Word Classes

Resumo: A tradição gramatical luso-brasileira dá vital importância ao estudo das classes de palavras. Diferentes teorias gramaticais atuais continuam a revisitar o tópico, que também é matéria de ensino na Educação Básica (nos ensinos fundamental e médio) e na formação de professores de língua portuguesa. O trabalho tem, então, por objetivo fazer um levantamento dos critérios utilizados para a conceituação dos nomes (substantivos) e dos verbos por dois livros didáticos brasileiros do Ensino Médio e dois livros didáticos angolanos da escola secundária (ensino médio). Constatou-se uma preferência por critérios morfossemânticos (i.e., critérios que levam em conta a forma e o significado das palavras) à revelia dos sintáticos (i.e., critérios que levem em conta a posição ocupada pela palavra) para a definição dessas duas classes pelos livros brasileiros e angolanos. Recorrendo à epistemologia e metodologia da Gramática Gerativa (Chomsky, 1986), o trabalho propõe uma série de atividades didáticas pautadas em tarefas de julgamento de gramaticalidade de sentenças (a manipularem sobretudo o critério sintático), de caráter complementar às atividades dos livros didáticos. Palavras-chave: classes de palavras; verbo; nome; Gramática Gerativa; ensino de língua portuguesa. Abstract: The Luso-Brazilian grammatical tradition gives vital importance to the study of the parts of speech. Different current grammatical theories continue to revisit the topic, which is also a subject of teaching in Basic Education (namely, in primary and secondary education) and in Portuguese teacher training programs. The paper aims to discuss the criteria used in the definition of nouns and verbs by two Brazilian and two Angolan secondary education textbooks. It has been verified a preference for morpho-semantic criteria. Morpho-semantic criteria take into account the form and the meaning of words. Individual parts of speech are not defined by syntactic criteria for the definition of these two classes by the Brazilian and Angolan books. By using the epistemology and the methodology of Generative Grammar (Chomsky 1986), the work proposes a series of didactic activities based on grammaticality judgment tasks (which manipulate the syntactic criterion), complementary to the textbook activities.

The Torricelli language of Onnele (ISO 639: onr) includes a remarkable set of strategies to indicate number, and to express other related semantic notions of extendedness and pluractionality that go well beyond the paradigmatic categorization of number. Nominal plurals are rare outside of kinship terms, and the number of any particular referent is generally inferred from context. For object referents, the normative strategy is little interested in precision of count, which stands in stark contrast to the geographically closest Torricelli language of Olo, which includes over fifty subclasses of nouns based on number markings (Staley 15). The Onnele counting system only includes ‘one’ (wokera) and ‘two’ (plainre), and then combines these (e.g. plainrikera ‘three’). Nevertheless, Onnele exhibits over fifteen different strategies to indicate some kind of number.
Number is shown in a wide variety of ways among Onnele nouns, adjectives, possessive pronouns, question words, verbs, conjunctions, and pronouns. A compound noun includes each of the singular parts to form the resulting plural complex (e.g. ino ‘younger.brother’ + rani ‘older.brother’ = inrani ‘brothers’). This strategy allows for greater disambiguation than a mere singular/plural distinction, for another construction adds a plural suffix to some kinship terms (e.g. rani ‘older.brother’ + -mpi ‘PL’ = ranimpi ‘older.brothers’). Many kinship terms use different roots for singular and plural (e.g. awa / mokapi ‘mother’s.younger.sister(s)’). A few nouns can show plurality through partial or full reduplication, yet this often shows plurality in the sense of a large degree, or in a distributive sense. The same is true of adjectival suffixes. Possessive pronouns can sometimes indicate the number of the possessed noun, but this is still mostly determined from context. Question words can indicate number (e.g. fina ‘who.SG’, fopi ‘who.PL’). Most verbs are regularly marked with a portmanteau subject agreement morpheme across a paradigm that distinguishes singular and non-singular. Some verbs can also be marked for object number agreement, and these suffixes exhibit the greatest divergence of number-marking concord among the closely related Onnele dialects. The Onnele pronoun system exhibits a complex system of number – almost an open class in its use of the ‘and’-verb to form compound pronouns – in order to track numbered referents among dual forms as well as any other combination of numbered referents (e.g. wuyape ‘3SG.and.2PL’). A verbal prefix yem- conveys some kind of pluractional meaning of reciprocity or coordinated action among its actors, depending on the lexical and contextual constraints. Finally, separate verb lexemes are sometimes used to indicate whether the action is done to one object or to a plurality of them.
The semantic category of number is much more complex than simply identifying the singularity or plurality of nouns. Rather, number may include various semantically related notions to plurality across many word classes, and this complexity deserves more attention, as indicated by such recent typological volumes as Storch and Dimmendaal 2014 and Mattiola 2019. For the Onnele data, I need to look further into those nouns that do exhibit nominal plural distinctions and classify them accordingly. Also, some number markings were previously labelled as ‘plural’ when some other kind of extendedness or pluractionality may really be at play (e.g. adjective suffixes). The distinction between ompla ‘thing’ and ommo ‘things’ may really be something other than singular/plural since local speakers frequently use them interchangeably for singular and plural referents. Since this noun can also be used in various senses to indicate ‘food’ and ‘work’, perhaps the distinction is more along the lines of countable vs. uncountable.

นักภาษาศาสตร์ที่สนใจศึกษาชนิดของคำในภาษาไทยได้เสนอแนวคิดเกี่ยวกับคำ  บุพบทไว้หลากหลายทรรศนะ บทความนี้จึงมุ่งสำรวจวรรณกรรมที่ศึกษาคำบุพบทในภาษาไทยว่า มีการศึกษาและการอธิบายคำบุพบทในภาษาไทยไว้เพียงใดและในแง่ใดบ้าง อีกทั้งยังได้เปรียบเทียบแนวคิดเกี่ยวกับคำบุพบทในวรรณกรรมดังกล่าว พร้อมทั้งแสดงความคิดเห็นเกี่ยวกับแนวคิดเกี่ยวกับคำบุพบทเหล่านั้นด้วย

ผลการศึกษาพบว่า แนวคิดเกี่ยวกับคำบุพบทในภาษาไทยอาจแบ่งออกเป็น 2 แนวคิดหลัก คือ (1) แนวคิดที่ว่ามีคำบุพบทในภาษาไทย และ (2) แนวคิดที่ว่าไม่มีคำบุพบทในภาษาไทย อนึ่ง แนวคิดทั้งสองแนวคิดยังมีข้อจำกัดในการอธิบายคำบุพบทในภาษาไทย ทั้งในแง่การจำแนกหมวดคำและหน้าที่และความหมายของคำ

The linguists interested in studying lexical categories in Thai have widely proposed the concepts of prepositions. Then, this article is aimed to explore the literatures of such concepts as portraying prepositions in Thai. Moreover, those concepts are here compared and commented as well.
It is found that the concepts of prepositions in Thai have likely split into 2 principle categories, viz., that verifying prepositional category and that denying prepositional category. Likewise, for both, there are some limitations in terms of explanations on parts of speech, and on word functions and meanings.

Positional classes are based on the positions occupied by the form-classes, which we have studied in the chapter entitled "Parts of Speech: Form-Classes" in the book An Introductory English Morphology. The members of these classes may be words or word groups. The positional classes are four in number, namely nominals, verbals, adjectivals, and adverbials. Following is a discussion of each. A. Nominals There are certain sentence positions that are characteristic places for nouns. These positions are the ones occupied by words / word groups that have these functions: subject of verb (SV), subjective complement (SC), direct object of verb (DO), indirect object of verb (IO), objective complement (OC), object of preposition (OP), and retained object (RO).

This chapter is a survey of word classes in indigenous North American languages, with the aim of providing an introduction to the study of parts of speech, and of highlighting the unique place and contribution of North American indigenous languages in this research. Section 2 defines lexical vs. grammatical and open vs. closed classes, and how these distinctions are realized in North American languages. Section 3 summarizes the prominent themes in word classes research in North America: 1) at what level a word is categorized (root, stem, or inflected word), 2) whether a given language distinguishes noun and verb, and 3) whether a given language has an adjective category. The chapter concludes that North American languages present serious challenges to the definition and status of word classes in linguistic theory, and that the development of distinct lexical categories in a language is not necessarily a given.

U ovome se radu analiziraju dosadašnje klasifikacije pridjeva u bosanskom jeziku i predlažu se neke nove klasifikacije. Pokazuje se da su dosadašnje klasifikacije, koje su se uglavnom zasnivale na značenju, nedosljedne, da nisu dovoljno precizne i nisu naročito korisne za opis gramatičkog ponašanja pridjeva. Klasifikacije koje se predlažu u ovom radu zasnivaju se na morfološkim i sintaksičkim osobinama pridjeva.

Structuralists and generativists define word classes distributionally (Palmer 1971, Baker 2003, Aarts 2007), while cognitive linguists take a semantic (Langacker 1987a) or semantic-pragmatic approach (Croft 1991, 2001). Psycholinguistic research, by contrast, has shown that phonological properties also play a role (Kelly 1992, Monaghan et al. 2005). This study reports on a production experiment involving English nonce nouns and verbs. The data confirm the importance of phonology, whilst also suggesting that distributional facts are involved in lexical categorisation. Together with the existing psycholinguistic evidence, the results show that both the generative and cognitive models of word classes are too restricted. However, the usage-based model can accommodate the facts straightforwardly. This was already anticipated by Taylor (2002) but is worked out in more detail here by elaborating on his notion of phonological “sub-schemas” and by bringing together insights from Croft (1991, 2001) related to discourse propositional act constructions and recent suggestions by Langacker (2008b) concerning “summary scanning” and “sequential scanning”.

Short Abstract:
This paper re-assesses the widely-held view that so-called "fusional languages" (for example most Germanic languages) are characterized by well-defined word-class distinctions, while so-called aglutinating languages (e.g. Turkish) typically exhibit more flexible word-class systems, a view that was most clearly articulated in the typology of Skalicka. The current paper is based on an in-depth investigation of word-classes in German and Turkish, against the backdrop of assumptions from mainstream generative morphology. An alternative typology is proposed, involving the Principle of Increasing Categorization, and introducing a typological distinction between early and late categorizing languages.

The compounds such as 'back ground, backstairs, backstreet, backroom' are classified as both as adjectives and as nouns in dictionaries. The author argues that adjectives are derived from corresponding nouns by conversion. The compounds 'downhill, downstairs, downstream, downstage are classified both as adjectives and adverbs. The author argues that adverbs are derived from the corresponding prepositional phrases, which are eventually converted to adjectives. The application of zero-suffixes in the derivation of these  homophone forms cannot explain their syntactic and semantic motivation.

Dentro del proceso enseñanza-aprendizaje, los niños en los primeros años escolares enfrentan una serie de conceptos tales como sustantivo, verbo, adjetivo, adverbio, preposición o conjunción, que tienen que manejar al menos para resolverlos  problemas  y  ejercicios  que  involucran  el  estudio  de  su  lengua  materna.  En este trabajo se presenta una descripción del concepto de las clases de palabras que se abordan en el libro de texto gratuito de español para la educación primaria, elaborado  en  el  marco  de  la  reforma  educativa  de  2009.  Se  describe  bajo  qué criterios lingüísticos han sido definidas y se analiza la problemática que presentan estos contenidos.

Formalist approaches traditionally define word classes in distributional terms. By contrast, Cognitive Grammar advocates a semantic basis: nouns profile THINGS; verbs highlight PROCESSES. There is psycholinguistic support for the importance of semantics in lexical categorisation, but also for (language-particular) distributional and phonological properties. This paper focuses on phonology, whose importance is further underlined by data from language change and typology. Following a review of the psycholinguistic, historical linguistic and typological evidence, a gap in the literature is filled, i.e. an experiment involving the production of nonce nouns and verbs is conducted, providing further converging evidence for phonology. I then show how this evidence, although not currently recognised in Cognitive Grammar, can be straightforwardly accommodated as phonological sub-schemas. These sub-schemas are probably more important than the super-schemas proposed in Cognitive Grammar (which may actually be non-existent, and anyway fail to yield clear predictions vis-à-vis empirical data). I conclude that in developing the model further, a higher degree of responsibility to all the available empirical data is called for.

Основная проблема, рассматриваемая в монографии, – основания для выделения синтаксических частей речи в даргинском языке, точнее, в двух его диалектах –ицаринском и тантынском. В работе приводится несколько частеречных классификаций, выполненных на разных основаниях, и обсуждаются способы выделения синтаксических классов, которые учли бы особенности как базовых классов словоформ, так и многочисленных дериватов.
Монография содержит также краткий очерк грамматики двух указанных диалектов.
Большая часть языкового материала собрана автором в ходе полевой работы.


В статье подробно анализируется процедура выделения частей речи в даргинском языке (нахско-дагестанская семья) – языке с богатой агглютинативной морфологией и многочисленными и продуктивными словообразовательными деривациями. Отдельно анализируются морфологические классы слов, а также синтаксические классы, выделяемые на основе дистрибуции единиц и и их управляющих свойств. В работе предлагается процедура приписывания того или иного синтаксического класса словоформам различных типов, в том числе образованиям, полученным в результате дериваций.


The paper concentrates on the problem of word classes in Dargwa (Nakh-Daghestanian), the language with rich agglutinative morphology and a number of productive derivation rules. The author analyses three different approaches to word classes – based on morphology of word forms, their distribution and, finally, their ability to dominate different phrases. The result is a procedure of ascribing a syntactic class to words of different types including the forms that appeared as the result of a derivation.

This thesis explores the inventory of syntactic features that drive Finnish word order. It focusses on several non-finite constructions that manifest categorially inconsistent morpho-syntactic properties. The central assumption underlying this research is that such incongruities result from alternative combinations of cross-linguistically common syntactic features rather than from the presence of rare and exceptional functional categories. My main proposal is that lexical and functional syntactic features may combine to produce hybrid forms. I examine the nature of such feature complexes in different clause types in Finnish: main, finite and non-finite embedded and relative, and infinitival clauses.

This draft makes clear that the system of Welsh pronouns is very different from that of the SAE-languages and strongly linked to VSO-syntax, i.e. major pronoun categories in Welsh are determined by their syntactic use and should not be termed on the basis of Latin-orientated grammar terminology.

"Is a distinction made between the two most basic categories of words – nouns and verbs – present in the earliest stages in the history of a language? Or do such distinctions develop gradually over several generations of language users? Does language age alone play a role in distinguishing lexical categories, or is it possible that other social factors are involved? Researchers have found differences in form between semantically and formationally related nouns and verbs in several sign languages (Supalla & Newport 1978, Johnston 2001, Hunger 2006, Kimmelman 2009), suggesting that sign languages generally are likely to make such a distinction. However, all the languages studied are at least 200 years old, and nothing is known about how and when this distinction arose.

The present study investigates formal differences in semantically and formationally related pairs of nouns and verbs (e.g., DOOR and OPEN-DOOR) in two very young sign languages which arose under extremely different social circumstances. One is Israeli Sign Language (ISL), formed under creolization conditions, with a community of ~10,000 deaf signers throughout Israel today. The other is Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language (ABSL), which arose in a small, insular village, with ~150 deaf signers today. It was found that ISL consistently distinguishes between nouns and related verbs, while in ABSL no reliable distinction was found. It is suggested that it is not only age but different social factors, such as shared context and the size of a community, play a role in the development of grammatical structure such as marking lexical categories.

I developed a set of elicitation materials consisting of 24 pairs of pictures depicting concrete objects and people manipulating these objects. The pictures were presented in a mixed order. The data were coded for the following properties: manner of movement, frequency of movement, directionality, mouthing, relative size of the signs, and use of size-and-shape specifiers. Only those pairs of semantically related nouns and verbs that are also formationally related in both languages – such as HAMMER and TO-HAMMER – were included in the analysis.

Using the same elicitation materials for both languages, it was found that ISL consistently distinguishes nouns from verbs in the pairs, with a different kind of marking typically found on each part of speech. For instance, verbs usually exhibit continuous movement and their corresponding nouns restrained movement. In ABSL, no reliable distinction was found for any of the features.

The findings suggest that factors other than age can influence the development of a linguistic feature in a young language: both languages under investigation are in their third generation, yet ISL has developed a means for distinguishing nouns from verbs in the related pairs, while ABSL has not. The results of this study are seen as supporting the hypothesis of Meir et al (2010) that there is a relation between social factors surrounding the emergence of young languages and the development of linguistic structure."

U ovome radu predstavljena je klasifikacija pridjeva bosanskog jezika na osnovu mogućnosti da vrše različite funkcije u rečenici. Pridjevi su podijeljeni na atributivno-predikativne pridjeve, pridjeve attributiva tantum i pridjeve praedicativa tantum.

The aim of the article is to characterize a category called interjection. The paper consists of three chapters. The first one provides an introduction to the subject matter related to word class of interjections. The author identifies their place in the various classifications of parts of speech and remarks that those divisions are based on the classical model of category. In the second part the author proves that using the cognitive approach to category which was developed by psychologists is better because it enables to explore phenomena which were neglected because of their complexity and heterogeneity. The author builds a definition of interjections as lexical items which are autonomous, syntactically independent and similar in terms of phonological and semantic features (they are conceptualized in domains of feelings, movement, sound and scripts). Finally, the author provides a summary of research results.
Celem artykułu jest próba charakterystyki kategorii wykrzyknika.  Autorka prezentuje miejsce wykrzyknika w opisach części mowy, opierających się na klasycznym modelu rozumienia kategorii i udowadnia, że zastosowanie w odniesieniu do tej grupy leksemów koncepcji kategorii, którą proponuje językoznawstwo kognitywne, częściowo ułatwia zbadanie zjawisk, które dotychczas ze względu na swoją złożoność i niejednorodność wymykały się analizom. Autorka określa wykrzyknikami grupę leksemów, które są samodzielne i niezależne składniowo, czyli wchodzą w podobne rodzaje relacji syntagmatycznych. Ponadto cechują je podobne cechy fonologiczne i semantyczne (konceptualizowane są w domenach uczuć, ruchu, dźwięku, woli i skryptów).

Participles present a constitutional ambiguity, very evident on the morpho-syntactic level and even more interesting from a semantic and pragmatic point of view. Various parameters are involved in determining the nominal or verbal features of participles: government, sententiality, reference and predication, time-stability of phenomena in the real world, and grounding on the text level.

This paper argues that long-standing problems in the analysis of Chinese, such as the question of word classes and grammatical relations, can be resolved, or actually done away with completely, if we take a constructionist approach in the analysis. This means the constructions are taken as basic, so we only need to look at the propositional functions of elements in the construction (referential, modifying, or predicative), and do not need to posit global categories such as word classes and grammatical relations.

The multifaceted linguistic phenomenon of object-denoting words, traditionally nouns, more or less temporarily denoting processes instead of objects, has been called míng-dòng huóyòng 名動活用 in Chinese linguistics. I devoted a whole monograph-length study to propose a new theoretical framework for the interpretation of word-class flexibility in Classical Chinese generally and of noun-verb and noun-adverb transitions in particular,  which is partially based on previous research e.g. by Cikoski,  Nikitina,  Harbsmeier  or Bisang,  but is overally anchored in the general theoretical framework of Cognitive Grammar  and Radical Construction Grammar,  and supported by observations regarding similar phenomena in other languages, such as English conversion  or Czech word-formation.  In that book, I did not aim at an exhaustive description of any single piece of literature in which all particular occurrences of the phenomenon would be analyzed; I rather used examples in a selective way to illustrate the respective theses. In a later paper,  I concentrated on the situation of word-class flexibility in the Shījīng 詩經, which I had formerly excluded from the scope of my research because of the date of its composition, as the language basically reflects late Pre-Classical Chinese, and because of its style, since it represents relatively strictly regulated poetry mostly in the tetrasyllabic metre.
In this paper I would like to systematically describe another pre-Qín text with regard to the phenomenon of noun-verb flexibility, the book Lǚshì Chūnqiū 呂氏春秋, completed most probably in 239 BC. This text is in a certain way stylistically and diachronically opposed to the Shījīng. In principle, it represents prose, though with a considerable amount of rhyming, which is characteristic of late Warring States literature generally.  Also, it was composed at the very end of the pre-Qín era, having linguistically much in common with Early Hàn Chinese and showing the same tendencies as similar works of this transition time, such as Zhànguócè 戰國策 or Lǐjì 禮記 – there are even large parts in which the text runs parallel in the Lǐjì and Lǚshì Chūnqiū. Moreover, the work is conceived as a kind of encyclopedic summa of the world of thought of the classical period, and therefore covers many different topics and its thematic, conceptual and linguistic diversity is generally above the average of the time. It is thus to be expected that the picture of noun-verb huóyòng will be relatively plastic and some unusual or simply interesting verbal uses of object-denoting words can be found there.
There are two specialized studies touching upon the problem in this text and dealing with it in some detail, namely Zhāng Shuāngdì’s lexicological analysis of the book  and Yīn Guóguāng’s research on word classes in the Lǚshì Chūnqiū in general.  These two scholars adduce much relevant material, but essentially as examples or lists; I will proceed here systematically according to my system. I am equally interested in peculiar cases of noun-verb conversion and in well-established derivation patterns as systematically attested in practically all pre-Qín texts, but of course, less regular cases need more attention. As a bonus, the Lǚshì Chūnqiū offers the possibility to trace the influence of the peculiar ritualistic style represented by the language of the Lǐjì on coinage of denominal verbs unattested elsewhere.

What is the difference between man and horse? “Man laughs, horse whinnies” ( 7th century scholiast on Dionysius Thrax’s Techne grammatice. – The use of a particular vocal expression, imitation of a natural voice – laughter for instance  – in a speech situation is prescribed by the habits of the speaking society, that is, by the consuetudo, as the Roman grammarians defined it. Thus, to take the eternal dispute, whether words are by nature or by convention, the study of interjections, to say the study of just those words which often are used to prove the natural origin of words, will prove the opposite: words are conventional.

The issue of lexical flexibility is best tackled as the articulation of two separate mappings: one that assigns lexical items to word classes; another one that associates these word classes with the syntactic functions they can access. A language may endow its lexemes with more or less multicategoriality, and its word classes with more or less multifunctionality: these are two distinct facets of lexical flexibility, which should be assessed separately. Focusing on Hiw, an Oceanic language of northern Vanuatu, I show that lexical flexibility is there mostly due to the high multifunctionality of its word classes, each of which can regularly access a broad array of syntactic functions. Conversely, Hiw ranks relatively low on the scale of multicategoriality: most of its lexemes are assigned just one word class. This is how a language can be grammatically flexible, yet lexically rigid.

— François, Alexandre. (2017) “The economy of word classes in Hiw, Vanuatu: Grammatically flexible, lexically rigid”.  In Eva van Lier (ed.), _Lexical Flexibility in Oceanic Languages_. Special issue of _Studies in Language_  41 (2): 294-357.

This paper presents the results of a research project based on the learning of words of different grammar categories (nouns, adjectives, verbs, and adverbs) in L2, while also considering the learning task. A total of 150 B1 students of Spanish, divided into three groups, carried out some practice with a form-focused activity, involving different levels of involvement load: (1) choosing the appropriate definition of a stimulus word; (2) working with samples that include a semantic equivalent; and (3) writing sentences with a stimulus word. The analysis of the results indicates that adverbs, which are invariable, are learned most quickly whereas the noun is the category that is learned most slowly, with a significant difference between these two categories. Meanwhile, writing sentences is the most useful learning activity for all the four grammar categories, while choosing definitions is the least useful; However, the difference is significant only when nouns, adjectives and verbs are learnt while in the case of adverbs it is not.
Resumen: Este trabajo presenta los resultados de una investigación sobre la incorporación de las diferentes categorías gramaticales (nombre, adjetivo, verbo y adverbio) al lexicón mental del aprendiz de L2, dependiendo de la tarea de aprendizaje empleada. 150 estudiantes de español de nivel B1, divididos en tres grupos, practican con una actividad centrada en la palabra, que requiere diferente nivel de participación o esfuerzo mental: (1) eligen la definición correspondiente a la palabra estímulo; (2) trabajan con ejemplos que contienen un equivalente semántico de dicha palabra; y (3) escriben oraciones con la palabra estímulo. El análisis de los resultados indica que la categoría que más rápidamente se incorpora es la invariable, es decir, el adverbio; y la que lo hace más lentamente, el nombre, siendo significativa la diferencia entre las puntuaciones de estas dos categorías gramaticales. Por otro lado, la escritura de oraciones es la tarea más eficaz para aprender todas las categorías y, la que menos, la selección de definiciones; si bien, la actividad de escritura solo es significativamente más eficaz cuando se trata de aprender sustantivos, adjetivos y verbos, pero no adverbios.

"This paper deals with some basic problems of linguistic categorization, such as the functional motivations of lexical categories, what does interlinguistic variation teach us about them, and whether they are universal or language specific. Some criteria proposed to decide if a categorial system is flexible are examined and they are claimed to serve rather to measure the degree of flexibility of a system but not to trace sharp boundaries between holistic types. Some other gradations are pointed out when more morphosyntactic and distributional properties of words are considered. The main conclusion is that structural patterns supporting lexical categorization are secondary in relation to function and are subject to both inter and intralinguistic continuous variation. Therefore, the focus should be put more on the typology of morphosyntactic strategies allowing the accommodation of lexical meanings to different communicative functions.

Este artículo trata sobre algunas cuestiones básicas de la categorización lingüística, tales como cuál es la motivación funcional de las categorías léxicas, qué nos enseña la variación interlingüística acerca de ellas y si son universales o específicas de las lenguas. En él se discuten algunos criterios que se han propuesto para decidir si una sistema categorial es o no flexible y que, según se defiende en este artículo, sirven para medir el grado de flexibilidad de un sistema, pero no para establecer divisiones tajantes entre tipos globales. También se apunta a otras gradaciones que derivan de la consideración global de las propiedades morfosintácticas y distribucionales de las palabras. La principal conclusión es que los patrones estructurales que sustentan la categorización son secundarios con respecto a la función y que están sometidos a variación continua intra e interlingüística; por ello, lo que se necesita no es tanto una tipología de sistemas de categorización léxica como una tipología de las estrategias morfosintácticas que permiten adaptar los significados léxicos a diferentes funciones comunicativas."

This MA thesis provides the first description and discussion of three temporal predicative particles (aɬta, ɬke and hata) found in Sanapaná, an underdocumented and underdescribed Enlhet-Enenlhet language of the Paraguayan Chaco. Furthermore, it compares the form and function of these particles in Sanapaná to that of their cognates in the other Enlhet-Enenlhet languages: Angaité, Enxet, Enlhet, Guaná and Enenlhet. As such, this thesis has three main objectives. Firstly, it aims to be a contribution to the descriptive literature on an understudied indigenous language of South America, since it is based on primary data gathered during my own field work. Secondly, it hopes to provide insights into the genetic relations between the languages of the Enlhet-Enenlhet language family. Thirdly, this work hopes to provide data for possible areal or typological studies of the phenomena manifested by these particles: tense-aspectmodality systems, and (nonverbal) predication. It is argued that aɬta, when it follows a verb, functions as a prehodiernal past marker. When it follows a word from a different word class, it can locate the referent of a noun in the past (but is not a nominal tense marker), and it makes the inherent predicativity of this word explicit, just as Kalisch (2009) argues that these particles do in Enlhet. ɬke, secondly, is argued to be an immediate aspect marker when it follows a verb, and has the same predicative force when following a word from a different class. Furthermore, it can locate the previous mention of a referent or its previous presence in the extralinguistic context in the past. Lastly, hata functions as an indefinite future marker when combined with a verb, and also has this aforementioned predicative force. Based on these (admittedly limited) Sanapaná data and that of its sister languages, it seems that Unruh & Kalisch’ (2003) hypothesis of a Western and an Eastern branch of the family is warranted: Guaná, Sanapaná and Enenlhet cluster together, while Enlhet shares fewer features with these languages. Within the former group, Guaná and Sanapaná seem to be most similar.

The paper is devoted to the interactions of particle typology and clitic typology and discusses the role of clitic particles in clusterization processes characteristic of 2P languages. The cover term ‘particle’ results from a classification of word classes. It often remains vague,
since many linguists define particles according to a ‘leftover principle’ as short functional words, which are neither conjunctions, prepositions, nor auxiliaries etc. For instance, in Dargwa grammars negation ak:u is labeled as a particle in spite of the fact it shows class-and-number agreement with the grammatical subject, It can also be the main predicate or adjoin to a lexical verb in tense forms.
I follow the placement of clustering particles in clitic templates  in a number of languages with 2P clitic clusters. In some cases, clustering elements can be identified as both phonetic clitics and syntactic clitics. In other cases. clustering elements do not exhibit some diagnostic features of phonetic clitics and can be identified as weak pronouns/particles.

Neste trabalho, faço uma primeira descrição e análise do comportamento morfossintático dos lexemas com semântica adjetival no Guató (isolado) e Wa’ikhana (Tukano Oriental), duas línguas indígenas brasileiras ameaçadas. O Capítulo 1 é dedicado à apresentação dos dois povos. No Capítulo 2, descrevo os corpora que serviram de base para o presente trabalho. No Capítulo 3, faço um panorama dos estudos sobre a classe lexical “adjetivo”, tratando da sua história, da sua caracterização na tipologia e das abordagens teórico-metodológicas acerca da definição das classes lexicais. Adoto a posição de Dryer (1997), Haspelmath (2010a, 2010b, 2018) e Croft (2000, 2003), segundo a qual as categorias pertencentes às línguas diferentes são incomensuráveis entre si e, portanto, é preciso criar ferramentas comparativas para poder realizar cotejos interlinguísticos. Portanto, em ambas as línguas, descrevo e analiso termos para propriedades que correspondem à definição do conceito comparativo “adjetivo” proposto por Haspelmath. Além disso, para delimitar o conjunto das propriedades descritivas a serem discutidas, utilizo os tipos semânticos associados com a classe adjetival propostos por Dixon (2011[1977], 2004). No Capítulo 4, descrevo a expressão de propriedades no Guató, argumentando que os lexemas de semântica adjetival se comportam como verbos. Apresento as funções sintáticas desses verbos e a morfologia associada a essas funções, assim como os recursos gramaticais utilizados para negar, intensificar, atenuar e comparar propriedades e para indicar a mudança de estado. No Capítulo 5, descrevo a expressão de propriedades no Wa’ikhana, mostrando que a maioria dos lexemas de semântica adjetival também se comportam como verbos. Começo a minha descrição apresentando as funções sintáticas das raízes verbais não derivadas. Em seguida, trato dos verbos descritivos derivados pelo sufixo atributivo -ti e proponho uma origem diacrônica para esse sufixo. Depois, passo para a descrição dos lexemas de semântica adjetival que se comportam como nomes, sobretudo, do tipo semântico IDADE. Dou uma especial atenção ao lexema bʉkʉ ‘velho’, propondo que, mesmo tendo a origem diacrônica verbal, ele deve ser considerado um nome não derivado sincronicamente. Finalizo o capítulo tratando dos recursos gramaticais e lexicais utilizados para negar, intensificar e comparar propriedades e para indicar a mudança de estado. O Capítulo 6 contém a conclusão em que resumo os principais resultados desta pesquisa e apresento alguns passos futuros.

This thesis presents the first detailed description of reduplication in Kodi, an Austronesian language of Indonesia. It proposes a theoretical analysis of the formal shapes and semantic properties of verbal reduplication, adjectival reduplication and numeral reduplication. It is the first study of reduplication in Kodi under a Generalised Paradigm Function Morphology (GPFM) framework.
      Empirically, reduplication in Kodi shows two major formal shapes: full reduplication and partial reduplication (syllable and foot reduplication). In terms of meaning, Kodi reduplications are mostly associated with verbal number or pluractionality, indirect noun pluralisation, intensity, distributive numerals or attenuation.
    It is demonstrated that possible formal shapes of Kodi reduplication are determined by prosodic structural properties (such as notions of feet, heavy syllable, or stress), in addition to the morphological structure of words (such as affixes and stems). It is therefore argued that only the prosodic morphology model can satisfactorily account for the formal shapes in the Kodi reduplication process. However, the issue of form-meaning pairing is also taken into account in this thesis. Such form-meaning pairing is demonstrated as being unable to be handled by a model of prosodic morphology. However, it is demonstrated that the mechanisms in GPFM explicitly capture both forms and semantic properties of Kodi reduplication, incorporating the insights of a prosodic morphology analysis, and therefore, offering the best morphological model for fully analysing the Kodi reduplication process.

In this paper I submit the hypothesis that Pre-Basque had two distinct verbal lexical categories, i.e. two distinct parts of speech both of which were related to the Standard Average European concept of verb. Following the literature on Northern Australian languages with two verbal categories and specifically McGregor (2002), I will call the two categories at issue Inflecting Verbs (IVs) and Uninflecting ‘Verbs’ (UVs).

This paper discusses the reduplication processes that are at work in Cavineña, a Tacanan language from Amazonian Bolivia. This language presents a wide range of different reduplication processes which have the following main characteristics: they can be simple or automatic, full or partial; they apply mostly to verbs, nouns and adjectives; they have different degrees of productivity; they are phonologically rather easy to describe. In addition to being pervasive, the morphological processes of reduplication in Cavineña are noteworthy for having several syntactic effects, an aspect of reduplication rarely discussed in general typological works on reduplication; these tend to focus on phonological and semantic characteristics. A particularly interesting syntactic function of reduplication in Cavineña is valence reduction with antipassive effect, which occurs when reduplication applies to transitive verbal roots.