KEY TOPICS

• Grammatical relations

• Case

• The nominative-accusative pattern

• The ergative-absolutive pattern

• Valence-changing constructions, including voice

How semantic roles are syntactically marked

In the last chapter we learned about different semantic roles and how these are connected to the predicate class with which they occur. In this chapter we look at how those semantic roles are made clear in the syntax. In other words, we look at how languages show who did what to whom, and with what.

In addition, we find that macrorole arguments – that is, the actor and the undergoer – group together in different ways. In this section I begin by describing the morpho-syntactic ways that languages mark semantic roles.

Linear order

Word order

In many languages, the actor and undergoer arguments appear in a certain position in the sentence and this tells us which is the actor and which the undergoer. In English, for example, the actor argument appears before the verb and the undergoer appears after the verb in a declarative sentence. This is why English is said to have a ‘Subject-Verb-Object’ word order or, in our terminology, Actor-Predicate-Undergoer constituent order. We know from the order of the constituents in (1a), for example, that the alien is the actor, the one doing the zapping.

KEY TOPICS

• Parts of words

• Analysing morphology

• Derivation and inflection

• Non-linear morphology

• Clitics

What is a word?

In this chapter we will look at the parts that words are made from: morphemes. We will learn to recognize them and will introduce some terms to describe them. In this section we discuss what we mean by a word, and how we might find words.

As members of a literate language community, we might think that defining a word is easy, but when we speak, of course, we do not mark word breaks. In a language that we do not know, we need a strategy for locating the boundaries between words.

In general terms, when we talk about a word we mean a separate, independent phonological unit. However, when we talk we run our words together and, despite what written conventions suggest, there usually are not audible pauses between our words. So how can we determine where words begin and end?

One feature of words is that they can be said on their own, in isolation. A speaker of English would be happy to pronounce the sequence /hapi/ happy on its own and call it a word, but would almost certainly not feel the same about /v/ ve or /ə/ (as in could've or coulda).

Secondly, when we do pause during natural speech, that pause always occurs between words, not in the middle of phonological words, as illustrated in (1).

KEY TOPICS

• Predicate classes

• Representing semantic structure

• Semantic roles

• Macroroles

• Valency

Predicate classes

So far we have looked at morphology and syntax and the different structures found in various languages. Right from the start we saw that semantics (meaning) and syntax (structural form) are closely related: in a sense they are two sides of the same coin. We based our syntactic tree diagrams on the meaning of the sentence, using semantic terms like predicate, argument and modifier. Table 4.1 provides a reminder of the basic relationships.

In this chapter we turn our attention to the semantics side of the coin. In order to look at the relationship between syntax and semantics in more detail I divide predicates into classes, and introduce a way of representing their meaning that shows these different classes. This semantic framework helps us to talk about semantics in a more precise and useful way. We will see that the various predicate classes may be expressed differently in the syntax, and we can also learn a lot about the semantic role(s) of the participant(s) by taking predicate classes into account.

KEY TOPICS

• Constituency and hierarchy

• Universal and non-universal aspects of syntactic structure

• Non-verbal predicates

• Operators

• Head-marking constructions

Introduction to syntactic structure

In this chapter we will introduce syntax, the study of how words pattern together in sentences.

So far we have concentrated on the structure of words: morphology. Syntax is the study of the function of words and how they are arranged into groups (constituents) and sentences. We are interested firstly in the types of words we find and their linear order. From there we can look at the structural relationships between constituents; in other words, which constituents are dependent on others. We will also study the hierarchical relationships between constituents; in other words, how units sit inside other units.

To illustrate constituent structure, take a look at the examples in (1) and (2). They are both ambiguous.

1. (1) the tiny elephant hunter

2. (2) Parking attendant attacks rocket.

Both (1) and (2) illustrate structural ambiguity. They have two meanings because we can ‘chop them up’ in different ways, assigning different structures and forming different constituents. (3) and (4) show one way of representing the two meanings and the constituents involved.

KEY TOPICS

• Language for communication

• The structure of this book

Most of the time, if not all of the time, we communicate with each other using language without considering the complex activity we are undertaking, forming complex words and sentences in a split second. We know immediately when someone uses language structures that are inappropriate or incorrect because we have learned the rules that govern the language(s) we use. In this book, we will look at the structures we use in more detail, in order to help us to understand the structures we find in languages that may be arranged in ways quite different from English.

There are many approaches to the study of language. Some linguists are more interested in discovering the basic, innate structures that we all have in our brains, regardless of which language(s) we speak. Linguists working in what is known as the generative tradition seek to understand universal grammar, the structures that human languages have in common and that we may be born with the capacity to use. The generative approach focuses on the formal characteristics of language structure, seeking to uncover the rules that ‘generate’ well-formed sentences. Other linguists take a more functional approach, studying language use in context; in other words, what actually comes out of our mouths rather than what may be stored in our heads. Functional approaches seek to incorporate the meaning and broader context of language in order to fully understand language structure.

KEY TOPICS

• Language typology

• Language families

• Language, culture and thought

• Language contact and change

Having examined the areas of morphology and syntax over the past chapters, in this chapter we look outwards to other, broader areas of linguistics that ‘share a border’ with the land of morpho-syntax. Each is, of course, a field of its own, so we will focus on some of the key topics and examples in each area to show how they connect with the topics we have covered.

For the purposes of linguistic analysis we usually separate out language's component parts (morphology, syntax, semantics, etc.) in order to explain how those parts are in fact fully interconnected. The same applies to language structure in context. Whenever we use language we do so in a specific socio-cultural context and while our brains are simultaneously doing other things. Nonetheless, linguists argue about precisely how the context ties into our processing and our use of language.

In addition, understanding how a language fits into its socio-linguistic and typological context gives us a headstart in our analysis of its structure. If we understand how ‘related’ languages work, this will give us clues as to which structures we are likely to find, and avoid us having to ‘reinvent the wheel’.

Finally, languages and their speakers do not exist in isolated bubbles, separate from all other language communities.