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It is argued here that the accent system of nouns in the Asikebu-Arira dialect, Naze City, Amami-Oosima, is of the "multi-pattern accent" type, formulated as Pn = 2n-1. It has two tonal registers (high-level and low-rising) and one lowering accent kernel. This is peculiar among the Ryuukyuan Dialects, where "N-pattern accent" types are dominant. I also argue that the tonal registers of the Asikebu-Arira Dialect are derived from the segmental features. Two lists of words with their accents follow.
The -TE ARU construction in Japanese expresses a current state derived as a result of some previous action. This construction should be divided into four types. I point out similarities and differences among the four types.
In this article, I argue that the meaning of a word consists of two types of semantic features, essential features and accompanying features. The former make up the central, or basic, meaning of the word, and the latter account for the conventional metaphorical meanings of the word. In metaphorical meanings, part (or possibly all) of the essential meanings is suppressed, and at least one of the accompanying features are realized.
This paper examines the use of the Japanese classifier hon. Referring to the result of our interviews, an attempt is made at extracting semantic properties involved in determining the use of hon. We especially focus our attention on border-line cases for the application of hon, and clarify three properties, namely, inanimacy, one-dimensionality and constancy which motivate a speaker to count objects with hon.
In this paper the meaning of the Indonesian suffix -nya is examined. The suffix -nya has a wide range of distribution so that it can be attached not only to nouns and verbs but also to auxiliaries and prepositions. It seems that adjectives which are followed by -nya on the one hand, and those which are combined with the prefix ke- and the suffixe -an on the other, have similar properties in that they can behave as nouns. The purpose of this paper is to obseve the inherent meaning of -nya by comparing these two nominalized forms of adjectives.
This paper points out the following features of the Burmese particle -ha_, which is said to be a marker of the topic or subject. It is shown that (1) -ha_ has a tendency to be suffixed to the sentence-initial component; (2) -ha_ has a tendency not to occur in subordinate clauses; (3) when a subordinate clause (unless it is a quotative one) appears between a subject and its predicate, the subject tends to be suffixed with -ha_; and (4) -ha_ is sometimes attached to non-subject nouns.
The Lhasa Tibetan verbal predicate "V + chun" (V denoting a verb) is used for a completed situation of persons or things. Many studies so far consider that it is used for a situation which happened to the speaker himself, Some of them further argue that it can also be used under certain conditions for a situation which occurred to someone other than the speaker. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the conditions under which the predicate is used and to examine its meaning.
In the Azpeitia dialect of Basque, there are some verbal predicates which express "ability" and/or "possibility." {V LEIKE} and {V-TIE EUKI} are two of them ("V" standing for a verb). This paper is an attempt to describe the usage and semantics of these predicates, their corresponding negative forms {EZIN LEIKE}, {EZ EUKI} and another negative predicate {EZIN DU}, which is used most frequently.
This paper deals with Modern Icelandic reciprocal verbs ending in the suffix -st. Sentences with -st reciprocal verbs fall into four patterns. The verbs can be classified according to which of the four pattern(s) they appear in. It is also pointed out that there is a correlation between the classification of the verbs and their meaning and that this classification might reflect certain historical developments in some cases.
The aim of this paper is to describe in terms of the tone various verbal forms such as the infinitive and indicative forms in the Kgatla Dialect of Tswana, a Bantu language spoken in Botswana and South Africa.
In this paper, I attempt to describe the meaning of the Portuguese verb CORTAR "to cut". The method used is to analyze the actual use of CORTAR according to conditions such as the means of the action and the nature of the object. I have tried to extract both the necessary conditions and sufficient conditions for CORTAR to be used. Metaphoric and idiomatic uses are excluded as much as possible from the discussion.
The static view of language, which is typical of Generative Grammar, easily assumes that every language is perfect and complete in systematicity, whereas the dynamic view of language ususally regards a language as an incomplete system of rules. This paper argues against the completeness of language system. In the second half, restrictions on the usage of Japanese postpositions are discussed to demonstrate that a language system can include incompatible grammatical rules.
