Polysynthesis presupposes the existence of ‘words’, a domain or unit of phonology and syntax that is extremely variable within and across languages: what behaves as a ‘word’ with respect to one phonological or syntactic rule or constraint may not behave as such with respect to other rules or constraints. Here we develop a system of variables that allows cataloguing all verb-based domains in a language in a boom-up fashion and then determining any potential convergence of domains in an empirical way. We apply the system to case studies of Mapudungung and Chintang. ese confirm earlier observations that polysynthetic languages do not operate with unified units of type ‘word’ in either phonology or syntax.

The 'word' in polysynthetic languages: phonological and syntactic challenges

This volume offers a thorough, systematic, and crosslinguistic account of evidentiality, the linguistic encoding of the source of information on which a statement is based. In some languages, the speaker always has to specify this source - for example whether they saw the event, heard it, inferred it based on visual evidence or common sense, or was told about it by someone else. While not all languages have obligatory marking of this type, every language has ways of referring to information source and associated epistemological meanings. The continuum of epistemological expressions covers a range of devices from the lexical means in familiar European languages and in many languages of Aboriginal Australia to the highly grammaticalized systems in Amazonia or North America. In this handbook, experts from a variety of fields explore topics such as the relationship between evidentials and epistemic modality, contact-induced changes in evidential systems, the acquisition of evidentials, and formal semantic theories of evidentiality. The book also contains detailed case studies of evidentiality in language families across the world, including Algonquian, Korean, Nakh-Dagestanian, Nambikwara, Turkic, Uralic, and Uto-Aztecan.

The Oxford Handbook of Evidentiality

Polysynthesis in Northern Australia

The Languages of the Daly River Region (Northern Australia)

This handbook offers an extensive crosslinguistic and cross-theoretical survey of polysynthetic languages, in which single multi-morpheme verb forms can express what would be whole sentences in English.

/pdf/the-acquisition-of-murrinhpatha-northern-australia-13p0rpl15t.pdf

The Acquisition of Murrinhpatha (Northern Australia)

6 The Caucasian languages

Abstract In polysynthetic West Caucasian languages, the morphological verbal complex amounts to a clause with all kinds of participants cross-referenced by affixes. Relativization is performed by introducing a relative affix in the cross-reference slot that corresponds to the relativized participant. However, these languages display several crosslinguistically rare features of relativization. Firstly, while under the view of the verbal complex as a clause this affix appears to be a relative pronoun, it is an unusual relative pronoun because it remains in situ. Secondly, relative affixes may appear several times in the same clause. Thirdly, relative pronouns are not expected to occur in languages with prenominal relative clauses. Fourthly, in the Circassian branch, relative pronouns are identical to reflexive pronouns. These features are explained by considering relative prefixes to be resumptive pronouns. This interpretation finds a parallel in the neighboring East Caucasian languages, where reflexive pronouns also show resumptive usages. Finally, since in some West Caucasian languages the relative affix is a morpheme with a dedicated relative function but still shows properties of a resumptive pronoun, our data suggest that the distinction between relative pronouns and resumptive pronouns may not be as clear as is usually assumed.

West Caucasian relative pronouns as resumptives

The paper presents a description and an analysis of the nominal complex, a peculiar construction which includes a noun and its modifiers, in West Circassian, a polysynthetic language of the Northwest Caucasian family. The nominal complex shows properties of a single word and tends to follow the template proposed for the word in West Circassian. However, its parts may themselves have a complex structure based on a similar template. This is argued to result from a principle that requires these subparts to be interpreted without appealing to a broader morphological context. In addition, the nominal complex may contain complex syntactic constituents as its proper parts. It is shown that the nominal complex in West Circassian is currently undergoing demorphologization and syntacticization.

Nominal complex in West Circassian: between morphology and syntax

/pdf/notes-on-perspective-sensitivity-qmbflyjugs.pdf

Notes on Perspective-Sensitivity

In this paper, I consider the syntactic property of the Mehweb predicative marker gʷa. This is a particle that serves as a finite predicate, supplementing the auxiliary in periphrastic form - a phenomenon attested in a number of East Caucasian languages. What is less common - or at least less documented - are the rules of how the particle is placed in the clause. The aim of the paper is to show that, while it can be placed, expectedly, after the lexical verb or after the focused constituent, it may also appear on a constituent other than the focus.

The Mehweb 'Assertive' Copula GʷA: A Sketch of a Portrait

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