The information structure of Meadow Mari

Cover Page

Cite item

Full Text

Open Access Open Access
Restricted Access Access granted
Restricted Access Subscription Access

Abstract

This paper provides a first descriptive overview of morphosyntactic strategies of marking information structure in contemporary Meadow Mari, based on both elicited and corpus data. I describe syntactic strategies of marking focus, topics, and contrastive topics in the language. Focus is variably realized in situ, in immediately preverbal or postverbal position, or via pseudocleft. The strategies differ in terms of their “markedness”, in the sense that more marked strategies encode subsets of the types of foci which the less marked strategies encode. Nevertheless, no type of focus requires a certain strategy. Topics are placed in the left periphery of the clause. In addition to these syntactic strategies of information structure marking, the suffix -ŽE is described as a morpheme denoting the selection of an individual from a superset and contrasting it with other individuals — essentially as a marker of contrastive topics. With its broad scope, the paper lays the groundwork for comparative research on information structure in Meadow Mari and other Uralic languages and for more detailed studies on information structure in Meadow Mari itself.

Full Text

Restricted Access

About the authors

Johannes Hirvonen

Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich

Author for correspondence.
Email: johannes.hirvonen@campus.lmu.de
Germany, Munich

References

  1. Alhoniemi 1993 — Alhoniemi A. Grammatik des Tscheremissischen (Mari). Hamburg: Buske, 1993.
  2. Arkhangelskiy 2019 — Arkhangelskiy T. Corpora of social media in minority Uralic languages. Proc. of the 5th Workshop on Computational Linguistics for Uralic Languages, Tartu, Estonia, January 7–8, 2019. Pirinen T. A., Kaalep H.-J., Tyers F. M. (eds.). Association for Computational Linguistics, 2019, 125–140.
  3. Bradley, Hirvonen 2022 — Bradley J., Hirvonen J. Null subjects in Mari. Null subjects in Slavic and Finno-Ugric: Licensing, structure and typology. Dalmi G., Tsedryk E., Cegłowski P. (eds.). Boston; Berlin: De Gruyter, 2002, 281–306.
  4. Büring 2003 — Büring D. On D-trees, beans, and B-accents. Linguistics and Philosophy, 2003, 26(5): 511–545.
  5. Büring 2009 — Büring D. Towards a typology of focus realization. Information structure. Zimmermann M., Féry C. (eds.). Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2009, 177–205.
  6. Büring 2016 — Büring D. (Contrastive) topic. Oxford handbook of information structure. Féry C., Ishihara Sh. (eds.). Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2016, 64–85.
  7. Burukina et al. 2024 — Burukina I., Borise L., den Dikken M. A ‘big DP’ analysis of Russian copular constructions with èto. Glossa, 2024, 9(1): 1–37.
  8. Chkhaidze 1941 — Chkhaidze M. P. Sintaksis lugovo-vostochnogo mariiskogo yazyka [Syntax of Meadow Mari]. Moscow: Uchpedgiz, 1941.
  9. Dezső 1978 — Dezső L. Towards a typology of theme and rheme: SOV languages. Wortstellung und Bedeutung. Vol. 1. Conte M.-E., Giacalone Ramat A., Ramat P. (eds.). Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1978, 3–11.
  10. É. Kiss 1998 — É. Kiss K. Identificational focus versus information focus. Language, 1998, 74: 245–273.
  11. Erteshik-Shir 2007 — Erteshik-Shir N. Information structure: The syntax-discourse interface. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2007.
  12. Frascarelli 2018 — Frascarelli M. The interpretation of pro in consistent and partial null-subject languages: A comparative interface analysis. Null subjects in Generative Grammar. Cognola F., Casalicchio J. (eds.). Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2018, 211–239.
  13. Frascarelli, Hinterhölzl 2007 — Frascarelli M., Hinterhölzl R. Types of topics in German and Italian. On information structure, meaning and form: Generalizations across languages. Schwabe K., Winkler S. (eds.). Amsterdam; Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2007, 87–116.
  14. Georgieva 2022 — Georgieva E. Fake possessives, partitives and definites sharing the same D. Talk at the 45th GLOW Colloquim, Queen Mary Univ. of London, April 28, 2022.
  15. Georgieva 2024 — Georgieva E. On sluicing in Meadow Mari and Udmurt. Talk at Jezik & Linguistics Colloquium, Univ. of Nova Gorica, May 30, 2024.
  16. Georgieva et al. 2021 — Georgieva E., Salzmann M., Weisser Ph. Negative verb clusters in Mari and Udmurt and why they require postsyntactic top-down word-formation. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, 2021, 39: 457–503.
  17. Gerland 2014 — Gerland D. Definitely not possessed? Possessives with non-possessive function. Frames and concept types: Applications in language and philosophy. Gamerschlag Th., Gerland D., Osswald R., Petersen W. (eds.). Dordrecht: Springer, 2014, 269–292.
  18. Givón 1983 — Givón T. Topic continuity in discourse: An introduction. Topic continuity in discourse: A quantitative cross-language study. Givón T. (ed.). Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1983, 1–41.
  19. Herring 1990 — Herring S. C. Information structure as a consequence of word order type. Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, 1990, 16(1): 163–174.
  20. Hirvonen 2023 — Hirvonen J. Focus and topic in Meadow Mari. Master’s thesis. Vienna: Univ. of Vienna, 2023. https://utheses.univie.ac.at/detail/69244/.
  21. Holmberg 2010 — Holmberg A. Null subject parameters. Parametric variation: Null subjects in Minimalist theory. Biberauer Th., Holmberg A., Roberts I., Sheehan M. (eds.). Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2010, 88–124.
  22. Khomchenkova 2022 — Khomchenkova I. A. Diskursivnye funktsii posessivnogo pokazatelya tret’ego litsa edinstvennogo chisla v gornomariiskom yazyke [Discourse functions of the 3rd person singular possessive marker in Hill Mari]. Ural-Altaic Studies, 2022, 45(2): 148–168.
  23. Khomchenkova 2023 — Khomchenkova I. A. Diskursivnye funktsii posessivnogo pokazatelya 3-go litsa edinstvennogo chisla [Discourse functions of the 3rd person singular possessive marker]. Elementy gornomariiskogo yazyka v tipologicheskom osveshchenii. Kashkin E. V. (ed.). Moscow: Buki Vedi, 2023, 614–630.
  24. Kim 1988 — Kim A. H.-O. Preverbal focusing and type XXIII languages. Studies in syntactic typology. Hammond M., Moravcsik E. A., Wirth J. (eds.). Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1988, 149–171.
  25. Krifka 2008 — Krifka M. Basic notions of information structure. Acta Linguistica Hungarica, 2008, 55(3–4): 243–276.
  26. Nelson et al. (to appear) — Nelson D., Vedernikova E., Bradley J. The syntax of Meadow Mari: Some issues around TAM and phrase structure. Uralic syntax. Tamm A., Vainikka A. (eds.). Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press. To appear.
  27. Nikolaeva 2003 — Nikolaeva I. Possessive affixes in the pragmatic structuring of the utterance: Evidence from Uralic. International Symposium on Deictic Systems and Quantification in Languages Spoken in Europe and North and Central Asia: Coll. of papers. Suihkonen P., Comrie B. (eds.). Izhevsk; Leipzig: Udmurt State Univ.; Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthrology, 2003, 130–145.
  28. Panov 2020 — Panov V. The marking of uncontroversial information in Europe: Presenting the enimitive. Acta Linguistica Hafniensia, 2020, 52(1): 1–44.
  29. Pengitov 1961 — Pengitov N. T. Poryadok slov v prostom rasprostranennom predlozhenii [Word order in a simple expanded sentence in Mari]. Trudy MarNIIYaLI, 1961, 15: 113–124.
  30. Pregla 2024 — Pregla A. Word order variability in OV languages: A study on scrambling, verb movement, and postverbal elements with a focus on Uralic languages. PhD thesis. Potsdam: Univ. of Potsdam, 2024. https://doi.org/10.25932/publishup-64363
  31. Reinhart 1981 — Reinhart T. Pragmatics and linguistics: An analysis of sentence topics. Philosophica, 1981, 27(1): 53–94.
  32. Riese et al. 2022 — Riese T., Bradley J., Yefremova T. Mari (марий йылме): An essential grammar for international learners. Vienna: University of Vienna, 2022. grammar.mari-language.com.
  33. Saarinen 2022 — Saarinen S. Mari. The Oxford guide to the Uralic Languages. Bakró-Nagy M., Laakso J., Skribnik E. (eds.). Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2022, 432–470.
  34. Serdobolskaya, Toldova 2012 — Serdobolskaya N. V., Toldova S. Yu. Teksty na lugovom mariiskom yazyke (starotor’’yal’skii govor) [Texts in Meadow Mari (Starotoryal dialect)]. Finno-ugorskie yazyki: fragmenty grammaticheskogo opisaniya. Formal’nyi i funktsional’nyi podkhody. Kuznetsova A. I. (ed.). Moscow: Rukopisnye pamyatniki Drevnei Rusi, 2012, 709–745.
  35. Simonenko 2014 — Simonenko A. Microvariation in Finno-Ugric possessive markers. NELS 43: Proc. of the 43th annual meeting of the North East Linguistic Society. Vol. 2. Huang H.-L., Poole E., Rysling A. (eds.). Amherst: GLSA, 2014, 127–140.
  36. Simonenko 2017 — Simonenko A. Towards a semantic typology of specific determiners. Proc. of the 21st Amsterdam Colloquium. Cremers A., van Gessel Th., Roelofsen F. Amsterdam: Institute for Logic, Language and Computation, 2017, 425–434.
  37. Skopeteas, Fanselow 2010 — Skopeteas S., Fanselow G. Focus types and argument asymmetries. Comparative and contrastive studies of information structure. Breul C., Göbbel E. (eds.). Amsterdam; Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2010, 169–197.
  38. Surányi et al. (to appear) — Surányi B., Brattico P., Asztalos E., Sahkai H. Information structure in Finno-Ugric languages. Uralic syntax. Tamm A., Vainikka A. (eds.). Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press. To appear.
  39. Tuzharov 1987 — Tuzharov G. M. Grammaticheskie kategorii imeni sushchestvitel’nogo v mariiskom yazyke [Grammatical categories of the noun in Mari]. Yoshkar-Ola: Mari Book Publ., 1987.
  40. van der Wal 2016 — van der Wal J. Diagnosing focus. Studies in Language, 2016, 40(2): 259–301.
  41. van der Wal 2021 — van der Wal J. The BaSIS basics of information structure. Aug. 2021. Manuscript.
  42. Vilkuna 1998 — Vilkuna M. Constituent order in European Uralic. Constituent order in the Languages of Europe. Siewierska A. (ed.). Berlin: de Gruyter, 1998, 173–233.
  43. Vilkuna 2022 — Vilkuna M. Word order. The Oxford guide to the Uralic languages. Bakró-Nagy M., Laakso J., Skribnik E. (eds.). Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2022, 950–960.
  44. Volkova et al. 2024 — Volkova A., Zakirova A., Voronov M., Dolgodvorova M., Klyucheva Z., Kokoreva S., Makarchuk I., Khomchenkova I., Arkhangelskiy T., Sokur E. Spoken corpus of Meadow Mari (as spoken in the village of Staryj Torjal, Novyj Torjal district, Mari El Republic, Russia). Moscow: HSE Univ., 2024. Electronic resource: http://lingconlab.ru/spoken_meadow_mari/ (accessed on 01.07.2024).
  45. Yurayong 2020 — Yurayong Ch. Postposed demonstratives in Finnic and North Russian Dialects. Doctoral diss. Helsinki: Univ. of Helsinki, 2020.
  46. Yurayong et al. 2024 — Yurayong Ch., Niva H., Miestamo M., Kittilä S., Sandman E. Miscellanea typologica uralica ex oriente et occidente. Itämeren kieliapajilta Volgan verkoille: Pühendusteos Riho Grünthalile 22. mail 2024. Björklöf S., Jantunen S., Junttila S., Kuokkala J., Laitinen S., Pasanen A. (eds.). Helsinki: Suomalais-Ugrilainen Seura, 2024, 729–760.

Supplementary files

Supplementary Files
Action
1. JATS XML
Download

Copyright (c) 2024 Russian Academy of Sciences