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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Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- ɸ-agreement within Construct State in Jordanian Arabic
- Complex predicates and space in Dâw (Naduhup language, AM)
- What are and what aren’t complex nominal expressions in flexible word order languages
- Non-canonical inverse in Circassian languages
- Relative clauses in Agul from a corpus-based perspective
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- ɸ-agreement within Construct State in Jordanian Arabic
- Complex predicates and space in Dâw (Naduhup language, AM)
- What are and what aren’t complex nominal expressions in flexible word order languages
- Non-canonical inverse in Circassian languages
- Relative clauses in Agul from a corpus-based perspective