[Koglist] Conference: Some results of the project Languages under the Influence (30 Nov)

Some results of the project Languages under the Influence. Uralic syntax changing in an asymmetrical contact situation Date: November 30, 2017, Place: Research Institute for Linguistics, Room 108 (Budapest, VI. Teréz krt. 13.) Program: 10.00–10.35: Eszter Simon–Ágnes Kalivoda: Introducing the UraLUID database 10.35–11.10: Erika Asztalos–Katalin Gugán - Nikolett Mus: Non-verb-final sentences in Nenets, Khanty, and Udmurt: a path from OV to VO 11.10–11.45: Veronika Hegedűs–Nikolett Mus–Balázs Surányi: Copular clauses in Nenets 11-45–11.55: break 11.55–12.30: Éva Dékány–Katalin Gugán–Orsolya Tánczos: From prenominal to postnominal relative clauses in Udmurt and Khanty 12.30–13.05: Katalin É. Kiss–Orsolya Tánczos: From possessive agreement to object marking: the functional evolution of the Udmurt -jez suffix The talks will be 25-30 minutes long; each will be followed by a 5-10 minute discussion. Abstracts: /Eszter Simon–Ágnes Kalivoda: Introducing the UraLUID database/ We present UraLUID, a linguistically annotated database built within the framework of the project Languages under the Influence. We aimed at creating a valuable resource of Udmurt, Tundra Nenets, Synja and Surgut Khanty. In order to provide a corpus as representative as possible, we focused on processing texts collected from different times, authors and genres. Thanks to the fieldwork carried out in the framework of the project, UraLUID contains spoken versions of the languages as well. We present the content and the structure of the database, discussing the main issues we had to face during the development. Furthermore, we demonstrate how to use the database by showing ELAN-files with audio data and explaining the structure of annotation in detail. /Erika Asztalos–Katalin Gugán - Nikolett Mus: Non-verb-final sentences in Nenets, Khanty, and Udmurt: a path from OV to VO/ The order of clausal constituents interacts with their discourse pragmatic function, and constituent order and patterns of discourse-pragmatic organization are both prone to contact-induced change (Aikhenvald 2006). In our talk, we survey patterns of (X)VO, or more precisely, (X)VX orders in three genetically related (S)OV languages, i.e., in Udmurt (Permic), Surgut Khanty (Ob-Ugric) and Tundra Nenets (Samoyedic), all of which are under heavy Russian, i.e., SVO influence. On the basis of a predominantly corpus-based research involving the comparison of two periods, we will show that the frequently hypothesized XV > VX change involves, self-evidently, an increase in the proportion of non-verb-final clauses. However, the analysis of the postverbal constituents with respect to their syntactic and discourse-pragmatic functions shows that the first steps of such a change can be described as the broadening of the potential discourse-pragmatic function of the postverbal elements, which may ultimately lead to the reanalysis of the basic word order. /Veronika Hegedűs–Nikolett Mus–Balázs Surányi: Copular clauses in Nenets/ Copular sentences exhibit rich and multifaceted and in many respects still ill-understood morphosyntactic variation across languages. A significant part of this variation concerns the morphosyntactic and functional correlates within individual languages of the lexical distinctions, if any, between different copulas, as well as the licensing of the absence of an overt copula. This talk will reconsider some descriptive generalizations regarding Tundra Nenets copular sentences, namely, the distribution of be-verbs across different constructions and the conditions on copula-drop in the language. Concerning the first issue, we show that the contexts in which the so-called existential verb and the copulas appear cannot be separated as neatly as previously reported. Addressing the second topic, we propose, adopting a Copula Support approach, that the omission of the copula is licensed if tense and subject agreement features of T (the functional head bearing them) enter syntactic agreement with the predicate, and get morphologically realized elsewhere. /Éva Dékány–Katalin Gugán–Orsolya Tánczos: From pre-nominal to post-nominal relative clauses in Udmurt and Khanty/ This talk examines changes that have taken place in the properties of relative clauses in Udmurt and Khanty. Originally, relatives were categorically non-finite. They were headed by participial verb forms, occupied a prenominal position, and had a gap at the relativization site without having a relative pronoun. While these types of noun-modifying clause are still in use, more recently both languages saw the emergence of postnominal participial relatives as well as postnominal finite relatives. These new relatives may feature relative pronouns, but the distribution of these pronouns is not identical in the two languages. The talk identifies the step of change from fully non-finite to fully finite relatives as well as the internal structure of postnominal relatives and the differences between the two languages. /Katalin É. Kiss–Orsolya Tánczos: From possessive agreement to object marking: the functional evolution of the Udmurt -jez suffix / The talk analyzes the functional evolution of the Udmurt -jez morpheme from crossreferencing a 3rd person singular possessor to marking accusative case. The use of possessive agreement in non-possessive – mainly determiner-like – functions is a shared property of several Uralic languages. Among them, possessive agreement appears to have obtained the widest range of roles in Udmurt, where the 3SG possessive agreement suffix is also said to function as a nominalizer, to mark contrast, to function as a kind of definite determiner, and to mark accusative case. We will argue that these seemingly different roles are instantiations of three major functions: cross-referencing a possessor, encoding partitivity, and marking specific objects, which, in turn, represent subsequent stages of a grammaticalization path. Evidence for the hypothesized changes will be provided by parallel developments in the sister languages, primarily Hungarian.