A presentative, or presentational, [1] is a word or a syntactic structure which presents, or introduces, an entity, bringing it to the attention of the addressee. Typically, the entity thus introduced will serve as the topic of the subsequent discourse. For example, the construction with "there" in the following English sentence is a presentative:
There appeared a cat on the window sill.
In French, one of major uses of the words voici and voilà is presentative, as in the following example:
However, the most common presentative in French is the (il) y a formula (from verb avoir ‘have’), as in the following sentence:
Similarly to French il y a, in Chinese the existential verb yǒu (have) is often used as a presentative to introduce new entities into discourse:
Kàn!
Look
Yǒu
PRESTT
rén
people
tōu
steal
nǐde
your
miànbāo!.
bread.
' Look! There’s someone [who] stole your bread!.' [4]
In Maybrat, a likely language isolate of West Papua, there is a dedicated presentative prefix me- which combines with demonstratives. It contrasts with other prefixes like pe- (forming adverbs, "there") or re- and we- (for attributives, "this man"). This contrast is illustrated in the following three examples with the demonstrative -to, which is used for non-masculine referents close to the speaker: [5]
Special word order configurations can also be used to introduce foregrounded entities into discourse, that is, to realise a presentational function. This is the case of “inverted” sentences, where the subject of SV(O) languages appears in post-verbal position. In the following spoken Chinese sentence, the agent of the motion verb lái (come), which usually occupies the preverbal position, occurs after the verb because it denotes a discourse-new entity:
Nèi
That
tiān
day
túránjiān
suddenly
ne,
PAUS
lái-le
come-PFV
hǎoxiē-ge
quite.a.few-CL
fēijī.
airplane.
Lit: ' Suddenly that day, came quite a few airplanes.' [9]
A subtype of inverted sentence is called locative inversion since in many languages the preverbal position is filled with a locative expression. English (especially written English) has this kind of structure:
In a little white house lived two rabbits. [10]
In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. [11]
In grammar, tense is a category that expresses time reference. Tenses are usually manifested by the use of specific forms of verbs, particularly in their conjugation patterns.
A transitive verb is a verb that accepts one or more objects. This contrasts with intransitive verbs, which do not have objects. Transitivity is traditionally thought a global property of a clause, by which activity is transferred from an agent to a patient.
The grammar of Standard Chinese or Mandarin shares many features with other varieties of Chinese. The language almost entirely lacks inflection and so words typically have only one grammatical form. Categories such as number and verb tense are frequently not expressed by any grammatical means, but there are several particles that serve to express verbal aspect and, to some extent, mood.
Slavey is a group of Athabaskan languages and a dialect continuum spoken amongst the Dene peoples of Canada in the Northwest Territories – or central Denendeh – where it also has official status. The languages are primarily written using a modified Latin script, with some using Canadian Aboriginal syllabics. In their own languages, these languages are referred to as: Sahtúgot’įné Yatı̨́, K’ashógot’įne Goxedǝ́ and Shíhgot’įne Yatı̨́ in the North, and Dené Dháh, Dene Yatıé or Dene Zhatıé in the South.
Although not widely accepted in linguistics, the term preverb is used in Caucasian, Caddoan, Athabaskan, and Algonquian linguistics to describe certain elements prefixed to verbs. In the context of Indo-European languages, the term is usually used for separable verb prefixes.
The Gbe languages form a cluster of about twenty related languages stretching across the area between eastern Ghana and western Nigeria. The total number of speakers of Gbe languages is between four and eight million. The most widely spoken Gbe language is Ewe, followed by Fon. The Gbe languages were traditionally placed in the Kwa branch of the Niger–Congo languages, but more recently have been classified as Volta–Niger languages. They include five major dialect clusters: Ewe, Fon, Aja, Gen (Mina), and Phla–Pherá.
The serial verb construction, also known as (verb) serialization or verb stacking, is a syntactic phenomenon in which two or more verbs or verb phrases are strung together in a single clause. It is a common feature of many African, Asian and New Guinean languages. Serial verb constructions are often described as coding a single event; they can also be used to indicate concurrent or causally-related events.
Nafaanra is a Senufo language spoken in northwest Ghana, along the border with Ivory Coast, east of Bondoukou. It is spoken by approximately 61,000 people. Its speakers call themselves Nafana, but others call them Banda or Mfantera. Like other Senufo languages, Nafaanra is a tonal language. It is somewhat of an outlier in the Senufo language group, with the geographically-closest relatives, the Southern Senufo Tagwana–Djimini languages, approximately 200 kilometres (120 mi) to the west, on the other side of Comoé National Park.
Marquesan is a collection of East-Central Polynesian dialects, of the Marquesic group, spoken in the Marquesas Islands of French Polynesia. They are usually classified into two groups, North Marquesan and South Marquesan, roughly along geographic lines.
Rapa Nui or Rapanui, also known as Pascuan or Pascuense, is an Eastern Polynesian language of the Austronesian language family. It is spoken on the island of Rapa Nui, also known as Easter Island.
Vaeakau-Taumako is a Polynesian language spoken in some of the Reef Islands as well as in the Taumako Islands in the Temotu province of the Solomon Islands.
Tuscarora, sometimes called Skarò˙rə̨ˀ, was the Iroquoian language of the Tuscarora people, spoken in southern Ontario, Canada, North Carolina and northwestern New York around Niagara Falls, in the United States, before its extinction in late 2020. The historic homeland of the Tuscarora was in eastern North Carolina, in and around the Goldsboro, Kinston, and Smithfield areas.
Tamambo, or Malo, is an Oceanic language spoken by 4,000 people on Malo and nearby islands in Vanuatu.
Ughele is an Oceanic language spoken by about 1200 people on Rendova Island, located in the Western Province of the Solomon Islands.
In linguistics, inversion is any of several grammatical constructions where two expressions switch their canonical order of appearance, that is, they invert. There are several types of subject-verb inversion in English: locative inversion, directive inversion, copular inversion, and quotative inversion. The most frequent type of inversion in English is subject–auxiliary inversion in which an auxiliary verb changes places with its subject; it often occurs in questions, such as Are you coming?, with the subject you is switched with the auxiliary are. In many other languages, especially those with a freer word order than English, inversion can take place with a variety of verbs and with other syntactic categories as well.
Maybrat is a Papuan language spoken in the central parts of the Bird's Head Peninsula in the Indonesian province of West Papua.
Iyo is a language spoken in the Madang Province of Papua New Guinea that comes from the Trans-New Guinea language family. Iyo also goes by the names Bure, Naho, Nabu, and Nahu. It has about 6,900 speakers. The Iyo language was previously known as Nahu because the first discovered speakers of the language lived in villages along the Nahu river. The name changed due to other communities speaking the same language but having different names for it. It was decided to call the language 'Iyo', which is the word for 'yes', after the leaders in the communities agreed to it.
An expletive attributive is an adjective or adverb that does not contribute to the meaning of a sentence, but is used to intensify its emotional force. Often such words or phrases are regarded as profanity or "bad language", though there are also inoffensive expletive attributives. The word is derived from the Latin verb explere, meaning "to fill", and it was originally introduced into English in the seventeenth century for various kinds of padding.
Tamashek or Tamasheq is a Malian variety of Tuareg, a Berber macro-language widely spoken by nomadic tribes across North Africa in Algeria, Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso. Tamasheq is one of the three main varieties of Tuareg, the others being Tamajaq and Tamahaq.
In the Catalan language, sentences consist of a collection of noun phrases grouped around a verb. One of these noun phrases has the syntactic function of subject while the others function as complements, or adverbials. The sentence can be introduced by a 'frame'.