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.