Clause Chaining in the Languages of the World

by Hannah S. Sarvasy (Editor), Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald (Editor)

Overview

The languages of the world make use of a variety of techniques for describing events and putting sentences together. This volume takes a typological approach to clause chaining, a fascinating feature of the grammar of hundreds of languages outside Europe, especially in the Asia-Pacific region, East Africa, across Central Asia, and the Americas. Clause chains consist of several dependent clauses and one main clause, and are used to organize discourse and to foreground or background events and participants; they often go together with switch-reference marking, an indication of whether upcoming subjects will be co-referential with preceding subjects or not.

The introductory chapter features a discussion of the typological properties of clause chaining, with a brief overview of previous approaches to and investigations of clause chains followed by an overview of their recurrent grammatical features; it ends with an appendix featuring notes for fieldworkers. The first part of the book explores general issues in clause chaining, including prosody, acquisition, and language contact and history; later parts then examine clause chaining and related phenomena in a wide range of languages from around the world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780198870319
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	02/28/2025
Pages:	880
Product dimensions:	7.09(w) x 10.00(h) x 1.97(d)

About the Author

Hannah S. Sarvasy, Senior Researcher, MARCS Institute for Brain, Behaviour and Development, Western Sydney University,Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald, Professor, Jawun Centre, Central Queensland University

Hannah S. Sarvasy is Senior Researcher at the MARCS Institute for Brain, Behaviour and Development at Western Sydney University. Her research combines fieldwork on Papuan, Atlantic and other languages, child language acquisition research, and psycholinguistic experimentation. She is the author of A Grammar of Nungon: A Papuan Language of Northeast New Guinea (Brill, 2017), among other volumes, and led a Nungon-speaking team to build the Nungon Child Speech Corpus, one of the largest digitized corpora of child-caregiver interactions in a Papuan language. She has published multiple studies on the grammar, history, acquisition, and processing of clause chains and switch-reference marking.

Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald is Professor, Australian Laureate Fellow, and Head of Research Cluster 'Language and well-being' at the Jawun Centre, Central Queensland University. She is a major authority on languages of the Arawak family, from northern Amazonia, and has written grammars of Bare (1995) and Warekena (1998), plus A Grammar of Tariana, from Northwest Amazonia (CUP, 2003) and The Manambu Language of East Sepik, Papua New Guinea (OUP, 2008; paperback 2010), in addition to essays on various typological and areal features of South American and Papuan languages and typological issues including evidentials, classifiers, serial verbs, and language and well-being.

Table of Contents

1. Clause chaining in the languages of the world in typological perspective, Hannah S. Sarvasy and Alexandra Y. AikhenvaldPart I. General issues in clause chaining2. Prosody in clause chaining constructions, Matthew K. Gordon3. The acquisition of clause chaining, Hannah S. Sarvasy and Soonja Choi4. Clause chaining and switch-reference in language contact and language history, Alexandra Y. AikhenvaldPart II. Clause chaining in languages of New Guinea5. Clause chaining in Greater Awyu languages of West Papua, Lourens de Vries6. Clause chaining and switch-reference in Ndu languages, Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald7. Clause chaining in Finisterre Papuan languages, Hannah S. Sarvasy8. Clause chaining and other means of clause linking in Doromu-Koki, Robert L. Bradshaw9. Clause chaining in Eibela, Grant Aiton10. Clause chaining in Matukar Panau (Oceanic, Papua New Guinea), Danielle Barth and Malcolm RossPart III. Clause chaining in North American Indian languages11. Clause chaining in Muskogean languages, George Aaron Broadwell12. Clause chaining in Uto-Aztecan: A Northern Paiute perspective, Maziar Toosarvandani13. Delineating typological categories: Central Alaskan Yup'ik, Marianne MithunPart IV. Clause chaining in South American Indian languages14. Clause chaining in Aguaruna (Chicham), Simon E. Overall15. Clause chaining in East Tukanoan Kotiria and Wa'ikhana: Structural and pragmatic features, Kristine Stenzel16. Object-oriented switch-reference in Pano, Roberto Zariquiey and Pilar M. Valenzuela17. Switch-reference and clause chaining in Northern Jê, Rafael NonatoPart V. Clause chaining in languages of Eurasia18. Clause chaining in Kurtöp, Gwendolyn Hyslop19. Clause chaining in Dzongkha, Stephen Watters20. Clause chains and related structures in Macro-Tani languages, Mark W. Post and Yankee Modi21. Clause chaining in Adyghe (West Caucasian), Diana Forker22. Clause chaining in Tsova-Tush and East Caucasian, Felix Anker23. Clause chaining in Turkic, Lars Johanson, Eva A. Csató, and Birsel Karakoç24. The development of clause chaining in Turkish, Ayhan Aksu-Koç and Hale Ögel-Balaban25. Clause chaining in Buryat (North Mongolic), Elena Skribnik26. Clause chains and intonation units in Japanese narratives, Patricia M. ClancyPart VI. Clause chaining in languages of Eastern and Southern Africa27. The Amharic converb in clause chaining, Mengistu Amberber28. Converb constructions and clause chaining in Cushitic, Yvonne Treis and Martine Vanhove29. Clause chaining in Bantu languages, Kristina Riedel and Hannah Gibson