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Re: Branching typologies

From:Dirk Elzinga <dirk_elzinga@...>
Date:Friday, September 28, 2001, 15:37
At 7:07 PM -0400 09/27/01, David Peterson wrote:
>In a message dated 9/27/01 11:46:10 AM, Dirk_Elzinga@BYU.EDU writes: > ><< The resulting >structure is somewhat flat, rather than left- or right-branching. >Since the verb is normally in first position, I suppose you could >call it verb-initial. >> > > How are the morphemes arranged?
I have never been convinced of the generalizability of the order of morphemes within a word (prosodic or grammatical) to word order in general. Hence my statement regarding Tepa clause structure as being flat. That said, inflectional morphemes are arranged in the following order (I haven't worked out derivation; I have some ideas that I'm not ready to commit to or share yet): {determiner,mood}=person-transitivity-STEM-(tense/aspect) All Tepa predicates are introduced by a modal clitic (in the case of matrix verbs) or a determiner (in the case of adjoined predicates). The person prefixes conflate the notions "subject" and "object" into single unanalyzable forms; their interpretation will depend on the presence (and type) of transitive prefix. There is thus no basis for determining the order of subject and object arguments within a clause. I'm not sure yet if there is a preferred order for adjoined predicates which are coindexed to arguments. I'm guessing that there isn't since the adjuncts are optional (Tepa is a pronominal argument language). A lot of the most interesting morphological action takes place in the STEM. Prosodic strategies are employed to mark number and tense/aspect distinctions; the suffixed t/a is present only under prosodically defined conditions. So it is hard to say what order these "morphemes" come in. Dirk --