GB130 - grambank/grambank GitHub Wiki

What is the pragmatically unmarked order of S and V in intransitive clauses?

Summary

GB130 focuses on the relative order of subject and verb in intransitive clauses. This feature has also been split into two binary features, "GB130a Is the pragmatically unmarked order of S and V in intransitive clauses S-V?" and "GB130b Is the pragmatically unmarked order of S and V in intransitive clauses V-S?". It is possible to answer 1 or 0 for one of the binarised features, and "?" for the other.

All questions concerning order of constituents aim to capture the pragmatically unmarked order between full NP constituents (not pronouns). Do not consider ‘left or right-dislocation’, accompanied by intonational signals, or pragmatically marked constructions such as focus. If the verb phrase consists of several elements it is the lexical verb that counts. The position of auxiliaries/TAME marking elements can be ignored.

Procedure

Find the order of core arguments in the language, either in the text of the grammar or in examples involving full NP subjects.
Code 1 for GB130 if the order in intransitive clauses with a full nominal subject is consistently SV or GB130a 1.
Code 2 for GB130 if the order in intransitive clauses with a full nominal subject is consistently VS or GB130b 1.
Code 3 for GB130 if both SV and VS order occur in pragmatically unmarked intransitive clauses with full nominal subjects, or 1 for GB130a and GB130b.. Do not count focus constructions or left- or right-dislocation.
Code ? only if it is unclear whether the examples in which one of the two possible orders occurs meet the pragmatically unmarked criterion. Include a comment describing the relevant construction(s).

Examples

Makhuwa (ISO 639-3: vmw, Glottolog: makh1264)

Available examples of intransitive clauses with full NP subjects in Makhuwa show SV order, as in the example below.

mwanámwáné    o-ná-mwéétta
CL1.child     CL1-PRS.DJ-walk
‘the child walks’ (van der Wal 2009: 70)

Makhuwa is coded 1.

Longgu (ISO 639-3: lgu, Glottolog: long1395)

The basic word order of Longgu is described as V(O)S, though the grammatical description also describes pragmatically marked constructions where a nominal subject is fronted to indicate a new topic or for contrastive focus (Hill 2002: 554). Pragmatically unmarked transitive clauses therefore have VS order, as in the example below, which is analyzed by the grammar writer as syntactically intransitive (Hill 1992: 19).

ara  vai-hu-vi        ngaia  vanoa-na    komu-i-na
3PL  RECP-shout-TR    3SG    people-3SG  village-SG-DEI
‘the people of the village shouted to each other’ (Hill 2002: 554)

(Abbreviations: DEI = ‘deictic’, TR = ‘transitive suffix’)

Longgu is coded 2.

Seneca (ISO 639-3: see, Glottolog: sene1264)

Chafe (2015: 147) describes Seneca as having relatively free word order. Full NP subjects can precede or follow the verb, as in the examples below.

hö:gak  shadíäta’
hö:gak  s-hati-hrat-ha’
geese   REP-M.PL.A-go.by-HAB
‘geese go by again’ (Chafe 2015: 183)

de’ónesdo:h                   neh     lake  ahsöh
te’-yo-nehtso-:h              neh     laje  ahsöh
NEG-NEUT.SG.P-be.frozen-STAT  namely  lake  still
‘the lake isn't still frozen’ (Chafe 2015: 174)

Seneca is coded 3.

References

Chafe, Wallace. 2015. A grammar of the Seneca Language. (University of California Publications in Linguistics, 150.) Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.

Hill, Deborah. 1992. Longgu grammar. Canberra: Australian National University. (Doctoral dissertation.)

Hill, Deborah. 2002. Longgu. In Lynch, John and Ross, Malcolm and Crowley, Terry (eds), The Oceanic Languages, 538–561. Richmond: Curzon.

van der Wal, Johanna. 2009. Word order and information structure in Makhuwa-Enahara. Leiden: Leiden University. (Doctoral dissertation.)

Related Features

Patron

Hannah J. Haynie