by hkum

Seminar in Linguistics 2003 : Abstracts


4/21 UMETANI Hiroyuki, "The Second Person Possessive Particles in Mongolian"

This paper examines the differences between the second person possessive particles cin' and tan'. They can be explained from pragmatic points of view, which have so far been not fully exploited.


5/12 LEE Munsuk, "Prosody in the Chonju Dialect of Korean"

It has been generally accepted that some dialects of Korean have clear oppositions of pitch accent, while others have none. In this paper a concept of "partial accent" is proposed, whereby an intermediate stage between a clear accent and no accent is defined and the hitherto unknown accent of the Chongju dialect is explained. The characteristics of such a type is unstable patterns and the fluctuation according to individuals and speech scenes. Disyllabic words have three patterns which frequently merge. Trisyllabic words have relatively stable two patterns. Another feature is that the pattern often depends on the initial consonant of a word.


5/19 MIMURA Tatsuyuki, "The Ternary Stress Accent in Danish"

It has been generally assumed that, like in many languages with stress accent, the position of the main stress in a word in Danish would be predictable through syllabic quantity. The present paper, however, points out that the position of the main stress cannot be deduced from syllabic quantity but should be assigned to each word individually, in view (1) of the existence of exceptions to the prediction, and (2) of the logical fallacy which depends on the position of the main stress in defining the syllabic quantity as the basis of the accent rules.

It is further shown that, when the postion of the main stress is compared with the number of the syllables of a word, it falls, without regard to the length of the word, in one of the last three syllables, thus limiting the patterns of the stress to three. Such a system is here defined as the Ternary Accent System.


5/26 KANG Youngsuk, "The Accent Rules of Compound Nouns in the Pusan Dialect of Korean"

In the accent system of compound nouns of the Pusan dialect some new rules in addition to those already discussed are shown to be working. They are:

  1. When the last syllable of the first member is high, which may potentially be followed by a particle in low, the second member with two or more syllables and with the first two syllables in high tends to behave, in deteremining the accent pattern of the compound, as if it has only the second syllable in high.
  2. No pattern with consecutive high syllables up to the the last is found among 5 or 6 syllable-words. When the first member has two syllables (and the second member three or more syllables), the last high syllable recedes to the second syllable of the second member. When the first member has three syllables, it, and not the second member, determines the accent pattern of the compound.
  3. Two-syllable words with the LH pattern potentially followed by a particle in low or high tend to behave the same way in forming a compound.

These represent a characteristic of this dialect.


6/2 SASAHARA Ken, "Middle Voice and Passive Voice in Upper Sorbian"

The present paper attempts to describe the voice system of Upper Sorbian on the basis of the meaning and behavior of reflexive verbs. It is shown that a new classification is possible when the logical sequence is considered.


6/10 KOJIMA Yasuhiro, "The Interrogative Particle tu in Modern Georgian"

In Modern Georgian we have two types of questions formed by means of the particle tu: (i) alternative questions with the conjunction tu; and (ii) questions with the interrogative particle tu ('tu-question'). A tu-question differs from an ordinary simple question in many respects. It is used only in a neutral context. In a tu-question polarity is neutralized, and accordingly there are some elements that cannot appear in a tu-question. In terms of its pragmatics, the tu-question is considered a special type of the alternative yes-no question.


6/23 EBATA Fuyuki, "Verbs of Existence in Sakha (Yakut)"

The present paper attempts to examine the charateristics of the verbs of existence (baar ‘exist’ and suox ‘not exist’) in Sakha (Yakut). These verbs of existence do not show the same behavior as nouns, adjectives or verbal adjectives, and must be set apart in the classification of parts-of-speech.


6/30 TAKAHASHI Miki, "On the Contour Tone and Mid Tone -- from the Materials in Cantonese, Minnan, Hakka and Thai"

The present paper deals with mutual interactions between the melodies and the tones of the lyrics of the songs in Cantonese of Hongkong and in the Central dialect of Thai, as well as with the tone sandhi phenomena in Minnan (Taiwanese), Hakka and Mandarin Chinese. It is claimed that, in consideration of the behavior of the tone observed in the songs together with the tone sandhi in the latter languages, the second half is relevant in the contour tone, and that the feature of the Mid-tone should be described as [-Upper].


7/7 CHE Xiangchun, "The Accent Rules of the Derivative Nouns in the Longjing Dialect of Korean"

This paper discusses the accent rules of the derivative nouns in the Longjing Dialect of Korean (Yanbian District, Jilin Province, China). The accent patterns of the derivative nouns other than compound nouns, which have already been discussed, are described according to the following groups: nouns with prefixes or suffixes, reduplicated words, four-character words and numerals.


7/14 SON Jaehyun, "Long Vowels and the Kyongsando Dialect of Korean"

The present paper focus on the prosody of the dialects of Taegu, Kyongju (both Kyongsan Pukdo) and Masan (Kyongsan Namdo). It is shown that the words whose initial syllable has a long vowel have a special accent pattern which behaves in a peculiar way in compound formation. Otherwise, these three dialects have the following characteristics in common when forming a compound:

  1. High syllables are not separated by one or more low syllable(s) within a word.
  2. Words other than those with a long vowel in the initial syllable have generally the same accent pattern in three dialects, which suggests the existence of the same underlying principles.
  3. In the accent pattern neither the first nor the second member seems to be dominant. Rather the juxtaposition of the accent patterns of both members is found prominently.

Two fundamental tendencies in the accent pattern of a compound seem to be in effect:
Each member tends to preserve its own accent pattern even within a compound, while high syllables cannot appear in two separate places.


7/14 HAYASHI Norihiko, "On the Voice in Jino"

Jino is spoken in the Xishuangbanna Tai Autonomous District in the Yunnan Province, China, and belongs to the Lolo-Burman branch of the Tibeto-Burman Family. The present paper examines the behavior of the case particle (postposition) va in view of the "voice" phenomenon in Jino. It is proposed that va functions, in addition to denoting the locative case, as an expression of the relation between the agent (causer) and the patient (causee).


10/6 SASAI Daisuke, "The Sublative Form of the Third Person Pronoun in Hungarian"

The present paper points out that there are two distinct uses of the sublative form of the third person pronoun in Hungarian. From this it is argued that the apparently same forms represent two different constructions.


10/20 XU Yongxin, "Transitivity in Passive Constructions of Japanese"

The present paper proposes a new hypothesis concerning the passive constructions in Japanese on the basis of "affectedness". This hypothesis advocates the necessity and usefulness of the distinction between "direct transitivity" and "indirect transitivity", which is used for the definition of transitive and intransitive verbs. The prototype of transitivity is also sought in view of this distinction.


10/27 KOGURA Norikazu, "The Verbal Suffix -ve in Shibo"

The present paper examines the use of the verbal suffix -ve in Shibo. It has been argued in the literature that the verbal suffix -ve expresses either causative or passive. However, the author's research revealed other uses than causative or passive. The reconsideration of all the uses including the newly discovered ones leads to the conclusion that the sentences with the verbal suffix -ve have the feature in common that the degree to which the agent expressed by the NP in the nominative controls the situation is weak.


11/10 MIYAZAKI Yôko, "Spatial Expressions in Mongolian : Variations Within the Language and Between Languages"

This research, which aims at elucidating the spatial expressions in Mongolian, was conducted in the urban as well as nomadic areas in Mongolia with the subjects of 369 persons using a questionnaire and models showing spatial orientations. A new classification of spatial expressions is proposed here whereby combinations of the two two-way distinctions, facing vs. aligning and basic vs. mirror-image, can cover all the possible patterns of four directions, front, back, right and left. This classification is claimed to bring order into apparently chaotic relations between languages concerning spatial expressions, thus establishing the position of Mongolian among languages of the world.


11/17 SAKAMOTO Ayako, "Coreference of NPs in the Serial Verb Construction in Khmer"

The present study attempts to describe what kinds of NP co-referentiality are allowed in the Serial Verb Construction of Khmer, and to show that there are certain pairs of NP co-referentiality, which has never been disccussed so far, involving a transitive verb and an intransitive verb.


12/1 KAWASUZAKI Hideyuki, "The Accent of Korean Spoken in the Heilongjiang Province, China"

This paper describes the accent of Korean of a speaker from Mudanjiang, in the Heilongjiang Province, China. Its monosyllabic nouns are divided into those which have an H when followed by a suffix, and those which have an L. Characteristically very few nouns both compared to other dialects and in consideration of historical development occur with an L. The majority of nouns with three or four sylables have the LLH and LLLH patterns, respectively. Monosyllabic verbs can be classified in four patterns.


12/8 TADA Kei, "The 'Verb-Complement' Construction in Taiwanese"

On the basis of the author's study of the complement hioh in the construction "Verb + Complement" in Taiwanese, the present paper examines some other complements in the same construction, with the result that the elements in the position of the complement express "state" or "manner of action" with low transitivity, and that the construction is used to express that transitive events have come about.


12/15 UEKUSA Yoshimasa, "The Use of the Dative and Locative in Tamil"

The present study compares the uses of the dative and locative cases in colloquial Tamil in Sri Lanka. It is pointed out that the dative expresses the changes outside an entity, while the locative expresses the changes of an entity itself, and that, while the dative expresses the goal in possession, etc., the locative does not do so.


1/19 NAGASAWA Itsuki, "Intentionality in the Manner Adverbial in Japanese"

Japanese adverbials which function outside the proposition (e.g., the so-called sentence adverbs) have been studied mainly in terms of the speaker's attitude reflected in them. The speaker's attitude in the adverbials within the proposition, on the other hand, has often been ignored. Among the latter class of adverbials, the present study mainly focuses on manner adverbials, and shows that the meaning of a sentence will depend on whether the adverbial reflects the speaker's attitude or that of a participant.

In particular, it is pointed out that what has been called the "resultative adverb" or "resultative predicate in a resultative construction" does not always mean genuine result: as a reflection of the speaker's attitude it will show a high degree of resultativeness; as a reflection of the agent's intention it will not always show a result. Accordingly, to describe the nature of such adverbials, the concept of "goal-orientedness" is more suitable than resultativeness. In addition, by contrasting some Japanese and English adverbials, this study points out the possibility that among the manner adverbials in Japanese, some would reflect more strongly the agent's attitude, and others the speaker's.


1/26 OGIHARA Hirotoshi, "On the Use of the Pronominal Suffix in Tocharian B"

Tocharian B has, apart from pronouns, a class of pronominal suffixes attached to finite verbs. The present paper shows that, comparing the uses of the pronoun and pronominal suffix, the pronominal suffix has, unlike the pronoun, only the anaphoric function.


1/26 ABE Maya, "Tense and Aspect in Ma'a"

The present paper surveys the tense-aspect system of Ma'a as spoken in the Western part of the Usambara Mountains in the North-Eastern Tanzania. The grammaticalized tense-aspect system is expressed by means of prefixes or suffixes, whose forms are common to both Inner Ma'a and Outer Ma'a, although some differences of frequency in their use are observed.


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