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Adyghe Grammar
Adyghe is a polysynthetic language with an ergative verb-final clause structure and rich verb morphology. Ergative–absolutive Adyghe is an ergative-absolutive language, unlike nominative-accusative languages, such as English, where the single argument of an intransitive verb ("She" in the sentence "She walks.") behaves grammatically like the agent of a transitive verb ("She" in the sentence "She finds it."), in ergative-absolutive language, the subject of an intransitive verb behaves like the object of a transitive verb, and differently from the agent of a transitive verb. For example, the word кӏалэ "boy" in the intransitive sentence кӏалэр малӏэ "the boy dies" behaves grammatically different from the word кӏалэ "boy" in the transitive sentence кӏалэм ар еукӏы "the boy kills it". Nouns in Adyghe can have the following roles in a sentence: *Ergative case: Marked as -м /-m/, it serves to mark the one that causes change by doing the verb. * ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Adyghe Language
Adyghe ( or ; ady, Адыгабзэ, Adygabzə, ), also known as West Circassian ( ady, link=no, кӏахыбзэ, khaxybzə), is a Northwest Caucasian language spoken by the western subgroups of Circassians. It is spoken mainly in Russia, as well as in Turkey, Jordan, Syria and Israel, where they settled after the Circassian genocide. It is closely related to the Kabardian (East Circassian) language, though some reject the distinction between the two languages in favor of both being dialects of a unitary Circassian language. The literary language is based on the Temirgoy dialect. Adyghe and Russian are the two official languages of the Republic of Adygea in the Russian Federation. There are around 128,000 speakers of Adyghe in Russia, almost all of them native speakers. In total, some 300,000 speak it worldwide. The largest Adyghe-speaking community is in Turkey, spoken by the diaspora from the Russian–Circassian War (–1864). In addition, the Adyghe language is spoke ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Adverbial Case
The adverbial case (abbreviated ) is a noun case in Abkhaz and Georgian with a function similar to that of the translative and essive cases in Finnic languages. It is also featured in Udmurt. The term is sometimes used to refer to the ablative case of other languages. Examples In Georgian, the adverbial case has several functions. Its most common usage is to derive adverbs from adjectives, like in English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...: The adverbial case suffix is -''ad''. The adverbial case can also act as the essive case: The adverbial case also used in stating the name of a language: With the passive future participle in ''sa''-, the adverbial case often forms purposive or infinitival-like constructions: References {{Grammatical cases Gram ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Future Tense
In grammar, a future tense (abbreviated ) is a verb form that generally marks the event described by the verb as not having happened yet, but expected to happen in the future. An example of a future tense form is the French ''aimera'', meaning "will love", derived from the verb ''aimer'' ("love"). The "future" expressed by the future tense usually means the future relative to the moment of speaking, although in contexts where relative tense is used it may mean the future relative to some other point in time under consideration. English does not have an inflectional future tense, though it has a variety of grammatical and lexical means for expressing future-related meanings. These include modal auxiliaries such as ''will'' and ''shall'' as well as the futurate present tense. Expressions The nature of the future, necessarily uncertain and at varying distances ahead, means that the speaker may refer to future events with the modality either of probability (what the speaker expec ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pluperfect
The pluperfect (shortening of plusquamperfect), usually called past perfect in English, is a type of verb form, generally treated as a grammatical tense in certain languages, relating to an action that occurred prior to an aforementioned time in the past. Examples in English are: "we ''had'' arrived"; "they ''had'' written". The word derives from the Latin ''plus quam perfectum'', "more than perfect". The word "perfect" in this sense means "completed"; it contrasts with the "imperfect", which denotes uncompleted actions or states. In English grammar, the pluperfect (e.g. "had written") is now usually called the past perfect, since it combines past tense with perfect aspect. (The same term is sometimes used in relation to the grammar of other languages.) English also has a ''past perfect progressive'' (or ''past perfect continuous'') form: "had been writing". Meaning of the pluperfect The pluperfect is traditionally described as a tense; in modern linguistic terminology it may ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Discontinuous Past
Discontinuous past is a category of past tense of verbs argued to exist in some languages which have a meaning roughly characterizable as "past and not present" or "past with no present relevance". The phrase "discontinuous past" was first used in English in 1969, though not in the same sense; its use in the sense described here dates to an article by the linguists Vladimir Plungian and Johan von der Auwera published in 2006. Typology of discontinuous past markers Plungian and von der Auwera distinguish three possibilities of marking the discontinuous past in various languages: * The discontinuous past marker may be the only marker of tense within a basically non-tensed verbal system. Such systems are found in the Pacific Ocean languages, east and west Africa, and in languages of North America and the Amazon. “Atemporal” systems with discontinuous past marking are also typical for many Creole languages. * The discontinuous past marker may be one among several tense markers in a s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Preterite
The preterite or preterit (; abbreviated or ) is a grammatical tense or verb form serving to denote events that took place or were completed in the past; in some languages, such as Spanish, French, and English, it is equivalent to the simple past tense. In general, it combines the perfective aspect (event viewed as a single whole; it is not to be confused with the similarly named perfect) with the past tense and may thus also be termed the ''perfective past''. In grammars of particular languages the preterite is sometimes called the ''past historic'', or (particularly in the Greek grammatical tradition) the '' aorist''. When the term "preterite" is used in relation to specific languages, it may not correspond precisely to this definition. In English it can be used to refer to the simple past verb form, which sometimes (but not always) expresses perfective aspect. The case of German is similar: the ''Präteritum'' is the simple (non-compound) past tense, which does not always imp ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Present Tense
The present tense (abbreviated or ) is a grammatical tense whose principal function is to locate a situation or event in the present time. The present tense is used for actions which are happening now. In order to explain and understand present tense, it is useful to imagine time as a line on which the past tense, the present and the future tense are positioned. The term ''present tense'' is usually used in descriptions of specific languages to refer to a particular grammatical form or set of forms; these may have a variety of uses, not all of which will necessarily refer to present time. For example, in the English sentence "My train leaves tomorrow morning", the verb form ''leaves'' is said to be in the present tense, even though in this particular context it refers to an event in future time. Similarly, in the historical present, the present tense is used to narrate events that occurred in the past. There are two common types of present tense form in most Indo-European langua ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Intransitive Verbs
In grammar, an intransitive verb is a verb whose context does not entail a direct object. That lack of transitivity distinguishes intransitive verbs from transitive verbs, which entail one or more objects. Additionally, intransitive verbs are typically considered within a class apart from modal verbs and defective verbs. Examples In the following sentences, verbs are used without a direct object: *"Rivers flow." *"I sneezed." *"My dog ran." *"Water evaporates when it's hot." *"You've grown since I last saw you!" *"I wonder how old I will be when I die." The following sentences contain transitive verbs (they entail one or more objects): *"We watched ''a movie'' last night." *"She's making ''promises''." *"When I said that, my sister smacked ''me''." *"Santa gave ''me'' ''a present''." *"He continuously clicked ''his pen'' and it was incredibly annoying to me." Some verbs, called ambitransitive verbs, may entail objects but do not always require one. Such a verb may be used as ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Transitive Verbs
A transitive verb is a verb that accepts one or more objects, for example, 'cleaned' in ''Donald cleaned the window''. This contrasts with intransitive verbs, which do not have objects, for example, 'panicked' in ''Donald panicked''. Transitivity is traditionally thought of as a global property of a clause, by which activity is transferred from an agent to a patient. Transitive verbs can be classified by the number of objects they require. Verbs that accept only two arguments, a subject and a single direct object, are monotransitive. Verbs that accept two objects, a direct object and an indirect object, are ''ditransitive'', or less commonly ''bitransitive''. An example of a ditransitive verb in English is the verb ''to give'', which may feature a subject, an indirect object, and a direct object: ''John gave Mary the book''. Verbs that take three objects are ''tritransitive''. In English a tritransitive verb features an indirect object, a direct object, and a prepositional ph ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Head Final
In linguistics, head directionality is a proposed parameter that classifies languages according to whether they are head-initial (the head of a phrase precedes its complements) or head-final (the head follows its complements). The head is the element that determines the category of a phrase: for example, in a verb phrase, the head is a verb. Therefore, head initial would be "VO" languages and head final would be "OV" languages. Some languages are consistently head-initial or head-final at all phrasal levels. English is considered to be strongly head-initial (verbs precede their objects, for example), while Japanese is an example of a language that is consistently head-final. In certain other languages, such as German and Gbe, examples of both types of head direction occur. Various theories have been proposed to explain such variation. Head directionality is connected with the type of branching that predominates in a language: head-initial structures are ''right-branching'' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Northwest Caucasian Languages
The Northwest Caucasian languages, also called West Caucasian, Abkhazo-Adyghean, Abkhazo-Circassian, Circassic, or sometimes ''Pontic languages'' (from the historical region of Pontus, in contrast to ''Caspian languages'' for the Northeast Caucasian languages), are a family of languages spoken in the northwestern Caucasus region,Hoiberg, Dale H. (2010) chiefly in three Russian republics (Adygea, Kabardino-Balkaria, Karachay–Cherkessia), the disputed territory of Abkhazia, Georgia, and Turkey, with smaller communities scattered throughout the Middle East. The group's relationship to any other language family is uncertain and unproven. One language, Ubykh, became extinct in 1992, while all of the other languages are in some form of endangerment, with UNESCO classifying all as either "vulnerable," "endangered," or "severely endangered." The Northwest Caucasian languages possess highly complex sets of consonant distinctions paired with a lack of vowel distinctions, often provid ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pronouns
In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun (list of glossing abbreviations, abbreviated ) is a word or a group of words that one may substitute for a noun or noun phrase. Pronouns have traditionally been regarded as one of the part of speech, parts of speech, but some modern theorists would not consider them to form a single class, in view of the variety of functions they perform cross-linguistically. An example of a pronoun is "you", which can be either singular or plural. Subtypes include personal pronoun, personal and possessive pronouns, reflexive pronoun, reflexive and reciprocal pronoun, reciprocal pronouns, demonstrative pronouns, relative pronoun, relative and interrogative pronouns, and indefinite pronouns. The use of pronouns often involves anaphora (linguistics), anaphora, where the meaning of the pronoun is dependent on an antecedent (grammar), antecedent. For example, in the sentence ''That poor man looks as if he needs a new coat'', the meaning of the pronoun ''he'' is d ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
