WG 4: Turkic, Mongolic, Caucasian... and NPs

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WG 4 Turkic, Mongolic, Caucasian... and NPs
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Working Group 4 members

• Alice Harris (co-chair) NE Caucasian, Cartvelian
• Arienne Dwyer (co-chair) Turkic, Mongolic,
  Sino-Tibetan
• Bill Rivers Slavic, Turkic
• Anna Kibort Slavic
• Imelda Udoh - Legbo
• Jeff Good NE Caucasian, Turkic, Niger-Congo
• Steve Moran Niger-Congo
• Lameen Souag Arabic, Berber, Beja, (Japanese)
• Florian Siegl Uralic, Paleoasiatic (Chuckchee,
  Yukagir, Nivkh)

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Higher-level variation domains or multiple
intersecting trees?

• Dialect variant forms/functions (SUNDAY)
• Historical etyma (SUNDAY or NEVER)
• Sociolinguistics
• Honorifics/Humilifics
• Pejoratives (which are covered in GOLD)

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Pragmatics/Discourse

• Topic, Focus, Cleft
•  Honorifics/Humilifics - Muna (Austronesian),
  Japanese, Uyghur (Turkic), Maithili (I-E)

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Issues of cross-referencing

• When multiple form/function phenomena can be
  cross-referenced to a particular form in the
  ontology
• E.g. cleft both focus and syntactic property
• E.g. evidentiality (next)
• E.g. finiteness

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Evidentiality(6.4 indep. class)

• hierarchy yall got it right
• Definition Primary relates to the source of
  information, and only secondarily modality
• Orthagonal reference Form etymon is frequently
  related to the perfect.
• (relegate to a COPE?)

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Finiteness

• Terminological distinctions masdar, participle,
  converb/coverb, infinitive, medial verb, supine
  From the POV of POS, Subordinate connective
  analytic category
• From the POV of the clause, Subordinated verb
  form synthetic category
• yet another form/function dichotomy
• ...Do we deal with these with COPEs or in
  ontology?
• i.e. How deep do we go?
• Decision based on what users may want to search,
  and the theoretical interests of the data
  provider

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enough until tomorrow!!!
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WG4-Sunday/Higher-level I

• Cross-referencing
• function x-refd to form
• syntax x-refd to morphology (e.g. clause
  chaining to verbal morphology)
• featural distinctions can be more useful than a
  hierarchy
• to precisely define (localize) categories for a
  given language, but
• the hierarchy may well be useful for querying

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Higher-level, II

• Historical information
• Problem the use of labels based on historical
  criteria rather than modern
• Finnish "Essive" is historical essive, but not
  used in the way that current linguists (and GOLD)
  define an essive
• Georgian historically had an ergative case,
  today this case is not ergative, but much more
  complex and essentially unlabelable.
• Pragmatics/Discourse including Topic, Focus...

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Lower-level - New Cats Addenda

• Pluractionals (aka Frequentative) in Number,
  x-refd to FrequentativeAspect
• V concept finiteness
• V cats converb/coverb, medial verb, masdar,
  participle
• Adj cats need to be much more elaborated
• Positive, Comparative, Superlative, Elative
  (comparative and superlative), Relative
• Verb Trans/Ditrans/Intrans (consider under
  Intrans or x-cutting unergative/active,
  unaccusative/inactive)
• Evidentials changed definition to
  highlightsource of information, x-ref with
  Perfect (raises problem of Gzn processes and
  historical forms)
• Sound symbolism, onomatopoeia (under 5 PoS cats)

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Nominal categories I

• Number
• Should be a separate class (taken out of Nouns)
• x-ref with Pluractionals
• Person
• Consider x-refing notion of Impersonal (shows up
  also in Voice), or creating an Impersonal Person
• Gender (not adequate for arbitrary gender)
• Need more complexity the definition of Other
  should be expanded to include Neuter and many
  other N classifiers
• refined definitions of M/F

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Nominal cats, II Case

• We suggest using a featural system rather than
  the hierarchical one
• Many lgs, like Avar, shows that you sometimes
  have to combine the features of location and
  motion, which you currently have separate.
• Additional cats Affective case Oblique (in a
  higher up CoreObl opposition) distinct from
  CorLoc/MotionOther

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Further work

• (Translation We didnt get around to these)
• Personal affixes and possessives
• Head-marking, dependant marking
• Root pattern morphology

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Evidence Outcomes

• See Working Group 4s change-tracked addenda to
  the GOLD.
• Contains revised definitions, new categories,
  references.
• File gold-view-rev3_WG4.doc