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Lexical flexibility in Oceanic languages
Edited by Eva van Lier
[Studies in Language 41:2] 2017
► pp. 255–293

Teop – an Oceanic language with multifunctional verbs, nouns and adjectives

| Christian Albrechts Universitat zu Kiel
The corpus-based analysis of Teop word classes demonstrates that lexical multifunctionality is not incompatible with the grammatical distinction between verbs, nouns, adjectives and adverbs, because this distinction does not manifest itself in their syntactic functions of heads of phrases, but in the kinds of modifier the words can combine with. Consequently, the Teop word class system falsifies all word class typologies that assume that a formal differentiation of event, object and property words presupposes a distinctive distribution across the head positions of determiner-marked referential expressions and TAM-marked predicative expressions. In addition to the multifunctionality of verbs, nouns and adjectives, the Teop lexicon shows regular patterns of conversion. The paper concludes with an assessment of the results and the limitations of the corpus-based approach and suggests four topics for further research: (1) the development of elicitation methods to supplement corpus-based analyses; (2) a typology of formally distinguished phrase types; (3) regular patterns of conversion across languages; and (4) possessive comparative constructions.
Keywords: conversion, modification, multifuntionality, phrase types, word classes
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Teop morphology and syntax
    • 2.1Introduction
    • 2.2Morphology
    • 2.3The syntactic structure of Teop
      • 2.3.1Introduction
      • 2.3.2The verb complex (VC)
      • 2.3.3The noun phrase (NP)
      • 2.3.4The adjectival phrase (AP)
  • 3.The distribution of Teop content words
    • 3.1Introduction
    • 3.2The distribution of verbs
    • 3.3The distribution of nouns
    • 3.4Adjectives
    • 3.5Deadjectival manner adverbs
    • 3.6Frequencies of verbs, nouns and adjectives functioning as heads of VCs, NPs and APs
  • 4.The method of the classification of Teop content words
    • 4.1Introduction
    • 4.2The corpus-linguistic analysis
    • 4.3Semantic and grammatical criteria for the distinction between lexical units and lexemes
    • 4.4Non-canonical VC, NPs, and APs
      • 4.4.1VCs with nominal heads
      • 4.4.2VCs with adjectival heads
      • 4.4.3NPs with verbal heads
      • 4.4.4APs with verbal heads
      • 4.4.5Inalienable possessive constructions
    • 4.5Modification by juxtaposition
      • 4.5.1Introduction
      • 4.5.2Modified verbs
      • 4.5.3Modified nouns
      • 4.5.4Modified adjectives
  • 5.Conversion
  • 6.Summary and concluding remarks
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
Published online: 5 October 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/sl.41.2.02mos
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Alfieri, Luca
2021. Parts of speech, comparative concepts and Indo-European linguistics. In Linguistic Categories, Language Description and Linguistic Typology [Typological Studies in Language, 132], ► pp. 313 ff. DOI logo
Stanojević, Miloš & Mark Steedman
2021. Formal Basis of a Language Universal. Computational Linguistics 47:1 ► pp. 9 ff. DOI logo
van Lier, Eva
2016. Lexical flexibility in Oceanic languages. Linguistic Typology 20:2 ► pp. 197 ff. DOI logo

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