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According to Croft et al. (2010), more typical or natural situations are likely to be expressed with a more tightly integrated construction than those that are less so. The present chapter examines descriptions of NINJAL motion event video clips by speakers of Sidaama (Highland-East Cushitic; Ethiopia), and shows that as far as the Sidaama data is concerned, the typicality or naturalness of an event is not a factor in giving rise to the use of a syntactically more integrated construction in motion event descriptions, uncovering inconsistency with Croft et al.’s hypothesis. Specific problematic cases concern the highly unusual manners of motion in Sidaama culture, skipping and jumping once (from one place to another). For skipping, there is no lexical item that specifically describes this manner, and thus available lexical items that express similar manners are used instead; accordingly, the degree of the syntactic integration of the construction depends on the particular lexical item used for the manner. Motion events involving a figure’s arrival at a goal by jumping once are expressed with considerable frequency by means of a compact construction consisting of a manner verb and a goal noun phrase with a path marker because the property of ‘jumping once’ functions not only as the co-event of manner but also as the co-event of enablement or cause, as well as its short path, exhibiting iconicity in usage.

This chapter examines descriptions of motion events in the video clips for the NINJAL motion project by speakers of Kupsapiiny (Southern Nilotic; Uganda), and demonstrates that the typological pattern of this language, which has morphological path and deictic-directional satellites, can vary depending on the complexity of the construction used. In a single-verb construction, it most frequently exhibits the satellite-framed pattern. In a more complex monoclausal multi-verb construction, a different pattern is exhibited. Its dominant subtype is one where a manner-of-motion verb as a main verb precedes the non-tensed form of a path-of-motion verb or a deictic-directional verb, a type of nonhead-framed (head-external path-coding) construction, which is neither satellite-framed nor verb-framed. Thus, Kupsapiiny consistently avoids verb-framed constructions. Hence, Kupsapiiny’s system does not fit in any of the systems that Talmy (2000b) recognizes, including such minor systems as split, parallel, and intermixed systems. It can be characterized as predominantly anti-verb-framed, showing a nonhead (head-external) path-coding pattern that can emerge as the morphological satellite-framed construction, or alternatively, as the nonhead-framed, monoclausal multi-verb sub-construction as a pattern contrasting with the verb-framed pattern along a dimension different from that in Talmy’s dichotomy, where the satellite-framed pattern contrasts with the verb-framed pattern.

This chapter describes how Sidaama, a Cushitic language of Ethiopia, expresses the five levels of clause linkage (M. Tsunoda 2004, 2012; cf. also T. Tsunoda & M. Tsunoda, this volume, Section 8) in three semantic areas – causal, conditional,and concessive – with subordination, coordination, and parataxis. Subordination is available for all of causals, conditionals, and concessives, but coordination and parataxis can be used for causals and concessives only, not for conditionals.Very roughly speaking, (i) the clause linkage marker (“CLM”) for conditionals,(ii) subordinating CLMs and coordinating CLMs for concessives, (iii) parataxis (for causals and concessives), and (iv) coordinating CLMs for causals are acceptable at all the five levels, but subordinating CLMs for causals have a limited distribution,to varying degrees. Sidaama has a CLM that is added to the causal clause only at Level III. This CLM is added to the effect clause, not to the causal clause, at Levels I, II, IV, and V. Such a CLM seems to be uncommon crosslinguistically. Sidaama is uncommon among the languages investigated in the present volume in that it has many constructions that are acceptable at Level IV without an epistemic expression.As shown in the present chapter, Sidaama furnishes truly fascinating data on the five levels in clause linkage.

This chapter describes how Kupsapiny, a Southern Nilotic language of Uganda,expresses the five levels of clause linkage (M. Tsunoda 2004, 2012; cf. also T.Tsunoda & M. Tsunoda, this volume, Section 8) in three semantic areas – causal,conditional, and concessive – by means of subordination, coordination, a combination of subordination and coordination, and parataxis. Kupsapiny seems to be uncommon in that the vast majority of the CLMs and parataxis are acceptable at all the five levels; in particular, there are many examples at Level IV that are acceptable by themselves, without the clause ‘I think’. The five levels are not clearly distinguished in Kupsapiny. Nevertheless, there is some evidence to distinguish between Levels I, II, and III on the one hand and Levels IV and V on the other.

Human languages exhibit fascinating commonalities and variations in the ways they describe motion events. In this volume, the contributors present their research results concerning motion event descriptions in the languages that they investigate. The volume features new proposals based on a broad range of data involving different kinds of motion events previously understudied, such as caused motion (e.g., kick a ball across) and even visual motion (e.g., look into a hole). Special attention is also paid to deixis, a hitherto neglected aspect of motion event descriptions. A wide range of languages is examined, including those spoken in Europe, Africa, and Asia. The results provide new insights into the patterns languages deploy to represent motion events. This volume will appeal to anyone interested in language universals and typology, as well as the relationship between language and thought.

The present chapter reports on the existence of MMCs outside Asia – in Sidaama of Ethiopia. Contrary to the hypothesis previously suggested in the literature (Tsunoda 1996) that MMCs are peculiar to some Asian languages, Sidaama does have MMCs – in fact, as many as three types.

We present three new studies into the representation of causality across languages and cultures, drawing on preliminary findings of the project Causality Across Languages (CAL; NSF Award BCS-1535846 and BCS-1644657). The first is an examination of the strategies that speakers of different languages employ when verbalizing causal chains in narratives. These strategies comprise the output of decisions concerning which subevents to represent specifically, which to represent in an underspecified manner, and which to leave to nonmonotonic inferences such as conversational implicatures. The second study targets the semantic typology of causative constructions. We implemented a multiphasic design protocol that combines the collection of production data with that of comprehension data from a larger number of speakers. Goodness-of-fit judgments were collected based on an eight-point scale. We found a strong main effect of language and of domain of causation (physical vs. psychological vs. speech act causation); in contrast, the involvement of an intermediate event participant in the causal chain did not exert a significant effect. The third study investigates whether culture modulates the effect of intentionality on nonverbal attributions of responsibility. A linear mixed effects regression model indicated a significant interaction between intentionality and population, in line with previous findings by social psychologists. These studies represent the first large-scale comparison of how speakers of different languages categorize causal chains for the purposes of describing them.

This chapter addresses the question of whether or not Talmy’s (1985, 1991, 2000b) motion typology should be expanded to visual motion (Matsumoto 2001, 2017; Slobin 2009; Cifuentes-Férez 2014), by examining how Sidaama (Cushitic; Ethiopia) expresses (i) self-agentive/non-agentive motion, (ii) agentive motion, and (iii) fictive motion along a visual emanation path. It shows that although this language closely follows the verb-framed pattern in expressing (i) and (ii), it does not do so in expressing (iii), as in many other verb-framed languages. A possible reason for this is that (iii) is not conceptualized as a macro-event, whereas Talmy’s typology is built on expression patterns of macro-events. This study also observes that there are other types of events to which Talmy’s typology does not apply, presumably for the same reason: they are not really macro-events.

The present study describes the use of a verb suffix complex consisting of the ‘along’ suffix and a deictic-directional suffix in Kupsapiny, a Southern Nilotic language of Uganda. In addition to specifying deictic direction of motion, this suffix complex can be used to emphasize the continuity or iteration of the translational motion expressed by a motion verb or to motionalize a non-motion verb to express associated motion (Koch 1984; Wilkins 1991; Guillaume 2013, 2016). It can also function as a pure aspectual marker, which involves no motion at all. There- fore, the use of this suffix complex always conveys the concept of continuation or iteration, and associated motion does not seem to be totally independent of the temporal category of aspect in Kupsapiny. Other typological implications of the findings are further discussed.

This chapter provides a sketch of the grammar of Sidaama, a Highland East Cushitic language spoken in the Sidaama Zone of south-central Ethiopia. After giving very brief background information on this language, it outlines the phonological system, lexical and grammatical categories, the morphology of its verbs, nouns, and adjectives, and the structure of its single-verb, multi-verb, and complex-clause constructions. Phenomena of particular typological interest described in the grammatical category section, the morphology section, and the clause structure section include noun-phrase clitics, the modification and the MODIFICATION distinctions of nouns, and external possessor constructions, respectively. The chapter also overviews different types of speech reports as well as focus- and topic-marking strategies and cleft-construction formation as topics of pragmatics.