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Object–subject Word Order
In linguistic typology, object–subject (OS) word order, also called O-before-S or patient–agent word order, is a word order in which the object appears before the subject. OS is notable for its statistical rarity as a default or predominant word order among natural languages. Languages with predominant OS word order display properties that distinguish them from languages with subject–object (SO) word order. The three OS word orders are VOS, OVS, and OSV. Collectively, these three orders comprise only around 2.9% of the world’s languages. SO word orders ( SOV, SVO, VSO) are significantly more common, comprising approximately 83.3% of the world’s languages (the remaining 13.7% have free word order). Despite their low relative frequency, languages that use OS order by default can be found across a wide variety of families, including Nilotic, Austronesian, Mayan, Oto-Manguean, Chumashan, Arawakan, Cariban, Tupi–Guarani, Jê, Nadahup, and Chonan. Example ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Linguistic Typology
Linguistic typology (or language typology) is a field of linguistics that studies and classifies languages according to their structural features to allow their comparison. Its aim is to describe and explain the structural diversity and the common properties of the world's languages. Its subdisciplines include, but are not limited to phonological typology, which deals with sound features; syntactic typology, which deals with word order and form; lexical typology, which deals with language vocabulary; and theoretical typology, which aims to explain the universal tendencies. Linguistic typology is contrasted with genealogical linguistics on the grounds that typology groups languages or their grammatical features based on formal similarities rather than historic descendence. The issue of genealogical relation is however relevant to typology because modern data sets aim to be representative and unbiased. Samples are collected evenly from different language families, emphasizing ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cariban Languages
The Cariban languages are a family of languages indigenous to northeastern South America. They are widespread across northernmost South America, from the mouth of the Amazon River to the Colombian Andes, and they are also spoken in small pockets of central Brazil. The languages of the Cariban family are relatively closely related. There are about three dozen, but most are spoken only by a few hundred people. Macushi is the only language among them with numerous speakers, estimated at 30,000. The Cariban family is well known among linguists partly because one language in the family— Hixkaryana—has a default word order of object–verb–subject. Previous to their discovery of this, linguists believed that this order did not exist in any spoken natural language. In the 16th century, Cariban peoples expanded into the Lesser Antilles. There they killed or displaced, and also mixed with the Arawak peoples who already inhabited the islands. The resulting language— Kalhíphona ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ergative–absolutive Alignment
In linguistic typology, ergative–absolutive alignment is a type of morphosyntactic alignment in which the single argument (" subject") of an intransitive verb behaves like the object of a transitive verb, and differently from the agent of a transitive verb. Examples include Basque, Georgian, Mayan, Tibetan, and certain Indo-European languages (such as the Kurdish languages and many Indo-Aryan languages like Hindi–Urdu). It has controversially also been attributed to the Semitic modern Aramaic languages. This is in contrast to nominative–accusative alignment, which is observed in English and most other Indo-European languages, 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") but different from the object of a transitive verb ("her" in the sentence "He likes her"). When ergative–absolutive alignment is coded by grammatical case, the case us ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Anna Siewierska
Anna Siewierska (born Gdynia, Poland, 25 December 1955, died Da Lat, Vietnam, 6 August 2011) was a Polish-born linguist who worked in Australia, Poland, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. She was professor of linguistics at Department of Linguistics and English Language Lancaster University and a leading specialist in language typology. Life During her youth, Anna Siewierska spent several years in Australia, while her father worked for a Polish trade company in Melbourne. She studied linguistics at Monash University under Barry Blake, writing an M.A. thesis on passive constructions that was later published as a bookSiewierska (1984) and was widely cited.Martin Haspelmathobituary (PDF), Association for Linguistic Typology. Accessed 25 May 2012. (Although the obituary is unsigned, its authorship by Haspelmath is clear from the site'top pageas archived on 25 May 2012].)Johan van der Auweraobituary (PDF), Societas Linguistica Europaea. Accessed 25 May 2012. From 1980, she wo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Päri Language
Päri, or Lokoro, is a Luo language of South Sudan. Päri has been claimed to have ergative alignment, which is rare-to-nonexistent in African languages, although recent descriptions of the language have instead described the case system as marked nominative In linguistic typology, marked nominative alignment is an unusual type of morphosyntactic alignment similar to, and often considered a subtype of, a nominative–accusative alignment. In a prototypical nominative–accusative language with a g ... (nominative–absolutive).C. König 2008 'Case in Africa' Oxford University Press References Luo languages {{ns-lang-stub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Malagasy Language
Malagasy (; ) is an Austronesian language and the national language of Madagascar. Malagasy is the westernmost Malayo-Polynesian language, brought to Madagascar by the settlement of Austronesian peoples from the Sunda islands around the 5th century AD. The Malagasy language is one of the Barito languages and is most closely related to the Ma'anyan language, still spoken on Borneo to this day. Malagasy also includes numerous Malay loanwords, from the time of the early Austronesian settlement and trading between Madagascar and the Sunda Islands. After c. 1000 AD, Malagasy incorporated numerous Bantu and Arabic loanwords, brought over by traders and new settlers. Malagasy is spoken by around 25 million people in Madagascar and the Comoros. Most people in Madagascar speak it as a first language, as do some people of Malagasy descent elsewhere. Malagasy is divided between two main dialect groups; Eastern and Western. The central plateau of the island, where the capital Antanan ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ditransitive
In grammar, a ditransitive (or bitransitive) verb is a transitive verb whose contextual use corresponds to a subject and two objects which refer to a theme and a recipient. According to certain linguistics considerations, these objects may be called ''direct'' and ''indirect'', or ''primary'' and ''secondary''. This is in contrast to monotransitive verbs, whose contextual use corresponds to only one object. In languages which mark grammatical case, it is common to differentiate the objects of a ditransitive verb using, for example, the accusative case for the direct object, and the dative case for the indirect object (but this morphological alignment is not unique; see below). In languages without morphological case (such as English for the most part) the objects are distinguished by word order and/or context. In English English has a number of generally ditransitive verbs, such as ''give'', ''grant'', and ''tell'' and many transitive verbs that can take an additional argument ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Maria Polinsky
Maria “Masha” Polinsky is an American linguist specializing in theoretical syntax and study of heritage languages. Career Polinsky was born in Moscow, Russia. She received a B.A. in philology from Moscow University in 1979, and an M.A. in 1983 and a Ph.D. in 1986 in linguistics from the Institute for Linguistics of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Her dissertation examined the structure of antipassives in several ergative languages. She joined the University of Southern California as an Andrew Mellon Fellow in 1989, becoming an assistant professor in 1991 and an associate professor in 1995. She joined UC San Diego as an associate professor in 1997, later serving there as full professor and chair of the Department of Linguistics. In 2001 she founded the Heritage Language Program at that department. From 2006 to 2015 she was a professor and Director of the Language Science Lab at Harvard University. In 2015 she took a position as professor in the Department of Linguistics ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Xavante Language
The Xavante language is an Akuwẽ (Central Jê) language ( Jê, Macro-Jê) spoken by the Xavante people in the area surrounding Eastern Mato Grosso, Brazil. The Xavante language is unusual in its phonology, its ergative object–agent–verb word order, and its use of honorary and endearment terms in its morphology. The Xavante people are approximately 18,380 individuals in 170 villages as of 2014, but the language is spoken by 9,600 people, of whom about 7,000 are monolingual. The current speakers, made up of all ages, use the language vigorously and hold positive attitudes towards Xavante. Background Xavante is a language in the Jê family, spoken in Mato Grosso, in the west part of Brazil. It has been orthographically rendered as Chavante and Shavante, and is also called Akuen, Akwen, A’uwe Uptabi, A’we, Crisca, Pusciti, and Tapuac. History The Xavante people originate from the east of the Araguaia River, in what was then called the province of Goias. In the early ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Selk'nam Language
Ona (Aona), also known as Selk'nam (Shelknam), is a language that is spoken by the Selk'nam people in Isla Grande de Tierra del Fuego in southernmost South America. Part of the Chonan languages of Patagonia, Selk'nam is almost extinct, due both to the late 19th-century Selk'nam genocide by European immigrants, high fatalities due to disease and disruption of traditional society. One source states that the last fluent native speakers died in the 1980s, A Radboud University linguist worked with speaker Herminia Vera-Ona, who died in 2014, to write a reference grammar of the language. Classification Within the Southern Chon language family, Selk'nam is closest to Haush, another language spoken on the island of Tierra del Fuego. There is speculation that Chon together with the Moseten languages, a small group of languages in Bolivia, form part of a Moseten-Chonan language family. Another proposal is, that it is related to the Pano-Tacanan languages. Joseph Greenberg classifies ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tzeltal Language
Tzeltal or Tseltal () is a Mayan language spoken in the Mexican state of Chiapas, mostly in the municipalities of Ocosingo, Altamirano, Huixtán, Tenejapa, Yajalón, Chanal, Sitalá, Amatenango del Valle, Socoltenango, Las Rosas, Chilón, San Juan Cancuc, San Cristóbal de las Casas and Oxchuc. Tzeltal is one of many Mayan languages spoken near this eastern region of Chiapas, including Tzotzil, Chʼol, and Tojolabʼal, among others. There is also a small Tzeltal diaspora in other parts of Mexico and the United States, primarily as a result of unfavorable economic conditions in Chiapas. The area in which Tzeltal is spoken can be divided in half by an imaginary north-south line; to the west, near Oxchuc, is the ancestral home of the Tzeltal people, predating Spanish colonials, while the eastern portion was settled primarily in the second half of the twentieth century. Partially as a result of these migrations, during which the Tzeltal people and other cultural groups ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chonan Languages
The Chonan languages are a family of indigenous American languages which were spoken in Tierra del Fuego and Patagonia. Two Chon languages are well attested: Selk'nam (or Ona), spoken by the people of the same name who occupied territory in the northeast of Tierra del Fuego; and Tehuelche spoken by the people of the same name who occupied territory north of Tierra del Fuego. The name 'Chon', or ''Tshon'', is a blend of 'Tehuelche' and 'Ona'. Previous studies The Selk'nam people were widely studied by anthropologists such as Martin Gusinde and Anne Chapman throughout the 20th century. However, their language went extinct in the 1970s. History and demographics The northern Tehuelche were conquered and later assimilated by the Mapuche during the Araucanization of Patagonia. Some 1.7 million Mapuche continue to live in Chile and southwest Argentina. Further south they traded peacefully with y Wladfa, the colony of Welsh settlers. Some Tehuelche learnt Welsh and left their chil ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
