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This paper accounts for the ka- passive form in Balinese. It focuses on its syntactic and semantic representation. Using the data taken from Balinese narrative texts issued in the Bali Orti of Bali Post newspaper, and applying the RRG theory by Van Valin and Randy (1999), it was found out that the kapassive belongs to a morphological passive voice of Balinese where the the voice is marked on the verb (it is marked by prefix ka-). The ka- base form can be attached by applicative suffixes such as -ang, -in, and -an. These morphological verbs imply various syntactic structure and semantic representation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a brief overview and comparison of the imperfective and perfective aspect in Estonian and Latvian. The main means of expressing the perfective and imperfective aspect in Estonian are the case opposition of the direct object (the nominative/genitive or the partitive), the use of verb particles, and the general context. In Latvian, the opposition of the perfective and imperfective aspect is mainly expressed by existence or absence of verb prefixes, adverbs, and also the context. In Latvian, verb prefixes, besides perfectivity, may also add or modify the lexical meaning of the verb. We compare how the perfective and imperfective aspect are expressed in both languages in the case of transitive verbs, based on the correspondences found in a text corpus of literary works and their translations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article describes the ways tense, aspect, mood, and modality are marked in the Finisterre-Huon Papuan language Awara. Awara uses verbal suffixes for all of these, as well as employing multi-verb constructions for four aspectual distinctions. Two past tenses, the present tense, and one future tense are marked. Distinguishing between the present tense suffix and the homophonous imperfective aspect suffix is a thorny issue in Awara morphology. The suffixes marking mood and modality belong to two classes of irrealis suffixes, which are similar in form to irrealis suffixes of other Finisterre-Huon languages. Awara is noteworthy for a grammatical distinction between static and dynamic verb classes, realized in different forms of imperfective aspectual suffixes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The derivational prefix be- productively forms deverbal, denominal and deadjectival verbs in Modern English (ModE) (e.g. beblast, bepearl, beblind). This paper re-examines the Oxford English Dictionary's (OED) description of this prefix's semantic and categorial properties in light of word-formation theory and proposes a new analysis according to which denominal and deadjectival be-verbs are based on denominal and deadjectival converted verbs (e.g. to pearl, to blind). The theoretical motivation for this analysis is the need to deal coherently with both deverbal and denominal/deadjectival be-verbs, and the analysis is empirically confirmed by the input morphology and output semantics of be-verbs. This analysis allows us to conclude that be- is a deverbal verb-forming prefix whose main function is to add the notion of total affectedness to the meaning of the base verb. This paper also shows that the ModE prefix be- provides an interesting case of the conflict between the OED and word-formation theory. Word-formation theory analyses words based on synchronic principles of language, and the results can differ greatly from the OED's descriptions, which are based on the historical-etymological principle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents an analysis of vowel harmony that occurs in the verbal system of ciNsenga and ciCewa. In these languages the nature of suffix vowels is determined by the nature of the root: mid vowels trigger the vowel /ε/ on the suffixes, non-mid vowels, on the other hand, trigger the vowel /i/ on the suffixes. An examination of monosyllabic verbs which, by definition, have no root vowel, reveals interesting patterns between different Bantu languages: in some languages such verbs consistently select suffixes with the vowel /i/ whereas in other languages such verbs select suffixes with the vowel /ε/. Drawing on insights from Underspecification Theory (Archangeli, 1984, 1988; Archangeli & Pulleyblank, 1989, 1994) the article argues that a unified and coherent account of vowel harmony can be made for these languages by positing that the languages are parameterised with respect to the harmonic feature specified in their underlying representations and the concomitant default rule needed to derive the surface representations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper puts forward a formal analysis of the semantics of Russian verbal prefixes that is formulated within the framework of degree semantics. Prefixes are analyzed as degree modifiers. The paper demonstrates how this analysis captures the properties of pere-, one of the most complex and challenging verbal prefixes in Russian. It is proposed that spatial, temporal, excessive, comparative, and iterative uses of this prefix can all be unified under a scalar approach. The distinctions observed between these uses are largely restricted to the types of scale and comparative standard that are involved in the semantics of the verbal phrase. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the varying role of conditions on grammatical relations marking (namely animacy and volitionality) by looking at different languages of one family, using both existing descriptions and working with specially prepared video stimuli. This enables us to see the degree of variation permitted within closely related languages. We look at four Alor-Pantar languages (Teiwa, Adang, Kamang, and Abui), Papuan languages of eastern Indonesia. The conditions on argument marking are manifested in different ways. Those languages with syntactic alignment index objects with a prefix, those which have semantic alignment index objects and some subjects with a prefix. In 42 video clips we systematically varied animacy and volitionality values for participants in one and two-participant events. These clips were used in fieldwork to elicit descriptions of the events. The data show that animacy of the object is an important factor which favours indexation of the object on the verb in all four languages to varying degrees. Volitionality, on the other hand, is a factor in the semantically aligned languages only. While the presence of a prefix on the verb is semantically motivated in many instances, marking is not directly determined by verbal or participant semantics, and lexical factors must also play a role. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Setswana is an agglutinative language where prefixes and suffixes are extensively used in the formation of words. Words such as verbs, pronouns, adjectives and so on, which have a grammatical relationship with nouns in sentences, demonstrate agreement with such nouns by means of agreement morphemes. In certain instances verbs in Setswana sentences may take two objects. Both of these objects may be represented in the verb by object agreement morphemes. The result is that two object agreement morphemes may be prefixed to the verb. While the morphemes of the verb are presented systematically in Setswana grammars, the occurrence of multiple object agreement morphemes has received limited attention in the literature on Setswana linguistics. Similarly, this phenomenon has not yet been investigated from a computational morphological point of view. This article reports on (i) an example-based investigation towards a better and more complete understanding of the phenomenon of multiple object agreement morphemes as they appear in Setswana verbs, (ii) the modelling of these morphemes in an existing finite state tokeniser and computational morphological analyser for Setswana, and (iii) the novel role that a morphological analyser and its guesser variant can play in a corpus-based investigation of the phenomenon under discussion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study investigates the gradual development of morphological specification, as reflected in use of early non-finite verb forms in the speech of three Hebrew-acquiring children (mean age range 1;4-2;2). Children acquiring different languages have been shown to make use of non-finite forms in their initial verb usage. Use of uninflected verbs in matrix clauses has been attributed to the Root or Optional Infinitives phenomenon in generative frameworks, or to the generally stepwise path of acquisition in developmental approaches. Analyses of the longitudinal data presented here suggest that Hebrew-acquiring children do not use infinitival forms before they begin to master inflections productively. Instead, they rely, for several months, on non-affixed "bare stems" as their initial verb forms. Prefix-marked "full" infinitives occur later, typically in well-formed syntactic contexts, alongside productive use of affixed Present-tense (benoni) participial forms. Hebrew-acquiring children thus appear to make selective use of different types of nonfinite forms (initial bare stems followed by Infinitives and benoni), each representing different levels of inflectional knowledge. It is therefore argued here that non-finiteness in early child language is in itself a developmental concept consisting of several sub-phases each of which demonstrates a particular level of linguistic knowledge, motivated by typological features of the ambient language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the effect of phonological development on the acquisition of Hebrew verb inflectional suffixes, comparing between two monolingual typically developing children (SR and RM). Examination of the order at which the suffixes appeared in the children's speech reveals one distinction; SR produced the number (plural) suffix -im before the person (1st singular) suffix -ft', while RM produced these suffixes in the opposite order. All other suffixes were produced in the same order. As these suffixes differ in the presence vs. absence of a coda, I attribute the distinction between the children to the development of word final codas, which was faster in SR's speech than in RM's. This interaction between phonology and morphology is known as prosodic licensing, whereby the prosodic structure hosting a grammatical morpheme is a prerequisite for the production of this morpheme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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