Difference between revisions of "In-depth annotation of multi-verb constructions in Èdó"
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Èdó language: some basic facts | Èdó language: some basic facts | ||
| − | Èdó is a tone language with an SVO structure. There are two basic tones in Èdó: high ( | + | Èdó is a tone language with an SVO structure. There are two basic tones in Èdó: high ( ) and low ( ). Nominal heads bear constant tones while verbal heads bear relative tones. By relative tones, I mean grammatically and lexically constrained tonal realization. Tones in Èdó have contrastive functions and serves to distinguish meaning in minimal contrastive forms as depicted in the following examples (Agheyisi 1990:18): |
| + | |||
| + | In addition to the two basic tones above, Èdó language has two other tones that are derived. The falling tone and the downstepped high tone. The falling tone is derived when a high tone precedes a low tone as in Ódò [ódô] Potash and Áwà [áwâ] hour in the examples above. | ||
| + | In Èdó due to the open syllable pattern of the language when two vowels occur adjacent across word boundaries contraction takes place and tone spreading and tone simplification processes apply. The downstepped high tone is derived when a word ending with a high tone bearing syllable combines with a noun with an initial low tone bearing syllable across word boundaries. In summary, the downstepped high tone is created through the processes of vowel assimilation and contraction, tone spreading and tone simplification. The following example illustrates this: | ||
| + | |||
| + | /òwá/ 'house'+ / èbé / 'book' [òwá!bé] | ||
Revision as of 15:01, 20 March 2009
INTRODUCTION Type craft is a tool for annotation and sharing natural language paradigms online. The main purpose of annotation is to describe the meaning and grammatical structure of languages. Type craft features the following tiers arranged in the following order: 1. Latinsed orthography 2. A tier for morhological analysis 3. A tier for meaning 4. A tier for glossing of morphological features 5. A tier for part of speech information.
Also type craft provides global tags that allows for classification of data along different mophological, syntactic and semantic criteria. In my analysis I have used the following default global tags: construction kernel, situation and aspect, additional predicates, Illocution and polarity
In the following I discuss first general features of Èdó language and then multi-verb constructions in Èdó.
Èdó language: some basic facts Èdó is a tone language with an SVO structure. There are two basic tones in Èdó: high ( ) and low ( ). Nominal heads bear constant tones while verbal heads bear relative tones. By relative tones, I mean grammatically and lexically constrained tonal realization. Tones in Èdó have contrastive functions and serves to distinguish meaning in minimal contrastive forms as depicted in the following examples (Agheyisi 1990:18):
In addition to the two basic tones above, Èdó language has two other tones that are derived. The falling tone and the downstepped high tone. The falling tone is derived when a high tone precedes a low tone as in Ódò [ódô] Potash and Áwà [áwâ] hour in the examples above. In Èdó due to the open syllable pattern of the language when two vowels occur adjacent across word boundaries contraction takes place and tone spreading and tone simplification processes apply. The downstepped high tone is derived when a word ending with a high tone bearing syllable combines with a noun with an initial low tone bearing syllable across word boundaries. In summary, the downstepped high tone is created through the processes of vowel assimilation and contraction, tone spreading and tone simplification. The following example illustrates this:
/òwá/ 'house'+ / èbé / 'book' [òwá!bé]