GENIUS: Mahapatra - Copular System in Odia

[Alda Mari]

Chers collègues, 

nous avons le plaisir de vous inviter au prochain séminaire/conférence 'Généricité: Interprétation et Usages' qui recevra l'exposé de
Bibhuti Bhusan Mahapatra (Mumbai)

"Multiple Copulas and Genericity in Odia"

Vendredi 26 Juin 2009
13h30 - 15h30
à l'ENS
29, rue d'Ulm
salle de reunions du DEC, 
RdC à droite (tout de suite) après l'accueil

Cordialement, 
Alda Mari, pour les membres du groupe "Généricité". 


Resumé: 
Od
ia has a multi-copula system; it has four copulas, namely, aT/ø, ach, th(a:) and he. Binary distinctions such as 'equative' vs. 'existential' (cf. Laksmi Bai: 1986) or 'equative' vs. 'pedicative' (cf. Higginbotham: 1987, Heggie: 1988 and Rapoport: 1987) or individual level vs. stage level predicates (cf. Carlson 1977) are often adopted to distinguish copulas. Considering the fact that there are four of them in Odia, their distribution is not predictable by using simple binary distinctions. Across languages, copulas occur as auxiliaries of main verbs to carry aspect, tense and mood features. However, the aT copula never occurs as an auxiliary; it does not carry any aspect or tense or mood feature; it takes only the subject agreement features. Unlike aT copula, the ach and th(a:) copulas occur as auxiliaries. The ach copula goes only with the speech time which essentially marks the realis feature. The th(a:) copula carries the other tense and mood features which, in contrast with the speech time, can all be taken as irrealis features. Thus, the copulas ach and th(a:) jointly mark the [±realis] contrast. Like the aT copula, the th(a:) copula can drop the tense feature too. They, with their tenseless forms, behave as individual level copulas. However, they do not convey the same individual level meaning. Using the predicate distinctions of Krifka, Pelletier et al. (1995) it can be shown that aT goes with 'lexical characterizing' predicates which do not have 'episodic' counterparts, thus, it indicates an inherent property of the subject. In contrast, th(a:) goes with 'habitual generic' reading, which is an aspectual generalization over stages denoted by stage level (episodic) predicates. Since the copula ach goes with the speech time alone it just expresses a present episodic meaning which is available only with 'episodic' (stage level) predicates. The copula he (be/become/happen/come into being) is basically an unaccusative event functor. Of course, there are many more complicated grammatical facts related to ach and he which escape an explanation in terms of the ontological distinctions such as stage, object and kind either in the domain of entities or predicates. The facts are noted in Mahapatra (2002).

http://lumiere.ens.fr/~amari/genius/Seminar.htm

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