Skip to main content

Ellen CONTINI-MORAVA: Noun class "concord" as communication: Ellen CONTINI-MORAVA: Noun class "concord" as communication.

Ellen CONTINI-MORAVA: Noun class "concord" as communication
Ellen CONTINI-MORAVA: Noun class "concord" as communication.
    • Notifications
    • Privacy
  • Issue HomeEmerging Works in Diverian Linguistics
  • Journals
  • Learn more about Manifold

Notes

Show the following:

  • Annotations
  • Resources
Search within:

Adjust appearance:

  • font
    Font style
  • color scheme
  • Margins
table of contents
  1. Ellen CONTINI-MORAVA: Noun class "concord" as communication.
  2. Noun Class “Concord” as Communication
  3. Ellen Contini-Morava
  4. Professor Emerita, University of Virginia
  5. elc9j@virginia.edu

Noun Class “Concord” as Communication

Ellen Contini-Morava

Professor Emerita, University of Virginia

elc9j@virginia.edu

This presentation provides a critique of the assumptions that underlie the traditional concept of “agreement/concord”, seen as a situation in which the grammatical form of one element in a sentence (the "target”, in the terminology of Corbett 1991; 2006) is regarded as dependent on morphosyntactic or semantic features of another element (the "controller" or “trigger”).  The term “concordial agreement” is often used to refer to the marking of (grammatical) “gender” or “noun class”, i.e. to the relationship between a noun and classificatory markers elsewhere in the sentence.  Focusing on the marking of noun classification in Swahili with some reference to Italian gender (Davis 2022; updated this volume), I provide several examples that are problematic for the traditional approach to agreement, e.g. cases where a “controller” is associated with different classification markers, a “controller” that is not present in the sentence, and a “controller” that is an expression not classifiable as a noun.  I present an alternative perspective that treats Swahili classification markers as signals with meanings.  This approach can handle both examples that conform to traditional notions of “concord” and ones that do not.


Alternatively, to view this video presentation, you may follow this link:

https://youtu.be/IwVWyI4ef-k

It is suggested that after opening the link, you click on “Full Screen” and adjust your volume.

Annotate

Contents of Volume I
Powered by Manifold Scholarship. Learn more at
Opens in new tab or windowmanifoldapp.org