Transcript verbs

Hülya YILDIZ
Zehra ŞERİFOĞLU
Ceylan AYAN
Esen ŞAHİN
 In all known languages, both spoken and signed, the vocabulary of an
individual language can be grouped into open and closed word classes.
 Open word classes are typically lexical classes and are those where
words can easily be added, for instance through derivation or other ways
of forming new words, or through borrowing.
 Closed word classes are typically functional classes and are those where
words are not readily added; while there is change in these classes too,
the change is much slower than with open classes.
1. WORD FORMATION
There are two main ways for languages to form new lexemes: derivation
and compounding.
 Compounding basically involves amalgamations of lexemes to form a
new lexeme. For example,
‘ windmill’ wind + mill
 Derivation relies on modifying a lexeme through various
morphological processes to form a new lexeme. For example,
‘healthy’ health and the suffix –y
Compounding and derivation are not mutually exclusive.
For instance,
 Football is a compound foot + ball
 Footballer is a derivation football + er
a. Derivation
Derivational morphology is different from inflectional morphology in
that, very generally speaking, inflection carries grammatical information
such as number, case and gender, while derivation does not. Derivation
only serves to create new words; these new words may then take necessary
inflectional morphology
For example,
 from ‘trap’ , deriving the word ‘entrapment’ ,using the prefix ‘-en’
and the suffix ‘-ment’
There are many different ways in which languages can form new
words through derivation, and any one language may employ several
strategies. A common derivational device is affixing. Another very
common derivational device is reduplication.
 Apophony involves internal modification of the stem. For example,
Derivation involving both a vowel and a consonant change is ‘breach’
/bɹi:tʃ/ from ‘break’ /bɹeik/ (Aikhenvald 2007:45)
 Prosodic modification through stress or tone is another derivational
device. For instance,
 ʼpermit (noun) and perʼmit (verb)
The difference between this noun and verb is only one of stress.
 Less common are devices which involve removing something. With
substraction a predictable part of the word is removed. An example can
be found in French, where the masculine counterpart of the feminine
adjective form is predictably shorter, namely lacking the final
consonant: compare petite /pətit/ ‘little.F’ versus petit /pəti/ ‘little.M’
and verte /vɛʁt/ ‘green.F’ versus vert /vɛʁ/ ‘green.M’ (Bauer 2003:
39)
Other kinds of shortenings are truncation clipping and
backformation. An example of clipping is pram from prembulator or
phone from telephone. One way of thinking of truncations is that the
suffix –ate is cut off (tuncated) before the suffix –ee is added to
evacuA back-formation is when a part of a word which seems to be an
affix (but might not be) is deleted an example is baby- sit from
baby-sitter where –er is conceived of as a suffix parallel to the
suffix in singer and runner.
 A blend involves merging to words that get partly truncated, as in
smog which consist of the begining of the smoke and the end of fog
,or motel which consists of the begining of motor and the end of
hotel
 Conversion is when a word changes word class without any
modification to the word itself. An example would be bottle, which
in isolation is intuitively classed as a noun, but which by
conversion can be used as a word,for instance in To bottle wine.
b. Compounding
• A compound is not just two separate words, but that it actually constitutes its
own phonological unit. This hold true irrespective of how the compound is
spelled, as it is the pronunciation that is relevant.
For example;
In English, compound words are written as one one word, with a hyphen
or two separate words such as,
football, pie-eyed, and fire door.
The essential thing about all these words is that they are pronounced as one
phonological units, they all have only one primary stress :
football /fʊtbɔ:l/ , pie-eyed /paıaıd/ , fire door /faıədɔ(ɹ)/
There are exceptions to this general rule. Pacoh (Austro-Asiatic (Katuic):
Vietnam) compounds may consist of phonologically free words but still
function as one single lexeme, as in ‘aat achéq’ wilderness ( Anial+
Bird)(Watson 1976: 226).
 Compounds are also generally inflected only once, as one word, as its head
(main) lexeme. We would inflect for plural only once for the entire
compound:
fooballs (not *feetballs), fire doors (not *fires doors)
 There are also exceptions to this rule, even in English. Both parts of the
compound are inflected.
tooth mark = teeth marks
 Compound generally do not get broken up by, for example, modifiers.
a new football *a footnewball
a metal fire door *a fire metal door
 It should be kept in mind that none of these criteria are absolute
universals.
Types of compounds
 Endocentric compounds ( tatpuruşa compounds) refer to “sub- class” of the items
denoted by one of ( the) elements.
AB is an instance of B
Like these compounds give extra information about head.
The word class of these compounds are determined by their head.
In English:
school boy
tea pot
black bird
sea sick
bed room
diesel motor
In Maori :
wharenui (whare ‘house’ + nui ‘big’ is a type of house (Harlow 2007: 130).
 Exocentric compounds (bahuvrihi compounds ) not refer to ‘a sub- category’
of any of the compounded elements.
A+B denotes a special kind of an unexpressed semantic head.
A+ B is not an instance A or B
In English: pie-eyed ‘drunk’ ( neither a type of pie nor a type of eye)
redneck ‘ illiterate’ ( neither a type of red nor a type of neck)
In Lango: wan ɔt ‘window’ ( neither a type of wan ‘eye’ nor a type of ɔt
‘house’)
In Maori : ihipuku ‘sea elephant’ ( neither a type of ihi ‘ nose’ nor a type of
puku ‘swollen’)
 Copulative or coordinatve compounds ( dvandva compouns) refer to “an
entity made up of the two elements mentioned in the compound together”
(Bauer 2003: 43).
A+ B denote “the sum” of what A and B denote
In English : bitter-sweet (both bitter and sweet)
actor-director ( both actor and director)
blue- green ( both blue and green)
In Malto: pesa- taka ( both pesa ‘coin’ and taka ‘bank- note, rupee’) (Steever
1998: 384).
 Syntactic compounds ( verbal compound ) the head element is a verb and
modifying element is something which could have functioned as the verb’s
argument in a phrase.
In English: hair-dryer ( the head is the verb DRY and HAIR is an argument of
the verb DRY)
earmark, head hunt
In Russian: sneg-o-pad ‘snowfall’(sneg ‘snow+ o ‘linker’+ pad ‘falling’;
Aikhenvald 2007: 32).
- Incorporation is a special type of syntactic compound because it involves not
only the word-formation process of combining two lexemes, but also involves
a host of other proceses, both morphological and syntactic.
- Noun incorporation is, the most common type of incorporation, a noun incorporated
into a verb.
Yucatec (Mayan (Mayan): Mexico)
(52) a. t-in-p’o?-ø-ah
nook
Comp-1sg-wash-it-perf
cloths
‘I washed (the) clothes.’
b. p’o?-nook-n-ah-en
wash-clothes-antipass-prf-1sg.abs
‘I clothes-washed.’ (= I washed clothes)
(Bricker 1978: 15)
In (52a) nook ‘clothes’ ia an object of the verb p’o?. It refers to specific clothes.
In (52b) the incorporation refers to “a unitary activity”, general action, but it
doesn’t refers to specific entity.
 Incorporation consists of not only the full form of the noun but also the stem form
of the full, free noun.
Huasteca Nahualt (Uto-Aztecan (Aztecan). Mexico)
(53) a. askéman ti-?-kwa nakalt
never
2sg-it-eat meat
‘ You never eat meat’
b. na? ipanima ni-naka-kwa
1sg always
1sg-meat eat
‘I eat meat all the time.’ ( lit. ‘I always meat-eat’)
(Merlan 1976: 185)
Turkısh
balık tutmak
kitap okumak
seyahat etmek
(fish- catch)
( book-read)
(trip-take)
2. PART OF SPEECH
Parts-of-speech (or word classes), which in essence are major categories
of words that group together grammatically.
Languages differ radically in how many classes they have and in the
proportions of these classes. Some languages have an extremely limited
set of closed class words (or functional categories), while others have a
high number of such words.
 Some languages have only two open word classes (or lexical categories),
others, like English, have as many as four separate such classes.
Furthermore, a word class found in one language will not necessarily be
found in another language. In other words, while it seems to be universal
that languages actually do group their words into categories of some kind,
the categories themselves are languages dependent.
A. Lexical classes
The open classes
- Consist of content words, i.e. words with more or less concrete, specific
meanings.
- Languages may have up to four major open class parts-of-speech, nouns,
verbs, adjectives and adverbs. The definitions of these categories rely on
a cluster of features, both semantic (denoting meaning), grammatical
and syntactic (how items are combined).
In English, nouns can be subcategorized into mass and count nouns,
depending on whether they can take the plural (e.g. sand/*sands versus
chair /chairs); or proper and common nouns, depending on whether
they can take the article (e.g. Peter/*the Peter versus chair/ the chair),
or abstract versus concrete (e.g. emotion versus chair),
Other languages subcategorize depending on whether or not the item is
possessable.
In Maasai, for example, nouns are either possessable or non-possessable.
Such things as tools, money, houses, kin, and so on can be marked for
possession grammatically, but such things as meat, water, land and stars
cannot.
In Mamaindé,
Subcategorize their nouns depending on, among other things,
physical properties such as consistency (whether the item in
question is solid or liquid) and shape (Eberhard 2009). In other
words, the potential sub categorizations of each major part-ofspeech category are language dependent.
 Nouns
- Refers to things, persons and places, but also includes abstract notions such
as feelings, ideas.
- Grammatically, nouns may typically be marked for
 number (how many of the item (s) are being referred
to),
 case (what role the item has in the sentence),
 gender (what sub-category the item belongs to)
 definiteness (whether it is a specific entity referred to or not), for instance
through morphological processes, but also, especially in the case of
languages with predominantly analytic strategies, through syntactic
processes.
 Combine with demonstrative pronouns (e.g. this/that as in this/that house)
and many function as arguments (that is, participants, e.g. Subject and
object) in a clause.
English has two numbers;
o singular (one entity)
o plural (more than one of the same entity); as in chair versus chairs.
Lavukale, specify for dual (two of the same entity), as in funfun ‘firefly’
(singular)-funfunil ‘ (two) fireflies’ (dual) – funfunaul ‘fireflies’ (plural).
- While English hardly has any case marking at all, the exception
being the genitive ‘s as in chair’s, many languages do mark for
case.
 In Dime; (Afro-Asiatic (South Omotic): Ethiopia): compare ziti
‘ox’ (nominative case) with zitim ‘ox’ (accusative case) (Seyoum
2008).
- Gender refers to which subclass the noun belong to.
 In French;
nouns are either masculine (le cadeau ‘the gift’)or feminine (la table ‘the
table’),
 In German;
nouns are either masculine (der Stuhl ‘the chair’), feminine (die Mütze ‘the
hat, cap’) or
neuter (das Buch ‘the book’).
Definiteness indicates whether we are referring to a general example of an
entity or a specific entity, as in the difference between a man, the man.
 Verbs
 Verb refers to actions and processes (e.g. Dance, grow, etc.), but also
states (e.g. Know, exist, etc.).
 Verbs may typically be marked for tense (placing the event in time),
 Aspect (specifying the perspective taken on the event),
 Mood (indicating the speaker’s attitude toward a situation or a
statement),
 Voice (e.g. Whether an event is active or passive)
 Polarity (whether the statement is in the affirmative or the negative)
 Verbs may also be marked for person agreement, where a grammatical
marker indicates the number and person of an argument, most commonly
the subject.
 Verbs typically function as predicates, typically form the core of the
sentence or clause and typically have ‘a relational meaning, relating one or
more participants to an event’ (Anward 2006:408).
Types of Verbs in Turkish
VERB TYPE
EXPLANATION
EXAMPLES
Intransitive verbs
Require no object (complement)
Uyumak,üşümek,yürümek..
Transitive verbs
Require direct object
Yemek,içmek,ütülemek…
Ditransitive verbs
Require both direct and indirect
objects
Dayamak,sormak,göndermek,
yollamak, vermek…
Verbs that require oblique
objects
Require one indirect object or
another complement
Bakmak, hoşlanmak, nefret
etmek…
Copular verbs
(Linking verbs)
Link the subject and the predicate -İmek, olmak,zero
of a sentence
copula,etc.e.g. Ali geçen yıl
öğrenci idi.
Tense, Aspect, and Mood in Turkish
Tense;
a)
Okul-lar pazartesi açıl-dı.
school-PL Monday open-PF
‘ The schools started on Monday.’
b) Okul-lar Pazartesi açıl-acak
-FUT
‘ The schools will start on Monday.’
Aspect;
a)
Ahmet bir elma ye-di.
an apple eat-PF
‘ Ahmet ate an apple.’
b) Ahmet bir elma yi-yor-du.
-IMPF-P.COP
‘Ahmet was eating an apple.’
c)
Ahmet sabahları bir elma ye-r-di.
-AOR-P.COP
‘In the mornings Ahmet used to eat an apple.’
 Mood Markers
in Turkish
-sA
Denotes conditional meanings; bilsen, bilseydin,
bilseymiş, okusaydın…
-(y)A
Optative mood marker. Which is the expression
of speaker’s wish; yapayım, yapalım…
-mAII
Modal functions of obligation/necessity, and
assumption; Ali’ye olmalı…
-(y)Abil
modal category that marks ability and possibility.; okuyabilirim…
 English has three tenses, two of which are marked morphologically and one
that is marked syntactically.
o The present tense (placing the event in the present, the ‘now’) is marked
with a suffix –s for third person singular, as in He walks.
o The past tense (placing the event in the past) is also marked
morphologically, with a suffixed -ed, as in He walked
o The future tense (placing the event in the future) is marked analytically with
the use of an auxiliary verb, as in He will walk.
 It is common for languages to have some kind of aspect marking.
o In English, marks for progressive (denoting that the event is on-going)
with the suffix –ing, as in He is walking.
 Languages may also make a grammatical difference between perfective
and imperfective (again extremely simplified, if an event is seen as an
ongoing process).
o In French, where the difference between ll a payé ‘he paid’ (perfective)
and ll payait ‘he paid’ (imperfective) is one of aspect.
 English has two voices, active and passive.
o Active;
He opened the door,
o Passive;
The door was opened by him.
 Languages also mark for polarity one way or another, and often that is done
in connection with the verb. English contrasts affirmative and negative
sentences with not,as in He walked versus He did not walk.
 The only form of person agreement that English has is the
present tense third person singular suffix –s, as in He
walks versus I walk.
Other languages, however, grammatically indicate
agreement for all three persons, and all the numbers that
the language has.
o In Italian, the verb is inflected for three persons and two numbers:
Italian (Indo-European: (Romance):Italy)
1SG mangio ‘I eat’
2SG mangi
‘you eat’
3SG mangia ‘he/she/it eats’
1PL mangiamo ‘we eat’
2PL mangiate ‘you eat’
3PL mangiano ‘they eat’
 Other languages may inflect for dual, and even trial and paucal, depending
on their systems.
A cluster of characteristics that may serve to identify whether a given word
is a noun or a verb. For example;
o In Mwotlap (Austronesian (Oceanic): Vanuatu)
koyo ma-tayak ke, to ke ni-ente-yo togolgol
3du pfct-adopt 3sgthen 3sg aor-child-3du straight
‘They have adopted him, so that he (became) their legitimate son’.
In example; ente ‘chid’ is marked both for tense/aspect with the aorist
prefix ni- and for agreement with the 3rd person dual subject with the suffix
–yo, just as if it had been a verb.
 Adjectives
Adjectives typically modify nouns, and denote qualities and attributes.
Quantitive or limitating adjectives (like many, a little…) never form an open
class
! Descriptive adjectives may form open class in many languages, but it does
not universal…
! Grammatically adjectives may be specified for degree, either
morphologically or syntactically.
Also grammatically adjectives cannot combine with nouns or verbs
In English: too cold is acceptable
*too book or *too follow is unacceptable
! In some languages adjectives show agreement in form with the noun
they modify.
In German: ein roter Stuhl (masculine) ‘a red chair’
eine rote Blume (feminine) ‘a red flower’
ein rotes Haus (neuter) ‘a red house’
The adjective (rot) is marked morphologically to agree with the gender
of the noun its modifies.
 There are three degree modifications; positive, comparative, superlative
 Degree or comparison may be expressed either morphologically or
syntactically.
English has both options
tall (positive), taller (comparative) , tallest (superlative) : the adjective
(tall) is marked morphologically
beautiful (positive) , more beautiful (comparative), most beautiful
(superlative) : the adjective (beautiful) is marked analytically.
 The use of adjective separate into two groups;
1) modification of a noun > a big apple
2) predication (denoting a property of the subject of a clause)
> the apple is big
! While nouns and verbs form near-universal open class categories,
this is not the case with adjectives.
153 languages for adjectives are mapped.
66 (43.1 %) have an open class
30 (19.6%) have a closed class
57 (37.3%) do not have any separate class for adjectives
 Igbo has a very small closed class of adjectives which counting only 8.
Four properties ‘value’, ‘dimension’, ‘age’, ‘colour’ are found in a closed
class adjectives
Other properties like position (high), speed (fast), physical characteristics
(hard) are expressed with nouns or verbs in languages with a closed
class of adjectives
VALUE
COLOUR
DIMENSION
AGE
Oma ‘good’
Ojı?ı ‘black,dark’
Ukwu ‘large’
Ohu?ru ‘new’
Ojo?o ‘bad’
Oca ‘white,light’
Nta
Ocye
‘small’
‘old’
 In Hause, properties (value, dimension, age, colour) are expressed by
nouns.
Hausa (Afro – Asiatic (West Chanadic): Nigeria)
a. Mutum mai alheri
b. Mutum mai doki
person having kindness
person having horse
‘a kind person’
‘a person having a horse’
c. Yana da alheri
d. Yana da doki
he.is with kindness
he.is with horse
‘he is kind’
‘he has a horse’
(describe properties are expressed by possession of nouns)
 In Bemba language, adjectival notions are expressed with verbs.
Adjectival notions are expressed with verbs whether relativized or not
Bemba (Niger- Congo (Bantoid) : DR Congo)
a. Umuuntu uashipa
c. Umuuntu aashipa
person who.is.brave
person is.brave
‘a brave person’
‘the person is brave’
b.
Umuuntu ualemba
person who.is.writing
‘a person who is writing’
d. Umuuntu aalemba
person is.writing
‘the person is writing’
 Adverbs
! Adverbs may constitute an open class, also it is the most heterogeneous of
all word classes.
• Adverbs typically modify categories other than nouns.
run quickly (modify verbs)
quite happy (modify adjectives)
very quickly (modify other adverbs)
well with (modify prepositions)
*Dog quickly (NOT modify nouns)
That was quite [a party] (modify noun phrases)
 Five main subclasses of adverbs
- setting adverbs of space and time (here, below, never…)
- manner adverbs/predicate adverbs (well, badly…)
- degree adverbs (very, extremely…)
- linking adverbs / text adverbs (however, thus…)
- sentence adverbs (probably, frankly…)
! Setting, degree and linking adverbs form closed subclasses of adverbs.
! Only manner adverbs constitute open subclasses of adverbs.
 It is quite common for languages to form manner adverbs from adjectives.
In English: slow (adjective), slowly (adverb)
! As with adjectives, languages differ in whether adverbs form an open,
closed, or no class at all.
! Adverbs form a closed class and most adverbial meanings are conveyed by
adjectives or nouns in the accusative case.
In Modern Standard Arabic,
sarisan ‘swiftly’ is the accusative form of the adjective saris ‘swift’
! There are also languages without any seperate class for manner adverbs
Swedish (Indo- European (Germanic): Sweden
a. Taget
ar langsamt
train.DEF.NEUT. is
slow.NEUT.
‘the train is slow’
b.
Han laser langsamt
he
reads slow.NEUT.
‘he reads slowly’
Manner adverb expressions are
expressed with the adjective in neuter form
Ainu (Isolate: Japan)
- The stative verb pirka ‘be good’
a. Pirka menoko
good
woman
a stative verb may be modify another stative verb
is used as an adj.
‘pretty women’
c. Tunasno pirka
quick
b.
Pirka inu
good listen
good
‘Get well quickly’
is used as an adv.
‘listen well’
•
Ainu has neither a special class for adjectives nor a special class for
adverbs; the stative verb is used in both cases.
 There are various lexical classes, and they can overlap each other. So Hengeveld et
al.(2004) propose implicational hierarchy.
Verbs
Nouns
Adjectives
(Manner) Adverbs
This hierarchy implies that
- verbs exist its own lexical classes in a language
- if a language has a separate open class for nouns, it also has a separate category for
verbs
- a language with a separate open class for adjectives necessarily has a separate open
class for nouns and verbs.
- if a language has a separate open class for adverbs, then it also has a separate open
class for adjectives
! This hierarchy is not universal, it only illustrates tendencies