Thomas Wier
My work focuses on the theory and typology of polysynthetic languages, with special focus on morphological blocking, incorporation, (non)configurationality, and complex systems of case and agreement. Aside from this, I have spent much of my career working on languages of the Caucasus, primarily Georgian and its dialects, as well as a variety of Native American language families, including Algonquian, Uto-Aztecan, and Tonkawa.
Address: Free University of Tbilisi
Kakha Bendukidze University Campus of Dighomi
Davit Aghmashenebeli Alley, 13km
Tbilisi 0131, Georgia
Address: Free University of Tbilisi
Kakha Bendukidze University Campus of Dighomi
Davit Aghmashenebeli Alley, 13km
Tbilisi 0131, Georgia
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This dissertation tackles these facts by examining first what the evidence for different domains of grammar are in Georgian. How do data from Georgian verb morphology challenge traditional assumptions underlying lexical incremental assumptions behind the morpheme? Do inversion facts argue for monostratal or multistratal conceptualizations of grammatical functions?
The answer to both of these questions is highly complicated, and requires an extensive look at the Georgian systems of case, agreement, tense, aspect, and modality. In particular I assess the viability of classical treatments such as Harris (1982), Anderson (1993), Marantz (1992), and Stump (2001) and find that Georgian poses problems for each one. I go on to assess in the second part how differential feature hierarchies in morphology versus syntax argue for the existence of distinct feature geometries. Feature hierarchies, it turns out, are epiphenomena of set-theoretical properties of these geometries. In the last chapter, I discuss the literature on feature hierarchies arguing how many scholars have misunderstood this highly abstract area of grammatical theorizing.
Hoijer’s original transcriptions were largely unannotated and unglossed and were translated word for word, with no free English translation of full clauses. In this volume, Thomas R. Wier provides translations for each line of text along with morphological analysis of each Tonkawa word. He breaks each line of the original Tonkawa text into its constituent parts, glosses each of these in turn, and translates the whole into English. For the first time in nearly a century, his work supplies an entirely new grammatical description—using the modern terms, conventions, and insights of modern linguistic theory—that will help linguists understand the structure of the Tonkawa language. The tales themselves—divided into “Night Stories” of a pre-human mythological past, and “Old Stories” of humans caught up in unexpected adventures—act as a crucial resource for scholars and any readers interested in the literature of this prominent Native American tribal group.
For both the language it preserves and the stories it tells, Tonkawa Texts is an invaluable repository of Tonkawa culture.
Papers
• a number of new phonemes in that protolanguage, including palatalized *rj, a velarized/labialized series of sibilants, and at least one pharyngeal fricative
• the absolute dating of the loss of these earlier segments
• 'm-mobile', a kind of rebracketing process affecting nasal stops word-initially
By calibrating dates of attestation with known external facts of contact languages, I provide evidence for the absolute dating of important phonological sound-shifts and morphological reanalysis in the Kartvelian languages.
1) their morphological exponence,
2) the extent to which their overall typological profile constrains how expressive forms may be formed,
3) grammatical categories exclusive to expressives,
4) expressives as a source for lexical innovation,
5) expressives as a locus of diachronic change
It will also look in-depth at the specific morphological and syntactic peculiarities of expressives in Georgian, which exhibit exuberant consonant clusters, processes of reduplication uncharacteristic of the language as a whole, as well as specific morphosyntactic alignment splits between different classes of expressive. Expressives will be seen to be not one thing, but many.
Entry for the International Encyclopedia of Linguistic Anthropology.
Encyclopedia article for International Encyclopedia of Linguistic Anthropology
This dissertation tackles these facts by examining first what the evidence for different domains of grammar are in Georgian. How do data from Georgian verb morphology challenge traditional assumptions underlying lexical incremental assumptions behind the morpheme? Do inversion facts argue for monostratal or multistratal conceptualizations of grammatical functions?
The answer to both of these questions is highly complicated, and requires an extensive look at the Georgian systems of case, agreement, tense, aspect, and modality. In particular I assess the viability of classical treatments such as Harris (1982), Anderson (1993), Marantz (1992), and Stump (2001) and find that Georgian poses problems for each one. I go on to assess in the second part how differential feature hierarchies in morphology versus syntax argue for the existence of distinct feature geometries. Feature hierarchies, it turns out, are epiphenomena of set-theoretical properties of these geometries. In the last chapter, I discuss the literature on feature hierarchies arguing how many scholars have misunderstood this highly abstract area of grammatical theorizing.
Hoijer’s original transcriptions were largely unannotated and unglossed and were translated word for word, with no free English translation of full clauses. In this volume, Thomas R. Wier provides translations for each line of text along with morphological analysis of each Tonkawa word. He breaks each line of the original Tonkawa text into its constituent parts, glosses each of these in turn, and translates the whole into English. For the first time in nearly a century, his work supplies an entirely new grammatical description—using the modern terms, conventions, and insights of modern linguistic theory—that will help linguists understand the structure of the Tonkawa language. The tales themselves—divided into “Night Stories” of a pre-human mythological past, and “Old Stories” of humans caught up in unexpected adventures—act as a crucial resource for scholars and any readers interested in the literature of this prominent Native American tribal group.
For both the language it preserves and the stories it tells, Tonkawa Texts is an invaluable repository of Tonkawa culture.
• a number of new phonemes in that protolanguage, including palatalized *rj, a velarized/labialized series of sibilants, and at least one pharyngeal fricative
• the absolute dating of the loss of these earlier segments
• 'm-mobile', a kind of rebracketing process affecting nasal stops word-initially
By calibrating dates of attestation with known external facts of contact languages, I provide evidence for the absolute dating of important phonological sound-shifts and morphological reanalysis in the Kartvelian languages.
1) their morphological exponence,
2) the extent to which their overall typological profile constrains how expressive forms may be formed,
3) grammatical categories exclusive to expressives,
4) expressives as a source for lexical innovation,
5) expressives as a locus of diachronic change
It will also look in-depth at the specific morphological and syntactic peculiarities of expressives in Georgian, which exhibit exuberant consonant clusters, processes of reduplication uncharacteristic of the language as a whole, as well as specific morphosyntactic alignment splits between different classes of expressive. Expressives will be seen to be not one thing, but many.
Entry for the International Encyclopedia of Linguistic Anthropology.
Encyclopedia article for International Encyclopedia of Linguistic Anthropology
• How many languages actually are there in the Caucasus?
• Why is the Caucasus a locus of such high linguistic diversity? What aspects of its linguistic ecology converge to produce this effect?
• What kinds of different modes of language shift are attested or common in the region?
• What kinds of cultural norms in the Caucasus inhibit language shift, and what kinds of conditions facilitate it?
• What kinds of typological features of languages are threatened even when the languages themselves are not?