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The present paper deals with the use of the copula / auxiliary bu- in Upper Sorbian through the examination of the electronic text corpus from the end of the 19th century to the present day. The result shows, on the one hand, that the use of bu- decreases as time goes by, and, on the other, that bu- as copula becomes increasingly polular at the expense of bu- as auxiliary, with a relative decrease of passive forms. Thus bu- is in the process of becoming a copula with aspectual elements from an auxiliary of passive, which suggests the possiblilty of the parallelism with German werden.
The present paper aims to clarify the areal distribution of those accent types which have been studied to date.
The accents of Korean have been classified as a pitch accent of the type of Japanese. However, the dialects chiefly studied have been only those of the Gyeongsang-do and Hamgyeong-do, with the result that no overall picture has been presented for the whole area. This paper examines, in addition to the dialects of the Gyeongsang-do and Hamgyeong-do, which are known as the areas of the multi-type accent, the accents of those dialects of the Gangwon-do, Jeolla-do, Chungcheong-do and Jeju-do, which have not been studied in depth. With a fresh interpretation of these materials a new classification is proposed.
Norwegian has two types of pitch accent: one has chiefly a low level tone in the streesed syllable (= Acc1), while the other has a falling tone there (= Acc2).
The studies on the coutours of these accents have been unsatistfactory in that they fail to describe the contour of the first type accurately. They also limit themselves to the consideration of those (mostly bisyllabic) words with the stress on the first syllable, and disregard polysyllabic words with different stress placements.
The present study includes those polysyllabic words with the stress on the second or ulterior syllable, with a conclusion that:
The accent system of the Miryang dialect shows n + 2 way opposition for n-syllable words. A characteristic of this dialect is the co-existence of two types, namely a type where the position of the accent (accent kernel) is phonemic, on the one hand, and a type where each accent unit (phrase) has one of the fixed intonation patterns, on the other. Thus the accent of this dialect operates on two separate principles. In addition, different generations show peculiar fluctuation between and predilection for some accent types, which suggests that the accent of this dialect is in the process of changing.
The present paper discusses the use of three interrogative particles, -la42, -nya42 and -a44 in Jino, a language belonging to the Lolo-Burman branch of the Tibeto-Burman family, and spoken in the Yunnan Province, China. It is proposed here that the selection of one of the three depends on a formal criterion as well as the attitude of the speaker. The main points of the conclusion are as follows:
As the formal criterion it is important to distinguish the yes-no question from the wh-question. Basically -la42 is used with the yes-no question, while with the wh-question -nya42 is used. In addition, even with the wh-question, when the sentence preceding the particle has a nominal predicate, and not a verbal predicate, -a44 is used, since -nya42 cannot follow a nominal predicate.
In some cases, however, -nya42 is used with the yes-no question. In such cases, in contrast with questions with -la42, it is proposed that the act of asking by the speaker is much more intense.
The present paper attempts to clarify the prosody of the Kwangju dialect, which is in the process of decay similar to the Chonju dialect the present writer has been studying.
The accent of the Kwangju dialect can be classified into the following three classes: A the initial high and a row of lows for the rest; B the first two syllables maintain the same height; and C the initial low with the high second syllable. However, there are strong tendencies for the words with tense, aspirated, s or h initial (termed as special consonants here) to belong to class B, and for the rest of the words to belong to class C. As a result, each class has quite uneven membership.
For longer words (four or more syllables) class A becomes rarer, and, if the initial is one one of the special consonants, they merge into class B. Words with a initial long vowel syllable shorten it, with unstable prosodic patterns, which suggests, in the present writer's opinion, a change in progress.
In summary, the Kwangju dialect shows the following changes in prosody:
Sakha (Yakut) has the so-called 'collective accusative' suffix -LERI. An NP with the suffix -LERI is used together with an accusative object, and denotes 'accessory' to the object. -LERI is usually attached to an inanimate NP. An NP with this suffix cannot take possessive suffixes, though the it must be the possession of the object. This relationship is paralleled by that of the comitative NP and the subject.
It is known in the literature that the perfect form of a verb in Modern Georgian may express a hypothetical future event in conditional clauses formed by tu. The present paper discusses semantic and pragmatic conditions under which the construction realizes:
This paper proposes a new classification of the serial verb construction in Taiwanese in terms of the semantic relations as well as syntactic features
It is argued, as opposed to other studies on the topic, that 1 should be classified as a separate category, while the so-called "pivotal construction" should be included in 5.
The present paper gives the results of a research on a large-scale corpus concerning the usage of the wo-causative and ni-causative in Japanese. It is found out that there are no discernable semantic differences. Either can be used in cases where no clear-cut difference between compulsory and non-compulsory situations is found, or no such distinction matters. However, in a compulsory situation, when the intention of the causer is of importance, the ni-causative tends not to be used, while there seems to be no restriction on the wo-causative.
The phonemic and phonetic descriptions of Dohoi/Kadorih are presented. The main points have been summarized as below.
Tamil has two types of equational sentences, one without a copula (zero-copula sentences) and the other with iru. The present paper examines the circumstances under which the latter type is used. With the comparison of the two types, it is intended to illuminate the characteristics of the type with iru. It is shown that the type with iru can represent, not only temporariness as previously remarked, but also contrast and discovery. Some restrictions on the nominal complements are also pointed out.
The present paper examines the commonly used Japanese expression of gratitude 'arigatō' and its Turkish equivalents 'teşekkür ederim' and others on the basis of the model for the restoration of human relations (Moriyama 1999). The differences of the use of these expressions according to the speech scenes are discussed, as well as the expressions used as a reply to them.
The present paper examines the influence of the native language in the acquisition of word order in Japanese by three Vietnamese children. The research consists of a series of interviews conducted during a 10 month period, which reveals that, while in the constituents order (SOV) hardly any influence of Vietnamese is perceived, the internal structure of noun phrases expressing possession (N-no N) is liable to be affected. The tendencies in the use of particles and its traits as an interlanguage are also pointed out.
This paper aims to elucidate how zero anaphora interacts with grammatical relations in Tagalog. The data examined here are narratives of approximately 70 minutes produced by 23 native Tagalog speakers, where they retold The Pear Story after watching its movie. Based on the typology of zero anaphora proposed here, I demonstrate that the O is more likely to be realized as a zero pronoun than the A and the S in Tagalog. To put it differently, the default anaphoric form for the S and the A is a pronoun, while that for the O is a zero. This may be called an accusative pattern in that the A and S behave alike excluding the O. Agentive and topical referents, which are typically in A or S function, tend to be referred to by a pronoun rather than a zero in Tagalog.
In Cherokee different groups of verbs take different sets of aspect affixes, whereby it is held that it is not possible to predict, from the form and meaning of the verbal stem, which set of affixes goes with a given verb. The present paper focuses on the so far neglected "lexical meaning" of the verb, and points out that the kinds of the aspect affixes to some extent correlate with the meaning of the verb, especially its "Aktionsart". In support of this view the frequency of Type B Personal affixes with a positive correlation to [+ state] is adduced.
Many outstanding researches have already been done on the usage of the imperative form of Japanese. However, quite a few of them attribute a priori the yare-series to "command" and the yattekure-series to "request". The present paper concentrates on these two types, forms represented by yare and those by yattekure, and shows that the essential function of yattekure is not "request", and that in contrast to yare, yattekure cannot be used:
Kaida-di, a writing system which incorporates ideographic and numeric characters, was used in Yonaguni and other Yaeyama islands for recording transactions, tax payments, and family names. This system began to fall out of use after the introduction of Japanese in the Meiji period.
This paper is a preliminary attempt to trace the history of the writing system in the 20th century, and to comprehensively record all attested characters and their readings in Yonaguni dialect. I will contend that the kaida characters have three separate origins:
The present paper traces the change of the use from the Meiji period to the present of the Japanese adverbs akirakani, hutūni and muyamini on the basis of a corpus stydy. The use of the adverb of manner for akirakani "clearly" is on the decline starting from the 1920s, while the use of the sentential adverb with the certainty of speaker's judgment supported by evidence or circumstances increases about the same time. Hutūni originally meant "generally" being composed of the noun hutū "average" with the particle ni. However, since the 1950s-1960s a new use began to prevail expressing that the manner, frequency or degree is average. In recent years still newer uses can be observed among some speakers. The semantic range of muyamini has narrowed down from the Meiji period to the present. It now basically means, with a negative connotation, an action without firm purposes or prospects.
The suffix -lar in the Taškent dialect of Uzbek is employed, in addition to the use as the mark of plurality, when the speaker elevates the referent in the utterance. Between these two uses some formal differences in person and morphotactics relevant to the suffix can be observed. The honorific -lar shows either of the following fundamental characteristics:
The 'tis (~it is) ... construction, which is a main syntactic feature of Hiberno (Irish)-English (South-Western dialect), behaves differently from the clect sentence it is X that Y in Standard English. The present paper points out the inadequacy of the traditional analysis of such sentences as cleft, in view of the frequent absence of that, as well as the characteristics and information structure of the constituent elements ('tis~it is, where it is procliticized, X and that). It is intended that a 'non-cleft' analysis can be shown to give a coherent description to such sentences in the data used.
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