Nonverbal predication in Movima

Katharina Haude | CNRS – SeDyL

Movima (isolate, lowland Bolivia) is a language with predicate-initial constituent order in the core clause. There is no copula in affirmative clauses. Unpossessed common nouns can function as main-clause predicates just as well as verbs. The difference between verbal and nonverbal predicates only becomes apparent in embedded (i.e. adverbial and complement) clauses: the predicate of an embedded clause is overtly morphologically marked, and the type of marking distinguishes verbal from nonverbal predicates. The same pattern occurs in negated clauses, which consist of embedded predicates preceded by a negative copula. The morphological marking of embedded predicates shows that not only verbs and nouns, but also demonstratives, locative adverbs, and even personal pronouns can function as predicates. Therefore, it is argued that there is no “preverbal” or “topic position” to express the syntactically privileged argument: in principle, any word that has the potential to function as a predicate has predicate status when forming the first constituent of the clause.

Keywords: flexible word classes, zero copula, pronominal predicates, clefts

Published online: 21 August 2018
https://doi.org/10.1075/tsl.122.08hau

References

Haude, Katharina

2006 A Grammar of Movima. PhD dissertation, Radboud University Nijmegen. http://webdoc.ubn.ru.nl/mono/h/haude_k/gramofmo.pdf

2009a Hierarchical alignment in Movima. International Journal of American Linguistics 75(4): 513–532.

2009b Reference and predication in Movima. In New Challenges in Typology: Transcending the Borders and Refining the Distinctions [Trends in Linguistics. Studies and Monographs 217], Patience Epps & Alexandre Arkhipov (eds), 323–342. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

2010 The intransitive basis of Movima clause structure. In Ergativity in Amazonia [Typological Studies in Language 89], Spike Gildea & Francesc Queixalós (eds), 285–315. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

2011 Referring to states and events: Subordination in Movima. In Subordination in South American Languages [Typological Studies in Language 97], Rik van Gijn, Katharina Haude & Pieter Muysken (eds), 141–168. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

2012 Saillance inhérente et saillance discursive en movima. Faits de Langues 39: 169–180.

2014a Reduplication in Movima: A prosodic morphology approach. In Reduplication in South American Languages, Hein van der Voort & Gale Goodwin Gomez (eds), 343–373. Leiden: Brill.

2014b Animacy and inverse voice in Movima: A corpus study. Anthropological Linguistics 56(3–4): 294–314.

To appear a. Grammatical relations in Movima: Alignment beyond semantic roles. In Handbook of Grammatical Relations (working title), Alena Witzlack-Makarevich & Balthasar Bickel eds Amsterdam John Benjamins

To appear b. Clefting for topicalization? Analyzing clause-initial pronouns in Movima. In Information Structure in Lesser-described Languages: Studies in Prosody and Syntax, Evangelia Adamou, Katharina Haude & Martine Vanhove eds Amsterdam John Benjamins

To appear c. From predication to reference in Movima. In Individuation et référence nominale à travers les langues, Christine Bonnot, Outi Duvallon & Hélène de Penanros eds Paris Presses de l’INaLCO

Payne, Thomas E.

1997 Describing Morphosyntax. A Guide for Field Linguistics. Cambridge: CUP.

Shank, Scott

2003 A preliminary semantics for pronominal predicates. Working Papers for the 38th International Conference on Salish and Neighbouring Languages, 215–236.

Cited by

Cited by 2 other publications

Bertinetto, Pier Marco, Luca Ciucci & Margherita Farina

2019. Two types of morphologically expressed non-verbal predication. Studies in Language 43:1 ► pp. 120 ff.

Haude, Katharina

2019. In Argument Selectors [Typological Studies in Language, 123], ► pp. 213 ff.

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 04 march 2021. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.