Feature 25. Mermaid constructions

found in question(s): 59

Definition and illustration

Mermaid constructions are often illustrated with Japanese:

(1) Japanese (Japonic)

According to Tsunoda (2020b), mermaid constructions are mono-clausal despite having an embedded clause and usually have the form [Clause] Noun Copula. They are furthermore characterized, among others, by the following features: The clause can be used as an independent sentence, and its subject is not coreferential with the noun (in this case, tokoro).

Correlations

Most known languages with this type of construction are located in a large area that stretches from Northeast Asia over Central China to South Asia and also includes a few Austronesian languages and at least one African language (the Cushitic language Sidaama) (Tsunoda 2020a: xii). Most of these languages exhibit OV order, which suggests the following unidirectional prediction:

(2) if a language has a mermaid construction then it is likely OV

However, because mermaid constructions seem to be cross-linguistically rare, there are many OV languages without this type of construction. In this case, OV might be a necessary precondition for the emergence of the feature, which is still incompletely understood. Moreover, there are very few exceptions to the correlation in (2), such as Thai or Tagalog.

References