Functional Grammar

13th ICFG 2008

Abstracts

13th International Conference on Functional Grammar

Reconsidering cheremis (Mari) word order through FG. A first assessment

Paolo Driussi,
Università degli Studi di Udine, Udine, Italy

While the history and reconstruction of single uralic languages and protolanguages as well as the description of actual languages have reached high levels, especially by means of phonology, morphology and lexicology, some syntactical questions have been studied only partially.

Quite a simple issue as word order in Cheremis is normally rendered as "Cheremis predicate stands in final position", on the other hand an eminent scholar wrote that "Cheremis word order is almost free" (Bereczki, 1989: 74), although "[t]he subject normally stands at the beginning of the clause, the predicate at the end of it" (>ibidem). All exemples are given in his work without a reason for constituents' order. WALS (Haspelmath et al., 2005) cites correctly enough mari as an OV language. Again, books in its bibliography lack a precise description of the phenomenon, though.

With a research based on a "limited" but quite non-homogenous corpus, I tried to work out a picture as complete as possible for describing word order in cheremis simple clauses.

While confirming that the Cheremis verb is almost always placed in final position, the picture gives reasons for regularity of different combinations of adverbials and explains also the possibilities for a different position of the verb itself. Moreover the study – although it only deals with the constituents' order in simple clause – offers the opportunity to show similarities with other Finno-Ugric languages, at the same time producing tools for deeper comparison with neighbouring Turkic languages.

Within the frame of FG the picture resulted in the following structure:

(1) P1 X Pø V P2

The most interesting feature of it is P2, where any attitude of the speaker can be inserted, together with cataphorical and illocutionary terms. P1 is the Topic and Pø the Focus. X is the place for all Arguments (normally given in the order <S Arg3 O>).In general a precise description of this feature can offer more reliable material about this language for typologists and general linguists as well, both on the side of historical linguistics and of language contact (cfr. Johanson, 2000).<

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References:

Bereczki, Gábor. 1989. Chrestomathia ceremissica. Budapest: Tankönyvkiadó.
Dik, Simon C. 1997a. The theory of functional grammar, part 1: the structure of the clause. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter (Functional grammar series, 20).
Dik, Simon C. 1997b The theory of functional grammar, part 2: complex and derived constructions. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter (Functional grammar series, 21).
Haspelmath, Martin & Dryer, Matteo & Gil, David & Comrie, Bernard (a cura di) 2005. The World Atlas of Language Structures. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Johanson, Lars 2000. "Linguistic convergence in the Volga area". In Gilbers et al. Languages in contact. Amsterdam – Atlanta: Rodopi (Studies in slavic and general linguistics): p. 165-178.