Verbal categories & simple clauses

Question 1

what is the interaction between tense and modality?

Answer 1

it is more common to have a 2way tense contrast where there is a future marker, but no past. This might be because the future has not happened yet and thus belongs to an unreal (irrealis) world, while the past and present both belong to the real (realis) world.

Question 2

explain the difference between perfective aspect and perfect tense.

Answer 2

Perfective is an aspect, looking at the internal structure of the event - is it ongoing or already completed? Perfect tense relates the event in time, specifically combining pas and present - it took place before ‘now’ but is till relevant to the present situation.

Question 3

what are the two forms of aspect?

Answer 3

perfective (unmarked - picture): perspective from outside the course of the event, presented as a whole with no beginning, course or end.
Imperfective (film): perspective from inside the course of the event. Are events iterative, progressive or habitual?

Question 4

what is the difference between Aspect and Aktionsart?

Answer 4

Aspect is grammatical and deals with the perspective taken on an event, whereas Aktionsart is a lexical, semantic specification dealing with the inner structure of the event.

Question 5

what are the three identifiers of Aktionsart?

Answer 5

punctual/durative
relic/atelic
dynamic/stative

Question 6

what is the difference between mood and modality?

Answer 6

Mood has to do with the actuality of the event.
Modality has to do with the speaker’s attitude (propositional modality & event modality)

Question 7

what are the two different moods?

Answer 7

realis mood, vs. irrealis mood - whether the event is realised or not.

Question 8

explain why the realis/irrealis opposition is essentially the same as the indicative/subjunctive opposition.

Answer 8

The realis and the indicative both reflect factual statements that interact with tenses as the past or non future and hold a certain validity. The irrealis and the subjunctive both reflect tentativeness or hypothetical situations, and interact with tenses as the future or nonpast. Assertion about their validity is not possible.

Question 9

what is propositional modality and what are its subcategories?

Answer 9

Propositional modality has to do with a speaker’s attitude toward the truth value of the information given in the proposition. the two main subcategories are
1. Evidentials (experiential/inference)
2. epistemic modality (speculative/deductive/assumptive)

Question 10

What is event modality and what are its subcategories?

Answer 10

Event modality has to do with potential action in various ways. the events or actions have not been realised yet, but are possibilities or probabilities. the two main subcategories are:
1. deontic
2. dynamics

Question 11

Explain deontic modality and its subgroups

Answer 11

with deontic modality, external factors are those initiating or conditioning the action.
1. directives are used when the speaker tries to initiate action (obligatives, permissives, imperatives)
2. commissives are used when a speaker certifies that an action will take place.

Question 12

Explain dynamic modality and its subgroups

Answer 12

with dynamic modality internal factors, such as ability, are those initiating or conditioning the action.
1. volitives denote willingness on the part of the subject
2. ability denotes capacity on the part of the subject.

Question 13

what are pragmatic roles?

Answer 13

pragmatic roles denote how the sentence is structure in terms of information status and information packaging.

Question 14

what is alignment?

Answer 14

mark grammatical relations and lump different types of arguments together. Different language may have different alignment systems. I.e. what does S pattern with, is it marked like A, or like O/P?

Question 15

what are the forms of alignment systems?

Answer 15

nominative-accusative alignment (S=A)
ergative-absolutive alignment (S=P)
split systems (S=A v S=P)

Question 16

explain isomorphism

Answer 16

a process that languages tend to group together items with similar roles, so that elements that have similar kinds of functions also end up looking formally similar.

Question 17

what is valency?

Answer 17

How many arguments a verb obligatorily has to take.

Question 18

what are the most common valency alternating strategies?

Answer 18

Increasing valency:
Causatives, applicatives
Decreasing valency:
Passives, antipassives, noun incorporation, anticausatives

Question 19

What does transposing valency entail?

Answer 19

With valency transposing devices, the number of arguments of a clause is not change, but the roles between them is somehow altered. Their respective semantic roles get swapped.

Question 20

what are transposing valency devices?

Answer 20

Inversion & dative shift

Question 21

What are causative constructions and what are its three subtypes?

Answer 21

they merge two separate events into one single complex event which in turn increases the valency.
lexical causatives
morphological causatives
analytic causatives

Question 22

What are applicative constructions?

Answer 22

applicatives increase the valency of a base clause by one by turning an adjunct into an obligatory argument through a marker on the base clause verb.

Question 23

What is a passive construction?

Answer 23

A passive construction accounts for a decrease in valency by ‘demoting the agent’.

Question 24

What is an anti passive construction?

Answer 24

reduces the P argument of the active clause to an adjunct, turning a predicate with two arguments into one with one argument, ‘demotion of the patient’.

Question 25

what is a dative shift?

Answer 25

Dative shift is also a 'double object' construction, where the indirect object is promoted to a second direct object.

Question 26

What is an anticausative construction?

Answer 26

An anticausative construction starts with a causative base and adds an element to take out the sense of causation, reducing the valency by one. --> the causer is no longer needed. The clause becomes more of a process, often with an inanimate entity taking the subject position.

Question 27

What is the difference between markedness and unmarkedness

Answer 27

unmarked member is the default, most frequent member, most simple and basic form. Marked member is the exception from the rule (functional notion) and therefore needs explicit formal marking.

Question 28

what are ambitransitives?

Answer 28

verbs that are both intransitive and transitive. The verb may or may not require a direct object. There are ambitransitives that align as S=P and those that align as S=A

Question 29

What is inversion?

Answer 29

the alignment between the arguments in the base (or direct) clause has been exchanged (or inverted). The verbal ending agrees with whichever argument is higher on the animacy hierarchy.

Question 30

What is the cognitive basis for alignment?

Answer 30

The cognitive basis for lumping together different arguments as expressive device is that there are semantic and pragmatic similarities between argument types, and therefore they express them the same.

Question 31

How can isomorphism explain alignment?

Answer 31

Isomorphism entails that form follows function, and elements with similar functions start to formally look similar as well. If languages have semantic and pragmatic reasons for lumping together arguments with the same function, and S and A hold this similar function, they will also look the same. Same goes for lumping together S and P. Or splitting the system.