Aug 2026· Journal of Indigenous Knowledge and Practice· 0 citations
Abstract
This study examines the four major word classes (viz. noun, verb, adjective and adverb) in Lohorung, a Kirat Rai (Tibeto-Burman) language of north-eastern Nepal, based on their semantic, syntactic, and morphological properties, based on Givón’s formal and functional approach. Data were collected through elicitation with native speakers and textual analyses and were analysed with reference to the author’s native-speaker intuition. The findings indicate that Lohorung exhibits prototypical nouns with their multiple features and non-prototypical nouns as well. Morphologically, nouns are marked by the specific affixes, <-ʈsi> encodes dual and <-i> encodes plural. Lohorung employs three types of classifiers, namely <-tsi> <-kɔ>, and <-pɑŋ/pɑ>. Verbs are clause-final and serve as main predicates, typical of Tibeto-Burman languages. Lohorung has three numbers and persons systems with clusivity. Manner adverbials may take , and some adverbs modify adjectives. This study concludes that the analysis of the four major word classes enhances the grammatical description of the Lohorung language and contributes to functional-typological research on lexical classification.
Regional languages preserve complex grammatical systems that reveal how communities organize experience, identity, and cultural knowledge. However, nominalization in Tombatu, an underdescribed Austronesian language of Minahasa, has not been systematically examined through an explicit rule-based morphological framework. This study addresses this gap by investigating the structural patterns, semantic functions, and generative mechanisms of affixal noun formation in Tombatu. Employing a descriptive-taxonomic design, data were collected over six months in Tombatu Village from proficient speakers through naturally occurring speech, elicitation, recording, note-taking, and informant validation. The final dataset found unique nominalized forms. These forms were classified into three major processes comprising 11 noun-forming prefixes, one noun-forming suffix, and 14 affix combinations, yielding 26 identified affixal configurations. The analysis applied Word Combination Rules, Derivation Rules, the Boundary Insertion Convention, and relevant morphological constraints. The findings show that prefixation exhibits the greatest structural and semantic variation in the dataset, producing agentive, person-denoting, instrumental, object-related, and result-related nouns. For example, /tapə-/ combines with /lukuʔ/ ‘to drink’ to form /tapəlukuʔ/ [tapəlukuʔ] ‘drinker’. Suffixation is more restricted, with /-an/ forming locative nouns, as in /tawoi/ ‘to work’ plus /-an/, which produces /tawoian/ [tawoian] ‘workplace’. Complex affix combinations form nouns denoting places, processes, objects, states, results, and entities. This study provides the first systematic generative account of Tombatu nominalization, expands empirical evidence for Austronesian word formation, strengthens regional-language documentation, and offers a linguistic basis for language maintenance and potential contrastive morphological activities in multilingual education.
Verra E. Manangkot, J. Liuw, L. Amalputra et al.· REiLA: Journal of Research a...· 0 citations
This study was motivated by the frequent use of sentences with the verb ada that require structural analysis, with the focus of the study directed toward the syntactic function of these sentences The data, consisting of 194 sentences composed by students in an academic context, were selected purposively and analyzed using a descriptive method based on Verhaar’s theory. The results reveal four constructions: N+Va, Va+N, N+Va+Num, and N+Va+N, with the Va+N construction being the most prevalent; verbs ada are always function as predicates and follow an inverted word order (P–S). These sentences are classified as simple and complex sentences with a variety of structural patterns. Furthermore, a shift in the category of the verb ada to an adverb was observed when it co-occurs with numerals, indicating its adaptability as an active element within numeral phrases, rather than merely a passive component, particularly in graded complex clause. This study demonstrates that the syntactic behavior of verbs ada constitutes a movement of verbs in occupying linguistic units at the syntactic level, namely the movement of verbs within grammatical units such as phrases, clauses, and sentences. The implications of these findings include up-to-date guidelines for teaching scientific sentence structure, analyzing academic discourse, and serving as a lexicographical reference to enrich grammatical information on word classes in monolingual Indonesian dictionaries.
Penelitian ini dilatarbelakangi oleh banyaknya penggunaan kalimat beverba ada yang memerlukan analisis struktural, dengan fokus kajian diarahkan pada fungsi sintaksis kalimat tersebut. Data berupa 194 kalimat yang disusun mahasiswa dalam konteks akademik dipilih secara purposif dan dianalisis menggunakan metode deskriptif dengan teori Verhaar. Hasil menunjukkan empat konstruksi: N+Va, Va+N, N+Va+Num, dan N+Va+N, yang didominasi konstruksi Va+N; verba ada selalu berfungsi sebagai predikat dan berpola inversi (P–S). Kalimat-kalimat tersebut terklasifikasi dalam kalimat tunggal dan majemuk bertingkat dengan variasi pola yang beragam. Selain itu, ditemukan pergeseran kategori verba ada menjadi adverbia ketika berdampingan dengan numeralia menunjukkan adaptabilitasnya sebagai unsur aktif dalam frasa numeral, bukan sekadar komponen pasif, terutama dalam klausa kompleks bertingkat. Penelitian ini menujukkan perilaku sintaktis verba ada merupakan gerak verba dalam menempati satuan bahasa pada tataran sintaksis, yakni pergerakan verba pada satuan gramatika frasa, klausa, maupun kalimat. Implikasi temuan ini meliputi panduan mutakhir dalam pengajaran struktur kalimat ilmiah, analisis wacana akademik, serta rujukan leksikografi untuk memperkaya informasi gramatikal kelas kata dalam kamus ekabahasa bahasa Indonesia.
Encep Kusumah, Nunung Sitaresmi, Rudi Adi Nugroho M.Pd. et al.· Tabasa Jurnal Bahasa Sastra...· 1 citation
English compound verbs are said to result predominantly from a morphological operation of conversion or desuffixation or, more rarely and ‘directly’, from an operation of compounding. In order to confirm the existence of ‘direct’ compound verbs in contemporary English and assess their relative weight among all compound verbs, a sample set of 250 units was obtained by automatically extracting recent verbal units containing a hyphen from the Oxford English Dictionary. Their dates of first attestation were then compared with those of similar nominal units, and those verbal units that were not clearly preceded by nominal occurrences were considered likely ‘direct’ compounds. They appear to constitute a sizable minority of the sample (almost one-fifth of all units). In a second step, in order to gain insight into the variety and quantitative distribution of the semantic relations attested in the sample, the internal semantic relation of each unit was established, applying, where possible, Pepper’s (2023) list of relations originally developed for binominal units. This showed that the verbal nature of the compounds leads to the presence of two additional, specific relations, MANNER and ATTRIBUTION, and that the morphological origin of the compound verb has an influence on the dominant categories of internal relations.
Pierre J. L. Arnaud, Vincent Renner· Arbeiten aus Anglistik und A...· 0 citations
Prefixation is a morphological process which studies how morphemes are affixed in the beginning of their host words for either grammatical functions or for lexical expansion and derivation. This paper investigates aspects of the grammar of prefixation in English and Igbo Languages. It adopts a comparative theoretical framework, so as to identify the morphological similarities and difference in both languages. It also adopts the qualitative design, which gives the description of the data the way they are. The paper adopts both a primary and secondary methods of data collections. The primary data were basically from the native speaker’s competence, the researcher who is a speaker of the Igbo language supplied the necessary data. The secondary data were sourced from textual materials. The analysis shows grammatical and functional similarities and dissimilarities in both languages, as well derivative similarities and dissimilarities in both languages. Prefixes are used in both languages to derive new words, change word classes, but Igbo in additions realise grammatical functions with prefixes. The study of prefixation in both languages greatly reveals common universal principles of human language and at the same time, parametric variations in the languages, showing their uniqueness. The study concludes that prefixation in both languages are morphologically productive, being inflectional in the Igbo language; derivational flexible in both languages, and can as well perform different linguistic functions in both languages. The study notes the selective nature of the paper on instances of prefixation in both languages because of space, and thus, recommends an expanded investigation of the topic; and comparative investigation of other related morphological concepts, such as infixation, interfixation and suffixation in English and Igbo.
Okolo N Patrick, Florence Nne Agwu· World Journal of Advanced Re...· 0 citations
This article focuses on the description of nouns in the Zazaki variety of Gimgim (Varto) and limits the analysis to nominal categories and noun phrases. The aim of this study is to analyse, in a descriptive manner, the morphological features and the nominal system of this variety of Zazaki within the framework of the Gimgim variety. Descriptive linguistics is adopted as the methodological framework of the study. The material discussed in this article is based on two principal sources. The primary source is the author’s own linguistic competence and research, while the secondary source consists of folklore texts collected and published from the Gimgim region. The article describes (i) the gender patterns of nouns, (ii) the formation of singular and plural forms in the nominative and oblique cases, (iii) the nominative-oblique opposition, and (iv) ezafe linkers in nominal phrases. The discussion is deliberately limited to nouns and noun formation and does not address verbal agreement, pronouns, or clause structure except where these are necessary to explain the morphology of noun phrases. The article also examines certain phonetic changes and sound losses that have developed in nouns over time. Where appropriate, these phonetic changes and their differences from other dialects are also discussed.
Ibrahim Bingöl· Anemon Muş Alparslan Ünivers...· 0 citations
Interest in the semantics of word formation has grown significantly in recent years, addressing research questions that require detailed semantic information and extensive data analysis. In this paper, we present the SONDE database, which was developed to investigate the semantics of nouns derived from verbs in French. The database relies on the manual analysis of 5272 deverbal nouns, annotated for their semantic type (taking into account the lexical ambiguity of both bases and derivatives), the lexical aspect of verbs and nouns, and the semantic roles assigned to their arguments. We first describe the construction of the database, including sample selection, the annotation scheme, and an evaluation of annotation reliability. We then analyze the collected data, focusing on (i) the similarity and polyfunctionality of deverbal processes, (ii) the preservation of argument structure and lexical aspect through nominalization, and (iii) the semantic organization of morphological families formed by verbs and their derived nouns. Results show that a network of semantic functions underlies the diversity of deverbal processes, partly shaped by semantically motivated relationships. It appears that the mechanisms of semantic extension that drive polyfunctionality also contribute to the emergence of similarities between processes. Another finding is that the aspectual and argumental properties of base verbs are not necessarily preserved in nominalizations, and that this non-preservation is conditioned by derivational patterns. Finally, the analysis of morphological families reveals distinct structural configurations depending on the semantic alignment of nouns across families. These configurations exhibit varying degrees of defectiveness and are largely determined by the semantic properties of the base verbs.
Richard Huyghe, Justine Salvadori, Rossella Varvara et al.· Morphology· 1 citation