LINGUIST List 16.512

Sun Feb 20 2005

Qs: Looking for Paper/Verbs as Closed Lexical Class

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Directory

         1.    Jean-Charles Khalifa, Looking for Paper or Author
        2.    Daniel Everett, Verbs as a Closed Lexical Class

Message 1: Looking for Paper or Author

 Date: 17-Feb-2005
From: Jean-Charles Khalifa <jckricky.univ-poitiers.fr>
Subject: Looking for Paper or Author


I'm looking for a paper by Tokomo Yamashita Smith, entitled ''How 'give'
and 'receive' Provide a Structure for more Abstract Notions: The Case of
Benefactives, Adversatives, Causatives, and Passives.'' I know the paper
was submitted to BLS in 1998, but unfortunately, I haven't been able to
find out whether or not it had been published and where.

I tried contacting the author in person, but the only e-mail address I
could find may be no longer valid. Could anyone help me find either the
paper or the author?

Many thanks,

Jean-Charles Khalifa

Linguistic Field(s): Not Applicable

Message 2: Verbs as a Closed Lexical Class

 Date: 16-Feb-2005
From: Daniel Everett <dan.everettmanchester.ac.uk>
Subject: Verbs as a Closed Lexical Class


In Piraha, an Amazonian language, there are only about 90 different verb
roots. These are combined to express complex events, subject to a set of
morphosyntactic, semantic, and cultural constraints. Pawley (1987) reports
a similar state of affairs for Kalam, a language of New Guinea.

I would like to know of other languages in which verbs form a small, closed
lexical class. If there is a sufficient number of responses, I will post a
summary.

Thanks,

-- Dan Everett

University of Manchester
Linguistics and English Language

PAWLEY, ANDREW. 1987. ''Encoding events in Kalam and English: different
logics for reporting experience,''in Coherence and grounding in discourse.
Edited by R. Tomlin, pp. 329-360. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

Linguistic Field(s): Typology

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