ablative (ABL)
A local case. The ablative case suffix denotes ‘direction away / motion away from’. It usually bears the semantic role SOURCE. E.g., kol-nəl ‘house-ABL’ can have the following meanings: ‘from the house’, ‘out of the house’, ‘away from the house’ (Riese 2001: 25).

dative/lative (DLAT)
A local case. In traditional Ugric linguistics, the dative/lative case has been labelled ‘lative’ (cf. Munkácsi 1894: 8, Kálmán 1976: 42, Riese 2001: 25). In the Ob-BABEL project it has been re-named ‘dative/lative’ due to the fact that it also functions as regular marker of the indirect object, thus widely corresponding to the notion of ‘dative’. Generally, the dative/lative case suffix denotes ‘direction to / motion towards’ and it bears the semantic role GOAL. E.g., kol-n ‘house-DLAT’ can have the following meanings: ‘into the house’, ‘onto the house’, ‘towards the house’ (Riese 2001: 25). In ditransitive constructions it functions as indirect object, e.g.: jaɣaji-n manaw-en maj-eln ‘sister-SG<2SG, 1PL.OBL-DLAT, give-IMP.SG<2SG: Give us your sister!’ (Ob-BABEL: Mortim ma 1:25). In addition it also expresses the agent in passive constructions, e.g.: xum-n xaːp waːr-awe ‘man-DLAT, boat, make-PASS[3SG]: A boat is being made by the man’ (Riese 2001: 52).

instrumental (INST)
The instrumental suffix denotes the means (the tool) by which the action is carried out or the accompanying person (comitative). It usually bears the semantic role INSTRUMENT or FORCE, but it can also express the semantic roles TIME or AGENT. An example for comitative use would be: aːɣi-janeː-təl piɣ-aneː-təl oːl-i ‘daughter-PL<3SG-INST, son-PL<3SG-INST, be-PRS[3SG]: he lives with his daughters and his sons’ (Ob-BABEL: a kʷ xum oːli takkeːt paːwəlt, takkeːt uːsət […] 9:4).

locative (LOC)
A local case. The locative case suffix denotes ‘location at’ or, used in a temporal function, ‘when’. It usually bears the semantic role LOCATIVE. E.g., kol-t ‘house-LOC’ can have the following meanings: ‘in the house’, ‘on the house’, ‘by the house’ (Riese 2001: 25). For a temporal use consider: ta pora-t ‘that, time-LOC: At that time’ (Kálmán 1976: 42).

translative
The translative case has two main functions: essive and translative. a) essive: usually MANNER semantic role, e.g.: pupɣ-iɣ lusəm lui-sup-ət xoːtta ta oːl-i ‘idol-TRNS, Lozva, belonging to the lower course-part-LOC, somewhere, ACT, be-PRS[3SG]: Now she lives as a spirit somewhere on the lower Lozva’ (jiːwtʲilʲ alɣalʲ maːxum oːlmət […] 8:4); b) translative: usually RESULTATIVE semantic role, e.g.: nomt-e lʲuːlʲ-iɣ jeːmt-əs ‘mind-SG<3SG, angry-TRNS, become-PST[3SG]: God's mind became angry’ (owleːt matər porat […] 1:3).


References:

Kálmán, Béla (1976): Chrestomathia Vogulica. Budapest: Tankönyvkiadó.

Loos, Eugene E. et. al. (ed.) (2004):Glossary of Linguistic Terms.

Munkácsi, Bernát (1894): A vogul nyelvjárások szóragozásukban ismertetve. Budapest: Magyar Tudományos Akadémia.

Riese, Timothy (2001): Vogul. München – New Castle: LINCOM EUROPA [= Languages of the World/Materials 158].

Converbs constitute a type of non-finite verb forms. The term converb has been adopted to typological studies from the Altaistic tradition. (The terms adverbial participle, conjuctive participle, gerund, gerundive, verbal adverb, French gérondif and German Verbaladverb also has been used for these deverbal forms.)

Converbs are non-finite verb forms used in adverbial functions. Converbs are not used as complements, but express a variety of adverbial meanings, such as temporal relations between the main and the subordinate actions, manner, cause, condition of the main action and others. In some languages converbs have originated as certain cases of verbal nouns. The cases of prototypical converbs are fossilized and are interpreted as a part of the whole converb marker.

There are two converbs in Mansi: the converb in -ke and the converb in -im(a).
Converb in -ke:
taːχt-ət noːχ-tilaml - ake - nəl - t
loon-PL fly.up-CVB-SG<3PL-LOC
’when the loons fly up’

Converb in -im(a):
aːγi eːrγ - im paːγ-min - as
girl sing-CVB go.to.shore-PAST[3SG]
’The girl went down to the shore singing.’

keːt - ima - m juji-paːlt
send-CVB-SG<1SG after
’after I was sent’ The -k converb also appears in Eastern Mansi but is quite seldom used. Instead, Eastern Mansi has developed two new types of converbs, the -ʃʲt and -mɘː converbs. The -ʃʲt type was earlier a postposition construction, and other postposition constructions are still used in adverbial functions or in a manner similar to converbs.

The -ʃʲt converb consists historically of a non-finite verb form, a possesspoive suffix and the ending -ʃʲt, which was shortened from the postposition ʃʲywt ‘during’. The most common form of the converb suffix is 3SG suffix -næːʃʲt or -mæːʃʲt, e.g. læːkʷəltæːmæːʃʲt ‘while leaving (3SG)’, pymtnæːʃʲt ‘while beginning (3SG). Both -n and -m variants of this suffix occur and have no differences in their usage, but stem historically from different verb forms. The -æː- is the personal suffix for 3SG and is a shortened form of -æːt. The -ʃʲt converb type is used in all persons and the personal marker is always in the middle of the suffix: mənəmənʃʲt ‘while going (2SG)’, pymtnəwʃʲət ‘while beginning (1PL)’.

The -mɘː type is historically a compound word form of a nomen actionis and a possessive locative of the word mɘː ’land’, e.g. mənnə-mɘːmt ‘while I go’. The possessive form of mɘː has grammaticalized to the nominalizer of the nomen actionis and the possessive locative has continued grammaticalization to adverbalizer.

The agent of the converb is usually marked with a personal suffix in the converb. Sometimes, especially in transitive clauses, the agent is in the lative case and the converb acquires the personal suffix of the patient or the recipient, e.g. tæxʷsəng-pøæl koməng kotələl jæɣ-nə koːtəltøælməmʃʲət æːkʷə ləɣən øæt uusəm ‘When I was given (lightened) a manly autumn day by father, I saw no squirrel’, søæt-nə towləm ‘after the course of a week’.


References:

Koptjevskaja-Tamm, Maria (1993): Nominalizations. Routledge, London – New-York.

Riese, Timothy (2001): Vogul. Languages of the World/Materials 158. Lincom Europa, Muenchen.

Ylikoski, Jussi (2003): Defining non-finites: action nominals, converbs and infinitives. SKY Journal of Linguistics 16: 185–237.

An emphatic pronoun is a full form (e. g. French moi ’I, me’) as opposed to a reduced or clitic form (e. g. French je) used for emphasis.

e. g.: Northern Mansi am ’I’, amki ’I, myself’ joməs rusj, joməs manjsji tittə - nə - m, ajt - nə - m χaltə
good russian good mansi feed-AN-SG<1SG water-AN-SG<1SG during
amki akw‘ tot teːγ - əm, amki akw‘ tot aje - γ - im.
myself at the same place eat-1SG myself at the same place drink-1SG
‘While I feed the honest Russians, the honest Mansis and give drink to them, I myself also eat there, I myself also drink there.’ (VNGy IV: 27)

eːlälj keːt - nə - m - t taːrä amki neː-lili - m viːγ - ləm
forward send-AN-SG<1SG-LOC immediately myself woman-soul-SG<1SG take-SG<1SG
’If I am sent away, I myself take my woman-soul immediately.’ (VNGy IV: 76)


References:

Matthews, P. H. (1997): The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press

Pei, Mario – Gaynor, Frank (1954): Dictionary of Linguistics. New York: Philosophical Library.

VNGy = Munkácsi Bernát (1892–1896): Vogul Népköltési Gyűjtemény I–IV. MTA: Budapest.

The focus of a sentence serves as the "information centre", i.e. the part of the sentence that broadens the knowledge about the topic. In most cases the information in the sentence-focus is thus new information. It is important to emphasize that the new information does not serve as the focus of the sentence but it is in the focus of the sentence. Thus there is no part of the sentence being a focus but the focus emphasizes a part of the sentence, most often the one bearing the new information.

There are several kinds of focus (resp. foci), broad and narrow or complex foci, depending on the size of the sentence-part being focussed (John only introduced Bill to Sue).

The most common device to assign focus on a sentence-part is prosody, but there are other devices on different sentence-levels to assign focus, too, e.g. certain positions in the sentence-structure such as the preverbal focus-position in Hungarian.

As the notion of focus does not mean new information as mentioned before, it is not the counterpart of the notion of topic. Both notions do not correlate like new vs. given information, but the topic of a sentence can also be focussed and there are several kinds of devices such as:

emphatic pronouns
takʷi taɣat-am palʲsʲimsʲa-kʷe
3SG.emph 'hang up'-PTCP.PST 'earring'-DIM
'Little earrings that she herself put in.'

topic-extraction (the topical referent is mentioned lexically on a very marked position of the sentence)
am piɣ-əm naŋ!
1SG 'son'-SG<1SG 2SG
'You are my son!'

clefting (the topical part of the sentence is singled out and brought to another position in the sentence resulting in an incomplete sentence)
tawe al-uŋkʷe marl-um maːxum jaɣaːɣi, jaɣaːɣi wit tot-uŋkʷe mina-s.
3SG.OBL 'kill'-INF 'press'-PTCP.PST 'people' 'sister', 'sister' 'water' 'get'-INF 'go'-PST[3SG]
'The sister of the people trying to kill him, the sister went to fetch water.'

References:

Endriss, Cornelia (2008): Grundlagen der Informationsstruktur. Workshop zur Informationsstruktur und Gestik, 25. April 2008.

Givón, Talmy (1983): Topic continuity in discourse: A quantitative crosslinguistic study. Amsterdam - Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company

Kiss, Katalin (2008): Topic and focus: two structural positions associated with logical functions in the left periphery of the Hungarian sentence. In: Kiefer, Ferenc; É.Kiss, Katalin (Hrsg.) Acta Linguistica Hungarica, Vol. 55 (3-4) Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó S. 287-296.

Krifka, Manfred (2008): Basic Notions Of Information Structure. In: Kiefer, Ferenc; É.Kiss, Katalin (Hrsg.) Acta Linguistica Hungarica, Vol. 55 (3-4) Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó S. 243-276

Lambrecht, Knud (1994): Information structure and sentence form. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Loos, Eugene E. et.al. (Hg.), (2004): What is Given versus New Information. Glossary Of Linguistic Terms.

Loos, Eugene E. et.al. (Hg.), (2004): What is Focus. Glossary Of Linguistic Terms.

Molnár, Valéria (1991): Das TOPIK im Deutschen und im Ungarischen (Lunder germanistische Forschungen 58). Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell

The term „frequentative” is used in the grammatical classification of verbs to refer to the expression of repeated action. Frequentative includes habitual meaning – that a situation is characteristic of a period of time – but additionally specifies that it is frequent during that period of time. Frequentative verbs are often called „iteratives”, although the meaning of the two categories is not exactly the same: iterative describes an event that is repeated on a particular occasion. (For further discussion see Bybee – Perkins – Pagliuca, 1994 and Brown, 2006.)

In some languages (e. g. Mansi, Hungarian, Russian) frequentative meaning may be marked morphologically, but for example in English it is normally expressed through adverbials of frequency, e.g. again, regularly, often.

There are several frequentative deverbal suffixes in Mansi, for example:
-ataːl, -aːl, -aːliγl, -γal, -γalaːl, -iγl, -iγlaːl, -l, -lant, -nt.
kitiγl- ’to ask a question’ > kitiγlaːl- ’to ask repeatedly’
suns- ’to watch’ > sunsiγl- ’to watch repeatedly’
wi- ’to take > wojγalaːl- ’to take repeatedly’
osjmarl- ’to use cunning’ > osjmarlaːliγl- ’to use cunning repeatedly’

The frequentative deverbal suffixes -l and -nt became the markers of the present tense in the Tavda dialect:

Present Tense

minj- ’to go’

SG
1.  minjäntem
2.  minjänten
3.  minjänt
PL
1.  minjänteu
2.  minjänten
3.  minjäntet

oːsint- ’to yawn’

SG
1.  oːsintlem
2.  oːsintlen
3.  oːsintål
PL
1.  oːsintåleu
2.  oːsintål
3.  oːsintlət


References:

Brown, Keith (ed.) (2006): Encyclopedia of Language & Linguistics. Oxford: Elsevier.

Bybee, Joan – Perkins, Revere – Pagliuca, William (1994): The Evolution of Grammar. Tense, Aspect and Modality in the languages of the world. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.

Crystal, David (1997): A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics. (4th edition, updated and enlarged.) Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd.

Kövesi, Magda (1933): Igemódok a vogulban. Budapest: Hornyánszky Viktor R.-T. M. Kir. Udv. Könyvnyomda.

Munkácsi, Bernát (1894): A vogul nyelvjárások szóragozásukban ismertetve. Budapest: Magyar Tudományos Akadémia.

Pei, Mario – Gaynor, Frank (1954): Dictionary of Linguistics. New York: Philosophical Library.

Riese, Timothy (2001): Vogul. Languages of the World/Materials 158. Muenchen: Lincom Europa.

Szabó, Dezső (1904): A vogul szóképzés. Nyelvtudományi Közlemények 34: 55-74.

Grammaticalization is the development of a lexical entity toward a grammatical one, or the further convertion of an already grammtical form into an even more grammatical one. Crosslinguistically grammaticalization patterns show great similarity. A former independent lexem gets fossilized. The regular progression here is from agglutination to clitization to fusion, leading to the final loss. In terms of the segements status: The unbound lexem turns into a morphem, before becoming morphophonemically and at last gets lost entirely.

The process can be analysed as bi- or tripartite. A bipartite analysis features paradigmatic and syntagmatic characteristics, while a tripartite analysis refers to the semantic-pragmatic status, the grammatical behaviour and phonological substance.

This unidirectional process is featured by regular patterns of changes, widely similar in the languages of the world, regardless of genetic or areal relations.

Basically four interrelated mechanisms apply: Desemanticization, meaning the lexem loses semantic contents, extention or context generalization by which the lexem gets used in a wider context, decategorization meaning the loss of morphosyntactic properties and erosion, a loss of phonological material. The interplay of these mechanisms converts an autosemantic property into a synsemantic one.

Using semantically rather general and unspecific material, grammaticalization is characterized by semantic and phonological reduction processes and is triggered by discourse pragmatic strategies. Semantically the elements get generalized, phonologically a loss of the stress or the independent tone can be observed. A substantive reduction in form of segmental material takes place, just as a temporal reduction regarding the elements' length. The element gets semantically more dependent on surrounding material while its syntactic position hardens. As a result the elements frequency increases.


References:

Bussmann, Hadumod (1996): Routledge Dictionnary of Language and Linguistics. London, New York. Routledge Reference. p.196-7.

Bybee, J.; Pagliuca, W. (1985): Crosslinguistic comparison and the development of grammatical meanings. In: Fisiak, Jacek (Ed.) Historical semantics- Historical word-formation. Berlin et al. Mouton. p. 59-85.

Glück, Helmut (1993): Metzler-Lexikon Sprache. Stuttgart, Weimar. Verlag J.B. Metzler. p.229-30.

Greenberg, J. H. (1978): How does a language aquire gender markers In: Greenberg, J.H. et al.: Universals of human language. Vol. 3. Stanford. Stanford University Press. p.47-83.

Matthews, P. H. (2002): The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics. Oxford. Oxford University Press. p.164.

Traugott, E. C.; Heine, B. (1991): Approaches to Grammaticalization Vol. 1+2. Amsterdam. John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Traugott, E. C. (1994): Grammaticalization and Lexicalization. In: Asher, R. E.; Simpson, J.M.Y. The encylopedia of language and linguistics. Vol.3. Oxford et al. Pergamon Press. p.1481-86.

Mirativity is a grammatical category expressing that a proposition is new, unexpected and surprising for the speaker. It typically comprises two members: a marked form for unexpected propositions and an unmarked one for all others. It can be marked morphologically or syntactically. The status of intonation in marking mirativity is controversial (AIKHENVALD 2004: 214) and seems to be an universal concomitant phonetic effect of surprise, so we don’t use it as a criterion in our definition.

There are up to now discussions concerning the status of mirativity as an independent grammatical category (see for example DELANCEY 1997 and LAZARD 1999). As mirativity arises very often as a semantic extension of other categories, primarily evidentiality (AIKHENVALD 2004: 204-06), it is often viewed as subcategory of these. Lazard (1999) regards mirativity along with evidentiality and inferentiality as subcategories of the more abstract category “mediative”. MEL’ČUK (1998: 197-8) considers mirativity as a subcategory of “reactivity”.

Despite of these objections we suggest to treat mirativity as an independent category for the following reasons: Firstly, semantically and pragmatically mirativity is related but different from evidentiality and its subtype inferentiality: unexpected information is not necessarily inferred, often it is given in a direct perception, nor does the fact that it’s unexpected specify the type of source on which it is based. Secondly, it’s impossible to subsume mirativity under a more abstract category cross-linguistically, as it appears in different languages not only as an extension of evidentiality but also of tense or mood (AIKHENVALD 2004: 2010-11). In the end there are actually languages having mirativity as a fully-fledged grammatical category as Kham, Tariana and others (see AIKHENVALD 2004: 211-14). Whether mirativity in a single language should be treated as independent category or subsumed under another has to be decided separately for every language (SKRIBNIK & OZONOVA 2007: 520-21).

As for the Ob-Ugric languages, there exists in both languages, Khanty and Mansi, a grammaticalized way to express mirativity (NIKOLAEVA 1999, SKRIBNIK 1998). According to Nikolaeva (1999), in Northern Khanty mirativity is a pragmatic extension of evidentiality. Furthermore she mentions that the category of evidentiality, and accordingly mirativity, has different origins in the Khanty dialects. In Northern Mansi mirative forms evolved through de-subordination (SKRIBNIK 2005), so it might be assumed that mirativity is an independent grammatical category in Northern Mansi (Skribnik, p.c.).

Examples from Northern Mansi (SKRIBNIK 1988; transcription by DA):

Anʲ aːm jujipaːl-um-t taj maːkoləŋ oːjka ta joːmiɣt-aneː-te
now I behind-SG<1SG-LOC EMPH bear ACT1 lunge.out-MIR.PRS-3SG
‘There is a bear lunging out behind meǃ’

Soːlʲ ta xara maː loːmt olː-um. Sunsiɣlaxt-eːɣ-um,
Indeed ACT1 tundra part be-MIR.PST.ACT[3SG] look.around-PRS-1SG
anʲ tit xara maː-t matərsir uːj jalas-am.
now here tundra some animal run-MIR.PST.ACT[3SG]
‘Indeed, it was a part of the tundra. I’m looking around, and some animal was running on the tundra.’

Peːs pora-t anʲ jiːw nʲaːl-əl xaːjtnut aliɣl-ima.
Old time-LOC now wood arrow-INST wolf hunt-MIR.PST.PASS[3SG]
‘Formerly wolves were (really) hunted with wooden arrows.’


References:

AIKHENVALD, Alexandra 2004): Evidentiality. Oxford: Oxford University Press

DELANCEY, Scott (1997): Mirativity: The grammatical marking of unexpected information. In: Language Typology 1, 33-52.

DELANCEY, Scott (2001): The mirative and evidentiality. In: Journal of Pragmatics 33, 369-82.

LAZARD, Gilbert (1999): Mirativity, evidentiality, mediativity, or other?. In: Linguistic Typology 3, 91-109.

MEL’ČUK, Igor (1998): Kurs obščej morfologii, Tom II. Moskow & Vienna: Wiener Slavistischer Almanach (Translation from French into Russian: Vladimir Plungjan).

NIKOLAEVA, Irina (1999): The semantics of Northern Khanty evidentials. In: Journal de la Société Finno-Ougrienne 88, 131-59.

SKRIBNIK, Elena (1998): K voprosu o nečevidnom naklonenii v mansijskom jazyke: struktura i semantika. In: Jazyki korennyx narodov Sibiri 4, 197-215.

SKRIBNIK, Elena (2005): From complex sentence structures to complex predicates: some grammaticalization patterns in Siberian languages. In: Sprachtypologie und Universalienforschung. Vol. 58 (2005) 1, 139-148.

SKRIBNIK, Elena & OZONOVA, Ajjana (2007): Sredstva vyraženija zasvidetel’stvovannosti i mirativnosti v altajskom jazyke. In: CHRAKOVSKIJ, Viktor (Ed.): Ėvidencial’nost’ v jazykach Evropy i Azii. Saint Petersburg: Nauka.

Momentary or punctual verbs belong to one of the subcategories of non-durative verbs. The lexical meaning of non-durative verbs implies temporal delimitation, an accomplishment, or a change in the process involved (e.g. burn down, burn up). Non-durative verbs can be used with modifiers such as in an hour, but not with modifiers such as for two hours, for a long time: The house burnt down in two hours/*for two hours.
Punctual verbs imply a sudden change in the situation (e.g. explode, find).

In Mansi there are several momentaneous formants, e.g.:
-ap, -at, -as, -aj, -al, -alt, -iγp, -iγt, -liγt, -uwl, -m, -umt, -aml, -mat, -maj, -əlmat.

kwaːl- ’to stand up’ > kwaːlap- ’to jump up’
saːηl- ’to ring’ > saːηlat- ’to ring out suddenly’
pisjγ- ’to sqeak’ > pisjγas- ’to give a squeak’


References:

Bussmann, Hadumod (1996): Routledge Dictionary of Language and Linguistics. Routledge: London.

Pei, Mario (1966): Glossary of Linguistic Terminology. Doubleday & Company, Inc.: Garden City, New York.

Riese, Timothy (2001): Vogul. Languages of the World/Materials 158. Lincom Europa: Muenchen.

Action nominals (Verbalnomen, nazvan'ie d'ejsztvija, verbal noun, nomen actionis, masdar, complex event nouns, English and Latin gerund) traditionally constitute a subgroup of non-finite verbal forms. However, the exact definition of action nominals is not completely clear (as can also be seen from the several different names of this grammatical category).

Action nominals can be defined as nouns derived from verbs (verbal nouns) with the general meaning of an action or process, capable of declining or taking prepositions and postpositions in the same way as non-derived nouns, and showing ‘reasonable’ productivity. Action nominals clearly refer to events, like verbs do, but in contrast with verbs they do it by giving the events a name. Thus action nominals combine semantic and discourse features of both verbs and nouns. In their morphology they also combine verbal and nominal features and different languages treat them as being closer to verbs or nouns. They are in some reasonably productive way derived from verbs, either derivationally or inflectionally, and refer to events and/or facts, i.e. not just to actions, as the name might imply.

There is a long tradition of distinguishing between derivational action nominals (like conquest, refusal and arrival) and inflectional action nominals, like English gerunds (singing, walking). This distinction is sometimes very hard to make because it is precisely action nominals that in many languages pose serious problems for a clear-cut distinction between derivational and inflectional forms, in that the various criteria suggested for distinguishing inflection and derivation clash when applied to them.

In Northern Mansi there are several derivational suffixes which can form also action nominals, but on the bases of the Northern Mansi texts it seems that mainly the non-finites in -n and -m (i.e. the forms traditionally called present and past participle) appear as action nominals.

Some examples:

eːlälj keːt - nə - m - t taːrä amki neː-lili - m viːγ - ləm
forward send-NACT-SG<1SG-LOC immediately myself woman-soul-SG<1SG take-SG<1SG
’If I’m sent away, I myself will take my own life immediately.’ (VNGy IV: 76)

loutə - m - ä jui-paːlt am paːltəm ti tot - wə - s
wash-NACT-SG<3SG after I to.me so bring-PASS-PAST[3SG]
’After (s)he had been washed, (s)he was brought to me.’ (VNGy II: 14)


References:

Chomsky, Noam (1970): Remarks on Nominalization. In: Jacobs, Roderick and Rosenbaum, Peter (eds.), Readings in English Transformational Grammar. Ginn and co. Waltham: Massachusetts. 184–221.

Comrie, Bernard (1976): The Syntax of Action Nominals: A Cross-Language Study. Lingua 40: 177–201.

Comrie, Bernard – Thompson, Sandra Annear (1985): Lexical nominalization. In: Shopen, Timothy (ed.), Language typology and syntactic description III. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. 349–398.

Grimshaw, Jane (1990): Argument Structure. MIT Press: Cambridge.

Haspelmath, Martin (1996): Word-class-changing Inflection and Morphological Theory. In: Geert Booij & Jaap van Marle (eds.), Yearbook of Morphology. 1995. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 43-66.

Koptjesvkaja-Tamm, Maria (1993): Nominalizations. Routledge: London – New York.

VNGy = Munkácsi Bernát (1892-1896): Vogul népköltési gyüjtemény I-IV. MTA: Budapest.

Ylikoski, Jussi (2003): Defining Non-finites: Action Nominals, Converbs and Infinitives. SKY Journal of Linguistics 16: 185–237.

In contrast to finite forms, non-finites are usually not marked for such categories as tense, mood, aspect, person or number, nor they do function only as predicates of independent sentences. The main types of non-finites include the infinitive, the participle, the converb and the action nominal. On cannot, however, say that there is an exact one-to-one correspondence between non-finite forms and their functions, as it may well be the case that non-finites are most typically used in more than one syntactic function. This is the case for example in English, where the non-finite form crying can function as a participle, as a converb and as an action nominal as well:

Participle: The crying girl left the room.
Converb: The girl left the room crying.
Action nominal: The girl’s crying irritates me.

Non-finite verbal forms (verbal nouns) play an important role in Mansi sentence structure. They are often used in conjunction with other suffixes, notably possessive and case suffixes (or postpositions). Since they often are equivalent to embedded sentences they can take their own arguments, i.e. objects and adverbials.

The Mansi non-finite verbal forms can be classified as follows:

1) Infinitive: -ηkwe, 2) Participles: -i, -s, -η, -p, -nə, -m (-im), -tal (the first four are no longer productive), 3) Converbs: -ke, -ima. Given that some of the participles (-nə, -m (-im), -tal) are often used as adverbials in sentences there is no sharp dividing line between them and the converbs. Participles in -nə and -m (-im) can be used also as predicates and as action nominals.

Some examples of the use of Mansi non-finite verbal forms:

1) Infinitive
at joχt-uŋkwe noms-ite
no come-INF think-SG<3SG
’(S)he thinks that (s)he won’t come.’

paːwl - iγ laːw-uŋkwe janiγ naːŋk-i
village-TRNS say-INF big seems-PRS[3SG]
’It seems too big to call it a village.’

2) Participle in -n/-ne/-nə (present participle)
eːkwa-te jot saːli-l min-ne χum
woman-SG<3SG with reindeer-INST go-PTCP man
’the man going with his wife on a reindeer’

am pil-ne manər oːnjsj-eγ-əm?
I fear-PTCP something have-PRS-1SG
’What do I have that can make you be frightened?’

taw jomsjakw ruːpita-ne-te maːγəs
(s)he good work-PTCP-SG<3SG because
’due to his/her good work’

3) Participle in -m (-im) (past participle)
waːs alisjl-am piγrisj
wild.duck hunt-PTCP boy
’the boy who hunted wild duck’

naŋ ti-χoːtal at teː-m-ən you today not eat-PTCP-SG<2SG
’You haven’t eaten today.’

am mina-m-əm-t
I go-PTCP-SG<1SG-LOC
’when I went’

4) Participle in -tal (privative, negative participle)
neː sus-tal χoːn
woman see-PTCP king
’king unseen by women’

5) Converb in -ke
taːχt- ət noːχ-tilaml - ake - nəl - t
loon-PL fly.up-CVB-SG<3PL-LOC
’when the loons fly up’

6) Converb in -im(a)
aːγi eːrγ-im paːγ-min-as
girl sing-CVB go.to.shore-PAST[3SG]
’The girl went down to the shore singing.’

keːt-ima-m juji-paːlt
send-CVB-SG<1SG after
’after I was sent’


References:

Kálmán Béla (1975): Chrestomathia Vogulica. Tankönyv-kiadó: Budapest.

Koptjevskaja-Tamm, Maria (1993): Nominalizations. Routledge: London – New York.

Riese, Timothy (2001): Vogul. Languages of the World/Materials 158. Lincom Europa: Muenchen.

Ylikoski, Jussi (2003): Defining non-finites: action nominals, converbs and infinitives. SKY Journal of Linguistics 16: 185–237.

Object agreement is a form of grammatical agreement. Grammatical agreement is a correspondence between two or more sentence elements in respect to their morphosyntactic categories (case, number, person, gender). Agreement can mark syntactic relations (such as two constituents belonging to the same complex constituent), as well as syntactic functions (such as subject and attribute).

In object-verb agreement the inflected verb phrase agrees with the object with regard to person and/or number. In object-verb agreement, animacy, definiteness, and/or the thematic relation of the verb complement also play a role. It is a well-known fact that objects whose features are high on one of the animacy/topicality hierarchies (e.g. human, specific, first person, etc.) are more likely to trigger agreement.

Among the Uralic languages, object agreement is present in Hungarian, Mordvinian, Ob-Ugrian (Khanty and Mansi) and Samoyedic (Nenets, Enets, Nganasan, and Selkup). In all these languages transitive verbs have two different paradigms, called the „subjective” (or „indeterminate”) and the „objective” (or „determinate”) conjugation. Verbs in the objective conjugation agree both with the subject and the direct object. Transitive verbs occur in either the subjective or the objective conjugation, so object agreement is optional, while subject agreement is obligatory.

In Ob-Ugrian, the objective conjugation forms contain the object marker and the subject marker, the object marker indicating the number of the object (but not the person). The object marker and the subject marker exhibit different degrees of agglutination, depending on dialect.

In Northern Mansi intransitive verbs can be used with the objective conjugation as well, e.g.:

kol saːt sjos jeːkw-im joːηχ - ite
house seven times dance-CVB go.around-SG<3SG
’He goes dancing around the house seven times’

The choice of the determinate suffixes is determined by many factors, besides the definiteness of the object also by the theme-rheme structure of the sentence and its focus features.

For some examples of the subjective and objective conjugations in Northern Mansi see e-Grammar


References:

Bussmann, Hadumod (1996): Routledge Dictionary of Language and Linguistics. Routledge: London and New York.

Comrie, Bernard (1981): Language Universals and Linguistic Typology. Basil Blackwell: Oxford.

Croft, William (1988): "Agreement vs Case Marking and Direct Objects," In: M. Barlow and C. Ferguson (eds.), Agreement in Natural Language: Approaches, Theories, Descriptions. University of Chicago Press: Chicago.

Croft, William (1990): Typology and Universals. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge.

Kálmán, Béla (1975): Chrestomathia Vogulica. Tankönyvkiadó: Budapest.

Nikolaeva, Irina: Object agreement, grammatical relations and information structure.(03.05.2012.)

Skribnik, Elena (2001): Pragmatic Structuring in Northern Mansi. Congressus Nonus Internationalis Fenno-Ugristarum Pars 6. Tartu, 222-239.

German: Partizip, Hungarian: melléknévi igenév, Finnish: Partisiippi, Russian: Причастие

In general, verbal inflection can be divided into (a) finite verb forms (inflected for tense, number, and person, e.g. sings) and (b) non-finite verb forms (singing) such as infinitives, converbs, gerunds, and participles (cf. Booij 2007: 101f.). The terminology in use is very inconsistent. Haspelmath (2002: 67) outlines a characterisation of the non-finite forms: „Although the terminology is not uniform, a rough generalization says that verb forms marking relative clauses are called participles, verb forms marking adverbial clauses are called converbs and verb forms marking complement clauses are called infinitives or masdars (action nouns).“ In a similar manner Crystal (2008: 352) points out: „In linguistics the term [‚participle’] is generally restricted to the non-finite forms of verbs other than the infinitive“.

As a first step we can sum up the non-finite verb forms: Non-finite verb forms are (a) infinitives, (b) gerunds, (c) converbs, (d) participles. It is especially the term ‚gerund’ that causes difficulties. As for the Ob-Ugric languages, gerunds and converbs are treated alike, labelled ‚converb’. Thus, for the Ob-Ugric languages we have the following non-finite verb forms: (a) infinitives, (b) converbs, and (c) participles (cf. Munkácsi 1894: 42-47, Kálmán 1976: 70f., Riese 2001: 66-70).

There are three understandings of the term ‚participle’:
(a) denoting a non-finite verb form functioning as an adjectival modifier (the singing child) as in its original use in traditional grammar, meaning that a word ‚participates’ in the characteristics of both verbs and adjectives (cf. Haspelmath 2002: 273, Crystal 2008: 351f.);
(b) denoting a non-finite verb form functioning as an adjectival or as an adverbial modifier (the child entered the room singing) (cf. Trask 1993: 200f.);
(c) denoting a non-finite verb form functioning as an adjectival modifier or as a noun (Smoking is forbidden).
Since for the Ob-Ugric languages on the one hand the term ‚converb’ is adopted for non-finite verb forms used in an adverbial manner and on the other hand participles often bear nominal properties, the definition (c) will be applied.

For the Ob-Ugric languages ‚participle’ can be defined as follows:

A participle is a non-finite verb form functioning as an adjectival modifier or as a noun.


References:

Booij, Geert (2007): The Grammar of Words. An Introduction to Linguistic Morphology. 2nd ed. – Oxford: OUP.

Crystal, David (2008): A Dictionary of Linguistics & Phonetics. 6th ed. - Malden, Mass. et. al.: Blackwell.

Kálmán, Béla (1976): Chrestomathia Vogulica. – Budapest: Tankönyvkiadó.

Kispál, Magdolna Sz. (1966): A Vogul igenév mondattana. – Budapest: Akadémia Kiadó.

Haspelmath, Maritn (2002): Understanding Morphology. – London: Arnold (= Understanding Language Series).

Munkácsi, Bernát (1894): A Vogul nyelvjárások szóragozásukban ismertetve. – Budapest: Magyar Tudományos Akadémia (= Ugor füzetek 11).

Riese, Timothy (2001): Vogul. – München: LINCOM EUROPA (= LW/M 158).

Trask, R. L. (1993): A Dictionary of Grammatical Terms in Linguistics. – London / New York: Routledge.

According to Crystal (1997) passive is ‘a term used in the grammatical analysis of voice, referring to a sentence, clause or verb form where the grammatical subject is typically the recipient or goal of the action denoted by the verb’.

The definition above fits many languages of the world, but, however, it is applicable for transitive verbs only. For example in the Finnic languages, the intransitive verbs can be inflected in passive voice as well. In that kind of languages passive voice is not used only for topicalizing the Patient or the R-argument, but also for expressing impersonal action. The impersonal passive comprises only the demotion of the Agent: there is no constituent promoted to subject position (Comry 1977).

Also the Ob-Ugrian passive has awoken special interest because the use of Ob-Ugrian passive voice seems to be independent of the transitivity of the verb (Kulonen 1989). According to Kulonen (1989) there can be seen three main types of passive in Ob-Ugrian, each of which has to be given their own functions. The two most important types are the personal and impersonal passive. The personal passive can still be divided into sentences with or without an agent. In the personal passive voice the verb is inflected according to the number and person of the subject (Patient), and the possible agent is marked with lative case.


References:

Comry, Bernard (1977): In defence of spontaneous demotion: the impersonal passive. Syntax and Semantics vol. 8. Grammatical relations. New York.

Crystal, David (1997): Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics. Blackwell Publisher Inc. Oxford. 4th edition.

Kulonen, Ulla-Maija (1989): The passive in Ob-Ugrian. MSFOu 203. Finno-Ugrian Society. Helsinki.

Possessive markers are a set of personal markers that are attached to nominal stems. According to their terminology, they often denote possessive relations of various kinds. In this function possessive markers encode a possessor in person and number as well as a possessed in number. The possessive marker follows the word stem and precedes optional case markers (Nikolaeva 1999a, 12). Suffixation may lead to phonological changes, e.g. loss of the reduced vowel ə in the last syllable, e.g. Mansi uːxəl 'sledge', uːxl-en 'sledge'-SG<2SG (Rédei, 1965, S. 45) or adding of an additional vowel between stem and possessive marker, e.g. Mansi xum 'man', xum-i-m 'man'-1SG
Furthermore, possessive markers are part of constructions without possessive meaning in Ob-Ugric languages. Some of these constructions are formally similar to the possessive construction but have different functions of which some denote properties that are often analyzed as kind of definiteness. Very often this ability is linked to underlying pragmatic properties of possessive markers in Ob-Ugric languages.

Except to nouns possessive suffixes are attached to several other nominal stems like participles and converbs (functioning as embedded participial clauses) or specific pronouns and possessive markers attach to postpositions in certain fixed constructions, too. All of these constructions have in common that except from those denoting possessive relations, only one referent is encode by the possessive suffix:

ula-te puwl-ime-te
'fire'-SG<3SG 'blow'-CVB-3SG
'While igniting his fire'

The use of possessive markes in Ob-Ugric languages is manifold and some functions are yet to be investigated more thoroughly, thus further research on these markers is required.


References:

Barker, Chris (1995): Possessive descriptions. Stanford: CSLI Publications

Baron, Irene, Herslund, Michael, Sørensen, Finn (ed.) (2001): Dimensions of possession. (Typological Studies in Language Volume 47) Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company

Kovgan, Elena (2005): "The textual structure of Khanty – co-reference and anaphora" In: M.M. Fernandez-Vest, Jocelyne (ed.), Les langues ouraliennes aujourd'hui. Approche linguistique et cognitive. The Uralic languages today. A linguistic and cognitive approach Paris: Librairie Honoré Champion S. 547–560

Nikolaeva, Irina A. Kovgan, Elena V. Koškarёva, Natalia (1993): "Communicative roles in Ostyak syntax" In: Finnisch-Ugrische Forschungen 51 S. 125-167

Nikolaeva, Irina (1999): Ostyak (Languages of the World/Materials 305) München, Newcastle: Lincom Europa

Riese, Timothy (2001): Vogul (Languages of the world. Materials 158) München: Lincom Europa

Skribnik, Elena (2001): "Pragmatic structuring in Northern Mansi" In: Seilenthal, Tõnu (ed.), Congressus Nonus Internationalis Fenno-Ugristarum 7.-13.8.2000 Pars VI Tartu: Auctores S. 222-239

Preverb, verbal prefix, verbal particle:

The three terms ‘preverb’, ‘prefix’ and ‘verbal particles’ are not to be used synonymously. Rather, ‘preverb’ is a cover term for verbal prefix and verbal particle. Preverbs form a complex unit with the base verb and they precede the verb.

Verbal prefixes are not separable from the verb while verbal particles are separable. This classification is especially prevalent in Germanic tradition (cf. eg. Déhe/Jackendoff/McIntyre/Urban 2002, Müller 2002: 253). In German there is a complex system of separable (stressed) particles (1) and inseparable (unstressed) prefixes (2), compare:

(1) Peter malt die Wand AN.
Peter paints the.wall PTCL
‚Peter paints the wall.’ (perfective)

(2) Peter be-MALT die Wand.
Peter PREF-paints the.wall
‚Peter paints the wall.’ (imperfective)


The Ob-Ugric languages also have preverbs. The existence of affixes or particles preceding the base verb is an unexpected syntactic phenomenon in a strongly suffixing language with SOV basic word order like Mansi and Khanty. Some research has already been made on verbal ‘prefixation’ in Mansi (cf. Zsirai 1933, Kiefer 1997 and Kiefer/Honti 2003). According to Zsirai (1933), there 31 preverbs in Mansi and 27 in Khanty.

As in many other cases, heteronomous terminology may be a major source for misunderstandings. Since affixation plays a crucial role in Uralic languages and thus in Uralic linguistics, one may be tempted to regard any morphem that stands in a close syntactic relation to a verb or a noun as a suffix or a prefix. Despite the fact that the term ‘verbal particle’ has a strong tradition in Germanic lnguistics, we argue that Mansi and Khanty preverbs should be considered as verbal particles, due to the following reasons: Mansi and Khanty preverbs are separable; most of them are morphologically still transparent; and many of them still function as adverbs.

As for seperability, cf. the following examples:

Khanty:
(3) palnʲitsak-a joɣ min läɣəlkälmən.
hospital-DAT into we.DU looked-1DU
‚We dropped into the hospital.’ (Kiefer/Honti 2003: 143)

Mansi:
(4) taw xumlʲe jal-s, tox juw wos min-i!
3SG how go-PST[3SG] so into let go-PRS[3SG]
‚He shall go home just like he has come.’


In Mansi, the most frequent preverbal prefixes are (cf. Riese 2001: 59 f.): akʷan- ‘together’, xot- ‘intensity of action; direction away from sth.; etc.’, eːl(a)- ‘forwards; onwards; away’, jol- ‘down’, juw- ‘home; into; completion of action’, kittiɣ- ‘seperation’, kon- ‘out; away’, lakʷa- ‘decentralised action’, lap- ‘completion of action’, naːl(uw)- ‘towards the river; towards the fire’, noː(ŋ)x- ‘up’, paːɣ- ‘towards the shore; away from the fire’, paːliɣ- ‘apart; in different directions; opening up’, tiɣ- ‘in the direction of the speaker’, tuw- ‘away from the speaker’.


References:

Déhe, Nicole / Jackendoff, Ray / McIntyre, Andrew / Urban, Silke (2002): „Introduction.“ – In: Dehé, Nicole / Jackendoff, Ray / McIntyre, Andrew / Urban, Silke (eds): Verb-Particle Explorations. – Berlin / New York: de Gruyter (= Interface Explorations 1), pp. 1-20.

Honti, Laszlo (1999): “Das Alter und die Entstehungsweise der ‘Verbalpräfixe’ in uralischen Sprachen (unter besonderer Berucksichtigung des Ungarischen). Teil I und II.” – In: Linguistica Uralica 35, pp. 81-97, pp. 161-176.

Kiefer, Ferenc / Honti, László (2003): „Verbal ‚Prefixation’ in the Uralic Languages. – In: Acta Linguistica Hungarica 50 (1-2), pp. 137-153.

Riese, Timothy (2001): Vogul. – Munich: LINCOM (= LW/M 158)

Zsirai, Miklós (1933): Az obi-ugor igekötők. – Budapest: Magyar tudományos akadémia.

First approaches to quantifiers were already made by the philosopher Aristotele. Later on they became a matter of interest in formal logic and linguistics. While for Aristotele just terms like 'all', 'some' and 'no' were of interest and for formal logics basically the operators 'all', 'some','some not' and 'not all', modern linguistics extendes this field to other determining expressions.

Following a linguistic definition quantifiers are determining term operators, that modify a referent sets property towards its predication quantitatively. They are part of the noun phrase which in general consists of a quantifier and the quantified expression, building up a bipartite structure. A distinctive distribution to discrete and continuous nouns may occur. Besides numeral information quantifiers may bear information about possession, coulour and event. Therefore, they can be regarded as determiners.

While quantifiers appear in every language, defining them as a distinct grammatical category is not possible, due to their uncertain morphosyntactic properties.

Within quantification there are two strategies of modification: Numeration and proportioning. Numeration is done by numerators, that either can be numeral as absolute numbers, e.g. 'Three breads were stolen.' or non-numeral as. quantities, e.g. 'Lots of breads were stolen.' and relative numbers, e.g. 'Most of the breads were stolen.'. Both numeral and non-numeral modificators are quantifiers.

Proportions are given by quantifiers, as well. They express either partitivity or exhaustiveness.

Partitive proportions can be generated by unquantified and semi-quantified operators.

Unquantified operators can give a rational proportion by rational numbers, e.g. 'Half my food was stolen.', relative proportions, e.g. 'Most of my food was stolen.' and partitive proportions, e.g. 'Some of my food was stolen.'

Semi-quantified proportions just tell, that a certain referent set is not empty, but do not specify its quantity, e.g. 'Some food of mine was stolen.'

Exhaustive proportions appear unquantified and quantified:

While quantified proportions use quantifiers, as well, e.g. 'All three breads I baked were stolen.', only unquantified proportions are given without any quantifier, e.g. 'The food in my kitchen was stolen.'


References:

Aldrigde, Maurice Vincent (1982) English Quantifiers. A Study of quantifying expressions in linguistic science and modern English usage. Avebury: Avebury Publishing Company.

Brown, Richard (1985): Term Operators. In: A.M. Bolkestein et al. (Ed.) Predicates and Terms in Functional Grammar. Funktional Grammar Series 2. Dordrecht: Foris Publications.

Gil, David (2001): Quantifiers In: Haspelmath, Martin; König, et al (ed.) An International Handbook / Manuel international / Ein internationales Handbuch Vol. 2. Berlin • New York (Walter de Gruyter) p.1275-1294.

Givón, Talmy (2001): Syntax: An Introduction. Vol. 2. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Co.

van Eijck , Jan (1991): Quantification In: Von Stechow, Armin; Wunderlich, Dieter (ed.) Semantics / Semantik. An International Handbook of Contemporary Research Vol. 6/ Ein internationales Handbuch zeitgenössischer Forschung. Band 6. Berlin • New York (Walter de Gruyter). p.459–487

In languages, there are different ways to encode reciprocal situations, i.e. situations like ‘They love each other’. The reciprocal situation comprises at least two simple situations (e.g., She loves him and He loves her), so one way to encode such a situation is to combine expressions for two simple situations. This strategy seems to be possible in all languages, although the extent to which such a pattern is conventionalized in grammar and common in actual discourse differs from language to language (Maslova & Nedjalkov 2011).

Maslova (2008:228) differentiates unary and binary constructions: "A reciprocal construction counts as unary if all reciprocants must be referred to within a single morphosyntactic slot [...]; a reciprocal construction is binary if it retains two referentially independent morphosyntactic slots of the underlying non-reciprocal argument structure".

Most languages have simple or complex reciprocal markers (verbal affixes, pronouns, particles, adverbs, etc.), which, if combined with a verb within one clause, signal that the clause describes a reciprocal situation and not just the situation denoted by this verb, without repeating the verb for each simple situation. Reciprocal pronouns belong to these markers.

Reciprocal markers can be unambiguous, i.e. they always express reciprocal meaning. In other languages, the reciprocal meaning may constitute one of several distinct functions of a grammatical construction. Very often, the primary reciprocal marker can be ambiguous between reciprocal and reflexive meanings.


References:

Maslova (2008:227) pleads for a extension of the classical and restrictive definitions of reflexivity in order to ensure that every language has at least one reflexive construction; accordingly, the question whether a reflexive construction can be used to encode reciprocity can be asked of every specific language.

Bußmann, Hadumod (1990): Lexikon der Sprachwissenschaft. 2. Aufl. Stuttgart: Kröner.

Maslova, Elena (2008): "Reflexive encoding of reciprocity: Cross-linguistic and language-internal variation". In: Ekkehard König, & Volker Gast (Eds.) (2008): Reciprocals and reflexives: Cross-linguistic and theoretical explorations. Berlin, New York; Mouton de Gruyter. 225-258.

Maslova, Elena; Nedjalkov, Vladimir P. (2011): "Reciprocal Constructions". In: Haspelmath, Martin; Dryer, Matthew S.; Gil, David G.; Comrie, Bernard (Eds.): The World Atlas of Language Structures Online (WALS). München: Max Planck Digital Library. Chapter 106.

Schwartz, Linda. (2000): "Pronoun and article". In: Booij, G. E.; Lehmann, Christian; Mugdan, Joachim (Eds.) (2000): Morphologie. Ein internationales Handbuch zur Flexion und Wortbildung. Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter (Die Handbücher zur Sprach- und Kommunikationswissenschaft, Bd. 17-1). 783-794.

Semantic domain (cultural domain, culturally shared domain)

IS NOT differentiated from the sociolinguistic term "domain" which has been introduced by J. Fishman. In this sense "domain" is a bundle of social situations which are determined by specific settings, role-determined references between the participants of interactions and typical subject areas.

IS according to the definition of Weller & Romney (1988) "an organized set of words, concepts or sentences, all of the same level of contrast, that jointly refer to a single conceptual sphere. The items in the domain derive their meaning, in part, from their position in a mutually interdependent system reflecting the way in which a given language or culture classifies the relevant conceptual sphere."

The following situation according to Borgatti (1998) exemplifies what a culturally shared domain is:

"If asked whether a tiger is an animal, the respondent feels that she is discussing a fact about the world outside, not about herself. In contrast, if she is asked whether 'vanilla' is one of her favorite ice cream flavors, the respondent feels that she is revealing something about herself rather than about vanilla ice cream. In this sense, cultural domains are experienced as outside the individual and shared across individuals."

Methods in order to determine the affiliation of a concept to a certain domain are a) freelisting and b) the triad test.

It is also possible to understand "semantic domain" as a superior level of classification (e.g. as animate vs. non-animate) whilst the term of "category" refers to an intermediate level of classification (e.g. animals, birds, furniture). Finally, the term of "concept" refers to generic terms (appellative names).


References:

Borgatti, S.P. (1998): "Elicitation Methods for Cultural Domain Analysis". In: J. Schensul & M. LeCompte (Ed.) The Ethnographer's Toolkit. Volume 3. Walnut Creek: Altamira Press.

Bußmann, Hadumod (1990): Lexikon der Sprachwissenschaft. 2. Aufl. Stuttgart: Kröner.

Müller, Andrea (2001): Modellfreie Erhebungsverfahren im Internet am Beispiel von Cognitive Mapping Studien. Diss. Georg-August-Universität Göttingen.

Romney, A.K., Weller, S.C. & W.H. Batchelder (1986): "Culture as consensus: A theory of culture and informant accuracy". American Anthropologist 88, S. 313-338.

Schröder, Astrid (2006): Semantische Kategorien und Merkmalswissen: Eine experimentelle Studie zur semantischen Repräsentation konkreter Objektbegriffe. Diss. Univ. Potsdam.

Weller, S.C. & A.K. Romney (1988): Systematic Data Collection. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications.

The topic of a sentence is what a sentence is about, i.e. the subject of the speaker's utterance. It thus resembles presupposed information and serves as a linker for new information: if the hearer cannot link some kind of new information to something known - i.e. to a topic - the hearer is not able to process this new information properly.

The pragmatic notion topic refers in most sentences to referents like persons or things, but not exclusively. Sometimes for example an utterance itself can serve as topic. Therefore it is important to know that there is a difference between the pragmatic notion topic and the pragmatic role called topic that refers to a topical referent.

A referent being the pragmatic role of topic in a sentence can be referred to with a noun phrase, but as topic means presupposed information, i.e. given information, it is sufficient to refer to it with personal pronouns, deictic pronouns and other anaphoric devices. In pro-drop languages like the Ob-Ugric languages, the common device to refer to topical referents is using zero anaphora.

Ø sort xuril sʲalt-əs
'pike' 'shape' 'enter'-PST[3SG]
'(He) dived in in the shape of a pike.'

There is a strong correlation between the pragmatic role of topic and the syntactic role of subject and especially the Ob-Ugric languages use several mechanisms to maintain this correlation throughout the whole text, e.g. by employing passive instead of active voice. As a consequence of this correlation, the Ob-Ugric languages do not have a subject-initial sentence-structure but a topic-initial, i.e. the topic of a sentence is on the left-most position, cf. questions).

aːsʲuw xotalʲ mina-s?
'father' 'where' 'go'-PST[3SG]
'Where did our father go?'

The pragmatic notion topic can occur in different kinds of pragmatic roles, e.g. as discourse-topic, paragraph-topic or sentence-topic, creating a topical hierarchy. The discourse-topic is the referent the speaker concentrates his main attention on and usually a discourse-topic is involved throughout a whole story. Paragraph-topics only exist in relation to discourse topics, i.e. they only occur in situations together with the discourse-topic, e.g. the main hero’s antagonist. They do not occur throughout the whole story but in one or two paragraphs only.

As the discourse-topic is the speaker's main focus of attention, there is only one discourse-topic per story, but several paragraph-topics in one story are possible. Sometimes the speaker's attention shifts between topic roles and former paragraph-topics can become discourse-topics and vice versa.

The correlation of syntax and pragmatics also affects the paragraph-topic that is very often realized as direct object. The Ob-Ugric languages use a special paradigm to encode (paragraph)-topics being direct objects, the objective conjugation.

Ø Ø mina-s-te
'go'-PST-SG<3SG
'(He) had gone right through (the iron net).'

Sentence-topics are the less important topic roles in the hierarchy and they only occur within a few sentences in a story.

Other than often anticipated, the topic of a sentence does not inherently have to be given information. If a referent is newly introduced and linked to a topical referent at the same time, the newly introduced becomes automatically topical, too (A good friend of mine).


References:

Endriss, Cornelia (2008): Grundlagen der Informationsstruktur. Workshop zur Informationsstruktur und Gestik, 25. April 2008.

Givón, Talmy (1983): Topic continuity in discourse: A quantitative crosslinguistic study. Amsterdam - Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company

Kiss, Katalin (2008): Topic and focus: two structural positions associated with logical functions in the left periphery of the Hungarian sentence. In: Kiefer, Ferenc; É.Kiss, Katalin (Hrsg.) Acta Linguistica Hungarica, Vol. 55 (3-4) Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó S. 287-296.

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