This article reports on verbal classifier affixes in Innu (also known as Montagnais), an Algonquian language spoken in northeastern Quebec and Labrador, Canada. Verbal classifiers are normally characterized as a form of semantic agreement whereby an affix on the verb (the classifier) categorizes the shape or substance of the referent of an argument. The analysis of a corpus of natural speech data reveals that in a significant number of cases the classifier actually introduces a new semantic argument and is the sole reference to it in the clause or discourse. Such stand-alone classifiers refer to parts of a whole, identify the theme of an impersonal verb, or express a peripheral argument.
Languages expressing motion events through serial verb constructions are categorized in various ways according to the typology of motion events. This paper challenges the typological classification of serializing languages by proposing that a serializing language like Fon is better analyzed as a satellite-framed language, lexicalizing the core-schema of motion — Path — in a verb satellite, than as verb-framed or equipollently-framed. Semantic and syntactic arguments are presented and lead to a new definition of verbal satellite in functional terms. It is further demonstrated that there is no need for a special treatment of serializing languages like Fon when conceiving the typology of motion events as a bipolar typological continuum, with at one end the verb-framing pattern and at the other end, the satellite-framing pattern.
Innu, like other Algonquian languages, has complex verbal morphology, and morphemes are often not easily segmentable. Much of the terminology used in Algonquian linguistics was influenced by early Algonquianists, especially Leonard Bloomfield, and morphemes are described in structural terms: Innu verb stems consist of at least two morphemes, an INITIAL and a FINAL. They may also contain a MEDIAL. Following the Bloomfieldian tradition, a distinction was later proposed between PRIMARY derivation for the derivation of a verb stem, and SECONDARY derivation for morphemes that attach to a verb stem to form a new verb. In this article, I shall explain what the verbal complex in Innu is, describe its component morphemes, and discuss the impact of the Bloomfieldian heritage on the comparative use of data from Algonquian languages and more specifically of Innu.
L'objectif de cet article est d'illustrer la relation intrinsèque existant chez les Kwoma entre le rituel de l'igname et la connaissance linguistique associée aux chants invoqués lors de sa pratique. Le rituel autour de l'igname est constitué de trois cérémonies distinctes, Yena, Mija et Nowkwi, et inclut des chants et des danses en l'honneur de ces esprits. Les chants rituels sont une source de savoir pour l'histoire mais aussi sur les valeurs et les normes socioculturelles à l'oeuvre dans la communauté. Après une présentation de la structure sociale de la société kwoma, un examen du rituel de l'igname puis une analyse de deux chants rituels, sawo howkwa et magwiy howkwa, on montrera que la sauvegarde du patrimoine culturel kwoma ne peut se faire sans la sauvegarde du patrimoine culturel immatériel.
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