In Lisa Matthewson, Erin Guntly and Michael Rochemont (eds.), Wa7 xweysás i nqwal’utteníha i ucwalmícwa: He loves the people’s languages. Essays in honour of Henry Davis, 597–612. Vancouver, BC: UBC Occasional Papers in Linguistics., 2018
Lushootseed has relatively little in the way of word-level inflections the main exception to this... more Lushootseed has relatively little in the way of word-level inflections the main exception to this being the aspectual system, which is described by Hess (1995) as having five members. On examining the paradigm, one notices that three of the five prefixes involved begin with /lə/, and that each of these forms is closely related in semantic terms. In this paper, I show that this is not a coincidence, and that both the size of the paradigm and the phonological similarities within it can rather neatly be accounted for by treating the progressive morpheme as a clitic, lə=, and the progressive state and continuative aspects as combinations of this clitic with the two non-zero aspect prefixes, one synchronic and one etymological.
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Totonacan by David Beck
in describing and modeling the use of highly formal features of the grammar such as particular person or number inflections, relatively little work has been done to document the ways in which discourse and lan- guage use might actually shape these features. Indeed, certain levels of the grammar such as inflectional paradigms are often considered to be inaccessible to the effects of language use, at least insofar as their form is concerned. The motivation for this assumption is, of course, that inflectional paradigms are the most highly grammaticized portion of a language and the forms within these paradigms are synchronically invariant, leaving the speaker the choice of using them or not as deemed appropriate but not allowing the speaker the option of altering the form itself. From a diachronic perspective, however, such alternations are clearly a possibility and, in fact, can easily be shown to have taken place in a wide range of familiar and unfamiliar languages. This in turn implies that inflectional paradigms may be open to the influence of so- ciolinguistic and other factors and that these forces do, in fact, play a role in the shaping of the form as well as the use of inflectional morphology. This paper is a study of how sociolinguistic factors —more specifi- cally, the linguistic practice of deference to addressees, as realized by a 2 > 1 person-hierarchy — has shaped the person-agreement system of a particular language, Upper Necaxa Totonac.
in describing and modeling the use of highly formal features of the grammar such as particular person or number inflections, relatively little work has been done to document the ways in which discourse and lan- guage use might actually shape these features. Indeed, certain levels of the grammar such as inflectional paradigms are often considered to be inaccessible to the effects of language use, at least insofar as their form is concerned. The motivation for this assumption is, of course, that inflectional paradigms are the most highly grammaticized portion of a language and the forms within these paradigms are synchronically invariant, leaving the speaker the choice of using them or not as deemed appropriate but not allowing the speaker the option of altering the form itself. From a diachronic perspective, however, such alternations are clearly a possibility and, in fact, can easily be shown to have taken place in a wide range of familiar and unfamiliar languages. This in turn implies that inflectional paradigms may be open to the influence of so- ciolinguistic and other factors and that these forces do, in fact, play a role in the shaping of the form as well as the use of inflectional morphology. This paper is a study of how sociolinguistic factors —more specifi- cally, the linguistic practice of deference to addressees, as realized by a 2 > 1 person-hierarchy — has shaped the person-agreement system of a particular language, Upper Necaxa Totonac.