Describing Morphosyntax

This page contains a summary of Describing Morphosyntax: A Guide for Field Linguists (1997) by Thomas E. Payne.

Contents
Acknowledgments xiii

List of abbreviations xiv

Introduction 1

0.1 The purpose of this book

0.2 Some terminology and recurring metaphors 4

0.3 Conclusion 11

1 Demographic and ethnographic information 1J

1.1 The name of the language 13

1.2 Ethnology 14

1.3 Demography 14

1.4 Genetic affiliation 15

1.5 Previous research 15

1.6 The sociolinguistic situation 15

1.7 Dialects 18

2 Morphological typology 20

2.0 Historical background and definitions 20

2.1 Traditional morphological typology 27

2.2 Morphological processes 29

2.3 Head/dependent marking 31

3 Grammatical categories 12

3.1 Nouns 33

3.2 Verbs 47

3.3 Modifiers 63

3.4 Adverbs 69

4 Constituent order typology 71

4.0 Introduction 71

4.1 Constituent order in main clauses 76

4.2 Verb phrase 84

4.3 Noun phrase 86

4.4 Adpositional phrases (prepositions and postpositions) 86

4.5 Comparatives 88

4.6 Question particles and question words 89

4.7 Summary 90

5 Noun and noun-phrase operations 92

5.1 Compounding 92

5.2 Denominalization 94

5.3 Number 96

5.4 Case 100

5.5 Articles, determiners, and demonstratives 102

5.6 Possessors 104

5.7 Class (including gender) W7

5.8 Diminution/augmentation 109

6 Predicate nominals and related constructions 111

6.1 Predicate nominals 114

6.2 Predicate adjectives (attributive clauses) 120

6.3 Predicate locatives 121

6.4 Existentials 123

6.5 Possessive clauses 126

6.6 Summary of predicate nominal and EPL relationships 127

7 Grammatical relations 129

7.1 Systems for grouping S, A, and P 133

7.2 Functional explanations for groupings of S, A, and P 139

7.3 Split systems 144

7.4 "Syntactic" ergativity 162

7.5 Summary 166

8 Voice and valence adjusting operations 169

8.0 Valence and predicate calculus 174

8.1 Valence increasing operations 175

8.2 Valence decreasing operations 196

9 Other verb and verb-phrase operations 221

9.1 Nominalization 223

9.2 Compounding (including incorporation) 231

9.3 Tense/aspect/mode 233

9.4 Location/direction 248

9.5 Participant reference 250

9.6 Evidentiality, validationality, and mirativity 251

9.7 Miscellaneous 257

10 Pragmatically marked structures 261

10.0 Pragmatic statuses 261

10.1 The morphosyntax of focus, contrast, and "topicalization" 271

10.2 Negation 282

10.3 Non-declarative speech acts 294

11 Clause combinations 106

11.1 Serial verbs 307

11.2 Complement clauses 313

11.3 Adverbial clauses 316

11.4 Clause chaining, medial clauses, and switch reference 321

11.5 Relative clauses 325

11.6 Coordination 336

12 Conclusions: the language in use 342

12.0 Discourse analysis and linguistic analysis 342

12.1 Continuity (cohesion) and discontinuity 343

12.2 Genres 356

12.3 Miscellaneous and conclusions 362

Appendix 1 Elicited and text data 366

Appendix 2 Sample reference grammars 372

Notes 376

References 382

Index of languages, language families, and language areas 396

Subject index 402