Mermaid construction : a compound-predicate construction with biclausal appearance / edited by Tasaku Tsunoda.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Tsunoda, Tasaku, editor.

Series:

Comparative handbooks of linguistics ; Volume 6.

Comparative Handbooks of Linguistics ; Volume 6

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Grammar, Comparative and general--Relative clauses.

Grammar, Comparative and general.

Grammar, Comparative and general--Noun phrase.

Grammar, Comparative and general--Syntax.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (XIV, 868 p.)

Place of Publication:

Berlin ; Boston : De Gruyter Mouton, [2020]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

This volume provides detailed studies of the crosslinguistically unusual mermaid construction in seventeen languages of Asia, including Modern Standard Japanese, and one language of Africa. This construction appears to be absent in languages of Europe, Oceania and the Americas. The name - mermaid construction - alludes to its paradoxical make-up, where the structure closely resembling a verb-predicate clause ends with what may look like a noun-predicate clause. Superficially it looks biclausal; however, syntactically it is monoclausal. It has a compound predicate which contains an independent noun, a clitic or an affix derived from a noun, or a nominalizer. Its compound predicate has a modal, evidential, aspectual, temporal, stylistic or discourse-related meaning. The paradox is resolved from a diachronic perspective insofar as a biclausal structure is reanalyzed as a monoclausal one. This volume shows how a noun may be reanalyzed to become a constituent of a predicate. It constitutes an important contribution to research on grammaticalization and in particular, the grammaticalization of nouns and more generally, to the typology of syntactic reanalysis.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Preface

List of authors

Maps

Genetic classification of languages examined or referred to

1 Mermaid construction: An introduction and summary

2 Modern Standard Japanese

3 Mitsukaido dialect of Japanese

4 Old and Early Middle Japanese

5 Irabu Ryukyuan

6 Korean

7 Kolyma Yukaghir

8 Sakha (Yakut)

9 Khalkha Mongolian

10 Amdo Tibetan

11 nDrapa

12 Kathmandu Newar

13 Burmese

14 Kurux

15 Hindi

16 Sidaama

17 Thai

18 Tagalog

19 Koryak

Index of names

Index of languages

Index of subjects

Notes:

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

3-11-067084-4

OCLC:

1191864264