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The distinction mass - count nouns has always been long discussed by grammarians due to their difficulty in finding a homogenous point of view. The present study aims to clarify the different interpretations of massive nouns, laying stress on their individualized “reading”. Starting from different occurrences of massive nouns there has been established the role played by the indefinite article a/ an in structures comprising a massive entity.

In this article we have conducted a number of grammatical and stylistic analyses on representative fragments from the monumental work of Livy. This analysis aims at discovering the particularities of construction in different types of texts, such as: Praefatio –the appeal to method, individual and collective portraits, discourses and battle scenes.

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Prepositional form and function in Irish, as in other Modern Celtic languages, are topics of much significance. In Modern Irish numerous simple prepositions not only form compounds with possessive forms of personal pronouns but additionally marshal an impressive array of 'conjugated' forms corresponding to the various grammatical persons. Prepositions also play a crucial role in indicating aspect and are involved in passive/ reflexive roles with the verbal noun. This paper offers an overview of the functioning of a selection of important prepositions in the language and provides examples by way of illustration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Livonian like other Finnic languages has a complex morphological system. Unlike, e.g., Finnish and Estonian, Livonian has not been systematically ­standardised and thus exhibits vast variability in usage. This article discusses the results of a morphosyntactic corpus analysis of the Livonian jussive mood. The article presents previous research on the Livonian jussive, formal aspects of jussive occurrences in the corpus, and an analysis of arguments of the jussive predicates. Jussive object marking is given more attention due to the ambiguity of case marking in Livonian, namely, nominative and genitive (sometimes even partitive) forms frequently ­coincide. A possible interpretation of the ambiguous cases is suggested based on their usage and restrictions.

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This essay argues that Jesus’s confession of ignorance about the day and hour of his return (Matt. 24:36; Mark 13:32) is logically inconsistent with the Nicene-Constantinopolitan doctrine of his “consubstantiality” (homoousia) with God the Father. The essay first defines “consubstantiality”, then presents three formulations of the argument, and finally rebuts a number of possible responses: from the textual originality of the phrase “nor the Son”; from the reinterpretation of “knows” as “makes known”; from the ideas of partitive exegesis and communicatio idiomatum; and from the question of the Holy Spirit’s knowledge of the things of God.

The article deals with the way in which partitive meaning was expressed in genitive constructions in the 16th-century Russian language. It focuses on the problem of codependence between partitive meaning and the genitive inflection -u, correlation between the inflections -a/-u, and the semantics of nouns which took the inflection -u in the 16th-century administrative files.

THE PARTITIVE GENITIVE OF QUANTITY IN 19th CENTURY DIALECT TEXTS COLLECTED BY A. BARANAUSKAS AND K. BRUGMANNSummaryAll the measure nouns found in the Eastern and Western High Lithuanian Kauniškiai dialect texts were divided into five subtypes. The abstract quantity nouns and the conventionalized measures usually govern the postposed partitive genitive. The placement of the partitive genitive may vary in the phrases with the nouns that have the meaning of containers and fractions (parts). The partitive genitives are usually postposed in complex phrases (tukstantis baczku smałos ‘(one) thousand barrels of pitch’; szventįto vandenio butelis ‘a bottle of sanctified water’). Words such as pusantro ‘one and a half’, pusė ‘a half’ are closely connected with numerals in their meaning and usage. The nouns lysė, ‘a bed’, dirva ‘ground (a field)’, lopinys ‘a piece’ can obtain the meaning of quantifiers when they describe different areas (sectors) of land.The postposition of the partitive genitive predominates (71-78 per cent) in these texts. The use of the preposed genitive in sequences with nouns denoting quantity makes up about a quarter of the occurrences, but in some of these the initial position is conditioned not by the quantity meaning, but rather by the meaning of purpose or definition. For Kauniškiai dialect texts the meaning of purpose in sentences with preposed genitives is in general not usual. That is, the position of the genitive in such sentences is not always connected with differences of meaning. The variation in the position of the genitive (especially in the Kauniškiai texts) is more closely connected with neutral or marked word order in the phrase. Therefore the use of preposed genitives is stipulated by three factors, namely, (a) the attributive meaning of the phrase (denoting purpose, definition, possession); (b) the marked word order in the phrase; (c) the alternation of the intonation in the sentence.Phrases with a postpositive genitive in the Kauniškiai texts can have a partitive meaning which is not significant. In these phrases the naming of the object expressed by the postpositive genitive as an entirety is more important.The content of quantity in the texts studied can be described as having three different possible sequences: (a) noun of quantity and postpositive genitive (maišas linų ‘bag of flax’); (b) noun of quantity and preposed genitive (linų maišas ‘bag of flax’ [literally *’of flax a bag’]); noun of quantity and a construction with su ‘with’ (maišas su linais ‘bag with flax’).The position of the attributive genitives and the genitives of quantity did not differ much as the word order in the attribute phrase of this period was not strictly defined.

GENITIVE OF QUANTITY: GRAMMATICAL GOVERNMENT AND SEMANTICSSummaryGenitives governed by lexical units of quantity and partitive genitives are used in the same syn­tactical positions, that of the subject and that of the direct object. Although both definite and inde­finite quantity can be expressed by lexical units which govern a genitive, grammatical concord is observed only in the expressions of definite quantity (cf. dešimt vyrų, and devyni vyrai), whereas indefinite quantity is expressed by the partitive genitive. However, the use of the genitive is deter­mined not by the opposition of definite quantity vs. indefinite quantity, but by the opposition of part vs. whole. The marked member of the latter opposition is the partitive genitive, the unmarked member being the objective accusative or the subjective nominative.In Lithuanian the part—whole opposition is considerably restricted by the semantic peculiarities of the verb, its actants and the linguistic context. The partitive genitive occurs in the position of the subject only with existential or motion verbs. Yet the partitive genitive is much more frequent in Lithuanian than, for instance, in Russian.As the part—whole opposition is in essence a quantitative opposition, there is no reason why we should speak about the expression of zero quantity or introduce a zero quantitative seme.

Copyright of Vox Romanica: Annales Helvetici Explorandis Linguis Romanicis Destinati is the property of Narr Francke Attempto Verlag GmbH & Co.KG and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Indogermanische Forschungen: Zeitschrift für Indogermanistik und allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft is the property of De Gruyter and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In this paper we will argue that the analysis of lies, fallacies, and misunderstandings requires a complex model including a heterogeneous common ground based on reportative and situational evidence (cf. Farkas & Bruce 2010) and two additional layers, beliefs and objective facts. Lies can be defined by using the concept of reportative evidence, i. e. there is a contrast between an utterance and the utterer's beliefs. Fallacies arise if a person is mistaken with regard to the situational evidence, i. e. there is a contrast between her beliefs and the objective facts. Misunderstandings, again, refer to reportative evidence, i. e. there is a contrast between the intended meaning of an utterance and the way it is understood by the hearer. Whereas the analysis of lies proves that the common ground is based on evidence and not on mutual belief, the analysis of fallacies and misunderstandings shows that both its situational and its reportative part have to split up into one part that is clearly fixed and another part that is open to interpretation and thus endangered by these communication failures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that nouns and names, as such, do not refer. Apparently-referring nouns and names have been converted lexically to determiners. Thus nouns and names participate in reference by virtue of dependency on a determiner, either in the syntax, as part of a determiner phrase, or lexically, by conversion. Determiners may be partitive (referring to a subset) or non-partitive (generic), and definite or non-definite; and various combinations of these subcategories may be expressed either by presence of an independent determiner or by conversion of a noun to a determiner. So, in English, for example, the cows is definite and partitive; but converted cows may be either non-definite (partitive or not) or definite non-partitive (generic). Apparently-referring nouns and names in English are paralleled in some other languages by expressions with a distinct determiner. In French, for instance, conversion is sparing and nouns typically appear with an accompanying determiner: So non-definite partitive cows corresponds to des vaches in French, and definite non-partitive cows to (one sense of) les vaches. Greek is intermediate in recourse to conversion. Presence of a determiner and conversion are considered to be alternative strategies (syntactic vs. lexical) for permitting nouns to participate in reference. In the absence of these, nouns are predicative, and languages again vary in how predicativity is expressed – though arguably again involving a determiner. Non-singular predicative nouns are often converted to a non-referential determiner. Singulars may or may not be accompanied by a singular non-referential determiner: compare Greek Ine δikiγoros (‘S/he is lawyer’) with English She is a lawyer.

This paper reports on the results of a corpus study on case variation after the lexeme voll ('full'). It deals with constructions like ( er ist voll revolutionären Bewusstseins 'he is full of revolutionarygen awarenessgen' vs. er ist voll revolutionärem Bewusstsein 'he is full of revolutionarydat awarenessdat'). Many reference grammars of German claim that voll ('full') governs the genitive as well as the dative and that in current language use the dative increasingly replaces the genitive. Based on an electronic corpus of the German daily newspaper Der Tagesspiegel, the issues of the extent of the case variation after voll ('full') and the government properties of this lexeme are addressed. The data analysis reveals that case variation only occurs when the governed NP is in singular. Here, the rate of dative (62%) is higher than that of genitive (38%). In the plural condition, however, the data analysis shows no case variation. Here, voll ('full') exclusively governs the genitive. Hence, the findings do not support the claim of a general genitive loss after voll ('full'). It is argued that the discrepancy between the singular and the plural conditions can be considered as a syntactically motivated case variation. The findings are mainly discussed in the context of Gallmann's (1996) approach of the syntactically determinate case ending omission. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper reports the results of one part of a study conducted on the native language of three Estonian-English bilingual children living in Britain. This part focuses on object case marking. The study found that the native language of these children demonstrated English influence in their systematic overuse of the partitive to mark direct objects in Estonian. The plausibility of regarding this as a transfer effect is supported by two considerations. First, the children have limited exposure to Estonian speakers in England, so that English has become their dominant language. Second, the children’s simplification of object marking patterns conforms to the much simpler English pattern. The primary subjects were asked to translate 40 English sentences (with 43 object contexts) into Estonian. A set of Estonian control subjects were given a completion task with the same sentences in Estonian. The results of the study revealed that the primary subjects overwhelmingly used the partitive in marking direct objects, even in contexts where either the genitive or nominative marking was required. The control subjects demonstrated a consistent use of the three object cases in appropriate contexts.

This article reports on the results of four corpus studies investigating determinerless count nouns in different predicative contexts in German (i.e., copula sentences with sein ‘be’, werden ‘become’, bleiben ‘stay’ and predicative als-phrases). The starting point for these corpus studies is the recent literature on German copula sentences with sein that addresses the question which nouns need to occur with a determiner and which can occur determinerless when used predicatively (Hallab 2011; Geist 2019, 2014). The studies reported in this article provide a broad overview of the attested data, which shows that the near exclusive focus on copula sentences, as well as the way in which the data was compiled in the literature so far have led to a biased picture of the determinerless predicative use of German count nouns. The data furthermore motivates the two theoretical results of this article: (i) a new characterization of the class of nouns that can occur determinerless in German copula sentences and (ii) a list of desiderata for future theoretical and formal analyses addressing which aspects of the determinerless occurrences can be attributed to the nouns and which are plausibly a result of the predicative contexts [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A comprehensive overview of the word formation of the North Frisian dialects is a desideratum of Frisian linguistics. In this article we provide a brief survey of the most important compositional and derivational patterns in Fering-Öömrang, the North Frisian dialect of Feer/Föhr and Oomram/Amrum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the semantic differences between three Slovak substantives expressing a short duration: chvíľa, okamih, and minúta. The study was conducted using the material of the Slovak national corpus and is based on the analysis of collocations of the lexemes in question. The statistical parameters that were used are the data on absolute frequency and the indicators of the measure of association (t-score). We have analyzed the potential factors that could restrict the compatibility of the nouns chosen inside a genitive construction, as well as possible contextual differences in situations where restrictions on the compatibility are absent. Genitive constructions can have two possible meanings: partitive (part/whole relation) or temporal proper. In the first case, minúta differs from chvíľa and okamih in that it has a specific target content. In the second case, each of the substantives is characterized by its basic compatibility area: for chvíľa, it is combination with nouns denoting a period or a break not limited by a strictly initial or final phase; for okamih, combination with actions denoting a start or an appearance; for minúta, central role is given to genitive constructions with fixed final phase substantives. In combination with život and smrť substantives, contexts with chvíľa focus on describing the situation directly from the position of the subject of perception, whereas contexts with okamih usually have it viewed by an outside observer. Thus, Slovak substantives of short duration form a system that is fundamentally different from the one used in the Russian language. In the Slovak system, personal time is opposed to social, and then the personal time is divided into irrational (chvíľa) and rational (okamih) time. DOI: 10.31168/2305-6754.2018.7.2.12

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Some Features in the Expression of the Noun Determination. Comparison Between Five Romance Languages. In this article we would like to compare the noun determination in five Romance languages (French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Romanian). All the languages examined here share the main uses of articles: known referent, generic use, unique entities, abstract names, inalienable possession for the definite article, or introduction of a new element into the discourse and description for the indefinite article. However, we wanted to show some peculiarities. We used the same text in five languages, (La sombra del viento, Carlos Ruiz Zafón) which is part of the RomCro corpus, composed in the Chair of Romance Linguistics of the Department of Romance Studies, Faculty of Humanities, University of Zagreb, Croatia. The results of the analysis showed a clear difference between French and the other languages. As expected, French uses the indefinite article in plural much more often, as well as the partitive article, which does not exist in Spanish, Portuguese and Romanian. Likewise, the possessive adjective is more common in French than in other languages which use the definite article instead. But what is particularly interesting are the differences which indicate a "change of perspective", namely a different kind of article than in the original text. Our conclusion is that the noun can have several characteristics at the same time (description or determination by complement, generic use or absence of specific referent etc.) of which the author (or the translator) chooses the one to highlight. Likewise, we have underlined the role of article zero, which can carry different values (unspecified referent, but also unspecified quantity or even definite article value if the noun is introduced by a preposition), depending on its relationship to other articles in the language. REZUMAT. Unele particularităţi în exprimarea determinării substantivului. comparație între cinci limbi romanice. În studiul nostru, am dori să comparăm determinarea substantivului în cinci limbi romanice (franceză, spaniolă, portugheză, italiană şi română). Toate limbile examinate aici ilustrează principalele utilizări ale articolelor: referent cunoscut, utilizare generică, entități unice, nume abstracte, posesie inalienabilă pentru articolul hotărât sau introducerea unui nou element în discurs și descrierea pentru articolul nehotărât. Cu toate acestea, am vrut să arătăm anumite trăsături structurale. Pentru aceasta, am folosit același text pentru cele cinci limbi (La sombra del viento, Carlos Ruiz Zafón), care face parte din corpusul RomCro, realizat la Catedra de lingvistică romanică a Departamentului de Romanistică, Facultatea de Filosofie şi Litere, Universitatea din Zagreb, Croația. Rezultatele analizei au arătat o diferență clară între franceză și celelalte limbi. Așa cum era de așteptat, franceza folosește mult mai frecvent articolul nehotărât la plural și, bineînțeles, articolul partitiv, care nu există în spaniolă, în portugheză și în română. De asemenea, adjectivul posesiv este mai frecvent în franceză decât în alte limbi care folosesc, în schimb, articolul hotărât. Dar ceea ce este deosebit de interesant sunt diferențele care indică o „schimbare de perspectivă”, și anume un alt tip de articol decât în textul original. Concluzia noastră este că substantivul poate avea mai multe caracteristici în același timp (descriere sau determinare prin complement, utilizare generică sau absența unui referent specific etc.), dintre care autorul (sau traducătorul) o alege pe cea pe care vrea să o evidențieze. De asemenea, am relevat rolul articolului zero, care poate avea valori diferite (referent nespecificat, dar și cantitate neprecizată sau chiar valoare de articol hotărât, dacă substantivul este introdus de o prepoziție), în funcție de relaţia sa cu alte articole în limbă. Cuvinte-cheie: articol, franceză, spaniolă, portugheză, italiană, română.

In this article we report a previously unidentified verbal root for the Indo- European protolanguage, *menkʷ- 'to be short; to lack', based on verbal and nominal reflexes in Italic, Indo-Iranian, Germanic, Tocharian and Anatolian, founded, we claim, in the Caland System, an archaic stratum of the Proto-Indo-European derivational system. In four of five Indo-European subgroups, predicates are found occurring with a subject(-like) argument in a non-nominative case, dative in the languages that have retained the Indo- European case morphology, but an oblique case in the branches where different non-nominative forms have merged. The documented verbal forms cannot be unified into a single reconstructable verb, yet we argue that the more abstract argument structure construction involving a dative subject(-like) argument must be inherited from Proto-Indo-European. Hence, we suggest a partial reconstruction for the grammar of Proto-Indo-European, based on the attested Tocharian form, *m(e)nkʷ-MP, the non-nominative case of the subject(- like) argument, and the meaning 'lack'. Taken together, this cumulative evidence corroborates the assumption that a verb meaning 'lack' developed from 'be short' in the proto-language, indeed instantiating a non-canonically case-marked argument structure with its subject(-like) argument in the dative case. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ved. bhari means 'to stamp, to trample'. This meaning confirms the disputed relationship with Hitt. parh-mi 'to chase, to hunt' and its derivation from PIE *bherh2-. The Hittite text KUB 35.145 mentions the god Perwa- beside parhant- 'chased' in a characteristic situation. Therefore it is possible that Perwa- and parh-mi are also related. Under these circumstances the most likely reconstruction of Perwa- is *bhḗrh2o- (or *bhérh2o-) 'the chasing one', denoting a god of wild animals. In this regard it is remarkable that all three, bhari, parh-mi and Perwa-, are connected with horses. The laryngeal in *bhḗrh2ohas been deleted like in *h1erh2eh2 > *h1ereh2 > *erā in Gr. ἔραζε 'on the earth'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this essay I understand school grammar as academic grammar for future teachers. It aims at linguistic awareness, not linguistic knowledge, which is an essential common ground with grammar lessons at school. It is about exciting insights into the structure of language. In the first section, the discourse on school grammar is examined. I will put a focus on the cultivated negative image of school grammar in history and then contrast it with practical expectations of use. Thereafter the essential linguistic foundations are outlined, which have been neglected in school grammar for far too long, being afraid of linguistic theory: valency and constituency. Afterwards, the area of tension between first and second language in terms of school grammar will be explored. Finally, I sketch school grammar as a basis for error correction and evaluation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rulebooks of Easy-to-read (ETR) German recommend to strictly avoid the genitive and to replace it by "von"-phrases with dative. This is backed by the assumption that for the target groups of ETR German genitive-phrases are generally harder to understand than "von"-phrases. However, there has been no empirical foundation for this assumption. The test reported in this paper addressed this problem and wanted to find out whether genitive is really harder to understand than "von"-phrases for two target groups: 17 adults with intellectual disability and 16 functional illiterates, that is people, who learned to read but, due to multiple reasons, do not have reading skills (anymore) that are sufficient for everyday life. The test was designed as multiple-choice test and compares the intelligibility of common forms of the attributive genitive (i.a. genitivus obiectivus, genitivus partitivus) with their "von"-paraphrases. The participants had to read and understand sentences and subsequently choose between statements that applied to the sentences or not. The overall results show that the tested forms of the attributive genitive were easy to understand. Comparing genitive-phrases and "von"-phrases there were no significant differences. That means, both forms were easy to understand for the participants. Some genitive forms were even easier to understand than the "von"-paraphrases. The results lead to the conclusion that the general prohibition of genitive in ETR German has to be revised. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This explorative study sheds light on article usage in German academic texts by French and Italian university (including Ph. D.) students. Given the differences between and among Romance and Germanic language systems, one might expect deviations in article usage in L2 German; in particular, speakers of Romance languages would seem likely to overgeneralise articles in their German language production. Contrary to these hypotheses, the corpora of learner varieties investigated in the present paper do not show evidence of overrepresentation and overgeneralisation of German articles, not even in generic sentences. In fact, articles tend to be underrepresented, as L2 learners often omit articles that are required in L1 German. Potential explanations of these findings are provided, giving rise to further research questions and desiderata. The latter include empirical studies on L1 German article usage in bilingual areas such as South Tirol, the use of articles in translations, and comparisons of article usage between L1 German and the L2 varieties of learners whose L1 does not have grammaticalised articles. Such studies should apply qualitative (i. e. semantic and pragmatic) as well as quantitative methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Copyright of Vox Romanica: Annales Helvetici Explorandis Linguis Romanicis Destinati is the property of Narr Francke Attempto Verlag GmbH & Co.KG and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)