Mathias Jenny
List of John Benjamins publications for which Mathias Jenny plays a role.
2022 Syntactic change in Palaungic: Exploring the origins of an atypical Austroasiatic relative construction Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area 45:1, pp. 22–71 | Article
The relative constructions in several Palaungic languages (Htanaw, Wa, Lawa, Rumai Palaung, Samlong Palaung, and Rucing Palaung), here shown to be participant nominalizations, display striking mutual similarities, while conspicuously diverging from the dominant relativization strategy within the… read more
2021 Morphological structure can escape reduction effects from mass admixture of second language speakers: Evidence from Sino-Tibetan Studies in Language 45:4, pp. 707–752 | Article
Morphological complexity is expected to decrease under mass admixture from adult second language speakers. While this has been chiefly shown for morphological richness, an unresolved question is whether the effect extends to aspects of morphological boundedness. Here we report a case study of… read more
2019 Grammatical relations in Mon: Syntactic tests in an isolating language Argument Selectors: A new perspective on grammatical relations, Witzlack-Makarevich, Alena and Balthasar Bickel (eds.), pp. 107–129 | Chapter
This study investigates the relevance of the generalized semantic roles S, A, P, T, and G and whether there are constructions that treat subsets of these identically, defining Grammatical relations in Mon, (Austroasiatic). After establishing the notion of transitivity in Mon, the study looks at… read more
2017 Chapter 11. Comparative, similative, and equative constructions in Mon: Form, function, and development Similative and Equative Constructions: A cross-linguistic perspective, Treis, Yvonne and Martine Vanhove (eds.), pp. 291–320 | Chapter
This study examines comparison constructions in Mon, a predominantly isolating language of western Mainland Southeast Asia. Comparison constructions, which I take to include comparative, similative, and equative, do not form a homogenous class, but employ various constructions. Their uses and… read more
2015 Syntactic diversity and change in Austroasiatic languages Perspectives on Historical Syntax, Viti, Carlotta (ed.), pp. 317–340 | Article
This study looks at the syntactic diversity of Austroasiatic languages and seeks possible explanations for the development of this diversity. With historical data available only for a small number of languages of the family, the evidence points to two main factors triggering syntactic change,… read more
2013 Differential subject marking without ergativity: The case of colloquial Burmese Studies in Language 37:4, pp. 693–735 | Article
While differential object marking seems to be widespread and is well represented in the linguistic literature, differential subject marking appears to be much less common. Burmese is one example of a language that marks some, but not all subjects, depending on a number of pragmatic factors. This… read more
2010 Benefactive strategies in Thai Benefactives and Malefactives: Typological perspectives and case studies, Zúñiga, Fernando and Seppo Kittilä (eds.), pp. 377–392 | Article
In Thai grammatical and semantic relations are expressed by syntactic or lexical means, such as constituent order and grammaticalized nouns and verbs. The topic of the present study are benefactive strategies in Thai, i.e. linguistic means to describe situations which involve an entity peripheral… read more