Session Notes Understanding Syntax May 10, 2019 * 1

Here are a few notes on our third seminar session on Friday, May 10, 2019. There will be a
second part to this, dealing with the session itself. Here, I only want to go into something that
time didn’t allow us to do, namely, the exercises for Chapter 1 of Tallerman (2014).

1. Exercise 1
Comparison of reflexive form in Standard Dialect (SD) and Northern Dialect (ND)

• ND has one form more: theirself. This form is a 3rd person singular (henceforth: 3SD)
reflexive and is presumably used when the gender of the antecedent (the thing or per-
son a reflexive refers back to) is not known, as opposed to himself (masculine, hence-
forth M or MASC) or herself (feminine, henceforth F or FEM).

• The ND forms are composed of possessive pronouns (my, your, his, her, their, our,
your, their) and either self (for SG forms) or selves (for PL forms). This is very regu-
lar, as opposed to the SD, which uses the accusative form of ordinary pronouns (him,
them) for 3SG MASC and 3PL. ND can thus be said to me more regular, or “logical.”

2. Exercise 2
The so-called POSSESSIVE construction (noun+’s + noun). The first noun, or N, is in fact
rarely the possessor but can have all sorts of functions. I’m just giving a few examples.

• Kim’s denial: Kim is not the possessor, but the agent of the denial

• Kim’s conclusion: Kim is what could be called the undergoer or experiencer of the
conclusion, as in, “Kim came to the conclusion.”

• Kim’s problem: Here, this passive role of Kim is even more pronounced.

• Thus, the relation of the first N to the second N depends to a large degree on that sec-
ond N. But the reverse is also true:

• Today’s book: the book we are reading today

• Mike’s book: Here, Mike is the possessor of the book.

• Tallerman’s book: Here, Tallerman is the author, not (necessarily) the possessor of the
book
This is a difficult exercise and I will not pursue it any further here. The question of semantic
roles of nouns (N), noun phrases (NP), and other items will be taken up again later in the
book.
 3. Exercise 3
Inn order to figure the solution to this task out, you need to carefully compare the gloss in the
second line with the English translation in the third:

• You will then find out that Icelandic lacks the equivalent of the English indefinite arti-
cle a, while it does have the equivalent of the English definite article the.

4. Exercise 4
Just check the second line in each example closely for its meaning.

• Kwamera: FUTURE-3SG-move-outwards – He/she/it will move outwards

• Kwamera: FUTURE-3SG-CONTINUOUS-sleep – He/she/it will be sleeping

• Kwamera: 1EXC-dislike dog this – I dislike this dog. First person (1) plus exclusive
meaning (EXC), but without a plural (PL) marker means “I.”

• Kwamera: 1INC-DUAL-drink – The two of us drink. Inclusive meaning (INC) plus

DUAL gives the meaning where I can say this to you while we’re having a beer.

• Lenakel: 3PL-PAST-TRIAL-go.there-together – Three went there together

• Lenakel: 3SG-PAST-read-TRANS again – He/she/it read it again. The transitive

marker TRANS tells us that there must be an object of read; The sentence can thus not
simply mean: He/she/it read again, without the it.

• Southwest Tanna: we.two.EXC 1PL-PAST-DUAL-afraid – The two of us were afraid.

Here, the person(s) this sentence is addressed to are not included.

• Southwest Tanna: we.two.EXC 1PL-PAST-DUAL-stab pig – The two of us stabbed

the pig. Again, the person(s) this sentence is addressed to are not included.

• Lenakel: he-PAST-see house good one – He saw a good house

• Lenakel: house POSS-his it-PAST-good very – His house was very good. In this ex-
ample, good is not an adjective as in the previous one, as it is inflected for tense,
namely, PAST.

5. Exercise 5
I will to this only cursorily:

• Mende: Indefinite article a is missing; it is not clear whether wúru is in the past. Word
order is as in English.

• Lobala: 3PL is realized as a prefix on the verb. In English, number is never realized as
prefix on the verb. There is no independent subject; that is, Lobala is a null-subject
language.
 • Swahili: There is no continuous form as in English; agreement (3SG) and tense
(PRES) are both realized as prefixes on the verb.

• Kru: Constituent order is SOV. The verb is not inflected for tense. The negation NEG
is a simple element not attached to a form of do and is in second position, separated
from the verb by the object.

6. Exercise 6
On careful inspection, you might discover the following:

• Whenever the grammatical marker nrâ is present, it always immediately precedes the
subject NP of the sentence. Where the marker nrâ is absent, the constituent order
seems to be SV in intransitive sentences, and SVO in transitive ones. But where it is
present, the order becomes VS and VOS, respectively! In one case, namely, (6), we
have the order VOS + time adverbial (at night).

• Tinrin has a freestanding element that marks agreement with the subject. In order to
make things not to easy for us, the 3SG form of that element is also nrâ!

• Combining these two observations, we can try to draw a tree structure for simple Tin-
rin sentences. In this, I will leave the intransitive sentences to one side. Sentence (4)
would then look like the tree on the left below.

• From what I said above, I would not hesitate to predict that sentence (4) without the
marker nrâ before the NP Tony would read “Tony nrâ tewùrrù nrani,” and have a
structure like the tree above to the right. A transitive sentence such as (9) would have a
similar structure. Therefore, I suggest the following

• Tinrin nrâ marker hypothesis: The marker nrâ prefixed to a subject NP serves to
flip this NP around; instead of at the beginning of AgrP, it comes at the end.
If there are temporal adverbials such as at noon in sentence (6), these can be tacked on to
structures as the ones above in a way that I will show you in class
All best & a nice Sunday – Michael (May 12, 2019)