LINGUIST List 13.2125

Mon Aug 19 2002

Qs: Nepali/Gender Agreement,Modern Greek/Accusative

Editor for this issue: Karen Milligan <karenlinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. upadhyay, Gender agreement in Nepali
2. Peter Henkelmann, Accusative of Spatial Extent in Modern Greek

Dear Linguists,

I'm looking at the variational phenomenon of subject-verb gender
agreement in Nepali. This agreement requires the verb to be
morphologically marked to agree with the gender of the third person
singular subject. My preliminary survey of conversational data
indicates that, while both men and women violate this requirement
thereby using the non-standard form (that is, when the verb of a
feminine third person singular subject is marked the same way as for a
masculine third person singular subject), women use it more frequently
than men. Could you direct me to any variational studies of gender
agreement or similar syntactic phenomenona in other languages
(particularly those languages in which the verb is marked for the
gender of the subject)? A search of Linguist archives has yielded some
help but I need more.


Thanks in advance for your help.

Shiv Upadhyay
Department of Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics
York University, Toronto

I was looking for a Modern Greek example containing an accusative of
spatial extent that is a CLEAR accusative in terms of its form,
i.e. its form does not coincide with the nominative. So the neuter
noun 'm�tro' is not suitable for this purpose. But I've come across
the old measure 'p�ntos' ('centimeter') with its acc. 'p�ndo'
(sg.)/'p�ndus' (pl.). Now, if you are a NATIVE SPEAKER of Modern
Greek, what about my invented sentences?

(1) I klost� �ne dh�ka p�ndus makri�.

(2) To saligk�ri s�rthike tris p�ndus.

I hope they don't sound strange to you.
- I await your assessment.

Regards,
Peter Henkelmann
from Germany 

Subject-Language: Greek; Code: GRK