Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin - Kultur-, Sozial- und Bildungswissenschaftliche Fakultät - Institut für Asien- und Afrikawissenschaften

16.11. Afrikalinguistisches Kolloquium: Verb serialisation in Juǀ'hoan and ǃXun (Kx'a) (Pratchett)

“When verbs come (and) clash together: some origins of verb serialisation in Juǀ’hoan and ǃXun (Kx’a)” - Vortrag von Lee Pratchett (CIBIO Porto) im Rahmen des (digitalen) Afrikalinguistischen Kolloquiums
  • Wann 16.11.2021 von 16:15 bis 17:45
  • Wo Institut für Asien- und Afrikawissenschaften, Invalidenstr. 118, Raum 410 & Zoom-Übertragung
  • Name des Kontakts Christfried Naumann (christfried.naumann (AT) hu-berlin.de, bitte kontaktieren bzgl. Zugangsinformationen per Zoom)
  • iCal

Verb serialising constructions are an areal feature of the Kalahari Basin Area (e.g., Güldemann & Fehn 2017), a Sprachbund comprising the Kx’a, Tuu, and Khoe-Kwadi language families. This presentation revisits the analysis of serial verbs in Juǀ’hoan and ǃXun (Ju, Kx’a) and focuses on formal variation observed in the analyses of asymmetric serial verbs (e.g., Heine & König 2015, Pratchett 2017). Applying a bottom-up approach and sourcing data as far as possible from natural texts, such variation can be shown to have its origins in a non-serialising multiverb construction involving a linker. The presentation concludes by illustrating the potential relevance of the Ju construction to the analysis of multiverb constructions in other Kalahari Basin Area languages.

References

Güldemann, Tom and Anne-Maria Fehn. 2017. The Kalahari Basin area as a “Sprachbund” before the Bantu expansion. In Hickey, Raymond (ed.), The Cambridge handbook of areal linguistics, 500-526. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Heine, Bernd & Christa König. 2015. The !Xun language: a dialect grammar of Northern Khoisan. Cologne: Köppe.

Pratchett, Lee J. 2017. Dialectal diversity in Southeastern Ju (Kx'a) and a documentation of Groot Laagte ǂKx’aoǁ’ae. Doctoral dissertation. Berlin: Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.