14LinguisticsStudies on Event Integration Patterns in African LanguagesProject term: April, 2012–March, 2015Coordinator: KAWACHI, Kazuhiro (National Defense Academy of Japan)Covering spoken languages in all the major language phyla in Africa (Niger-Congo, Nilo-Saharan, Afroasiatic, and Khoisan), and including sign languages in Africa in its scope of study, this project investigates how African languages characteristically integrate different types of components of macro-events (complex events) in such semantic domains as motion, state change, and aspect to express them morphosyntactically (Talmy 1985, 1991, 2000), and addresses theoretical issues raised by previous studies (e.g., what macro-events are, whether another typological type like the equipollent type exists) and those that we may encounter as our studies advance. Many African languages have been reported to commonly use multi-verb constructions to integrate event components, but no systematic comparison between morphosyntactic or semantic structures of these constructions seems to have been made so far. By comparing not only languages within Africa with each other but also languages in Africa with those in other areas of the world, the project examines how the African languages under study are classified into the typological types and whether there is any property that is characteristically found across African languages. The project further looks at how consistently characteristic patterns of expressing events are found across different semantic domains within each individual language, language family, and phylum.Typological Studies of Information Structures and Linguistic Forms in AfricaProject term: April, 2011 – March, 2014Coordinator: HIEDA, OsamuThe aims of the project are:1) to study how languages express informational structures phonologically, morphologically or syntactically;2) to demonstrate what typological diversity African languages show in the relationship between information structures and linguistic forms; and 3) to examine whether African languages are characterized geographically in the relationship between information structures and linguistic forms. To study these themes, the project members have organized a research network. Humboldt University Project leader: Tom Guldemann (Humboldt University) is about to launch a new project for an investigation similar to our project. When his project starts, we will conduct our project in cooperation with the project at Humboldt University.Cross-linguistic Research on “Verbals”Project term: April, 2013 – March, 2015Coordinator: YAMAKOSHI, Yasuhiro (Sapporo Gakuin University)This project investigates the “verbals” (i.e, non-finite verbs) of various languages, especially of the Altaic-type (the agglutinating languages mainly spoken in middle, inner, and east Asia), and other languages that have different morphosyntactic features.In traditional grammar, verbal inections are divided into two classes: finite and non-finite. Such a classification is suitable for describing the grammar of Indo-European languages. Therefore, many grammars of other languages such as Altaic-type languages are also described using this classication (nite / non-nite). However, this classication sometimes seems unsuitable for other languages. For example, in the Hateruma dialect of Yaeyama Ryukyuan, the same inflectional form can be used as the predicate, of both the main and subordinate clauses. In Hateruma, enclitics decide the functions of verbs. Therefore, we cannot dene both the nite and non-nite forms in this language. This phenomenon does not seem to be a rare case. Joint Research Projects
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