Word Class Typology

The Word Class Typology project (carried out by members of the Surrey Morphology Group) combines the investigation of grammatical categories in a broad sample of languages with the use of explicit formal and statistical frameworks for the expression of typological and theoretical generalizations. Two phenomena in the Alor-Pantar languages are particularly interesting for us:

The system of pronominal affixes on verbs and nouns

The pronominal affixes are of significant interest because: · They mark objects and not subjects (found in only 6% of the world’s languages according to Siewierska 2005)
·  They are highly sensitive to semantic and pragmatic factors, which makes them diagnostic of the interactions between multiple linguistic levels
·  They co-occur, with distinct functional allocation, on different word classes.

The variety of ‘functional’ verbal lexemes which cross multiple syntactic and morphological boundaries

The verbs  challenge our notions of syntactic and morphological  categories, and call for an analytical framework which maintains the categorial distinctions  necessary for a coherent theory of language.

Research Aims

Through the study of these phenomena we aim to contribute to the understanding of
·    The evolution of deterministic morphosyntactic categories from diffuse pragmatic and semantic conditions
·    The continuum between lexical word classes and grammatical features
·    Unusual morphosyntactic phenomena that have been neglected or ignored by linguistic theory, and for which Alor-Pantar languages provide the key evidence.