Cultural formalism and spatial language in Belhara

When looking at ethnographies of Himalayan societies, one is impressed by the recurrent relevance and importance of spatial notions in cullural domains from shamanism to architecture, from belief systems to everyday behaviour, from religion to grammar

From ergativus absolutus to topic marking in Kiranti : a typological perspective

In many languages, clauses can be subordinated by means of case markers. For Bodic languages, a branch of Sino-Tibetan, Genetti (1986) has shown that the meaning of case markers on clauses is in most instances a natural extension of their function on nouns. A dative, for example, which marks a referential goal with a noun, signals a situational goal, i.e., a purpose, when used on a clause. Among the case markers recruited for subordination, we not only get relatively concrete cases like datives, comitatives and various types of locatives, but also core argument relators such as ergatives and accusatives. In this paper, I focus on ergative markers in one subgroup of Bodic, viz. in Kiranti languages spoken in Eastern Nepal, especially in Belhare

Fundamental Agler Decompositions

We use shift-invariant subspaces of the Hardy space on the bidisk to provide an elementary proof of the Agler Decomposition Theorem. We observe that these shift-invariant subspaces are specific cases of Hilbert spaces that can be defined from Agler decompositions and analyze the properties of such Hilbert spaces. We then restrict attention to rational inner functions and show that the shift-invariant subspaces provide easy proofs of several known results about decompositions of rational inner functions. We use our analysis to obtain a result about stable polynomials on the polydisk

What is typology? - a short note

It is often assumed that the goal of typology is to define the notion ‘possible human language’. This view, which I call the Universalist Typology view is shared, for example, by virtually all contributors to Bynon & Shibatani’s 1995 volume Approaches to Language Typology, and by Moravscik in her review of this volume in Linguistic Typology 1 (p.105). In the following I claim that this assumption is fundamentally mistaken. To clarify the theoretical status of what is meant by ‘possible human language’, I argue here for a distinction between typological theory (theoretical typology) and grammatical theory (theoretical syntax and theoretical morphology) as distinct subdisciplines of linguistics

Hindered mobility of a particle near a soft interface

The translational motion of a solid sphere near a deformable fluid interface is studied in the low Reynolds number regime. In this problem, the fluid flow driven by the sphere is dynamically coupled the instantaneous conformation of the interface. Using a two-dimensional Fourier transform technique, we are able to account for the multiple backflows scattered from the interface. The mobility tensor is then obtained from the matrix elements of the relevant Green function. This analysis allows us to express the explicit position and frequency dependence of the mobility. We recover in the steady limit the result for a sphere near a perfectly flat interface. At intermediate time scales, the mobility exhibits an imaginary part, which is a signature of the elastic response of the interface. In the short time limit, we find the intriguing feature that the perpendicular mobility may, under some circumstances, become lower than the bulk value. All those results can be explained from the definition of the relaxation time of the soft interface.Comment: 10 pages, 2 figure

Nominalization and focus constructions in some Kiranti languages

It is well-known that in many if not most Sino-Tibetan languages relative clause and attribute/genitive markers are identical with nominalization devices and that sentences bearing such markers can also function as independent utterances (cf. Matisoff 1972, Kölver 1977, DeLancey 1989, Genetti 1992, Ebert 1994, Bickel 1995, Noonan 1997, etc.). This morphological convergence of syntactic functions, which we may dub the ‘Standard Sino-Tibetan Nominalization’ (SSTN) pattern, is particularly prominent in some languages spoken in the eastern and southeastern part of the Kirant because these languages not only feature prenominal relative clauses, but also allow, albeit as a minor type, internally headed constructions

Verb agreement and epistemic marking : a typological journey from the Himalayas to the Caucasus

Epistemische Morphologie registriert manchmal das Wissen über spezifische Argumente anstatt über Propositionen. Sie steht dann in minimalem Kontrast zu Kongruenzmorphologie, die die Identität von Argumenten registriert. Diese Ähnlichkeit lässt erwarten, dass die relevante Personenkategorie – der Referent, dessen Wissen in epistemischer Morphologie angezeigt wird bzw. der Referent dessen Merkmale in Kongruenzmorphologie unifiziert werden – der gleichen typologischen Varianz unterliegen. Eine Untersuchung vorwiegend himalajischer und kaukasischer Daten bestätigt diese Voraussage: in beiden Systemen sind Personenkategorien bald als Sprecher vs. Andere, bald als Adressat vs. Andere, bald als Informant vs. Andere (Sprecher in Aussagen, Adressat in Fragen) definiert. Die einzige Option, die in epistemischen Systemen bisher nicht belegt ist, ist die Dreifachopposition von Sprecher vs. Adressat vs. Andere, die in Kongruenzsystemen gängig ist.Studies of the epistemic categories expressed in Tibetan auxiliaries and copulas have mostly compared the phenomena with mirativity marking, and this is no doubt the correct comparandum in diachronic research. However, synchronic descriptions are also often tempted to compare the relevant categories with agreement systems or similar reference-related structures, at least for expository purposes when explaining how the system works (e. g. Denwood 1999, Tournadre 1996, Goldstein et al. 1991)

On the scope of the referential hierarchy in the typology of grammatical relations

In the late seventies, Bernard Comrie was one of the first linguists to explore the effects of the referential hierarchy (RH) on the distribution of grammatical relations (GRs). The referential hierarchy is also known in the literature as the animacy, empathy or indexibability hierarchy and ranks speech act participants (i.e. first and second person) above third persons, animates above inanimates, or more topical referents above less topical referents. Depending on the language, the hierarchy is sometimes extended by analogy to rankings of possessors above possessees, singulars above plurals, or other notions. In his 1981 textbook, Comrie analyzed RH effects as explaining (a) differential case (or adposition) marking of transitive subject ("A") noun phrases in low RH positions (e.g. inanimate or third person) and of object ("P") noun phrases in high RH positions (e.g. animate or first or second person), and (b) hierarchical verb agreement coupled with a direct vs. inverse distinction, as in Algonquian (Comrie 1981: Chapter 6)