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What are and what aren’t complex nominal expressions in flexible word order languages

  • Uta Reinöhl EMAIL logo
Published/Copyright: March 31, 2020

Abstract

This paper tackles the challenge of how to identify multi-word (or “complex”) nominal expressions in flexible word order languages including certain Australian languages and Vedic Sanskrit. In these languages, a weak or absent noun/adjective distinction in conjunction with flexible word order make it often hard to distinguish between complex nominal expressions, on the one hand, and cases where the nominals in question form independent expressions, on the other hand. Based on a discourse-based understanding of what it means to form a nominal expression, this paper surveys various cases where we are not dealing with multi-word nominal expressions. This involves, in particular, periphery-related phenomena such as use of nominals as free topics or afterthoughts, as well as various kinds of predicative uses. In the absence of clear morpho-syntactic evidence, all kinds of linguistic evidence are relied upon, including, in particular, information structure and prosody, but also derivational morphology and lexical semantics. In this way, it becomes frequently possible to distinguish between what are and what aren’t complex nominal expressions in these languages.

Acknowledgments

Many thanks to Antje Casaretto for annotations of Vedic Sanskrit prose (see fn. 5) and for all her comments and suggestions. Thanks to Sonja Riesberg for her comments and to Robert Tegethoff and Simon Fries for proofreading. Research for this paper was funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) as part of the SFB 1252 “Prominence in Language” in the project B03 “Agent prominence and the diachrony of predication in Indo-Aryan” at the University of Cologne.

Abbreviations

abl

ablative

acc

accusative

dat

dative

dem

demonstrative

emph

emphatic marker

erg

ergative

evid

evidentiality marker

f

feminine

gen

genitive

impf

imperfect

ins

instrumental

loc

locative

m

masculine

mid

middle

n

neuter

nom

nominative

obj

object marker

obl

oblique

perf

perfective

pl

plural

ppp

past passive participle

prs

present tense

prt

discourse particle

pst

past tense

rel

relative pronoun

seq

sequential marker

sg

singular

subjct

subjunctive

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Published Online: 2020-03-31
Published in Print: 2020-04-28

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