non-canonical' word order in tundra nenets. an explanation ......introduction flexibility in the...

“Non-canonical” word order in Tundra Nenets.An explanation of the initial OS order

Nikolett Mus

Research Institute for LinguisticsHungarian Academy of Sciences

2–3 December 2016LDLT5: Workshop on information structure and discourse in the

minority languages of the Russian Federation

Nikolett Mus Tundra Nenets OS order 1 / 22

Introduction

The basic word order of Tundra Nenets

the major constituents in Tundra Nenets clauses follow a rigid SOVorder:

(1) SergeiSergeiS

Maša-mMasha-accO

meńe.love.sgV

‘Sergei loves Masha.’ (KhO 2016)

both the non-agreeing, i.e. non-topical and the agreeing, i.e. topicalobjects follow the subject:

(2) SergeiSergeiS

Maša-mMasha-accO

meńe-da.love.3sg>sgV



Introduction

Flexibility in the word order of Tundra Nenets

there are further “non-canonical” orders:

(3) Maša-mMasha-accO

SergeiSergeiS

meńe.love.3sgV


both the non-topical and the topical objects precede the subject:

(4) Maša-mMasha-accO

SergeiSergeiS

meńe-da.love-3sg>sgV


→ the topicality of the direct object does not seem to correlate with itsposition


Introduction

The explanations of OS order so far

the OSV order can be produced in two possible ways:

1 the object and the subject are topics and the object precedes thesubject (cf. Vilkuna 1998)

(5) Maša-miOi

SergeiS

[ti[ti

]]

meńe(-da).V

‘Sergei loves Masha.’

2 the subject is focused and it occupies the preverbal position (and theobject may be topicalized, cf. Nikolaeva 2014)

(6) [ti[ti

]]

Maša-mO

SergeiSi

meńe(-da).V

‘Sergei loves Masha.’


Introduction

Hypotheses

the OSV order is not optional, i.e. it is not available to any objects

the OSV order represents different underlying structures

movement from vP to TopPmovement within vP

the O and the S have different informational functions


Introduction

Research questions

What types of direct objects precede the subject?

What types of subjects are preceded by direct objects?

Is it only the subject that is preceded by the direct object?

Is there any syntactic and/or pragmatic restriction of the reversedorder?


Outline

Outline

1 Introduction

2 Background: the language and the data

3 The movable objects in OS

4 Interim Summary

5 The subjects in OSV

6 Conclusions


Background

1 Introduction



4 Interim Summary


6 Conclusions


Background

The Tundra Nenets language and the data

The Tundra Nenets language is ...a (Northern) Samoyedic, Uralic language

spoken in three ADs of the Russian Federation (Europe, Siberia)

seriously endanered with cc. 20.000 speakers

The Tundra Nenets corpus is ...preliminary, i.e. a collection of published written texts

UTF-8 encoding, plain texts, not yet annotated

electronically accessible (LUI)

The Tundra Nenets corpus contains so far ...cc. 30.200 tokens of press articles

cc. 22.500 tokens of folklore narratives

cc. 27.100 tokens of phrasebook conversations


Background

Data collection strategies

1 automated processlisting the 10 most frequent NPssearching for the object forms of NPs

Sentence types SO/OS OS ratio

Declaratives 189 15 7.94%Interrogatives 143 27 18.9 %

2 manual processextracting typical transitive verbs, e.g. ‘give’, ‘send’


The movable objects in OS

1 Introduction



4 Interim Summary


6 Conclusions



The objects in OS order

proper namepersonal pronoun

(7) śiPḿi1sg.acc

ńaxarthree

ńeka-ḿiPuncle-1sg

Parne-xæPParne-dat

wator-Na-P.promise-co-3pl

‘My three uncles promised me to Parne.’(Labanauskas 1995 (=L95))

DP

(8) t́ukuthis

śo-mPsound-acc

xib́awho

meP- Na-da?make-co-3sg>sg

‘Who made this sound?’ (Susoy 1990 (=S90))

NP (definite from the context)

(9) Nano-mPboat-acc

ńeneća-Ppeople-pl

meP-Na-daP.make-co-3pl>sg

‘People made the boat.’ (Okotetto 1998 (=O98))



The objects in OS order (cont.)

indefinite NP

(10) jibawarm

ja-xadland-abl

to-wicome-ptcp.ipfv

jeśa-mPmoney-acc


ponPfor.a.long.time

ńi-Pneg-3pl

pere-́setu-Pkeep-hab-cng

‘People do not preserve the money from warm lands for a long time.’

(Ńarana Nærm (=ŃN))

wh-phrase

(11) Namge-mPwhat-acc

pidaraP2pl

pærNa-daP?do-co-2pl

‘What are you doing?’ (Nenang 2005 (=N05))

⇒ both definite and indefinite objects precede subjectsNikolett Mus Tundra Nenets OS order 13 / 22


Correlations with differential object agreement

DOA in Tundra Nenets

3rd person topical objects

silent pronouns

(12) Maša-m Sergei meńe.

(13) Maša-m Sergei meńe-da.

The informational status of the objects

(14) A. ‘Who does Sergei love?’

B. Maša-m Sergei meńe. → O is the new information

(15) A. ‘Does Sergei love Masa?’

B. Maša-m Sergei meńe-da. → O is the topic

⇒ both topicalized and focused objects precede subjectsNikolett Mus Tundra Nenets OS order 14 / 22


Adverb positioning

(16) lućaPRussianO

wada-mPword-acc

xańanawhereAdv

Naćeke-rchild-2sgS

toxola-da-ć?learn-3sg>sg-intV

‘Where did your child learn Russian?’ (N05)

(17) VoroncovoVoroncovoAdv

xarda-xanatown-loc

Næ-dabe-ptcp.ipfv

škola-xanaschool-loc

ńenejNenetsO

wada-mPword-acc

Naćeki-Pchild-plS

ńi-doneg-3plV

toxola-mb́u-P.learn-cont-cng

‘The children at the school in Vorontsovo don’t learn Nenets.’ (ŃN)

⇒ sentential adverbs are be preceded by topicalized objects in OSVNikolett Mus Tundra Nenets OS order 15 / 22

Interim Summary

The types of objects in OSV order

Definiteness

indefinitedefinite

Information structural status

old information (topic)new information (focus)

Syntactic position

agreeing object precede the sentential adverbsnon-agreeing object follow the sentential adverbs


The subjects in OSV

1 Introduction



4 Interim Summary


6 Conclusions


The subjects in OSV

The subjects preceded by objects

The subjects preceded only by non-agreeing objects:

generic expressions

(18) jibawarm

ja-xadland-abl

to-wicome-ptcp.ipfv

jeśa-mPmoney-acc


ponPfor.a.long.time

ńi-Pneg-3pl

pere-́setu-Pkeep-hab-cng

‘People do not preserve the money from warm lands for a long time.’

(ŃN)

(19) VoroncovoVorontsovo

xarda-xanatown-loc

Næ-dabe-ptcp.ipfv

škola-xanaschool-loc

ńenejNenets

wada-mPword-acc

Naćeki-Pchild-pl

ńi-doneg-3pl

toxola-mb́u-P.learn-cont-cng

‘The children at the school in Vorontsovo don’t learn Nenets.’ (ŃN)


The subjects in OSV

The subjects preceded by objects

The subjects preceded only by agreeing objects:

wh-expressions

(20) Nano-mPboat-acc

xib́awho

meP-Na-daP.make-co-3pl>sg

‘Who made the boat?’ (O98)

(21) Śoḿa,Somya

śit2sg.acc

xib́awho

xonra-sa?inform.3sg-int

‘Somya, who informed you?’ (Puškareva–Khomič 2001)


Conclusions

1 Introduction



4 Interim Summary


6 Conclusions


Conclusions

The informational structure of OSV

agreeing objects → old information ⇒ moves to TopPthey precede any type of subjectswh-restriction (?)

non-agreeing → can be new information ⇒ remains in vPthey precede subjects that are expressed by generic expressions


Conclusions

Thank you!

Acknowledgments

This research is supported by the project Languages under the Influence funded bythe Hungarian National Research, Development and Innovation Office (grant No.:ERC HU 15 118079), the principal investigator is Katalin É. Kiss.


IntroductionBackground: the language and the dataThe movable objects in OSInterim SummaryThe subjects in OSVConclusions

non-canonical' word order in tundra nenets. an explanation ......introduction flexibility in the...

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