemas there are subschemas for subclasses of complex words with specific properties. This architecture of the grammar is in harmony with findings from other empirical domains of linguistics such as language acquisition, word processing, and language change.
Languages in which non-finite verbs (infinitives, gerunds etc.) are classified using the same linguistic means as nouns are rare. This typologically unusual phenomenon is found in some Atlantic (Niger-Congo) languages, including Jóola languages like Eegimaa, Fogny and Kwatay, where several different noun class/gender prefixes (NCPs) are used to classify both nouns and verbs. In this book, it is argued following Sagna (2008), that these parallel morphosyntactic classifications in the nominal domain and verbal domains also reflect parallel semantic categorisation of entities and events. The main topics investigated in this book are word class flexibility between nouns and verbs, non-finiteness, noun class/gender (where morphological classes are analysed separately from agreement classes) and the semantic principles underlying the categorisation of entities and events. One of the central findings proposed in this book is that instances of NCP alternations on non-finite verbs reflect strategies of event delimitation. This book will be of interest to scholars investigating parts-of-speech systems, finiteness, systems of nominal and verbal classification, and linguistic categorization.
The Cangin languages of Senegal remained hidden from linguists for years, and have only recently been seriously documented. This book traces the history of the Cangin languages, and presents a reconstruction of Proto-Cangin through careful application of historical linguistic methods. This is one of few in-depth historical treatments of a West African language family, and takes into account all existing sources, including previously unpublished data from my own work on Noon. The reconstruction of Proto-Cangin reveals a number of important features now obscured in the modern languages, including a surprisingly rich inventory of noun class prefixes, which are of great importance to the study of the world’s largest language family, Niger-Congo. Included is a catalogue of over 600 Proto-Cangin reconstructions.
Morphological Perspectives takes words as the starting point for any questions about linguistic structure: their form, their internal structure, their paradigmatic extensions, and their role in expressing and manipulating syntactic configurations.