Dynamic Diachronic Modell of the Parts-of-Speech System of Nganasan (Typological, Areal and Genetic Background of Nganasan Adjectives)

• Main Author: Sandor Szeverenyi
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Beck; Pacific; Enets; khatanga; nenets; Nganasan*; samoyed*; Selkup
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.499.3210; http://home.hum.uva.nl/pos/abstracts/Abstract_Szeverenyi.pdf

Samoyedic is classified as one of the two main branches of the Uralic language family. Four Samoyedic languages are spoken today: Nenets, Enets, Nganasan, and Selkup. The number of Nganasan native speakers is 500. They live on the Taimir Peninsula from the lower Yenisei in the west to the Khatanga Bay in the east. In my poster I consider a multiple approach to a particular model designed for parts-of-speech system from a diachronic point of view. Cross-linguistically many theories have been brought forward regarding one of the main problems of classification: the status of the adjectival category and the lexical categorization of property concept words (e.g. Bhat 1994, Beck 2002, Dixon 1982, Wetzer 1996). Lexical categorization of property concept words plays an important role in the build-up of the parts-of-speech system because the adjectival category as a swing-category between NOUN and VERB does not show universal features. There are several languages, e.g. English in which adjectives are distinct from both nouns as well as verbs. These languages differ from one another concerning the constitution of the adjectival class. For example English has a large, open class of adjectives, and others have only smaller, closed classes. In a large number of languages found over of North America, East and Southeast Asia, and the Pacific, adjectives are indistinguishable from verbs. Most languages in Europe, North Africa, North Asia and Australia tend to treat adjectives in a similar way to nouns, the same as in case of Nganasan: