No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the authors.
Lexical anaphors and pronouns in Telugu
... In certain Polish dialects, for example, the feminine gender is used exclusively for married women; unmarried women and young girls are referred to with neuter or masculine gender (Zaręba 1984-5, cited in Corbett 1991. In Telugu (South-Central Dravidian), the same pronouns that are used for animals and inanimate objects are also used for young girls, or girls the speaker has a close personal relationship with (Subbarao & Lalitha Murthy 2011), and in Konkani (Indic), neuter agreement can be used for young women as well (Corbett 1991). ...
Gender-(mis)matching pronouns have been studied extensively in experiments. However, a phenomenon common to various languages has thus far been overlooked: the systemic use of non-feminine pronouns when referring to female individuals. The present study is the first to provide experimental insights into the interpretation of such a pronoun: Limburgian zien ‘his/its’ and Dutch zijn ‘his/its’ are grammatically ambiguous between masculine and neuter, but while Limburgian zien can refer to women, the Dutch equivalent zijn cannot. Employing an acceptability judgment task, we presented speakers of Limburgian (N = 51) with recordings of sentences in Limburgian featuring zien, and speakers of Dutch (N = 52) with Dutch translations of these sentences featuring zijn. All sentences featured a potential male or female antecedent embedded in a stereotypically male or female context. We found that ratings were higher for sentences in which the pronoun could refer back to the antecedent. For Limburgians, this extended to sentences mentioning female individuals. Context further modulated sentence appreciation. Possible mechanisms regarding the interpretation of zien as coreferential with a female individual will be discussed.
... These forms are also used to form reciprocals in Telugu. (Subbarao & Lalitha Murthy 2000, Subbarao & Everaert (2012. See Krishnamurti and Gwynn (1985). ...
1. The aim of this paper is to show that the phenomenon of Backward Control, is quite robust in Telugu, and is some cases the only available option is Backward Control in Telugu, as Forward Control results in ungrammatical sentences. Haddad (2009 a, b) argues that Telugu has Copy Control where the matrix and embedded lexical subjects that are identical are both overtly present and there are no restrictions that operate on Copy Control. In contrast, we demonstrate that Copy Control in Telugu is not free as Haddad claims, and Telugu instead has Partial Copy Control, where the embedded subject is in the scope of a Negative Polarity Item (NPI) and the corresponding c-commanding NP is a universal or distributive quantifier expression occurring in the matrix subject position. Only in such conditions, we show that Copy Control is permitted. We propose a constraint which should be adhered to for the phenomenon of Copy Control to take place. Thus, while Forward Control and Backward Control are much more robust phenomena in Telugu, Copy Control is rather a restricted phenomenon limited only to a quantifier linked to a negative polarity item. The analysis of Telugu data further shows that a question expression in the embedded subject position in the scope of an NPI c-commanded by a negative may be coindexed with a universal quantifier or a distributive quantifier and only in such cases is Copy Control permitted in Telugu. Such unique coindexation between a wh-expression with an NPI with a c-commanding quantifier raises a fundamental question as to how such coindexation takes place, and at which level in the grammar of the language. The analysis presented in this paper further demonstrates that whether a universal quantifier or a distributive quantifier have different morphological forms or homophonous in a language, their semantic import and syntactic behaviour may be identical with regard to quantification. Thus, our paper shows that in a control structure a Universal Quantifier or a Distributive Quantifier or an NPI (negative Polarity Item) in the scope of a negative in the subject position may be coindexed with a corresponding item in the subject position of the matrix clause and the corresponding item in the matrix clause may be any one of the items from the set. We substantiate our claim by providing cross-linguistic evidence from Monsang, Hmar and Mizo of the Kuki-Chin sub-branch of the Tibeto-Burman language family.
... The initial component of a reduplicated reciprocal anaphor invariantly copies the case of its antecedent. It is worth noting here that this feature of case-copying, which is not shared by many Indo-Aryan languages, including Hindi and Bangla, is widespread in Dravidian languages, viz., Kannada (Amritavally 2000), Malayalam (Jayaseelan 2000) and Telegu (Subbarao and Murthy 2000). Reciprocal anaphors in Asamiya are distinguished from their reflexive counterparts in form, number and distribution. ...
North East Indian Linguistics Volume 5 presents the latest in descriptive and anthropological linguistic research into the languages of the North East Indian region. Long acknowledged to be among the culturally and linguistically richest and most diverse regions of all Asia, North East India needs to be well-studied and well-understood to underscore its potential.
This volume advances the understanding of North East Indian languages and cultures through analyses of a wide variety of topics in a range of regional languages. The themes discussed in this volume include language contact and genetic linguistics in the languages of Arunachal Pradesh, Assam and neighbouring Bhutan, historical grammar within the Bodo-Garo and Mizo-Kuki-Chin branches of Tibeto-Burman, nominalization and the relational marking of noun phrases in North East Indian languages, and new advances in the study of Bodo-Garo phonology – in addition to contributions to the analysis of Eastern Indo-Aryan grammar and the song language of the Pangwa Tangsa.
This book will be of interest to linguists, anthropologists, sociologists, and anyone with an abiding interest in the languages and cultures of this fascinating and understudied region.
In this paper, we report on a study of gender reference in Limburgian, specifically the use of the neuter subject pronoun het ‘she’ (lit. ‘it’) to refer to a female referent. This pronoun is used in addition to the feminine pronoun ze ‘she’. We investigate the role of the referent’s social and grammatical characteristics in the variation between grammatically feminine and ‘non-feminine’ ( nf; i.e., neuter and masculine) pronouns in two experiments. First, we test the effect of a referent’s age in a language production study, in which 41 native speakers participated. The results of this study indicate that speakers use het more often to refer to younger than to older women. Second, we use an acceptability judgment task ( N = 72) to assess whether the preference for non-feminine pronouns for younger women might be explained by grammatical agreement with non-feminine antecedent nouns (e.g., grammatically neuter maedje ‘girl’). The results indicate that this is not the case: het is preferred as a pronoun for younger but not older women, regardless of an antecedent noun’s grammatical gender. We conclude that the variation in pronoun gender in Limburgian is a socio-pragmatic phenomenon, and we offer suggestions for future research in this area.
South Asian languages license control into adjuncts known as conjunctive participle clauses. At the same time, these languages allow exceptions to adjunct control. These exceptions have received very few, mainly semantic, analyses in the literature. This paper focuses on one South Asian language, Telugu, and offers a syntactic analysis. It shows that the so-called exceptions to adjunct control are non-exceptions and that they are instances of Expletive Control that involve two unaccusative predicates. The proposal is not without challenges. One challenge comes from English that does not allow Expletive Control. The article spells out the English details and shows that they do not create a problem for the Telugu data.
South Asian languages are rich in linguistic diversity and number. This book explores the similarities and differences of about forty languages from the four different language families (Austro-Asiatic, Dravidian, Indo-Aryan (Indo-European) and Tibeto-Burman (Sino-Tibetan)). It focuses on the syntactic typology of these languages and the high degree of syntactic convergence, with special reference to the notion of 'India as a linguistic area'. Several areas of current theoretical interest such as anaphora, control theory, case and agreement, relative clauses and the significance of thematic roles in grammar are discussed. The analysis presented has significant implications for current theories of syntax, verbal semantics, first and second language acquisition, structural language typology and historical linguistics. The book will be of interest to linguists working on the description of South Asian languages, as well as syntacticians wishing to discover more about the common structure of languages within this region.
This study explores Adjunct Control in two South Asian languages, Telugu (Dravidian) and Assamese (Indo-Aryan), within the Minimalist Program of syntactic theory. Adjunct Control is a relation of obligatory co-referentiality between two subjects, one in the matrix clause and one in an adjunct/subordinate clause of the same structure. Telugu and Assamese have non-finite Conjunctive Participle (CNP) clauses that function as adjuncts. Both languages show evidence of Adjunct Control into CNP clauses.
Three types of Adjunct Control are examined. These are Forward Control, in which only the matrix subject is pronounced; Backward Control, in which only the subordinate subject is pronounced; and Copy Control, in which case both subjects are pronounced. Telugu licenses all three types of Adjunct Control, while Assamese licenses only Forward and Copy Control. Sentences (1-3) are examples from Telugu.
(1) Forward Control
[aakali wees-i] Kumar sandwic tinnaa-Du
[hunger fall-CNP] Kumar.NOM sandwich ate-3.M.S
‘Having felt hungry, Kumar ate a sandwich.’
(2) Backward Control
[Kumar-ki aakali wees-i] sandwic tinnaa-Du
[Kumar-DAT hunger fall-CNP] sandwich ate-3.M.S
‘Having felt hungry, Kumar ate a sandwich.’
(3) Copy Control
[Kumar-ki aakali wees-i] atanu/Kumar sandwic tinnaa-Du
[Kumar-DAT hunger fall-CNP] he/Kumar.NOM sandwich ate-3.M.S
‘Having felt hungry, Kumar ate a sandwich.’
I analyze Adjunct Control as movement, providing a detailed account of the conditions that drive and constrain each type of control. I suggest that the subject starts out in the adjunct before it moves to the matrix clause. The result is non-distinct copies of the same element in both clauses. Decisions regarding the pronunciation of copies take place on the phonological side of the computation. The pronunciation of one copy only (the matrix or adjunct copy) results in Forward or Backward Control. The pronunciation of both copies results in Copy Control.
ResearchGate has not been able to resolve any references for this publication.