Volume 42, Issue 6

In continuation of two previous articles in which the word and its semantic structure in Altaic languages were discussed the word is regarded as a set of monemes. This set is dissected in different ways, especially under the aspect of the positional distribution of the monemes. The result is a model in the form of a tree ending in a string. This string reflects the potential morphological structure of any word of an Altaic language.

The article is a revised version of the author’s concept of word classes in Bambara first published in Lehrbuch den Bambara (Leipzig 1974). The problem is also discussed in modern Mande linguistic studies of various authors (Dumestre, Ebermann etc.). Trying to further develop Fries’ concept (The Structure of English, London 1963) of analysing word classes from their grammatical-syntactical distribution, four form classes and seven classes of functional words are recognised in Bambara. In addition to these two groups a third one is postulated: communicative-pragmatic words, which do not have any syntactic function nor do they serve to realise them, they only modify the speech intention and the communication process.

The present paper deals with a classification of the parts of speech of the Korean language giving priority to syntactico-functional and distributional criteria, which is considered as useful for the purpose of foreign language teaching. Primary syntactic functions of the different word classes have been determined and the question of conversion (change of parts of speech) as well as entering of equivocal (homonymous) words or word forms, both of the same origin, into different word classes according to their different syntactic features has been discussed. Furthermore, correlations between syntactically defined word classes and their morphological features have been specified. As first step, lexical items have been divided into word classes having sentence value and not having sentence value, respectively. As second step, word classes lacking sentence value have been divided into those capable of functioning as an independent member of sentence and those functioning mainly adjunctionally as constituent of a member of sentence, the former as to their primary or prevailing syntactic functions (i.o. predicates, „actants“, „circonstants“) being subdivided into verbs, nouns and adverbs, respectively, and the latter consisting in adjectives (modifiers). Word classes endowed with sentence value consist of interjections and modal words.

In written texts (mostly novels) in Swahili, a Bantu language in East Africa, and talks with speakers of the language, many examples of diminutive and augmentative forms of the nouns were found and analyzed. On morphophonological grounds, the diminutive prefix is either ki- or kiji- (double prefix), whereas the augmentative prefix is ji- or zero. The formation of the diminutive and augmentative forms in singular and plural is shown in detail for every noun class. In case of the existence of two diminutive forms of a noun (with ki- and kiji-), the form with kiji- expresses an additional diminutive idea. The diminutives express smallness in general, but can be used with a derogatory meaning; whereas augmentativos express a special hugeness, but can bo used also to characterize non-human features with persons. If emphasis is put on the diminutive (augmentative) meaning, even nouns denoting living beings take the ’ki-(resp. rna-) concords. The vi- and ma- prefixes are also used to express collectiveness.

The paper discusses the postulates made by Bickerton 1981 concerning the free occurrence of the TMA-morphemes and their invariant order in creole prototypical verbal systems with respect to Cape Verdian and Guinean Creole. It is argued that both creoles already dispose rather of bound than free morphemes and therefore should no longer be regarded as prototypical but late creoles. Required by the existence of postverbal morphemes in these two creoles an appropriate enlargement of the invariant TMA-morpheme order is proposed.

In Hindi within the category of gender masculine and feminine can be distinguished. To a certain extent the opposition of male and female is reflected in the opposition of masculine and feminine and sex can be identified by the gender of the noun as well as by secondary gender identifiers of tho language. Yet, mainly in the case of nouns denoting trades and professions, posts, representatives of intellectual and political movements and relations between individuals the feminine opposites are missing. This gap in the language is bridged by the respective masculine plus a secondary gender identifier or by this masculine plus a lexical supplement and secondary gender identifiers. Yet, the above mentioned linguistic means that are used for denoting male and female individuals cannot be employed indiscriminately or regardless of tho context. Certain sentence structures, too, rule out the use of certain means of the language for denoting gender explicitely.

Резюме В работе сделана попытка представать фонетическую характеристику согласных финитно (пнлшшио-тагалог). Описанию звукового строя этого языка до настоящего времени уделялось нішо недостаточно внимания, что приводит порой к совершенно про* тивоположмым точкам зрения на некоторые фонетические н фонологические аспекты. Во второй части автор на основе тридцати двух вариаций согласных звуков и лексических дублетах делает попытку представить уже фонологическую характеристику согласных путем противопоставлении их характерных признаков.

Резюме В статье обсуждается вопрос об особенностях вьетнамских модальных глаголов. Традиционное рассмотрение модальных глаголов как часть сказуемого - рядом с главным глаголом - при этом подтверждения не находит. Модальные глаголы во вьет­намском языке могут самостоятельно играть роль сказуемого в предложении.

Zusammenfassung Unterschiedlichste natürliche Sprachen liefern immer wieder Indizien dafür, daß die Sprecher dieser Sprachen als Wesen einer dreidimensionalen Welt die Zeit als eine weitere vierte Dimension offenbar nur zweidimensional begreifen können. Die Zeitachse scheint daher am ehesten geeignet, sowohl in der Forschung als auch in der Lehre eine Modellierung dieses Phänomens vorzunehmen. Dies um so mehr, als es am konkreten Beispiel des Bengali, einer neuindoarischen Aspekt-Sprache, dadurch möglich wird, Temporalität mit Aspektualität anschaulich zu verbinden. Letztendliches Ziel ist, in das Wesen der einzelnen Tempus-Modus-Formen dieser Sprache vorzudringen, um ausgehend von der jeweiligen Hauptfunktion auch die entsprechenden Nebenfunktionen im Gesamtrahmen des temporalen Feldes besser zu verstehen. Der Artikel gibt prinzipielle Überlegungen wieder, die der Autor bei der Abfassung einer Grammatik des Bengali zur Anwendung bringen will.

The paper deals with the mutual relations of actional main types and the meaning of both of finite verbal forms (perfect and imperfect forms) and the active participle in the field of (initially determined) terminative(2)-verbs in Arabic like intalaqa ‘to go off, to leave’. The finite verbal forms express single or repeated actions, whereas the actional segment that follows the initial point can be of various length. The active participle occurs above all in non-predicative positions (e.g. as attribute or predicative attribute). The durative basic meaning of the participle is manifested in actions with general/iterative or repeated/temporally expanded meaning. On the other hand the active participle is not use in order to point out single actions. The active participle expresses in this way above all stylistic nuances with regard to the meaning of the imperfect form.

The author traces Chinese influence on the Bahasa Indonesia. He lists Chinese loanwords in present-day Indonesian giving etymologies and discussing their assimilation process. The majority of these loans have their origins not in P’u-t’ung-hua but in the dialects of the South Eastern coastal provinces of China: Chekiang, Fukien and Kwangtung. Especially the dialect of Southern Fukien, also known as Amoy Chinese, had great impact on the language habit of Malay-spenking Chinese settlers in the Indonesian archipelago. Bahasa Indonesia has absorbed a lot of these words which are now being widely used in the present-day spoken language of the Republic of Indonesia.

Résumé Notre contribution a pour but de mettre en lumière quelques aspects du néosémantisme (constitution d’un sens nouveau à partir d’un même signifiant) observés dans la langue maninka (Guinée) en prenant comme exemple le vocabulaire politique, social et culturel. Le corpus analysé base sur des matériaux élaborés en maninka dans les années 1978-1984. Dans l’état actuel des recherches sur cette langue le processus de formation des néosémantismes est difficile à repérer. La difficulté essentielle est do rendre compte do la relation qui existe entre la phase initiale, la phase de dissémination (pénétration massive des néosémantismes dans l’usage commun) et la phase d’approbation (fixation des néosémantismes dans la langue). Une réponse à toutes questions se posant dans ce contexte exigerait une enquête plus poussée sur la base d’une documentation plus vaste (en premier lieu ü l’égard de lexiques de base et de dictionnaires). Nous voulons ici simplement esquisser les grandes lignes de l’évolution qui s’est produite dans le domaine lexical au regard du changement de sens de termes préexistants pouvant servir de base de recherches ultérieures. Nous tentons de présenter les traits essentiels des sémèmes d’un mot polysémique sous l’aspect de leur rapport aux procédés de formation des mots et de leur distribution et finalité (extension et généralisation de sens, transfert de sens, détermination de la configuration sémantique, connotation péjorative ou méliorative) en tenant compte des processus de l’archaisme, plus ou moins nets et plus ou moins avancés selon le cas concret.

A dictionary of Synonyms in Modern Standard Arabic for German speaking users is still one of the desiderata despite the importance of Synonyms for teaching Arabic and translation. Compiling such a dictionary needs a solid theoretical foundation which has to take into consideration that Modern Arabic is spoken in the Arab countries in numerous regional dialects and sociolects which are in permanent interaction with Modern Standard Arabic.

The present paper deals with some aspects of the anaphoric and cataphoric reference functions of the particle (harf) ḥaiṯu in Modern Standard Arabic, paying special emphasis on its versatility in syntactic structures for expressing different meanings (local, temporal, causative and adversative). By touching upon compounds of ḥaiṯu, e.g. bi-ḥaiṯu (anna), (min) ḥaiṯu anna, min ḥaiṯu and ḥaiṯumā, as well as discussing their German equivalents a moderate contribution is to be rendered in order to further specify references in Arabic-German dictionaries.

This article presents an analysis of a Lao text of the text-type ‘press information’ in order to clarify some means of textual coherence, including some functional aspects. Textual coherence is brought about by interpropositional relations, which, on their turn, are realized by meaning types and topic relations. Meaning types describe syntactic means of connecting propositions as textual elements. Topic relations are relations between textual elements established by referentially identical lexemes (i. e. topics). Characteristic of Lao texts of the above mentioned text-type is a mainly asyndetic connection of textual elements, according to the text-typical functional-communicative features ‘objective’ and ‘concise’. A great amount of topic chains has its starting-point in the headline of the text and is almost completely repeated in the first sentence. Most topics are repetitions of their first mentions. The interruption or ending of topic chains in many cases already after the first sentence are signals for a chunk-borderline at this position.

This article is intended to be a contribution to the problem of reported speech in Arabic. A command can be presented as a locutionary or illocutionary act of utterance. The reporter’s interpretation of the speaker’s intention can only be described if one distinguishes the grammatically determined meaning from the utterance meaning and the communicative sense. This paper examines linguistic and semantic changes due to reported speech depending on the different structures of the original sentences. It becomes evident in which way reported speech is related on the one hand to the propositional content of the original utterance and on the other to the phrases indicating its illocutionary force. A special aim is to explain how focussing the locutionary reap, illocutionary act results in certain verbs and related that-clauses being used.

Résumé L’article se propose de montrer un aspect du contact entre la langue malgache et française: des changements dans le continuum français - malgache standard - malgache parlé du à ce contact. Il traite le sujet d’une variante du malgache parlé comportant différentes sortes d’emprunts au français qui est désignée comme vary amin'anana ou fralgache, mais qui devrait être désignée - en tenant compte de sa structure - plus correctement comme malançais. Par l’intermédiaire do la pratique linguistique des forces sociales dirigeant le pays, cette variante a influencé le code écrit, c.-à-d. le malgache standard.

India belongs to those multilingual countries in the world, which have on their disposal a systematic and scholarly well-founded survey about the stock of their languages, pursuing it continuously and methodically. Of great importance in this field are the Allindian census, taken respectively in the first year of each decade since the end of last century. In these census tho linguistic dates are an important and extensive part. From the progress in linguistics and in society new demands spring up, which have consequences for the approach to the inclusion and representation of linguistic dates in each census and lead to appropriate changes. This paper considers some questions and problems in this connection.