http://nova.newcastle.edu.au/vital/access/services/Feed ${session.getAttribute("locale")} 5 http://nova.newcastle.edu.au/vital/access/manager/Repository/uon:11315 What is a complex predicate? There is currently no widely accepted answer to this question, no agreed set of criteria which allow an analyst to classify Construction A as a ‘complex predicate’, and Construction B as ‘not a complex predicate’. This volume does not pretend to offer the final definitive answer to this basic question, but it does aim to further delimit the range of possible answers. The volume does this in two ways. First, it provides detailed data on constructions usually classified as ‘complex predicates’ in a range of languages from Australia, East Africa, Papua, South and Southeast Asia, and North America. In particular, it provides detailed data on a hitherto little described construction - the coverb construction. Coverb constructions are common among Australian, East African, Iranian, and Oceanic languages. The construction involves two constituents: a coverb and a verb. Coverbs must be analysed as a distinct part of- speech class. They share some characteristics with verbs - they are inherently predicational and they are not derived from any other part of speech. However, they differ from verbs in being inherently non-finite. The volume also aims to delimit the range of possible answers by providing a detailed examination of the mapping between complex predicates of various types and event structure, in the sense of Rappaport Hovav and Levin. This is a central focus for all of the papers in the volume. This mapping has not previously been as prominent a focus of research. 2012-08-22T01:10:04.120Z ]]> http://nova.newcastle.edu.au/vital/access/manager/Repository/uon:9821 The term ‘complex predicate’ has a wide usage, including, for example, serial verb constructions, light verb constructions, and particle + verb constructions, among others. An examination of the data provided by analysts in their discussions of complex predicates shows that monoclausality is the critical factor in determining whether a construction involves a complex predicate or not. Complex predicates are monoclausal structures involving two or more predicating morphemes. 2012-01-18T23:10:05.276Z ]]> http://nova.newcastle.edu.au/vital/access/manager/Repository/uon:1540 This paper examines theoretical analyses of vowel harmony in the light of data from Warlpiri, a language of Central Australia. Modern analyses account for vowel harmony in terms of a constraint requiring feature agreement within a particular domain (e.g. Backovic, 2000; Lombardi, 1996). These analyses predict that exclusively suffixing languages should exhibit only rightwards harmonies. They also predict that all disharmonic sequences within a particular domain should be equally disfavoured. Warlpiri is of interest for two reasons. Firstly it is an exclusively suffixing language, but it shows both leftwards and rightwards harmonies. Secondly, it permits one disharmonic sequence within the lexicon, but not its converse. We show that the leftwards harmony is not an exception to the predictions of modern analyses, as it is morphologically and not phonologically motivated. However, we show that agreement constraints cannot account for the evidently related harmony constraints on the structure of the lexicon in Warlpiri. Rather, these must be accounted for by constraints against specific disharmonic sequences. Under this ‘anti-disagreement’ analysis the structure of the lexicon follows from the grammar. 2010-04-27T06:29:02.693Z ]]> http://nova.newcastle.edu.au/vital/access/manager/Repository/uon:1734 In this paper we propose a new model for the analysis of complex word forms in Australian languages. We propose that complex words should be categorized in terms of their phonological patternings. We show that complex words exhibit two distinct types of phonological patternings. One type of complex word shows the same patterns as simplex words. We call morphological relations within this type of word, root-level relations. In the other type of complex word, at least one constituent itself has the characteristics of a simplex word. We call morphological relations within this type of word, word-level relations. We demonstrate that the distinction between root-level and word-level relations has clear correlates in morphological productivity. Our model provides a straightforward account of the relationship between phonology and morphology in complex words. 2010-04-27T06:09:44.788Z ]]> http://nova.newcastle.edu.au/vital/access/manager/Repository/uon:3726 In this paper we propose a new model for the analysis of complex word forms in Australian languages. We propose that complex words should be categorized in terms of their phonological patternings. We show that complex words exhibit two distinct types of phonological patternings. One type of complex word shows the same patterns as simplex words. We call morphological relations within this type of word, root-level relations. In the other type of complex word, at least one constituent itself has the characteristics of a simplex word. We call morphological relations within this type of word, word-level relations. We demonstrate that the distinction between root-level and word-level relations has clear correlates in morphological productivity. Our model provides a straightforward account of the relationship between phonology and morphology in complex words. 2010-04-27T05:22:44.781Z ]]>