Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-g8jcs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T21:03:37.255Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Forms of predication in Sakha (Turkic): Will the true lexical predicates please stand up?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 June 2016

Mark C. Baker  and
Nadezda Vinokurova
Mark C. Baker
Affiliation:
Rutgers University
Nadezda Vinokurova
Affiliation:
Institute of Humanities and Indigenous Peoples of the North, Yakutsk, Russia
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The Turkic language Sakha (Yakut) uses a copular verb with predicate nominals but not with predicate adjectives or verbs in certain environments, including relative clauses, nominalized clauses, and complements to nouns. Previous work takes this as evidence that adjectives but not nouns are true one-place predicates. However, unaccusativity diagnostics show that adjectives pattern with nouns in Sakha, as in other languages: neither is inherently predicative without a predicative functional head. The need for a copula with predicate nominais in certain environments can be explained using Richards’s distinctiveness condition. Relative clauses, noun complements, and nominalization structures all bring a nominal head in close contact with the predicate. If the predicate itself is nominal, a verbal copula must intervene to separate the predicate from the embedding head of the same category.

Résumé

Résumé

La langue turcique Sakha (Yakut) emploie une copule avec les noms prédicatifs mais pas avec les adjectifs prédicatifs ou les verbes dans les contextes tels que les subordonnées relatives ou substantivées et les compléments de noms. Des études précédentes concluent par conséquent que contrairement aux substantifs, les adjectifs sont de vrais prédicats monovalents. Cependant, certains tests d’inaccusativité démontrent qu’en Sakha, les adjectifs se comportent comme les noms, comme dans les autres langues : ni l’adjectif ni le nom n’est prédicatif sans une tête fonctionnelle predicative. La nécessité d’une copule dans certains contextes peut s’expliquer par la condition de caractère distinct de Richards. Les subordonnées relatives, les compléments de nom et les nominalisations ont en commun le rapprochement d’une tête nominale et d’un prédicat. Si le prédicat est nominal, une copule intervient pour séparer le prédicat de la tête enchâssée de la même catégorie.

Keywords

Sakha (Yakut)predicationdistinctivenesscopulapredicate nominalsakha (yakut)prédicationcaractère distinctcopuleprédicat nominal
Type
Articles
Information
Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique , Volume 57 , Issue 2: Properties of predication/Proprietes de la predication , July 2012 , pp. 177 - 207
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Linguistic Association/Association canadienne de linguistique 2012 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Baker, Mark. 1988. Incorporation: A theory of grammatical function changing. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Baker, Mark. 1996. The poly synthesis parameter. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Baker, Mark. 2003. Lexical categories: Verbs, nouns, and adjectives. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Baker, Mark. 2011. Degrees of nominalizations: Clause-like constituents in Sakha. Lingua 121:1164–1193.Google Scholar
Baker, Mark and Vinokurova, Nadezda. 2010a. On tense and copular verbs in nonverbal predications in Sakha. In Rutgers Working Papers in Linguistics, vol. 3, ed. Staroverov, Peter, 31–63. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers Department of Linguistics.Google Scholar
Baker, Mark and Vinokurova, Nadezda. 2010b. Two modalities of case assignment in Sakha. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 28:593–642.Google Scholar
Belletti, Adriana and Rizzi, Luigi. 1981. The syntax of ne: Some theoretical implications. The Linguistic Review 1:117–154.Google Scholar
Benmamoun, Elabbas. 2000. The feature structure of functional categories: A comparative study of Arabic dialects. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Borer, Hagit and Grodzinsky, Yosef. 1986. Syntactic cliticization and lexical cliticization: The case of Hebrew dative clitics. In Syntax and semantics, vol. 19: The syntax of pronominal clitics, ed. Borer, Hagit, 175–217. San Diego: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Bowers, John. 1993. The syntax of predication. Linguistic Inquiry 24:591–656.Google Scholar
Burzio, Luigi. 1986. Italian syntax: A Government-Binding approach. Dordrecht: Reidel.Google Scholar
Chierchia, Gennaro and Turner, Ray. 1988. Semantics and property theory. Linguistics and Philosophy 11:261–302.Google Scholar
Chierchia, Gennaro. 1998. Reference to kinds across languages. Natural Language Semantics 6:339–405.Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam. 1957. Syntactic structures. The Hague: Mouton.Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam. 1970. Remarks on nominalization. In Readings in English Transformational Grammar, ed. Jacobs, Roderick A. and Rosenbaum, Peter S., 184–221. Waltham, MA: Ginn.Google Scholar
Cinque, Guglielmo. 1990a. Types of A-bar dependencies. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Cinque, Guglielmo. 1990b. Ergative adjectives and the lexicalist hypothesis. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 8:1–40.Google Scholar
Diesing, Molly. 1992. Indefinites. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Dixon, R.M.W. 1982. Where have all the adjectives gone? Berlin: de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Enç, Murvet. 1991. The semantics of specificity. Linguistic Inquiry 22:1–27.Google Scholar
Halle, Morris and Marantz, Alec. 1993. Distributed morphology and the pieces of inflection. In The View From Building 20, ed. Hale, Kenneth and Keyser, Samuel J., 111–176. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Huang, C.-T. James. 1982. Logical relations in Chinese and the theory of grammar. Doctoral dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).Google Scholar
Kornfilt, Jaklin. 1997. Turkish. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Kornfilt, Jaklin. 2008. Subject case and Agr in two types of Turkic RCs. In Proceedings of the 4th Workshop on Altaic Formal Linguistics (WAFL), MIT Working Papers in Linguistics (MITWPL), vol. 56, ed. Boeckx, Cedric and Uluta§, Süleyman, 145–168. Cambridge, MA.Google Scholar
Krause, Cornelia. 2001. On reduced relatives with genitive subjects. Doctoral dissertation, MIT.Google Scholar
Öztüirk, Balkiz. 2005. Case, referentiality and phrase structure. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Perlmutter, David and Postal, Paul. 1984. The 1-advancement exclusiveness law. In Studies in Relational Grammar, vol. 2, ed. Perlmutter, David and Rosen, Carol, 81–125. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Pesetsky, David and Torrego, Esther. 2006. Probes, goals, and syntactic categories. Ms., Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and University of Massachusetts.Google Scholar
Rapoport, Tova. 1987. Copular, nominal, and small clauses. Doctoral dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).Google Scholar
Richards, Norvin. 2010. Uttering trees. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Rood, David. 1976. Wichita grammar. New York: Garland.Google Scholar
Stassen, Leon. 1997. Intransitive predication. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Stowell, Timothy. 1983. Subjects across categories. The Linguistic Review 2:285–312.Google Scholar
Stowell, Timothy. 1996. The phrase structure of tense. In Phrase structure and the lexicon, ed. Rooryck, Johan and Zaring, Laurie, 277–292. Dordrecht: Kluwer.Google Scholar
Travis, Lisa. 1984. Parameters and effects of word order variation. Doctoral dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).Google Scholar
Underhill, Robert. 1976. Turkish grammar. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Vinokurova, Nadezda. 2005. Lexical categories and argument structure: A study with reference to Sakha. Doctoral dissertation, University of Utrecht.Google Scholar
Wetzer, Harrie. 1996. The typology of adjectival predication. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar