WG 4: Turkic, Mongolic, Caucasian... and NPs

Working Group 4 members• Alice Harris (co-chair): NE Caucasian, Cartvelian• Arienne Dwyer (co-chair): Turkic, Mongolic, Sino-

Tibetan• Bill Rivers – Slavic, Turkic• Anna Kibort – Slavic• Imelda Udoh - Legbo• Jeff Good – NE Caucasian, Turkic, Niger-Congo• Steve Moran – Niger-Congo• Lameen Souag – Arabic, Berber, Beja, (Japanese)• Florian Siegl – Uralic, Paleoasiatic (Chuckchee,

Yukagir, Nivkh)

Higher-level “variation” domains or multiple intersecting trees?

• Dialect variant forms/functions (SUNDAY)

• Historical etyma (SUNDAY or NEVER)

• Sociolinguistics– Honorifics/Humilifics – Pejoratives (which are covered in GOLD)

Pragmatics/Discourse

• Topic, Focus, Cleft

•  Honorifics/Humilifics - Muna (Austronesian), Japanese, Uyghur (Turkic), Maithili (I-E)

Issues of cross-referencing

When multiple form/function phenomena can be cross-referenced to a particular form in the ontology:

• E.g. cleft: both focus and syntactic property

• E.g. evidentiality (next)

• E.g. finiteness

Evidentiality(6.4 [indep.] class)

• hierarchy: y’all got it right

• Definition: Primary relates to the source of information, and only secondarily modality

• Orthagonal reference: Form + etymon is frequently related to the perfect.

• (relegate to a COPE?)

Finiteness• Terminological distinctions: masdar, participle,

converb/coverb, infinitive, medial verb, supine From the POV of POS, =Subordinate connective – analytic category

• From the POV of the clause, = Subordinated verb form – synthetic category

• yet another form/function dichotomy...Do we deal with these with COPEs or in ontology?• i.e. How deep do we go?• Decision based on what users may want to search,

and the theoretical interests of the data provider

enough until tomorrow!!!

WG4-Sunday/Higher-level I:

• Cross-referencing– function x-ref’d to form– syntax x-ref’d to morphology (e.g. clause

chaining to verbal morphology)– featural distinctions can be more useful than a

hierarchy • to precisely define (localize) categories for a

given language, but • the hierarchy may well be useful for querying

Higher-level, II:• Historical information

– Problem: the use of labels based on historical criteria rather than modern

– Finnish: "Essive" is historical essive, but not used in the way that current linguists (and GOLD) define an essive

– Georgian: historically had an ergative case, today this case is not ergative, but much more complex and essentially unlabelable.

• Pragmatics/Discourse – including Topic, Focus...

Lower-level - New Cats + Addenda :– Pluractionals (aka Frequentative) in Number, x-ref’d to

FrequentativeAspect– V concept: finiteness

• V cats: converb/coverb, medial verb, masdar, participle– Adj cats: need to be much more elaborated:Positive, Comparative, Superlative, Elative (comparative and

superlative), Relative– “Verb”: Trans/Ditrans/Intrans (consider under Intrans or x-

cutting: unergative/active, unaccusative/inactive)– Evidentials: changed definition to highlightsource of

information, x-ref with Perfect (raises problem of Gzn processes and historical forms)

– Sound symbolism, onomatopoeia (under 5: PoS cats)

Nominal categories I• Number

– Should be a separate class (taken out of Nouns)

– x-ref with Pluractionals

• Person– Consider x-ref’ing notion of Impersonal (shows up also

in Voice), or creating an Impersonal Person

• Gender (not adequate for arbitrary gender)– Need more complexity: the definition of Other should

be expanded to include Neuter and many other N classifiers

– refined definitions of M/F

Nominal cats, II: Case

• We suggest using a featural system rather than the hierarchical one

• Many lgs, like Avar, shows that you sometimes have to combine the features of location and motion, which you currently have separate.

• Additional cats: Affective case; Oblique (in a higher up Core:Obl opposition); distinct from Cor:Loc/Motion:Other

“Further work”

(Translation: We didn’t get around to these):

• Personal affixes and possessives

• Head-marking, dependant marking

• Root pattern morphology

Evidence + Outcomes

• See Working Group 4’s change-tracked addenda to the GOLD.

Contains revised definitions, new categories, references.

File: gold-view-rev3_WG4.doc