Description

Book Synopsis
Wagiman is an Australian Aboriginal language spoken by about ten people in the top end of the Northern Territory. It possesses an unusual open class of words which Wilson calls 'coverbs'. Coverbs are responsible for conveying a wide range of mostly verbal and adjectival meanings. They are most frequently paired with an inflecting verb from a closed class to form a complex predicate: the coverb and inflecting verb jointly determine the verbal semantics and argument structure of the clause. This book provides a descriptive and analytical account of the behaviour of coverbs in Wagiman, especially their role in complex predicate formation. The author seeks to discover what governs which pairings of coverbs and inflecting verbs are possible, and how the meaning of the whole can be derived from the meanings of the parts. Wilson pursues a formal account of Wagiman complex predicates within Lexical Functional Grammar, seeing complex predicate formation as the fusion of Lexical Conceptual Structures.

Coverbs and Complex Predicates in Wagiman

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    A Hardback by Stephen Wilson

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      Publisher: Centre for the Study of Language & Information
      Publication Date: 01/06/1999
      ISBN13: 9781575861739, 978-1575861739
      ISBN10: 1575861739
      Also in:
      Grammar, syntax and morphology

      Description

      Book Synopsis
      Wagiman is an Australian Aboriginal language spoken by about ten people in the top end of the Northern Territory. It possesses an unusual open class of words which Wilson calls 'coverbs'. Coverbs are responsible for conveying a wide range of mostly verbal and adjectival meanings. They are most frequently paired with an inflecting verb from a closed class to form a complex predicate: the coverb and inflecting verb jointly determine the verbal semantics and argument structure of the clause. This book provides a descriptive and analytical account of the behaviour of coverbs in Wagiman, especially their role in complex predicate formation. The author seeks to discover what governs which pairings of coverbs and inflecting verbs are possible, and how the meaning of the whole can be derived from the meanings of the parts. Wilson pursues a formal account of Wagiman complex predicates within Lexical Functional Grammar, seeing complex predicate formation as the fusion of Lexical Conceptual Structures.

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