Case, Valency and Transitivity
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Case, Valency and Transitivity
Studies in Language Companion Series (SLCS) The SLCS series has been established as a companion series to Studies in Language, International Journal, sponsored by the Foundation “Foundations of Language”.
Series Editors Werner Abraham
Michael Noonan
University of Vienna
University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
Editorial Board Joan Bybee
Christian Lehmann
University of New Mexico
University of Erfurt
Ulrike Claudi
Robert Longacre
University of Cologne
University of Texas, Arlington
Bernard Comrie
Brian MacWhinney
Max Planck Institute For Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig
Carnegie-Mellon University
William Croft
University of California, Santa Barbara
University of New Mexico
Edith Moravcsik
Östen Dahl
University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
University of Stockholm
Masayoshi Shibatani
Gerrit Dimmendaal
Rice University and Kobe University
University of Leiden
Russell Tomlin
Ekkehard König
University of Oregon
Marianne Mithun
Free University of Berlin
Volume 77 Case, Valency and Transitivity Edited by Leonid Kulikov, Andrej Malchukov and Peter de Swart
Case, Valency and Transitivity Edited by
Leonid Kulikov Leiden University
Andrej Malchukov Peter de Swart Radboud University Nijmegen
John Benjamins Publishing Company Amsterdam/Philadelphia
8
TM
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences – Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1984.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Case, Valency and Transitivity / edited by Leonid Kulikov, Andrej Malchukov and Peter de Swart. p. cm. (Studies in Language Companion Series, issn 0165–7763 ; v. 77) Includes bibliographical references and indexes. 1. Grammar, Comparative and general--Case. 2. Grammar, Comparative and general--Transitivity. 3. Dependency grammar. 4. Semantics. I. Kulikov, L.I. II. Mal’chukov, A.L. (Andrei L’vovich). III. Swart, Peter de. IV. Series. P240.6.C37 2006 415’.5--dc22 isbn 90 272 3087 0 (Hb; alk. paper)
2006040572
© 2006 – John Benjamins B.V. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publisher. John Benjamins Publishing Co. · P.O. Box 36224 · 1020 me Amsterdam · The Netherlands John Benjamins North America · P.O. Box 27519 · Philadelphia pa 19118-0519 · usa
Table of contents Introduction
vii
Part I. Morphological case 1. Syntactic vs. morphological case: Implications for morphosyntax Andrew Spencer 2. Case systems in a diachronic perspective: A typological sketch Leonid Kulikov
3 23
3. Emergence of morphological cases in South Mande: From the amorphous type to inflectional? Valentin Vydrine
49
4. Issues of morphological ergativity in the Tsimshian languages: Agreement, determiners and the reconstruction of case Tyler Peterson
65
5. Direction marking and case in Menominee Jochen Trommer
91
Part II. Case marking and transitivity: The syntax of case 6. Bare and prepositional differential case marking: The exotic case of German (and Icelandic) among all of Germanic Werner Abraham
115
7. Control infinitives and case in Germanic: ‘Performance error’ or marginally acceptable constructions? Jóhanna Barðdal and Thórhallur Eythórsson
147
8. Experiencer coding in Nakh-Daghestanian Dmitry Ganenkov
179
9. ‘Argument-sharing’ in Oriya serial verb constructions Kalyanamalini Sahoo
203
Case marking and transitivity: Case interpretation
10. Two approaches to specificity Lars Johanson
225
11. Case markedness Peter de Swart
249
vi
Case, Valency, and Transitivity
12. Incremental distinguishability of subject and object Helen de Hoop and Monique Lamers
269
Case marking and transitivity: Case and the typology of transitivity
13. The woman showed the baby to her sister: On resolving humanness-driven ambiguity in ditransitives Seppo Kittilä 14. Case semantics and the agent–patient opposition Åshild Naess 15. Transitivity parameters and transitivity alternations: Constraining co-variation Andrej Malchukov 16. Transitivity in Songhay Julia Galiamina
291 309
329 359
Part III. Transitivity and valency change 17. Syntactic valence, information structure, and passive constructions in Kaqchikel George Aaron Broadwell
375
18. A very active passive: Functional similarities between passive and causative in Balkar Ekaterina Lyutikova and Anastasia Bonch-Osmolovskaya
393
19. Case marking, possession and syntactic hierarchies in Khakas causative constructions in comparison with other Turkic languages Alexander Letuchiy
417
20. Transitivity increase markers interacting with verb semantics: Evidence from Finno-Ugric languages Elena Kalinina, Dmitriy Kolomatsky, Alexandra Sudobina
441
21. Extraversive transitivization in Yucatec Maya and the nature of the applicative Christian Lehmann and Elisabeth Verhoeven
465
Language index Subject index
495 498
Introduction 1. Case, valency and transitivity The present selection of papers dealing with case, valency, and transitivity, originated from a conference on the similar topic held at the University of Nijmegen in June 2003. Thematically it belongs to a row of recent publications indicating a new upsurge of interest in that field.1 The contributions to the present volume discuss issues related to case, valency, and transitivity in a wide range of languages from different theoretical perspectives. Before turning to the presentation of individual chapters, a brief discussion of the central concepts addressed in this volume is in order. The notions of case, valency and transitivity, which are in the center of the present publication, are distinct, albeit related phenomena. As most of the concepts coming from traditional grammar ‘case’ is multiply ambiguous (see Blake 2001; see also Spencer, this volume, for discussion). In a narrow sense it pertains to morphological case, but the term ‘case marking’ is frequently used to cover also alternative means of encoding grammatical relations such as agreement, and even syntactic position. The term ‘valency’ is also ambiguous. On the one hand, it pertains to a valency pattern, i.e., specification of the number of verbal arguments and their encoding, but is also used to refer to a verbal category marking valency change, such as causatives, applicatives, etc. Many authors, like Dixon and Aikhenvald (2000), also include voices into the valency changing categories. One could expect that transitivity is the most specific notion, as at least on the traditional interpretation it is referring to a specific valency pattern involving a direct object in addition to the subject, or more precisely, transitive verbs are those verbs which take an agent and a patient argument and any other verb with the same valency (Blake 2001). However, in the last two decades (as in Hopper and Thompson’s work, see below) transitivity has been elevated into a central overarching category interacting with many functional factors, which manifest themselves in a range of ‘transitivity alternations’, pertaining to a change of case and valency. On this broad view transitivity is the central phenomenon addressed in this volume. The contributions in the present volume belong to different research traditions. Many of them, in particular those which have a cross-linguistic scope, follow a functional-typological approach trying to uncover functional motivations behind crosslinguistically recurrent case-marking patterns. A different line of research dealing with the issues of case marking can be found within the generative tradition. This tradition focuses on syntactic effects of morphological case, on relations between morphological case, abstract case and grammatical relations, and tries to give a structural syntactic implementation for many notions discussed above (for example, through associating valency and case with special functional projections; the contributions by Abraham and Trommer can give an idea of the research agenda within this tradition). There are
viii Introduction
a number of other theoretical approaches, as represented, for instance, by Sahoo’s contribution. A special mention should be made of Optimality Theory (OT) which seeks to integrate a variety of formal and functional approaches to grammar and where case marking has been one of the favourite topics (see contributions by de Hoop and Lamers and de Swart for discussion of OT approaches to case marking). Malchukov’s contribution, for example, tries to integrate OT with functional typology, whereas Trommer’s OT approach is grounded in the generative tradition. As is clear from the above, different contributions align to different traditions, although many of them, in particularly those representing case studies of individual languages, can be considered as theory neutral. Equally diverse are the issues addressed in the respective contributions. Some contributors (Abraham, Johanson, Spencer, Barðdal and Eythórsson, Sahoo, de Swart, and Trommer) focus on theoretical issues, other contributions are more typologically oriented (Naess, Malchukov, and Kittilä), while still others take a diachronic (Kulikov, Vydrine, and Peterson), or a psycholinguistic perspective (de Hoop and Lamers). The majority of papers represent case studies of individual languages, often based on original field work. The languages addressed in individual contributions include Amerindian languages (Broadwell, Lehmann and Verhoeven on Mayan, Peterson on Tsimshian, Trommer on Algonquian), African (Vydrine on Mande and Galiamina on Songhay), Turkic languages (Johanson, Lyutikova and Bonch-Osmolovskaya, and Letuchiy), Finno-Ugric (Kalinina et al.), Caucasian (Ganenkov on Nakh-Daghestanian), Indo-Aryan (Sahoo), as well as better studied European languages (as in the contributions by Abraham, Barðdal and Eythórsson, de Hoop and Lamers). Still another way to classify the contributions, which is again orthogonal to the previous classification, concerns the empirical focus of the contributions. Above we have noted that the notions of case, valency and transitivity are interrelated but distinct. The current order of presentation in the volume roughly follows the following outline: the volume starts with contributions examining case as a morphological phenomenon, after which it continues with contributions dealing with case marking on a syntactic level and interaction between case marking and transitivity, and finally, the volume concludes with the contributions related to verbal valency and valency changing. It goes without saying that a neat classification into classes is impossible, as many authors address several interrelated topics, as is evident from the chapter summaries.
2. Overview of the individual contributions Part I: Morphological case The contributions to this part primarily focus on morphological case. Andrew Spen cer’s contribution Syntactic vs. morphological case: implications for morphosyntax is well-fit to open the volume as it discusses the relation between morphological and
Introduction
syntactic case setting the scene for discussion in the subsequent parts. In his contribution Spencer draws attention to the dual character of the category of case in case-marking languages. On the one hand, case is expressed as a morphological form of a noun; on the other hand, it is manifested as a property of a phrasal node, thus fulfilling its syntactic function. The author focuses on examples of mismatch between the two, arguing that for some case relations defined in syntax there is no straightforward morphological correspondent. His claim is illustrated by three examples: the realization of syntactic ergative case distributed across two other morphological cases in Chukchee; the realization of certain classes of dative marked nouns in certain positions in the NP as a special morphological subtype of dative in Czech (which has no other reflex in the syntax of the language); and the very complex morphological realization of nouns in genitive marked syntactic contexts in German (which cannot be understood unless we decouple syntactic and morphological case labels). A broad diachronic perspective on morphological case is provided by Leonid Kuli kov. His contribution Case systems in a diachronic perspective: A typological sketch is a typological overview of the main types of changes in case systems. It deals with the main mechanisms of the rise of new cases and expansion of case systems (case-increasing), types of decaying case systems (case-reducing), as well as with some processes within case systems which help to resist phonetic erosion and case syncretism (stable case systems). On the basis of this cross-linguistic diachronic survey of case systems, the author offers a tentative classification of the evolutionary types of languages. This diachronic perspective on morphological case is also adopted by Valentin Vy drine in his contribution Emergence of morphological cases in South Mande lan guages. The author shows that pervasive phonetic processes have resulted in the emergence of contracted forms of pronouns, and he further argues that contrary to the established view, their forms can be interpreted in terms of morphological cases. The author further demonstrates that in some languages of the group, such as Guro, elements of an ergative system have emerged in the personal pronouns. Interestingly, in these languages ergative case is found on pronouns, rather than nouns, which contradicts one of the typological universals, established by Silverstein (1976) and Kozinskij (1980) among others. In the second part of the chapter, the author addresses the rise of locative cases in two other Mande languages, Tura and Dan. While Vydrine’s contribution examines the emergence of a case system, Tyler Peter son’s contribution Issues of Morphological Ergativity in the Tsimshian Languages focuses on the vestiges of a case system in the Tsimshian languages (Canada, province of British Columbia), which he detects in the class of clitic morphemes called ‘connectives’. He argues that they arose from rearrangement of several types of morphemes which include agreement markers, determiners and the remnants of a morphological case system. The author further provides an in-depth discussion of the interaction of the (new) ergative agreement with the remnants of the (old) nominative–accusative case patterning. In general, Tsimshian languages are shown to display some typologically remarkable mechanisms of case reduction and case reanalysis.
ix
Introduction
Staying in North America Jochen Trommer discusses Direction marking and case in Menominee, an Algonquian language. In this language a different verbal marker is used depending on the relative animacy of the subject and object. When the object is higher in animacy than the subject, the inverse marker is used but when the subject is higher the direct form is used. Whereas recent generative approaches have argued that direction marking does not emerge from a prominence hierarchy but rather is the expression of case at a more abstract level, Trommer argues that prominence hierarchies do play a role. He proposes that direction marking expresses abstract Case features, and that the realization of these features is mediated by constraints on prominence hierarchies. He provides an Optimality Theoretic analysis in which direction marking is the outcome of the interaction between different types of violable constraints.
Part II: Case marking and transitivity The second part of this volume, which includes the majority of papers, addresses the role of case on a syntactic level and the relation between case marking and transitivity. It starts with a discussion of general issues in the syntax of case and case variation, after which it moves on to the distinguishing function of case, followed by discussions of case and the typology of transitivity.
A. Syntax of case
One of the hotly discussed topics in the recent literature is the phenomenon of noncanonical marking of subjects and objects (see the papers in Aikhenvald, Dixon and Onishi (2001), Bhaskarao and Subbarao (2004)). The phenomenon of non-canonical marking, or more generally of differential case marking of subjects and objects was first discussed in the typological literature in relation to split-ergativity. A well-known generalization, originally due to Silverstein, states that accusative marking will most likely be found on ‘prominent’ Os (e.g., pronominal or animate and definite), while ergative marking will most likely be found on non-prominent As (e.g., on nouns rather than pronouns). Silverstein (1976), Comrie (1989) and others provide an explanation for this pattern in terms of markedness: the typical (most natural, functionally unmarked) Os are indefinite/non-specific and inanimate, and deviation from this prototype needs overt marking. Best studied in the typological literature is the phenomenon of Differential Object Marking (DOM), discussed in typological perspective by Bossong (1985), and in an optimality-theoretic perspective by Aissen (2003), who derives DOM patterns via the interaction of markedness hierarchies and economy constraints. Differential subject marking, on the other hand, remains less studied, which may be due to the fact that few uncontroversial cases of non-canonical subjects have been found in better studied European languages (Icelandic is rather exceptional in this respect). The issues of differential case marking and non-canonical marking of subjects and objects are addressed in a number of contributions to the volume.
Introduction
Werner Abraham’s contribution Bare and prepositional differential case marking: the exotic case of German (and Icelandic) among all of Germanic integrates a formal syntactic analysis of (differential) case-marking patterns with some insights from the functional and historical traditions. In particular, certain generalizations and predictions about ‘differential object marking’ (DOM) formulated by Aissen (2003) are taken issue with both empirically and theoretically. The author examines the possible case-marking patterns in Germanic languages, in particular, in German and Icelandic, and proposes a number of general structural constraints which account for the attested patterns. In the second part the author compares the encoding of arguments of three-place predicates in German to Dutch and Norwegian, which use either bare NPs or PPs instead of German dative. He further discusses the relation between case marking on objects and scrambling, and addresses the question of verb-incorporated prepositions. Thus he shows how the issues of differential case marking are related to word order variation, as well as to other seemingly independent syntactic parameters. The chapter by Jóhanna Barðdal and Thórhallur Eythórsson is similar to Abraham’s in language material and in its interest for non-canonical subjects, but differs radically on a theoretical stance, and also in conclusions. Their contribution Control infini tives and case in Germanic: ‘Performance error’ or marginally acceptable construc tions? discusses control constructions in Germanic involving impersonal predicates, in which subject-like obliques are the unexpressed subjects of controlled infinitives. The relevance of this construction lies in the fact that it has been considered in the literature as an important diagnostics for subjecthood. It has also been used as evidence that subject-like obliques in Icelandic, which can be embedded under control verbs, are true subjects, while their counterparts in German are not. The authors present attested examples of control infinitives, obtained from different sources including the World Wide Web, from Modern Icelandic and Modern German, as well as Modern Faroese. They argue that the difference assumed in the literature between Modern Icelandic and Faroese, on the one hand, and Modern German, on the other, should not be considered categorical but gradient. Finally, the authors make an important methodological point that marginally acceptable constructions should be taken more seriously by linguists, rather than being dismissed as ‘performance errors’. Dmitry Ganenkov examines in his contribution Experiencer coding in NakhDaghestanian non-canonical marking of overt subjects. Ganenkov proposes a threeway classification of experiencer arguments, on the basis of their encoding in 18 NakhDaghestanian languages: (1) core experiencers appearing with perception verbs; (2) recipient-like experiencers; and (3) ‘involuntary agent’-like experiencers. He then constructs a semantic map which brings to the fore two diachronic tendencies in the semantic evolution of experiencer markers. He argues that experiencer markers tend to arise from spatial sources and then gradually develop into dative markers. Furthermore, over time non-canonical experiencer arguments often turn into canonically marked transitive subjects, expressed with ergative case in Nakh-Daghestanian.
xi
xii
Introduction
Moving from simple to complex predicates, Kalyanamalini Sahoo investigates ‘Argument-sharing’ in Oriya serial verb constructions. Such constructions consist of several co-ranking nuclei, which refer to sequential actions conceptualized as one event or various phases of a single event. The author provides an analysis of serial verb constructions in the LFG framework, paying special attention to the patterns of object sharing in these constructions. She argues that the Case of the shared argument is determined by the verb with which this argument co-occurs, while the Case imposed by other verbs is suppressed.
B. Case interpretation
The papers in this section have a shared interest in the issues of case interpretation and case markedness. As mentioned above, markedness has been invoked as an explanation for differential case-marking patterns. This explanation is in line with the discriminating approach to case marking which takes the main function of case marking to be to distinguish subjects from objects. On this view those objects which are less typical as objects (e.g., animate, pronominal, etc) are most likely to be marked, as otherwise they can be mistaken for subjects. This connection between case-markedness and distinguishability is further persued in contributions by de Hoop and Lamers and de Swart. Lars Johanson’s approach to markedness, rooted in the structuralist tradition, is somewhat different and considers markedness in a paradigmatic perspective. His chapter Two approaches to specificity deals with differential object marking in Turkish, where one finds accusative case only on specific objects. The author shows how the interpretation of cases is affected by the markedness relation within language-specific oppositions. For example, he demonstrates that accusative case signals specificity only when it is competing with unmarked objects in the immediate preverbal position, while in other positions the distinctions in specificity are not overtly marked by case. The author further offers a comparison of his structural approach to specificity, to a functional account as advocated, for instance, by Dik (1989). Focusing on disagreement between these two types of accounts, he demonstrates that the two approaches are complementary to each other. Peter de Swart in his contribution Case markedness also deals with differential object marking, but focuses exclusively on the distinguishing function of case. He argues that in the languages under discussion object marking has a pure pragmatic function and is only used when a potential ambiguity of grammatical relations is at stake. He proposes a principle of minimal semantic distinctness which states that lack of contrast between two arguments of a transitive verb at the semantic level should be compensated for by means of contrast at the morphological level, i.e., the use of overt case on the object. Grounded in two markedness scales, one of semantic and one of formal transitivity, he formalizes his account in Bidirectional Optimality Theory, a recent formal framework which gives a natural account of the relation between markedness in meaning and markedness in form.
Introduction xiii
Helen de Hoop and Monique Lamers’s Incremental distinguishability of subject and object takes the distinguishing function of case into the psycholinguistic domain by looking at the distinguishability of subjects and objects from an incremental (timesensitive) perspective. Focusing on subject and object functions in German and Dutch they examine five cues on which subject and object can be distinguished: (1) case; (2) agreement; (3) selectional restrictions of the verb; (4) precedence; (5) prominence. Reinterpreting these cues as violable optimality-theoretic constraints, the authors apply them to the interpretation of transitive sentences on a word-by-word basis. De Hoop and Lamers show that their model of incremental optimization of interpretation and the violation patterns that come about by checking the proposed distinguishability constraints incrementally can account for the differences in processing found in several psycholinguistic studies.
C. Case and the typology of transitivity
The chapters in this section continue the discussion of cross-linguistic variation in case marking and its motivations initiated by the previous contributions. In particular, they discuss how the discriminating approach to case marking, as outlined above, is related to the function of identifying or ‘indexing’ semantic roles. The indexing approach can be naturally extended beyond role-properties to clausal properties contributing to high transitivity, as demonstrated by Moravcsik, Hopper and Thompson, and Tsunoda. In a well-known paper Hopper and Thompson (1980) featured out certain functional factors which contribute to high transitivity (such as affectedness and definiteness/individuation of O, perfectivity and punctuality of the verb, volitionality of A, etc). They showed that lack of these features can lead to a decrease in formal transitivity, i.e., a transitivity alternation. Note that on this approach, case alternations on objects are not interpreted in terms of markedness but rather as a transitivity decrease, reflecting the lack of one of the functional parameters contributing to high transitivity, such as animacy and specificity related to O individuation. Although Hopper and Thompson’s approach is not without problems (see, for instance, Lazard (2003) for a recent critical discussion), their approach has been highly influential, and a number of contributions to this volume take up or elaborate on their analysis. The next three chapters, by Kittilä, Næss and Malchukov are similar, as they are typological in nature, and all address the issue of cross-linguistic motivations for casemarking patterns, and their motivations. The analyses, however, are different as the authors differ in the importance they attribute to the distinguishing and indexing function of case marking. Seppo Kittilä’s contribution The woman showed the baby to her sister: on resolving animacy-driven ambiguity in ditransitives is in line with the contributions by de Swart and de Hoop and Lamers in that it focuses on the disambiguating function of case marking. The author examines the strategies languages use for resolving ambiguity in ditransitives in which both objects (Recipient and Theme) have a human referent. The author suggests a distinction between languages depending on what factor determines the encoding of objects in a ditransitive construction:
xiv Introduction
semantic role, grammatical function, or animacy information. The latter languages are of particular interest, as these languages must take special measures to disambiguate arguments in constructions where the Theme is animate as well. The author provides a comprehensive survey of ditransitive constructions in animacy prominent languages, showing that languages differ both in terms of disambiguation mechanism involved (case, agreement, etc), but also with respect to which object changes its encoding when compared to the canonical ditransitive construction. The chapter by Åshild Næss on Case semantics and the agent-patient opposition addresses the question how the distinguishing and indexing functions of case can be related to each other as parts of a single integrated system. The chapter presents a set of case-marking data which does not seem to be readily explainable from either a purely discriminatory or a purely indexing point of view. In a number of languages (such as Chepang and Marwari), case marking on one core argument appears to depend on semantic properties of the other argument of the clause. The author argues that an adequate analysis of these case-marking patterns must recognize that case marking has both discriminatory and semantic aspects. She further argues that the notion of prototypical transitivity must be defined in terms of a maximal semantic distinction between the arguments involved, and that core case marking in the prototypical instance makes reference to this distinction: only when the arguments of a bivalent clause are maximally distinct with respect to the properties of volitionality, instigation and affectedness does core case marking (in the sense of overt ergative or accusative case) necessarily apply. Andrej Malchukov’s contribution Transitivity parameters and transitivity alter nations: constraining co-variation addresses the relation between transitivity parameters, as formulated by Hopper and Thompson (1980), and transitivity alternations. The author proposes to represent the list of transitivity parameters in the form of a scale, stretching from subject-related (e.g., agentivity) via verb-related (e.g., aspect) to object-related parameters (e.g., affectedness). This semantic scale can be used to predict which syntactic argument changes its case marking in the course of an alternation, on the assumption that a transitivity parameter should be preferably encoded on the ‘relevant’ constituent, that is, the constituent to which it pertains. This, basically iconic ‘Relevance principle’ interacts with a structural principle, which prohibits the manipulation on case marking of the ‘primary’ argument exclusively (i.e., without a diathetic shift). The author then shows how interaction of these two principles can predict crosslinguistically preferred patterns of transitivity alternations, as well as constrain co-variation between transitivity alternations and transitivity parameters. The last chapter in this part presents a case study of Transitivity in Songhay. In this chapter Julia Galiamina discusses the correlation between semantic and syntactic transitivity in this West-African language. In the first part of her paper she argues that the morpheme na should be analyzed as a marker designating clauses with a high degree of transitivity. She argues that four of the parameters proposed by Hopper and Thompson (1980) are exclusively involved in determining the degree of clausal transitivity. Two
Introduction
other of Hopper and Thompson’s parameters may influence the lexical transitivity (i.e., valency patterns) of verbal lexemes as discussed in the second part of her contribution. On the basis of a comprehensive examination of Songhay verbal vocabulary Galiamina proposes a classification into six basic syntactic verb types. She presents a detailed discussion of the semantics of these verb types with particular attention granted to the different types of labile verbs and their alternations.
Part III: Transitivity and valency changing Typological approaches to valency-changing categories have a somewhat different research tradition, in this connection the pioneering work by the Leningrad/St. Petersburg Typology Group should be mentioned (see, for example, Nedjalkov and Sil′nickij (1969) on the typology of causative constructions, and Xrakovskij (1981) on the typology of passive constructions). In the subsequent years rich literature has been published on this topic, yet some phenomena in this domain attracted more attention than others. Thus, among the voice categories passive is arguably best studied both within particular languages as well as across languages, while among the valency changing derivational morphology the causatives have received most attention. However, in spite of the extensive literature on this topic, a number of issues remain controversial, including the basic question, whether voices should be treated on a par with other valency changing categories such as causatives. It should be noted that a strict distinction between the two classes could be hardly maintained in view of a wide-spread polysemy of voice morphology, which may have syntactic repercussions. This is also demonstrated in a number of contributions to the volume which deal with structurally ambiguous categories, which may perform both a valency-decreasing and a valency-increasing function, e.g., when the same marker can be used both in a passive and a causative function. The order of presentation in this section starts from valency decreasing categories, which indisputably fall into the domain of voices, to valency ambiguous categories, and further on to valency increasing categories (causatives and applicatives). George Aaron Broadwell’s chapter on Syntactic valence, information structure, and passive constructions in Kaqchikel opens the discussion of voice and valency changing categories. His contribution deals with two passives in the Mayan language Kaqchikel, the ki-passive and the standard passive. The author shows that the two derivations share many syntactic features, but differ at the informational level: the former type is only employed in cases where the arguments are topical noun phrases. This chapter contributes to the typological study of passives and to grammatical theory, in general. It draws attention to the relatively neglected aspects of passive constructions, in particular, the relation between their syntactic features and informational effects of valence changing. Ekaterina Lyutikova and Anastasia Bonch-Osmolovskaya in their contribution A very active passive: Functional similarities between passive and causative in Balkar address the range of uses of the Balkar passive. They note that the passive marker in
xv
xvi Introduction
Balkar has developed uses which are not attested in most Turkic languages. The authors present an extensive discussion of the different uses of the passive morpheme of which the ‘causal passive’ use is very uncommon from a typological perspective. Furthermore, a special feature of Balkar is the proliferation of ‘double passive’ forms, in which we find more than one application of passive morphology on transitive verbs. The double passive is shown to have a wide variety of functions, including a causal one. This detailed discussion of the Balkar passive provides us with new evidence for a functional contiguity of the passive and causative domains. Staying within the same language family, Alexander Letuchiy discusses Case mark ing in causative constructions in Khakas in comparison to some other Turkic lan guages. The author shows that the marking of the causees in causative constructions can depend on different factors, including discourse-pragmatic, semantic and syntactic ones. The latter refers in particular, to the hierarchy of grammatical relations which, according to Comrie, determines the encoding of causees as direct, indirect or oblique objects. The author shows how deviations from the ‘paradigm case’ predicted by Comrie’s hierarchy can be accounted for in terms of other factors, pertaining to the marking of the underlying object, the type of the causee, and to discourse properties of the arguments in the causative construction. It is further shown that other Turkic languages (e.g. Tuvinian, Altai and Balkar) differ from Khakas with respect to what weight they attribute to the different factors. The author also discusses polysemy of the causative marker, in particular, he notes its use in the passive function. The next chapter, Transitivity increase markers interacting with verbs seman tics: evidence from Finno-Ugric languages, by Elena Kalinina, Dmitriy Kolomat skiy, and Alexandra Sudobina, also deals with a valency ambiguous category, this time in the Finno-Ugric languages Mari and Komi. At first sight the Mari suffix -alt seems to be a polysemous marker with two mutually exclusive functions. On the one hand, it derives transitive verbs from intransitive ones and on the other hand it also actively participates in agent-demotion constructions. The authors argue, though, that this polysemy is apparent as it is dependent on an alternation in agreement pattern. A similar polysemy pattern is revealed by the causative marker -əd in Komi. The authors show that, depending on the verb semantics, the derived causative form may be interpreted as causative proper (marking the presence of an animate counteragent) or as one of the secondary derivatives, pertaining to total affectedness of the object, intensity, or volitionality. The final chapter addresses applicative-like derivations, which have figured less prominently in the typological literature, as compared to causatives. Christian Leh mann and Elisabeth Verhoeven’s contribution Extraversive transitivization in Yu catec Maya and the nature of the applicative investigates a transitivity increasing operation in Yucatec Maya, expressed by the suffix -t. This derivation, termed by the authors ‘extraversive’, applies to intransitive verbs, making them transitive by adding a direct object (an undergoer-focused transitivization). The authors note the similarities this category has to applicatives, but emphasize that it differs from the latter, being an es-
Introduction xvii
sentially lexical operation with limited syntactic regularity. The authors provide an indepth analysis of the ‘extraversive’ transitivization with the aim of refining the concept of the applicative. Special attention is given to a possible functional transition between plain undergoer-focused transitivization (i.e., ‘extraversion’) and applicative formation. It is argued that such a transition is conceivable given the kind of thematic roles typically involved in the two constructions. The last chapter demonstrates how a fine-grained analysis may lead to the discovery of a new category. More generally, many other contributions to the volume, providing in-depth analyses of case and valency in individual languages, are in line with an increased concern found in the literature in capturing specific functions of grammatical categories, as well as an increased interest in polysemy patterns. This bottom-up approach to the study of case marking is intended to feed and complement general approaches seeking to uncover typological generalizations or provide an articulated theory of case and valency in different theoretical frameworks. As can be seen from the above, the present volume collects papers dealing with case, valency, and transitivity from a variety of theoretical perspectives and in a wide range of languages. As the editors we hope it will be interesting to linguists of different persuasions and that the challenging data will promote further research in the field.
3. Acknowledgements The preparation of this volume started immediately after the PIONIER Workshop ‘Case, Valency, and Transitivity’ organized at the University of Nijmegen in June 2003. As with any other book, the realization of this book would not have become reality without the help of many people and we would like to take the opportunity to thank them. First and foremost we would like to thank the contributors for their cooperation and patience without which this volume would not have been possible. Our warm thanks and deep appreciation go to the anonymous reviewers whose constructive and helpful critical remarks helped us and the authors to improve this volume. We thank Werner Abraham, who, as one of the series editors, suggested to us the possibility of publishing the papers presented at the workshop and who assisted us throughout the preparation of this volume. Kees Vaes, Patricia Leplae, and the staff at John Benjamins provided us with all the necessary help during the production process. The workshop and this volume were organized and prepared within the scope of the PIONIER project ‘Case Cross-linguistically’ at the Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands. We would like to express our gratitude to our fellow research team members Helen de Hoop, Monique Lamers, Sander Lestrade, Yang Ning, and Joost Zwarts for their support and we acknowledge the Netherlands Organisation of Scientific Research (NWO) for financial support [PIONIER Project ‘Case Cross-linguistically’ grant 220-70-003]. Special thanks are due to Sander Lestrade who provided us with last-minute assistance in preparing the final manuscript for publication.
xviii Introduction
During the preparation of this volume the deeply sad news reached us about the untimely death of Helma van den Berg. In June 2003 Helma actively participated in the workshop and presented her research on experiencer constructions in Daghestanian languages. She intended to write a contribution to the present volume but matters turned out differently. On 11 November 2003 she suffered a heart attack while working on a dictionary of the Dargi language in Derbent (Daghestan, Russia). Helma will be dearly missed.
Notes 1. We refer the reader to such (edited) volumes as Reuland (2000), de Hoop et al. (2001), Brandner and Zinsmeister (2003), Amberber and de Hoop (2005), dealing with case and case marking, Aikhenvald, Dixon and Onishi (2001), Bhaskararao and Subbarao (2004), specifically addressing issues of non-canonical case marking, Kulikov and Vater (1998), Dixon and Aikhenvald (2000b); Shibatani (2001), dealing with transitivity and valency-changing operations.
References Aikhenvald, A., Dixon, R. and Onishi, M. (eds). 2001. Non-canonical Marking of Subjects and Objects [Typological studies in languages, 46]. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Aissen, J. 2003. “Differential Object Marking: Iconicity vs. Economy”. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 21: 435–83. Amberber, M. and de Hoop, H. (eds). 2005. Competition and Variation in Natural Languages: the Case for Case. London and New York: Elsevier. Bhaskararao, P. and Subbarao, K.V. (eds). 2004. Non-nominative Subjects. Volume 1–2. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Blake, B. J. 2001. Case. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bossong, G. 1985. Differentielle Objectmarkierung in den Neuiranischen Sprachen. Tübingen: Narr. Brandner, E. and Zinsmeister, H. (eds). 2003. New Perspectives on Case Theory. Stanford: CSLI. Comrie, B. (1989). Language Universals and Linguistic Typology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Dixon, R. and Aikhenvald, A. 2000. “Introduction”. In Changing Valency: Case Studies in Transitivity, R. Dixon and A. Aikhenvald (eds), 1–29. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dixon, R. and Aikhenvald, A. (eds). 2000b. Changing Valency: Case Studies in Transitivity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dik, S. C. 1989. The Theory of Functional Grammar, 1. The Structure of the Clause [Functional Grammar Series 9]. Dordrecht: Foris Publications. de Hoop, H., Koeneman, O., Mulders, I. and Weerman, F. (eds). 2001. Effects of Morphological Case [Lingua 111, Special issue]. Hopper, P. J. and Thompson, S. A. 1980. “Transitivity in Grammar and Discourse”. Language 56: 251–99.
Introduction xix
Kulikov, L. and Vater, H. (eds). 1998. Typology of Verbal Categories. Papers Presented to Vladimir Nedjalkov on the Occasion of his 70th Birthday [Linguistische Arbeiten 382]. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Kozinskij, I. Š. 1980. “Nekotorye universal’nye osobennosti sistem sklonenija ličnyx mestoime nij” [Some universals in the declension of personal pronouns]. In Teorija i Tipologija Mestoimenij [Theory and Typology of Pronouns], I.F. Vardul’ (ed.), 50–62. Moscow: Nauka. Lazard, G. 2003. “Transitivity revisited as an example of a more strict approach to typological research”. Folia Linguistica XXXVI (3–4): 141–90. Nedjalkov, V. P. and Sil′nickij, G. G. 1969. “Tipologija morfologičeskogo i leksičeskogo kauzativov” [A typology of morphological and lexical causatives]. In Tipologija Kauzativnyx Konstrukcij: Morfologičeskij Kauzativ [A Typology of Causative Constructions. The Morphological Causative], A. A. Xolodovič (ed.), 20–50. Leningrad: Nauka. (Engl. transl. in: F. Kiefer (ed.). 1973. Trends in Soviet Theoretical Linguistics. Dordrecht: Reidel, 1–32). Reuland, E. (ed.). 2000. Arguments and Case: Explaining Burzio’s Generalization. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Shibatani, M. (ed.). 2001. The Grammar of Causation and Interpersonal Communication. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Silverstein, M. 1976. “Hierarchy of features and ergativity”. In Grammatical Categories in Australian Languages, R.M.W. Dixon (ed.), 112–71. Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies. Xrakovskij, V. S. 1981. “Diateza i referentnost’. Passivnye konstrukcii” [Diathesis and referentiality. Passive constructions]. In Zalogovye Konstrukcii v Raznostrukturnyx Jazykax [Voice constructions in the languages of different structural types], V. S. Xrakovskij (ed.). Leningrad: Nauka.
part 1
Morphological case
chapter 1
Syntactic vs. morphological case Implications for morphosyntax Andrew Spencer University of Essex
I discuss three instances in which it is necessary to separate the notion of ‘syntactic case’ (a property of phrasal nodes) from ‘morphological case’ (a property of word forms). Chukchee ergative case is expressed morphologically by either the locative or the instrumental, depending on inflectional class. Czech animate masculine nouns have a second distinct dative singular form found only at the right edge of a multiword NP. German noun inflection distinguishes only four of the eight case/number forms required in the syntax (and in the morphology of modifiers). I propose an analysis in terms of realization-based morphosyntax, in which a set of realization rules spells out the syntactic case features in terms of morphological features.
1. Introduction The marking of transitivity and valence relations is the principal syntactic function of case in case-marking languages. However, the notion of ‘case’ always has a dual character in that the case itself is expressed as a morphological form of a noun. In its syntactic function case is always a property of a phrasal (NP) node. Languages realize these syntactic case properties in various ways but in some languages there is a mismatch between the patterning of cases in the syntax and the patterning in the morphology. For instance, I shall argue that there may be case relations defined in the syntax for which there is no straightforward morphological correspondent. Case systems in general, therefore, raise interesting questions about the complexity of the syntax–morphology mapping. The paper is organized as follows. In section 2 I discuss the general question of syntactic and morphological features. In sections 3, 4, 5 I present three different examples of mismatch between syntactically and morphologically defined case. Chukchee has a syntactic ergative case whose morphological realization is either an instrumental or a locative form depending on declension class. Animate masculine Czech nouns have two distinct dative singular forms, one found only at the right edge of a multiword NP, the other found elsewhere. German nouns only distinguish four of the eight case/ number forms required in the syntax (and in the morphology of modifiers). I examine this depleted system by focussing on the realization of genitive case. In section 6 I sketch
Andrew Spencer
an analysis of these systems appealing to a model of realization-based morphosyntax, which conceives of case specification in terms of a set of realization rules spelling out syntactic case features in terms of morphological features. The final section presents brief conclusions.
2. Two types of morphosyntactic features The term ‘case’ canonically denotes an inflectional category of nouns which serves some grammatical function. We would not normally speak about a case system if the morphological case forms had, say, purely spatial meanings. Conversely, if we are using the term ‘case’ in a strict sense (outside that of principles and parameters syntax) cases identified in the syntax have to be realized by overt morphological forms (and not, say, by surface syntactic configurations or agreement patterns). The complex relationships between form and function are reflected in traditional terminology. Thus, Graeco-Latin practice (which has been imported into many other European descriptive traditions) has been to find arbitrary names for some kind of typical function or meaning of a case. However, this practice begs the question of whether the cases actually have a typical function or meaning, and if so what it is. The term ‘nominative’ refers to the use of a given form to ‘name’ a word, that is, to serve as the citation form, but it could just as easily be called the ‘subjective’ case or some such. Other traditions adopt other conventions. Thus, in the Dravidian native tradition cases are named after their (typical) suffix allomorphs (there are no inflectional classes in Dravidian languages). On the other hand, descriptive and pedagogic traditions such as those of Czech and Sanskrit recognize the arbitrariness of case naming conventions. Thus, Czech lists the seven cases in a set order and labels them with ordinals: ‘first case, second case’ and so on. (You have to know that accusative comes after dative and hence is ‘fifth case’.) In their own ways both the Dravidian and the Czech naming systems stress the independence of syntactic/semantic function from morphological form. However, they do so in such a way as to obscure the links between morphological organization and syntactic processes which appeal to case. Thus, case ‘agreement’, or rather multiple marking of case on modifiers, is a syntactic issue, as is case government by adpositions and so on. I shall propose a general solution to this conceptual problem which relies on a distinction between syntactically defined properties, or ‘syntactic features (s-features)’ and morphologically defined properties or ‘morphological features (m-features)’ (see Sadler and Spencer 2001). The idea is very simple. There are some morphological properties which never seem to have an import for syntax. Inflectional class membership and similar features are a case in point. These are properties whose sole function is to regulate the way that words are formed, that is, they are purely morphological properties. (Inflectional class must therefore be sharply distinguished from gender, which is a
Syntactic vs. morphological case
syntactic property.) Some grammatical properties, such as definiteness in English, are realized by particular grammatical words (function words). At the same time, a syntactically relevant property such as [Number: Plural] in English has two functions. On the one hand it regulates syntactic agreement processes which appeal to number marking. On the other hand, it regulates the forms of words, triggering suffixation of -(e)s or whatever. Whenever a syntactic feature is realized wholly or in part by morphological forms that feature will play a dual role. It’s important to realize that these roles are distinct. The evidence for this is mismatches between the two roles. Thus, number agreement in British English may ignore morphological marking, as is well known (The committee has/have decided …, Stravinsky’s ‘Requiem Canticles’ is/are being broadcast tonight); in a fair number of languages verbs take singular agreements with 3rd person plural non-pronominal subjects, and so on. What this means is that the mapping between syntactically used features and morphologically used features is not always trivial. In other words, we are really dealing with two types of feature here, even if the (usually) close connection between them makes it look as though there is only one feature (and even if, for this reason, descriptive tradition rarely distinguishes the two types). The dual function of features such as [Number] can be made explicit by typing. This would give us complex features of the kind [Number: {Yes, No}, Type: {syntactic, morphological}]. By default a feature is assumed to belong to both types. However, for English the feature [Definiteness] belongs solely to [Type: syntactic]. In an inflecting language such as Latin an inflectional class feature such as [Declension] belongs solely to [Type: morphological]. For notational simplicity I shall use the prefixes s-/m- respectively to denote syntactic and morphological features when it’s necessary to distinguish them. The dual nature of syntactic and morphological case is reflected principally in the fact that syntactic case features relate exclusively to phrasal nodes, while morphological case features relate exclusively to word-level nodes. In other words, being in a syntactic case is a property of a phrase, while being in a morphological case is a property of a word (specifically, a property of a word form of a lexeme). In those systems, or those parts of a system, in which the morphological case-marking system transparently reflects the syntactic case system the rules of morphosyntax will effectively be defined over a single type of feature, but this feature will be distributed over phrasal and lexical levels of syntactic structure. Consider a simple case such as Hungarian házakot ‘house.acc.pl’, as in the Hungarian equivalent of István builds houses. In the syntax this word will appear as the head of an NP marked with the feature [Case: Accusative], whose distribution is governed by syntactic case assignment rules. The principles of morphological exponence in Hungarian will state that this feature is then shared by the lexical head noun. At the same time the feature [Case: Accusative], interpreted this time as a morphological feature, defines a set of cells in the inflectional paradigm of nouns. Only a word bearing the appropriate [Case] feature can figure as the head of such an NP. (In languages with case agreement this will be equally true of modifiers — in Hungarian this, arguably, only applies to the demonstratives ez/az ‘this/that’).
Andrew Spencer
In Latin-type inflectional systems the syntactic feature [Case: Accusative] annotating an NP phrasal node will likewise be expressed on the lexical head of the phrase, but it will serve to regulate the inflectional rules only in conjunction with number and declension class features. Similar considerations will apply to the English possessive clitic. An NP such as the girl next door in the girl next door’s name can be marked as a possessor (say, with an arbitrary feature [Case: Genitive]). However, the morphosyntax of English stipulates that this feature is associated with the right edge of the NP, not the lexical head. How exactly this is implemented is tangential to current concerns (see Halpern 1995 for a specific suggestion which appeals to two distinct feature types). The [Case: Genitive] marking on the NP [the girl next door] realizes the possessor relationship between the girl next door and name. The [Case: Genitive] marking on door serves as the morphological trigger for affixation of -s. Note that a [Case] feature is only required in languages that realize grammatical relations through morphology. Thus, the direct object houses in István builds houses is not marked with any case feature because English lacks a case system other than in the possessive construction (and, possibly, personal pronouns).
3. Chukchee A number of authors have reported case systems in which there is a mismatch between the system of cases deployed in the syntax and the system of morphological cases. One instance which has been discussed in a number of places is the Finnish accusative (Ackerman and Moore 2001: chapter 4, Kiparsky 2001, Maling 1993). Non-pronominals lack a morphological accusative. Direct objects are marked with nominative, genitive or partitive depending on various complex conditions. Yet there is ample evidence that the syntax needs to refer to some notion such as ‘accusative nominal’. In Estonian the mismatch between morphology and syntax is even clearer in that pronouns, too, lack a morphological accusative (see Ackerman and Moore 2001 for detailed discussion). In this section I outline a less well-known instance of such mismatches from Chuk chee, a Chukotko-Kamchatkan language of NE Siberia. Skorik (1961) identifies three distinct declension classes: Declension 1: Non-humans. Plural identical to singular except in the absolutive; ergative identical to instrumental (but distinct from locative) Declension 2: Proper names, close kin. Plural distinct from singular; ergative identical to locative, no instrumental Declension 3: Human common nouns. This declension patterns optionally like declension 1 or declension 2, in the sense that this class of nouns has optional plural oblique case forms. Examples are shown in Tables 1a, b (Skorik 1961: 175, 186, 199, 403), including the pronouns
Syntactic vs. morphological case
Table 1a. Singular
Decl 1
3sg
Decl 2
Decl 3
absolutive instrumental Locative Ergative comitative I comitative II
‘bear’ kejŋə-n kejŋ-e kejŋə-k kejŋ-e ge-kejŋ-e ga-kajŋə-ma
pronoun ətlon – ən-ək ən-an g-ənə-ke g-ənə-g-ma
proper name Rintə-n – Rintə-ne Rintə-ne (Rintəne reen) (Rintəne reen)
‘friend’ tumgətum – tumgə-k tumg-e – ga-tomgə-ma
Table 1b. Plural
Decl 1
3pl
Decl 2
Decl 3
absolutive instrumental locative ergative comitative I comitative II
kejŋə-t kejŋ-e kejŋə-k kejŋ-e – ga-kajŋə-ma
ətri – ər-ək ərgən-an g-ərə-ke g-ərə-g-ma
Rintə-nti – Rintə-rək Rintə-rək (Rintərək reen) (Rintərək reen)
tumgə-t – tumgə-rək tumgə-rək – ga-tomgə-rə-ma
For all nominals except pronouns the comitative I is used in the singular only. An unfilled cell indicates that there is no form available in the paradigm (e.g. instrumental case of humans). The principal function of the locative is to express spatial position, and the instrumental of inanimate objects denotes instruments. However, both cases are grammaticalized, and can be used, for instance, to express the optional demoted object function in an antipassive construction (Comrie 1979). Chukchee syntax shows considerable evidence of ergative patterning (Comrie 1979). In particular, all transitive subjects (pronominal or otherwise) in all tense/aspect/mood forms have to appear in the ergative (and objects appear in the absolutive). Moreover, a transitive verb always shows agreement with its (ergative marked) subject. In addition, a number of syntactic processes target SO vs. A pivots. When a transitive verb appears in one of the two antipassive forms the direct object is demoted to an oblique case marked chômeur (or omitted) while the subject appears in the absolutive. A similar detransitivization is seen in noun incorporation of the direct object. Yet, as can be seen from the tables there is no dedicated ergative case. In declension 1 (common nouns) the ergative is syncretic with the instrumental while in declension 2 (‘high animacy’ nouns) the ergative is syncretic with the locative case. The instrumental and ergative are clearly distinct in function in declension 1 and can even co-occur (Dunn 1999: 113, Skorik 1961: 159), and, of course, it is not uncommon for the locative/ergative to co-occur with a genuine locative (in sentences of the form Rintən shot the seal on the ice floe).
Andrew Spencer
The obvious interpretation of this state of affairs is to say that there is a syntactic case ERGATIVE and a set of morphological cases which have their own canonical functions but which realize the syntactic ERGATIVE as well. Indeed, tacitly, at least, this is what is assumed in published discussions of Chukchee grammar. Nothing would be gained from assuming some kind of split case marking for subjects and mapping declension 1 transitive subjects to instrumental and declension 2 transitive subjects to locative. On the contrary, such a proposal would just mean that all the rules mapping subjects to case forms would have to be stated in the form of a disjunction: ‘instrumental or locative (for high animacy nouns)’. In addition matters are complicated by the fact that there are declension 3 nouns such as tumgətum ‘friend’ which pattern sometimes as declension 1 and sometimes as declension 2 depending on the extent to which the animacy of the referent is emphasized. This variation applies to demonstrative pronouns as well (Dunn 1999: 100). By assuming a syntactic ERGATIVE case we locate the variation where it belongs, in morphological realization, not in syntactic function. Patterning similar to that of Chukchee is reported for a variety of Australian languages. Chukchee represents a particularly clear-cut example of the phenomenon. This type of organization should not be unexpected. Languages often seem to have a choice of oblique or semantic cases from which to develop a morphological ergative case reflex of the syntactic ergative function. It shouldn’t come as a surprise to see a language which grammaticalizes different obliques depending on properties of the noun. But this just serves to emphasize the importance of distinguishing syntactic functional categories from the purely formal morphological categories. The Chukchee paradigms illustrate a further instance of the mismatch between syntactic and morphological case realization. Skorik describes two distinct comitative cases, each realized by a circumfixed form which includes the prefixal component ge-. (Dunn 1999: 116 refers to these as comitative and associative case.) Plural nouns seem not to have the comitative I case form. Proper nouns lack both comitative cases in both singular and plural, but the function of those cases is taken over by a postpositional construction with reen ‘with’. Here, then, we might argue on the grounds of paradigm symmetry that there is a comitative case cell but that it has to be filled periphrastically.
4. Czech Dative Czech distinguishes a dative case, used for recipient/benefactive arguments and complements to some prepositions such as k(u) ‘towards’, and a locative case, used exclusively with prepositions such as na ‘on’. Animate masculine gender nouns in Czech tend to have two dative case forms in -u/ovi in almost free variation (Short 1993: 466). In a number of noun classes the locative is syncretised with the dative in the singular. Heim (1982: 21, 43, 145) discusses an interesting aspect of the distribution of these variants, which suggests that the -u variant is the default dative and the -ovi is a form conditioned by fairly low level aspects of syntactic structure. In a multiword name (for in-
Syntactic vs. morphological case
stance, title + given name + surname), only the last word takes the -ovi ending, and the others take the -u suffix: Petrovi, o Petrovi ‘to Petr’, ‘about Petr’ but Petru Zemanovi ‘to Petr Zeman’, o Petru Zemanovi ‘about Petr Zeman’. Adjectives have a rather different declension pattern from nouns (the adjective endings derive historically from fusion with a cliticized determiner element). A number of surnames in Czech decline like adjectives. Name constituents preceding such surnames always take the -u suffix: panu Petru Pokornému ‘to Mr. Petr Pokorný’, o panu Petru Pokorném ‘about Mr. Petr Pokorný’. Finally, Czech has a set of possessive adjectives for persons. Unlike normal adjectives, the possessive forms decline exactly like nouns (except in the instrumental singular and oblique cases in the plural). For instance, we have Karlův ‘of Karel’ (e.g. Karlův most ‘Charles Bridge’, literally ‘Karel’s bridge’). However, unlike nouns, the possessive adjectives have no -ovi form for animate masculine singular dative/locative case. Rather, all such masculines take their dative singular in -u, and their locative singular in -ě: ku Karlovu mostu ‘to the Charles Bridge (dative)’, na Karlově mostě ‘on the Charles Bridge (locative)’. The Czech dative illustrates a situation in which the syntax needs to make appeal to a single case feature, dative, while the morphology has to subdivide the case array of certain classes of nouns so as to distinguish dative-u and dative -ovi. This then represents a mild mismatch between syntactic and morphological case arrays. Of interest is the fact that morphological case form selection depends on such a low level factor as linear position in the phrase. I now turn to a more remarkable instance of such a mismatch.
5. German Genitive 5.1 Forms Standard Literary German distinguishes four case forms morphologically. Each of them has a grammatical use, to express the grammatical relations of subject, object or possessor and to realize complements to certain verbs, prepositions and adjectives. The system is most clearly represented on determiners, for instance, the definite article. Table 2. Declension of definite article Nominative Accusative Genitive Dative
Masculine
Feminine
Neuter
Plural
der den des dem
die die der der
das das des dem
die die der den
Although there are various syncretisms here, it is clear that there are four distinctly marked cases. On the other hand lexical nouns make far fewer distinctions in case.
10
Andrew Spencer Table 3a. Declension of Tag ‘day’ Nominative Accusative Genitive Dative
Singular
Plural
Tag Tag Tag(e)s Tag(e)
Tage Tage Tage Tagen
Table 3b, Declension of Bach (proper name) Nominative Accusative Genitive Dative
Singular
Plural
Bach Bach Bachs Bach
Bachs Bachs Bachs Bachs
Table 3c. Declension of Mutter ‘mother’ Nominative Accusative Genitive Dative
Singular
Plural
Mutter Mutter Mutter Mutter
Mütter Mütter Mütter Müttern
Table 3d. Declension of Komponist ‘composer’ Nominative Accusative Genitive Dative
Singular
Plural
Komponist Komponisten Komponisten Komponisten
Komponisten Komponisten Komponisten Komponisten
Typical examples are shown in Tables 3a–d. In Tables 3a–c we see ‘strong’ nouns, while in Table 3d we see a ‘weak’ noun, which takes the ending -en in all forms except the nominative singular. In Table 3a, the dative singular in -e is archaic, so that in effect, Tag has only four forms. Here I concentrate on the expression of genitive case. As can be seen from the tables there is no dedicated genitive plural form, while the genitive singular is marked solely on masculine or neuter nouns (though feminine proper names and kin terms such as Anna and Mutti ‘mummy’ also have the -s genitive). There are a number of contexts in which the genitive case is required in the syntax. In (1–4) we see the genitive marked on pre- and post-nominal modifiers/possessors:
(1) a. Bach-s Konzerte ‘Bach’s concertos’ b. Annas Büchlein ‘Anna’s little book’
Syntactic vs. morphological case
c. das Büchlein der zweiten Frau Bachs the little.book the.fem.sg.gen second wife Bach.gen ‘the little book of Bach’s second wife’
(2) das Haus mein-es Bruder-s ‘the house my-masc.sg.gen brother-gen ‘my brother’s house’
(3) die Kantaten J S Bach-s the cantatas J S Bach-gen ‘the cantatas of J S Bach’
(4) der Besuch der alt-en Dame the visit the.fem.sg.gen old-en lady ‘the visit of the old lady’
However, as recent scholarship has made apparent, there are complex restrictions on the overt expression of genitive case on nouns.
5.2 Non-obligatory marking In multiword proper names only the final element inflects for genitive (5). Some prepositions select genitive case complements, but proper names never inflect for genitive after these prepositions (6). Finally, if a proper name is modified by an inflecting determiner or adjective then the head noun cannot inflect for genitive but appears instead in the basic (nominative singular) form (7a). However, a weak noun appears in its -en form (7b):
(5) a. die Kantaten Johann Sebastian Bachs ‘the cantatas of J S Bach’ b. die Kantaten Johanns
(6) statt Bach(*s). ‘instead of Bach.’
(7) a. b.
die Konzerte des jüngsten Bach(*s) ‘the concertos of the youngest Bach’ die Konzerte eines alten Komponisten ‘the concertos of an old composer’
The conditions on genitive marking crucially refer to the property ‘Proper Name’. Some proper names are homophonous with common nouns, and this can give rise to minimal pairs such as that shown in (8):
(8) a. das Schicksal des weltbekannten Zeppelin the fate the.gen famous Zeppelin ‘the fate of the famous (Count) Zeppelin’
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b. das Schicksal des weltbekannten Zeppelin-s the fate the.gen famous Zeppelin-gen ‘the fate of the famous Zeppelin (airship)’
5.3 Case-marking not sufficient — obligatory overt marking Schachtl (1989) and Gallmann (1990, 1996, 1998) have noted a number of other constraints on the patterning of case marking on nouns. The examples in this subsection are taken from their works. In the plural, nouns lack an unambiguous genitive form. Bare noun complements in genitive case contexts are unacceptable (9a) and require a case marked modifier of some sort (9b):
(9) a. *die Aussagen Zeugen the statements of.witnesses b. OK die Aussagen dieser Zeugen the statements of this.gen.pl witnesses ‘the statements of these witnesses’
No such modification is required in nominative or accusative case contexts.1 Interestingly, even an unambiguously genitive case-marked noun form isn’t always sufficient to guarantee acceptability: (10) a. *Er bedarf Zuspruch-es he needs consolation-gen.sg ‘He needs consolation’ b. OK Er bedarf unser-es Zuspruch-es he needs our-gen.sg consolation-gen.sg ‘He needs our consolation’ In (10) the form Zuspruches is unambiguously genitive and singular but the form can’t be used as a genitive complement in isolation. In (10b) the modifier is also unambiguously (masculine/neuter) genitive singular, but that is not true of the modifier in (11b) below: (11) a. b.
die Verarbeitung des Holz-es the preparation the.masc.gen.sg wood-gen ‘the preparation of the wood’ die Verarbeitung tropisch-en Holzes the preparation tropical-en wood-gen ‘the preparation of tropical wood’
The form tropischen could appear in almost any cell of the paradigm, depending on whether there is a definite determiner somewhere in the dp, and thus it can’t by any stretch of the imagination be said to uniquely determine the (already uniquely deter-
Syntactic vs. morphological case
mined) head noun. On the other hand, there has to be some modifier and that modifier has to inflect. In (12) we see that an indeclinable modifier, prima ‘fine’, is as bad as no modifier at all: (12) *die Verarbeitung (prima) Holz-es the preparation fine.indecl wood-gen To complicate matters somewhat, an indeclinable modifier such as rosa ‘pink’ is acceptable provided it is accompanied by a declinable modifier (13a), but the declinable modifier must precede the indeclinable (13b): (13) a. das Tragen gestreift-er, rosa Kravatte-n the wearing striped-pl.gen pink tie-pl ‘the wearing of striped, pink ties’ b. *das Tragen rosa, gestreift-er Kravatte-n the wearing pink striped-pl.gen tie-pl
6. Case and case realization: Paradigm-based realizational lexicalism 6.1 Introduction The case systems surveyed in sections 3–5 illustrate in various ways the independence of morphological realization from syntactic case function. In Chukchee we have a case function which can be clearly delineated in the syntax but which has no unique morphological realization. In certain Czech nouns the precise form of the dative singular depends on surface linear position or some similarly ‘low-level’ syntactic property. The syntactic dative case thus corresponds to two morphological dative cases, which are in part in free variation and in part exhibit a syntactically-conditioned type of allomorphy. For these nouns, then, we must ask not what the morphological realization of syntactic dative is, but rather what the default realization is and what the conditioned realization is. Finally, in German the case system for lexical nouns is breaking down, so that the genitive case function is realized sometimes by an overt genitive case form, but more often than not by a default form (which may or may not be identical to the nominative singular). As in Chukchee and Czech, we find more than one form realizing a given syntactic case, though in the case of German it’s probably better to say that in certain syntactic contexts there is, in effect, no morphological realization of case, and instead a default (unmarked, unmarkiert) realization is invoked. In the next subsections I briefly sketch an analysis of these three systems appealing to the notion of paradigm-based lexicalism (Blevins 2001). I will not couch these analyses in any specific grammatical framework, but rather will paint a general picture that can be formalized in a variety of ways. (A sketch of an approach to the German data can be found in Spencer 2003, to appear). The leading idea of this paradigm-based approach to case realization is that there are at least two levels of structure, a syntactic
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level, which includes a specification of syntactic case on case-bearing noun phrases, and a morphological (or morphosyntactic) level, which specifies the morphological form of the individual words corresponding to syntactic terminals in the syntactic representation. For simplicity I shall refer to these as the ‘syntactic representation’ (s-representation) and the ‘morphosyntactic representation’ (ms-representation) respectively. The precise morphological form of words in the ms-representation is a function of the set of syntactic properties (including possibly configurational properties such as immediate constituenthood and linear order). The relationship between syntactic case and its realization is governed by realization rules which map a complete s-representation of the phrase or clause to its corresponding ms-representation. The realization rules are functions which map s-representations to ms-representations. They are regulated by the Elsewhere Principle: if two rules can apply to a given representation and are in competition then the most specific rule pre-empts the less specific (where specificity can, in principle at least, be computed directly over featural definitions of the s‑representations). Of course, the default realization of, say, [s-Case: Abs] is [m-Case: Abs]. We can readily capture this by assuming that, by default, we have a single case feature which can be indexed or typed: s/m-Case: Abs. The general default is then that s–F ⇒ m–F for any attribute-value pair F.
6.2 Chukchee For Chukchee, in addition to the relatively straightforward absolutive we need to distinguish at least the following five syntactic cases: ergative, instrumental, locative, comitative I, comitative II. However, corresponding to these five will be four morphological cases (m-case): instrumental, locative, comitative I, comitative II. The morphosyntactic realization of the relevant syntactic cases is shown in Table 4. The Chukchee situation demonstrates that the s-case to m-case mapping needs to be sensitive first and foremost to declension class. The correspondences in Table 4 illustrate special cases which override the general default. Notice that something has to be said about the way in which a postpositional phrase (i.e. a chunk of syntactic structure) can function as a morphological realization of s-case. (See Ackerman and Stump 2004, and Sadler and Spencer 2001 for general discussion of this question.) In Chukchee, then, a transitive subject NP is annotated case ergative. The morphosyntax of Chukchee demands that the lexical head be marked with the same feature. However, this feature cannot serve as the input to any realization rule in Chukchee morphology, because Chukchee nouns lack ergative case forms. Instead, the mapping is achieved by reference to the correspondences in Table 4. This analysis works equally well for personal pronouns. These have a form which could well be labelled ‘ergative’. This form is distinct from the locative, and it is used canonically for transitive subjects. Since personal pronouns are not used with an instrumental meaning, it might appear odd to call this case ‘instrumental’. However, this is misleading. The labels given to case
Syntactic vs. morphological case
Table 4. s-case and m-case correspondences Syntactic case
Morphological case
erg
Decl 1: instrumental Decl 2: locative
instr
Decl 1: instrumental Decl 2/3: not defined
com I
Decl 1/3: comitative I Decl 2: locative + reen
com II
Decl 1/3: comitative II Decl 2: locative + reen
features are entirely arbitrary (we could just as well assign them integers). Suppose we label the (syntactic) cases of Chukchee in this manner: absolutive ergative instrumental locative etc.
case 1 case 2 case 3 case 4
Then the claim is that the morphological system of Chukchee lacks case 2 forms. The noun paradigms are therefore defined in terms of the following cases: absolutive instrumental locative etc.
case 1 case 3 case 4
We can therefore re-write Tables 1a, b as Tables 5a, b. Table 5a. Partial Chukchee noun paradigm with integer case labels Sing
Decl 1
3sg
Decl 2
Decl 3
1 3 4
‘bear’ kejŋə-n kejŋ-e kejŋə-k
Pronoun ətlon ən-an ən-ək
proper name Rintə-n – Rintə-ne
‘friend’ tumgətum tumg-e tumgə-k
Table 5b. Plural
Decl 1
3pl
Decl 2
Decl 3
1 3 4
kejŋə-t kejŋ-e kejŋə-k
ətri ərgən-an ər-ək
Rintə-nti – Rintə-rək
tumgə-t – tumgə-rək
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The relevant correspondence rules are now shown in Table 6. Table 6. s-case and m-case correspondences Syntactic case
Morphological case
case 2
Decl 1, 3sg, pronouns: case 3 Decl 2, 3pl: case 4
case 3
Decl 1: case 3 Decl 2/3, pronouns: not defined
It should now be clear that nowhere in the morphological paradigm of a Chukchee nominal is there a dedicated ‘ergative case’ form.
6.3 Czech dative The Czech dative represents a different sort of mismatch between syntactic and morphological case. Here we need to furnish the paradigm of a subset of nouns with two [m-case: dative] cells. However, since morphological form is just that, morphological form, there is nothing to prevent us from doing this. Let’s assume then that the [m-case: dative] feature itself has two subfeatures: [m-case: dative [{1, 2}]]. This enriched feature representation labels a dative1 and a dative2 case. Where there is free variation between the two forms we can assume that the mapping rules appeal solely to the (underspecified) attribute-value pair [m-case: dative]. However, we also need to define a mapping from the linearized phrase structure representation telling us how to inflect the components of a multiword noun phrase marked [s-case: dative]. That mapping needs to be able to define a multiword phrase and identify its right edge. The rule then says that, for nouns of a certain inflectional class, the morphosyntactic correspondent of the rightmost syntactic terminal of the phrase is realized by [m-case: dative [2]] (i.e. the -ovi form), while noun correspondents of other terminals are realized by [m-case: dative [1]] (i.e. the -u form). The details of how this is done will depend on the precise architecture of the morphosyntactic framework, so I shall not try to present a fully articulated account. However, the basic idea should be clear.
6.4 German genitive I discuss the analysis of the German genitive in some detail in Spencer (to appear) (Certain crucial aspects of the analysis owe something to Gallmann 1998, 2004 Müller 2002.) The central idea is that nouns have a degenerate paradigm compared to adjectives and determiners. Thus, although the mapping from s-case to m-case for determiners is relatively straightforward the corresponding mapping for lexical nouns is rather complex and subject to a whole host of rather idiosyncratic constraints and codicils.
Syntactic vs. morphological case
Adjectives inflect in two ways, showing the so-called ‘weak inflection’ after definite determiners, and the so-called ‘strong inflection’ in most other cases (there is also a ‘mixed inflection’). I shall not discuss adjectival inflection in this paper. As far as I can tell the ‘strong/weak’ declension property is essentially orthogonal to the specific claims being advanced here about case assignment.
6.4.1
Morphological forms
For the determiners and adjectives, which reflect syntactic cases, numbers and genders in a reasonably transparent fashion, we can assume the standard paradigm structure, with four m-cases and two m-numbers in simple correspondence with syntactic case/number features. However, although standard accounts treat nouns as also having complete paradigms, this is not how they actually pattern. If we lump together strong and weak nouns then we find the following forms are distinguished: (14) a. b. c. d. e.
{nominative, accusative, genitive} plural {accusative, dative} singular dative plural genitive singular nominative singular
From (14) it is apparent that: – No noun distinguishes non-dative cases in the plural; – No noun distinguishes accusative/dative case in the singular.2 Working from form to content, then, rather than assuming an eight-cell paradigm, we find the two types of declension shown in (15): (15) Strong nouns [Class: Strong] [Gender: Masculine] (Base) [Number: Plural] [Number: Singular, Case: Genitive] [Number: Plural, Case: Dative]
Mann ‘man’ Mann Männer Mannes Männern
Strong nouns [Class: Strong] [Gender: Feminine] (Base) [Number: Plural] [Number: Plural, Case: Dative]
Stadt ‘town’ Stadt Städte Städten
Weak nouns [Class: Weak] [Number: Singular, Case: Nominative] (Base)
Student ‘student’ Student Studenten
Interestingly, these generalizations are not true of all substantives in German, because adjectives can be converted to nouns (especially where these denote people) in which case the converted form realizes case and number in exactly the manner of an adjective,
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even preserving the strong–weak distinction.3 While of great interest in itself, this phenomenon is not directly relevant to the points being made here. Needless to say, if we were to include substantivized adjectives in our description it would simply serve to emphasize the mismatch between syntactic properties and morphological properties. The depleted paradigm for strong nouns now includes only three inflected forms, including two portmanteau case/number forms, genitive singular and dative plural. Moreover, not all nouns have the genitive singular form.
6.4.2
Syntax–morphology mapping
As can be appreciated from the description already given the mapping between s-representations and m-representations for German nouns is somewhat complex and full of ad hoc and stipulative conditions. However, given the m-representations shown in (18) together with the general principle under which a syntactic feature maps to the corresponding morphological feature (with the Base form being the default), we have already accounted for the basic patterns. Consider first the masculine/neuter strong nouns. Any N terminal of a phrase marked [Number: Singular, Case: Genitive] will be mapped to the genitive singular form. However, feminine nouns lack a genitive singular form (with the exception of certain names and kin terms) so the genitive singular feature set will map to the base form for such nouns. Similarly, the morphological correspondent of a dative plural marked terminal will be realized as the dative plural form (gender is irrelevant in the plural). Such forms will not, however, be mapped to the non-dative plural form, because the dative plural form is more specific than the general plural. Plural phrases in any other case will have their terminals mapped to the default plural form. All other nouns will appear in the base form (i.e. all singular forms for feminine nouns and all non-genitive forms for masculine/neuter nouns). For weak nouns the mappings are somewhat different. Here, only the N head of a nominative singular phrase is mapped to a specified form. All other nouns are mapped to the -en form, which therefore serves as the base or default form with respect to syntax–morphology mapping. The -en form therefore doesn’t explicitly realize any set of morphosyntactic features. As we have seen, there are exception clauses to the general mapping principles for proper names after prepositions and nouns: (16) Except where a noun Ni is in the context a, b, or c and the correspondent of Ni bears the feature [Type: Proper]: a. [P [ …[Ni CASE gen, NUM sg]]] b. [dp D [ …[Ni CASE gen, NUM sg]]], D not phonologically null c. [ …[Ni CASE gen, NUM sg] [N CASE gen, NUM sg]] then the standard mapping principle applies Under conditions (16a — c) the standard principle cannot apply, therefore, and so the noun defaults to the base form. In order to state some of the generalizations it’s necessary to distinguish elements which are overtly inflected for genitive case.
Syntactic vs. morphological case
(17) A word form is ‘overtly inflected as [Case: Genitive]’ iff it bears the feature [Case: Genitive] and it is a member of the determiner class or – it is an adjective and bears the feature [Class: Strong] or – it is a noun Given these definitions we can understand the facts of (18) (from Gallmann 1990: 269): (18) a. der Traum jedes Schüler-s the dream every-masc.sg.gen schoolboy-gen b. der Traum jed-en Schüler-s the dream every-en schoolboy-gen ‘the dream of every schoolboy’ c. der Traum jed-es Student-en the dream every-masc.sg.gen student-en d. *der Traum jed-en Student-en the dream every-en student-en A genitive complement to a noun must be overtly marked for case. The set of data in (26) illustrates a peculiarity of the adjectival jeder ‘every’, namely, that it can take either the strong or the weak declension in certain contexts. In (26b) the noun Schülers is overtly marked as [Case: Genitive], while in (26c) the strong adjective form jedes is overtly marked. In (26a) both forms are marked overtly. However, in (26d) we see the weak declension of jeder with a weak noun in the -en form. Since the -en form is effectively a default form and doesn’t bear any case/number features at all it can’t serve as an overt realization of syntactic genitive case. Therefore, neither element of the noun phrase is overtly marked and the expression is ungrammatical.
7. Conclusions The central claim of this paper is that there are two aspects to case in case-marking languages. On the one hand, case features assigned in the syntax and copied by agreement rules and so on are properties of phrasal nodes. On the other hand, case features are also properties of specified terminals in case marked phrases, either lexical heads or phrase edges. As such, they regulate word formation by triggering affixation and other morphological rules. These two notions of ‘case’ are conceptually distinct entities as shown by cases of mismatch: in Chukchee the realization of syntactic ergative case is distributed across two other morphological cases. In Czech certain classes of dative marked nouns in certain positions in the NP are realized as a special morphological subtype of dative, which has no other reflex in the syntax of the language. In German, the morphological realization of nouns in genitive marked syntactic contexts is
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articularly complex and cannot be understood unless we decouple syntactic and morp phological case labels.
Acknowledgements This work was undertaken as part of a Senior Research Fellowship from the British Academy/ Leverhulme Trust. I am very grateful to both bodies for their support. I thank Werner Abraham and Sonja Eisenbeiss, who have made very helpful comments on earlier versions of this work and two anonymous referees for useful suggestions.
Notes 1. Gallman also discusses a number of unexpected constructions in the use of the dative case, though that case is rather more well-behaved than the genitive. 2. With the well-known exception of Herz ‘heart’, dative sg. Herzen, genitive sg. Herzens (Hammer 1971: 21). 3. See Spencer (2002) for demonstration that adjectives converted to nouns in this way really are nouns and not adjectives which modify null heads.`
References Ackerman, F. and Moore, J. 2001. Proto-properties and Grammatical Encoding: A Correspondence Theory of Argument Selection. Stanford University: Center for the Study of Language and Information. Ackerman, F. and Stump, G. 2004. “Paradigms and periphrastic expression: A study in realization-based lexicalism”. In Projecting Morphology, L. Sadler and A. Spencer (eds), 111–58. Stanford University: Center for the Study of Language and Information. Blevins, J. P. 2001. “Realisation-based lexicalism [Review of F. Ackerman & G. Webelhuth, A Theory of Predicates]”. Journal of Linguistics 37: 355–65. Comrie, B. 1979. “Degrees of ergativity: Some Chukchee evidence”. In Ergativity: Towards a Theory of Grammatical Relations, F. Plank (ed.), 219–40. London: Academic Press. Dunn, M. 1999. A Grammar of Chukchi. PhD dissertation, Australian National University. Gallmann, P. 1990. Kategoriell Komplexe Wortformen. Das Zusammanwirken von Morphologie und Syntax bei der Flexion von Nomen und Adjektiv. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag. Gallmann, P. 1996. “Die Steuerung der Flexion in der dp”. Linguistische Berichte 164: 283–314. Gallmann, P. 1998. “Case underspecification in morphology, syntax and the lexicon”. In Possessors, Predicates and Movement in the Determiner Phrase, A. Alexiadou and C. Wilder (eds), 141–76. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Gallmann, P. 2004. “Feature sharing in dp”. In Explorations in Nominal Inflection, L. Gunkel, G. Müller and G. Zifonun (eds), 121–60. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Halpern, A. L. 1995. On the Placement and Morphology of Clitics. Stanford University: Center for the Study of Language and Information.
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Hammer, A. E. 1971. German Grammar and Usage. London: Edward Arnold. Heim, M. 1982. Contemporary Czech. Columbus, OH: Slavica. Kiparsky, P. 2001. “Structural case in Finnish”. In Effects of Morphological Case [Lingua, special issue 111], H. de Hoop, O. Koeneman, I. Mulders and F. Weerman (eds), 315–76. Maling, J. 1993. “Of nominative and accusative: The hierarchical assignment of grammatical cases in Finnish”. In Case and Other Functional Categories in Finnish Syntax, A. Holmberg and U. Nikanne (eds), 49–74. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Müller, G. 2002. “Remarks on nominal inflection in German”. In More than Words: A Festschrift for Dieter Wunderlich, I. Kaufmann and B. Stiebels (eds), 113–45. Berlin: Akademie Verlag. Sadler, L. and Spencer, A. 2001. “Syntax as an exponent of morphological features”. In Yearbook of Morphology 2000, G. Booij and J. van Marle (eds), 71–96. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Schachtl, S. 1989. “Morphological case and abstract case: Evidence from the German genitive construction”. In Syntactic Phrase Structure Phenomena in Noun Phrases and Sentences, C. Bhatt, E. Löbel and C. Schmidt (eds), 99–111. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Short, D. 1993. “Czech”. In The Slavonic Languages, B. Comrie and G. Corbett (eds), 455–533. London: Routledge. Skorik, P.Ja. 1961. Grammatika Čukotskogo Jazyka, Tom 1 [A Grammar of Chukchee, Vol. 1]. Leningrad: Nauka. Spencer, A. 2002. “Gender as an inflectional category”. Journal of Linguistics 38: 279–312. Spencer, A. 2003. “A realizational approach to case”. In Proceedings of the LFG03 Conference, M. Butt and T. Holloway King (eds), 387–401. University at Albany, State University of New York. (http://csli-publications.stanford.edu). Spencer, A. (to appear) “Paradigm-based morphosyntax: The German genitive”. In On Inflection. In Memory of Wolfgang U. Wurzel, A. Bittner, F. Plank, and P. Steinkrüger (eds). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
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chapter 2
Case systems in a diachronic perspective A typological sketch Leonid Kulikov Leiden University
The present paper offers a cross-linguistic survey of the main types of possible developments in case systems. In Section 2 I will focus on the main mechanisms of the rise of new cases and expansion of case systems (case-increasing). Section 3 will deal with the loss of cases and decay of case systems (case-reducing). In Section 4 I will discuss some processes within case systems which do not lead to quantitative changes but help to resist phonetic erosion (stable case systems). On the basis of this diachronic typological overview, I will outline in Section 5 a tentative classification of the evolutionary types of languages from the point of view of case systems. It will be argued that one of the main factors determining the evolutionary type of a language is the areal (rather than genetic) relationship.
1. Introduction The present paper offers a cross-linguistic survey of the main types of possible developments in case systems. In Section 2 I will focus on the main mechanisms of the rise of new cases and expansion of case systems (case-increasing). Section 3 will deal with the loss of cases and decay of case systems (case-reducing). In Section 4 I will discuss some processes within case systems which do not lead to quantitative changes but help to resist phonetic erosion (stable case systems). On the basis of this diachronic typological overview, I will outline in Section 5 a tentative classification of the evolutionary types of languages from the point of view of case systems.
2. Rise of cases and expansion of case systems: sources and mechanisms 2.1 Adpositions and adverbs Most often, new case-markers (and, accordingly, new cases) are recruited from postpositions and prepositions1 (for which I use the cover term ‘adpositions’) or other semiauxiliary adverbial words with similar semantics.2 Thus, in Harris and Campbell’s
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(1995: 89) formulation, ‘[c]ases develop from postpositions when the postposition is felt to be so closely connected to its attribute noun that together they are reinterpreted as one word; semantic and morphophonemic changes (e.g. vowel harmony) often take place which conceal the word boundary and change the status of elements, resulting in new case suffixes.’ This source of new case markers is well-known from historical linguistics, studies on case and grammaticalization (see, for instance, Kahr 1976; Lehmann 1995: 80ff.; Blake 2001: 161ff.) and hardly requires a long discussion. It will suffice to give a few examples of the rise of new cases, illustrating the mechanism in question by the evolution of the Indo-Aryan case systems and by the history of locative cases in (Old) Lithuanian.
2.1.1 New Indo-Aryan languages: new cases from postpositional phrases and nominal compounds
By the end of the Middle Indo-Aryan (mia) period, that is, at the turn of the 2nd millennium ad, the Indo-Aryan languages have lost most of the cases of the original Sanskrit, or Old Indo-Aryan (oia), system of eight cases3 (which, except for minor details, is nearly identical to the case system reconstructed for Proto-Indo-European). Generally, only two cases survive, Direct (resulting from the merger of nominative and accusative) and Oblique (mostly going back to the Old Indo-Aryan genitive), although in some languages isolated traces of some other oblique cases, such as instrumental, locative or ablative, can still be found, sometimes even within the declension paradigm; cf. the Sinhala instrumental case suffix -en/-in and Assamese ergative -e, both reflecting the oia instrumental singular ending of a-stems ‑ena. The functions of the lost cases are largely taken over by morphemes (bound or free, i.e. postfixes or postpositions) of different origin, many of which occur in this usage already in oia (Sanskrit), where they supplement the inventory of case-markers. These Indo-Aryan morphemes can be of different grammatical types according to the type of their source:
(i) First of all, in oia we find primary, or ‘old’, postpositions; they go back to ProtoIndo-European morphemes which were used in the adpositional function already in the proto-language. An example of an old oia postposition reflected as a case suffix in a daughter language, in Middle Indo-Aryan, is the Māhārāṣṭrī ablative suffix -āhi < Skt. postposition adhi (constructed with the ablative in oia); see Insler 1991–92; Bubeník 1998: 68f. Next to old postpositions, there are several markers which result from grammaticalization of some verbal and nominal forms. The grammatical types of these secondary postfixes and postpositions (which may eventually yield case markers) include: (ii) Postpositions descendant from a. non-finite verbal forms, in particular, converbs, traditionally called ‘absolutives’, or ‘gerunds’ (cf. Skt. ādāya ‘with’, lit. ‘having taken’); gerundives (parti-
Case systems in a diachronic perspective
cipia necessitatis, cf. Skt. kārya- ‘to be done’ in (4)); and verbal adjectives (cf. Skt. kr̥ ta- ‘done, made’ in (4)); b. case forms of some nouns (cf. Skt. madhye ‘in the middle’ in (2)); (iii) Final members of compounds, which, again, may represent a. non-finite verbal forms (cf. -gŕ̥ hya-formations in (1) and nominal compounds in -sthita- in (2)) or b. nominal case forms (cf. nominal compounds in -artham ‘goal, purpose’ in (3)). The markers of the first three types (i, ii.a and ii.b), representing free morphemes (words), were originally attached to (non-nominative) case forms of the noun, thus forming, after having become bound morphemes, the second layer of case forms (see below). In type (iii), the source of the new case morpheme was attached to the nominal stem, thus creating a new case within the first layer. It is worth mentioning that, due to the erosion of the nominal inflexion by the end of the mia period, some (oblique) case forms may eventually become indistinguishable from bare stems, and thus the border between types (ii) and (iii) cannot always be drawn with accuracy. Such grammaticalization processes can be traced as far back as Old and Middle IndoAryan,4 and the embryonic cases of the above-described types can be found already at the earliest documented stage of oia, in (early) Vedic. Thus, in early Vedic, that is, foremost, in the language of the R̥ gveda (RV), the most ancient Vedic (and Indo-Aryan) text (around the 2nd half of the 2nd millennium bc), we encounter a few examples of compounds based on the converb of the verb gr̥ h ‘grasp’.5 These include:
(1) a. b. c.
(RV 8.70.15) karṇa-gŕ̥ hya ear-grasp:conv ‘(having grasped) by the ear’ (RV 4.18.12, 10.27.4) pāda-gŕ̥ hya foot-grasp:conv ‘(having grasped) by the foot’ (RV 10.85.26) pūṣa tvā itó nayatu hasta-gŕ̥ hya Pūṣan you:acc from.here lead:3sg.impv hand-grasp:conv ‘Let Pūṣan (a deity) lead you from here by the hand.’
Note that the -gŕ̥ hya-formations do not give rise to a new case: in middle Vedic and post-Vedic Sanskrit we find no continuation of this morphological type. Apparently, this proto-case was unable to gain a place within the nominal paradigm, thus turning out to be a dead-end formation, from the point of view of the diachronic typology of case systems.
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A number of examples of the grammaticalization of new cases (or quasi-cases) can be found in the mia period, in particular, in Apabhraṃśa Prakrits, cf.:
(2) Apabhraṃśa Prakrits (Bubeník 1998: 67, 80) a. abl. -ṭṭhiu (as in hiaya-ṭṭhiu ‘out of [my] heart’) < oia sthita- ‘standing’ (passive perfect participle of the verb sthā ‘stand’) b. loc. majjhe < Skt. madhye (Loc.sg. of madhya ‘middle’), e.g. in gharaho majjhe house:gen in ‘in the house’
In New Indo-Aryan languages we observe a rapid increase in use and grammaticalization of such new postpositions, which are normally added to the Oblique case form. This grammaticalization may result in the amalgamation of a postposition with the nominal stem or Oblique case and, hence, in the rise of a new case. Such is, for instance, the origin of some new case endings:
(3) a. Sinhala dat. -ṭa, Khowar dat. -te < Skt. -artham ‘goal, purpose’; b. Sinhala gen. -ge < Skt. gr̥ he ‘in the house’ (Loc.sg. of gr̥ ha- ‘house’)
A bulk of markers of genitive and dative containing k- and/or r-, most of which go back to nominal derivatives of the Old Indo-Aryan verbal root kr̥ - (kar-) ‘make, do’, can be found in several New Indo-Aryan languages, cf.:
(4) New Indo-Aryan genitive a. Hindi -kā, -ke (< Apabhr. -kera) < Skt. gerundive kārya- ‘to be done’; b. Awadhi, Maithili -ker < Skt. part.pf.pass. kr̥ ta- ‘done, made’; < Skt. adj. kr̥ tya- ‘to be done’. c. Bhojpuri -kæ
Likewise, some dative k-morphemes, such as Hindi -ko, Oriya -ku, Marathi ‑kē, Romani -ke/-ge undoubtedly reveal a vestige of the same Sanskrit root kr̥ - (kar-). The initial stages of the corresponding grammaticalization processes can be dated as early as Old Indo-Aryan. Thus, the starting point of the grammaticalization path of Skt. -artha ‘goal, purpose’ towards the Sinhala dative case suffix -ṭa (see (3) above) is the adverbial usage of the accusative of the Sanskrit bahuvrīhi compounds in -artha(X-artham), meaning ‘having X as a goal, purpose’ → ‘for (the sake of) X’: udakārtham ‘having water as a goal’ → ‘for water’, sukhārtham ‘having happiness, pleasure as a goal’ → ‘for happiness, for pleasure’, tadartham ‘having that as a goal’ → ‘for that, therefore’. A detailed chronological analysis of the major turning points in the corresponding grammaticalization scenarios, particularly on the basis of evidence from a variety of mia and (early) nia dialects remains a desideratum. In nia languages, the morphological status of the resulting markers may vary from bound morphemes (case suffixes), tightly connected with the nominal stem (cf. the Sinhala case markers mentioned in (3)), to free morphemes (postpositions). The latter
Case systems in a diachronic perspective
type can be illustrated by the Hindi dative-accusative morpheme -ko that can be shared in some constructions by several nouns (as in rām aur mohan ko ‘to Ram and Mohan’), exemplifying a ‘Gruppenflexion’, which pleads for a postposition rather than for a suffix analysis. There are also some intermediary instances, where it is quite difficult to draw a clear-cut border between bound and free case markers. In the modern indological literature (as well in some other linguistic traditions) the difference between these groups of case (or case-like) markers and postpositions is described in terms of the distinction between cases of the first, second and third layers (Zograf 1976; Masica 1991: 230ff.; Matras 1997). The first layer corresponds to the case in the strict sense of the term and, in Hindi, is limited to the opposition between the direct and oblique cases. The third layer corresponds to clear instances of postpositional phrases, while the second one takes an intermediary position between cases proper and postpositional phrases. It is important to note that only the first layer case can trigger agreement on adjectives. Although both ‘Gruppenflexion’ and the lack of agreement with second layer cases appear to distinguish these morphemes from cases proper, the high degree of grammaticalization makes appropriate their association with the category of case in general.
2.1.2
New locative cases in Old Lithuanian
Similar mechanisms for creating new cases have been used in Old Lithuanian, resulting in a sub-system of locative cases, which is not preserved in the modern literary language6 but can still be found in some archaic dialects, spoken, in particular, in Belarus (for details, see e.g. Ambrazas et al. 1985: 90 = 1997: 106; Mathiassen 1996: 38; Zinkevičius 1996: 112f.). Most of the Lithuanian cases can be traced back to the ProtoIndo-European case system. In addition, we find three new locatives: illative, adessive and allative, made by attaching the postposition (?) *nā˘ to the accusative form in ‑n (with the subsequent degemination of ‑n-n-) and the postposition *piẽ (< Proto-Balt. *prei) to the locative and genitive, respectively. In fact, the only locative which is present in the modern literary Lithuanian case system, ‘inessive’, is a new case as well (made by adding the new postposition *en to the old locative), replacing the old locative inherited from Proto-Indo-European (which only survives in some adverbials such as nam-iẽ ‘at home’). The resulting case system (as attested in Old Lithuanian and in some Southern and Eastern archaic dialects) is summarized in Figure 1 (see p. 28).
2.2 Multilayer case marking New cases (usually, new locatives) can also be created by adding existing case‑markers to some case forms or to adverbials with case-like semantics, which results in multilayer case marking. Such mechanism has given rise to the rich system of locative cases in Finnish (probably already by the Proto-Finnic period), as well as in some other Finno-Ugric (FU) languages (see e.g. Hakulinen 1961: 67ff.). Although the documented history of the FU
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Nom. mìšk-as ‘forest’ Acc. mìšk-ą (< *-am) Gen. mìšk-o mìšk-ui Dat. mišk-ù Instr. (new) Loc. Voc. mìšk-e *mišk-iẽ) (old Loc.
mišk-è (< *mišk-ę´ < *-oi + (H)en)
mišk-anà (mišk-añ) (< *-am + na) ‘into the forest’ mišk-ópi (-óp) (< *-o + piẽ) ‘to(wards) the forest’ mišk-íepi (-íep) (< *-iẽ + piẽ) ‘into the forest’
Illative Allative Adessive Figure 1.
languages counts ‘as few as’ about five hundred years and we cannot directly observe the rise of new cases (as in Indo-Aryan), most of the Finno-Ugric case-markers are morphologically transparent and their sources can readily be reconstructed. Thus, only one third of the fifteen cases of modern Finnish (which can all be traced back to the Proto-Finnic period) can be reconstructed to Proto-Finno-Ugric (pfu), or Proto-Uralic, as the comparison with other Finno-Ugric languages shows. Some others have been developed during or after the Proto-Volga-Finnic (pvf) period. Specifically,
Finnish
Nom. Acc. Gen. Essive Partitive Translative
-ø -n -n -na/-nä -ta/-tä, -a/-ä -ksi
pf
< < < < < *-k-s-e <
Internal locative cases Inessive -ssa/-ssä < Elative -sta/-stä < Illative -hVn, -–n, -seen < *-seń, -zeń External locative cases -lla/-llä -lta/-ltä -lle(´)
pvf
*-s-na/-s-nä *-s-ta/-s-tä
Adessive Ablative Allative
< *-l-na/-l-nä < *-l-ta/-l-tä < *-leń
Abessive -tta/-ttä (‘without X’) Comitative -ine-
<
*-s-ta-k/-s-tä-k
<
*-i-n (?)
Figure 2.
pfu *-ø *-m *-ń *-na *-δa (*Loc.-Abl.)
Case systems in a diachronic perspective
the three internal locative cases, inessive, elative and illative, have been created by adding the case markers of essive and partitive (historically going back to locative-ablative) to the forms in -s (which can be identified as an adverbial suffix). Likewise, the external locatives (adessive, ablative and allative) have been made from the adverbial forms ending in -la/-lä,7 which is probably identical with the final element in a few nouns with locative semantics such as ete-lä ‘south’, pohjo-la ‘north’, appe-la ‘home of the father-inlaw’ (← appi- ‘father-in-law’). These developments are summarized in Figure 2. Of course, it is sometimes almost impossible to draw with accuracy the distinction between the two types discussed in Sections 2.1 and 2.2, i.e. between adpositional cases and multilayer case marking. Thus, Proto-Lithuanian *nā˘ used in the formation of the illative (cf. mišk-añ < *-am + na ‘into the forest’) might represent an old postposition or an extinct case-marker (perhaps directly borrowed from an adjacent Finno-Ugric language? cf. Finnish essive suffix ‑na/‑nä).
2.3 Cases from pronouns and articles (indexicals) New case-markers can also be recruited from the set of demonstrative pronouns or articles (which in turn typically go back to pronouns). Such was probably the origin of the Berber inflectional case-prefixes, illustrated in (5) (Sasse 1984: 120ff.; see also Prasse 1964; Aikhenvald 1990; Aixenval’d and Militarev 1991: 211):8
(5) Berber Nom (‘dependent form’) Acc (‘independent form’)
‘man’ urgaz argaz
‘children’ uarrau arrau
A comparison with Cushitic languages shows the striking similarity with the vocalism of the demonstrative pronouns; cf., for instance, masculine demonstratives in Burji:
(6) Burji (Cushitic) Nom ku Acc ka
According to Sasse (1984: 122), the Berber case-prefixes can be interpreted as relics of a previous system of definiteness markers, being in fact fossilized articles. Articles and/or demonstrative pronouns may also be the historical sources of some case endings in Kartvelian languages.9 Thus, according to A. Šanidze, the marker of the Georgian nominative case -i (the ‘Subject–Object’ form, approximately corresponding to the absolutive of the ergative languages) may go back to the postposed demonstrative pronoun -igi (through the stage of the definite article).10 The same may be the origin of the Laz and Megrelian (Mingrelian) ‘narrative’ case marker -k (for discussion, see Klimov 1962: 17f., 36f.). The Georgian ergative suffix -ma/-m, the marker of another case encoding the two main syntactic arguments, undoubtedly goes back to the
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demonstrative pronoun man ‘that; he’; Old Georgian still preserves the more archaic form of this ending, -man, which is formally identical to the source morpheme (Klimov 1962: 55). Likewise, some scholars suggest a similar origin of the ergative case marker in two North-West Caucasian (Abkhaz-Adyghe) languages, Kabardian (-mə) and Ubykh (-n). According to Kumaxov (1971: 43, 158; 1989: 31f.), both case morphemes may go back to the definite article/demonstrative pronoun ‘this’ (Kabardian mə, Ubykh jəna). Finally, rich evidence for the development of ergative case markers from demonstrative and pronominal forms is provided by a number of Australian languages; see now the most comprehensive treatment of the issue in McGregor (to appear), which offers both a detailed survey of data available from several grammars and a theoretical explanation of this grammaticalization scenario. Thus, the Nyulnyulan ergative suffix -ni/‑in/-nim etc. may derive from Proto-Nyulnyulan *‑nimV, which ‘is a plausible cognate of the … third person pronoun ni ~ nu’. The Jingulu ergative markers -(r)ni and -nga probably go back to either pronouns or demonstratives *-nu and *-ngaya (McGregor, op.cit.). In general, the possible developments of demonstrative pronouns can be represented according to the scheme in Figure 3 (Harris and Campbell 1995: 341f.). Case marker Demonstrative pronoun
Definite article Gender-class marker
Figure 3.
2.4 Split of one case in two New cases can also be created by splitting one case into two. The most common scenario is the borrowing of a new case marker from a different declension type, as shown in Figure 4 below. The case Ci that originally has distinct endings in declensions I and II (-xI and -xII, respectively) splits, yielding two new cases, Ci1 with the ending -xI (= the direct successor of the ‘old’ case Ci) and Ci2 with the ending ‑xII. This process is usually accompanied by the loss of the declension type (II) that was the source of the new casemarker (see Figure 4). Declension types
Cases
Figure 4.
I
II
C1 C2 …
… …
… …
Ci
-xI
-xII
(I) C1 C2 Ci1
… … … -xI
Ci2
-xII
Case systems in a diachronic perspective
An illustration of such development is provided by the history of the modern Russian ‘second’ locative and ‘second’ genitive (also called partitive).11 Locative-2 of the 2nd declension type (historically going back to the Proto-IndoEuropean declension of the *-o-stems) is marked with the accented ending -ú (thus being opposed to -e of the original locative, or Locative-112) and can only be employed in constructions with the locative prepositions v ‘in’ and na ‘on’. It is formed almost exclusively from monosyllabic nouns such as sneg ‘snow’, les ‘forest’, sad ‘garden’: na sneg-u/ v sneg-u, v les-u, v sad-u. The ending -ú has been borrowed from the old declension of the stems in *-u- (type synъ < *sūn-u-s ‘son’, dom-ъ < *dom-u-s ‘house’), where it was regular: Nom.sg. dom-ъ (< *dom-u-s) — Loc.sg. dom-u (< *dom-óu). Under the influence of the locatives of some nouns of this type, such as (v) med-u ‘(in) honey’, -u-forms have penetrated into the paradigm of the old *-o-type nouns, foremost of those which denote location and thus are particularly common in the locative usage. The earliest attestations of this new case appear at the turn of the 13th century (one of the earliest attestations, na sněg-u ‘on the snow’, dates to 1296). Subsequently, the *-u-declension has disappeared (approximately after the 14th century), being ousted by the productive 2nd (*-o-) declension. Outside the *-o- (2nd) declension, the two locatives can be distinguished for one of the accent subtypes of the 3rd declension, which includes feminine nouns ending in a palatalized consonant, cf. ten’ ‘shadow’: Locative-1 (o) téni ‘about the shadow’ ~ Locative-2 (v) tení ‘in the shadow’. Even more limited is the distinctiveness of Genitive-2 (partitive) (see e.g. Kiparsky 1967: 26ff.). Only some uncountable nouns of the 2nd declension, such as saxar ‘sugar’, čaj ‘thee’, mëd ‘honey’, have a separate form of Partitive (with marker -u) different from Genitive-1 in -a (but identical with the dative): mëd-u ~ mëd-a, saxar-u ~ saxar-a, čaj‑u ~ čaj-a. This form is employed in constructions like ‘a pound (of) ___’, ‘he drunk/ate some ___’, being interchangeable with Genitive-1 in certain contexts, for instance in kilo saxar-u/saxar-a ‘(one) kilogram sugar’. Again, like in the case of Locative-2, the ending -u has been taken over from the old *‑u- declension, where it was regular: Nom.sg. med-ъ ‘honey’ — Gen.sg. med-u (< *medh-ou-s); Nom.sg. syn-ъ ‘son’ — Gen.sg. syn-u (< *sūn-ou-s, cf. Lith. Gen.sg. sūnaũs). Genitive-2 had been established approximately by the 16th century. These developments are summarized in Figure 5, which represents the relevant fragment of the modern Russian 2nd declension (in the singular) as compared to its Old Russian predecessor (attested since the 11th century).
2.5 Other possible sources of new cases The above short sketch does not claim to be an exhaustive list of all possible sources of new cases. Thus, a very interesting mechanism for the rise of a new case is instantiated by the emergence of the new vocative in the modern (colloquial) Russian. The history of this form can be briefly summarized as follows.
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Modern Russian 2nd declension
Old Russian *-o-type *-u-type
Nom. Gen.
les-ø ‘forest’ čaj-ø ‘thee’ mëd-ø ‘honey’ lés-a čáj-a mëd-a
lěs-ъ lěs-a
med-ъ med-u
Gen.-2 /Part. Dat. Loc.-1
lés-u lés-u (o) lés-e
čáj-u čáj-u (o) čáj-e
mëd-u mëd-u (o) mëd-e
– lěs-u lěs-ě
– med-ovi med-u
Loc.-2
(v) les-ú
…
(v) med-ú
–
–
Figure 5.
Common (or Proto-) Slavic has inherited from Proto-Indo-European the old vocative which was distinct from the nominative. Originally, its form was equal to the bare stem, but already by the Proto-Slavic period the morphemic structure has been blurred in all declension types, as shown in (7):
(7) Old Russian nominative and vocative *-o(/e)-declension *-u-declension *-ā-declension Nom.sg. Voc.sg.
žen-a ‘wife’ žen-o (< *gwen-a)
vьlk-ъ ‘wolf ’ vьlč-e (< *ulkw-e)
syn-ъ ‘son’ syn-u (< *sūn-ou)
Unlike some other Slavic languages, such as Polish, Bulgarian and Ukrainian, modern Russian has not preserved this case form, which only survives in a few idiomatic expressions, such as (o) bože! ‘Oh God!’. Instead, it has developed a new vocative form.13 The new vocative case is distinct from the nominative only for several nouns of the 1st declension (historical *-ā-declension), specifically for those which are particularly common in the vocative usage. These include a few kinship nouns (mama ‘mum(my)’, papa ‘dad’, tëtja ‘aunt’) and short forms of proper names: Maša (short form for Marija), Tanja (~ Tat’jana), Saša (~ Aleksandr (m.)/Aleksandra (f.)), Petja (~ Pëtr), etc. Like the Proto-Indo-European vocative, it is marked with the zero ending, thus being identical with the bare stem (and with the genitive plural of this declension type): mama — mam-ø, papa — pap-ø, tëtja — tët’-ø, Maša — Maš‑ø, Tanja — Tan’‑ø, Saša — Saš‑ø, Petja — Pet’‑ø, etc. Most interestingly, the mechanism of such a resurrection of the vocative case, according to which the vocative form tends to be as close as possible to the bare stem (being in that respect similar to the imperative form in the verbal system), is likely to reflect a very basic (albeit of course not absolute and exceptionless) universal of the human speech.
Case systems in a diachronic perspective
3. Loss of cases and decay of case systems 3.1 General remarks The general mechanisms which lead to the merger of cases and to case syncretism and, eventually, to the loss of some cases are well-known from historical linguistics (see e.g. Sihler 1995: 247f.; Blake 2001: 167ff.). These include: – phonetic processes which result in the loss of the difference between two or more case forms, some kind of erosion of case inflexion; – overlapping of syntactic and semantic functions and/or uses of cases, i.e. syntactic and semantic affinity of some cases; – analogical developments. All these mechanisms usually work together, so that, most often, all the three factors create favourable (albeit not always sufficient) conditions for the merger of cases. In what follows I will illustrate the above-listed types of development using examples from Indo-European languages, which probably provide the richest evidence for various scenarios of the evolution, decay and collapse of case systems. Since it is impossible to enter into a discussion of the details of the reconstruction of the Proto-Indo-European declination, the reader can be referred to the standard handbooks of Indo-European comparative linguistics, such as Szemerényi (1970: 144ff. = 1990: 166ff.); Beekes (1995: 172ff.); Sihler (1995: 246ff.); etc.
3.2 From Proto-Indo-European to Latin: Merger of three Proto-Indo-European cases in the Latin ablative The Latin ablative case results from the merger of three Proto-Indo-European cases, ablative, locative and instrumental, as shown in Figure 6. 14 PIE
Latin
Abl Loc
Abl
Ins Figure 6.
The relevant fragment of the system of case endings reconstructed for Proto-IndoEuropean is represented in (8) (the endings which have left direct reflexes in the actually attested markers of ablative are in bold face; those which have only indirectly contributed to the attested endings are in bold and underlined):15
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(8) Proto-Indo-European ablative, locative and instrumental case endings Singular
Plural
Ablative
*-(o)s *-ed
*-ios
Locative
*-i *-ø
*-su *-oisu
Instrumental
*-(e)h1 *-bhi (/*-mi)
*-ōis *-bhi-s†
†
For the endings of the instrumental in the proto-language and their relations with the inflexion of the dative and ablative plural, see, in particular, Kortlandt 1984: 101f. = 2003: 48f.
The resulting system of the ablative endings, arranged by declension types, is shown in (9). Although the origins of some actually attested endings may be the subject of debate,16 the main details of the scenario are quite clear:
(9) Latin ablative case endings Declensions
Singular
1st (-a-)
-ā(d) [analogy with -o-type]
2nd (-o-)
-ō(d) < *…o-ed
3rd (-i-, -C-)
-ī(d) [analogy with -o-type] -e < *-i
4th (-u-)
-ū(d) [analogy with -o-type]
5th (-e-)
-ē < *…e-eh1
Plural -īs < *-oisu and/or *-ōis
-bus < *-bhos (← *-ios + *-bhis ?)
The example of Latin is instructive, showing that phonetic processes may render opaque formal distinctions between cases, thus leading to the merger of some forms (as in the case of Loc. and Ins.pl.), but do not represent the only driving force of case syncretism. Note that all three Proto-Indo-European source cases, the (old) ablative, locative and instrumental, have left traces both in the singular and plural paradigms at least in some of the attested Latin declensions, so that phonetic processes alone could not yet result in the simple syncretism of these three cases. Apparently, the final picture results from a complex interplay of several mechanisms, which may overrule each other quite intricately. In particular, the three source cases must be considered semantically (functionally) close enough to each other, which has licensed the form of one of them to take over the functions of the other(s). Most likely, the ultimate syncretism of the three cases was preceded by a period of the variation and alternation between them, when two or all of them could be interchangeably employed in some usages (perhaps with minor functional distinctions), but eventually the ablative has ousted its competitors in all or most of such contexts.
Case systems in a diachronic perspective
3.3 From Latin to modern Romance languages: Collapse of case systems in Spanish and French Latin seems to attest the very beginning of the decay of the original Proto-Indo-European case system, which has affected all Romance languages. The daughter languages, i.e. Spanish, Italian, French, Rumanian etc., display the same tendency, reducing the Latin case system further down and ending up with caseless systems or with two cases at maximum (as in Rumanian; see, for instance, Penny 1991; Calabrese 1998; Blake: 2001: 175f.). These processes can be illustrated by the development of the case system in Spanish. The phonetic changes that were relevant for the evolution of the Proto-Romance (≈ Latin) case system can be summarized as follows: 1. Loss of final -m mostly caused merger of Acc.sg. with Abl.sg.: -m > ø: Acc.sg.
montem
Abl.sg.
monte
monte
2. Merger of the long and short a, together with the loss of final -m, caused merger of Nom., Acc. and Abl.sg.: -m > ø , ā > a : Nom.sg. mensa Acc.sg.
mensam
Abl.sg.
mensā
mensa
3. Merger of u and ō in final position caused merger of Acc.sg. with Abl.sg.: u, ō > o | __# : Acc.sg. dominum Abl.sg.
domino
dominō
4. Merger of the front vowels in final position caused merger of Nom.-Acc.pl. (montēs) with Gen.sg. (montis).
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By the 4th and 5th centuries ad these changes have resulted in a considerable reduction of the case paradigm: three-case system in the Eastern part of the Roman empire and two cases in the most of the West, including Spain. The latter includes Nominative and Oblique cases and can be illustrated by the following three examples: (10) Old Spanish case system (Penny 1991: 104) Nom.sg. rosa annos leo Obl.sg. rosa anno leone leones Nom.pl. rosas anni rosas annos leones Obl.pl Such two-case systems survived in French (see below) and Provençal until the 12th13th centuries. In other areas, there was an early further reduction to invariable singular and plural forms. By virtue of further phonetic changes most of the contrasts shown in (10) have become obliterated, surviving only for anni ~ annos. Of course, this isolated sub-type could not survive for a long time, foremost due to the levelling pressure of the other morphological types. Accordingly, the form annos has been generalized as plural form, in analogy with other inflexional types with plural in -s. The resulting system of the three major paradigmatic classes that Spanish inherits from Latin is represented in (11): (11) Modern Spanish nominal paradigm (1) (2) (3) Sg. rosa año leon Pl. rosas años leones Here it will be in order to have a brief glimpse at the evolution of the Old French twocase system and to discuss the mechanisms of its disappearance. As mentioned above, by the Old French period only two cases have survived (usually called subject and object cases = ‘sujet’ and ‘régime’), as illustrated in (12) (for details and discussion, see e.g. Plank 1979; van Reenen and Schøsler 2000): (12) Old French case system Masculine Subj.sg. Obj.sg. Subj.pl. Obj.pl
li forz mur-s ‘strong wall’ le fort mur li fort mur les forz mur-s
Feminine li forz flor-s ‘strong flower’ la fort flor les forz flor-s les forz flor-s
Thus, each declension type counts no more than two forms in total, distributed quite intricately across the paradigm. The system becomes even more opaque because of the loss of the final -s before a consonant: -s > -ø | _ C
Case systems in a diachronic perspective
Thus, for mur- we have two allomorphic variants, as shown in (13): (13) Subj.sg. Obj.sg. Subj.pl. Obj.pl
__V , __ ## [myrs] [myr] [myr] [myrs]
__ C [my:r] [myr] [myr] [my:r]
The further collapse of this system was caused by several factors (for a general survey see especially Laubscher 1921). These include, in particular: (i) the expansion of constructions with non-canonical subject marking, viz. with the subject encoded by the object case — as, for instance, in impersonal constructions of the type Il i a __ (= Modern French Il y a __ ‘There is __’), which has apparently triggered case variation in the subject position (see Laubscher 1921: 51ff.); (ii) the existence of a few (minor) inflexional types which had completely lost case distinctions by the Old French period; (iii) the very intricate distribution of as few as two markers, -ø and -s, across the four member paradigm, in other words, the fact that the system is ‘conceptually too complicated’ (van Reenen and Schøsler 2000: 337).
3.4 Types of case syncretism in Indo-European: a summary To conclude the discussion of the developments attested in some Indo-European case systems, I will briefly summarize the types of syncretism attested in the main branches of the Indo-European family (see Figure 7).17 The rich variety of syncretism patterns does not of course imply that any two cases may fall together in a totally unpredictable and accidental way. There are several factors which play an important role in the choice of the scenario of the case variation and syncretism, such as semantic and formal markedness, the relationships with other cases within the paradigm, paradigmatic independence of case. A detailed study of the system of these parameters goes beyond the scope of the present paper.18 Nominative Accusative Genitive Ablative Balkan
Greek, (Common) Slavic
Instrumental Locative Dative
Figure 7.
Balkan (Albanian, Rumanian etc.)
Mycenaean, Homeric Greek
Classical Greek
Latin
Celtic, Germanic
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4. Restructuring of case systems: Resolving case syncretism Thus far I discussed the examples which illustrate the increase or decrease of the total number of cases, i.e. various quantitative changes in case systems. Next to these two types, we may be faced with more complex situations, where some developments compensate the loss of case oppositions, so that the number of case distinctions remains unchanged, at least in some fragments of the declensional paradigm, but the system itself undergoes crucial restructuring. In what follows I will discuss a few language mechanisms used for resisting potential case syncretisms.
4.1 Borrowing inflexion from other cases: Genitive-accusative in Slavic One such mechanism used to avoid merger of cases resulting from phonetic processes and erosion of inflexion and thus to resolve possible case syncretism(s) and prevent the loss of cases19 is the borrowing of new inflexion from other cases. One of the most well-known examples is the rise of the category of animacy in the history of Slavic languages (for details, see e.g. Klenin 1980, Iordanidi and Krys’ko 2000: 198ff.). Already by the time of Common Slavic, the old Indo-European nominative and accusative have merged in most declension types due to the phonetic erosion of the end of word (in auslaut): the final consonant was dropped, and the originally distinct nominative and accusative forms have fallen together. The only important exception is the declension type in -a- (< PIE *-ā-), where the distinction was preserved. Thus, for instance, in Old Church Slavonic (around the 9th century ad), within the singular paradigm, the nominative and accusative forms are only distinguished for the -a-type: (14) Old Church Slavonic *-ā-type žena ‘wife’ Nom.sg. žen-a (< *-ā)
*-o-type
*-u-type
rabъ ‘slave’
rodъ ‘birth’
synъ ‘son’
rab-ъ (~ PIE *-os)20
rod-ъ
syn-ъ
Acc.sg.
žen-ǫ (< *-ām)
rab-ъ (~ PIE *-om)
rod-ъ
syn-ъ
Gen.sg. …
žen-y …
rab-a …
rod-a …
syn-u …
The Old Russian paradigm (attested since the 11th century ad) is very similar. In the plural, after the replacement of the old nominative ending -i by -y of the accusative (approximately by the 15th century), the syncretism of the nominative and accusative cases has proceeded even further, since the two forms have merged not only for masculine but also for feminine nouns in -a-:
Case systems in a diachronic perspective
(15) Old Russian *-ā-type Nom.pl. žen-y ‘wife’ Acc.pl. žen-y Gen.pl. žen-ъ … …
*-o-type (by the 15th cent.) rab-i ‘slave’ → rab-y rab-y rab-ъ …
While for the neuter nouns the syncretism of nominative and accusative was normal and even obligatory already in Proto-Indo-European, for other nouns such an innovation apparently could not be tolerated. For the resolution of the case conflict, the form of the genitive case has been taken, replacing the old accusative, formally identical with the nominative.21 This innovation was limited to the animate nouns (cf. the shaded boxes in (16)), which thus have become opposed to inanimates. As a result, the Slavic languages have acquired the category of animacy: (16) Modern Russian Fem.
Masc.anim.
Masc.inanim.
Nom.sg.
žen-a
rab-ø
rod-ø
Acc.sg.
žen-u (< *-ǫ)
rab-a
rod-ø
Gen.sg.
žen-y
rab-a
rod-a
…
…
…
…
Nom.pl.
žen-y
rab-y
rod-y
Acc.pl.
žen-ø
rab-ov
rod-y
Gen.pl.
žen-ø
rab-ov
rod-ov
…
…
…
…
Note that in the singular of the -a-type (but not in the plural), the old form of accusative has been preserved. Apparently, because of the lack of merger, it was not necessary to replace it with the genitive. Here evidence from texts is particularly valuable: we can observe a continuous growth of the tendency and the expansion of the genitive. For instance, Old Russian attests the introducing of the Gen.pl. forms in the function of the Acc.pl. in the 12th century for masculine human nouns; some Slavic languages, such as Polish, have stopped at that stage. The feminine humans and non-human animates introduce Gen.pl. for Acc.pl. only in the 13th century.
4.2 Resisting phonetic erosion: Evolution of the Armenian case system Another telling example is provided by Armenian,22 which has preserved the original Proto-Indo-European system of case oppositions intact, in spite of the heavy phonetic
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erosion in the auslaut, thus being even more ‘case-stable’ (see type 3 in Section 5) than the phonologically more conservative Slavic and Baltic languages. There are a variety of mechanisms which help to preserve the original case contrasts. Thus, the ablative singular form (ending *-os in most declensions of the proto-language) would fall together with the locative singular (*-i) after the apocope.23 For instance, both Abl. and Loc.sg. of the Proto-Indo-European word meaning ‘heart’ (*ḱr̥ d/*ḱērd(i)‑; Proto-Armenian has generalized the stem *ḱērdi-) would yield Arm. srti. The removal of this syncretism has become possible by adding an enclitic particle (probably going back to PIE *eti; reflected, for instance, in Skt. áti ‘over, beyond’), which yielded -ē, cf. sirt ‘heart’ — Loc.sg. i srt-i ~ Abl.sg. i srt-ē (Pedersen 1905: 221ff. = 1982: 83ff.; Kortlandt 1984: 103 = 2003: 49f.). Another interesting mechanism of the recruiting of the new case inflexion is exemplified by the gen.-dat.-abl.pl. ending -c‘, which can be traced back to PIE *‑sko‑m. *‑sko‑ represents the derivational adjectival suffix (cf. Goth. manna ‘man’ — mannisks ‘human’). Apparently, Armenian has introduced the possessive adjective into the substantive paradigm, replacing the old genitive plural; later this form was expanded to the dative and ablative (see Godel 1975: 106; Kortlandt 1984: 100 = 2003: 47). A detailed discussion of all phonological changes and morphological developments which, altogether, result in a perfect preservation of the PIE system of case contrasts might be the subject of a separate study. Here it will suffice to refer the reader for details to special studies on the history of the Armenian declension (Meillet 1936: 64ff.; Godel 1975: 99ff.; Džaukjan 1982: 85ff.; and, especially, a short but very rich and insightful paper Kortlandt 1984).
5. Concluding remarks: The main evolutionary types of languages The analysis of possible changes in case systems presented in Sections 2–4 can serve as a basis for classification of languages according to the general tendency which determines the evolution of case systems. We can distinguish between the following three main evolutionary types of languages: 1. Case-increasing languages24 include, for instance, Uralic, New Indo-Aryan, Tocharian; 2. Case-reducing languages: Germanic, Italic (Romance) and Celtic, Albanian, Greek; 3. Case-stable languages: Armenian, Slavic, Baltic (Lithuanian), Turkic. The border between case-reducing and case-stable languages can not always be drawn with accuracy. Thus, as mentioned above, in the brief discussion of the history of the Lithuanian case system (Section 2.1.2), the ablative and (old) locative were lost by the time of the oldest attested texts. This feature, indicating per se the case-reducing type, was, in a sense, compensated by the rise of new locatives, and, accordingly, there are good reasons to consider (Old) Lithuanian an example of the case-stable type.
Case systems in a diachronic perspective
Of particular interest is the distinction between case-reducing languages, on the one hand, and the case-stable/case-increasing type, on the other, which can be found within one single language family or even within a smaller genetic unit, a group of very closely related languages. Most importantly, the case-stable (or case-increasing) type by no means correlates with the phonological conservatism. In other words, in the cases where two genetically related languages A and B undergo some crucial phonetic changes which, eventually, should result in the erosion of inflection, this does not yet guarantee that these processes will be equally fatal for their case systems. In reality, one of the languages (e.g. A) may indeed be affected by heavy losses of cases or even the total collapse of case system, whereas in another one, B, the case system may remain essentially intact. Thus, both Romance and Slavic languages have been subject to the erosion of case inflection, which has resulted in the merger of some case endings (see Sections 3.3 and 4.1 above). However, in contrast to the Romance languages, Slavic shows a greater degree of morphological conservatism, using several compensating techniques (Harris and Campbell’s ‘preservative reanalysis’). As a result of one such compensating process, Slavic has developed the category of animacy, which has helped to save the nominative– accusative contrast. The only outsider within the Slavic language group is Bulgarian/ Macedonian, which has lost the entire case system (except for the vocative form). Another instructive example is provided by the history of the Indo-Aryan group. Like many other Indo-European languages, the Indo-Aryan languages have lost most case distinctions by the end of the Middle Indic period. Nevertheless, in contrast to the Western Indo-European languages, in the New Indo-Aryan period we observe a strong tendency to develop new cases from postpositions, which has resulted in the restoration of case systems nearly up to the previous (Old Indo-Aryan) size in such languages as Sinhala. It seems that one of the factors which determine the evolutionary type of a language is the areal rather than genetic relationship. Thus, Baltic and Slavic language groups form a remarkable exception within the Indo-European family, being most conservative as far as the case systems are concerned. Old Lithuanian has even extended its case system, developing three new locatives (still preserved in the most archaic dialects); likewise, Russian has expanded the original (Common Slavic) case system (from 7 to 9 units). Both phenomena are likely to be due to the Finno-Ugric influence (see e.g. Mathiassen 1996: 38). By contrast, the collapse of the Bulgarian case system seems to represent one of the features of the Balkan linguistic area: nearly all languages belonging to this ‘Sprachbund’ have considerably reduced their case systems ending up with 2 or 3 cases at maximum (cf. Rumanian, Albanian and Greek). Another case in point is New Indo-Aryan. Here, the emergence of new cases on the basis of the multilayer case technique may be due to the influence of the adjacent agglutinating Dravidian languages. It is interesting to note that the shared characteristics of two or more genetically related or geographically adjacent languages are usually not limited to the evolutionary
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type of language, which determines the global tendency in the development of case system (case-increasing, case-reducing, case-stable), but extend to some ‘minor’ features. Thus, the affinity of Finnish, (Old) Lithuanian and Russian is not limited to the caseincreasing type (probably induced by Finno-Ugric). In addition, Baltic (Old Lithuanian) seems to have borrowed from Finnish the very mechanism of case-expansion (multilayer case-marking, rather uncommon for the Indo-European linguistic type in general) and extended the same semantic area (locative) as the adjacent Finnish. The functions of the two new Russian cases, 2nd locative and 2nd genitive (partitive) also seem to indicate the Finno-Ugric influence. It is a common place in the Russian historical grammar that the rise of the partitive case is due to the influence of the Finno-Ugric case systems (such as that of Finnish, which has a partitive case). The rich system of Finnish locative cases may also have been an indirect reason for developing a new (second) locative case, distinct from the old Russian locative, which bears too many nonlocative functions. A study of the areal phenomena in the evolution of case systems (as well as of other morphological features) offers new perspectives in the study of the linguistic prehistory. Establishing such evolutionary features typical for a particular linguistic area may give a clue to the morphological type of the extinct substrate language(s) which used to be dominant in the area and has (have) determined the evolution of the morphological type of the historically attested languages for many centuries.
Acknowledgements This article is a revised version of the paper presented at the pionier-Workshop ‘Case, Valency and Transitivity’ (University of Nijmegen, June 2003). Some parts of the paper were also presented at the meeting of the CLS Diachronie Groep (Nijmegen, April 7, 2003) and at pionier Talk (Nijmegen, April 9, 2003). I would like to take this opportunity to thank the audiences of these talks and all participants of the discussion, in particular (in alphabetic order) P. Ackema, J. Barðdal, H. Baayen, W. Boeder, M. Butt, P. Fikkert, H. de Hoop, A. van Kemenade, S. Kittilä, M. Lamers, A. Malchukov, P. Muysken, Å. Næss, Yang Ning, G. Postma, P. van Reenen, N. Roos, R. Ryan, A. Spencer, L. Stassen, P. de Swart, S. G. Thomason and C. Versteegh for suggestions and critical remarks. I am also much indebted to P. Arkad’jev, R. Derksen, A. Lubotsky, H. Martirosyan and M. de Vaan, as well as two anonymous reviewers for their criticism and valuable comments on earlier drafts of this paper. I acknowledge the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (nwo) for financial support, grant 220-70-003 for the pionier project ‘Case cross-linguistically’.
Notes 1. The origin of case prefixes from prepositions, albeit theoretically possible, seems to be extremely rare in the languages of the world. This disproportion may be due to some reasons of general nature. Thus, as Reh (1986) concludes on the basis of the analysis of evidence from some
Case systems in a diachronic perspective
African languages, prepositions may tend to become suffixes on the preceding verb rather than prefixes on the following noun. This, in turn, according to Stampe, may result from the fact that ‘[u]naccented elements tend to attach rather permanently to preceding accented elements, and not to following ones’ (Donegan and Stampe 1983: 344; Stampe 1994). 2. The adpositions, in turn, often go back to verbal forms or (especially often for expressing locative case relations) to nominal forms; see, for instance, Blake 2001: 161ff. 3. For details, see, for instance, Bloch 1934; Zograf 1976; Bubeník 1998: 99–101; Masica 1991: 230ff. 4. For a general survey and discussion of the evolution of the Indo-Aryan case system, see, for instance, Bubeník 1998: 65ff. 5. For a discussion of the status of these formations, see Kulikov (forthc.). 6. Some isolated forms still existing in modern Lithuanian do not belong to the paradigm but function as adverbials. 7. Termed ‘coaffix’ by Collinder (1960: 291) and some other scholars. 8. For case-marking in Berber languages, see also Aikhenvald 1995: 44–6. 9. I would like to thank V. Chirikba and Y. Testelets for having discussed with me the Caucasian data. 10. Important corrigenda to this explanation of the origin of the Kartvelian nominative and ergative morphemes are offered by Boeder (1979: 471, note 20; 474, note 35), who accounts for the nominative -i as resulting from the reanalysis of igi ‘that:nom’ as ig-i ‘that-nom’. 11. For the synchronic status of these two cases, see, in particular, Zaliznjak 1967; Plungian 2002; for their history, see e.g. Kiparsky 1967: 35ff.; Ivanov 1983: 266ff.; Hentschel 1991. 12. Called in the Russian grammatical tradition predložnyj, i.e. ‘Prepositional’ case, since it can only be employed with prepositions. 13. An alternative analysis of this new vocative is offered by Yadroff (1996), who argues that such forms can be interpreted as nominatives (rather than bare stems), which underwent deletion not of segments but of a prosodic unit (‘deprosodization’) with subsequent resyllabification. 14. For details of the history of the Latin case endings, see, next to general Indo-European handbooks (e.g. Beekes 1995: 172ff.), in particular, Leumann 1977: 405ff.; Gasperini 1999. 15. Although we do find traces of some other case forms, they do not form separate cases any longer. Thus, for instance, the old singular locatives are still found in archaic adverbial locative expressions such as Romae ‘in Rome’ < *Romā-i, Tusculī < *Tuscule-i; the old instrumental appears in such adverbs as certē. 16. Thus, the genesis of the abl.pl. ending of the 3rd, 4th and 5th declensions -bus poses some problems. It is likely to represent the Proto-Italo-Celtic *-bhos, which replaced the original ending *-ios, presumably under the influence of the ins.pl. *-bhis (Kortlandt 1984: 103f. = 2003: 50). 17. For the case syncretism in Indo-European, see the seminal work by Delbrück 1907; Luraghi 1987; for a typological perspective, see now Arkad’jev 2003. 18. An important study of possible patterns of case syncretism in a typological perspective is Arkad’jev 2003. 19. Cf. Harris and Campbell’s (1995: 89) ‘preservative’ (or ‘structure-preservative’) reanalysis.
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20. The genesis of the actually attested endings of the nom.sg. and acc.sg. forms of the *o‑declension represents an intricate problem on its own and was the subject of long debate in the scholarship; for a discussion and survey of the relevant literature, see, in particular, Kortlandt 1983: 181ff.; Vermeer 1991; Orr 2000: 96–113. Here it will suffice to briefly summarize the main conclusions. While the development *-om > -ŭ (-ъ) in the accusative must be regular, the expected reflex of the nominative ending *‑os should be **-o (preserved in some isolated forms, such as the Russian proper name Sadk-o). Later this ending must have been replaced by -ŭ (-ъ), in analogy with the *u‑declension, where the nominative–accusative merger was phonetically regular (*-us, *-um > -ŭ (-ъ)); for the most comprehensive discussion and convincing substantiation of this scenario, see Vermeer 1991. 21. In fact, the use of the genitive for encoding the direct object (exemplifying a non-canonical object marking) is quite an old feature of this group of Indo-European languages, undoubtedly going back to the Common Slavic period. Already in the oldest attested Slavic language, Old Church Slavonic (the earliest texts are dated to the 9th century ad), genitive objects were common in some types of constructions, in particular under negation and with some non-canonical transitives, such as xotěti ‘wish’. 22. I am thankful to H. Martirosyan for discussing with me the evidence from Armenian. 23. For the apocope, i.e. loss of vowels in final syllables, see Kortlandt 1980: 103f. = 2003: 31. 24. To be more accurate, we should of course use the term ‘languages which undergo case-increasing’.
References Aikhenvald, A. Y. [= Aixenval’d, A.Ju.]. 1990. “On Berber cases in the light of Afroasiatic languages”. In Proceedings of the Fifth International Hamito-Semitic Congress, H. G. Mukarovsky (ed.), 113–19. Wien: Afro-Pub. Aikhenvald, A. Y. [= Aixenval’d, A.Ju.]. 1995. “Split ergativity in Berber languages”. St. Petersburg Journal of African Studies 4: 39–68. Aixenval’d, A.Ju. and Militarev, A.Ju. 1991. “Livijsko-guančskie jazyki” [Lybian-Guanche languages]. In Jazyki Azii i Afriki [Languages of Asia and Africa]. T. IV, kn. 2. Afrazijskie jazyki [Afro-Asiatic languages], 148–267. Moskva: Glavnaja redakcija vostočnoj literatury. Ambrazas, V. et al. 1985. Grammatika litovskogo jazyka [A grammar of the Lithuanian language]. Vil’njus: Mokslas. [Engl. transl.: Ambrazas, V. et al. Lithuanian Grammar. Vilnius: Baltos lankos, 1997.] Arkad’jev, P. 2003. Tipologija padežnogo sinkretizma [A typology of case syncretism]. B. A. thesis. Moscow, Russian State University for Humanities. Beekes, R. S. P. 1995. Comparative Indo-European Linguistics. An Introduction. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Blake, B. J. 2001. Case. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bloch, J. 1934. L’indo-aryen: du véda aux temps modernes. Paris: Adrien-Maisonneuve. Boeder, W. 1979. “Ergative syntax and morphology in language change: The South Caucasian languages”. In Ergativity: Towards a Theory of Grammatical Relations, F. Plank (ed.), 435– 80. London etc.: Academic Press.
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Bubeník, V. 1998. A Historical Syntax of Late Middle Indo-Aryan (Apabhraṃśa) [Current issues in linguistic theory 165]. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Calabrese, A. 1998. “Some remarks on the Latin case system and its development in Romance”. In Theoretical Analyses on Romance Languages, J. Lema and E. Treviño (eds), 71–126. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Collinder, B. 1960. Comparative Grammar of the Uralic Languages. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell. Delbrück, B. 1907. Synkretismus: Ein Beitrag zur germanischen Kasuslehre. Strassburg: Trübner. Donegan, P. J. and Stampe, D. 1983. “Rhythm and the holistic organization of language structure”. In Papers from the Parasession on the Interplay of Phonology, Morphology and Syntax, J. F. Richardson, M. Marks, and A. Chukerman (eds), 337–53. Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society. Džaukjan (Djahukian), G. B. 1982. Sravnitel’naja grammatika armjanskogo jazyka [A comparative grammar of Armenian]. Erevan: AN ArmSSR. Gasperini, L. 1999. “Diachrony and synchrony of the Latin ablative: Concerning certain semantic roles”. Diachronica 16 (1), 37–66. Godel, R. 1975. An Introduction to the Study of Classical Armenian. Wiesbaden: Reichert. Hakulinen, L. 1961. The Structure and Development of the Finnish Language. Bloomington: Indiana University; The Hague: Mouton. Harris, A. C. and Campbell, L. 1995. Historical Syntax in Cross-linguistic Perspective [Cambridge studies in linguistics 74]. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hentschel, G. 1991. “Rol’ sxem formal’noj differenciacii v istoričeskom razvitii flektivnoj sistemy russkogo suščestvitel’nogo” [The role of the schemes of formal differentiation in the historical development of the inflectional system of the Russian substantive]. Russian Linguistics 15 (1): 31–51. Insler, S. 1991–92. “The Prakrit ablative in -āhi”. Annals of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute 72–3: 15–21. Iordanidi, S. I. and Krys’ko, V. B. 2000. Istoričeskaja grammatika drevnerusskogo jazyka. Tom 1. Množestvennoe čislo imennogo sklonenija. [A historical grammar of Old Russian. Nominal declension: Plural]. Moskva: Azbukovnik. Ivanov, V. V. 1983. Istoričeskaja grammatika russkogo jazyka. [A historical grammar of Russian]. Moskva: Prosveščenie. Kahr, J. C. 1976. “The renewal of case morphology: Sources and constraints”. Working Papers on Language Universals (Stanford University) 20: 107–51. Kiparsky, V. 1967. Russische historische Grammatik. Bd. 2. Die Entwicklung des Formensystems. Heidelberg: Winter. Klenin, E. 1980. “Conditions on object marking: Stages in the history of the East Slavic genitive-accusative”. In Papers from the 4th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, E. Traugott, R. Labrum, and S. Shepherd (eds), 253–7. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Klimov, G. A. 1962. Sklonenie v kartvel’skix jazykax v sravnitel’no-istoričeskom aspekte [Declension in Kartvelian languages in a comparative-historical perspective]. Moskva: Izdatel’stvo Akademii Nauk SSSR. Kortlandt, F. H. H. 1980. “On the relative chronology of Armenian sound changes”. In Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Armenian Linguistics, 97–106. Delmar, N. Y.: Caravan Books. [= Kortlandt 2003: 26–33] Kortlandt, F. H. H. 1983. “On final syllables in Slavic”. Journal of Indo-European Studies 11: 167–85.
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Kortlandt, F. H. H. 1984. “Proto-Armenian case endings”. In International Symposium on Armenian Linguistics: Reports [Meždunarodnyj simpozium po armjanskomu jazykoznaniju: Doklady], 97–106. Erevan: AN Arm. SSR. [= Kortlandt 2003: 45–51] Kortlandt, F. H. H. 2003. Armeniaca: Comparative Notes. Ann Arbor: Caravan. Kulikov, L. (to appear) “Noun incorporation in a diachronic perspective: Its sources and development (evidence from Indo-European)”. In Evolution of Syntactic Relations, Ch. Lehmann and S. Skopeteas (eds). Berlin: Mouton. Kumaxov, M. 1971. Slovoizmenenie adygskix jazykov. [Inflectional system of the Adyghe languages]. Moskva: Nauka. Kumaxov, M. 1989. Sravnitel’no-istoričeskaja grammatika adygskix (čerkesskix) jazykov [A comparative-historical grammar of the Adyghe (Circassian) languages]. Moskva: Nauka. Laubscher, G. G. 1921. The Syntactical Causes of Case Reduction in Old French [Elliot Monographs 7]. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Lehmann, Ch. 1995. Thoughts on Grammaticalization [LINCOM Studies in Theoretical Linguistics 01]. München: LINCOM EUROPA. Leumann, M. A. [et al.] 1977. Lateinische Grammatik. Bd. 1. Lateinische Laut- und Formenlehre (Neuausgabe der 1926 - 1928 erschienenen 5. Aufl. der Lateinischen Grammatik von J. B. Hofmann and A. Szantyr) [Handbuch der Altertumswissenschaft. Abt. 2; Teil 2, Lateini sche Grammatik; Bd. 1]. München: Beck. Luraghi, S. 1987. “Patterns of case syncretism in Indo-European languages”. In Papers from the VIIth International Conference on Historical Linguistics, A. G. Ramat, O. Carruba, and G. Bernini (eds), 355–71. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Masica, C. 1991. The Indo‑Aryan Languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mathiassen, T. 1996. A Short Grammar of Lithuanian. Columbus: Slavica. Matras, Y. 1997. “The typology of case relations and case layer distribution in Romani”. In The Typology and Dialectology of Romani, Y. Matras, P. Bakker and H. Kyuchukov (eds), 61–93. Amsterdam: Benjamins. McGregor, W. B. (to appear) “Indexicals as sources of case markers”. In Forms and Functions: Aspect, Tense, Mood, Diathesis and Valency. Proceedings of the First Colloquium on Language Typology in a Diachronical Perspective held at Göteborg University, 19–21 November 2004, F. Josephson and I. Söhrman (eds). Amsterdam: Benjamins. Meillet, A. 1936. Esquisse d’une grammaire comparée de l’arménien classique. Vienne: Mékhitharistes. Orr, R. 2000. Common Slavic Nominal Morphology: A New Synthesis. Bloomington: Slavica. Pedersen, H. 1905. “Zur armenischen Sprachgeschichte”. Zeitschrift für vergleichende Sprachforschung auf dem Gebiete der indogermanischen Sprachen (Kuhns Zeitschrift) 38: 194–240. [= Pedersen 1982: 56–240]. Pedersen, H. 1982. Kleine Schriften zum Armenischen. Hildesheim: Olms. Penny, R. 1991. A History of the Spanish Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Plank, F. 1979. “The functional basis of case systems and declension classes: From Latin to Old French”. Linguistics 17: 611–40. Plungian, V. A. 2002. “K semantike russkogo lokativa (“vtorogo predložnogo” padeža)” [Towards the semantics of the second Russian locative (“second prepositional” case)]. Semiotika i informatika 37: 229–54. Prasse, K. G. 1964. “The origin of Berber noun-prefixes”. In The Proceedings of the First International Congress of Africanists, L. Bown and M. Crowder (eds), 97–104. London: Longmans.
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van Reenen, P. and Schøsler, L. 2000. “Declension in Old and Middle French: Two Opposing Tendencies”. In Historical Linguistics 1995. Vol. I: General Issues and Non-Germanic Languages, J. Ch. Smith and D. Bentley (eds), 327–44. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Reh, M. 1986. “Where have all the prefixes gone?” Afrikanistische Arbeitspapiere 5: 121–34. Sasse, H.-J. 1984. “Case in Cushitic, Semitic, and Berber”. In Current Progress in Afro-Asiatic Linguistics, J. Bynon (ed.), 111–26. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Sihler, A. L. 1995. New Comparative Grammar of Greek and Latin. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Stampe, D. 1994. Extract from the summary of a discussion at LinguistList, dated 13 April 1994. (http://www.umich.edu/~archive/linguistics/linguist.list/volume.5/ no.451–500). Szemerényi, O. 1970. Einführung in die vergleichende Sprachwissenschaft. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. Szemerényi, O. 1990. Einführung in die vergleichende Sprachwissenschaft. 4., durchges. Aufl. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. Vermeer, W. 1991. “The mysterious North Russian nominative singular ending -e and the problem of the reflex of Proto-Indo-European *-os in Slavic”. Welt der Slaven 36: 271–95. Yadroff, M. 1996. “Modern Russian vocatives: A case of subtractive morphology”. Journal of Slavic Linguistics 4: 133–53. Zaliznjak, A. A. 1967. Russkoe imennoe slovoizmenenie. [Russian nominal inflection]. Moskva: Nauka. Zinkevičius, Z. 1996. The History of the Lithuanian Language. Vilnius: Mokslo ir enciklopedijų leidykla. Zograf, G. A. 1976. Morfologičeskij stroj novyx indoarijskix jazykov: opyt strukturnotipologičeskogo analiza [The morphological structure of the New Indo-Aryan languages: a structural-typological approach]. Moskva: Nauka.
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chapter 3
Emergence of morphological cases in South Mande From the amorphous type to inflectional? Valentin Vydrine Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography, Russian Academy of Sciences
The paper addresses the ‘emergence’ of morphological case in South Mande languages. It is argued that some languages, such as Guro, should be analyzed as having an ergative case, which, remarkably, is restricted to pronouns. This pattern violating one of the well-known typological universals finds a ready explanation in a diachronic perspective. The paper also discusses locative forms of nouns in Tura and Dan, which may be viewed as emergent locative cases, but also show similarities to locative classes, as found in Bantu languages.
1. Introduction1 The present paper deals with the morphology of nouns and pronouns in South Mande languages. In particular I argue that contrary to the established view, their forms can be interpreted in terms of morphological cases. I further show that in some languages of the group, elements of an ergative system have emerged in the personal pronouns. The Mande language family (Niger-Congo philum) consists of about 60 languages, nine of which (Mano, Dan, Tura, Guro, Mwan, Wan, Yaure, Gban, Beng), spoken in Ivory Coast, Liberia and Guinea, belong to the South Mande group. They share some features with the rest of the Mande family. The SOV word order is very strictly observed in all Mande languages, so that the absence of a direct object in the clause automatically makes the verb intransitive.2 If the verb is transitive, an NP in the pre-verbal slot is the direct object. An NP following the verb is an indirect object and is usually marked by a postposition. Word order within the NP is as follows: Adjectives and numerals follow the head noun (N + Adj/Num) and possessive nouns precede the head noun (Nposs + N). Tense, aspect, mood markers follow either the subject or the verb. In the Manding branch (Bamana, Maninka, Jula are the best known languages of the family) grammatical meanings are expressed only by word order and auxiliary words. The established image of Mande languages as ‘languages without morphology’ seems to
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be the main reason why nobody (to my knowledge) has ever tried to interpret Mande data in terms of morphological cases.3 However, the situation in South-West, South and East Mande languages and Bobo is different. Pervasive phonetic processes of monosyllabification, through elision of consonants and vowels, led to the emergence of contracted forms at an early stage. Sometimes, the resulting forms produced morphological paradigms. The morphologization concerned primarily the system of personal pronouns, which can be easily explained through their high frequency in discourse. Nouns underwent this process too, although to a much lesser extent. In the remainder of this paper I will present and analyze South Mande data. The paper is organized as follows. In section 2, I analyze the personal pronoun system in two South Mande languages (Guro and Yaure) and argue that they can best be interpreted in terms of declension, at least partially. In some languages (Guro, Mano, Beng) we find ergative case which cannot be regarded as a mere fusion of a subject and a direct object pronoun. Section 3 examines the emerging possessive case in Tura and Dan languages. In section 4, the status of the locative form of nouns in Tura is considered. In the final section, the main results are summarized.
2. Pronoun cases: a split ergative system? 2.1 The Proto-South Mande system Sets of personal pronoun series in South Mande languages represent a paradigm, the only difference from the case paradigms in Indo-European languages (and other ‘case languages’) lies in the fact that not only cases are distinguished in this system, but other grammatical meanings as well (focalization, aspect, polarity, etc.). The results of my reconstruction show that an entire set of pronominal series existed already in ProtoSouth-Mande (cf. Table 1; for discussion see Vydrine 2006). One can see that some grammatical oppositions between the series are interpreted in terms of cases. Let us have a closer look at these oppositions. Three subjective series represent the Nominative. Two of them, ‘Basic’ and ‘Optative’, are distinguished by tone; the high tone can be considered as a marker of the optative mode. The third one, ‘Imperative’, is defective (in line with its semantic nature) and stands out in the segmental form of its singular pronoun, which reflects its special role in discourse. Setting these minor differences aside, we have to conclude that the modal oppositions are hierarchically inferior to the opposition of cases. The three Subjective series are opposed to the non-subjective series which is here referred to as Oblique case. The latter appears in the position of Direct Object, Indirect Object, Possessor or any other non-final member in a nominal phrase. The table shows that the Non-subject series differs from the Subject Basic series only in the 3rd person.
Emergence of morphological cases in South Mande
Table 1. Personal pronoun series in Proto-South Mande Singular Subject basic sbj optative sbj imperative Non-subject Reflexive Focalized/autonomous Portemanteau/ergative (?) †
Pl.
Dual
Plural
1
2
3
1 excl 1 incl
1 incl 2
3
¯ *N *Ń – ¯ *N ¯ *N *mā *mā
*i¯/ē *i´ *ɓè *i¯/ē *i¯/ē *bi¯†/yi¯ *ɓē/yi¯
*è *é – *à *ē *yè *yà
*yi¯/ō *yi´/ó – *yi¯/ō *yi¯/ō *yi¯/ō *wā
*kòá *kóá *kòà *kòá *kòá *kòá *kòà
*wò *wó – *ànù *wō *wò *wà
*kō/kυ¯ *kó/kυ´ *kò/kυ` *kō/kυ¯ *kō/kυ¯ *kō/kυ¯ *kō/kυ¯
*kā *ká *kà *kā *kā *kā *kā
Or *ɓi¯.
The Reflexive and Focalized/Autonomous series are neutral with respect to case. The Focalised pronouns can appear in any syntactic position, and therefore, the opposition ‘focalized–non-focalized’ is primary to the case opposition. The Reflexive pronouns can occupy only non-subject positions within an elementary sentence, but they tend to be also used as logophoric and/or long-range reflexive markers, which means that they can appear in the function of Subject in the second clause of a complex sentence. A more complicated case is represented by the last series of Table 1. Let us examine more closely the functioning of the reflexes of this series in modern Guro (cf. the set of ergative series, Table 2).
2.2 Guro In this South Mande language, the number of pronominal series has increased, new semantic oppositions took form, see Table 2. Let us consider some examples illustrating the use of the pronouns of the non-ergative and non-contractive series (the latter will be considered in detail further on). The subjective (nominative) basic series is used in perfective constructions (cf. (1)), in combination with the existential copula à as in (2), in negative verbal phrases (in the latter case, a merger with the negative marker ká is optional):
(1) È dă. 3sg.nom come ‘He came.’
(2) È à zi`má. 3sg.nom be beautiful ‘He is beautiful.’
The subjective (nominative) imperfective series result from merger with an imperfective marker é. They appear in imperfective verbal constructions or, when in combination with the auxiliary dā ‘to come’, in future constructions, see (2).
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Valentin Vydrine Table 2. Personal pronouns in Guro (Maa and Nya dialects; forms in the brackets belong to Mεε and Yasua dialects)† Series
Singular 1
Subjective basic 㯠Subject. ã¯a imperfective Optative and a (a ~ ã¯) reflexive Non-subject 㯠series Focalized màá Ergative basic Ergative imperfective Ergative optative Contractive ergative basic Contractive ergative imperfective Contractive ergative optative Contractive reflexive basic Contractive reflexive imperfective Contractive reflexive optative
Plural 2
3
1 incl
1 excl
2
¯i ¯i´i
3
è èé
kàà (gàà) kàá (gà)
kυ¯ kυ¯υ´
kā wò kāá (ká) wòó
´i (i´~ ¯i )
mā má
ɓē ¯i´i (i´)
kàā (gà ~ gàà) kυ´ (kυ´ ~ kυ¯) à kàā ~ kāà kυ¯ (gàà) yι`´ι kàā, kàānû kυ¯υ´, kυ¯υ´nû (gàā, gàānû) è (gāà, gàà) kυ¯ èé (yē) kàá (gà, gàā) kυ¯υ´ (kυ´)
má mà
´i ɓè
é yà
kàā (gà ~ gàà) kυ´ kàà (gàà) kυ`
ká kà
wó wà
mā
ɓē
yà
(gàà)
kυ¯
kā
wà
mā
ɓē
yā
kāà ~ kàà (gāà, gàà)
kυ¯
kā
wā
má/a
´i
má/a
´i
èé/yèé kàá/kàā (gàà) kυ´ (kυ`) (yē ) ē kāé kυ´
ká
wυ¯
má/a
´i
é
ká
wυ´
¯i bi`´i
é
ká
kυ´
ká (ká ~ wó (wó ~ ó) kā) kā wò kāá, wυ`υ´, wυ`υ´nû kāánû (wυˇnû) kā wò kāá (ká) wòó (wō)
ká (káá) wυ`υ´ (wυ`υ¯)
†
Some optional series which are of little interest for the topic discussed are not represented in the table.
(3) Èé dã¯ã¯ sáá ɓīlī lε¯. 3sg.nom.ipfv come.ipfv rice eat mrph ‘He will eat some/the rice.’
The optative and reflexive series have two different functions. In subject position, these pronouns express a direct or indirect command:
Emergence of morphological cases in South Mande
(4) È ká lē é sáá ɓīlī lō. 3sg.nom neg that 3sg.nom.opt rice eat neg ‘He shouldn’t eat rice.’
In non-subject position, on the other hand, they fulfill the function of reflexive and logophoric pronouns):
(5) È dă é và. 3sg.nom come.pfv 3sg.refl to ‘He came to his (own) home.’
The non-subject pronouns are used in positions of direct and indirect objects and of possessor or noun modifiers in a noun phrase:
(6) Èi gɔ¯¯εī tâdɔˇ àj lε¯. 3sg.nom money keep.pfv 3sg.obl for ‘Hei kept money for himj.’
(7) à ti´ 3sg.obl father ‘his father’
The focalized pronouns can be used in any syntactic position. Here is an example of the use of such a pronoun in the function of direct object:
(8) È yìí d-ãˆ. 3sg.nom 3sg.foc know-ipfv ‘As for himj, hei knows himj.’
Existence of 1sg and 2sg forms with segmental stems ma and ɓe in Guro was mentioned already in Benoist’s Guro Grammar (1969: 52–3).4 Benoist treated them as contracted pronouns. One problem of Benoist’s interpretation is that, from a formal point of view, it is difficult to imagine a fusion of the type ¯i + à = ɓè ‘you (sg)-him’, and even 㯠+ à = mà ‘I-him’ does not seem convincing. The other problem with Benoist’s interpretation is that these stems appear also in contexts in which fusion cannot take place. Consider the following examples:
(9) a. b.
Mā bε˜¯nε˜¯ ɓālāá. 1sg dog beat.pfv5 ‘I beat a dog.’ Bē bε˜¯nε˜¯ ɓālāá 2sg dog beat.pfv ‘You (sg) beat a dog.’
In both examples mā and ɓē are optional, and they can be replaced, without any modification of semantics or pragmatics of the utterances, with the standard forms, 㯠and ¯i respectively. However, in some other contexts these forms (mā and ã¯, ɓē and ¯i ) are no
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more interchangeable. Especially, unlike 㯠and ¯i (the Subjective Basic series), forms mā and ɓē do not cooccur with intransitive verbs. Another important thing is the following: the direct object in both examples, bε˜¯nε˜¯, has indefinite status, which means that nothing else is included into the NP of the Direct Object (cf. example (16), where a non-subject 3sg pronoun is represented at the underlying level in the function of a ‘context-bound definite marker’; at the surface level, it is reflected in the tonal modification of the subject pronoun). From the observations above it can be concluded that mā and ɓē in modern Guro (whatever may be their origin) are not contractive, as far as they incorporate just one single pronoun at the underlying level. My opinion is that they should be treated as ergative pronouns, although with a limited distribution.6 Returning to Table 2, we can see that the three ergative series differ formally from the corresponding non-ergative (nominative) series only in the 1sg and, in the basic series (Subjective basic and Ergative basic), in 2sg. Let us also mention that the 1sg form ma is much more broadly used than the corresponding 2sg form ɓe: the latter cannot appear in many contexts in which the former is quite natural, in particular, in those contexts in which the direct object is a 2sg or 3pl pronoun. ¯i (10) Mā (= ã¯) ɓālāá. 1sg.erg (1sg.nom) 2sg.obl beat.pfv ‘I beat you (sg).’ (11) a. b.
Mā (= ã¯) wò yé. 1sg.erg (1sg.nom) 3pl.obl see.pfv ‘I saw them.’ yé. Ī (≠ *ɓē) wò 2sg.nom (2sg.erg) 3pl.obl see.pfv ‘You (sg) saw them.’
Mā (but not ɓē) can precede a direct object expressed by a non-pronominalized noun phrase even if the latter has no indefinite status: (12) (Benoist 1969: 24) a. Mā Tālá lē fálá d. 1sg.erg Tra poss village know ‘I know Tra’s village.’ b. Ī (≠ *ɓē) Tālá lē fálá d. 2sg.nom 2sg.erg Tra poss village know ‘You (sg) know Tra’s village.’ The contractive ergative series of pronouns can be considered, synchronically, as resulting from a fusion of the ergative series with the 3sg non-subject pronoun à. The attested forms support this derivation. In these series, the stems MA and BE are no longer optional, but obligatory:
(13) a. b.
Emergence of morphological cases in South Mande
Mà ɓālāá. 1sg>3sg beat.pfv ‘I beat him.’ Bè ɓālāá 2sg>3sg beat.pfv ‘You (sg) beat him.’
It should be stressed that this fusion takes place even when the non-subject 3sg pronoun is included within the noun phrase that forms the direct object. In other words, this fusion contravenes the syntactic hierarchy and goes beyond the limits of different noun phrases: lē bε˜¯nε˜¯ ɓālāá. (14) Bè 2sg>3sg poss dog beat.pfv ‘You (sg) beat his dog.’ (15) Bè bī ɓālāá. 2sg>3sg son beat.pfv ‘You (sg) beat his son.’ As can be seen from these examples, Guro (like the great majority of Mande languages) formally distinguishes between free and relational nouns: in the possessive phrase, only the former need a possessive marker lē. However, the 3sg non-subject pronoun à can go with free nouns even without the possessive marker. In this case it does not express a possessor, but the definiteness of the noun phrase: à bε˜¯nε˜¯ ‘the (aforementioned) dog’. When such a noun phrase appears in the direct object position, à merges with the subject pronoun. As a result, the form of the subject (contractive) pronoun marks the definite status of the noun in the direct object position: (16) Bè bε˜¯nε˜¯ ɓālāá. 2sg>3sg dog beat.pfv ‘You (sg) beat the (aforementioned) dog.’ With reflexive verbs, both MA and 㯠forms of the 1sg pronoun are possible: (17) a. b.
Mā (= ã¯) à zùlù-nâ. 1sg.erg (1sg.nom) be wash-prog ‘I’m washing myself.’ Māá (= ã¯a ) dã¯ã¯ zùlù lε¯. 1sg.erg.ipfv (1sg.nom.ipfv) come.ipfv wash to ‘I’ll wash myself.’
Ma (but not ɓe) appears as an optional form in all three contractive reflexive series (cf. Table 2) which represent a fusion of subjective pronouns with reflexive pronouns of the direct object noun phrase:
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(18) Má (= a ) bī ɓālāá. 1sg>1sg son beat.pfv ‘I beat my son.’ In example (18), má can be represented at the underlying level as a combination of two pronouns, 㯠+ a , of which the first one is a subject 1sg pronoun, and the second one a reflexive 1sg pronoun. However, both ma and ɓe forms are impossible in a negative context:7 (19) 㯠(≠ *mã¯) ká à ɓālāā lε¯ lō. neg 3sg.obl beat to neg 1sg.nom (1sg.erg) ‘I didn’t beat him.’ The use of the 1 and 2 sg ergative pronouns is summarized in Table 3. The above discussion shows that Guro has a split ergative system: the ergative/absolutive system manifests itself in 1sg and 2sg only, while the 3sg pronouns behave according to a nominative–accusative system. In the plural, the case oppositions are neutralized.8 In other words, ergativity in this language is restricted by the Locutor Hierarchy (1p. > 2p. > 3p.) which is part of Kibrik’s (1997) Activity Hierarchy, which is an elaboration of Silverstein’s (1976) Animacy Hierarchy: The higher the status of the Subject within this hierarchy, the more readily the ergative form is used. If the subject occupies the highest position in that hierarchy (i.e., it is represented by a 1sg pronoun), it has a special ergative form, ma, which is not mechanically derivable from the form of the nominative ã. We find relatively few restrictions on the use of this ergative form. At the next stage of the Locutor Hierarchy (2sg), we also find a special ergative stem ɓe which cannot be derived from the nominative form i. In contrast to the 1sg ergative, this pronoun is restricted to contexts in which the direct object is pronominalized and represented by the 3sg pronoun, or in which the direct object has indefinite status. On the other hand, the position of the direct object pronoun on the Locutor Hierarchy and on Silverstein’s Activity Hierarchy in general is also relevant: the larger the distance between the Subject and the (Direct) Object pronoun on the Locutor Hierarchy, the more probable the use of the ergative form. This explains why the non-contractive ergative 2sg form goes with indefinite direct objects only, and the contractive ergative pronouns can occur with the 3sg pronoun, whose status is the lowest. When Table 3. Contexts in which Guro ergative pronouns can be used Type of DO
mā
ɓē
Ø 1 pl, 2 pl pronouns 1sg, 2 sg, 3 pl pronouns definite noun 3 sg pronoun indefinite noun
– – + + + +
– – – – + +
Emergence of morphological cases in South Mande
the verb is reflexive and the subject and direct object are equal in status (ex. (7)), the use of the ergative is optional. Even the incompatibility of the ergative case with negation can be explained within the same logic: negation lowers the agentive status of the subject.9 If my interpretation is correct, it contradicts one generally accepted view and one claimed universal: 1. in Niger-Congo languages, and in Mande languages in particular, ergativity is not attested;10 2. ‘if a language has an opposition of ergative and ‘nominative’11 in the declension of the pronouns of 1st and 2nd persons (or at least one of them), the same opposition is present in the declension of nouns’ (Kozinsky 1980: 52).
2.3 Yaure In some other languages of the group, the process of the establishment of morphological cases took a different pathway. The most interesting case is represented by the Yaure language (Hopkins 1987; the interpretation is mine), which has a 4-level tones system. Two additional case-forms (as compared to Guro) have emerged in this language. First, a possessive series resulting from the fusion of the non-subject series with the possessive conjunction lé. I prefer the term ‘possessive case’, because these forms are used to express the possessive relation with free nouns (‘alienable possession’), while non-subject pronouns go together with related nouns (‘unalienable possession’); Secondly, a dative series has developed through the fusion of non-subject pronouns with the directional postposition lε` ‘to, for’. However, the process has not stopped here. The possessive case has split into two series: the reflexive and the focalized. The non-subject Table 4. Personal pronouns in Yaure Singular
Subject Basic Negative а) Optative b) Reflexive Non-subject Portemanteau Focalized Possessive Possessive focal. Possessive reflex. Dative Oblique + l
Plural
1
2
3
1 excl pl/ incl dual
1 incl
2
3
ã` mã`ã´ ã´
ì yìá í
è yàá é
kυ` kυ`á kυ´
kȁ ȁ kȁ ȁ kȁ ȁ
kà kàá ká
ò wòá ~ òá ó
a mã`ã̏ mε`˜ε˜` mε´˜ mε´˜ mε˝˜ mε´˜ –
í ? yìε` yíé yíé yı˝e˝ yíε´ –
ȁ ? yε̏ ε̏ yȅé yé ~ é ye˝e˝ yε̏Lε´ yɔ̏L
kυ´ ? kυ`ε` kυ´é kυ´é kυ˝e˝ kυ´ε´ –
kȁ ȁ kȁ à kε̏ε` kε̏ε` kε̏ε` kε˝ε˝ kε̏ε` –
ká – kε`ε` kε´ε´ kε´ε´ ke˝e˝ kε´ –
ò ? wȅ ȅ wȅ ε´ wéé we˝e˝ wlε̏ε´ wlɔ̏
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series, particularly 3rd person forms, tend to merge with other postpositions as well: l (meaning of possession and direction), and some others. It should be observed that in Yaure, pronouns in all derived series have a CV(V) structure, while in the non-derived series, it is V (except for the plural locutors which form a separate subsystem). Pronominal systems of other South Mande languages display more or less the same patterns as already analyzed in Guro and Yaure, in various combinations.
3. Emergence of a possessive case on nouns In Tura (a 4-level tonal system) and Dan (3 to 5 level tones, depending on the dialect, plus one or two descending tones), non-subject pronouns in their function of possessor of a free noun appear in a semi-amalgamated form with the marker ɓȁ 12 which can be traced back to a postposition with a broad locative meaning, and further back, to a well attested noun stem meaning ‘surface’. Consider Table 5. Table 5. Oblique cases pronouns in Tura and Dan (the Kla dialect) Singular Person Kla-Dan Non-subject Possessive Tura Non-subject Possessive
Plural Dual
Plural 1 incl 2
1
2
3
1 excl 1 incl
ŋ̏ m ` mȁ
` ` βȁ
ȁ ȁ βȁ
yi` ~ `i yi``i
kò kwà kùȍ , kòȍ kwàȁ
ŋ´ ḿmȁ
´i ´iȁ
ȁ ȁ ȁ
kó kóȁ
ká káȁ
kà kàȁ
3 ȁ nȕ /ânù/ànû ȁ nȁ ȁ
ȁŋ̏ ȁm ̏ mȁ
Nouns merge with this marker too. Consider following examples from Kla-Dan (20) and Tura (21): ̏ dʌ´ ‘his father’ → b. A ̏ dʌ´-a´ k ‘his father’s house’ (20) a. A (21) ŋ´ do˝ó-ȁ kwi˝i´. 1sg.obl elder.brother-poss house ‘My elder brother’s house.’ (Bearth 1971: 109–13) It should be mentioned that -ɓȁ /-ȁ is not the only possessive conjunction in those languages. In Tura there are two others, pè (a grammaticalized noun stem with the original meaning ‘part, share’) and pe˝ (the meaning of the corresponding noun stem being ‘side’). They express, besides the possessive relation, some additional components of meaning (contrastive meaning for pè) or have a non-neutral distribution (possibility to combine with locative nouns for pe˝). Against this background, -ɓȁ /-ȁ can be regarded as a ‘neutral’ possessive marker. Consider, for instance:
(22) a. b.
Emergence of morphological cases in South Mande
ȁ lɔ˝̏ɔ-ȁ nɔ˝ŋ´. 3sg.obl younger.brother-poss wife ‘His younger brother’s wife.’ ȁ lɔ˝̏ɔ pè nɔ˝ŋ´. 3sg.obl younger.brother poss wife ‘His younger brother’s wife.’
In (22b), a deceased younger brother is meant, while (22a) describes a regular, neutral situation (Bearth 1971: 110). It is true that the degree of cohesion of the possessive marker -ȁ with the possessor noun (or pronoun) is not yet very high, and in the perception of the native speakers of the languages in question the connection of this marker with the lexeme ɓȁ in its other meanings seems to be maintained. But we have every reason to regard the situation as an emerging possessive case.
4. The locative form of nouns: an embryo of a locative case or a locative class? Some nouns in Guro, Mwan, Tura, Dan,13 especially those with locative semantics, have special ‘locative forms’ (with modified vowels and tones) when they occur in the position of indirect object. These forms originate from a fusion with stems functioning both as a noun and a locative postposition. Two examples from Tura (Bearth 1971: 199– 201) are Pȁ ȁ ‘hut in the field’ with corresponding locative form pȁ ȁ á ~ pȁ ȁ lé ‘in the hut’, and Pε˝έε ‘town, village’ with the locative form pe˝é ~ pe˝élé ‘in the village’. See also example (23): (23) Wò gòlò pe˝é. 3pl remain village.loc ‘They remain in the village.’ The stem lé as a noun means ‘edge, end, extremity, surface, place’, and as a postposition, it expresses a generic locative meaning ‘on, in’. Full forms in Tura (such as pȁ ȁ lé) tend to grow obsolete, the preference being given now to fused forms (such as pȁ ȁ á). It is tempting to consider the ‘locative forms’ as a ‘locative quasi-case’. This interpretation is contravened, however, by the fact that these forms can also appear in syntactic positions other than that of indirect object: (24) Pe˝é ke˝ sε̏á. village.loc be good ‘It’s all right in the village.’ (25) Ma˝a˝-lé ke˝ kóo˝ pe˝é. man-loc be our.obl town.loc ‘Man is our town.’
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These different syntactic functions of the fused forms reflect different functions of the original morpheme -lé: that of a locative postposition and that of a noun with a general locative meaning. The syntactic polyvalence of the locative forms in Tura brings strongly to mind the locative noun classes in Bantu languages. An example of a locative class noun in subject function in the Bantu language Shambala (Zone G) is given in (26): (26) Ku-ntu kw-ekula ku-akwe ku-zatama… 15cl.-area 15cl.-be.large 15cl.-poss 15cl.-be.beautiful ‘The area which is large, it is beautiful…’ (Aksenova and Toporova 1990: 103) In the Gweetaa dialect of Dan, the evolution of a similar form has led to a different result. Here, two different forms are derived from stems with locative semantics, one with a suffix -ɗɤ¯, the other with the suffix -ɗε̏. The former (‘locative noun’) appears in post-verbal position, and the derived form is never followed by a postposition; the latter appears in other nominal positions. A form without any suffix, if available, appears in some idiomatic contexts. (27) Yȁ pɤ̏ ɤ¯ kèȅ tȁ. 3sg.nom.prf fall refl back.of.head on ‘He fell on the back of his head.’ ɤ ɤ (28) Yȁ ¯ gɔ̏ ɓō yȁ ¯ kèȅ-ɗε̏ tó ɗy-˝. 3sg.nom.prf refl head shave 3sg.nom.prf refl back.of.head-loc1 leave so ‘He shaved his head and left the back of his head unshaved.’
(29) Dı̏ʌ̏ʌ̏ y`a` dɔ¯ ȁ kèè-ɗɤ¯.14 boil 3sg.nom.prf stand 3sg.obl back.of.head-loc2 ‘A boil appeared on the back of his head.’ In this language, there are serious reasons to regard the form derived by the suffix -ɗɤ¯ as a locative case. However, there is further evidence that complicates the situation. First, this suffix also appears as an adverbial marker: (30) Yɤ̏ ɗε̏ yɤ̏ pε˝˝εpε˝-ɗɤ¯.15 3sg.nom place see clear-adv ‘He can see clearly.’ Nevertheless, it would be wrong to regard ‘locative ɗɤ¯-nouns’ as adverbs, because they can have dependent nouns to the left, as in example (29). A solution could be to consider these forms as a ‘locative case’. Secondly, there is in Dan-Gweetaa another, less regular, way of deriving locative nouns, through fusion with locative postpositions: (31) Yȁ sε˝ ɓli´kɤ̏ kʌ¯. 3sg.nom.prf earth brick make ‘He made earthen bricks.’
Emergence of morphological cases in South Mande
(32) Bāā kɤ̏kɤ̏-nu ̏ wó tō si˝á. cassava shaving-pl 3pl.nom remain earth.loc ‘Casava shavings remained on the ground.’ The form si˝a´ results, most probably, from the fusion of the noun sε˝ with the locative postposition ɓȁ ‘on’. In the majority of cases, such fused forms still can be recognized by the speakers as such (‘full forms’ are considered as characteristic of ‘children’s speech’, while the fused forms belong to the ‘speech of adults’). However, they cannot be regarded as equivalent to the -ɗɤ¯ forms, because the latter are sometimes also possible with the same stems: (33) Dȉ ɓε¯ zȉ̏i-sɯ ̏ y̏a gó sε˝ε˝-ɗɤ¯.16 worm fruit scare-ptcp 3sg.nom.prf exit earth-loc2 ‘A fearful worm got out of the ground.’17 The forms like sε˝ε˝-ɗɤ¯ and si˝a´ could be interpreted as representing two different locative cases. It is yet to be determined what exactly is the degree of regularity of these cases (which seems to be not very high) and their semantics. There is yet another morphological feature that distinguishes noun phrases in the locative case. Instead of regular possessive marker ɓ̏a (which can be reduced to ‑̏a, cf. section 3), it requires a special marker, gɔ̏ (which goes back to the noun gɔ̏ ‘head’): (34) Ma´ w dō ku n¯ gɔ̏ ɓláā. 1sg.nom.prf monkey one catch 1sg.obl poss farm.loc ‘I have caught a monkey on my farm.’ (35) Ā kʌ¯ gbēŋ¯ kʌ̏ ȁ gɔ̏ k-ɗɤ¯. 1sg.nom pst night do 3sg.obl poss house-LOC2 ‘I spent a/the night at his house.’ This possessive marker is required even if there is no fusion of the noun with a locative postposition. In other words, its appearance is conditioned by the syntactic function of the NP, rather than by the morphological form of the possessed noun: (36) … ɤˆ d̏a ɤ¯ gɔ̏ yʌ˝ʌ̏ gɯ ´. 3sg.nom>3sg.obl put 3sg.refl poss pocket in ‘… and he puts it in his pocket.’ Dependence of the choice of possessive marker on the syntactic function of the NP can be interpreted as a special case of morphological case agreement.
5. Summary and conclusion The South Mande languages represent an example of a morphological case system in an early stage of formation. This process has brought forth an interesting example of the
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emergence of ergative case in pronouns of 1st and 2nd person in Guro, which contradicts one of the universals formulated by Kozinsky (1980) (cf. also Silverstein 1976); the existence of ergativity in an African (and, especially, Niger-Congo) language by itself contravenes an opinion firmly established in linguistic typology (cf. Nichols 1992: 187). The locative forms of nouns in Tura, whose derivational history is quite transparent, reveals some similarity to the locative classes in Bantu languages. In Dan, a similar form evolves towards a morphological locative case (or even cases), with morphological agreement marked in the possessive marker.
Acknowledgements This study is based mainly on data collected during five field trips in 2001 through 2005 by a St. Petersburg team of linguists against the background of a joint research project with the University of Zürich. This Project was supported by a grant from the Swiss National Foundation for Scientific Research subj 062156.00. I would like to express my gratitude to Prof. Thomas Bearth whose energy made this project possible. Previous publications (quite extensive for some languages, less so for some others) were also taken into account. Unless indicated otherwise examples given in the text originate from my own fieldwork.
Abbreviations adv adverbial marker, excl exclusive 1st person pronoun, ipfv imperfective, incl inclusive 1st person pronoun, loc locative marker, mrph secondary marker of some verbal constructions (going back to a benefactive postposition), nom nominative subject pronoun, neg negation marker, obl oblique case (non-nominative), opt optative, pl plural, pfv perfective, prf perfect, prog progressive, pst past, ptcp participle marker, refl reflexive pronoun, sg singular, sbj subject.
Notes 1. The orthography for all the languages has been unified according to the International Phonetic Alphabet. Thus, level tones are marked as indicated in Table a.
Table a. Level tones Extrahigh High Middle Low Extralow
2-level systems
3-level systems
é
é ē è
è
4-level systems
5-level systems
e˝ é
e˝ é ē è ȅ
è ȅ
Emergence of morphological cases in South Mande
Contour tones are marked as follows: eˇ — rising tone, ê — falling tone. Regular ipa symbols will be used for the vowels, with one exception: for the languages with atr (Advanced/Retracted Tongue Root) vowel harmony (Guro, Yaure), the –atr vowels will be marked, according to the established practice, as ı, ε, ɔ, υ, instead of i̘ , e̘ , o̘ , u̘ . 2. It should be noted that in many Mande languages the 3sg object pronoun is usually omitted (dropped). However, it remains present at the underlying level, which becomes evident if the 3sg pronominal object is replaced by any other noun phrase. 3. The only exception so far is Rude (1983). 4. Benoist’s spelling is bē. 5. The rising tone of the verb marks perfective aspect. 6. Turning back to the historical interpretation, I assume that current ergative forms go back to the Proto-South-Mande portemanteau pronouns, i.e. subject-do contractive forms. The question arises: should we consider the latter as ergative as well? The ergative nature of the corresponding pronouns in modern Mano and Beng support this interpretation. 7. In fact, the stem MA is represented in the contractive negative form (which is optional in Guro). 8. Plural locutor pronouns represent, in most of South Mande languages, a subsystem of their own and follow special rules; see Vydrine (2006). 9. It should be mentioned that a seemingly similar connection between the use of the ergative and Locutor Hierarchy has been attested in the Yukulta language (Queensland, Australia), cf. Hopper and Thompson (1980: 273). 10. In Rude (1983), ‘ergativity’ is mentioned in the title, but in fact this author deals with the opposition ‘active vs. stative cases’. 11. The more correct term would be ‘absolutive’. 12. In the Dan-Blo dialect, ɓaˆ. 13. Probably, in some other South Mande languages too. 14. The modification of tone of the word kèȅ is conditioned by the tone of the subsequent element. 15. The stem pε˝ε˝pε˝ cannot be used without the suffix ɗɤ¯. 16. As can be seen from this example, the stem, in combination with the suffix, can also modify its form. This modification is irregular, but this problem falls outside the scope of this paper. 17. The word ɓε¯ ‘fruit’ is used in Dan-Gweetaa as a weakly grammaticalized classifier for round objects. In this function, it combines with words like ‘snake’ or ‘worm’ to express the large size of these beings.
References Aksenova, I. S. and Toporova, I. N. 1990. Vvedenie v Bantuistiku: Im’a. Glagol [Introduction to the Bantu Studies: Noun. Verb]. Moscow: Nauka. Bearth, Th. 1971. L’énoncé Toura. Norman, Oklahoma: S. I. L. Benoist, J.-P. 1969. Grammaire Gouro (Groupe Mandé — Côte d’Ivoire) [Afrique et Langage 3]. Lyon.
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Hopkins, E. 1987. Aperçu sur le Système Pronominal du Yaouré [S. I. L.-I. L.A 8]. Abidjan. Hopper, P. J. and Thompson, S. A. 1980. “Transitivity in grammar and discourse”. Language 56 (2): 251–99. Kibrik, A. E. 1997. “Beyond subject and object: Toward a comprehensive relational typology”. Linguistic Typology 1: 279–346. Kozinsky I. Sh. 1980. “Nekotorye universal’nye osobennosti sistem sklonenija lichnykh mestoimenij” [Some universals in the declension of personal pronouns]. In Teorija i tipologija mestoimenij [Theory and Typology of Pronouns], I. F. Vardul’ (ed.), 50–62. Moscow: Nauka. Nichols, J. 1992. Linguistic Diversity in Space and Time. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Rude, N. 1983. “Ergativity, and the Active–Stative Typology in Loma”. Studies in African Linguistics 14 (3): 265–83. Silverstein, M. 1976. “Hierarchy of features and ergativity”. In Grammatical Categories in Australian Languages [Linguistic Series 22], R. M. W. Dixon (ed.), 112–71. Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies. Vydrine, V. 2006. “Lichnye mestoimenija v juzhnykh jazykakh mande” [Personal pronouns in South Mande languages]. In Acta Linguistica Petropolitana. Volume II, Part 2: Mandeica Petropolitana, 322–403. St. Petersburg: Nauka.
chapter 4
Issues of morphological ergativity in the Tsimshian languages Agreement, determiners and the reconstruction of case Tyler Peterson University of British Columbia
The present-day Tsimshian languages lack a productive morphological case system, but vestiges of it can be observed in the behaviour of a sui generis class of morphemes called the ‘connectives’. It is proposed that these morphemes are actually the products of a systematic, localized fusion of a variety of grammatically distinct morphemes, including agreement, determiners and the remnants of a morphological case system. A historical and comparative reconstruction of this presents a typologically unusual arrangement of ergative agreement coupled with a nominative case system. This is characterized as a ‘nominative/ergative’ paradox, and an examination of these phenomena will present a snapshot of how a family of languages is evolving and coping with this incongruent set of grammatical processes.
1. Introduction In typological studies a number of different expressions of morphological ergativity have been found, typically manifested through a morphological case system and/or agreement system. In this paper, two correlates of ergativity at the morphological level in the Tsimshian languages are explored. This is done by examining the morphological markings which indicate the function of a nominal through specifically looking at (i) the pronominal system and cross-referencing agreement on the verb, and (ii) the so-called ‘connective’ system. The present-day Tsimshian languages lack a productive morphological case system, but vestiges of it can be observed in the behaviour of a sui generis class of morphemes called the ‘connectives’. It is proposed that these morphemes are actually the products of a systematic, localized fusion of a variety of grammatically distinct morphemes, including agreement, determiners and the remnants of a morphological case system. When ergative agreement is coupled with this case system some interesting results emerge, such as the typologically unusual arrangement of ergative agreement with a reconstructed nominative case system. This is characterized
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as a ‘nominative/ergative’ paradox, and an examination of these phenomena will present a snapshot of how a language (or in this case a family of languages) is evolving and coping with this incongruent set of grammatical processes. Two closely related languages, Interior Tsimshian and Coast Tsimshian (and respective sub-dialects) will be compared and analyzed, with the hypothesis that established morphosyntactic properties of one language can provide insight into the lesser known properties of the other. This will aid ultimately in reconstructing agreement, determiner and case marking in proto-Tsimshian. The structure of this paper is as follows: Section 2 introduces some of the relevant aspects of Tsimshian morphology and syntax, and examines in some detail the ergative agreement patterns in the Tsimshian language family. Section 3 then introduces and examines the unique connective system of the Tsimshian languages, which is then taken and reanalyzed as the fusion of case, determiners and agreement in Section 4. The interactions between this remnant case system and the ergative–nominative agreement patterns is discussed in Section 5.
2. Ergativity and agreement in the Tsimshian languages The Tsimshian languages are spoken on the northwest coast of Canada, almost entirely in the province of British Columbia and in adjacent areas of the interior. There are two subgroups within the Tsimshian family, each containing two languages, as shown in (1): the Interior Tsimshian subgroup is made up of Gitksan and Nisgha’a, which are similar enough to be considered dialects of the same language. The Coast Tsimshian subgroup is divided into Sm’algyax (or Coast Tsimshian proper) and Sgüüxs (South Tsimshian), and are also similar enough to be considered dialects of the same language.1
(1) The Tsimshian Language Family (Rigsby 1986: 25) Tsimshian Coast Tsimshian (CT) Sm’algyax
Sgüüxs
Interior Tsimshian (IT) Gitksan
Nisgha’a
The typical constituent order in matrix clauses in both Coast and Interior Tsimshian is rigidly vso. A Tsimshian verb stem may be morphologically simple, but frequently hosts a range of grammatical affixes, agreement, a case marker (in IT) and enclitic connectives. Examples of these include (2) and (3):
Issues of morphological ergativity in the Tsimshian languages
(2) CT: Sm’algyax a. góydiks=a gúxh arrive=cnc candlefish ‘The candlefish came.’ (Dunn 1972: 2)2 b. niic=(a)s Nadine=(a)t Isabelle see=pnc Nadine=pnc Isabelle ‘Nadine saw Isabelle.’ (Stebbins 2003: 83)
(3) IT: Nisgha’a a. ts’in=hl hanak’ enter=cnc woman ‘The woman entered.’ (Tarpent 1982: 57)3 b. hlimoom-ә-(t)=s (t) Mary=t Lucy help-tr-3=case pnc Mary=pnc Lucy ‘Mary helped Lucy.’ (Tarpent 1988: 108)
There are two general clause types in Tsimshian, referred to in the Tsimshian literature as the ‘indicative’ and ‘subjunctive’ (Boas 1911; Dunn 1979a).4 Indicative clauses represent a syntactic construction where the verbal complex is the first element in the clause followed by the subject and object, such as the examples (2) and (3). Subjunctive clauses may occur as matrix or embedded clauses and are typically characterized by (but do not always require) the presence of certain types of preverbal morphemes. These morphemes do not form a homogeneous grammatical class of their own, and typically include discourse particles, temporal/aspectual particles, negation, conjunction and subordinators. The subjunctive clause is also associated with different patterns of verbal morphology and connective distribution from that in indicative clauses, as well as differences in the realization of pronouns and agreement. Although there is no reordering of lexical arguments in a subjunctive clause, a clitic which marks the transitive subject, functioning either as pronoun or cross-referencing agreement with a nominal, is positioned preverbally (typically, but not always, encliticized to the first element in the clause). This is accompanied by a suffix on the verb that also functions either as pronoun or cross-referencing agreement with a transitive object or intransitive subject. Consider the examples in (4) and (5), which use a preverbal particle marking progressive aspect, triggering subjunctive morphology:
(4) CT: Sm’algyax a. yagwa=t dzap=dit Rita=a waas prog=3 make=pnc Rita=cnc blanket ‘Rita is making a blanket.’ (Stebbins 2001: 20) b. yagwa=dp babuud-n prog=1pl wait-2sg ‘We are waiting for you.’ (Mulder 1994: 114)
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(5) IT: Gitksan a. yukw=t dzab-(t)=s (t=)Barbara=hl wiila prog=3 make-3=case pnc=Barbara=cnc blanket ‘Barbara is making a blanket.’ b. yukw=təp giba-n prog=3pl wait-2sg ‘We are waiting for you.’
Ergative morphology is one of the significant characteristics distinguishing indicative and subjunctive clauses. In the indicative transitive clauses in examples (2b) and (3b) suffixal nominative agreement on the verb represents the transitive subject, with the object unrepresented. However, in subjunctive clauses of (4) and (5) an ergative orientation in pronouns and agreement emerges: there is a distinct inflectional paradigm that marks the transitive subject representing either a pronoun or cross-referencing agreement with a lexical argument. This is accompanied by nominative agreement on the predicate which now represents the object. It is proposed that this arrangement defines an ergative–nominative split (as opposed to an ergative–absolutive one as claimed by all previous researchers (Peterson 2004), suffixal agreement on the verb can represent both an intransitive and transitive subject (with an unrepresented object). When ergative morphology is triggered (in the transitive subjunctive), the suffixal agreement switches to representing the object — there is no distinct morphological case or agreement paradigm representing a transitive object (or absolutive). This ergative–nominative split, the characterization of which will be explored in more detail below, can be schematized in (6):
(6) Indicative: nominative | ∅ Subjunctive: ergative | nominative
In addition, the connective system in Tsimshian (to be examined in sections 3 and 4) has distributional patterns that are sensitive to not only clause type, but also the grammatical role and the semantics of the nominal it marks (i.e. proper/common noun distinction). The result of this is a rather complex distribution of that in some constructions is purely ergative or nominative, while in others there is no clear pivot (i.e. neutral or contrastive). Given their similarities, there are several differences between CT and IT represented in the examples above that highlight the issues under discussion: notably, CT appears to lack the =s ‘case’ marker found in IT. Also, CT appears to lack many of the agreement patterns in IT. There is no intransitive subject or transitive object agreement in subjunctive clauses which IT has (although it does have the bound object pronoun). IT, on the other hand, appears to lack the complexity of the connectives found in CT. What will be examined in the following sections is the interactions between the connective system (‘cnc’ and ‘pnc’), agreement/pronoun distribution in CT and IT, and why IT has this undetermined =s ‘case’ marker and why CT lacks it. In section 4, an analysis
Issues of morphological ergativity in the Tsimshian languages
is presented which shows that connectives in CT are in fact morphologically complex, and the fission of a connective into its component segments reveals a set of morphemes that can be isomorphically mapped to agreement, case and determiners in IT. However, the formal similarities between these morphemes make them difficult to distinguish without contrasting the complete range of elements and alternations which can occur in any given sentence construction. Thus, it will be useful to begin with a more detailed examination of the agreement/pronominal forms in both indicative and subjunctive clauses.
2.1 Agreement in Interior Tsimshian IT has two sets of agreement affixes that also function as dependent pronouns — the ergative and nominative series — and one set of independent pronouns, given in Table 1. 5 Table 1. IT Agreement affixes/Pronouns (Rigsby 1986; Tarpent 1989; Peterson 2004) Ergative 1 2 3
Nominative
Independent pronoun
sg
pl
sg
pl
sg
pl
=nә =mә =t
=tәp mә…sәm =t
-y’ -n -t
-m’ -sәm’ -tiit
n’iiy’ n’iin n’it
n’uum n’isim’ n’idiit
In indicative intransitive clauses there is no pronominal marking on the verb nor crossreferencing agreement with a nominal argument. A pronominal subject is marked with the independent pronoun and not with the nominative suffix, as in (7a), thus according it the same status as a nominal argument in (7b):
(7) IT: Nisgha’a a. yuuxkw n’ iiy’ 1sg eat ‘I ate.’ (Tarpent 1982, 1988) b. yuuxkw t Mary eat pnc Mary ‘Mary ate.’
In indicative transitive clauses a nominal subject is represented by cross-referencing nominative affix on the verb, while the transitive object is unmarked (7c). The reference of nominative agreement in these constructions can be verified with a pronominal subject, as it is also marked with the nominative (7d): c. hlimoom-ә-(ti)=s [(t) Lucyi]=t Mary help-tr-3=case pnc Lucy=pnc Mary ‘Lucy helped Mary.’
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d. hlimoom-ә-y’ t Mary help-tr-1sg pnc Mary ‘I helped Mary.’ An IT predicate can only host one dependent pronoun/agreement suffix, therefore, with two arguments the nominative suffixes are used to represent the pronoun subject, while the independent pronouns are used to represent the object (7e): e. hlimoom-ә-t n’iiy’ help-tr-3 1sg ‘S/he helped me.’ Indicative clauses in IT are characterized as having a nominative orientation through the use of nominative agreement marking the subject on the verb, while the accusative is left unmarked. However, in subjunctive clauses, such as the examples in (8), the nominative suffix now represents an intransitive subject, whether as a pronoun (a) or agreement (b):
(8) IT: Gitksan a. yukw=hl litsxxw-y’ prog=cnc read-1sg ‘I am reading.’ b. yukw=hl litsxxw-(ti)=s (t=)Johni prog=cnc read-3=case pnc=John ‘John is reading.’
Even though nominative agreement is not present in intransitive indicative clauses (suggesting an ergative alignment), it is still designated as nominative because it represents an intransitive subject in subjunctive clauses. The ergative series are clitics that are hosted by a preverbal element, typically encliticizing to the first constituent in the clause (similar to a ‘2nd position clitic’). Their distribution is restricted to subjunctive clauses and to representing transitive subjects, thus functioning as ergative agreement with a lexical argument. The ergative–nominative alignment that emerges in subjunctive clauses is also defined by the nominative agreement which now shifts to representing the object. Examples of this are given in (8c–e) c. d.
needii=t ’uuw’-y’ neg=3 invite-1sg ‘S/he didn’t invite me.’ yukw=nә yook-әn-ti=hl t’ihlxwi prog=1sg feed-tr-3=cnc child ‘I’m feeding the child.’
Issues of morphological ergativity in the Tsimshian languages
e. needii=ti gya’-y’ t=Peteri neg=3 see-1sg pnc=Peter ‘Peter didn’t see me.’ The overall surface distribution in indicative and subjunctive clauses of both agreement/bound pronouns and independent pronouns is summarized in Table 2. Table 2. Distribution of agreement/pronouns in IT Indicative clause Subjunctive clause
Ergative
Nominative
Ind. pronoun
— A
A S/O
S/O —
Of interest in IT is the various differential subject marking patterns that can be observed above. A nominal subject can be marked in three different ways: with ergative agreement in transitive subjunctive clauses (cf. 8c–e), nominative agreement in transitive indicative clauses (cf. 7c–e) and intransitive subjunctive clauses (cf. 8b), and unmarked in intransitive indicative clauses (cf. 7b). One could consider characterizing the nominative series of person markers as actually ergative in indicative clauses, since they represent a transitive subject but not an intransitive one. I suggest this is a superficial paradox: it is common for languages to use the same inflectional paradigm for marking transitive subjects (with an unmarked object), and then in a different environment switch to representing objects, especially when there is a distinct (ergative) paradigm marking transitive subjects triggered by that environment (i.e. the subjunctive). Another way to view this is that intransitive subjects are simply zero-marked in indicative clauses. The result illustrates an ergative–nominative distinction rather than an ergative–absolutive one, since there is no distinct inflectional paradigm dedicated to marking only S/O (the independent pronouns notwithstanding for other reasons in the syntax). The significance of this point will become clearer when the distribution of the =s ‘case’ marker is examined in section 4.
2.2 Agreement in Coast Tsimshian Agreement and pronouns in CT, given in Table 3, pattern nearly identically to their counterparts in IT: the ergative series in CT have similar shape, and pattern correspondingly to those in IT as preverbal (often phonologically independent) clitics. The nominative affixes also parallel closely the nominative series in IT, having a similar shape and distribution. Although the bound pronoun series in CT surface as dependent pronoun suffixes, their function and distribution parallels with the independent pronouns in IT (see Table 3). Beginning with subjunctive clauses, as in IT, a pronominal subject in a transitive clause is marked with the preverbal ergative clitic, and a pronominal object is marked with the nominative suffix, such as in example (9).
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Table 3. CT Agreement affixes/pronouns (Dunn 1979a; Peterson 2004) Ergative 1 2 3
Nominative
Bound pronoun
sg
pl
sg
pl
sg
pl
n m t
dp m-…-sm t
-u -n -t
-m -sm -t
-n’u -n -t
-n’m -n’sm -t
(9) CT: Sm’algyax ada wil m way-u and then 2sg find-1sg ‘and then you found me.’ (Boas 1911: 384)
Like subjunctive clauses in IT, ergative agreement occurs with a transitive subject, as in (10). However, unlike IT, there is no object agreement. Compare (10) and (11) with (8c–e): (10) yágwa-ti naxnúu=da yúuti=a hanák prog-3 listen.to=cnc man=cnc woman ‘The man was listening to the woman.’ (Dunn 1979b: 133) (11) hla n wil niidz=as Meli incept 1sg then see=pnc Mary ‘I’ve just now seen Mary.’ (Dunn 1979a: 65) Like IT, a nominative suffix functions as a pronoun, but unlike IT, not as nominative agreement with an intransitive subject. Compare (12)–(14) with (8b): (12) hla dm ba-n incept non-past run-2sg ‘You’re about to run.’ (Dunn 1979a: 62) (13) yagwa ba=a wan prog run=cnc deer ‘The deer is running.’ (Dunn 1979a: 60) (14) yagwa yawxg=as Ami prog eat=pnc Amy ‘Amy is eating.’ (Mulder 1994: 99) Also unlike IT, the CT examples (15) and (16) show that in indicative transitive and intransitive clauses there is no nominative agreement. (15) sa-yüü=s Marjorie hlioon suddenly-hide=pnc Marjorie fried.bread ‘Marjorie (suddenly) hid the fried bread.’ (Stebbins 2003: 97)
Issues of morphological ergativity in the Tsimshian languages
(16) CT: Sgüüxs hla xúupl manxyáá=s üünal incept dark walk.up=pnc Arnold ‘Arnold walked up in the dark.’ (Dunn 1979b: 134) There are further animacy and discourse conditions resulting in a rather complex distribution of pronouns and agreement in CT clauses, however the basic generalization holds: the distribution of pronouns in CT is ergative in subjunctive clauses, but nominative in indicative clauses (cf. Table 2). Ergative systems of cross-referencing agreement are considered typologically unusual and can be distinguished by their relationship to morphological case: one is parasitic on case, Hindi for example, while the other is independent of case as in Jacaltec (Mayan), Selayarese (Austronesian), and some Caucasian languages (Blake 2001: 123). This supports the view of Marantz (1984b) and Wiltschko (2002) that ergativity is not a unitary phenomenon, at least with respect to agreement (Woolford 2000: 30). In Jacaltec and the northwest Caucasian languages Abaza and Abkhaz, the transitive subject and transitive object/intransitive subject are represented inflectionally on the predicate but there is no case marking on noun phrases (Blake 2001: 123). Tsimshian appears to share this characteristic, other than the presence of the ‘case’ marker =s on an IT predicate, there is no overt morphological case on noun phrases. The status of this ‘case’ marker will be examined in more detail in the sections 3 and 4, with the hypothesis that it is indeed a remnant of morphological case marking that can be reconstructed in both CT and IT. CT subjunctive clauses seem to challenge the typological generalization that a language will not have ergative agreement unless it also has nominative agreement (Woolford 2001: 8). It will be demonstrated that CT does indeed have nominative object agreement, but that it has undergone fusion with the other post-verbal elements such as the determiner system and historical case. In order to explore this hypothesis, we will now turn to the Tsimshian system of connectives, an examination and analysis of which will later be juxtaposed with the agreement system just presented. What will be pertinent to the following discussion is the agreement alternations associated with the indicative and subjunctive clause types, specifically third person subject and object nominative agreement — why IT has it and CT lacks it — and how they interact with the connective system and the yet to be determined =s ‘case’ marker in IT.
3. Tsimshian connectives A fundamental feature of all the Tsimshian languages is the form, function and distribution of a class of morphemes that have been conventionally labelled as the ‘connectives’ (Boas 1911; Dunn 1979a/b; Rigsby 1986; Tarpent 1987; Mulder 1994). Connectives appear to mark nouns for their referential properties, number, argumenthood, and definiteness, and has thus led to various proposals that treat them as determiners (Hunt 1993;
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Beck 2002: 49; Peterson 2004, 2006). However, in addition to encoding these semantic properties, the surface shape and distribution of a connective can be conditioned by factors including the grammatical or semantic role of the noun it precedes, animacy and clause type. While no analysis has committed to analyzing Tsimshian connectives as actual case marking, most researchers suggest that it may directly reflect or be analogous to case-marking patterns, possibly receiving their case features either through diachronic fusion or some mechanism of feature percolation (Belvin 1985, 1990: 19; Mulder 1994: 130). Given these considerations, Tsimshianists have acknowledged both the determiner-like and case-like behaviour of these morphemes and have maintained the linguistically neutral term ‘connective’. Unlike the patterns of agreement discussed above, IT and CT connectives diverge significantly in their form and distribution: the form and distribution of CT connectives are considerably more complex than those in IT. A review of the properties of the connective system in both CT and IT will be undertaken in the following subsections, using this as a point of departure in section 4 in reconstructing not only the remnants of a morphological case system, but also uncovering the previously assumed lack of nominative agreement in CT (both of which are present in IT). This will be done by demonstrating that CT connectives are actually morphologically complex, the segmentation of which will reveal an isomorphic relationship between CT and IT agreement patterns, determiner shape, and distribution. In addition to taking a step towards unifying agreement patterns between the two languages, the outcome of this will be a glimpse at the vestiges of both a proto-Tsimshian morphological case system and a more fully-articulated determiner system.
3.1 Interior Tsimshian connectives IT has a simpler system of connectives than CT, shown in Table 4. Both Nisgha’a and Gitksan distinguish two noun classes that correspond to the grammatical distinction between proper and common nouns. Proper nouns are additionally marked for number: Table 4. Interior Tsimshian connectives (Tarpent 1989) Proper Noun (pnc)
Common Noun (cnc)
sg
pl
sg/pl
(=)t(=)
=tip
=hl
There is a peculiar mismatch between phonological and syntactic constituency in the Tsimshian languages (also found in the neighbouring Wakashan language Kwak’wala (Beck 2002)), where connectives typically phonologically encliticize to the preceding word (17a–c) — regardless of the syntactic relation it has with that constituent — or stand alone (17d):
Issues of morphological ergativity in the Tsimshian languages
(17) IT: Nisgha’a a. ts’in=[hl hanàk’] come.in=[cnc woman] ‘The woman came in.’ (Tarpent 1982: 57) b. hlimoom-ə-(t)=s=[tip Mary]=[hl hanàk’] help-tr-3=case=[pnc(pl) Mary]=[cnc woman] ‘Mary and them helped the woman.’ (Tarpent 1987: 481) c. hlimóom-ə-(t)=[hl hanàk’]=[t Mary] help-tr-3=[cnc woman]=[pnc Mary] ‘The woman helped Mary.’ (Tarpent 1987: 480) d. yuuxkw [t Mary] eat [pnc Mary] ‘Mary ate.’ (Tarpent 1988: 107) IT connectives are not sensitive to the grammatical or semantic function of the noun they mark, and this might be what led Tarpent (1988: 2) and Beck (2002: 51) to treat all connectives in Nisgha’a as determiners in function, including the morpheme =s. Tarpent specifies (in her terminology) whether a noun is ‘determinate’ (marked with the connective =s), or ‘non-determinate’ (common noun), marked with the connective =hl; while the proper noun connectives =t and tip are simply called ‘determinate markers’. Hunt (1993) attempts to reduce the apparent redundancy of doubly marking proper nouns by claiming that =s is in fact a type of case marking (as it is glossed in this paper), a claim motivated by the fact that, unlike the other connectives, =s is indeed sensitive to transitivity, clause type and the semantic role of the proper noun it precedes. For example, in indicative sentences, the distribution of this case marker appears to be ergative, in that it precedes A, as in (18), but not S or O, as in (19) and (20). (18) gub-ә-(t)=[s (t)=John]=hl smax eat-tr-3=case pnc=John=cnc (bear)meat ‘John ate the meat.’ (19) *w’itx=[s t=John] (cf. w’itx t=John) come pnc-John ‘John came.’ (20) hlәmoo-yә-(t)=s (t)=Tom=[*s t=Mary] help-tr-3=case pnc=Tom pnc=Mary ‘Tom helped Mary.’ However, this pattern holds only in indicative clauses. In subjunctive clauses, =s precedes any proper noun argument that immediately follows the verb. This also extends to objects: when there is a pronominal subject in a transitive clause such as (23), =s will precede the object. Thus it can potentially appear before A (21), S (22) or O (23).
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(21) needii-t hlimoo-t[=s (t)=John]Agent t=Peter neg-3 help-3-case pnc=John pnc=Peter ‘John didn’t help Peter.’ (22) yukw=hl litsxxw-(t)[=s (t)=John]Subject prog=cnc read=case pnc=John ‘John is reading.’ (23) needii=təp gya’-(t)=[s (t)=John]Object neg-1pl see-3=case pnc=John ‘We didn’t see John.’ Hunt goes on to suggest that =s ‘case’ may be a type of generic case that is only assigned to nominals that are adjacent to a lexical case assigning head, but does not elaborate on its actual status in the grammar. Table 5 outlines the distribution of the proper noun =s case-marker in IT: Table 5. Proper noun =s case-marking of semantic roles in IT Indicative Subjunctive
Intransitive
Transitive
— S
A A, O
One key generalization can be extracted from the IT examples above: in all cases =s ‘case’ accompanies nominative agreement. However, this also sets up a paradox of sorts in indicative clauses: as Table 5 illustrates, the distribution of =s ‘case’ appears to be ergative in indicative clauses but it occurs with nominative agreement, which marks the transitive subject in indicative clauses (cf. (18)), and is absent in intransitive clauses because the lack of nominative agreement with intransitive subjects (cf. (17a– b)). However, a neutral orientation of =s emerges in subjunctive clauses: it can mark any semantic role, regardless of the grammatical relation of the argument nominative agreement represents. Recall that ergative agreement was designated as such because in subjunctive clauses it distinguishes transitive subjects from intransitive subjects and objects, which are represented by nominative agreement. Given the link between nominative agreement and =s ‘case’, can this generalization be extended to designate the function of =s as a case marker in IT? In other words, can =s be described as essentially nominative case because of its link to nominative agreement? There are two general issues with this possibility: first, unlike nominative agreement, =s does not stand in opposition to any other type of morphological case marking in IT. Secondly, how can we account for the neutralized distribution =s in subjunctive clauses? The ability of =s ‘case’ to mark objects in a subjunctive environment would also challenge the typological generalization that there are no reported languages that have ergative agreement and also morphologically mark accusative case (Woolford 2000). This is exactly what would surface in (23) if we
Issues of morphological ergativity in the Tsimshian languages
were to interpret =s as accusative case. Before further discussing this issues in sections 4 and 5, let us turn to connectives in CT.
3.2 Coast Tsimshian Connectives CT connectives are phonologically similar to those in IT in a number of respects: they also encliticize to the preceding word and distinguish between proper and common nouns (but not for number). However, unlike their IT counterparts, CT connectives are sensitive to the semantic role of the nominal they mark and clause type. This sets up a considerably larger paradigm of connectives, displayed in Table 6: Table 6. Coast Tsimshian plain connective systems (Dunn 1979b; Mulder 1994) Sm’algyax
A S O
Sgüüxs
Proper noun (pnc)
Common noun (cnc)
Proper noun (pnc)
Common noun (cnc)
=as/=dit =as =at
=a/=da =a =it
=as/=dit =as
=i/=di =i
The marking of an intransitive or transitive subject or object for both proper or common nouns is naturally subject to the transitivity of the clause. With proper nouns, nominative orientation in connective marking is outlined in the indicative clauses in (24) and (25): Both the transitive and intransitive subject are marked with =as, while the transitive object is marked with =at. (24) CT: Sm’algyax niic=(a)s Nadine=(a)t Isabelle see=pnc Nadine=pnc Isabelle ‘Nadine saw Isabelle.’ (Stebbins 2001: 19) (25) nah ts’lm-’wiihawtg=as Madzi da na-waab-u past into.from-cry=pnc Margie prep poss-house-1sg ‘Margie came to my house crying.’ (Mulder 1994: 57) In both common and proper noun agent-marking connectives, there are two forms available, the choice of which depends on the clause type. The aspect marker yágwa (prog) in (26) and (27) triggers subjunctive clause ergative agreement with the transitive subject. The selection of the proper noun connective =dit marking u ünal ‘Arnold’ and common noun =di marking ól ‘bear’ is dependent on this agreement relation: (26) CT: Sgüüxs yágwa-t bíi’ghl=dit uünal sá’awansk prog-3 tear=pnc Arnold paper ‘Arnold is tearing the paper.’ (Dunn 1979b: 133)
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(27) yágwa-ti níis=di óli–i hoon prog-3 glare.at=cnc bear=cnc fish ‘The bear glared at the fish.’ (Dunn 1979b: 133) Using common nouns as an example, the transitive subject in (27) is marked distinctly from the intransitive subject in (28) and transitive object, yielding an ergative orientation in connective marking: (28) dzagha dá’uhl=i y’axw t’ei lu ’asdi nak across go=cnc man across on both sides ‘A man went across the inlet.’ (Dunn 1990: 2) On the other hand, the tense/aspect complex nah (past) hla (perf) in (29) heads an indicative clause, hence no ergative agreement with the transitive subject and the pnc =as and cnc =a in (30) surface. (29) CT: Sm’algyax nah hla dzab=as Norman na-homework past perf do=pnc Norman poss-homework ‘Norman has just finished his homework.’ (Mulder 1994: 115) (30) nah t’uus=a y’uut=a hanak’ past push=cnc man=cnc woman ‘The man pushed the woman.’ (Dunn 1979a: 63) (30) and (31) demonstrate the neutral distribution of cnc =a marking A, S or O: (31) yagwa hadiks=a sts’ool da ts’m t’aaks prog swim=cnc beaver prep pond lake ‘A beaver is swimming in the pond.’ (Dunn 1979a: 63) What emerges from these examples is four unique groupings, given in Table 7, of the semantic roles from the juxtaposition of the proper/common noun distinction and clause type (see also Mulder 1994: 44 for details): Table 7. Distribution of semantic roles in CT connectives Indicative: Subjunctive:
Proper noun
Common noun
A/S:O (nominative) A:S:O (contrastive)
A/S/O (neutral) A:S/O (ergative)
What is notable in CT is that certain interactions of clause type and transitivity yield typologically unusual groupings or pivots of the semantic roles that cannot be adequately characterized as either ergative or nominative: cncs pattern ergatively in subjunctive clauses ([/=da/]A[/=a/]S/O), while making no distinction in indicative clauses ([=/a/]A/S/O). The distribution of pncs somewhat ‘mirrors’ the distribution of the cncs: indicative clause connectives pattern nominatively ([/=as/]A/S [/=at/]O) while subjunc-
Issues of morphological ergativity in the Tsimshian languages
tive clauses display a tripartite distinction, marking each semantic role with a different connective ([/=dit/]A [/=as/]S [/=at/]O). However unusual, a system such as this may indeed be captured by the generalization that in indicative clauses the proper noun nominative and common noun neutral groupings simply morphologically distinguish the Agent in subjunctive clauses, while leaving the Subject–Object relations intact: A/[S:O] → A:[S:O] and A/[S/O] → A:[S/O]. These alternations would be supported by the general ergative split between indicative and subjunctive clauses in both CT and IT. While this functional explanation is tenable, it will be demonstrated in the next section that treating CT connectives as morphosyntactic atoms obscures the genetic relationship between CT and IT in patterns of 3rd person nominative agreement, determiners and morphological case.
4. Agreement, determiners and case: the decomposition and comparative analysis of Tsimshian connectives A superficial comparison of IT and CT connective systems shows that the form and distribution of connectives in CT is considerably more complex than those in IT. This section will explore a comparative analysis between CT and IT motivated by the hypothesis that CT connectives are in fact morphologically complex, the decomposition of which will uncover a relationship between segment and function that will shed light on the genetic relationship between CT and IT. This will specifically include the reconstruction in CT of: 1. Connective-initial d- in both proper and common noun subjunctive clauses as nominative object agreement (cf. (11) and (25)). 2. Connective-initial a/i- as semantically vacuous (possibly epenthetic). 3. Connective-final -t in =dit and =it as a proper noun determiner (cf. IT, Table 5). 4. Connective-final -s as the CT cognate of =s ‘case’ in IT. 5. Connective-final -a/i as the common noun determiner. Splitting apart the segmental components of a CT connective will isolate the potential patterns which, through establishing an isomorphic relation with IT, can identify determiner marking, agreement, and eventually case marking. This in turn will lead to a simpler organization of semantic role pivots across clause types and noun classes (cf. Table 7). The centerpiece of this proposal will be the identification of the morphological case marking in CT, which patterns nearly — but not identically — with the =s ‘case’ in IT. The benefits that follow from this approach include: 1. Accounting for the unaccounted for gaps between CT and IT in the apparent lack of nominative agreement in CT (both indicative and subjunctive). 2. A unified description of morphological case marking for proper nouns in both CT and IT subjunctive clauses.
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3. The reconstruction of a proto-Tsimshian case morpheme *=s. 4. The reconstruction of a proto-Tsimshian proper noun determiner: *=t. 5. A unified account of 3p ergative agreement neutralization in subjunctive clauses in CT and IT. This last point is significant and introduces an effect that will follow from the present analysis: in both CT and IT, 3rd person agreement is the same (/-t/) in both the nominative and ergative paradigms. This is not coincidental: it will be demonstrated that this is the result of the neutralization of ergative agreement in subjunctive clauses. This neutralization effect is proposed to be a strategy that the Tsimshian languages employ in resolving what will be characterized as an ‘ergative–nominative paradox’ in subject marking. Ergative agreement of the type described above often occurs in languages with ergative case, such as Hindi or the Daghestan language Avar (Blake 2001: 121; Woolford 2000: 15). However, ergative agreement can also occur in languages without any case morphology, as in the Mayan language Jacaltec. Once a reconstruction of morphological case (*=s) in Tsimshian is attained, what will be its relationship with the agreement system? In subjunctive constructions, a transitive subject will simultaneously be represented by ergative agreement and what will be characterized as ‘nominative-linked’ =s case. In other words, what actually surfaces in these constructions is in fact ‘doubled’ nominative agreement (nominative agreement replacing preverbal ergative agreement) in order to resolve this paradox.
4.1 The Decomposition of ct Connectives: =s ‘case’ and Subject Marking Dunn (1979b) and Stebbins (2001), following observations made by Boas (1911: 354– 59), suggested that CT connectives may be morphologically complex, analyzing them as a series of elements containing one to three positions and listing their (semantic) function in any given clause. This is schematized in (32): s d (32) = V t (where V = {i, a}) ∅ ∅ However, Dunn (1979b: 136) and Mulder (1994: 62) ultimately reject further exploration of this approach, observing that while decomposition of the connective system in this way may be possible, overlaps in function of the segments would lead to unnecessarily complex and cumbersome portmanteaux (although Stebbins implicitly adopts it in some of her glosses). Setting this issue aside, I will take Dunn’s description (1979b: 137) and schema in (32) as a point of departure in comparing CT connectives with their potential counterparts in IT. Consider the examples in (33) and (34). Beginning with the most complex connective in CT, the proper noun connective =dit marks A in a transitive clause: the d- in the decomposed form /d–V–t/ can be considered voiceless underlyingly: /t–V–t/. From this, it is possible to relate the connective-initial ‘t-’ to the pattern of 3rd person object
Issues of morphological ergativity in the Tsimshian languages
agreement (marked on the predicate by a nominative suffix), and connective-final ‘-t’ to the proper noun determiner (now re-glossed ‘pn.det’) as marking the transitive subject, the same of which is found in a corresponding subjunctive IT clause: (33) CT: /dit/ → /t–i–t/ yagwa=ti t’uus=dj-i[-t Dzoni]=at Meli j prog=3 push=3-?-pn.det John=pn.det Mary ‘John is pushing Mary.’ (Dunn 1979b: 67) (34) IT: Gitksan Johni]=t Maryj yukw=ti t’is-(tj)=s=[(t) prog-3 push-3=case=pn.det John=pn.det Mary ‘John is helping Mary.’ Comparing (33) with (34) illustrates how in IT the post-verbal affix/clitic complex made up of suffixal nominative agreement -t, the enclitic =s case, and enclitic determiner =t marking the proper noun transitive subject might have undergone fusion in CT, the result of which is the post-verbal connective. This reanalysis, schematized in (35), also implies the isomorphic relation of the CT connective-internal /-V-/ segment, /-i-/ (glossed as ‘?’ for the moment), to the IT =s case marker. This process of fusion, and the implications of relating /-i-/ to =s will be discussed below. (35) IT: [Verb]-[agr]=[case]=[det] CT: [Verb]=[agr.case.det] Now consider the examples in (36) and (37): in transitive indicative clauses the proper noun connective =(a)s marking a transitive subject, and the connective =(a)t marking a transitive object can be decomposed into their component segments: /(a)-s/ and /(a)t/ respectively. Parallels in position are found with the IT =s case marker and the proper noun determiner =t, which can be observed marking the proper noun object: (36) CT: Sm’algyax: /(a)s/ → /s/; /(a)t/ → /t/ niic=(a)s Nadine=(a)t Isabelle see=case Nadine=pn.det Isabelle ‘Nadine saw Isabelle.’ (Stebbins 2001: 19) (37) IT: Nisgha’a hlimoo-yә-(t)=s(t) Tom=t Mary help-tr-3=case Tom=pn.det Mary ‘Tom helped Mary.’ (Tarpent 1987: 108) Stebbins (2001) originally transcribed (36) as niic=s Nadine=t Isabelle, and in fact, transcriptions of CT clauses often omit the pre-consonantal ‘a’ in the connectives ([(a)C]), but never a post-consonantal (or word-final) ‘a’ ([C–a]). This may be adduced as preliminary evidence that the post-consonantal ‘a’ in all of the CT connectives may be analyzed as a common noun determiner (now re-glossed ‘cn.det’), based on the
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isomorphy with the cn.det ‘hl ’ in IT, and the fact that it is phonologically stable. The function of the pre-consonantal ‘a’, on the other hand, may be epenthetic in order to break up consonant clusters. Under this reanalysis, both CT and IT mark the transitive subject in indicative clauses with =s. However, CT appears to lack the transitive subject (nominative) agreement found in IT transitive indicative clauses, as well as the proper noun determiner. Both Rigsby’s transcriptions of Gitksan and Tarpent’s of Nisgha’a frequently omit both the subject nominative agreement and the proper noun determiner (denoted with bracketing), thus exactly paralleling the same construction in CT. Compare (38) with (39) and (40): (38) CT: niic=s Nadine=t Isabelle (39) hlimoo-yә-(t)=s (t)=Tom t=Mary help-tr-3=case pn.det=Tom pn.det=Mary ‘Tom helped Mary.’ (40) IT: Nisgha’a hlimoom-ә-(t)=s (t)=Tom t=Mary help-tr-3=case pn.det=Tom pn.det=Mary ‘Lucy helped Mary.’ (Tarpent 1988: 108) So far, we’ve been able to plausibly reconstruct and track the distribution of =s case and the proper noun determiner in a transitive Tsimshian clause: =s always marks a proper noun transitive subject, while the =(a)t marking an object in CT is a cognate of the proper noun determiner in IT =t, as well as the connective-final [t] (/t–V–t/) reconstructed form the subject connective =dit (cf. (33)). Because =t marks both the subject and object, we can forward the generalization that there is no distinct morphological marking of an object in a Tsimshian clause (ruling it out as a potential accusative/absolutive case marker): it is simply marked with a determiner, the distribution of which is not expected to be sensitive to grammatical roles. What will become crucial in the analysis to follow is the observation that 3rd person nominative agreement and =s case appear to be in complementary distribution in the examples above. Based on this, a preliminary claim can be made that either agreement or morphological case can mark a transitive subject, but not both. By treating =s as the morphological marking of case, we should be able to see a pivot emerge in comparing the marking of (proper noun) transitive subjects with intransitive subjects. In intransitive subjunctive clauses, =s marks the proper noun subject in both the CT example in (41) and the IT example in (42), again in complementary distribution with third person nominative agreement (and the optional proper noun determiner in IT):
Issues of morphological ergativity in the Tsimshian languages
(41) CT: Sgüüxs hla xúupl manxyáa=s üünal incept dark walk.up=case Arnold ‘Arnold walked up in the dark.’ (Dunn 1979b: 134) (42) IT: Nisgha’a yùkw=hl yuuxkw-(t)=s (t) Mary prog=cn.det eat-3=case pn.det Mary ‘Mary is eating.’ (Tarpent 1988: 105) The reanalyzed CT connective =(a)s marking the agent in a transitive clause (cf. (35)) also marks the subject of an intransitive clause (cf. (41)), yielding a nominative alignment. However, this pattern does not extend to IT indicative intransitive clauses, where there is no =s case marking the subject, as in example (44). Compare with the CT example in (43), which appears to have the =s case cognate: (43) CT (Sm’algyax) nah ts’lm-w’iihawtg=(a)s Madzi da na-waab-u past into.from.side-cry=case Margie prep poss-house-1sg ‘Margie came to my house crying.’ (Mulder 1994: 57) (44) IT: Nisgha’a yúuxkw t Mary eat pn.det Mary ‘Mary ate.’ (Tarpent 1988: 107) This is where IT and CT diverge: recall that in IT transitive indicative clauses the distribution of the =s case marker appears to be ergative, in that it precedes A but not S or O (cf. Table 5). In CT transitive indicative clauses, a nominative S/A grouping emerges as both an intransitive and transitive subject are marked with =s (as reconstructed in comparing (41) with (36)). What is of interest is the distribution of =s in a subjunctive clause: IT marks both an intransitive and transitive subject with =s, and while CT also marks an intransitive with =s, it was unclear whether =s marks a transitive subject. The source of this ambiguity is the proper noun connective marking a transitive subject in a subjunctive clause in CT, =dit (Verb-/t–i–t/), where the connective-internal /-V-/ segment, /-i-/, would have to be reconstructed as =s in order to be isomorphic with IT =s (or Verb-t=s=t). If it is not reconstructed as =s, then the =s case marking of a transitive subject is lacking from CT transitive subjunctive clauses. Table 8 compares distribution of =s in CT established so far with that in IT (and the reconstructed =t determiners marking proper noun objects). It was claimed above that apparent ergative distribution of =s case in IT is superficial, as =s case can be observed as accompanying nominative agreement. The lack of nominative agreement in indicative intransitives in IT was due to independent reasons in the syntax. This can be characterized as ‘agreement-linked’ case (cf. section 3; see
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Table 8. Distribution of ‘=s’ case marking of subjects in CT and IT Intransitive CT: IT:
Indicative Subjunctive Indicative Subjunctive
V=s V=s V V=s
NPS NPS NPS NPS
Transitive (cf. (41)) (cf. (38)) (cf. (40)) (cf. (39))
V=s V=? V=s V=s
NPA NPA NPA NPA
=t NPO =t NPO =t NPO =t NPO
(cf. (33)) (cf. (31)) (cf. (34)) (cf. (32))
also Hunt 1993). Because nominative agreement in IT shifts between the transitive subject (in indicatives), the intransitive subject (in subjunctives), and the object (in subjunctives with a pronominal subject), =s case may be designated through this link as being nominative. This is adequate in characterizing all cases in IT except for transitive subjunctive clauses with a lexical subject, where ergative agreement and =s case both mark the subject (cf. (32)). In these examples a nominative–ergative ‘paradox’ would arise in case and agreement: the lexical subject would be marked with both nominativelinked =s case and ergative agreement, as shown with co-indexing in example (45): (45) IT: Gitksan yukw=ti hlimoom-(tj)=s=(t) Lucyi=t Maryj prog-3.erg help-3.nom=case=pn.det L.=pn.det M. ‘John is helping Mary.’ There are two potential solutions to resolving this paradox: the simplest involves reinterpreting =s case as ergative. This is immediately problematic because =s can mark an intransitive subject in subjunctive clauses (cf. (41)). The other solution is re-examining the agreement paradigms in both IT and CT. Note that the third person agreement is the same in both the ergative and nominative paradigms: /-t/ (with the exception of the plural in IT, /-tiit/). Considering that this subject marking paradox only arises in ergative–nominative agreement with a lexical subject, it is proposed that ergative agreement is actually neutralized in this environment, and what in fact surfaces is doubled (post- and pre-verbal) nominative agreement, again shown with co-indexing in example (46):6 (46) yukw=ti t’is-(ti)=s=(t) Lucyi=t Maryj prog-3.nom push-3.nom=case=pn.det L.=pn.det M. ‘John is pushing Mary.’ (47) shows that evidence for doubled nominative agreement can be adduced from what were previously classified as exceptional cases of agreement, involving subjunctive transitive clauses with a third person plural pronominal subject: (47) needii-ti stil-tiiti t=Johnj neg-3.nom accompany-3pl.nom det=John ‘They didn’t accompany John.’
Issues of morphological ergativity in the Tsimshian languages
Equipped with this analysis, we can now re-examine the CT transitive subjunctive connective =dit (/t–i–t/), as this is the parallel locus of the nominative–ergative paradox in CT. Notice how the question of reconstructing the connective-internal /-V-/ segment, /-i-/, as =s in IT is now somewhat moot. The connective-initial dit (/t–i–t/) reconstructed as nominative agreement now co-refers with the subject and not the object, and the preverbal agreement, formerly ergative is now also nominative. This revises our analysis of (33) and (34) above. Compare (46) with (48): (48) CT (Sm’algyax): /dit/ → /t–i–t/ yagwa=ti t’uus=di-i-t Dzoni=(a)t Melij prog=3.nom push=3.nom-case-pn.det J.=pn.det M. ‘John is pushing Mary.’ (Dunn 1979b: 67) Under this analysis, CT has employed a morphological strategy of deleting the =s case marker in order to not only ease the nominative–ergative paradox, but also to conform to the strong tendency for languages not to doubly mark arguments with both case and agreement (Woolford 2000). Doubled nominative agreement still surfaces as in CT, but /-i-/ can be analyzed as simply epenthetic in order to break up the agreement and proper noun determiner /-t/ obstruents, thus saving the necessity of developing a languageinternal phonological reconstruction of /-s-/ > /-i-/.
4.2 =s ‘case’: ergative pronouns and object marking The final consideration in examining the distribution of =s case is the marking of objects, which occurs when a pronominal transitive subject is used in a subjunctive transitive clause. In both CT and IT, there is no intervening lexical subject and =s case will surface on the predicate marking the object, as seen in the CT example in (49) and the IT example in (50): (49) CT: Sm’algyax hla n wil niidz=[(a)s Meli]O incept 1sg.erg comp see-case Mary ‘I’ve just now seen Mary.’ (Dunn 1979a: 65) (50) IT: Gitksan hla wi-n gya’a-(t)=[s (t)=Mary]O incept comp-1sg.erg see-3.nom=case pn.det=Mary ‘I’ve just now seen Mary.’ The =s case marking of objects is somewhat unexpected if we are to consider the potential of =s as a type of morphological case-marking of lexical (proper noun) subjects in Tsimshian, but is actually not totally unexpected if =s case is linked to nominative agreement as presented above. Tsimshian pronominal inflection confirms the typological generalization that no language has ergative agreement unless it also has agree-
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ment with objects, a pattern that is borne out in Tsimshian subjunctive clause object agreement. This still holds in the examples above if we assume that =s case subsumes the function of nominative agreement. This is exactly what bears out: as in IT, =s replaces nominative object agreement, assumed to be underlyingly in the CT example in (51): (51) hla n wil niidz-(ti)=(a)s Melii incept 1sg.erg comp see-3-case Mary ‘I’ve just now seen Mary.’ [cf. (49)]
5. Summary and discussion CT connectives can be treated as morphologically complex, the segmentation of which produces morphemes which have direct counterparts in IT. Through this, we were able to close the genetic gap between CT and IT in reconstructing object agreement, case, and proper noun determiners — all assumed to be lacking in CT. With [d]-initial segment in CT connectives (dit, da, di) reanalyzed as subject and object nominative agreement (cf. (47) and (48) respectively) in subjunctive clauses, the decomposed CT connectives are now isomorphic to the agreement patterns in IT. The establishment of a potential proto-determiner which marks proper nouns in Tsimshian was achieved: *=t, which is present on all proper nouns but is frequently deleted on subjects (to possibly aid in cluster reduction), but surfaces consistently on all proper noun objects. We can now also isolate (but not reconstruct at this stage) the CT common noun determiner =a/i which is isomorphic to the IT common noun determiner =hl (Peterson 2004). Lastly, this paper focussed mainly on the morphological marking of proper nouns, as *=t and =s case is sensitive to this class of nominals. The analysis presented here was able to reconstruct the somewhat complex distribution of morphological case in the Tsimshian languages, which can now be designated as the proto-case: *=s. Only proper nouns are marked with *=s, while common nouns are unmarked. The results of this are summarized in Table 9. The immediate effect of approaching CT connectives as morphologically complex is the obviation of the complicated organization of semantic roles across clause types that came with the connective paradigm (cf. Table 7). A plausible explanation for this arises from the tension created by ergative agreement, nominative agreement, and nominaTable 9. Proto-Tsimshian determiners and case Determiners CT IT
‘case’
Common noun
Proper noun
Common noun
Proper noun
=i/a =hl
*=t
(unmarked)
*=s
Issues of morphological ergativity in the Tsimshian languages
tive agreement-linked case. Determiners were also implicated in this grammaticalization process, and complicated the distribution of connectives in apparently distinguishing proper noun objects (cf. /=at/, /=it/, Table 6). Despite the implicit nominative designation of =s case, through its agreementlinked relationship with nominative agreement, the ultimate goal is not necessarily to define the ultimate function of =s case as a morphological case marker in the sense of being ‘ergative’, ‘nominative’ or ‘accusative’ etc. What is of ultimate interest is to track the merging of the remnants of a case system with other local morphemes such as agreement and determiners in terms of comparing two genetically related languages, and what drives this grammaticalization process. For example, in IT all of these morphemes affix/encliticize to the predicate, which can be considered as the staging ground for the grammaticalization that appears to have already taken place in the verb-encliticizing CT connectives. However, once decomposition and reanalysis is applied to the Tsimshian connective systems, a problem is presented in accounting for the typological gap that originally motivated the generalization that ergative agreement is parasitic on ergative case: there are no reported instances of ergative agreement in a nominative/accusative case system (Anderson 1977, Dixon 1994). This was represented in the ergative–nominative subject marking paradox in (44), where a subject is represented by ergative agreement but also marked by nominative agreement-linked =s case. The resolution to this paradox is grammaticalization in CT, and the neutralization of ergative agreement (replaced by nominative agreement) in subjunctive clauses in both CT and IT. An important side-effect of this analysis is the readjustment to the ergative split in Tsimshian. Where the previous split was aligned to clause type, ergative agreement is now only found in 1st and 2nd person subjunctive clauses, while 3rd person is nominative in both clause types (where it is accompanied by nominative-linked =s case). This claim of course has potential typological ramifications of its own that need to be evaluated, and I will set those aside for another study. The Tsimshian languages also confirm the generalization that if a language has agreement at all, it will have agreement with nominatives (Woolford 2000), as this is borne out in Tsimshian transitive indicative clauses and subjunctive clauses with a lexical subject. The examples in (42) and (43) have ergative subject pronouns, therefore, object agreement is expected and does indeed occur. Woolford (2000: 4) notes the generalization that ergative agreement has not been observed occurring in languages with morphologically marked accusative case. Rather, ergative agreement can occur in languages with a nominative/accusative case system, as long as the accusative is not morphologically marked. The Tsimshian languages now conform to both of these generalizations under this analysis: there is no distinct morphological accusative case. Objects are morphologically =s case-marked, but only as linked to nominative agreement (cf. (49)–(51)). Lastly, affixes typically undergo phonological processes of deletion, reduction and fusion with other neighbouring affixes. One of the effects of this is the reduction in the differentiation of morphological case distinctions (Blake 2001: 169). Languages can
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make use of different ‘repair’ strategies to compensate for phonological changes and erosion, such as word order or adpositions to mark syntactic relations. Tsimshian offers another option, represented by a kind of grammaticalization process through fusion and neutralization — the result of which is the connective system.
Abbreviations = clitic boundary, - affix boundary, comp complementizer, cnc common noun connective, pnc proper noun connective, pn.det proper noun determiner, cn.det common noun determiner, pl plural, sg singular, prog progressive, neg negation, poss possessive, past past, prep preposition, tr transitivizer, incept inceptive, perf perfect, erg ergative, nom nominative.
Notes 1. It should be noted that these language names are somewhat controversial: Sm’algyax or ‘the true language’ is used by the speakers of both the CT and IT languages to denote the name of their language family, or what linguists call the ‘Tsimshianic’ languages (Tarpent 1997). The individual language names are intended to reflect the geographical location of that particular Sm’algyax language. Special thanks to my Gitksan language consultants, Doreen Jensen and Barbara Sennott, and to Gessiane Picanço for helpful comments. Data which is not cited is from original fieldwork, which was supported by The Phillips Fund for Native American Research of the American Philosophical Society, awarded to the author. All errors and omissions are mine. 2. The examples in this paper use the Tsimshian practical orthography (with the exception of [ə]) based on the IPA. These include k = [q]; k’ = [q’]; g = [g]; a = [ɑ]; a = [a]; x = [χ]; ü = [ɨ]; hl = [ɬ]. The labels A(gent), S(ubject) and O(bject) will be used in the sense familiar from studies in ergativity (Dixon 1979; Manning 1996) to uniquely identify arguments. ‘S’ will refer to the single argument of an intransitive verb; ‘A’ will refer to the agent argument of a transitive verb; ‘O’ will refer to the theme argument of a transitive verb. 3. The pronoun and agreement affixes are subject to various phonological operations such as voicing or deletion. Transcriptions also vary from source to source and I have reconstructed original position of these affixes, indicating them with brackets. See Tarpent (1988) for details and motivation. The optionality of the third person marker -t that will become relevant to the following discussion. 4. I have adopted the terms ‘indicative’ and ‘subjunctive’ from the CT literature and applied them to the IT languages, where these clause types are called ‘independent’ and ‘dependent’, respectively. This offers convenience and consistency in comparing CT and IT, as the constructions these labels represent are nearly identical for language groups in the Tsimshian family. 5. Rigsby (1986) classifies the pronouns in IT into three series: Series I, II and III for the ‘ergative’, ‘nominative’ and ‘independent pronoun’ respectively; while Boas (1911), Dunn (1979a) and Mulder (1994) use ‘subjective’, ‘objective’ and ‘dependent pronoun’ for CT for these same terms. I have adopted ‘ergative’, ‘nominative’ and ‘independent pronoun’ for greater cross-linguistic transparency and to better reflect their distributional properties.
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6. Hunt (1993) also offers a formal approach that treats post-dependent marker 3rd person –t as of the same inflectional class as the post-verbal –t.
References Anderson, S. 1977. “On mechanisms by which languages become ergative”. In Mechanisms of Syntactic Change, C. N. Li (ed.), 317–63. Austin: University of Texas Press. Beck, D. 2002. “Tsimshianic from a Central Northwest areal perspective: I”. In icsnl XXXVII: Proceedings of the Thirty-Seventh International Conference on Salish and Neighbouring Languages, C. Gillon, N. Sawai and R. Wojdak (eds), 35–60. Vancouver: University of British Columbia, Dep. of Linguistics. Belvin, R. 1985. “Nisgha syntax and the Ergativity Hypothesis: an analysis using the Government and Binding Model”. In icsnl XX: The Twentieth International Conference on Salishan and Neighbouring Languages, 25–76. Vancouver: University of British Columbia, Dep. of Linguistics. Belvin, R. 1990. “Person Markers and Patterns of Case Assignment in Nisgha” In icsnl XX: The Twentieth International Conference on Salishan and Neighbouring Languages, 17–36. Vancouver: ubcwpl. Blake, B. J. 2001. Case. 2nd Edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Boas, F. 1911. “Tsimshian”. Handbook of American Indian Languages [Bureau of American Ethnology, Smithsonian Institution. Bulletin 40], part I, 287–422. Washington: Government Printing Office. Dixon, R. M. W. 1979. “Ergativity”. Language 55: 59–138. Dixon, R. M. W. 1994. Ergativity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dunn, J. A. 1972. “Collapse of the modality and pronominal systems in contemporary Coast Tsimshian”. Manuscript. Dunn, J. A. 1979a. A Reference Grammar for the Coast Tsimshian Language [Canadian Ethnology Service, Mercury Series Paper No. 55]. Ottawa: National Museum of Man. Dunn, J. A. 1979b. “Tsimshian connectives”. International Journal of American Linguistics 45: 131–40. Hunt, K. 1993. Clause Structure, Agreement, and Case in Gitksan. PhD dissertation, University of British Columbia. Manning, C. D. 1996. Ergativity: Argument Structure and Grammatical Relations. Stanford, ca: csli Publications. Marantz, A. 1984b. “Predicting ergative agreement with transitive auxiliaries”. In Proceedings of the Eastern States Conference on Linguistics, G. Alvarez, B. Brodie and T. McCoy (eds), 58– 68. Columbus: Ohio State University. Mulder, J. G. 1994. Ergativity in Coast Tsimshian Sm’algyax [University of California Publications in Linguistics 124]. Berkeley: University of California Press. Peterson, T. 2004. “The (Re)organization of semantic roles in Tsimshian connectives”. In icsnl XXXIX: Proceedings of the 39th International Conference on Salish and Neighbouring Languages, J. C. Brown and T. Peterson (eds), 323–40. Vancouver: University of British Columbia, Dep. of Linguistics. Peterson, T. 2006b. “Investigating determiners and the DP in Gitksan”. In ICSNL XXXIX: Proceedings of the 41st International Conference on Salish and Neighbouring Languages, M. Kiyota (ed.). Vancouver: University of British Columbia, Department of Linguistics.
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Rigsby, B. 1986. Gitksan Grammar. Unpublished manuscript, University of Queensland, Australia. Stebbins, T. 2001. Sm’algyax. Grammatical sketch prepared for the Research Center for Linguistic Typology, La Trobe University. Stebbins, T. 2003. Fighting language endangerment: community directed research on Sm’algyax (Coast Tsimshian). Osaka: The Endangered Languages of the Pacific Rim Project. Tarpent, M.-L. 1982. “Ergative and accusative: a single representation of grammatical relations with evidence from Nishga”. In Working Papers of the Linguistic Circle of Victoria, 50–106. Tarpent, M.-L. 1987. A Grammar of the Nisgha Language. Unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Victoria. Tarpent, M.-L. 1988. “Below the surface of Nisgha syntax: arguments and adjuncts”. Paper presented at the International Conference on Salish and Neighbouring Languages. Tarpent, M.-L. 1997. “Tsimshianic and Penutian: problems, methods, results, and implications”. International Journal of American Linguistics 63: 52–244. Wiltschko, M. 2002. “Is Halkomelem split ergative?”. icsnl XXXVII: The 37th International Conference on Salish and Neighbouring Languages, C. Gillon, N. Sawai and R. Wojdak (eds), 249–68. Vancouver: University of British Columbia, Dep. of Linguistics. Woolford, E. 2000. “Ergative agreement systems”. University of Maryland Working Papers in Linguistics 10: 157–91.
chapter 5
Direction marking and case in Menominee Jochen Trommer University of Leipzig
Direct-inverse marking in Algonquian languages has traditionally been viewed as a manifestation of prominence hierarchies. In this paper, I argue based on data from Menominee (Bloomfield, 1952) that recent attempts to capture this phenomenon without appealing to prominence hierarchies, especially by reducing it to general mechanisms of case assignment and realization (Halle and Marantz 1993; Bruening 2001) are empirically inadequate. In a line with Trommer (2003b), I propose an optimality-theoretic analysis of the Menominee data which implements hierarchy effects by preference constraints corresponding to atomic parts of hierarchies and argue that this analysis obviates the empirical problems of alternative case-based accounts.
1. Introduction In Algonquian languages such as Menominee, transitive predications in which the object is higher in animacy than the subject (e.g. 1st/2nd person vs. 3rd person) are marked by an ‘inverse’ marker (-eko in (1a)) on the verb; when the subject is higher, a ‘direct’ marker is used (-a∙ in (1b)):1
(1) Direct/inverse marking in Menominee Menominee (Bloomfield 1962: 154) a. ke-na∙n-eko-w-a∙w [+2]-fetch-dir-[+3]-[−1+pl] ‘He fetches you (pl.).’ Menominee (Bloomfield 1962: 153) b. ke-na∙n-a∙-w-a∙w [+2]-fetch-dir-[+3]-[−1+pl] ‘You (pl.) fetch him.’
It has long been observed that direction (direct/inverse) marking is functionally equivalent to the distinguishing function of case marking since it allows to identify subject and object which are not otherwise overtly distinguished in Algonquian by case marking on nouns or different agreement affixes. Thus, the agreement markers are identical in (1a) and (1b). Menominee ke- marks agreement with a 2nd person argument (subject or object). That ke- refers to the object in (1a) and to the subject in (1b) becomes only clear by the different direction markers. Similarly -w marks 3rd person for subject
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and object alike, and -a∙w can express plurality of any non-first person argument. The linking of these features to subject or object is again achieved by the direction markers. A number of current generative approaches to this phenomenon (e.g. Halle and Marantz 1993; Bruening 2001) imply that the connection between case and direction marking is even tighter and argue that direction marking does not emerge from a prominence hierarchy, but expresses case at a more formal level. In this paper, I argue that the second conclusion is right, but the first is too strong: Direction markers express abstract case features, but the realization of these features is mediated by general optimality-theoretic constraints on prominence hierarchies, as proposed in Trommer (2002, 2003b,d,e). The paper is organized as follows: Section 2 introduces basics of Menominee verbal agreement. In section 3, I discuss the account of direction marking by Halle and Marantz (1993), which tries to eliminate reference to feature hierarchies from the analysis of direction marking. I show in section 4 that this approach fails to account for the systematicity of direction marking in Menominee, and in section 5 I argue that the same problems extend to other current approaches to direction marking. The alternative analysis to direction marking I propose is presented in section 6. Finally, section 7 contains a short summary of the paper.
2. Menominee verb agreement In this section, I introduce basic categories and notions of Menominee (and more generally Algonquian) verb inflection which are relevant for the theoretical discussions in the following sections. Let us start with ‘order’, a category Algonquianists use to differentiate a predicative verb paradigm (‘independent order’, (2a)) from a second one used mainly in subordinate sentences (‘conjunct order’, (2b)) which is based in most respects on a different set of agreement affixes but uses the same set of direction markers: Thus both forms in (2) use the same direction marker (-e), but the phonological shape and the morphosyntactic features expressed by the agreement affixes differ:2
(2) Menominee (Bloomfield 1962: 156) a. ke-n∈∙w-e-m-waw [+2]-see-dir-[−3]-[−1+pl] ‘You (pl.) see me.’ (independent order) Menominee (Bloomfield 1962: 181) b. n∈∙w-e-y∈-k see-dir-[+2+pl]-[−3+pl] ‘When you (pl.) see me.’ (conjunct order)
A second point that is crucial for the understanding of Algonquian morphosyntax is the differentiation of 3rd person arguments illustrated in (3) and (4):3
Direction marking and case in Menominee
(3)
Menominee (Bloomfield 1962: 150) a. po∙se-w embark-[+3] ‘He embarks.’ (proximate) b. po∙se-w-an embark-[+3]-[+obv] ‘The other embarks.’ (obviative)
(4) Menominee (Bloomfield 1962: 150) a. po∙se-n embark-[+per] ‘There is embarking.’ (indefinite subject) Menominee (Bloomfield 1962: 151) b. m∈hki∙-w be.red-[+3] ‘It is red.’ (inanimate)
The first distinction is that between proximate (3a) and obviative (3b) NPs, where ‘proximate’ corresponds roughly to NPs referring to topic information and ‘obviative’ to NPs introducing new discourse referents. In transitive predications with two 3rd person animate arguments, either the subject or the object (but not both) must be obviative. Following Bloomfield (1962), I will translate obviative arguments in examples by the phrase ‘the other’. Slightly modifying a proposal by Halle and Marantz (1993), I will code the distinction by the feature [±obv], where obviatives are [+obv] while non-third person arguments and proximates are [−obv]. The second relevant distinction is a contrast between animate ((3a,b) and (4a)) and inanimate arguments (4b). I will assume that 1st and 2nd person arguments are generally [+an] and only inanimates are [−an]. Finally, subjects can be ‘indefinite’, i.e. unspecified in a passive-like manner (4a). Bloomfield actually calls these forms passives, and I will follow him here in the translations. However, the alleged passive forms are integrated in the inflectional system of transitive forms in so many respects that it makes more sense to treat them as unspecified actor forms. I will mark unspecified subjects by the specification [−spec] (‘-specified’) in contrast to all other arguments which are [+spec]. Table 1 shows the distribution of the assumed features. Table 1. Nominal Features in Algonquian 1st/2nd person 3rd proximate 3rd obviative inanimate unspecified
[±obv]
[±an]
[±spec]
− − + − −
+ + + − +
+ + + + −
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3. Halle and Marantz’ (1993) approach Halle and Marantz (1993, hereafter: H&M) analyze verb inflection including direction marking in Potawatomi, a language closely related to Menominee, but differing in a number of interesting morphological details. While I think that direction marking in Potawatomi is largely parallel to the same phenomenon in Menominee, I will mainly discuss Menominee here since it is much better documented. As Hockett, the primary source of H&M for Potawatomi puts it, discussing a treatment of his own data by Pike and Erickson (1964):4 If exercises in restatement have methodological or theoretical aims, then they should be based on the best and fullest available primary reports, not on anything as full of holes as my sketch of Potawatomi … Why did Pike and Erickson choose Potawatomi rather than Ojibwa or Menomini, on which Bloomfield’s treatments superbly full in the latter case - are now available? (Hockett 1966: 73)
Potawatomi has direction markers analogous (and phonologically closely related) to the ones introduced above for Menominee: -ukO appears if the object is 1st or 2nd person and the subject 3rd person, while -a appears in transitive forms with the opposite feature distribution. In this section, I introduce H&M’s analysis of Potawatomi direction marking. In section 4, I will show that it cannot capture the full range of data in Menominee. Halle and Marantz assume that -a and -ukO represent an agreement head (‘Agr1’) different from two other heads underlying simple agreement marking in the language (‘Agr2’ and ‘Agr3’) and adjoined to a functional head that represents the order category (‘Ind’ for the independent order). This agreement head (Agr1) is supposed to agree only with non [−obv] dp arguments. To understand this statement, it is important to note that H&M posit a three-way distinction for obviation: …[+obv], [−obv] and unmarked for obviation. 1st and 2nd person pronouns . . . are always marked [−obv]. 3rd person DPs may be marked [+obv] for discourse reasons or left unmarked. In a particular syntactic environment . . . in clauses with 3rd person DPs as both subject and object arguments, one of the 3rd person DPs must be specially marked [−obv] and the other must be marked [+obv]. (Halle and Marantz 1993: 141/142).
Table 2 spells out different possible combinations of subject and object features in this system. If subject and object are both non-third person (a,b), all arguments are [−obv], hence there is no argument for Agr1 to agree with. If only the subject is 1st or 2nd person, and the object is 3rd person and obviative (d) or unmarked for obviation (c), the object is the only argument that is not [−obv], and therefore triggers agreement. The same holds true if the subject is 3rd person and non-obviative and the object is 3rd person obviative (e). The configurations in f, g and h represent the mirror image of c, d and e, and consequently involve subject agreement for Agr1. In H&M’s approach, after syntax agreement heads copy the syntactic features of the arguments they agree with. As strictly syntactic heads, agreement heads at this point do
Direction marking and case in Menominee
Table 2. Potawatomi Agreement Configurations according to H&M Subject
Object
a. b. c.
1 [−obv] 2 [−obv] 1/2 [−obv]
2 1 3
d. e. f.
1/2 [−obv] [−obv] 3 3
g. h.
3 3
[+obv] [+obv]
Agr1 agrees with none
Direction Marker −
3 [+obv] 3 [+obv] 1/2 [−obv]
object
-a
1/2 [−obv] 3 [−obv]
subject
-ukO
[− obv] [−obv]
not specify phonological features which are introduced later by insertion of underspecified ‘Vocabulary Items’ which pair morphosyntactic features with phonological content. Under the assumption that subjects and objects in Menominee bear the abstract case features [+Nom(inative)] and [+Acc(usative)] even though there is no overt case morphology, Agr1 contains [+Nom] in the configurations for f, g and h, and [+Acc] in those for c, d and e. H&M use this fact to derive the distribution of -ukO and -a by the vocabulary items in (5) spelling out Agr1 and the Ind head which are assumed to have been fused into a single node by an earlier morphological operation.5
(5) [Agr1 + Ind] a. [+Nom] ↔ /-ukO/ / [+trans] ___ b. [ ] ↔ /-a/ / [+trans] ___
(5a) is inserted into [Agr1 + Ind] if this agrees with the subject. (5b) is the default Vocabulary Item for the Agr1 head. Although it does not specify any particular features, it is inserted if no other appropriate Vocabulary Item is available. Since (5a) is restricted to nominative Agr1, (5b) is inserted whenever this head is not nominative and hence accusative. The context restriction (‘+trans’) stands for the class of transitive verbs in both vocabulary items and blocks them from occurring with intransitive verbs. Crucially, the vocabulary items in (5) relate the different direction markers straightforwardly to case. No reference to prominence hierarchies or related constraints seems to be necessary. As far as the core cases are concerned (c, d, e, f, g and h in Table 2), Menominee behaves just as Potawatomi and according to H&M’s analysis. We saw above in (1) that Menominee shows direct marking (-a∙ corresponding to -a) if the subject is 1st or 2nd person and the object 3rd person, and inverse marking (-eko corresponding to -ukO), for the converse feature distribution in subject and object. As (6) shows, -eko (here reduced phonologically to -ek) is also used if the subject is obviative and the object proximate. (6b) contains -∈∙ instead of -a∙, but this seems to be just a morphophonologically conditioned variant of the direct marker.
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(6) Menominee (Bloomfield 1962: 154) a. na∙n-ek-w (na∙nek) fetch-dir-[+3] ‘The other fetches him.’ Menominee (Bloomfield 1962: 152) b. na∙n-∈∙-w fetch-dir-[+3] ‘He fetches the other.’
Thus up to this point, Menominee as well as Potawatomi are in accordance with the analysis proposed by H&M. In the next section, I will show that the analysis is problematic for conceptual reasons, and is in principle unable to capture the distribution of direction markers in Menominee once the full range of relevant data is taken into account.
4. Problems with Halle and Marantz’s analysis A conceptual problem with H&M’s analysis is that it presupposes a feature with three values (obv in the forms [+obv], [−obv] and [obv], i.e., obv unvalued). Much of current research in feature theory (see e.g. Harley and Ritter 2002, for a recent approach in morphosyntax) seeks to eliminate exactly the formal possibility to allow three-valued features. Moreover, the evidence for an unvalued obviation feature is at best indirect since there are no minimal pairs of forms differing just by the fact that a third person argument is coded [−obv] in one and [obv] in the other. Recall from the examples in (3) repeated here in (7) that such minimal pairs do exist for the contrast between [+obv] and not [+obv]:6
(7) Menominee (Bloomfield 1962: 150) a. po∙se-w embark-[+3] ‘He embarks.’ (proximate) b. po∙se-w-an embark-[+3]-[+obv] ‘The other embarks.’ (obviative)
The only empirical motivation to differentiate [−obv] and [obv] is the behavior of the direction markers.7 This problem is closely connected to the fact that Table 2 does not list all possible combinations of feature values for subject and object. More concretely, the configurations listed in Table 3 are excluded. Excluding a, b and c is uncontroversial since Potawatomi, Menominee and all other Algonquian languages I know of disallow the cooccurrence of two 3rd-person arguments with the same obviation marking in a clause. But in H&M’s account, there must be constraints which also exclude d, e, f and g since these would lead to unattested
Direction marking and case in Menominee
Table 3. Impossible agreement configurations according to H&M Subject a. b. c. d. e. f. g.
3 3 3 3 3 1/2 *3
Object
[−obv] [+obv]
3 3 3 3 3 *3 1/2
[+obv] [−obv] [−obv]
[−obv] [+obv] [+obv] [−obv] [−obv]
Agr1 agrees with … – – – – – – –
forms of direction marking. In d and e, both arguments are not [−obv], hence Agr1 should agree with both arguments. In f and g, both arguments are [−obv] and Agr1 should not exhibit any agreement with either of them. Thus the assumption that [obv] can be unvalued presupposes that there are further constraints which determine why [obv] and [−obv] occur in complementary distribution. Since it remains unclear in H&M’s paper what the formal nature of these constraints is, this casts further doubts on their analysis. Note finally that the condition for Agr1 for triggering agreement with an argument is formulated within a negated context. Agr1 is assumed to agree with non [−obv] dp arguments. It is unclear whether this is a natural class in any existing feature system, and I know of no other implementation of syntactic agreement relations which presupposes negation as a crucial device for defining agreement triggers. A second major problem with H&M’s analysis is that they treat the direct and the inverse marker as the only markers of their class. In contrast to this, traditional descriptions of Algonquian (Bloomfield, 1962; Hockett, 1966) assume at least two additional direction markers, one used in transitive 1 → 2 (-n in Potawatomi, -enen∈ in Menominee) independent order forms and the other one in the corresponding 2 → 1 forms (Potawatomi: -y, Menominee: -e). H&M analyze Potawatomi -y and -n completely differently, as the result of phonological readjustment rules introducing segmental material. (8) shows the rule they assume for -n in a slightly simplified form (Halle and Marantz 1993: 159):
(8) Readjustment rule introducing -n ∅ → -n / ___ Agr2 [+1] nom
Φ
This is to be read as follows: The rule only applies if Agr2, a further agreement head has two bundles of Φ-features, one specified [+1] nom, the other simply as Φ. As a consequence of other constraints, this rule applies exactly if the subject is first and the object
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second person, and inserts -n. The main argument for not relating -y and -n to the direct and inverse marker is the fact that in Potawatomi -a (≈ Menomini -a∙) and -ukO (≈ -eko) appear before the negation element -s’ while -y (here: -i ≈ -e) and -n (≈ -enen∈) appear after it (Halle and Marantz, 1993: 165):
(9) a. b.
n-wapm-a-s’i [+1]-see-neg-dir ‘I do not see him.’ k-wapm-us’-i-mun [+2]-see-neg-dir-[+1+pl] ‘You do not see us.’
Even in H&M’s (1993) framework, their different position is not a decisive argument against treating the two groups of direction markers as belonging to essentially the same affix type,8 while the stipulative nature of a rule format like in (8), makes the concrete analysis of H&M for -y and -n highly questionable. In Menominee, no comparable evidence for a H&M-style analysis of -e and -enen∈ exists. Negation appears outside of all agreement morphology: (10) Menominee (Bloomfield 1962: 171) ke-n∈∙w-e-n-i∙naw-an [+2]-see-dir-[+per]-[+1+pl]-neg ‘You (sg./pl.) do not see us.’ More importantly, in Menominee there is strong evidence that all direction markers belong to the same affix type. In the conjunct order, -e and -enen∈ are not only used for 1 → 2 and 2 → 1 forms, but for all forms with a 1st or 2nd person object: (11) 1/2 → 1/2 forms (conjunct order) Menominee (Bloomfield 1962: 183) a. na∙tom-enen∈-an (na∙tomenan) call-dir-[−3] ‘When I call you (sg.).’ Menominee (Bloomfield 1962: 181) b. n∈∙w-e-yan see-dir-[−3] ‘When you (sg.) see me.’ (12) 3 → 1/2 forms (conjunct order) Menominee (Bloomfield 1962: 183) a. na∙tom-enen∈-k (na∙tomeh) call-dir-[+per] ‘When he calls you (sg.).’
Direction marking and case in Menominee
Menominee (Bloomfield 1962: 181) b. n∈∙w-e-t see-dir-[+3] ‘When he sees me.’ Table 4 summarizes the differences between independent and conjunct order in the distribution of direction markers. Table 4. Distribution of -e, -eko and -enen∈ -e
-eko
-enen∈
Independent order
Conjunct order
2
→1
2
→1
3
→1
3
→1
[−an]
→1
[−an]
→1
[−an]
→2
[−an]
→2
3
→2
3
→2
1
→2
1
→2
Interestingly, in transitive forms there is always exactly one direction marker. If -eko is suppressed, -e or -enen∈ appear instead. This strongly suggests that all direction markers belong to the same affix type and compete for realization, which is inexplicable if -e and -enen∈ have a completely different source as the other direction markers, as suggested by H&M’s analysis of Potawatomi. The third and most serious problem with H&M’s analysis for Menominee is that it does not take into account all features relevant for direction marking. Thus, indefinite actor forms pattern differently from forms with a (proximate or obviative) 3rd person agent. Such forms have the inverse marker -eko if the object is 1st or 2nd person, but the direct marker if the object is 3rd person: (13) Menominee (Bloomfield 1962: 155) a. ne-na∙tom-ek-∈∙-m call-dir-[−lrs]-[−3] ‘I am called.’ Menominee (Bloomfield 1962: 152) b. na∙n-a∙-w-an fetch-dir-[+3]-[+obv] ‘The other is fetched.’ In terms of a feature-hierarchy account, indefinite actors are higher in the animacy hierarchy than proximate arguments, but lower than 1st/2nd person arguments. What is problematic for H&M’s account is that the indefinite actor in (13a) must be [obv] or [+obv] to trigger subject agreement of Agr1 and hence appearance of -eko. But the assumption that indefinite actors are consistently not [−obv] predicts that -eko should also appear in (13b). The only way out I see for a H&M-style analysis is to postulate
99
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that indefinite actors are [−obv] in some contexts, but [+obv] (or [obv]) in others. This however would pose further burden on the constraints governing the cooccurrence of feature values for obv with other features which is already problematic for the data explicitly discussed by H&M. A similar, but even more severe problem as with indefinite actors emerges with inanimate arguments which cooccur with obviative arguments in a transitive clause, as in (14): (14) Menominee (Bloomfield 1962: 173) o-po∙n-a∙-n-e∙n-an [+3]-pot.put-dir-[+per]-[+obv]-neg ‘The other does not put it in the pot.’ Since the subject is obviative, in a H&M-style analysis, Agr1 must agree with the subject, which should result in the use of -eko. However, in this case only the direct affix -a∙ is possible. -eko is used if the subject is inanimate, and the object obviative: (15) Menominee (Bloomfield 1962: 154) n∈∙qn-eko-n kill-dir-[+per] ‘It kills the other.’ Under H&M’s analysis, this suggests that Agr1 agrees with the subject, which hence must be non [−obv] ([obv] or [+obv]). But since the obviative object is by definition [+obv], this would lead to a violation of the condition that for two 3rd-person arguments in a transitive clause, one must be [−obv], and the other one [+obv]. Thus, there is no straightforward way to incorporate direction marking with transitive predicates involving an inanimate and an obviative argument into H&M’s account. However, the facts follow from an approach in terms of the animacy hierarchy if obviative is ranked higher than inanimate leading to the overall hierarchy in (16):9 (16) 1st/2nd person > indefinite actor > proximate > obviative > inanimate Hence, the failure of H&M’s approach to account for the full distribution of direction marking in Menominee seems to be due to their reluctance to acknowledge prominence hierarchy effects. These effects can be reduced to a binary (or rather ternary) feature (obv) for a reduced scale (1st/2nd person > proximate > obviative), but not for the full scale in (16). The alternative analysis for Menominee I will propose in section 6 will reconcile the basic insight of H&M that direction marking is related to case with a formal account of feature hierarchy effects couched in Optimality Theory.
5. Other formal accounts of direction marking The reluctance to view prominence hierarchies as grammatically relevant entities is by no means restricted to H&M’s analysis of Potawatomi, but a more general feature of
Direction marking and case in Menominee 101
much recent syntactic research especially of work adhering to the Minimalist Program (Chomsky 1995, 2000). Here is a representative statement from Newmeyer: To establish the Animacy Hierarchy as a grammatical construct, one would need to find for some language a grammatical generalization that involves a mapping from distinct positions on the hierarchy to some aspect of grammatical form. I know of no such case. To be sure, certain grammatical generalizations seem sensitive to relative degree of animacy. In Navajo, for example, higher-animacy arguments must precede lower-animacy ones (Witherspoon 1977). And other languages have chosen some cut-off point in the hierarchy to make some grammatical distinction. In Kharia, pronouns and nouns referring to animate beings have a number distinction not found among common nouns referring to inanimate things (Biligiri 1965). Such situations are easily handled by means of reference to a binary feature distinction (whose roots might well lie in some hierarchically-arranged cognitive categorization of animacy distinctions). But apparently, however, no language has grammaticalized the Animacy Hierarchy itself. We only see bits of its shadow in the actual grammars of particular languages. (Newmeyer 2000)
What is interesting about direction marking is that it seems to be just such a ‘non-existing’ device grammaticalizing the Animacy Hierarchy itself. There are a number of other formal approaches to direction marking in various Algonquian languages which do not formally involve feature hierarchies (e.g. Anderson 1992; Steele 1995; McGinnis 1995),10 but just as the approach of H&M none of them seems to be adequate to capture the full distribution of direction markers in Menominee. Here I will discuss only two of them which are especially explicit and closely related to H&M’s analysis, namely Bruening (2001) and Stump (2001).
5.1 Bruening (2001) Bruening, discussing yet another Algonquian language, Passamaquoddy, proposes a more syntactically oriented approach having strong affinities to H&M’s analysis: Let us suppose that there is a syntactic feature in Algonquian languages, call it Proximate ([P]), which is a feature of NPs. First and second persons are inherently valued for this feature; they are [+P]. Third persons are not inherently valued (except for inanimates, which cannot be [+P]); they derive a value only from context, and only through opposition between NPs. If two NPs occur in the same local domain . . ., one will always become [+P] while the other will remain unvalued. Which does which is entirely free; speakers can choose to assign any of two locally co-occurring NPs [+P]. There is one restriction: any animate co-ocurring with an inanimate will always become [+P]. This follows from the stipulation that inanimates cannot be [+P]; if one of two third persons must become [+P], it will have to be the animate one. (Bruening 2001: 119)
As in H&M’s account, direction marking is crucially related to one feature (P) connected to obviation, but in contrast to H&M’s, this feature’s plus-value corresponds to proximate, not to obviative. P is interpreted as an uninterpretable feature in the sense of Chomsky (1995), hence a feature which has no semantics, but only a syntactic function and which must be checked by moving it to an appropriate head. Bruening assumes
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that [P] (unvalued P) can be checked in situ by little v, a functional head in the verb phrase introducing the external argument while all [+P] NPs must move to a higher head H to be checked. As a consequence of the concrete formalism he presupposes for cyclic movement, this means that all [+P] NPs must appear at some point in a specifier of vP, either by base generation (for [+P] subjects) or by movement to the specifier of vP in the case of [+P] objects.11 Direction markers are then taken to be the spellout of agreement features at v agreeing with the NPs in its specifier positions. If the object of a transitive verb is non-third-person, both argument NPs have to appear in a Spec-vP position since the subject is generated there anyway, and the object is [+P] and has to move there. If both arguments are third person, ‘one becomes [+P], . . ., this is the proximate category. In addition, the third person that does not become [+P] will be assigned an additional feature, call it [Obv]. This feature will be assigned on top of its [P] feature, and will eventually be spelled out as an obviative suffix.’ (Bruening, 2001: 120). The introduction of the additional feature [Obv] is largely parallel to H&M’s assumption of a three-valued obviative feature, since NPs now have the three options of being [+P], [P] or [P][Obv]. An important departure from H&M’s analysis is that the head corresponding to direction marking (v) can agree with both arguments. This is also reflected in the vocabulary entries Bruening assumes for Passamaquoddy direction markers which can encode agreement features of subject and object (the corresponding Menominee markers appear in brackets): (17) a. b. c. d.
-i -ol -oku -a
↔ ↔ ↔ ↔
[2Subj,1Obj] [1Subj,2Obj] [+P Obj] [ ]
(-e) (-enen∈) (-eko) (-a∙)
In contrast to H&M, Bruening also provides an account of indefinite actor forms. Since indefinite forms with a non-third object have a [+P] object, (17c) is licensed, and the default marker (17d) is correctly predicted for indefinite forms with 3rd person objects. In this respect, Bruening’s analysis is clearly superior to H&M’s account. However like H&M’s approach, it fails to fully capture direction marking in Menominee. Note first that the entries in (17a) and (17b) are inadequate for the corresponding Menominee affixes which also occur with 3rd person subjects in conjunct order forms (see (17) above). It seems to be a trivial modification to replace these by (18a,b), but Bruening assumes that competition among VIs is determined by specificity. Since the entry for -eko (-oku) is equally specific as (18a,b), this means that there is no possibility to determine which one is inserted in a specific context. (18) a. -e ↔ [1Obj] b. -enen∈ ↔ [2Obj] Bruening also inherits the problem with Menominee verbs having an inanimate subject and an obviative object which take the inverse marker -eko (see example 14). To de-
Direction marking and case in Menominee 103
rive the fact that inanimate subjects of transitive verbs always require -eko, he assumes that inanimate arguments are inherently [P] (unvalued P), but an obviative object must also be [P] since [+P] is incompatible with [Obv]. But a [P] object would not license insertion of the inverse marker and predict incorrectly insertion of -a∙. Thus, as H&M’s account, Bruening by trying to reduce direction marking to restrictions on a single case-like feature fails to capture the effects of the full hierarchy in (16) on Menominee direction marking.
5.2 Stump (2001) Ironically, the analyses of H&M and Bruening show a strong resemblance to the detailed account of Potawatomi direction marking in Stump (2001), which is based on completely different theoretical assumptions. Stump assumes an elaborate model of lexicalist morphology based on paradigm rules. For reasons of space, I will only paraphrase his technically intricate analysis informally here. Stump states rules that introduce -a if the subject has the feature mr (Major Reference), and -ukO if the object has mr. mr is a diacritic feature whose occurrence is governed by different rule types basically stating the following: (19) a. In a transitive form where subject ≫ object, the subject has the feature mr. In a transitive form where object ≫ subject, the object has the feature mr b. X ≫ Y holds if X is 1st or 2nd person and X is 3rd person or obviative, or if X is animate and Y inanimate This would avoid for Menominee the problems with transitive verbs having an obviative and an inanimate argument, and (19b) could be trivially extended to cover indefinite actor forms. Nonetheless, there are two serious problems with Stump’s analysis: First, he assumes a diacritic feature (mr) without semantic, and not even syntactic content (recall that H&M’s obv feature is linked to obviation, while Bruening’s [P] triggers syntactic movement). Second, the type of the rule paraphrased in (19b) seems to be completely unrestricted. and could easily be reformulated as in (20) to capture the distribution of a hypothetical direction marker which patterns with -a∙ if only animates are involved, but with -eko, as soon as inanimates are involved: (20) X ≫ Y holds if X is 1st or 2nd person and X is 3rd person or obviative, or if Y is animate and X inanimate Direction markers of this type are unattested, and probably impossible given the current understanding of prominence hierarchy effects in natural language. Thus, without the addition of further substantial constraints, Stump’s analysis hardly provides more than a set-theoretical restatement of the empirical facts.
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6. An Optimality-Theoretic analysis of Menominee direction marking In this section, I show that the distribution of direct and inverse markers in Menominee can be derived from minimal representations of the markers themselves specifying animacy and case, and an independently motivated optimality-theoretic account of hierarchy effects in agreement. While a full analysis of Menominee direction marking would require much more space than I have here (see Trommer, 2003b,2003d for more details), this is evidence that the shortcomings of the discussed approaches can be avoided without the stipulation of ad-hoc mechanisms restricted to direction marking itself.
6.1 The representation of direction markers Since the typical distribution of direction markers is in transitive verb forms with person/number affixes that are not specified for case, it is natural to assume that direction markers express just the case features left unexpressed by other affixes and have roughly the content in (21): (21) [+Nom . . . ][+Acc . . . ] This representation does still not allow to differentiate between direct and inverse markers. But taking a schematic look at the distribution of -a∙ and -eko, an interesting generalization emerges: Table 5. Distribution of -a∙ vs. -eko -a∙ [1/2 +an] [−spec +an] [3 −obv +an] [3 −obv +an] [3 +obv +an]
-eko → → → → →
[3] [3 +spec] [3 +obv +an] [3 −an] [3 −an]
[3] [−spec +an] [3 +obv +an] [3 -an] [3 -an]
→ → → → →
[1/2 +an] [1/+2 +an] [3 +obv +an] [3 −obv +an] [3 +obv +an]
Whenever -a∙ is used, the subject is [+an]; if -eko appears, the object is [+an]. Since this feature is not realized by any other agreement affix in Menominee, it is plausible that it is also part of the specification of the direction markers as in (22): (22) a∙ : [+Nom +an] [+Acc] eko : [+Nom] [+Acc +an] This still does not account completely for the distribution of -a∙ and -eko since for many cases both markers would be licensed. For example, if one argument is 1st person and the other proximate/animate, as in (23), both arguments are animate; hence, both markers should be possible:
Direction marking and case in Menominee 105
(23) a. [+Nom +1 +an] [+Acc +3 −obv +an] b. [+Nom +3 −obv +an] [+Acc +1 +an] In the next subsection, I will introduce the formal apparatus which allows to derive the correct appearance of both markers based on an optimality-theoretic account of hierarchy effects in agreement.
6.2 Hierarchy-based competition The formal framework I will assume here is Distributed Optimality (do; Trommer, 2003c), but most of the analysis could be translated into any ot-based approach to spellout, where morphology has crucial access to syntactic structure (as e.g. in Noyer, 1993; Grimshaw, 1997, 2000). In do, as in dm, syntactic operations manipulate abstract heads without phonological features. Morphology constitutes an independent module of the grammar that takes word-like units from the output of syntax as its input and assigns to them strings of vocabulary items (VIs), pairings of underspecified syntactic feature structures and phonological matrices. Following Correspondence Theory (McCarthy & Prince, 1994), the feature structures of VIs are coindexed with the underlying feature structures they spell out to identify unambiguously which vi realizes which underlying head. In contrast to dm, this does not happen by language-specific rules, but by evaluating a language-specific ranking of a universal set of morphological constraints. Take as an example the Menominee word form in (24), focusing on the pronominal clitic ne:[+1] which marks first person arguments in the independent order: (24) Menominee (Bloomfield 1962: 150) ne-po∙se-m [+1]-embark-[−3] ‘I embark.’ The constraint L [+Cl] requires that all clitics are adjacent to the left edge of the spellout domain (roughly the morphological word). This is violated once by (25b). parse F counts a constraint violation for each input feature which is not realized in the output by a coindexed vi specifying this feature. Since there is no clitic in Menominee realizing [−2], it is unavoidable to violate it at least once, however violation is minimized, which leads to selection of (25c) (suffixal agreement is disregarded in (25)): (25) Input: [+Cl+1–2]1 [+V]2
L [+Cl]
prs F
*!
*
☞ a. ne:[+Cl+1]1-po∙se:[+V] 2
b. po∙se:[+V] 2-ne:[+Cl+1] 1
c. po∙se:[+V]
* **!*
ne- also appears to express the subject or object of transitive verbs, but if there is another argument which is 2nd person, the [+2] clitic ke- appears and ne- is suppressed:
106 Jochen Trommer
(26) Menominee (Bloomfield 1962: 157) a. ke-na∙tom-enen∈-m-enaw [+2]-call-dir-[−3]-[+1+pl] ‘We call you (sg./pl.).’ Menominee (Bloomfield 1962: 156) b. ke-n∈∙w-e-m-enaw [+2]-see-dir-[+3]-[+1+pl] ‘You (sg./pl.) see us.’ Following Gerlach (1998) and Woolford (2003), I analyze suppression of the [+1] clitic as an effect of the alignment constraint. One clitic must be suppressed since it is not possible to align two clitics to the left edge of the spellout domain (27c): (27) Input: [+Cl+1–2] 1 [+Cl+2–1] 2 [+V] 3
a. ne:[+Cl+1] 1-po∙se:[+V] 2
prs [+Cl][+2]/[+1] L [+Cl] *!
****
☞ b. ke:[+Cl+2] 1-po∙se:[+V] 3
c. ne:[+Cl+1] 1-ke:[+Cl+2] 1-po∙se:[+V] 3
prs F ****
*!
**
The ranking of L [+Cl] and parse F is crucial since higher ranking of parse F would favor (27c) over (27a,b). However, the preference for the 2nd person clitic must be expressed by the additional constraint parse [+Cl][+2]/[+1]. This constraint belongs to the family of relativized parse constraints (Trommer 2002) and is to be read as follows: “If there are adjacent [+2] and [+1] heads in the input, then realize the person feature [+Cl] of the [+2] head.” Relativized parse constraints are related to universal prominence hierarchies by the schema in (28): (28) If A is distinct from B, and A ≥ B on a prominence scale S then there is a parse constraint parse [F]A/B Given the scales in (29) which are justified by extensive crosslinguistic evidence, we get particular constraints as in (30). (29) a. {[+1],[+2] } > [+3] b. [+animate] > [−animate] (30a) encodes the preference of feature realization for 1st over 3rd person agreement, and (30b) the realization preference for animate arguments over inanimates. Since [+1] and [+2] are not ranked, there are antagonistic constraints for clauses with [+1] and [+2] arguments (30c,d). Actual preference depends on the language-specific ranking. (30) a. b. c. d.
parse [per][+1]/[+3] parse [per][+an]/[−an] parse [per][+1]/[+2] parse [per][+2]/[+1]
Direction marking and case in Menominee 107
In the next subsection, I will show that relativized parse constraints allow a straightforward account of direction marking in Menominee.
6.3 Hierarchies and competition in direction marking Recall that direction markers realize only case and the feature [+an]. Actually, direction markers are the only affixes in Menominee to express these features. Hence, parse constraints referring to [+an] will have an immediate effect on the distribution of these markers. Now, the schema in (28) can also be applied to [+an] which licenses constraints such as (31): (31) parse [+an][+1]/[+3] This constraint favors -a∙ for (23a) and -eko for (23b), i.e. typical cases where the lexical entries for the direction markers do not determine which one will actually appear: (32) Input: [+Nom +1 +an]1 [+Acc +3 −obv +an]2
parse [+an][+1]/[+3]
☞ a. -a∙:[+Nom+an] 1 [+Acc]2
b. -eko:[+Nom] 1 [+Acc+an]2
(33) Input: [+Nom +3 −obv +an] 1 [+Acc +1 +an]2
a. -a∙:[+Nom +an] 1 [+Acc] 2
*! parse [+an][+1]/[+3] *!
☞ b. -eko:[+Nom] 1 [+Acc+an] 2
Note the crucial role of the case features in the feature structures of the direction markers. In do, feature structure in VIs may only be coindexed with an input head if they subsume the features of this head. Thus, -a∙:[+Nom +an]2 [+Acc]1 is not a possible candidate for the input in (33). Since similar constraints as (31) are licensed by the whole prominence hierarchy relevant for direction marking in (16), relativized parse constraints predict the correct direction markers for all transitive verb forms. A final question is what blocks cooccurrence of -a∙ and -eko which is otherwise predicted by parse F. I will assume that the restriction to one direction markers results from an instance of the constraint family coherence, which is defined as follows (Trommer 2003a:8): (34) coherence (F ) : Count a constraint violation for each vi V matched by F and containing index i preceded by another matched vi V’ containing index j such that i ≠ j and there is no matched vi V’’ between V’ and V. As alignment constraints, coherence constraints are mainly motivated by universal tendencies in affix order, thus coherence constraints for simple agreement have the effect that affixes expressing features of the same head appear adjacent to each other. However, if we restrict coherence to direction markers, which have by assumption
108 Jochen Trommer
the form [+Nom] [+Acc], we derive the effect that cooccurrence of these markers is disfavored. This is illustrated in (35): (35) Indices and violations for coh [+Nom]1 [+Acc]2
Relevant indices
Violations
a. -a∙:[+Nom +an]1 [+Acc]2 -eko:[+Nom]1 [+Acc+an]2
VI1,2 VI1,2
*
b. -eko:[+Nom]1 [+Acc+an]2 -a∙:[+Nom+an]1 [+Acc]2
VI1,2 VI1,2
*
c. -a∙:[+Nom+an]1 [+Acc]2
VI1,2
d. -eko:[+Nom]1 [+Acc+an]2
VI1,2
The configuration VI1,2 VI1,2 violates coherence since the second vi contains the index 1 which is different from the index 2 in the first vi. The same holds true for 2 in the second, and 1 in the first vi. Thus, the only way to avoid a violation of coh [+Nom][+Acc] is to restrict a word form to maximally one direction marker. If the coherence constraint is ranked above all parse constraints, we get the correct interaction of faithfulness and hierarchy effects:12 (36) Input: [+Nom +1 +an]1 [+Acc +3 −obv +an]2
coh [+Nom][+Acc]
parse [+an][+1]/[+3]
☞ a. -a∙:[+Nom+an]1 [+Acc]2
b. -eko:[+Nom]1 [+Acc+an]2
c. -a∙:[+Nom+an]1 [+Acc]2-eko[+Nom]1 [+Acc+an]2
parse F ***
*!
***
*!
The same type of account also carries over to the markers -e and -enen∈, which can now be represented as in (37): (37) e : [+Nom +spec] [+Acc +1] enen∈: [+Nom +spec] [+Acc +2] This means that these affixes are also subject to coh [+Nom][+Acc], hence cannot cooccur with the other direction markers. A full account of the distribution of these markers in terms of relativized parse constraints is provided in Trommer (2003d).
7. Summary In this paper, I have shown that direction marking in Menominee cannot be completely reduced to case or related syntactic devices. This provides evidence that prominence hierarchies play a crucial role in the formal realization of grammatical relations. I have provided an alternative analysis in terms of ranked violable constraints which reconciles the idea that direction marking realizes case with a more general approach to hierarchy effects in inflection. This approach avoids problematic theoretical devices, such as diacritic or three-valued features.
Direction marking and case in Menominee 109
Abbrevations agr agreement, dm distributed morphology, do distributed optimality, dir direction marker, pl plural, prs Parse (constraint), vi vocabulary item; [±1] 1st person, [±2] second person, [±3] 3rd person, [±pl] plural, [+Acc] accusative, [±an] animate, [+cl] clitic, [±spec] specified, [±lrs] low referential status, [+Nom] nominative, [±obv] obviative, [+per] person, [+trans] transitive, [+V] verb.
Notes 1. Glosses of agreement affixes are represented as feature structures (See Abbrevations). 2. Menominee orthography in the examples follows in all respects Bloomfield (1962). While this is close to ipa in most respects, the symbol ‘∈’ is problematic (note that Bloomfield uses ‘∈’, not the IPA symbol ‘ɛ’. He says that this sound varies ‘from a vowel like that of French tête, through the type of English had, to opener variants approaching the vowels of French brave and English father’ (1962: 4). Milligan (2000) argues that this vowel corresponds to IPA ‘æ’. 3. -n occurs in a variety of contexts (e.g. intransitive unspecified subject forms and negated forms for all person values) and replaces ‑w (third-person: [+3]) and ‑m (non-third-person: [–3]) which would otherwise be expected. Since it is in complementary distribution with these person suffixes and shares their position, while not marking a specific person contrast, I assume that it expresses the bare person feature ([+per]). The inanimate 3rd person form (4b) is marked here with the same affix as corresponding animate forms (4a). However, inanimate forms use different agreement markers in the plural and specific contexts such as negated forms. 4. Note that Bloomfield and Hockett write ‘Menomini’, while I use the spelling ‘Menominee’. The latter is the official writing of the Menominee tribe. Thanks to Monica Macaulay (p.c.) for bringing this to my attention. 5. It is unclear to me what the motivation for head fusion in this case is since it does not seem to have any empirical consequences. 6. The same contrast exists with 3rd person subjects in the context of 1st and 2nd person objects. Since both types of forms are marked as inverse, H&M cannot mark the proximate 3rd person subject [+obv] which would make it indistinguishable from the obviative 3rd person, nor can they mark it [−obv] which would incorrectly predict direct marking for this configuration. Thus the assumption of the three-way distinction for the obviation feature is crucial for the analysis to work. 7. H&M (p. 141–4) claim that their feature system for obviation also accounts for the distribution of the 3rd person clitic w- in Potawatomi, which is restricted to transitive forms with two 3rd person arguments. Since the proximate argument in these forms is [−obv] while it is unspecified for obviation in intransitive 3rd person forms according to their analysis, they can reduce this restriction to the generalization that only [−obv] arguments license overt clitics. However, the restriction of w- to transitive 3 → 3 forms can be equally well captured by a context restriction for the entry of w- which allows it only in the local context of another 3rd person head. Thus invoking a three-valued obviation feature is by no means necessary here, and hence the behaviour of the 3rd person clitic provides no evidence for this feature system. That the behaviour of
110 Jochen Trommer
w- is rather idiosyncratic is also evidenced by the fact that the corresponding Menominee clitic (o-) occurs also in intransitive forms. 8. This could be effected, e.g., by local dislocation; see Embick and Noyer (2001) for discussion. 9. This scale is standard in work on Algonquian languages (cf. for example Brittain, 2001; Valentine, 2001). 10. See Trommer (2003b) for a critique of recent approaches to direction marking which involve the formalization of hierarchy effects. 11. Bruening provides convincing syntactic evidence for such movement of the lower argument in clauses with an obviative 3rd person animate subject and a proximate 3rd person animate object. However, no evidence for movement in any of the other inverse configurations is given. Since clauses with two 3rd person animate arguments are also special in other ways, e.g. by requiring that one of the arguments is obviative and the other proximate (cf. section 2), this makes it questionable that object movement is a general property of inverse clauses. 12. An anonymous reviewer rightly points out that the coherence-based account predicts languages where all relevant parse constraints are ranked above coherence and every transitive verb form is marked by a direct and an inverse marker at the same time. I assume that a pair of such affixes consistently cooccurring, probably under adjacency, would be indistinguishable from a single affix expressing transitivity.
References Anderson, S. R. 1992. A-Morphous Morphology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bloomfield, L. 1962. The Menomini Language. New Haven: Yale University Press. Brittain, J. 2001. The Morphosyntax of the Algonquian Verb. New York: Garland Press. Bruening, B. 2001. Syntax at the Edge: Cross-Clausal Phenomena and the Syntax of Passamaquoddy. PhD dissertation, MIT. Chomsky, N. 1995. The Minimalist Program. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Chomsky, N. 2000. “Minimalist inquiries: The framework”. In Step by Step, R. Martin, D. Michaels and J. Uriagereka (eds), 89–155. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Embick, D. and Noyer, R. 2001. “Movement operations after syntax”. Linguistic Inquiry 32 (4): 555–95. Gerlach, B. 1998. “Optimale Klitiksequenzen”. Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft 17: 35–91. Grimshaw, J. 1997. “The best clitic: Constraint conflict in morphosyntax”. In Elements of Grammar: Handbook of Generative Syntax, L. Haegeman (ed.), 169–96. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Grimshaw, J. 2000. “Optimal clitic positions and the lexicon in Romance clitic systems”. In ot Syntax, G. Legendre, J. Grimshaw and S. Vikner (eds), 205–40. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Halle, M. and Marantz, A. 1993. “Distributed Morphology and the pieces of inflection”. In The View from Building 20, K. Hale and S. J. Keyser (eds), 111–76. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Harley, H. and Ritter, E. 2002. “A feature-geometric analysis of person and number”. Language 78 (3): 482–526. Hockett, C. F. 1966. “What Algonquian is really like”. IJAL 32 (1): 59–73. McGinnis, M. 1995. “Fission as feature movement”. In Papers in Minimalist Syntax [MIT Working Papers in Linguistics. Volume 27], R. Pensalfini and H. Ura (eds), 165–87. Cambridge, MA: MITWPL.
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McCarthy, J. and Prince, A. 1994. “The emergence of the unmarked: Optimality in prosodic morphology”. Proceedings of nels 24, Amherst: ma. Milligan, M. 2000. “A New Look at Menominee Vowel Harmony“. In Papers of the Algonquian Conference 31: 237–54. Newmeyer, F. J. 2000. “Optimality and functionality: Remarks on ot in syntax”. Manuscript, University of Washington. [roa-402-0800]. Noyer, R. 1993. “Optimal words: Towards a declarative theory of word formation”. Manuscript, Princeton University. (http://www.ling.upenn.edu/~rnoyer/papers.html). Pike, K. L. and Erickson, B. 1964. “Conflated field structures in Potawatomi and in Arabic”. International Journal of American Linguistics 30: 201–12. Steele, S. 1995. “Towards a theory of morphological information”. Language 71 (2): 260–309. Stump, G. T. 2001. Inflectional Morphology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Trommer, J. 2002. “Hierarchy-based competition”. Manuscript, University of Osnabrück. (http:// www.ling.uos.de/trommer/hbc.pdf). Trommer, J. 2003a. “Coherence”. Manuscript, University of Osnabrück. (http://www.ling.uos. de/trommer/coh.pdf). Trommer, J. 2003b. “Direction marking as agreement”. In Syntactic Structures and Morphological Information, U. Junghanns and L. Szucsich (eds), 317–40. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Trommer, J. 2003c. Distributed Optimality. PhD dissertation, University of Potsdam. Trommer, J. 2003d. “Head-level and chain-level constraints on spellout”. Manuscript, University of Osnabrück. (http://www.ling.uni-osnabrueck.de/trommer/chains.pdf). Trommer, J. 2003e. “Participant reduction and two-level markedness”. In Proceedings of the Workshop on Variation within Optimality Theory, J. Spenader, A. Eriksson, and Ö. Dahl (eds), 101–8. Stockholm. Valentine, J. R. 2001. Nishnaabemwin Reference Grammar. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Woolford, E. 2003. “Clitics and agreement in competition: Ergative cross-referencing patterns”. In Papers in Optimality Theory II [University of Massachusetts Occasional Papers. Volume 26], A. C. Carpenter, A. W. Coetzee, and P. de Lacy (eds). Amherst, ma: glsa.
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part 2
Case marking and transitivity The syntax of case
chapter 6
Bare and prepositional differential case marking The exotic case of German (and Icelandic) among all of Germanic Werner Abraham University of Vienna
The ensuing paper is an attempt at a survey as to which factors may play a role in case marking. Case marking can come in terms of case morphology, of fixed position in the clause, and in terms of a limited inventory of prepositions. This survey tries to keep apart these three factors aligning them with combinatory constraints on the appearance of case marking in more than one place verbs. It will be seen, first, that case is not identical to case irrespective in which case combinations it appears. From this the notion of ‘exceptional case (combination)’ is derived. If we assume further — as is canonic — that Germanic originally had a substantially larger corpus of bare case object marking, then, by morphological erosion, languages allowed for prepositions to take over the function of object-discerning morphemes. It will be seen that this diachronic view allows for typologization of languages according to the emergence and size of such case signaling prepositions. Furthermore, the fact that languages like Icelandic construes subjects with non-nominatives (in fact, genitives, datives, and accusatives all allow for subject status), while German never does, will be motivated by minutely different agreement strategies.
1. Two types of object differentiation In a wide number of languages with overt case marking of direct objects, only some ob jects are case marked, while others are not, depending on semantic and pragmatic fea tures. This is the commonly held opinion in typological and functional linguistics. Fol lowing Bossong (1985), this phenomenon has been called Differential Object Marking (dom). In the present article it is subsumed under the more general term ‘differential case marking’, for reasons that will become obvious when Icelandic (quirky subjects) is discussed. As the title suggests object marking is executed either by morphological case (as in German der Präsident-nom vs. des/dem/den Präsident-en-gen/dat/acc; English him- dat/acc) or by prepositional marking (French a chaqun). The general question raised here is whether there are differences between case and prepositional object marking and whether or not any generalization can be attached to this difference.
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dom takes many forms including the three following in (1) (from Aissen 2003):
(1) a. Singhalese, in which case marking is optional, but only animate-referring objects may be case marked; b. Hebrew, in which object case marking is obligatory, but is limited to defin ite objects; c. Romanian, in which object case marking is obligatory for some objects, optional for others, and excluded for a third set. Those for which it is ob ligatory are animate-referring personal pronouns and proper nouns.
Although these three examples may seem quite disparate, dom is in fact a highly prin cipled phenomenon. According to Bossong (1985, VIII) the structural uniformity of this phenomenon in at least 300 (presently known) languages around the earth is so obvious that one wonders why linguistics has up to now dealt so little with this topic. The present article will focus on the dom-criteria highlighted in (1a–c) and discuss phenomena from Germanic to shed more light on dom. In particular, it will be claimed that Case Differentiation poses special paths of research in languages which distinguish Case morphologically and which do not replace bare Case with prepositional Case as discussed in the main body of Aissen (2003). German is such a language, and it will be compared with other Germanic languages which have undergone heavy Case syncretism. The particular question asked before this Germanic scenario is what precisely the changes are that languages with prepositional Case have undergone in relation to German and their original pre-Caseless states and why it is, in particular, that Icelandic can have Genitive/Dative/Accusative marked subjects, whereas German can only have Nominative subjects. The second main topic are prepositional case in relation to bare case in closely related languages, such as between Dutch/Norwegian, on the one hand, and German, on the other. The functional generalization which underlies most explanations of Differential Object Marking is the following: ‘The higher in prominence a direct object, the more likely it is to be overtly case marked.’ The dimension of prominence involves, above all, animacy and definiteness or specificity. Other than subjects, which are always high on the scale of prominence, objects are low in prominence. This is the reason that only the most prominent object realizations receive case marking, while those low in prominence stay unmarked. Since this is not only true in general, but also in individual languages based on different criteria far beyond those of animacy and definiteness, it does not seem implausible to state different priorities and conflicts between such criteria in different languages and to describe such variants in the individual languages in terms of Optimality Theory (Aissen 2003). The claim is, then, that such an account is not only formal and uniform for the range of typological variation, but that it also allows insight into the emergence of dom in its historical expansion in individual languages. The present paper investigates the validity of these claims across Germanic languages, in particular German, Dutch, and Norwegian. German offers itself prominently because
Bare and prepositional differential case marking
of its various Case valence paradigms numbering at least 12 and the distinct behavior of each of these paradigms with respect to structural modification (passivization, control infinitives, middle constructions etc.). It will be seen that the distribution of Case as such is subject to a variety of criteria which need to be at the basis of any dom calcu lation. Second, the generality of Aissen’s claim will be contested on empirical grounds. It will be shown that not only can such a generalization be extended to Dutch and Norwe gian — languages for which such a claim has never been raised (in fact, it has never before for any Germanic language). What is more, it will be shown that the claim of dom in order to hold with respect to vir+NP in Afrikaans (Aissen 2003) needs to be replaced by a template explanation in terms of scrambling and thema vs. rhema distribution in the ‘middle field’ of the clause. Any identical Case in the middle field (structurally, the V-head to the right and Comp to the left, in any SVOV [Subject–Verb-Object–Verb] lan guage such as German, Dutch, and Afrikaans, but not English or any of the Scandinavian languages) falls into a base-derived thematic position to the left (C-attracted) and a basic (V-attracted, i.e. VP-internal) rhematic dimension. Pronouns as well as definite NPs, as distinguished from indefinite NPs, are prototypical thematic Case carriers. Assuming the derivational Phase Principle (Chomsky 1999), what follows from this is that Case on pronouns and definite NPs is not assigned in situ, but derived (moved out of VP), while never reaching any of the functional domains (Case Agreement above VP) as yet. More generally, this appears to hold for any scrambling (and, consequently, discourse configurational) language. The paper is organized as follows. Section 2 introduces, still at an empirical level, principled differences of indirect object/Dative and direct object/Accusative marking in German and English. This leads over, in Section 3, to differential Case marking for subjects in Icelandic and German (quirky subjects) posing the principled question how come that oblique Case subjects can be subjects in the first place on an explanatory, theoretical level. It will be seen that the decisive criterion is the base structure difference between Icelandic and German. German projects the functional domain inside VP, whereas Icelandic does so outside of VP. As a natural addition, in Section 4 dativeindirect objects of three-place predicates are discussed in great detail in German vs. Norwegian and Dutch. Where German has bare Dative Case the other two Germanic languages provide a majority of PPs with an unpredictable variety of prepositional lexemes. Section 5 considers briefly whether case can be governed by V-incorporated P in German. In Section 6, it is investigated to what extent a particular preposition in Afrikaans, vir ‘for’, can reflect Aissen’s object preposition marking (dom). Aissen’s position will be refuted by showing that the preposition in question provides distinct discourse functional marking rather than case marking. In conclusion, it will be claimed that given that all Proto-Germanic had (V)SOV the pervasive linear order of S-io-do-pp not only reflects this common ancestry, but that it is also at the deep logical bottom of branching and discharge in all Germanic languages (cf. Haider’s (2000a,b) Left Branching Hypothesis — a claim directed in particular against other proto word order claims such as Kayne 1994).
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2. dom and the grammaticalization scenario: preliminary remarks Speaking of Case morphology in modern Germanic one thinks primarily of Icelandic and German. Such identification of morphological Case is no longer extant in the rest of the Scandinavian languages nor in Dutch and English, and, if one wants, also Yiddish and West Frisian. The main criterion as to what counts as bare vs. prepositional Case is Dative vs. Accusative marking. While languages such as German never use prepositions for Dative valences — or, more precisely, prepositional Case and morphologically assigned Case have a different semantics — other languages such as English distinguish verb-proximate (= closest to the base position of Vo, i.e. immediately to the right of Vo in clause-final position) Case functions and verb-distal (i.e., not in Vproximate position) Case functions in the following sense. Prepositional Case invariably has a verb-distal clausal function, whereas bare Case is overtly marked as a verbproximate clause function.
(2) a. They gave [bare him] [bare a cup of tea] b. They gave [bare a cup of tea] [prep *(to) him] c. They gave *[prep to him] [bare a cup of tea] d. Sie gaben [bare ihm.dat] [bare eine Tasse Tee.acc] e. */##Sie gaben eine Tasse Tee.acc [prep an ihn]
German (2e) is meaningless or, at best, it has a meaning which is totally different from (2d). The direct object in German is uniquely verb-designated. It can never be anything but the accusative bearing clausal part. In English, on the other hand, what is the direct object is determined by predicate proximity: it can be either the thematic goal, him, or the thematic theme, a cup of tea, as shown in the examples above. This positional strategy in English allows for structural transitions that a Case-by-morphology language like German strictly disallows. See (3) as to what can passivize in English and what cannot in German cross-thematically (i.e., disregarding theta-role distinctions).
(3) a. He was given a cup of tea b. A cup of tea was given to him c. *Er/Ihm wurde eine Tasse Tee gegeben d. Eine Tasse Tee wurde ihm gegeben
… … … …
derived from (2a) derived from (2b) only one source same only source
There is only one clausal part promoting to passive subject: the designated Accusativeth(ema). Position plays no role whatsoever. The German strategy for clause-part iden tification is purely by Case morphology (which, in turn, is linked, to thematic identification; see (3c,d)). In English, on the other hand, it is by position relative to the verb irrespective of the thematic identification. Except for Icelandic and partly Dutch, the Germania follows the whole-sale Case syncretism of English, which implies structural clause part identification by position. That is, what are lexically designated Datives in German either correspond to verbproximate bare Case direct objects or, semantically undifferentiated, to prepositional
Bare and prepositional differential case marking 119
Case elements in verb-distal and, consequently, non-direct object position as in English (gave (*to) mother a book vs. gave a book *(to) mother). However, there is no Englishlike semantic equivocation between preposition Case and indirect object function, on the one hand, and verb-proximity and direct object function, on the other, in the rest of the Germanic languages. As Askedal (1998) has demonstrated what are Dative objects in German receive different prepositional Cases in Norwegian. The same holds for Dutch vis-à-vis German. Quite clearly, this reflects different paths of grammaticaliz ation1 from original, pre-prepositional Dative-Case periods to modern prepositionalCase stages in English, Norwegian, and Dutch. This raises the question, first, what the trigger is for Norwegian and Dutch assigning different prepositions. In other words, since prepositions have localistic meaning, there are bare datives in German which must be identified to be different in meaning accord ing to what they are semantically co-assigned by their governing verbs. Second, given the finalized grammaticalization English has undergone in designating no more than one single preposition, to, to indirect Case, it can be investigated which localistic pre positions fuse first to yield the early step in grammatically neutralizing prepositional Case for the purpose of distinguishing it from the direct object. Before we investigate which Dutch prepositions correspond to the entire bare Datives in German, let us first pursue the question what types of Dative+other case combinations exist in the main language under scrutiny, German. This will be pursued next, in Section 3.
3. Differential case marking in German and Icelandic vs. Dutch and Norwegian 3.1 Regular vs. exceptional patterns in German It is the two questions in the closing paragraph of Section 2 that we pursue further in this article. To complete the picture I insert the total range of Case series in German. German syntagmatic and paradigmatic morphology distinguishes four different Cases: Nominative, Accusative, Dative, and Genitive. The three regular Case patterns, both as regards Case combination and relative linear order, of German verbs are listed in (4). They can be predicted from a small set of simple rules.
(4) One-place verbs: Nominative (1) Two-place verbs: Nominative Accusative (1–4) Three-place verbs: Nominative Dative Accusative (1–3-4)
The Nominative is always the ‘highest’ (= most verb-distal) argument, Accusative the ‘lowest’ (=predicate-proximal) if no other case or prepositional case intervenes (e.g., the (non-structural) Genitive always is closer to the verb than the structural Accusative; this is to all appearances due to the fact that the Genitive is (near-)incorporated
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Case). In addition, Case can be determined in an exceptional way in German, too, and an inspection of the range of Case exceptions leads to the following generalizations: Restrictions on Bare Case combinations in German: Generalizations 1–6. Generalization 1 The highest argument of causative/agentive verbs is never marked exceptionally.2 In cases other than causative/agentive the highest argument may be exceptional (as in Icelandic) or must not be (as in German). This includes and excludes (‘*’) the following combinations (illustrated on subordinate Vlast order). See (5a–g)).
E(xceptional)C(ase)M(arking) is demonstrable by Ich lasse ihn das tun/I let him do it. ihn/him is Accusative object governed by lassen/let, but likewise it is a Subject(/nonnominative=’exceptional’) governed by tun/do. The terminology ECM is due to Generative Syntax. In German, it holds only for Accusative, not for any other morphological case.
(5) Further illustrations a. *Gen–Nom *daß seiner sie gedenkt. that his she thinks of b. Nom–Gen daß sie seiner gedenkt. that she his thinks of c. Nom–Dat–Acc daß sie ihm etwas gibt. that she him smthg. gives d. Nom–Acc–Dat daß sie etwas ihm vorzieht. that she smthg. him prefers e. Nom–Dat daß sie ihm hilft. that she him helps f. *Dat –Nom–Acc *daß ihm sie etwas gibt. that him she smthg. gives g. *Gen Nom Acc *daß dessen sie ihn bezichtigt. that this she him accuses Generalization 2 At most one argument of a verb can be marked exceptionally. This excludes the following combinations (see (5h–l)).
(5) Illustrations h. Nom –*Gen–Dat–Acc *daß sie dessen ihm etwas gibt. that she this him smthg. gives i. *Acc–Nom *daß ihn sie unterstützt.
Bare and prepositional differential case marking
that him she supports j. *Nom–Gen–Acc *daß sie dessen ihn bezichtigt. that she this him accuses k. *Acc–Nom–Acc *daß ihn sie etwas lehrt. that him she smthg. teaches ?/ok l. Nom–Acc(/Dat)–Acc *dass sie ihn/ihm etwas lehrt. that she him smthg. teaches Generalization 3 Only the lowest (dp-)argument of V can be marked exceptionally. In other words, all patterns are filtered out in which the exceptional Case is not the lowest in the hierarchy.
(5) Illustrations m. Nom–*Gen–Dat–Acc *daß sie dessen ihm etwas gibt. that she this him accuses n. Nom–*Acc–Acc *daß sie etwas ihn lehrt. that she smthg. him teaches k. Nom–*Dat–Dat *daß sie ihm mir hilft. that she him me helps o. Nom– *Gen–Gen *daß sie seiner dessen gedenkt. that she his this thinks ok daß ihm das hilft. p. Dat–Nom that him this helps
This leaves us with the attested patterns in Table 1 below (see also (5b–e) above) — and the possibly problematic case of psychological predicates — see (5p) above and 12 (Acc > Dat!) in Table 1.3 Since dynamic verbs cover the main body of the verbal lexicon Generalization 1 says that the Nominative has the highest priority in Case assignment (Bayer 2003). German respects Generalization 2 in a very obvious, empirically verifiable sense, and so do other languages (see Czepluch 1982; Fanselow 1995, 2002; Yip, Maling & Jackendoff 1987 for Icelandic). The most plausible explanation for Generalization 2 is avoidance of (psychological) parsing difficulties. Compare Illustrations (h) vs. (i–l). Likewise Generalization 3 is plausible as the opposite of Generalization 1 to the extent that Nom has the inverse serialization. However, it faces an apparent problem with Psych-verbs and other ‘inverted’ predicate types as for the valence types 8 and 12 in Table 1 below. See Table 1 (from Fanselow 1995) for a descriptive list of the Case patterns for non-complex verbs in German. Generally, to restrict structural flexibility to Nominative and Accusative corresponds closely to very general (bottom up) parsing requirements. According to such constraints, it would be counterproductive to their very systematic exist-
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ence if all Cases could participate alike in structural modification.4 Whether or not the fact that Icelandic has Nom–Dat–Dat is a a problem for Gener alization 3 above remains to be seen.5 It might be contingent on two different types of object Datives. Notice that Icelandic datives may have syntactic subject status for certain verbs, which constitutes another type of Dative. (6) Ég úthlutaði honum verkefninu. I assigned him.dat task-the.dat ‘I assigned him the task.’ or: ‘I assigned the task to him.’ (Maling 2002)
Not much else can be said given also that we do not know how mighty the verbal class is following the pattern of Nom–Dat–Dat. Table 1 (gleaned, with minor modifications, from Fanselow 1995) summarizes the case combinations in German. Table 1. Bare Case Combination Patterns in German (the ‘regular’ Case valence combinations appear in shaded CAPS) Argument 1 1 2 3 5 6 7 8 11 12 13 14
Nom Acc Dat Nom Nom Nom Dat Nom Nom Nom Nom
Argument 2
Acc Dat Gen Nom Acc Acc Acc Dat
Argument 3
Example
Acc6 Dat Gen Acc
kommen ‘come’ frieren ‘be cold’ grauen ‘dread’ sehen ‘see’ helfen ‘help’ gedenken ‘commemorate’ gefallen ‘please’ lehren ‘teach’ vorziehen ‘prefer’ bezichtigen ‘accuse’ geben ‘give’
Clearly, Case in German—even subject case—is lexically, not structurally designated. Recall from (3), that, unlike in English, morphological Case in German has structural implications in the sense that only Accusatives can promote to passive subjects. There are three more Bare Case Generalizations implicit in (5a–p) and Table 1 based on thematic and predicate proximity characteristics. Generalization 4 Non-Nominatives can never be Agents. This implies that secondarily derived subjects (such as ergative V-subjects, passive subjects, middle construction subjects) cannot be Agent.
This appears to hold also for Icelandic Dative subjects since these are never Agents.7
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Generalization 5 V-proximity reflects localistic reference (referring to the V-Proximity Hierarchy Dative < accusative < Genitive <> prepositional objects < V, for German/Dutch basic SOV). This is in line with our conclusions about the graded intensionality increase for prepositional objects by contrast with bare case objects. See the next Section, 4. From this follows that accusative is in structural V-proximate position, but not necessarily in non-structural V-proximate position. Notice that this leaves open the question whether locally stative PPs are to be distinguished syntactically from directional PPs, and, if so, how this is to be administered. It is usually assumed that non-directional, locally stative PPs are adjuncts and thus outside of the case-assigning merging dimension inside VP.
Generalization 6 To account for *Nom–Gen-Gen, *Nom–Dat–Dat, Parsing (sentence processing) appears to be responsible, certainly in a scrambling (discourse functional) language, where Bare Case Doublets for obvious reasons are prohibited, since any type of linking (thematic or clause-functional) is an additional load on the interim stack where material which cannot be processed yet has to be waiting for further processing clues. But see (6) above. Nom–Acc– Acc is an admitted exception only in Standard German; in the substandards it is avoided and replaced by Nom–Dat-Acc (Abraham 1995: ch. 3).
The fact that Nom–Acc-Acc is totally avoided and replaced by Nom–Dat–Acc in the substandards confirms the conclusion about its exceptional status in the standard of Modern German.
3.2 Subject case in two-place predicates in Icelandic and German Subject Case appears to work quite differently between SOV and SVO languages. Compare Icelandic and German in (7) (due to Sigurðsson 2001: 14) and (8). For an exhaustive cross-linguistic survey see Barðdal (2002, 2005).
(7) a. *Mer hōfδum leiδst viδ. me.dat had.1pl bored we.nom ‘I had found ourselves boring.’ b. *Mer hōfδuδ leiδst þið. me.dat had.2pl bored you.nom ‘I had found you boring.’ c. Mer hōfδu leiδst þeir. me.dat had.3pl bored they.nom ‘I had found them boring.’
The VP-internal Nominative agrees with the finite verb only in 3rd person as in (7c), whereas in 1st and 2nd person agreement is blocked. In German there is no such con-
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straint. There is always Nominative agreement in terms of person and number. Examples (8a–b) correspond directly to Icelandic (7a–c) above (from Bayer 2003: 25, his (38)). (8) a. b.
daß ihr nur wir mißfallen haben. … ≠*(7a) that her.dat only we.nom displeased have.1pl daß ihm nur ihr mißfallen habt. … ≠*(7b) that him.dat only you.nom displeased have.2pl
According to Sigurðsson (2001) this difference is accounted for by different base structure positions for the functional nodes of number and person for Icelandic and German such that the subject raises to a lower position in Icelandic than in German thereby breaking agreement between person and Nominative. This account rests on the assumption that one and only one structural architecture underlies the syntax of Icelandic and German. By contrast, I share with Bayer (2004) the position that German projects no functional categories in terms of Agr(eement) for Case (Abraham 1997). All Case is assigned lexically inside the extended verbal domain, vP (for the subject) and VP (for the objects), such that no EPP-checking is required. The quirky external argument in Icelandic has subject properties essentially for syntactic reasons (demonstrated through control behavior and binding relations; see Yip/Maling/Jackendoff.1987, among others). Consequently, it need not turn into a grammatical subject as the German Nominative does due to agreement with the finite clausal predicate. In SOV-German, as opposed to SVO-Icelandic, the morphological features of the inflected predicate are syntactically deactivated (Sigurðsson 2001, Bayer 2003). Clearly, one consequence of this position is that the notion subject is turned into a gradable, or squishy, notion. Despite the fact that the Case systems as well as the quirky subject valences of Icelandic and German are very similar — i.e., a lot more similar than those between German and its closest genetic relatives, Dutch and English — they differ in important features by which quirky subjects acquire properties of grammatical subjects. According to Bayer (2003: 27) and Banerji (2003), one can distinguish substantive and formal agreement, and accordingly substantive and formal subjects, due to the criterion of thematic linking of Case. Both Icelandic and German project Nominatives to lower, non-subject Case in certain valence patterns, (9a,b) and (10a–c), and control constructions in (9c) and (10e). See Sigurðsson (2003), Dalmi (2004: 55f.) for illustrations and a thorough discussion.
(9) a. daß (es) mich friert. hat expl me.acc freezes b. daß mir schlecht ist. that me.dat sick is c. *Ich glaubte ihr geholfen worden zu werden. I believed her.dat helped been to be
(10) a. b. c. d.
Bare and prepositional differential case marking 125
Henni var kalt. her.dat was cold Hana vantaði vinnu. her.acc lacked job.acc Hennar var saknaδ. her.gen was missed Ég taldi [henni hafa verið hjálpað]. I believed [her.dat have been helped
The thematic role of a human non-agent is linked to Acc or Dat Case. Correspondingly, a telling case is when the higher role is linked with Dat or Acc, while the lower role, often an inanimate object, is linked with the Nom Case. (11) a. b.
daß mir diese Entscheidung gut an-steht. that me.dat this decision.nom well at-stands ‘that this decision is worthy of mine.’ Honum leiδist konan sin. him.dat bores wife self ’s ‘He is a bore to his wife.’
In Icelandic, the quirky subject undergoes raising to the functional Spec,SAgr(eement)P node in order to satisfy EPP-checking. Bayer assumes that the affiliation with the functionally based specifier position seems to have repercussions in the agreement system such that person and number are not projected in the same position (cf. Sigurðsson’s 2001 argument). In principle, this appears to be due to the order of constituents as dictated by the functional (person and number agreement, tense, mode, etc.) structure. Thus, the difference between non-scrambling8 SVO-Icelandic and scrambling SOV-German lies in the fact that the latter licenses the Subject case through the finite predicate (= formal subject agreement), i.e. lexically and thus independently of EPP-checking. In Icelandic, on the other hand, for the external argument to be licensed the dp has to raise to Spec,AgrP. In German (subject) agreement takes place in the local domain of the inflected verb, i.e. under m-command. Any such m-commanding (SOV) language may have subjectless sentences, i.e., sentences in which the only visible argument bears quirky Case — however, agreement then is with the default 3rd person only (Bayer 2003: 24). No quirky PRO, i.e., only Nominative-PRO for embedded infinitivals is allowed.9 The Icelandic quirky subject, on the other hand, is not licensed in such a formal fashion, i.e., by agreement with the finite verb. Being a head-initial, SVOlanguage, Icelandic projects a functional domain with a pre-VP functional head F/Agr which eventually has to host the highest argument irrespective of whether it is a Nominative or a Non-nominative NP/DP. This allows for what has been called substantive or semantic licensing for the external argument. In such a functional scenario, agreement for person and for number may be split as Sigurðsson (2001) has demon-
126 Werner Abraham
strated; recall (7a–c) above. Quirky subjects, then, may also bear non-Nom. This is so because quirky Dat/Acc subjects are directly licensed by a KaseP,10 much like PPs (Bayer, Bader & Meng 2001) and, thus, are not licensed for agreement by the finite predicate. See (12) (based on Bayer 2003: 26). (12) Functional Agreement split between NumberP and PersonP for non-structural (exceptional) Case in Icelandic (illustrated in (7a–c)) [FP NumP … 3rd PersonP … Dat/Acc … Nom] [vP … This is something that German (as well as any better studied scrambling SOV-language) does not have aside from the fact that German does not project the functional domain for the realization of grammatical inflection in the first place (Haider 2000a).11 Table 2, exploiting the wide number of literature on the topic, summarizes the shared and distinct characteristics of the two Germanic languages, Icelandic and German, both characterized by rich Case morphology, but distinctly separated according to other morphosyntactic criteria (explained in more detail in Abraham 1995; see also Haider/ Rosengren 1998). Table 2. Corollaries of Differential Case Marking in German and Icelandic Mechanics accompanying differential Case marking 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Rich morphological Case differential (4 overt cases) Only nominative PRO Head-final/SOV + strict V2 (entailing ‘V-bracket’) Scrambling of bare case elements FP/AgrP outside of vP/VP EPP/FP attracts designated external argument for subject Grammaticalization of highest argument = ‘substantive’ subject Checking of eA=Merge/no displacement Agreement by m−command (= lexical valence) Non−nominative eA privileged beyond lexical A−structure
German Icelandic + + + + − − − + + −
+ − − − + + + − − +
Criteria 1–10 are standardly assumed for German as well as for Icelandic. For 2 see above in the context of (12) as well as Bayer (2004). The empirical argumentation leading to criteria 3 and 4 is solidly manifest; the property in 5 follows by necessity from criterion 2. The most solid argument corroborating 6 are Dative ‘subjects’ in German, which lack all the distributional properties of true subjects sported by Icelandic. Criteria 7 and 8 follow immediately from 6. So do criteria 8–10. In the next section we investigate two genetically close languages: German with bare case shift (=scrambling) for the sole purpose of changing discourse functions (Thema vs. Rhema), on the one side, and Dutch which hardly scrambles (non-subjects in topic position severely restricted, limited bare case shift, which is usually replaced by ‘heavy object shift’ — i.e., bare case goes to prepositional case if out-placed in word order).
Bare and prepositional differential case marking 127
4. Three-place verbs in German and Dutch/Norwegian 4.1 General remarks As we have seen in the last Section, prepositional phrases never subject-agree with the clausal finite verb. See the discussion around examples (9)–(12). This may seem trivial, but it is not against the background of the foregoing discussion around quirky subject Case. The question will become urgent when German Dative objects are compared with the distribution between bare NP and prepositional phrase correspondents in Dutch and Norwegian. Are there different object Datives in German such that only certain ones lead to bare DPs in Dutch/Norwegian, while other Datives need to be rendered as PPs? It will be shown that this is exactly the case. If, as we have assumed, KaseP always governs DP under PP or P-object the question arises whether there are also datives not governed by KaseP such that the distribution in (13a,b) can be predicted in a systematic fashion. (13) a. German Dat > Dutch/Norwegian bare DP b. German Dat > Dutch/Norwegian PP A different topic is opened in the present section by the diachronic grammaticalizing scenario. All Germanic languages including English derive from a state like modern German and Icelandic. The most radical path of grammaticalization is represented by English with only one grammatical Case preposition, to, albeit only in predicate-distal position (one, however, that is in predicate-proximate position from the viewpoint of Old English and Modern German). The Scandinavian languages and Dutch obtain middle positions on such a chain in that different lexical prepositions replace the German Datives — exactly which prepositional Cases will be the topic of the remainder of the present discussion. The reason why linear order cannot determine the clausal function in German as well as Dutch is that linear order is determined by discourse functional status — i.e., as thema or rhema. Compare (14a–g) and (15a–e) against the background that pronominals as well as specific appellatives are category-inherent themata. (14) German a. daß er seiner Mutter den Brief übergab. that he his mother the letter overhanded */? b. daß er an seine Mutter den Brief übergab. that he to his mother the letter overhanded c. daß er den Brief an seine Mutter übergab. that he the letter to his mother overhanded Dutch d. dat hij zijn moeder de brief overhandigde. ? dat hij aan z’n moeder de brief overhandigde. e. f. dat hij de brief aan z’n moeder overhandigde.
Dat+Acc+v */?
P+Acc+V Acc+P+V
Dat+Acc +V ? P+Acc +V Acc +P+V
128 Werner Abraham
The examples in (15) presents a comparison of object word order — pronominal objects vs. NP-objects: Legend: ‘do/io/po’ = pronominal or definite lexical constituents; ‘io/do/po’ = indefinite or idiomatic lexical constituents; bold for contrastive accent (ca; given if the designated base position has been evacuated: ‘___’); po/po = definite/ indefinite preposit ional object.
(15) Comparison of object word order — pronominal objects vs. NP-objects: a. (do/)io(/po)–Adverb–[VP (io/)do(/po)–V] (i) hem in de tuin een les geven. him in the garden a lesson give (ii) hem in de tuin de levieten lezen. him in the garden the lectures read b. –Adverb–[VP do(/io/po)–V] in de tuin hem de levieten lezen. in the garden him the lectures read c. (IO/)DO(/PO)–Adverb–[VP ___–V] een koe in de tuin zien. a cow in the garden see Adverb–[VP (io/)do(/po)–V] (i) in de tuin een koe zien. in the garden a cow see (ii) de koe in de tuin zien. the cow in the garden see d. io–Adverb–DO–V haar/de huisvrouw bij het boodschappendoen de das om doen. her/the housewife at shopping deceive e. *IO–do–V *een kind het verhogen. a child it increase I will not repeat the Norwegian results in that they are quite similar to Dutch (Askedal 1998) — which is interesting in itself since Dutch and Norwegian are typologically different: Dutch is non-scrambling SOV, while Norwegian is (likewise non-scrambling) SVO. SVO usually do not scramble at all since, when a bare object undergoes rightwardmovement, it can no longer remain a bare dp, but has to adopt pp-form. Table 3 compares three-placers and some of the underlying properties of the four Germanic languages under comparison. The ensuing discussion will relate to this summary. ‘Markedness’ relates to the way that case identifies parts of speech (subject, objects).
Bare and prepositional differential case marking 129
Table 3. Markedness distributions and graded grammaticalization in positional DP/PP variation: the German cline Language
Class of morpho-syntactic features
Grammaticalizing stage Case identifiability by position
German
Linearly flexible Case-DP Never: P-Case-NP = Bare Case-DP
Most conservative (ungrammaticalized)
−
Dutch
Linearly flexible Case-DP Sometimes: P-Case-DP = Bare Case-DP
Intermediate
±
Norwegian
Linearly flexible Case-DP Infrequently: P-Case-DP = Bare Case-DP
Intermediate
±
English
Linearly flexible Case-NP (Almost) always: to-Case = Bare Case-NP
Most strongly gram maticalized
+
‘Synchronically frozen diachrony’ means the following: For all of Germanic, languages started out as bare case languages (except for directional and stative prepositions); in their diachronic development, however, case marking eroded giving way to either case identification by fixed position or by preposition. German is the most conservative in this diachronic process, English the most advanced to the extent that it has developed only one single preposition, to, to mark indirect objects. The other Germanic languages, Norwegian and Dutch, provide a great list of different prepositions for Non-Accusative direct objects. They differ only in the size of these lists of prepositions: Norwegian has less variety than Dutch. This is what is meant by saying that the markedness distributions are satisfied in different grades across the four languages. German provides topicalization as well as scrambling for all types of io-Dative; Dative valences are categorically different semantically from P-Case. In Dutch bare io-NPs and P-Case are at a balance. Free io-NP is linearly fixed. Norwegian is void of scrambling or topicalization. From this follows that for purposes of context focus Norwegian, much like English, has to take recourse to bi-clausal (pseudo-) clefting. The overwhelming correspondence to German bare-Case io is P-Case. Modern English has no linear flexibility whatsoever, and there is only one io-representation: that by means of to, which is devoid of any local implication, i.e., it is fully Case-grammaticalized. This yields a distinct distribution across the four languages under investigation. See columns 2, 3, and 4 in Table 3 above. At the same time, these distinct distributions are indicative of the different stages of grammaticalization of Differential Object Marking. The following corpus of four classes aims at supporting the generalizations made in Table 2. The sample of German and Dutch mirrors the illustrations in Norwegian
130 Werner Abraham
(Askedal 1997, 1998, 2001). Given the four-way combinability we distinguish 4 classes of German–Dutch(–Norwegian) equivalences, Classes I–IV. See below. Class I: German Dat = exclusively bare DP (i.e., no prepositional Case) in Dutch (16) a. jmdm. etwas beweisen. someone.dat something.acc prove Dem Vater die Unschuld beweisen. ‘prove the innocence to father’
iemand iets bewijzen. z’n vader zijn onschuld bewijzen.
b. jmdm. etwas erwähnen. someone.dat something.acc prove Ich erwähne Mutter die Tatsachen. ‘I mention the facts to my mother’
iemand iets noemen. Ik noem mijn moeder de feiten.
c. jmdm. etwas prognostizieren. someone.dat something.acc predict
iemand iets voorspellen.
d. jmdm. das Leben schwer machen. someone.dat life.acc make difficult e. jmdm. etwas vorlesen.12 someone.dat something.acc read
iemand het leven moeilijk maken. iemand iets voorlezen.
Only 20 verb lexemes have been tested. At least the following German verbs would have to be added: abnehmen ‘accept’, abgewöhnen ‘disaccustom’, aufsetzen ‘draft’, auflegen ‘lay up’, auferlegen ‘commission’, ausreden ‘dissuade’, entgegenbringen ‘offer’, nach rufen ‘shout behind’, nehmen ‘take’, schwören ‘swear’, stehlen ‘steal’, vermitteln ‘media te’, vorlesen ‘read to’, vorsagen ‘recite to’, vorsetzen ‘put before’, wegnehmen ‘take away’, zustecken ‘hand’. All of these co-classify with the verbs give/geben and take/nehmen (prototypical of the semantic and syntactic class of three-places). Dutch fully mirrors the German linearity and bare-case representation. In the following subclass the Dative covers inalienable body reference (in the termin ology of German grammar writing‚ free (i.e., not valence required) ‘Pertinenzdativ’, ‘Dativus sympatheticus’ or ‘Dativus commodi’). (17) a. b.
jmdm. etwas ausreden. iemand iets uit het hoofd praten someone.dat something.acc dissuade jmdm. die Hand drücken. iemand de hand drukken. someone.dat his hand.acc shake
A few more of this subclass: abhacken/afhakken ‘chop off ’, anvertrauen/in vertrouwen nemen/toevertrouwen ‘entrust’, ausspülen ‘rinse out’, auswaschen ‘wash out’, (in …)
Bare and prepositional differential case marking
drücken ‘press’, sich leicht machen ‘make easy for oneself ’, (von …) stoßen ‘push away’, (die Haare) stutzen/knippen/snoeien ‘trim (hair)’, sich vornehmen ‘plan’, (Haar) waschen ‘wash (hair)’. Norwegian provides bare Case IOs far less frequently (Askedal 1997, 1998, 2001) not only than German, but even less frequently than Dutch. Class II: German Dat = optionally bare DP or prepositional Case in Dutch Four prepositions appear to play a role alternating optionally with bare representations: aan ‘to’, voor ‘for’, tegen ‘toward’, and naar ‘to’. Recall that P-constituents are invariably in proximate position to the predicate as compared to bare Case NPs. (18) Dutch aan ‘to’ — German bare Dative Case: German Dutch (aan) iemand iets verraden 1 jemandem etwas verraten. someone something betray 2 jmdm. etwas volldiktieren (aan) iemand iets dicteren 3 jmdm. etwas melden (aan) iemand iets melden 4. jmdm. etwas schreiben (aan) iemand iets schrijven voor ‘for’: 1 jmdm. etwas beschreiben 2 jmdm. etwas fertigmachen 3 jmdm. etwas einbauen 4 jmdm. etwas holen tegen ‘toward’: just one lexeme in the corpus: 1 jmdm. etwas sagen
English ‘betray’ ‘dictate’ ‘report’ ‘write’
(voor) iemand iets beschrijven13 (voor) iemand iets klaarmaken (voor) iemand iets installeren (voor) iemand iets halen
‘describe’ ‘finish’ ‘install’ ‘get’
(tegen) iemand iets zeggen
‘say’
naar ‘ (toward)’: just one lexeme in the corpus: (naar) iemand iets roepen 1 jmdm. etwas zurufen14
‘call to’
Furthermore, patterning the same way: mitbringen/meebrengen/bring along, einschütten/inschenken/pour (in), einschenken, kochen/koken/cook, backen/bakken/bake, braten/ braden/grill. Class III: German DAT = exclusively preposition Case in Dutch (19)
aan ‘to’: 1 jmdm. etwas ansehen iets aan iemand zien 2 jmdm. etwas überschreiben iets aan iemand overmaken 3 voor ‘(be)fore’:
‘read’ ‘transfer’
131
132 Werner Abraham
1 jmdm. etwas verheimlichen iets voor iemand geheimhouden iets voor iemand opvoeren 2 jmdm. etwas vorführen 3 sich einer Sache aussetzen zich aan iets blootstellen 4 jmdm. etwas schieben iets voor iemand duwen 5 jmdm. etwas hochheben iets voor iemand optillen 6 sich etwas aufsagen iets voor zichzelf opzeggen iets voor zichzelf uitdenken 7 sich etwas ausdenken
‘keep a secret’ ‘display’ ‘expose to’ ‘push’ ‘lift’ ‘recite’ ‘find out’
naar ‘toward’: 1 jmdm. etwas zuwenden 2 jmdm. etwas glauben 3 jmdm. Bei etwas zuhören
‘turn side’ ‘reach out’ ‘listen’
4 sich etwas anschauen
iets naar iemand toedraaien iets naar iemand uitsteken naar iets luisteren/iets aanhoren naar iets kijken
‘watch’
van ‘from/of ’: 1 jmdm. etwas abverlangen 2 jmdm. etwas glauben 3 jmdm. Körperteil küssen 4 jmdm. etw. um etwas legen
iets van iemand verlangen iets van iemand geloven iets van iemand kussen iets om iemand slaan
‘demand’ ‘believe’ ‘kiss’ ‘wind around’
bij iemand blijven hangen
‘hang on to’
iets onder iemand schuiven iemand de schuld in de schoenen schuiven
‘substitute’ ‘make appear responsible’
bij ‘with’: 1 sich jmdm. anhängen onder ‘under’: 1 jmdm. etwas unterschieben 2 jmdm. die Schuld zuschieben/unterschieben Met ‘with’: 1 etw. dem Erdboden gleich machen Om ‘for to’: 1 jmdm. etwas nachweinen over ‘about/over’: 1 jmdm. etwas nachrühmen 2 sich etwas überlegen tegenover ‘opposite of ’: 1 sich jmdm. Gegenübersetzen
iets met de grond gelijkmaken ‘make flush with the ground’ om iemand een traan laten
‘cry for’
over iemand achteraf veel lof spreken over iets nadenken; iets overwegen
‘put praise on’ ‘ponder’; ‘consider’
tegenover iemand gaan zitten ‘sit across’
Bare and prepositional differential case marking 133
Class IV: Possessive construction as the only Dative equivalent (20) Body part Dative: 1 sich etwas brechen Der Junge brach sich das Bein 2 sich etwas vorhalten Der Junge hält sich ein Tuch vor den Mund. 3 sich etwas überhängen 4 sich etwas umwickeln 5 sich die Füße abstreifen 6 sich etwas einstreichen (21) Dativus commodi: 1 sich am Körperteil säubern 2 sich etwas einstecken
iets aan iemand zien De jongen brak z’n been iets voor iets houden De jongen houdt een doek voor z’n mond iets over iets hangen iets om iets slaan iets afvegen iets in iets smeren
‘break a leg’
z’n …schoonmaken (no reflexive!)15 iets in z’n … stoppen
‘clean’
‘hold in front of ’ ‘throw around’ ‘wind around’ ‘rub off ’ ‘smear on’
‘put in’
4.2 Type comparison German–Dutch Table (4) generalizes over the samples in Classes I–IV above. Recall that we sketched out the decline of case morphology in Table 3 above and the increasing Table 4. Summarizing comparison German–Dutch Class I Class II Class III Class IV
German
Dutch
Case/P-marking
NP-3+NP-4 NP-3+NP-4 NP-3+NP-4 NP-3[poss]
NPi +NPj (P+)NPi +NPj *(P+) 3+4 0+poss-NPj
Bare Case-marking aan, naar, onder, tegen, van, voor bij, met, over, om, tegenover −
‘3’, according to the tradition of grammar writing in German (Latin), stands for ‘Dative’, ‘4’ stands for ‘Accusative’.
4.3 Methodological conclusions: Parsing differentiations Much like in German, Dutch identifies part of the Dative phrases by position: V > io > do, in particular for lexemes of the semantic give-class. Dutch and German, however, differ in that Dutch does not scramble io or do. German does under refocusing. pp-correspondents, on the other hand, are placed behind bare-Case DOs in all four languages again with the exception that only German can scramble for discourse functional purposes. On this criterion of linear inflexibility Norwegian, Dutch, and English are totally alike. See (22a,b) for the corresponding base structures in English/Norwegian and German/Dutch.
134 Werner Abraham
(22) a. b.
English/Norwegian IO–DO [VP V [IOP NP-3 i [DOP NP-4j]]] German/Dutch IO>DO [VP [IOP NP-3 i [DOP NP-4j]] V]
> NP > PP/PO > [VP V [DOP NPj [PO P+NP i]]]] > German/Dutch NP > PP/PO > [VP [DOP NPj [PredP [PO P+NP i]]] V]
In German only the Genitive object can be inserted between P-objects and the base position of the finite predicate. Let us translate this proximity to V-last (structurally c‑command and m-command) to a narrow predicate phrase (Zwart 1998, Koster 1999). From this follows that Dutch projects a far larger class of V-proximate predicate objects than German does. German, on the other hand, provides far more bare-Dative, V‑distal objects than Dutch. German, thus, projects the following strict Case linearity (see Czepluch 1988). (23) [VP [IOP NP-3i [DOP NP-4j] [PredP [PO P+NPi/NP-2k]] V(-Aux)Finite]] What is it that determines the different prepositions in Dutch as equivalents to the bare case objects in German? Altogether we list 10 different lexical prepositions in Dutch among which the most frequent types are voor (18), aan (19) and naar (19). They are distributed over four semantic verb classes — see (24): (24) a. German NP-3i + NP-4j = Dutch/Norwegian NPi + NPj see the following lexical classes in the governing predicate: verba dicendi give-verbs take-verbs verbs with body part object b. German NP-3i + NP-4j = Dutch NPi + NPj or = Dutch NPj + POI verba dicendi: aan Goal 6 times tegen Goal 1 for give-verbs voor Benefactive 9 c. German [VP [IOP NP-3i [DOP NP-4j] with stressed V-particle (as in vortragen, über-lassen) is replaced by a Dutch preposition to mark the German Dat: aan Goal 3 times voor Benefactive 7 naar Goal 4 van Source 4 d. in German possessive or Commodi-constructions the reflexive pronoun mirrors the Dutch possessive attribute where ‘possessive attribute’ reflects the semantics of: van Source in 6 cases voor Benefactive 2 cases
Bare and prepositional differential case marking
Is there some kind of systematics at the bottom of this distribution? What strikes one is the locality differential expressed by the number of prepositions as compared with the German base Dative case. No doubt one has to take this locality differential to be dependent from lexical intension of the verbal predicate. By contrast, the uniform Dative case in German levels flat such lexical differences. Conversely, one can say that bare case morphology is intensionally poorer (i.e., open for wider semantics) than the prepositional case constituent, but extensionally richer (i.e., applicable to wider usage) — which may have contributed to the proliferation of bare case in general. In addition, the non-locality of the intensionally poor Dative case allows for scrambling without grammatical consequences. This appears to be different in languages with less extensional, and consequently more intensional, bare case as in Finnish or Hungarian. P-case, by contrast, does not allow unlimited scrambling — compare Dutch. To all appearances, one can say that lexical case intensionality and the option of scrambling are mutually exclusive. And if scrambling is an efficient means of refocusing and D-linking, then the high intensionality of prepositional case is a lesser signal of discourse prominence. See the correlations in Table 5. Table 5. Correlations: bare Case–Discourse Scrambling–Case intension SVOV
Bare Dative Scrambling = Discourse functions directly Case expressed by movement and/or refocusing
Case Lexeme intension
German Dutch
+ − (+)
− +
+ − (limited)
The intensional criteria in the columns are determined by the following oppositions: prepositional object vs. Dative-NP; left-dislocated cleft construction or Pseudo-cleft construction vs. Scrambling; and referential extensionality vs. intensional object lexeme. On the basis of these criteria, the two languages figuring in Table 5 can easily be extended by English and the continental-Scandinavian languages as shown in Table 6 below. Prepositional objects, however, generally do not scramble (amenable, in principle, to ‘Dative shift’; see ‘-(+)’ in Table 6). Whatever is subject to scrambling/topical ization and refocusing, and, consequently, discourse-functional change, in German and Dutch can only be expressed in Scandinavian and in English by virtue of cleft constructions (see Huber 2002 for a thorough discussion). English restricts the indication of preposition case to to. The latter does not trigger any localistic meaning. The typologicTable 6. Correlations between Case, Discourse function, and V-type SVO
Bare Case Dative
Mainland Scandinavian − (+) English − (+)
Topical Discourse focus expressed by cleft constructions
Lexeme intension
+ +
+ − (partly)
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136 Werner Abraham
al scale, thus, renders a picture between the pole of German, on the one hand, sporting bare Dative case, and English, as the other pole, providing prepositional objects without any localistic intension (see Table 5 under the term ‘case lexeme intension’ for English). This locates different landmarks on a diachronic path of grammaticalization and distinct mechanisms of sentence processing. We have seen what the compensatory means between retaining the bare io-Dative, in correlation with Scrambling and direct Thema–Rhema-Identification (see Table 5 above), vs. localistic P-objects without direct Thema–Rhema-identification (valid for all Germanic except German) look alike. Recall Section 4 with the Correspondence Classes I–IV.
5. Case governed by V-incorporated P The present section demonstrates that a large number of verbal particles and prefixes in German (to be extended to Dutch) carry with them traces of their former category as prepositions to the extent that the entire particle/prefix verb expounds the same case governing properties as their diachronic antecedents, the prepositions — in our case Datives. One can thus rightfully speak of verb-incorporated prepositions - patterns that cannot be found in the inventories of dom-dealings (Bossong, Aissen) and that appear to be peculiar to German and Dutch. As we have seen in 4.1.–4.3 the majority of irregular Dative verbs are morphologically complex to the extent that they are formed by a combination of P + V (= stressed, separable verbal particle + simple verb). See also Meinunger (2000). Typically, such combinations assign case governed by the original preposition, now verbal prefix or verbal particle. The examples are all three-place, while their simple counterparts are two-place or three-place with a prepositional goal object: (25) a. nachtelefonieren: after-telephone b. vorsingen: before-sing c. abgewöhnen: off-use d. aussetzen: out-set e. beitragen: by-carry
Sie telefonierte ihm nach she called him.dat after Sie sang es ihm vor she sang it him.dat before Sie gewöhnte es ihm ab she used it him.dat off ‘she made him give it up’ Sie setzt ihn der Kälte aus she sets him the cold.dat out Sie trug zum Erfolg bei
≠*Sie telefonierte ihm she called him.dat ≠ ?? Sie sang es ihm she sang it him.dat ≠*Sie gewöhnte es ihm she used it him.dat
≠*Sie setzt ihn der Kälte she sets him the cold. dat ≠ she carried the succes. dat she contributed to the success
It is not implausible to place separable verb particles (‘preverbs’, in the typological term inology) and (inseparable) verbal prefixes on one scale of grammaticalizing develop-
Bare and prepositional differential case marking 137
ment. Possibly, under this assumption, valence extensions by Dative arguments for prefix verbs can also be taken to reduce verbal case government to remnant government of what used to be a preposition before total incorporation into the verb. Examples are: (26) verweigern deny erklären explain
Sie verweigert ihm einen Kuß ≠ *Sie weigert ihm einen Kuß she denied him a kiss *she nied him a kiss Sie erklärt ihm die Rechnung ≠ *Sie klärt ihm die Rechnung she explained him the bill *she plained him the bill
Notice that any such verb-lexical extension is restricted to prepositions that govern (also) the Dative (i.e., those prepositions that allegedly govern both the Dative and the Accusative; but see the principled disclaimer to this traditional view in Abraham 2001). Purely Accusative- or Genitive-governing prepositions do not appear to V‑incorporate. This is in itself indicative of the classification of verbal Datives as exceptional, irregular case, at least for more-than-two place verbs. There are claims to the effect that the German Dative is structural the main argu ment being that it undergoes subject promotion with the bekommen/get-passive (see the discussion in Abraham 1995: 198ff.). However, since this passive is subject to perfective-Aktionsart status of the lexical verb this cannot be maintained as a structural — i.e., more than lexical — characteristic of the Dative. Undoubtedly, there is more than just one class of Datives subject to different diagnostics and classification in this respect. Again, however, the fact that the Dative has to evade the verbal case grid once the Accusative takes the reference of the Dative exponent is indicative of its ex ceptional (‘inherent’=) status. See (27) [‘=’ means ‘identical verb meaning]. (27) Er pfiff seinen/m Hund = Er pfiff seinen/*m Hund herbei he whistled his. acc/dat dog he whistled his.acc/*dat dog to him Such object marking has no separate status in either Bossong’s or Aissen’s discussions.
6. A reflex of object preposition marking (DOM) in Afrikaans? In this concluding section, we are coming back to Aissen’s and Bossong’s claims about DOM — i.e. their main claim that case marking is a function to distinguish objects. As the following discussion shows this claim is short of what is empirical fact for example in Afrikaans in an important respect of the grammar. There can be quite different reasons for DOM, namely discourse functional distinctions. In Afrikaans (but not in Dutch, its direct ancestor language), there is a preposition voor/vir which is also used to mark direct objects in three-place clauses. It would thus appear to be a typical DOM representative. Remarkably, there is a profound difference when it is used with transitive two-place verbs (Molnárfi 2003: 134). Notice, first, that vir in two-place predications cannot strand — a fact which takes it from the tablet of
138 Werner Abraham
prepositions given the general stranding template of prepositional objects. See (28a-d) for what appears to be a genuine reflex of DOM in Afrikaans. The items in question appear underscored. (28) a. Vir wie het jy gesien? for who have you seen ‘Whom did you see?’ b. *Wie het jy voor gesien? who have you for seen c. Vir wie het jy die boek gegee? for who have you the book given ‘(To) Whom have you given the book?’ d. Wie het jy die boek voor gegee? who have you the book for given ‘(To) Whom have you given the book?’ e. dat ek [VP gister [VP (*vir) meisies gesien het]] that I [VP yesterday [VP( *for girls seen have f. dat ek (*vir) meisies [VP gister gesien het] that I (*for girls yesterday seen have [VP t gesien het] g. dat ek die meisie/haar [VP gister that I the girl/her yesterday seen have h. dat ek [VP gister [VP (vir) die meisie gesien het]] that I yesterday (for the girl seen have i. dat ek [VP gister [VP *(vir) haar gesien het]] that I yesterday *(for her seen have
… 2-place sien ‘see’ … 2-place sien ‘see’ … 3-place gee ‘give’ …3-place gee ‘give’ … 2-place sien ‘see’ … 2-place sien ‘see’ … 2-place sien ‘see’ … 2-place sien ‘see’ … 2-place sien ‘see’
There are three groups in (28) demonstrating different oppositions: (28a, b) vs. (28c, d); (e–f); and (g-i). (28a) shows a P vir in wh/SpecCP-position, obviously a direct object. (28b) excludes P-stranding as well as the reading of (28a). However, (28c) and (28d) do not show a similar complementary distribution as (28a, b). Quite obviously, verbal place plays a role in the distribution of the reduced case preposition vir and strong P voor ‘for’. Yet, this does not yet allow a clear conclusion. (28e, f), on the other hand, clearly demonstrate that indefinite clausal parts do not collocate with vir. This excludes the generalization that vir is a case governing signal only. (28g–i) introducing definite as well as anaphoric parts, die meisie/haar ‘the girl/her’, provides the final clues: no vir for basic word order and for a out-of-the-blue declarative in (28g) — topical/definite referential die meisies in the thema compartment of the Afrikaans clause, where it belongs due to the definite reference of the direct object referent; in (28h), on the other hand, this very same part is displaced into VP, where only Rhemata are positioned: thus, the direct object is in contrastive focus with vir indicating this (at least optionally). Finally, (28i) provides evidence that personal anaphors such as haar ‘her’ are ‘structurally genetic themata’; any displacement out of the thema compartment of the clause, left of
Bare and prepositional differential case marking 139
VP, requires extra signalling by vir. Concluding, one can say that the reduced preposition vir signals displaced discourse-functional clausal parts thus distinguishing thema and rhema, basic vs. displaced clause-order positions, and default vs. contrastive accent. Quite clearly, this is a novel function of an (original) case governing preposition on direct objects undiscussed in the classical literature on DOM data and DOM accounts. As argued in Molnárfi (1999, 2002, 2003), there are good reasons to believe that vir in Afrikaans is not a preposition if used with two-place predicates. For one thing, vir in co-occurrence with transitive verbs cannot undergo preposition stranding and its insertion does not affect the transitivity relation between verb and object in any way. How, then, are the distributions in (28a-d) explained against the background sketched above? See the relevant data for preposition stranding: The contrast between the stranding phenomena in (28b) and (28d) indicates not a categorial distinction between vir if used in two- vs. three-place predicates. It is assumed here that 3-place predications have a low clausal compartment which is heavier than that of a two-place clause. See Table 7 for the match between grammatical functions and discourse functions. Low structural and linear heaviness receives stronger rhematic weight in the first place thus permitting the heavy preposition voor more easily than the less weighty 2-place predication in (28b). Table 7 sketches the links between clausal constituents and themarhema discourse functions in Afrikaans (in line with the other Continental West Germanic languages, German and Dutch; see Abraham 1995, 1997, 2003a). In addition to (28a–i) and the ensuing discussion, (29a,b) demonstrate that the insertion of vir does not change the semantic and syntactic transitivity of the verb. What is more important, however, is that there are semantic distinctions. (29) a. b.
Ek het [VP vir hom geslaan] I have for him beaten Ek het [VP teen hom geslaan] I have toward him beaten
(29a) shows the same affective (‘for’, ‘toward’) vir before the object as in (29b). Dis course pragmatically, however, they mean quite different things: vir hom in (29a) is
Table 7. Field topology: Verbal bracket, discourse categories and the distribution of default a ccent (GA) [WP = Wackernagel position]
a. b. c. d.
Thema/ rhema
Agr
⇐Thema
Thema ⇒
[cp/ip Spec CP/IP Vir wiei *Wie i Vir wiei Wiei
Co/Io
WP (clitic) pronouns jy jy jy jy
het het het het
Rhema
Rhema ⇒ Thema
AgrOP [VP AgrOP
[VP AgrOP
Vo ]]]
– –
ti voor ti die boek voor t i
gesien? gesien? gegee? gegee?
–
⇐ Rhema
– – ti die boek
Extra position – –
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used contrastive-deictically. It is emotionally laden the pronoun with the discourse marker vir inside VP (where it has moved from its thematic position to the left of VP) being rhematically interpreted. In (29b), on the other hand, P teen ‘toward’ denotes that the signaled P-transitivity has undergone semantic weakening. This effect is due to teen, which has full lexical meaning as a preposition and executes no discourse-effect. All of this contributes to the overall impression that (I)dom by prepositions contrib utes more to the grammatical structure than has been alluded to by other authors. To demonstrate this as well as deriving theoretical conclusions from this empirical basis has essentially been the goal of this paper.
7. Conclusion We have addressed three main issues: subject marking in Icelandic and German (quirky subjects); indirect object marking by bare Case and preposition (German, Dutch, Norwegian); and Case marking for definite objects in Afrikaans. Let us return to corresponding typological claims in the literature and weigh our generalizations and accounts against theirs. In her cross-linguistic survey Aissen (2003) the notion of ‘markedness’ of a Case element plays a major role on which the decision whether or not prepositional marking is inserted is grounded. The following markedness constraints have been found to hold (Aissen 2001: 8; the author’s (15)). (30) a. *Su/NSpec » *Su/Spec » *Su/Def » *Su/PN » *Su/Pro b. *Oj/Pro » *Oj/PN » *Oj/Def » *Oj/Spec » *Oj/NSpec The constraints in (30a,b) form the basis for Aissen’s account of dom which is entirely, or in part, determined by definiteness. The two high-ranking constraints in (30a) penalize indefinite subjects, non-specific and specific, respectively. It is known that there are languages which exclude non-specific indefinite subjects, in compliance with the highest constraint in (30a). Likewise, the high-ranking constraint in (30b) penalizes personal pronoun objects — i.e., they exclude transitive clauses in which the object is a personal pronoun and the subject is a non-pronoun. Such languages resort to con structions other than simple transitive clauses to express the combination of non-pro noun agent and pronoun patient. The top three constraints in (30b) penalize definite objects of various types. Our last chapter on Afrikaans — as well as, in fact, a great bulk of literature on discourse-functionality in languages such as German (Abraham 1997, 2003a) and Hun garian (Kiss 1981) — has made clear that languages may differ with respect how (in)definiteness imposes on linear order, but not on Case marking. Notice that Afrikaans has turned SVO, on the basis of which no scrambling is possible any longer, while Dutch, the direct mother of Afrikaans, is non-scrambling SOV. In other words, P-marking for displaced antifocus NPs in Afrikaans responds to needs of discourse functional identification and has nothing to do with (in)definiteness. As a whole, Aissen’s claims,
Bare and prepositional differential case marking 141
it appears, have to be looked at more critically with respect to which exact mechanisms are at hand in a discourse (non)configurational language. I leave it at that here. Little need be added to our discussion of quirky subjects in Icelandic and German except highlighting again the fact that the differences need be accounted for on the basis of whether or not a functional domain, FP, is opened outside of VP. Scrambling SOVlanguages like German need no such FP outside of VP. What deserves extra noticing is that an approach like the one pursued (based on the radical distinction between scramb ling SOV-languages and non-scrambling SVO) merges insights from the functional/ se mantic school of thinking with more formal approaches of syntax in that the claim that the notion of subject is a squishy one is couched and grained finer on the basis of a differ entiated architecture of subject-hood. The central issue is to relate semantically rooted (substantive) properties of Case licensing with properties of formal licensing (Bay er 2003) and the instrumentality developed to screen this apart with analytical means in modern syntax. The comparison between bare and P-Case IOs in SOV-German, non-scrambling SVO-Norwegian, and non-scrambling SOV-Dutch has yielded the interesting result that bare Case employed in German and Old Norse is intensionally poorer than its prepositional counterparts in modern Dutch and Norwegian, not, however, than English highly grammaticalized to. It is easy to see that the linear form of bare Case io/ Dat > do/Acc across the four Germanic languages reflects the older state of the common Proto-Germanic, possibly in terms of animate/human/definite > inanimate/ indefinite and/ or, even more fundamentally, Topic > Comment. German and Icelandic are the only Germanic languages where io/Dat > do/Acc is taken exception of (cf. Table 1, V-class 12). P-Case is not structurally governed. Therefore, it is placed inside VP in SOV-German, but outside of the immediate governing (c-command) domain in all SVO-Germanic languages. P is (m-command, i.e. lexically) governed in German. Consequently, it is immediately left-adjacent to V-last. The position of pp in all Germanic SVO-languages is a trace of its earlier SOV-type preserved exclusively in modern German. Notice that the Germanic pervasive io > do mirrors exactly the same common ancestry with its linear proto-logic depicted in (31). (31) (V >)Topic/Subject > animate/topic (pronoun) addressee/goal/io > inanimate (appellative)/comment/do/PP (> V) No less than that SOV is at the bottom of S>V>io>do>pp also logically is Haider’s tenet (Haider 1994, 2000a,b), which confirms the fundamental naturalness of (32). SVO and positional inflexibility, then, can be seen as a deviation from the natural, discourse oriented (31) in terms of easier sentence processing in languages where due to erosion of inflective distinctions, morphological Case no longer serves the purpose of identifying referential differences. The loss of scrambling is one step in this direction — as we have seen, it can accompany a language which is fundamentally SOV like Dutch, or a language which has rich case inventory like Icelandic.
142 Werner Abraham
Acknowledgements Thanks to an anonymous reviewer, to Tolly Eythórsson, Leonid Kulikov, Peter de Swart, Halldor Sigurðsson, and to Johanna Barðdal for help and valuable suggestions.
Abbreviations Acc accusative case, AgrP (subject-predicate) agreement phrase, ca contrastive accent, C(omp)P complement phrase (clause phrase), Coord coordinator, Dat dative case, do direct object, dom direct object marking, dp determiner/article phrase, FF (topological) forefield(/ initial field=SpecCP), GA (clausal) grammatical (=default) accent, I(nfl)P inflection phrase, io indirect object, KaseP case phrase (for German: Bayer et al. 2001), MF (topological) middle field (= from WP on left edge to Vo on right edge; terminology from the ‘Satzfeldlehre’ in German grammar writing), Nom nominative, NP noun phrase, O object, pp preposition phrase, RH rhema (discourse category), S subject, SVOV Subject–Verb-object-Object–Verb (for German clause with two verb positions), TH thema (discourse category), TOP topic (word order category), V verb, VP verb phrase (= verb+valence NPs), WP Wackernagel Phrase (verbal clitics), 1 morphological nominative case (Latin-German tradition; see 4.2.-4.3.), 2 genitive case, 3 dative case, 4 accusative case.
Notes 1. The notion of ‘grammaticalization’ is used in its original (Meillet, Kuryłowicz) sense as the diachronic change from a lexical morpheme to a grammatical morpheme. No other, wider use of the term is envisaged (see, for such a strict notion, Abraham 2003b). 2. Notice that for non-agentive/non-causative verbs, the highest subject may be non-nominative. This is the case for some experiencer verbs: mich schaudert, mir graust ‘me.acc shudders’/ ‘me.dat awes’. Otherwise Gen 1 holds without exception (notwithstanding the few murky German examples Barðdal and Eythórsson (this volume) presents to demonstrate the opposite for German). 3. I cannot follow Fanselow’s (1998: 5f.) line of argument that Dat is a regular (structural) Case along with Nom and Acc. Fanselow’s main argument is that Dat cooccurs both with the Acc > Nom-turned passive subject and the unaccusative subject as in (jemandem etwas) entgleiten ‘slip off ’ and (jemandem etwas) auffallen ‘strike one’. Since the Gen occurs in collocation with passive subjects just as well, the argument is vacuous in the sense of an empirical overgeneralization. Notice that the term ‘ditransitive’ as used pervasively in English does not make sense in languages like German or Latin since the dative is never transitive (i.e., can adopt subject status when passivized). 4. Smith (1996) develops ideas about case restrictions similar to mine including Icelandic (observation by one anonymous reviewer). 5. Point raised by Jóhanna Barðdal.
Bare and prepositional differential case marking 143
6. The German valence pattern Nom–Acc–Acc is not ‘ditransitive’, since only one of the two accusatives (usually the non-personal valence actant) can passivize (more precisely, can adopt the subject position in passives), while the other remains Acc like any other non-structural, inherent, lexical Case. The pattern has already been documented for Old English (Allen 1995). It does not exist at all in Icelandic (Barðdal 2004). 7. Barðdal (2004) presents conflicting positions on this claim. When verbs like ‘work,’ ‘write,’ ‘talk’ occur with a dative subject in Icelandic they are not being used agentively, which, however, according to the author, does not change the fact that the ‘basic lexical semantics of these verbs is still agentive, in the sense that the referent carrying out the activity is still a ‘worker,’ ‘writer’ and ‘talker’.’ (cf. Barðdal 2004). 8. I am using a strict notion of scrambling, which crucially differs from object-shift. Object shift involves heavy PPs in the non-canonical bare case position as in English, while, in SOV languages like German, bare cases remain cases in non-canonical (accent-default) positions. In other words, scrambling does not exist in English nor does it in the Mainland Scandinavian languages. 9. German has no dative-PRO. See Bayer (2004). Barðdal has insisted, counter to German speakers at various academic discussions (the conference preceding this volume, Nijmegen 2003; ICHL-Copenhagen 2004), that German has dative-PRO. See Barðdal and Eythórsson (this volume; Eythórsson and Barðdal 2005). But she never consulted modern grammars of German, where this is totally lacking. I fail to see why the typological horizon of such a claim about German would have to be even if such obvious standard versions should turn up in colloquial speech. 11. See the abbreviations section. 10. This explanation is not in line with the fact that examples of this type in Icelandic are not judged particularly good without agreement either. In other words, the examples seem to be bad because of a restriction on nominative objects not to be 1st or 2nd person and not because of agreement (cf. Eythórsson and Barðdal 2003). 12. Not all Dutch examples seem to be exclusively bare: (aan) Jan het boek voorlezen (to)-Janthe-book-read’ sounds fine with and without the preposition (anonymous reviewer). 13. Dutch beschrijven can occur both with aan and voor (anonymous reviewer). 14. The translation of zurufen is either: (i) Iets naar iemand roepen or (ii) Iemand iets toeroepen but not (iii) *iemand iets roepen nor (iv) *naar iemand iets toeroepen There seems to be a complementary distribution between toe and naar perhaps because both have directional semantics (anonymous reviewer). 15. As to ‘no reflexive!’, (*zich) z’n armen schoonmaken ‘him/herself his/her arms clean make’.
144 Werner Abraham
References Abraham, W. 1995. Deutsche Syntax im Sprachenvergleich. Grundlegung einer typologischen Syntax des Deutschen [Studien zur deutschen Grammatik 41]. (2nd, revised and extended version 2005). Tübingen: Stauffenburg Verlag.. Abraham, W. 1997. “The base structure of the German clause under discourse functional weight: Contentful functional categories vs. derivative functional categories”. In German: Syntactic Problems - Problematic Syntax [Linguistische Arbeiten 374], W. Abraham and E. v. Gelderen (eds), 11–42. Tübingen: M. Niemeyer. Abraham, W. 2003a. “The syntactic link between Thema and Rhema: The syntax–discourse interface”. In Optionality in Syntax and Discourse Structure — Aspects of Word Order Va riation in (West) Germanic and Other Languages. [Folia Linguistica. Acta Societatis Lin guisticae Europaeae XXXVII (1–2)], W. Abraham and L. Molnárfi (guest eds), 13–34. Berlin: Mouton De Gruyter. Abraham, W. 2003b. “Autonomous and non-autonomous components of ‘grammatic(al)ization’: Economy criteria in the emergence of German negation”. Sprachtypologie und Universalienforschung (STUF) 56 (4): 325–65. Aissen, J. 2003. “Differential object marking: Iconicity vs. economy”. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 21 (3): 43–85. Allen, C. L. 1995. Case Marking and Reanalysis. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Askedal, J.-O. 1997. “Indirekte Objekte im Germanen und Norwegischen“. In Vergleichende Germanische Philologie und Skandinavistik. Festschrift für Otmar Werner, Th. Birkmann, H. Klingenberg, D. Nübling and E. Ronneberger-Sibold (eds), 49–66. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Askedal, J.-O. 1998. “Indirect objects in German and Norwegian”. Talk at the Annual Conference Societas Linguistica Europaea, St. Andrews-Scotland, 1998. Askedal, J.-O. 2001. “Interlinguale Valenzdivergenzen im Bereich indirekter Objekte. German vs. Norwegisch“. In Valenztheorie — Einsichten und Ausblicke, W. Thielemann and K. Welke (eds), 235–53. Münster: Nodus. Banerji, S. 2003. “Focus, word order, and scope effects in Bangla.” In Optionality in Syntax. Guest-edited issue of Folia Linguistica Europea XXXVII/1–2, 35–76. Barðdal, J. 2002. “Oblique Subjects in Icelandic and German”. Working Papers in Scandinavian Syntax 70: 61–99. Barðdal, J. 2005. “The semantics of the impersonal construction in Icelandic, German, and Faroese: Beyond thematic roles”. In Focus on Germanic typology [Studia Typologica 6], W. Abraham (ed.), 105–38. Berlin: Akademieverlag. Barðdal, J. and Eythórsson, T. (this volume). “Control infinitives and case in Germanic: ‘Performance error’ or marginally acceptable constructions?”. Bayer, Josef 2003. “Non-nominative subjects in comparison”. Paper University of Konstanz. Appeared as Bayer (2004). Bayer, J. 2004. “Non-nominative subjects in comparison”. In Non-Nominative Subjects. Volume 1. [Typological Studies in Language 60], P. Bhaskararao and K. Venkata Subbarao (eds), 49– 76. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Bayer, J., Bader, M. and Meng, M. 2001. “Morphological underspecification meets oblique case: Syntactic and processing effects in German”. Lingua 111: 465–514. Bossong, G. 1985. Differentielle Objektmarkierung in den Neuiranischen Sprachen. Tübingen: Gunter Narr.
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Czepluch, H. 1982. “Case theory and the dative construction”. The Linguistic Review 2: 1–38. Czepluch, H. 1988. “Kasusmorphologie und Kasusrelationen: Überlegungen zur Kasustheorie am Beispiel des Deutschen”. Linguistische Berichte 116: 275–310. Chomsky, N. 1999. “Derivation by phase”. MIT Occasional Papers in Linguistics 18. Dalmi, G. 2004. The Role of AGRP in Non-Finite Predication. PhD dissertation, Budapest. (Linguistik Aktuell. 2005. Amsterdam: J. Benjamins). Eythórsson, T. and Barðdal, J. 2003. “Oblique Subjects: A Germanic inheritance”. Working Papers in Scandinavian Syntax 71, 145–202. Fanselow, G. 1995. Deutsche Verbalprojektionen und die Frage der Universalität Konfigurationaler Sprachen. PhD dissertation, Universität Passau. Fanselow, G. 2002. Optimal exceptions. Unpublished manuscript, University of Potsdam. Haider, H. 1994. “Detachment — the later, the deeper”. Working Paper of the Sonderforschungs bereich 340 (41), Universities of Stuttgart and Tübingen. Haider, H. 2000a. “ov is more than vo”. In The Derivation of ov and vo [Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 31], P. Svenonius (ed.). Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Haider, H. 2000b. “Branching and discharge”. In Lexical Specification and Insertion, P. Coopmans, M. Everaert, and J. Grimshaw (eds), 135–64. Amsterdam: J. Benjamins. Haider, H. & Rosengren, I. 1998. Scrambling [Sprache und Pragmatik 49]. Lund: Lund University. Huber, S. 2002. Es-clefts und det-clefts. Zur Syntax, Semantik und Informationsstruktur von Spaltsätzen im Deutschen und Schwedischen. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International. Kayne, R. S. 1994. The Antisymmetry of Syntax. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Kiss, K. É. 1981. “Topic and focus: The operators of the Hungarian sentence”. Folia Linguistica Europaea XV: 305–30. Koster, J. 1999. “The word orders of English and Dutch. Collective vs. individual checking”. Groninger Arbeiten zur Germanistischen Linguistik 43: 1–42. Maling, J. 2002. “Icelandic verbs with dative objects”. Working Papers in Scandinavian Syntax 70: 1–60. Meinunger, A. 2000. Syntactic Aspects of Topic and Comment [Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 38]. Amsterdam-Philadelphia: J. Benjamins. Molnárfi, L. 1999. “Zur Diskurskomponente in der Sprechsprache: vir als Rhemamarkierer im Afrikaans”. Folia Linguistica 33, 75–102. Molnárfi, L. 2002. “Focus and antifocus in modern Afrikaans and West Germanic”. Linguistics 40: 1107–1160. Molnárfi, L. 2003. “On optional movement and feature checking in West Germanic”. In Optionality in Syntax and Discourse Structure — Aspects of Word Order Variation in (West) Germanic and Other Languages [Folia Linguistica. Acta Societatis Linguisticae Europaeae XXXVII (1–2)], W. Abraham and László Molnárfi (guest eds), 129–62. Berlin: Mouton De Gruyter. Sigurðsson, H. 2001. “Case abstract vs. morphological”. Working Papers in Scandinavian Syntax 67: 103–57. Sigurðsson, H. 2003. “Agreement and head visible feature government”. Studia Linguistica 47: 32–56. Yip, M., Maling, J. and Jackendoff, R. 1987. “Case in Tiers”. Language 63: 217–50. Zwart, J.-W. 1998. Dutch Syntax. A Minimalist Approach. PhD dissertation, University of Gro ningen.
chapter 7
Control infinitives and case in Germanic ‘Performance error’ or marginally acceptable constructions? Jóhanna Barðdal and Thórhallur Eythórsson University of Bergen/University of Iceland
An examination of German language use reveals that subject-like obliques of impersonal predicates and dative passives can be left unexpressed in control infinitives, exactly as in Icelandic and Faroese, contra claims in the literature that there are no oblique subjects in German. Native-speaker judgments on these attested examples are subject to some controversy, bringing to the fore the issue of how to evaluate marginally-accepted data. We argue that this must be addressed in relation to the fact that there are also examples of control infinitives in Faroese and Icelandic which are judged ill-formed or ungrammatical by native speakers, again contra the established view in the literature that Icelandic and Faroese have oblique subjects. The distribution of the acceptability judgments correlates with the fact that the control infinitives under investigation are low-frequency constructions in all the Modern Germanic languages, including Modern Icelandic. The scarcity of such control infinitives in the modern languages prognosticates that only very few such instantiations should be found in earlier stages of Germanic, as is indeed borne out.
1. Introduction It is consistently argued in the existing literature on subject properties of subject-like obliques of impersonal predicates in Germanic that they cannot be left unexpressed in control infinitives in German, but only in Icelandic and Faroese (Zaenen, Maling and Thráinsson 1985, Sigurðsson 1989, 2002, Fischer and Blaszczak 2001, Fanselow 2002, Stepanov 2003, Wunderlich 2003, Bayer 2004, Haider 2005, amongst others). By ‘impersonal predicate’ we refer to predicates which select for a ‘logical subject’ in nonnominative case, i.e. compositional predicates as in (1) and dative passives as in (2).
(1) a. b.
Mér er kalt. Mir ist kalt. me.dat is cold ‘I’m freezing.’
Icelandic German
148 Jóhanna Barðdal and Thórhallur Eythórsson
(2) a. b.
Mér var andmælt. Mir wurde widerspochen. me.dat was contradicted ‘I was contradicted.’
Icelandic German
As the ability to be left unexpressed in control infinitives has been taken to be conclusive evidence of subjecthood, it is only in Icelandic and Faroese that subject-like obliques have been regarded as syntactic subjects, while in German they have been considered syntactic ‘objects’. As a matter of fact, however, we have come upon a large number of examples of impersonal predicates embedded under control verbs in German language use. The question arises how such occurrences should be assessed, given their alleged ungrammaticality in German. Similar examples have also been documented in Old Norse-Icelandic, Old Swedish and Early Middle English (Cole et. al 1980, Seefranz-Montag 1983, 1984, Rögnvaldsson 1995, 1996, Falk 1997, Barðdal 2000a, 2000b, Barðdal and Eythórsson 2003a, Eythórsson and Barðdal 2005). In our ongoing work on Germanic we have, thus, been faced with the following two major problems: 1. For the bulk of the Old Germanic languages only very few examples of controlled infinitives involving impersonal predicates have been documented. How should the scarcity of the examples be interpreted? 2. How should attested German examples of control infinitives with impersonal predicates be evaluated, given their alleged ungrammaticality? Should they be regarded as plain ‘performance errors’ or must they be taken seriously in research on impersonal predicates and control? In this paper we show, moreover, that the grammaticality judgments of impersonal predicates embedded under control verbs in Icelandic, Faroese and German vary according to speakers and specific example sentences. This contradicts the literature on subjecthood in Modern Icelandic, where impersonal predicates embedded under control verbs are always discussed as being perfectly grammatical, and the literature on Modern German, where such examples are always discussed as being completely ungrammatical. We argue, therefore, that the difference between Modern German, on the one hand, and Modern Icelandic and Faroese, on the other, is not categorical but gradient (cf. Barðdal 2002, 2006, Eythórsson and Barðdal 2005). We point out that control infinitives containing impersonal predicates are exceedingly rare in written Modern Icelandic, the language which has always been taken as providing the ultimate proof for the existence of oblique subjects. Therefore, when searching for linguistic evidence for oblique subjects in a given language, one cannot demand documentation of a large amount of control infinitives, but only a few instantiations should suffice. Since examples of this type do not come in shoals, one would not expect to find them in large quantities in real language use either. In order to explore the status of infrequent and marginally acceptable data, we compare:
Control infinitives and case in Germanic 149
1. Grammaticality judgments from native informants 2. Examples from literary texts 3. Examples from corpora (including the World Wide Web) On the basis of this comparison we conclude that infrequent and marginally acceptable data cannot be categorically dismissed as unimportant and uninteresting for either empirical or theoretical research, but deserve to be taken seriously as representing a rare, but, at least for some speakers, a grammatical pattern in a language. In the remainder of this paper we discuss control infinitives containing impersonal predicates and their occurrences and acceptability not only in Modern German (section 3) but also in Modern Faroese (section 4) and Modern Icelandic (section 5). Shifting our focus to earlier Germanic, in section 6 we discuss examples from Old NorseIcelandic, Old Swedish and Early Middle English. In section 7 we argue that there is a correlation between frequency and acceptability, in that structures which are highly frequent in real language use are judged more grammatical by native speakers than lowfrequent structures. On this approach it is expected that one person’s performance errors equate other people’s marginalia. First, however, a short explanatory note on the nature of the subject property of control infinitives is in place.
2. Control constructions Behavioral properties of subjects include various syntactic phenomena such as the ability to control reflexivization, raising-to-subject, raising-to-object, and deletion in second conjuncts and controlled infinitives (Keenan 1976, Cole et al. 1980, Croft 2001: ch. 4, Haspelmath 2001). In our comparative work on subjecthood in the Germanic languages (Barðdal 1998, 2000a, 2000b, 2002, 2006, Barðdal and Eythórsson 2003a, 2003b, Eythórsson and Barðdal 2005), we have placed greatest emphasis on control constructions because of their uncontroversial status as one of the most conclusive evidence of subject behavior, not only in Germanic but also cross-linguistically.1 Consider the following examples:
(3) a. b. c.
He intends to ____ prove himself. Hann ætlar að ____ sanna sig. he.nom intends to pro.nom prove.inf self.refl Er beabsichtigt, ____ sich zu beweisen. he.nom intends pro.nom self.refl to prove.inf ‘He intends to prove himself.’
English Icelandic German
In these infinitives the subject of the lower verb ‘prove’ has been left unexpressed on identity with the subject of the matrix verb ‘intend’ in English, Icelandic and German.2 This property has been shown to correlate with other subject properties and is not found with objects (Falk 1995, Rögnvaldsson 1996, Moore and Perlmutter 2000, Barðdal 2002,
150 Jóhanna Barðdal and Thórhallur Eythórsson
2006, Barðdal and Eythórsson 2003a, Eythórsson and Barðdal 2005, amongst others):
(4) a. *He intends to ____ prove ____. b. *Hann ætlar að ____ sanna ____. c. *Er beabsichtigt, ____ ____ zu beweisen.
English Icelandic German
In (4) above, the reflexive object of the infinitive clause cannot be left unexpressed in spite of being coreferential with both the subject of the matrix clause and the omitted subject of the infinitive. Therefore, it is only the subject of a finite predicate and not its object that can be left unexpressed in corresponding control infinitives. However, in our work on Germanic, we have been faced with the problem that controlled infinitives are statistically rare in language use and much less frequent than finite clauses, despite the fact that introspection confirms that such examples may be grammatical. With impersonal predicates, moreover, like the ones in (1–2) above, controlled infinitives are extremely rare in Modern Icelandic (Rögnvaldsson 1991: 372, 1996: 50, Barðdal 2000b: 102, Barðdal and Eythórsson 2003a: 461, Eythórsson and Barðdal 2005: 833, 837), which is otherwise known to have ‘oblique subjects’. In a corpus of written and spoken Modern Icelandic, containing approximately 40,000 running words (Barðdal 2001a), not one single example of a control construction involving impersonal predicates can be found. In other words, despite the acceptability of such examples, they are exceedingly rare in real language use. Two examples, found in naturally occurring language use, are given in (5) below (Eythórsson and Barðdal 2005: 834, 841): (5) (kaffi.blogspot.com/2002_11_01_kaffi_archive.html, 2002) a. Hvað fær okkur til að ____ líka ekki fólkið what makes us.acc for to pro.dat like not people.the.nom í kringum okkur? in round us.acc ‘What is it that makes us not like the people around us?’ (lb.icemed.is/web/2001/6?ArticleID=905, 2001) b. … að maður þurfi að vera haldinn þrælslund til að that one.nom needs to be held severe-servility for to ____ falla í geð slík fásinna. pro.dat fall in liking such craziness.nom ‘… that one needs to be equipped with severe servility to like such craziness.’ The non-finite verbs in (5), líka ‘like’ and falla í geð ‘like, be to sb’s liking’, both select for a dative subject in Modern Icelandic.3 Consequently, it is the dative subject that is left unexpressed in control constructions: in (5a) on identity with the accusative object okkur ‘us’ and in (5b) on identity with the indefinite generic subject maður ‘one’. It is therefore the subject-like dative of impersonal predicates in Icelandic that behaves as a syntactic subject while the nominative stimulus behaves syntactically as an object (cf. Andrews 1976, Zaenen, Maling and Thráinsson 1985, Sigurðsson 1989, 2002,
Control infinitives and case in Germanic
Rögnvaldsson 1995, 1996, Jónsson 1996, Barðdal 2000a, 2001b, 2002, 2006, Barðdal and Eythórsson 2003a, Eythórsson and Barðdal 2005, amongst others). We now proceed to a discussion of control constructions in the individual Germanic languages that still have impersonal predicates, namely German, Faroese and Icelandic.
3. German Examples of impersonal predicates being embedded under control verbs are always discussed as ungrammatical in the literature on German, as far as we can gather (Reis 1982, Zaenen, Maling and Thráinsson 1985, Sigurðsson 1989, 2002, Fischer and Blaszczak 2001, Fanselow 2002, Stepanov 2003, Wunderlich 2003, Bayer 2004, Haider 2005, amongst others). This has led to the dichotomous view that Icelandic has oblique subjects whereas German does not. Yet, examples of impersonal predicates embedded under control verbs, however marginal they may be, are being produced by German speakers (cf. Barðdal 2002, 2006, Barðdal and Eythórsson 2003b, Eythórsson and Barðdal 2005). The following examples serve to illustrate this:
(6) (www.noglobal.org/tutelalegalet.htm, 2001) a. Vor der Durchsuchung hat man die Möglichkeit, von einer before the search has one the opportunity by a Anwaltsperson ____ geholfen zu werden. lawyer pro.dat helped to become.inf ‘Before the search it is possible to get help from a lawyer.’ (www.skaichannel.de/diary/silverlake/2001/010630.html, 2001) b. Er, der bezweifelt, dass ich es wert bin, ____ zum he who doubts that I it worthy am pro.dat at Geburtstag gratuliert zu werden, benutzt seine Luca birthday congratulated to become.inf uses his Luca Leidensstory, um mir in den Bauch zu hauen. suffer-story to me in the belly to punch ‘He who doubts that I am worthy of being congratulated on my birthday uses his Luca Leidensstory to punch me in the belly.’ (www2.igmetall.de/homepages/kiel/file_uploads/ wie_bliev_streik_31.pdf, 2003) c. Kündigungen sind nicht da, um ____ angenommen zu notices are not there for pro.nom accepted to werden. Kündigungen sind da, um ____ widersprochen become.inf notices are there for pro.dat contradicted zu werden. to become.inf ‘Notices are not there to be accepted. Notices are there to be contradicted.’
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(www.visualbasic.at/forum/showtopic.php?threadid=531, 2004) d. Ich brenne ja darauf ____ widersprochen zu werden. I burn yes of pro.dat contradicted to become.inf ‘I simply cannot wait to be challenged.’ The predicates helfen ‘help’, gratulieren ‘congratulate’ and widersprechen ‘contradict’ all select for dative objects when used in ordinary transitive sentences, and this dative is maintained in passives, as shown in (2) above. In the examples in (6) the unexpressed argument of the control infinitives corresponds to the preserved dative and no nominative is involved at all. Haider (2005: 27–8) claims that the passive of helfen ‘help’ has been infelicitously used in a well-known advertisement slogan in Germany in recent years, in which the standard mir ist geholfen is replaced with the ‘incorrect’ ich werde geholfen. He argues that this has prompted German speakers to use the passive with a nominative and not a dative, and thus that our examples of geholfen zu werden have a nominative passive as an underlying form and not a dative passive. To this we can only say that our oldest example of geholfen zu werden dates back to 1949, long before the famous slogan ever was fabricated:
(7) (www.martinus.at/info/sekten/brunogroeningfreundeskreis.html, 1949) Wer den Herrgott verleumdet ist es nicht wert ____ who the.acc God slanders is it not worthy pro.dat geholfen zu werden. helped to become.inf ‘He who slanders God is not worthy of being helped.’
The sentence in (7) was composed by Bruno Gröning, an early 20th century German writer and a healer, and is taken from a section in his auto-biography. Moreover, all his examples of transitive helfen that we have come across occur with a dative object and not an accusative object (cf. Eythórsson and Barðdal 2005: 856). The following is a famous quote from Gröning:
(8) (www.lichtpfad.net/start/groening.htm) Es liegt hier immer an den Menschen. Wie ich gesagt habe: wer it lies here always on the people as I said have who es wert ist, dass ihm geholfen wird, dem wird it worthy is that him.dat helped becomes, him.dat becomes geholfen. Es geht hier nicht um Geld, es geht um den Glauben. helped it goes here not of money it goes of the faith ‘This always depends on the individuals. As I have said: he who is worthy of being helped will be helped. What matters here is not money, but faith.’
The example in (8) shows that in the language of this speaker, the dative is preserved in passive and is not replaced with a nominative. There is thus no doubt that the underly-
Control infinitives and case in Germanic
ing form in (7) is the standard dative passive in German and not a nominative passive. Native speakers do not agree on the grammaticality of the examples in (6–7) above. Our German discussants have judged them as everything from ungrammatical to perfectly acceptable. Some of our discussants have even disqualified them as ‘performance errors’. This brings to the fore the problem of how to distinguish between performance errors and marginally acceptable data, since obviously marginal data are bound to be interpreted as performance errors by some speakers exactly because of their marginal status. That is, if we assume that acceptability borders vary for speakers, marginal data may settle on either side of the border, yielding speaker-dependent variation in acceptability judgments of marginally acceptable constructions. One way of attacking this problem is to investigate carefully the sources of the relevant examples. If the data are found in literary texts, it seems reasonable to assume that they are not performance errors, since texts of literary purposes are usually well elaborated stylistically. Several of our German examples stem from literary sources, biographies and texts composed by creative writers and academics. Consider the following examples, all given in their immediate context:
(9) (www.gutenberg2000.de/kant/krva/krva003.htm, 1781) a. Denn ein Teil dieser Erkenntnisse, die mathematischen, ist im alten Besitze der Zuverlässigkeit, und gibt dadurch eine günstige Erwartung auch für andere, ob diese gleich von ganz verschiedener Natur sein mögen. Überdem, wenn man über den Kreis der Erfahrung hinaus besides if one about the sphere the experience over ist, so ist man sicher, ____ durch Erfahrung nicht is so is one sure pro.dat through experience not widersprochen zu werden. contradicted to become.inf ‘Because a part of this knowledge, the mathematical one, has always possessed reliability, and by means of this it provides a favorable expectation for others, even though these may be of a quite different nature. Besides, if one has left the sphere of experience, one can be certain not to be contradicted by experience.’ (www.qualitative-research.net/ fqs-texte/3-02/3-02schneider-d.htm, 2002) b. Der folgende Ausschnitt aus dem Interview mit einem freien Drehbuch autor verweist auf diese “Einsamkeit des Respondenten”: Wie war das für dich, diese Fragen? (lange Pause) “Ja, ich meine, es ist interessant. Ich denke, ich werde selten so mal gefragt und hab die Möglichkeit, mich dazu zu äußern, unwidersprochen.” ____ Nicht unterbrochen und ____ nicht widersprochen pro.nom not interrupted and pro.dat not contradicted
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zu werden bedeutet in diesem Falle auch, kaum eine to become.inf means in this case also hardly a Reaktion zu erhalten. reaction to receive ‘The following section from an interview with a freelance scriptwriter points out this “solitude of the respondent”: How do you feel about getting questions of this sort? (a long silence) “Well, I guess it’s interesting. I’m thinking that I hardly ever get questions like these and have the opportunity to express myself about these issues, unchallenged.” Being neither interrupted nor challenged means in this case that one hardly gets any reactions at all.’ (www.freitag.de/2002/45/02450402.php, 2002) c. Die Betroffenen bauen fast immer ein Vertrauensverhältnis zu ihren Betreuern auf. Potenzielle Täter nutzen das freundschaftliche Verhältnis häufig aus, um gezielt die Bedürfnisse des behinderten Menschen auszuforschen. Je größer die Abhängigkeit, umso größer ist die Gefährdung. Wie soll man Berührungen auch vermeiden, wenn auch die intimsten Handlungen nicht alleine bewerkstelligt werden können? Ein Recht für geistig wie körperlich behinderte a right for mentally as physically disabled Frauen, ____ nur von Frauen bei intimen Handlungen women, pro.dat only by women at private activities assistiert zu werden, gibt es in der Bundesrepublik […] nicht. assisted to become.inf is there in the Federal-Republic […] not. ‘These people almost always build up a relationship of trust with their carers. Potential offenders often take advantage of this friendly relationship with the specific aim to learn about the needs of the disabled person. The greater the dependency, the greater the threat. How is one supposed to avoid contact, if even the most personal activities cannot be carried out in privacy? The right for mentally and physically disabled women to only be assisted by women when engaged in private activities does not exist in Germany.’ As discussed above, the verb widersprechen ‘contradict, challenge’ selects for a dative object, which is preserved in passives, and the same is true for assistieren ‘assist’. The sentence in (9a) is from the introductory section of Immanuel Kant’s earlier edition of Kritik der reinen Vernunft ‘Critique of pure reason’. We have examined a large randomly selected portion of Kant’s texts and found that all transitive non-reflexive examples of widersprechen occur with a dative object in his texts, and all examples of this verb used in the passive construction maintain the dative. One such example is the following:
Control infinitives and case in Germanic
(10) (gutenberg.spiegel.de/kant/kuk/Druckversion_kukp421.htm, 1790) Ihnen ist aber nicht ohne Grund von anderen widersprochen they.dat is but not without reason by others contradicted worden, … be(come).inf … ‘They are not being contradicted by others without a reason …’ It therefore seems clear that Kant consistently used the verb widersprechen with a dative, and thus that it is this dative which has been left unexpressed in the infinitive in (9a). The example in (9b) is from a recent research article in social science on discourse and communication, published on the Web. Likewise, the sentence in (9c) is from a debate article in the weekly journal Freitag ‘Friday’, written by an academic and researcher in gender studies in Berlin. These examples are formulated by speakers belonging to the literate section of the German society, and were found in texts that have gone through the scrutiny accompanying advanced writing and text composition. This fact, in turn, heavily undermines the hypothesis that examples of this kind can be viewed and dismissed as performance errors. Yet another method to investigate the acceptability of our documented control infinitives, and thus to answer the question whether such examples are caused by errors in speech performance, is to carry out a systematic questionnaire survey among native speakers. Table 1 below gives the results of such a survey, conducted among Germanspeaking students at four different universities: Bochum, Jena, Saarbrücken and Vienna (cf. Eythórsson and Barðdal 2005, Barðdal 2006).4 The questionnaire survey included twelve examples of eight different verbs, of which three are discussed here: one example with assistiert and geholfen werden, respectively, and four with widersprochen werden. For further examples, detailed description and a more elaborated discussion, we refer the reader to Eythórsson and Barðdal (2005) and Barðdal (2006: 68–72, 84–6). When all eight verbs, and their twelve examples, are taken into consideration, the judgments range from 7–86% of the examples being regarded as acceptable (p < .000). Table 1. Native-speaker judgments of attested German control infinitives Good/OK 6c 6d 7 9a 9b 9c
widersprochen zu werden widersprochen zu werden geholfen zu werden widersprochen zu werden widersprochen zu werden assistiert zu werden Total
Strange
Bad/wrong
N
%
N
%
5 2 9 6 4 1 37
16.7 6.7 36.0 21.4 14.3 34.4 21.4
8 3 5 5 4 5 30
26.7 10.0 20.0 17.9 14.3 15.6 17.3
N 17 25 11 17 20 16 106
Total
%
N
56.6 83.3 44.0 60.7 71.4 50.0 61.3
30 30 25 28 28 32 173
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However, for the subset of these examples discussed in the present paper, Table 1 shows that there is also considerable variation in the acceptability rates, not only between the three verbs, but also between the four different examples of widersprochen werden. The differences between the three verbs are statistically significant (p < .034) and the variation suggests that there may be some lexical, semantic and/or pragmatic restrictions on the occurrence of impersonal predicates in control constructions in German. This variation certainly shows that there is need for a further study; however this is beyond the scope of the present paper (although, see Barðdal 2006: 68–72, 84–6 for a further discussion).5 It is nevertheless clear from the statistics in Table 1 that impersonal predicates embedded under control verbs are accepted by a subset of the German population, as 7 to 36% of the judgments fall at the positive side of the acceptability border, in spite of the fact that such examples are assumed to be ungrammatical in German. In other words, no example is judged ungrammatical by all of the participants of our survey. Instead, they are all judged acceptable by some of the participants. This fact, again, undermines the hypothesis that our documented examples are caused by error in speech performance. The least we can expect is that native speakers recognize speech errors in their own language. Moreover, as long as no plausible account exists of how and why such alleged ‘speech errors’ are produced by native speakers, it is difficult to take such a suggestion seriously, and the more it appears to be an ad-hoc attempt to illegitimately dismiss examples which deserve to be taken seriously in a theory of grammar. To summarize, in this section we have shown that several of our German examples of control infinitives involving impersonal predicates stem from literary texts, academic texts and newspapers. Such examples can therefore not be categorically dismissed as ‘performance errors’ or ‘bad German’. Moreover, these examples show that the subjectlike dative of impersonal predicates can function as the unexpressed argument in control infinitives, a property generally considered as being confined to subjects. This holds true for the language of at least some German speakers, who can neither be categorized as inexperienced writers nor as foreigners not in proper command of the language. In the next two sections, we show, contra the discussion in the literature, that there is also disagreement on the acceptability of control infinitives of impersonal predicates in both Faroese and Icelandic.
4. Faroese Barnes (1986) comments on the difficulty of finding acceptable examples in Faroese of control infinitives containing impersonal predicates. He suggests that the reasons may be purely semantic. Given that control verbs usually select for agentive predicates as non-finite complements, Barnes observes that this is semantically incompatible with experiencer verbs. Thus, whereas (11a) is perfectly acceptable, (11b) is at best marginal (Barnes 1986: 26):
Control infinitives and case in Germanic 157
(11) a. Eingin beyð sær til at ____ hjálpa mær. no-one offered self forward to pro.nom help.inf me ‘No one offered to help me.’ ?? b. Eingin beyð sær til at ____ dáma hana. no-one offered self forward to pro.dat like.inf her ‘No one offered to like her.’ In addition to the differences in the semantics of hjálpa ‘help’ and dáma ‘like’ in (11a–b), they also select for different case frames: The verb hjálpa selects for a nominative subject while dáma takes a dative subject (although nowadays dáma can also be constructed with a nominative subject; see below). However, Barnes (1986: 26) was able to come up with the following examples of control infinitives which were accepted by at least some of his native speaker informants. (12) a. b. c.
Eg kann ikki torga at ____ vanta pengar. I.nom can not bear to pro.dat lack.inf money ‘I cannot bear to lack money.’ Eg havi ilt við at ____ dáma fisk. I.nom have bad with to pro.dat like.inf fish ‘I find it difficult to like fish.’ Hann royndi at ____ dáma matin. He.nom tried to pro.dat like.inf food-the ‘He tried to like the food.’
All the lower verbs in (12) are impersonal predicates which select for dative subjects in Faroese. Barnes (1986: 26–7) provides further examples where the non-finite clause functions as a subject, presented in (13) below, although (13b) was judged ‘doubtful or bad’ by some of his informants. (13) a. b.
At ____ leiðast við lívið er vanligt hjá ungum. to pro.dat tire.inf with life-the is common among young ‘To tire of life is common among young people.’ ? At ____ skorta mat er ræðuligt. to pro.dat lack.inf food is terrible ‘To lack food is terrible.’
It is clear that the lesser acceptability of examples like (13b) cannot be due to the semantic factors that Barnes attributes it to, since in this case there is no purposive matrix control verb preferably selecting for an agentive lower predicate. Rather, (13b) is generic. Barnes discusses another possible reason for the infelicitousness of (13b), namely that there may be a tendency in Faroese to preserve lexical case, meaning that the dative cannot be implicit but has to be spelled out. However, since there is a tendency in Faroese to substitute nominative for dative in some passivizations, Barnes concludes that no general tendency to preserve the dative can be assumed to exist. The examples and the judgments provided in the article by Barnes date from the year
158 Jóhanna Barðdal and Thórhallur Eythórsson
1986. They are, in other words, almost two decades old. When verifying Barnes’ results, the potentially serious problem arises that in current Faroese there is a strong tendency to substitute nominative for oblique case on subjects (‘Nominative Substitution’, cf. Barnes 1986, Eythórsson 2001, 2002, Jonas 2002, Petersen 2002, Eythórsson and Jónsson 2003, Thráinsson et al. 2004, Jónsson and Eythórsson 2005). However, the examples in (14), which we have gathered, stem from speakers for whom nominative subjects with the verbs lysta ‘want’ and vanta ‘lack’ are ungrammatical. The verb lysta can occur either with an accusative or a dative, while vanta occurs only with a dative. Not all our Faroese discussants, however, agree on the acceptability of the examples in (14). Some speakers accept them, but others do not. Nevertheless, such examples confirm that oblique subjects can be left unexpressed in control infinitives in current Faroese, exactly like nominative subjects (Eythórsson and Barðdal 2005: 839). (14) a. b.
Tað at ____ lysta at vita sum mest, er ein it to pro.acc/dat want.inf to know.inf as most is a jaligur eginleiki hjá fólki. positive quality with people ‘Wanting to know as much as possible is a positive quality in people.’ Tað at ____ vanta pengar, er ikki gott. it to pro.dat lack.inf money is not good ‘Being short of money is not good.’
We believe that the examples in this section clearly show that oblique subjects in Faroese behave as nominative subjects with regard to the ability to be left unexpressed in control constructions, as is also generally acknowledged in the literature. However, we also want to emphasize that not all such examples are equally well formed in Faroese, or not equally well accepted by all speakers. In this respect, Modern Faroese is no different from Modern German, discussed in the previous section, where it is shown that not all attested German examples of impersonal predicates embedded under control verbs are judged equally well formed. For Faroese, this may, of course, be a consequence of the fact that impersonal predicates have become very rare in the spoken contemporary language (cf. Barðdal 2002: 90–2, 2006: 90–4, Eythórsson and Jónsson 2003, Jónsson and Eythórsson 2005), but the effect of frequency will be further discussed in section 7. We now proceed to the section on impersonal predicates and control constructions in Modern Icelandic.
5. Icelandic As stated in section 2, even though control constructions involving impersonal predicates are rare in Icelandic, they are nevertheless attested, and are considered important proof for the subject status of oblique subjects. In particular, because of the explosivelike expansion of the World Wide Web, finding such examples has become relatively easy. In addition to the examples in (5) above, two more examples of control infinitives of im-
Control infinitives and case in Germanic 159
personal predicates are presented in (15), in which the dative subjects of vera kalt ‘freeze’ and ganga illa ‘do badly’ function as the unexpressed subject of the control infinitives: (15) (gylfiolafsson.blogspot.com/2003_11_01_gylfiolafsson_archive.html, 2003) a. Undanfarið hef ég mætt nokkurri andstöðu þegar ég tala lately have I met some opposition when I speak um þau almennu sannindi að það sé kúl að ____ vera kalt. about the general truth that it is cool to pro.dat be.inf cold ‘I have met some opposition lately when I talk about the general truth that it is cool to freeze.’ (viktorja.tripod.com/archives/2003_05_01gamalt2 .html, 2003) b. Það er ekkert verra en að ____ ganga illa í prófum badly in exams it is nothing worse than to pro.dat go sem mar [sic] á að fá hátt í. which one should to get high in ‘Nothing is worse than doing badly at exams one ought to get good grades in.’ There is no doubt that the examples in (5) and (15) are good examples of impersonal predicates embedded under control verbs in Icelandic. However, not all examples that we have come across are equally acceptable. Consider, for instance, the following examples, given in context: (16) (www.rannsoknir.is/Bornin_i_borginni_lokaskyrsla.pdf, 2001) a. Hlutfall nemenda í 5.–10. bekk sem eru frekar eða mjög proportion students in 5–10 grade who are rather or very sammála því að ____ þykja vænt um skólann sinn, agreeing it to pro.dat feel affection about school their að samskipti nemenda og fullorðinna séu góð í skólanum og að krakkarnir í bekknum séu góðir vinir. ‘The proportion of students in 5–10 grade who agree [with the statement] that they care about their school, that the interaction between the teachers and the students is good in the school, and that the children are on friendly terms with each other.’ (www.shihtzu-in-iceland.com/soguhornid.html, 2003) b. Ég átti nú þegar heimili með mömmu sem þótti vænt um mig og tvo bræður sem ég gat leikið mér við, og aðra hvolpa sem stoppuðu stundum við, stöldruðu við um stund, og fóru síðan sína leið. Mig langar ekki að fara neitt annað. Loksins kom ég að húsi þessara indæla eldra fólks og finally came I to house these lovely older people and þau gáfu mér að borða og reyndu að ____ þykja they gave me to eat and tried to pro.dat feel.inf vænt um mig … care about me
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‘I already had a home with my mother who loved me and my two brothers whom I could play with, and the other puppies who stopped by occasionally for a while, before they went their way. I don’t want to go anywhere else. Finally, though, I came to the house of this lovely older couple and they fed me and tried to care about me …’ (kaninka.net/halla/005637.html, 2003) c. En svona í alvöru talað þá er ekkert sniðugt að þér skuli líða svona illa … þú ert með svo margt spennandi framundan og síðan ertu líka svo sæt og skemmtileg!!! líða illa … Ég veit! hættu bara að ____ I know! stop just to pro.dat feel.inf bad ‘But seriously, it isn’t good that you feel so bad … There are so many exciting things ahead of you, and you’re also so sweet and fun to be with!!! I know! Just stop feeling bad …’ In our opinion, all three examples in (16) are unacceptable and in particular should (16b–c) be marked with an asterisk to signal their ungrammaticality. The example in (16a) is slightly better, we feel, although it is far from acceptable. In order to verify the (non-)acceptability of these Icelandic examples, we have carried out a questionnaire survey of the same type as in German, where we present our examples in context to native speakers, in this case students at the University of Iceland.6 The results are given in Table 2 below: Table 2. Native-speaker judgments of attested Icelandic control infinitives Good/OK 16a að þykja 16b að þykja 16c að líða Total
Strange
Bad/wrong
Total
N
%
N
%
N
%
N
16 5 2 23
57.1 17.8 6.5 26.4
7 8 9 24
25.0 28.6 29.0 27.6
5 15 20 40
17.9 53.6 64.5 46.0
28 28 31 87
As evident from the figures in Table 2, Icelandic speakers do not accept all examples of impersonal predicates embedded under control verbs that are found in Icelandic texts on the World Wide Web. In fact, the rejection rates range from 18–65%, in spite of the fact that Icelandic is the language that has always been taken to provide conclusive evidence for the existence of oblique subjects. The differences between the examples are statistically significant (p < .000), and so is the difference between the two verbs (p < .004).7 In this connection, the following questions pose themselves: Should we reject the subject analysis of oblique subjects in Icelandic on the basis of the judgments presented in Table 2 and hence ignore all the other control infinitives involving impersonal predicates that are clearly acceptable in Icelandic? If we do accept the subject analysis of ob-
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lique subjects in Icelandic, aren’t we also forced to accept a subject analysis for subjectlike obliques in German? If we reject the subject analysis for German on the basis of the negative judgments presented in Table 1, aren’t we also forced to reject it for Icelandic? Can we possibly assume a different syntactic analysis of subject-like obliques in these two languages given the consensus in the field that omission in control infinitives is a conclusive subject test in both languages? Our answers to these questions are in the negative. We can neither ignore the negative judgments on Icelandic nor the positive judgments on German when analyzing the syntactic behavior of subject-like obliques in these languages. Doing so would be both opportunistic and inconsistent with good scientific method. Despite our lack of appreciation of the examples in (16), they still exist and cannot be discarded as evidence for the omissibility of oblique subjects in control infinitives in Icelandic. Some Icelandic speakers have not only formulated these examples but also put them in writing. The same is true for German. In other words, speakers vary in their grammaticality judgments of control constructions in Icelandic and in their judgments of which lexical predicates may instantiate such constructions. The existence of the examples in (16), and both our and the participants’ disapproval of them, shows that there is no clear-cut agreement on the acceptability of control constructions involving impersonal predicates in Icelandic, although this fact has not figured in the previous literature on Icelandic. The question now arises why the examples in (16) are worse than the ones in (15). Starting with the sentences in (15), both are generic with an indefinite reading of the unexpressed dative subject, which is thereby not left unexpressed on identity with a nominative subject of a possible control predicate, as one would expect given the nature of prototypical control constructions. The examples in (16b–c), however, are purposive while the ones in (15) have either a generic or a happenstance reading. It is not equally clear why the example in (16a) is not judged good, since the matrix control predicate vera sammála ‘agree with’ is not nearly as intentional as reyna ‘try’ in (16b) or hætta ‘stop’ in (16c). It would seem that a predicate referring to the cognitive state of ‘agreeing’ should be semantically compatible with an impersonal predicate expressing the emotion þykja ‘feel’. In order to investigate this, we have searched for examples of the same string vera sammála því að ‘agree to/that’ on the World Wide Web, and come up with 553 hits. Of these, only 38 hits involved control infinitives, while the remaining 515 involved subordinate clauses. All 38 instances had agentive/intentional predicates as non-finite verbs, except one with the stative verb hafa ‘have’ expressing location, as in hafa kirkuna í Borgarholtinu ‘have the church in Borgarholt’. It is clear in this last case that the ‘agreement’ does not refer to the cognitive state of ‘agreeing’ but to a decision on the location of the church. That is, this sentence refers to an agreement on the suggestion/decision of having that particular church at the given location. This means that even though vera sammála því að in (16a) is not purposive it still expresses a strong enough degree of determination to be incompatible with þykja ‘feel’ in Icelandic, at least for some speakers. In essence, this means that vera sammála því að conventionally combines with agentive/intentional/determinative predicates in Icelandic lan-
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guage use and not experiencer-based predicates like þykja ‘feel’. To conclude, for some speakers of Icelandic, impersonal predicates are incompatible with purposive constructions (cf. Barðdal 2001c: 132–3, 2002: 88–9, Eythórsson and Barðdal 2005: 851–3), while other speakers are more liberal in this respect. Impersonal predicates, however, are not incompatible with purposive meaning in general, since both raising infinitives and ordinary finite impersonal predicates can embed under, or be subordinated by, control predicates with purposive or determinative meaning. This is shown in the examples in (17) below: (17) a. b. c.
… sem eru sammála því að þeim þyki vænt um skólann sinn. … who are agreeing it that they.dat feel care of school their ‘… who agree that they care about their school.’ Þau reyndu að ____ láta sér þykja vænt um mig. they tried to pro.nom let.inf themselves.dat feel.inf care of me ‘They tried to have warm feelings for me.’ Hættu bara að ____ láta þér líða illa. stop just to pro.nom let.inf yourself.dat feel.inf bad ‘Just stop having these bad feelings.’
In (17b–c) the impersonal predicates þykja and líða ‘feel’ occur in raising-to-object constructions embedded under the verb láta ‘let’. The ‘let’-infinitives are, in turn, embedded under the control predicates reyna ‘try’ and hætta ‘stop’. In (17a), vera sammála því að ‘agree that’ is perfectly grammatical with the finite þeim þyki ‘they feel’, as opposed to the non-finite að þykja ‘to feel’. These examples show that impersonal predicates are not semantically incompatible with control predicates or purposive/determinative predicates in Icelandic, as argued for instance by Jónsson (2000: 76–7), but rather that they are incompatible with the infinitive form in combination with a purposive control predicate. Impersonal predicates are not incompatible with the form of a control infinitive if the meaning is non-purposive (cf. examples (15) above) and they are not incompatible with purposive meaning if they are not embedded directly under a control verb (cf. examples (17) above). More investigation is needed to elucidate the restrictions on impersonal predicates embedded under control verbs in Icelandic. We have, however, shown that there are constraints on whether and how impersonal predicates can occur in control constructions in Icelandic and that these constraints vary across Icelandic speakers, yielding differences in grammaticality judgments of attested Icelandic data. In this section we have demonstrated that Icelandic is not significantly different from German and Faroese as control infinitives involving impersonal predicates are not unanimously accepted by all speakers. Some speakers do not accept a subset of the documented example sentences in all three languages, although the tolerance is presumably higher in Icelandic and Faroese than in German. This tolerance, moreover, correlates with frequency, since more utterances of this type can be found in Icelandic than in German (cf. Barðdal 2002: 90–2, 2004: 110, 2006: 90–4). Crucially, however, control infinitives of impersonal predicates are being produced in all three languages,
Control infinitives and case in Germanic 163
by native speakers, many of whom are professional writers. This fact shows that subjectlike obliques can be left unexpressed in control infinitives and they behave thus as syntactic subjects in all three languages, and not as objects.
6. Earlier Germanic Impersonal predicates embedded under control verbs have also been reported in Early Middle English, Old Swedish and Old Norse-Icelandic. The Old Swedish examples in (18) were reported by Falk (1997: 25) and the Early Middle English ones in (19) are here cited from Seefranz-Montag (1983: 133–4) (see also Cole et al. 1980, amongst others). (18) a. b.
os duger ey ____ ther æptir langa. (c.1450) us.obl suffices not pro.obl there after long.inf ‘It is useless for us to long for that.’ huat hiælper idher ____ ther æptir langa. (c.1400) what helps you.obl pro.obl there after long.inf ‘Is it of any help to you to long for that?’
(19) a. b.
good is, quaþ Iosef, to ____ dremen of win. (c.1250) good is, said Iosef to pro.obl dream.inf of wine ‘It is good, said Joseph, to dream of wine.’ him burþ to ____ liken well his lif. (c.1275) him.obl should to pro.obl like.inf well his life ‘He should like his life well.’
The Old Swedish verb langa ‘want, long for’ selects for an oblique subject-like argument, whose oblique case was gradually replaced by nominative case in the history of Swedish. The accusative and dative cases had already merged into an oblique or ‘objective’ form at this time (Delsing 1991, 1995). According to Falk (1997: 26), however, both examples in (18) date from a period before langa started occurring with a nominative. The unexpressed argument in these controlled infinitives thus corresponds to the subject-like oblique of the impersonal predicate langa. Observe that the matrix verb in (18a) duga ‘suffice’ is itself an impersonal predicate selecting for a subject-like oblique. The subject-like oblique selected by langa has therefore been left unexpressed on identity with the subject-like oblique selected by the matrix verb duga ‘suffice’. The non-finite verbs in the English control constructions in (19), dremen ‘dream’ and liken ‘like’ are impersonal predicates that select for a subject-like oblique, which is also gradually replaced by a nominative in the history of English. However, both sentences are from a period before the subject-like oblique changes into a nominative (Cole et al. 1980: 729, Allen 1986: 381). The control verb biren ‘be obliged’ in (19b) is itself an impersonal predicate, exactly like the Swedish duga in (18a).8 Therefore, the unexpressed argument in the English control infinitives in (19) corresponds to the subject-
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like oblique of dremen and liken in finite clauses. This behavior, in turn, is only found with subjects, and not objects. The first three examples in (20) of control constructions involving impersonal predicates in Old Norse-Icelandic were recorded by Rögnvaldsson (1995, 1996), while the latter three were documented by us (Barðdal and Eythórsson 2003a: 458–9): (20) a. b. c. d. e. f.
Þorgils kvaðsk ____ leiðask þarvistin. Thorgils.nom said pro.dat be-bored.inf staying-there-the.nom ‘Thorgils said that he was bored staying there.’ Þórðr kvaðsk ____ þykkja tvennir kostir til. choices.nom to Thórðr.nom said pro.dat feel.inf two ‘Thórðr said that he felt that there were two alternatives.’ Hrafn kvaðsk ____ sýnask at haldinn vœri. Hrafn.nom said pro.dat feel.inf that held be ‘Hrafn said that he felt that guard should be kept.’ Hǫskuldr kvaðsk ____ þat mikit þykkja ef Hǫskuldr.nom said pro.dat it.nom much.nom seem.inf if þau skulu skilja … they shall depart ‘Hǫskuldr said that it concerned him greatly if they should depart …’ Indriði kveðsk eigi ____ svá á lítask … Indriði.nom says not pro.dat so on seem.inf ‘Indriði says that he does not think (that) …’ Þiðrandi kvaðsk ____ gruna hversu … Þiðrandi.nom said pro.acc suspect.inf how ‘Þiðrandi said that he suspected how …’
All the non-finite predicates in these examples consistently select for a subject-like oblique in Old Norse-Icelandic. The verbs in (20a–e) select for a dative while the verb in (20f) selects for an accusative. This last verb, gruna ‘suspect’, can occasionally occur with a nominative in Old Norse-Icelandic texts. It also selects for a nominative in one particular idiomatic expression in Icelandic, not at issue here. However, in the actual text from which this example is cited, the author uses gruna consistently with an accusative. It therefore seems clear that the unexpressed subjects in the Old Norse-Icelandic control infinitives in (20) correspond to subject-like accusatives/datives but not a nominative. In this respect, the subject-like oblique of impersonal predicates in Old NorseIcelandic behaves syntactically as a subject and not as an object. Observe that all the examples in (20) involve the same matrix verb kveðask ‘say (of oneself)’. Some objections to the control analysis of kveðask ‘say (of oneself)’ have been offered in the literature. First, Faarlund (2001: 106) argues that the final morpheme -sk is a cliticized reflexive object sik ‘oneself ’ on the verb kveða ‘say’, and thus that the sentences in (20) exemplify raising-to-object infinitives and not control infinitives. It has however been shown elsewhere that the verb kveðask in Old Norse-Icelandic does not
Control infinitives and case in Germanic 165
select for object predicates, as expected on the raising-to-object analysis, but always for subject predicates, as predicted by the control-infinitive analysis (Ottósson 1992: 65–9, Rögnvaldsson 1996: 61, Barðdal 2000a: 39, Barðdal and Eythórsson 2003a: 456–8): (21) a. b.
Hann kvað sig heita Njál. he.nom said self.acc be-called.inf Njáll.acc ‘He said that he was called Njáll.’ Hann kvaðst heita Njáll. he.nom said be-called.inf Njáll.nom ‘He said that he was called Njáll.’
Object predicate Subject predicate
Observe that kveða in (21a) selects for a raising-to-object infinitive, as the predicative Njál is in the accusative case, agreeing with the ‘raised object’ sig ‘himself ’ in case. In contrast, in (21b) the predicative Njáll is in nominative case, agreeing in case with the subject of kveðast, but not with the -st element. If kveðast were a raising-to-object verb the predicate Njáll should show up in accusative case as in (21a) and not in the nominative. Examples with that kind of structure, however, are ungrammatical in Modern Icelandic and, according to Kjartan G. Ottosson (p.c), they are also non-attested in Old Norse-Icelandic. These facts show that the examples in (20) are not raising-to-object infinitives but control infinitives.9 To give a parallel example, kveðask in Old Norse-Icelandic could also occur in raising-to-subject constructions. Faarlund claims, however, (based on information from Kjartan G. Ottosson (p.c.) in the year 1999) that the modern descendent of kveðask, i.e. kveðast, is ungrammatical in raising-to-subject constructions in Modern Icelandic. We have, however, other intuitions on this, and we have found examples of the Modern Icelandic control verb segjast ‘say of oneself ’, which is semantically and stylistically equivalent to kveðask in Old Norse-Icelandic, used as a raising-to-subject verb in presentday Icelandic. The examples in (22a–e) were found by searching the Web, but (22f) was overheard, and reported to us, by Kjartan G. Ottosson (p.c.) in January 2005: (22) (www.hugi.is/syndir/prentvaen.php?grein_id=16340596, 2005) a. Svo sagði ég mínum fyrrverandi frá þessu, og honum sagðist then told I my ex from this and he.dat said vera allveg [sic] sama um hvað strákurinn og ég be.inf totally indifferent about what guy-the and I gerðum, við værum ekki lengur saman … did we were not anymore together ‘Then I told my ex about this and he said that he didn’t care what I did with this guy, we are not together anymore …’ (www.hamstur.is/mm/frettir/sludur/2921, 2003) b. Henni segist vera slétt sama hvort myndin nái vinsældum … she.dat says be.inf quite same whether film-the achieves popularity ‘She says that she doesn’t care whether the film will be popular (or not) …’
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(staerdfraedi.khi.is/haustkjarni/_reqdis/0000006e.htm, 2002) c. Öðrum stráknum sagðist ekki ganga sérlega vel í other.dat guy.dat said not go.inf particularly well in stærðfræði en hinum tveim sagðist ganga vel … math but other.dat two.dat said go.inf well ‘One of the guys said that he wasn’t doing particularly well in Math but the other two said that that they were doing well …’ (www.73argangur.com/2002_10_01_archive.html, 2002) d. Þórði segist líka vel í Osló. Thórður.dat says like.inf well in Oslo ‘Thórður says that he quite likes it in Oslo.’ (www.bb.is/?PageID=47, 2005) e. Honum sagðist hafa létt þegar hann komst að raun he.dat said have.inf felt-relieved when he came to experience um að um var að ræða stafsetningarvillu. about that about was to regard spelling-error ‘He said that he was relieved when he found out that it was only a question of spelling error.’ f. Honum sagðist ekki vera kalt. he.dat said not be.inf cold ‘He said that he wasn’t freezing.’ These examples show, contra the standard view, that the categories of control predicates and raising-to-subject predicates are fuzzy, and that there is some unexpected exchange of verbs between them. Additional support for that stems from the fact that the uncontroversial control predicate búast við ‘expect’ in Icelandic is used as a raising-tosubject verb in the following documented example: (23) (strumpurinn.tripod.com/2001_12_01_gamalt.html, 2001) Ef mér bjóst við að ganga vel í einhverju þá var if I.dat expected with to go.inf well in something then was það réttarsagan, en … it legal-history-the but ‘If I expected to do well in any subject, it would have to be Legal History, but …’ As native speakers of Icelandic we confirm that the sentence in (23) is an acceptable sentence, despite this non-standard usage. One of us finds it perfectly acceptable whereas the other judges it as marginally acceptable. This is the first of two examples that we have encountered in our research on control and raising-to-subject in Icelandic, where the control verb búast við ‘expect’ is used as a raising verb, which brings us to the third criticism put forth by Faarlund (2001: 131), namely the scarcity of documented examples of control constructions involving impersonal predicates in Old Norse-Icelandic. Examples like those in (22–3) are statistically very rare in Modern Icelandic, yet
Control infinitives and case in Germanic 167
they are acceptable sentences in our opinion. There may, however, be some more conservative speakers who might reject them. Scholars working on phenomena that are statistically rare in language use face the problem of possible accidental gaps in the corpus. This problem raises the methodological issue of the amount of linguistic data needed to draw conclusions from about the grammar of dead languages, including their syntax. Clearly, the more text material is available, the less the chances are that lack of documented structures is due to accidental gaps, and the higher the chances that the data are representative of the language in question. Specifically in historical linguistics, traditional philological wisdom holds that ‘one example is no example’ (cf. the Latin slogan ‘unus testis — nullus testis’). Contrary to this, we defend the view that what really matters in determining the status of rare syntactic phenomena is not the quantity but the quality of the attested examples. Even for well-documented languages like Old and Early Middle English and Old NorseIcelandic, a grammar of these languages based solely on the most frequently occurring structures in the texts runs the risk of overlooking rare but important patterns, which may have been perfectly grammatical for the speakers of these languages, but which, for some reasons, are underrepresented in the texts. We argue that all occurring structures, both frequent and infrequent, have its place in the language system, but not only the frequent ones, as is implied by Faarlund’s criticism (2001: 131). The occurrence of even a single, philologically and linguistically unambiguous example of a particular structure may suffice to establish that it is part of the grammar of the language in question, although its status is, of course, less central than the status of high-frequent structures. By ‘philologically unambiguous’ we refer to examples that can be justified on the basis of the manuscripts considered most reliable. Falk’s Old Swedish control infinitives in (18) are from manuscripts from around 1400–1450, while the texts date back to 1303 and 1308, respectively (1997: 200). There is also a consensus in the literature on Early Middle English that the control infinitives in (19) are valid Early Middle English data (cf. Allen 1986: 381). Rögnvaldsson has, moreover, compared the examples in (20a–c) with the original manuscripts (1995: 22, n. 1), and we have ensured that the examples in (20d–f) are here given in their correct form.10 All the examples in (20) are from the oldest and most reliable manuscripts of the classical Old Norse-Icelandic period (1200– 1400) (cf. Barðdal and Eythórsson 2003a: 458–9). Therefore, although few in number the crucial examples which have been documented in Early Middle English, Old Swedish and Old Norse-Icelandic must on both philological and theoretical grounds be considered valid evidence for the subjecthood of subject-like obliques, given that only subjects, and not objects, can be left unexpressed in control constructions.
7. ‘Performance errors’ or marginally acceptable constructions? Control constructions are infrequent to begin with and with impersonal predicates they are even less frequent. This is true not only for German, but also for both Faroese
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and Icelandic. We have come across fewer examples on Modern German web sites than on Modern Icelandic sites, and the German examples that we have found show a greater range in their acceptability across German speakers than the Icelandic examples across Icelandic speakers. In this work we have used two accepted methods: First, we have searched for documented examples in literary texts, and second, we have carried out a questionnaire survey, containing a subset of these examples, with native speakers of both German and Icelandic. The third method we have used, and perhaps a more controversial one (see below), is to cite as evidence examples from the World Wide Web. However, we have included examples from the Web in both our German and our Icelandic questionnaire survey, and the results show that not all speakers accept all examples of impersonal predicates embedded under control verbs in either language. We have nevertheless established that the examples that we have found are real examples and not performance errors, which again shows that impersonal predicates can occur in control constructions in real language use in German, that they are being uttered during real usage events, and are accepted by a proportion of the German population. The examples discussed in the present paper show acceptability rates up to 36%, while the total for our complete survey is 86% (cf. Eythórsson and Barðdal 2005: 857, Barðdal 2006: 68–9). Moreover, some of the German participants have claimed that our examples are typical of colloquial spoken German, and not of written German. As such, our examples cannot be categorically dismissed as performance errors. Because of the growth of the World Wide Web, corpus linguists have pondered the question whether the Web can be used in corpus linguistics in the same way as edited balanced corpora. Keller, Lapata and Ourioupina (2002) have particularly investigated this by comparing results obtained through Google and AltaVista with the results obtained from the British National Corpus (bnc). In an article entitled Using the Web to overcome data sparseness they examine the distribution and frequency of a specific set of randomly chosen lexical items in certain syntactic constructions, testing both existing word combinations and combinations which do not occur in bnc. They estimate that the English part of the Web is approximately 330 to 980 times larger than bnc, which in fact contains 100 million words. Keller, Lapata and Ourioupina found that the frequency figures they obtained from the Web correlate with the frequency figures yielded by the searches in bnc. Moreover, they also found that their frequency figures correlate with speakers’ acceptability judgments; the most frequent combinations were judged most acceptable by speakers, and vice versa, the lowest or non-attested combinations were judged least acceptable. They therefore conclude that despite the fact that various ‘noise’ factors cannot be properly controlled for when using the Web, because of its gigantic size, it is still a useful and accurate tool for linguists who work on low-frequency, and thus marginal, constructions. In a follow-up study, Keller and Lapata (2003) compared the correlation between acceptability judgments and frequencies of occurrence for similar combinations of lexical and constructional patterns as in their previous study. This time they compared the
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degree of acceptability of the relevant patterns and combinations with frequencies of occurrence from different corpora. In fact, they found that not only do acceptability judgments correlate with frequencies of occurrence, but also that the strength of the correlation varies between corpora. The strongest correlation effect was in fact obtained for the World Wide Web. This means that of the three ‘corpora’ they investigated, bnc, the North American News Text Corpus (nantc) and the Web, there is highest correlation between speakers’ degree of acceptability and Web frequencies, rather than bnc frequencies or nantc frequencies. Keller and Lapata’s research thus shows that the Web is not a worse corpus than any other corpus. On the contrary, it is quite representative of language and language use, and for linguists working on low-frequency constructions, there are simply better chances of finding such examples on the Web than in other smaller corpora. A comparison of the results of our questionnaire survey and the frequency of the data we found on the Web, in fact supports the findings of Keller and his colleagues, in that we found fewer examples in German than in Icelandic, and those we did find are less accepted in German than in Icelandic. Keller and Lapata’s findings, that there is a correlation between frequency and acceptability, accord with usage-based models of language which assume that the language system is a dynamic, emergent system, in which frequency plays a central part (cf. various papers in Barlow and Kemmer 2000 and Bybee and Hopper 2001, in particular MacWhinney 2001). The language system is shaped by experience and all usage events contribute to the extension and reshaping of the system. The most commonly found structures are also the most central ones, whereas infrequent structures have a less prominent place in the system. On such an approach, it is expected that acceptability correlates with frequency, and it is expected that the system varies for different speakers, since not all speakers of a language have necessarily had the same experience with it. Again, this is exactly what our research on control constructions in Germanic has shown. Given that grammar is not only a collective system of form-meaning correspondences which interact at different linguistic levels, but also that each individual in this collective encompasses his or her version of the system, it is expected that there is not a complete overlap between individual grammars. As stated above, this is motivated by the fact that not all individuals in a linguistic community have necessarily been exposed to the same subset of language use. Therefore, it is expected that what is acceptable for one speaker of a language need not be accepted by a different speaker. On our approach, therefore, the differences in the acceptability of control infinitives involving impersonal predicates in a language are explainable in terms of a difference in the language system of these individuals. The speakers who accept these combinations of lexical and structural patterns do so because they have been exposed to such lexical and structural patterns earlier, while the speakers who reject them do so due to lack of exposure. This is the reason why native speakers of one and the same language disagree on the acceptability of documented lexical and syntactic strings of rare and marginal
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status. What is rare but marginally acceptable for one speaker can only be interpreted as a ‘performance error’ by another speaker if their grammars do not overlap in this particular respect. Moreover, the larger a language community is in terms of number of speakers and geographical region, the higher the chances are that the language exposure will vary considerably for speakers. This is the situation in the German-speaking area in Europe, while the Icelandic language community is much smaller and known to be exceptionally homogenous. This is presumably a part of the explanation for impersonal predicates being more accepted in control constructions in Icelandic than in German. This difference may also be due to a difference in the type frequency of impersonal predicates in Icelandic and German (cf. Barðdal 2002: 90–2, 2006, Eythórsson and Barðdal 2005). On a frequency-based account, the category of oblique subjects is both stronger and more entrenched in Icelandic than in German, as impersonal predicates amount to approximately 700 in Icelandic, while the corresponding number for German is perhaps around 80–100 (Barðdal 2004: 109–10). Oblique subjects are therefore a more robust and integrated part of the Icelandic system than of the German system, and can thus more easily be left unexpressed in elliptic structures in Icelandic than in German. For a further discussion and explication of this, we refer the reader to the references cited above. In the year 1999, we sent out an informal inquiry by e-mail to some fellow Icelandic linguists regarding the acceptability of segjast used as a raising-to-subject verb. The message only contained one constructed example sentence of the type in (22), asking for feedback on its acceptability. Four responses of five stated that it was ungrammatical. Our fifth correspondent, however, pronounced that the example was ‘not entirely bad’. In the meantime, we have come across the examples in (22) in naturally occurring language settings, despite their assumed ungrammaticality. Again, in the summer 2003, we sent out another message reporting on an example that we had overheard for the first time, during a stay in Iceland, of a compositional predicate, standardly selecting for an accusative object, which was being used with a dative object on this particular occasion. Two Icelandic colleagues responded to the message, one by saying that ‘he thought that he had heard sentences like this before’, the other by saying that ‘this must surely be a performance error’. These two true stories underscore our point that the line between marginally acceptable data and so-called performance errors may be hard to draw. As other scholars have called attention to (for instance, Joseph 1997), research on the ‘periphery’, as well as the ‘core’, may shed light on interesting linguistic phenomena, both language specific and across languages and language families. In fact, Joseph argues that in a synchronic system all linguistic data start out as ‘marginal’, and that only through a quantitative approach is the sphere of marginalia abandoned paving the way for larger generalizations. This entails a bottom-up approach to language and language structure, and a view of the difference between the ‘core’ and the ‘periphery’ as being a difference of quantity but not a difference in ontological nature. In other words, the difference between the
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‘core’ and the ‘periphery’ is not dichotomous but represents a gradual scale, where high quantity is concomitant with high acceptability, and low quantity with low acceptability. As we have shown here, one person’s performance errors equate other people’s marginalia. Therefore, marginally acceptable constructions, like control infinitives of impersonal predicates in German, cannot be categorically dismissed as ‘performance errors’, but deserve to be taken seriously since they are accepted by a subset of the German population. To conclude, in order to throw some light on the question of how to distinguish between performance errors and marginally acceptable data, we have carried out a systematic questionnaire survey to investigate the acceptability of our control infinitives and found that they are not regarded as performance errors by a proportion of the German population. We hope to have shown with our initiation of this discussion that more research is needed on this topic. Our results demonstrate that this problem deserves to be properly addressed, and that principled methods need to be developed to deal with it.
8. Summary In this paper we have discussed control constructions involving impersonal predicates, in which subject-like obliques are the unexpressed subjects of controlled infinitives. This particular syntactic behavior can be shown to correlate with other subject properties in Germanic and does not exist for objects. We have presented attested examples of such control infinitives from Modern Icelandic and Modern German, all of which we have obtained from the World Wide Web. We have also discussed control infinitives of impersonal predicates in Modern Faroese. Our linguistic evidence stems from three sources: 1) literary texts, 2) corpora, including the World Wide Web, and 3) a questionnaire survey involving native-speaker judgments. All the evidence point in the direction that the difference assumed in the literature between Modern Icelandic and Faroese, on the one hand, and Modern German, on the other, does not exist. We have called attention to the fact that examples of impersonal predicates embedded under control infinitives are extremely rare in written Modern Icelandic, yet a subset of the attested examples is accepted by native speakers, whereas other more colloquial examples are rejected. We have found indubitable examples of impersonal predicates in German embedded under control predicates, in which the subject-like oblique takes on the subject behavior of being the unexpressed argument. Our German examples, however, are both fewer than our Icelandic ones and subject to more controversy. Nevertheless, a subset of our German informants has judged our examples as perfectly acceptable. Other German speakers find them possible but strange, and yet others reject them. This must be evaluated in the light of the fact that impersonal predicates embedded under control verbs in Icelandic and Faroese are not unanimously judged as acceptable in these lan-
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guages either. In fact, both a speaker variation and example variation is found here. In any event, there is a clear correlation between observed frequencies, obtained from the Web, and the degree of acceptability found for these structures, as they are more frequent and more accepted in Icelandic than in German. This suggests that the difference between Icelandic and German is not categorical but gradient, contra the standard view that subject-like obliques of impersonal predicates are syntactic subjects in Icelandic but not in German. We have also discussed the few examples of impersonal predicates embedded under control verbs which have been documented in Old Norse-Icelandic, Old Swedish and Early Middle English. We have argued that the sole existence of such examples demonstrates that subject-like obliques of impersonal predicates also behaved syntactically as subjects in earlier Germanic, and that the scarcity of the examples is prognosticated since such examples are also statistically rare in the modern languages. We thus conclude that not only do Modern Icelandic and Modern Faroese have oblique subjects but that there are also data in Modern German and earlier Germanic which demand an oblique-subject analysis.
Acknowledgements This article is the final product of an earlier working paper of ours (2005) and we dedicate it to all our German informants over the years. For help with the German data published here for the first time, we thank Andy Stebler. We are also indebted to Werner Abraham, Ulrike Demske, Guðvarður Már Gunnlaugsson, Beate Hampe, Jóhannes G. Jónsson, Kjartan G. Ottosson, Christer Platzack, Doris Schönefeld, Halldór Á. Sigurðsson, Sigríður Sigurjónsdóttir, Heimir Freyr Viðarsson, Matthew Whelpton, two anonymous reviewers and the editors of this volume, in particular Peter de Swart. This work is supported in part by the Centre for Advanced Study, during Thórhallur Eythórsson’s affiliation in Oslo, Norway.
Abbreviations acc accusative, dat dative, inf infinitive, nom nominative, obl oblique, refl reflexive.
Notes 1. For a general discussion of control infinitives, we refer the interested reader to Kristoffersen’s work on control infinitives in Old-Norse Icelandic (1996), Lyngfelt’s work on Swedish (2002), and Jackendoff and Culicover’s work on English (2003), and the references cited therein. 2. We categorically gloss the unexpressed subject in control infinitives as pro in all examples in this paper. This has no theoretical implications from our side and is only done to distinguish control infinitives from other types of infinitives, such as raising infinitives.
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3. The compositional predicate falla í geð in fact differs from líka in that it is a so-called alternating predicate, whereas líka is not (cf. Barðdal 2001b, Eythórsson and Barðdal 2005). That is, falla í geð can either occur as a Dat–Nom predicate with the dative passing all behavioral subject tests in Icelandic, or as a Nom–Dat predicate with the nominative passing the relevant behavioral subject tests. The predicate’s meaning varies accordingly, ranging from ‘like’ via ‘be to sb’s liking’ to ‘please’. In (5b) above, it is the dative experiencer that functions as an unexpressed subject and not the nominative stimulus. For an argumentation that the German cognate of falla í geð, gefallen, is also an alternating predicate, see Eythórsson and Barðdal (2005). 4. We are indebted to Werner Abraham, Ulrike Demske, Beate Hampe and Doris Schönefeld who gave their classes the task to fill out our questionnaire in April–June 2004. 5. An anonymous reviewer, apparently a native speaker of German, rejects all our German examples (originally presented here out of context) except (6c), (8) and (9b), which s/he finds only marginally possible. The reviewer suggests that these particular examples may be better than the others because they are coordinated. As seen from Table 1, the examples in (6c) and (9b) are nevertheless judged worse by the participants of the questionnaire survey than, for instance, (7) and (9c), so coordination is hardly at issue here, or at least not solely. Interestingly, however, the sentence in (8) is not an example of a control infinitive but of an ordinary subordinate clause and is perfectly grammatical in German, yet the reviewer claims that it is only marginally possible in his/her language. This suggests that at least some of our discussants/informants may be more restrictive in their judgments than prescriptive standards of German demand. 6. We thank Jóhannes G. Jónsson, Sigríður Sigurjónsdóttir and Matthew Whelpton for giving their classes the task to fill out our questionnaire in April 2005. The Icelandic version of the questionnaire is structured in exactly the same way as the German one (cf. Appendices in Eythórsson and Barðdal 2005 and Barðdal 2006). 7. It is interesting that both for the Icelandic and the German responses, the judgments varied substantially depending on the participants’ majoring subject at university. The students majoring in English were much more liberal in their judgments than the students majoring in their native language (i.e. Icelandic and German, respectively). This correlation was found in both questionnaire surveys, although all the participants were native speakers of either Icelandic or German. This difference is highly significant for both surveys (p < .000), suggesting that students majoring in their own language may perhaps be stricter in their judgments than is demanded by prescriptive standards. At least they are significantly stricter in their judgments than other groups of speakers (cf. Barðdal 2000: 69–70, 85–6). 8. It could perhaps be argued that if biren is a modal verb whose complements were often preceded by the marker to in earlier English, the example in (19b) may well be monoclausal and not biclausal, which is a necessary prerequisite for a control analysis. An argument against a monoclausal analysis of sentences with biren together with an infinitive stems from the fact that its Icelandic cognate bera ‘be obliged’ is a control verb selecting for an infinitive, also preceded by the infinitive marker að (cf. Sigurðsson 2002: 701–3): (i)
(www.fila.is/stylesheet.asp?file=08282003203036, 2002) Honum ber að ____ vinna störf sín óháð persónulegum he.dat is-obliged to pro.nom do.inf jobs his irrespective-of personal skoðunum … opinions ‘He is obliged to carry out his duties irrespective of personal opinions …’
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Modal verbs in Icelandic divide into four syntactic classes: (a) control verbs with the infinitive marker að, like bera, (b) raising verbs with the infinite maker að, like hljóta ‘be bound to’, (c) raising verbs without the infinitive marker, like skulu ‘shall’, and (d) monoclausal modals selecting for a past participle, like geta ‘can’. Control verbs with modal meaning are, however, not restricted to Icelandic, as the German verb obliegen, which is synonymous to Icelandic bera, is also a control verb selecting for an infinitive with the infinitive marker zu ‘to’: (www.gema.de/urheberrecht/fachaufsaetze/gema.shtml) (ii) … dass es den Mitgliedern der gema obliegt, ____ zu entscheiden … that it the.dat members.dat the.gen gema are-obliged pro.nom to decide.inf ‘… that the members of gema have the obligation to decide …’ The fact that English biren can be semantically classified as a modal verb must therefore not be confused with it necessarily having a monoclausal structure. On the contrary, we have shown here that the category of modal verbs is not only consistent with a control analysis but that some control verbs are in fact also modal verbs. 9. A possible objection against our control analysis could be put forth on the basis of the fact that kveðask does not occur with the infinitive marker að, as is usual with control verbs in Icelandic. However, it has been shown by Anderson (1990: 264–7) that a small class of control verbs in Icelandic does not select for this marker. Both the verb kveðast and its synonymous segjast are included in this class. For a further discussion of this, and of the status of kveðast and segjast as evidential verbs selecting for different kinds of complement clauses, cf. Barðdal and Eythórsson (2003a: 452–62) and Eythórsson and Barðdal (2005: 836–7). 10. We are indebted to Guðvarður Már Gunnlaugsson and Heimir Freyr Viðarsson for checking our Old Norse-Icelandic examples against the original manuscripts.
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Falk, C. 1995. “Lexikalt kasus i svenska” [Lexical case in Swedish]. Arkiv för nordisk filologi 110: 141–78. Falk, C. 1997. Fornsvenska upplevarverb [Old Swedish Experiencer Verbs]. Lund: Lund University Press. Fanselow, G. 2002. “Quirky subjects and other specifiers”. In More than Words: A Festschrift for Dieter Wunderlich, I. Kaufmann and B. Stiebels (eds), 227–50. Berlin: Akademie Verlag. Fischer, S. and Blaszczak, J. 2001. “Diachronic perspective of quirky subjects”. In Working Papers of the International Symposium on ‘Non-nominative Subjects’, Tokyo, December 18–21, 2001, P. Bhaskararo (ed.), 42–56. Tokyo: Institute for the Studies of Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa. Haider, H. 2005. “How to turn German into Icelandic — and derive the OV–VO contrasts”. Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics 8: 1–53. Haspelmath, M. 2001. “Non-canonical marking of core arguments in European languages”. In Non-Canonical Marking of Subjects and Objects, A. Y. Aikhenwald, R. M. W. Dixon and M. Onishi (eds), 53–83. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Jackendoff, R. and Culicover, P. W. 2003. “The semantic basis of control in English”. Language 79 (3): 517–56. Jonas, D. 2002. “Recent change in Faroese experiencer constructions”. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, San Francisco. Jónsson, J. G. 1996. Clausal Architecture and Case in Icelandic. PhD dissertation, University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Jónsson, J. G. 2000. “Case and double objects in Icelandic”. Leeds Working Papers in Linguistics 8: 71–94. Jónsson, J. G. and Eythórsson, T. 2005. “Variation in subject case marking in Insular Scandinavian”. Nordic Journal of Linguistics 28(2): 223–45. Joseph, B. D. 1997. “On the linguistics of marginality: The centrality of the periphery”. Chicago Linguistic Society 33: 197–213. Keenan, E. 1976. “Towards a universal definition of ‘subject’”. In Subject and Topic, Ch. N. Lee (ed.), 303–34. New York: Academic Press. Keller, F. and Lapata, M. 2003. “Using the Web to obtain frequencies for unseen bigrams”. Computational Linguistics 29 (3): 459–84. Keller, F., Lapata, M. and Ourioupina, O. 2002. “Using the Web to overcome data sparseness”. In Proceedings of the Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing, J. Hajic and Y. Matsumoto (eds), 230–7. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania and the Association for Computational Linguistics. Kristoffersen, K. E. 1996. Infinitival Phrases in Old Norse: Aspects of their Syntax and Semantics. PhD dissertation, University of Oslo. Lyngfelt, B. 2002. Kontroll i svenskan. Den optimala tolkningen av infinitivers tankesubjekt [Control in Swedish: The Optimal Interpretation of the Unexpressed Subject of Infinitives]. [Nordistica Gothoburgensia 25]. Göteborg: Elanders Novum. MacWhinney, B. 2001. “Emergentist approaches to language”. In Frequency and the Emergence of Linguistic Structure, J. Bybee and P. Hopper (eds), 449–70. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Moore, J. and Perlmutter, D. M. 2000. “What does it take to be a dative subject?” Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 18: 373–416. Ottósson, K. G. 1992. The Middle Voice in Icelandic. PhD dissertation, Lund University. Petersen, H. P. 2002. “Quirky case in Faroese”. Fróðskaparrit 50: 63–76.
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Reis, M. 1982. “Zum Subjektbegriff im Deutschen”. In Satzglieder im Deutschen: Vorschläge zur Syntaktischen, Semantischen und Pragmatischen Fundierung, W. Abraham (ed.), 171–211. Tübingen: Narr. Rögnvaldsson, E. 1991. “Quirky subjects in Old Icelandic”. In Papers from the Twelfth Scandinavian Conference of Linguistics, H. Á. Sigurðsson (ed.), 369–78. Reykjavík: Institute of Linguistics, University of Iceland, Rögnvaldsson, E. 1995. “Old Icelandic: A non-configurational language?” Nowele 26: 3–29. Rögnvaldsson, E. 1996. “Frumlag og fall að fornu” [Subject and case in Old Icelandic]. Íslenskt mál 18: 37–69. Seefranz-Montag, A. von. 1983. Syntaktische Funktionen und Wortstellungsveränderung. Die Ent wicklung „Subjektloser“ Konstruktionen in einigen Sprachen. Munich: Wilhelm Fink. Seefranz-Montag, A. von. 1984. “ ‘Subjectless’ constructions and syntactic change”. In Historical Syntax, J. Fisiak (ed.), 521–53. Berlin: Mouton. Sigurðsson, H. Á. 1989. Verbal Syntax and Case in Icelandic. PhD dissertation, Lund University [Reprinted 1992 by Institute of linguistics, University of Iceland, Reykjavík]. Sigurðsson, H. Á. 2002. “To be an oblique subject: Russian vs. Icelandic”. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 20: 691–724. Stepanov, A. 2003. “On the ‘quirky’ difference Icelandic vs. German: A note of doubt.” Working Papers in Scandinavian Syntax 71: 1–32. Thráinsson, H., Petersen, H. P., Jacobsen, J. and Hansen, Z. S. 2004. Faroese: An Overview and Reference Grammar. Tórshavn: Føroya fróðskaparfelag. Wunderlich, D. 2003. “The force of lexical case: German and Icelandic compared”. To appear in The Nature of the Word: Essays in Honor of Paul Kiparsky, K. Hanson and S. Inkelas (eds). Massachusetts: MIT. Zaenen, A., Maling, J. and Thráinsson, H. 1985. “Case and grammatical functions: The Icelandic passive”. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 3: 441–83.
chapter 8
Experiencer coding in Nakh-Daghestanian Dmitry Ganenkov Moscow State University
This paper addresses argument marking patterns of experiencer verbs in NakhDaghestanian languages. Examination of valency patterns of 20 experiential verbs in 18 Daghestanian languages has revealed selective similarities between individual types which can be captured in the form of a semantic map. The three main ‘clusters’ of experiencer verbs which are distinguished, on both formal and semantic grounds, are: experiencers of perception predicates, of emotion predicates which often pattern with recipients, and experiencers encoded as involuntary agents. Further I provide a diachronic interpretation of the semantic map, suggesting a preliminary reconstruction of the semantic evolution of experiencer markers. It is argued that the two main diachronic tendencies in this domain are recruitment of spatial cases for experiential encoding, and assimilation of non-canonical experiencer arguments to canonically (ergatively) marked transitive subjects.
1. Introduction Experiencer verbs are usually defined as verbs whose argument perceives a visual image or sound, has a particular physical, mental or emotional state, or receives or possesses some information. Typical examples of experiencer predicates are ‘see’, ‘hear’, ‘be cold’, ‘know’, ‘love’, ‘want’, and ‘remember’. It is well known that in many languages the syntactic behaviour of at least some experiencer verbs differs from the standard transitive pattern, which is used with bivalent predicates (see e.g. Feuillet 1998). The experiencer is often marked not by one of the core cases, but by a peripheral case (most often dative) or an adposition. Some other experiencer verbs may be transitively aligned, with the experiencer marked either as A or as P. Thus, in terms of the expression of the experiencer argument, three main classes of verbs can be distinguished in the languages of the world, shown in the Russian examples below: subject-like experiencer (1), object-like experiencer (2), and ‘noncanonically’ marked experiencer, usually dative (3):
(1) Ja bojus’ sobak. I.nom be.afraid.1sg dog.gen.pl ‘I am afraid of dogs.’
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(2) On rasserdi-l svoj-ego otc-a. he.nom make.angry-pst.m self-acc father-acc.sg ‘He annoyed his father.’
(3) Mne xolodno. I.dat cold.impers ‘I am cold.’
Experiencer verbs have been the subject of several studies, mostly focusing on the syntactic properties of experiencer constructions, such as the subjecthood of the dative participant (Verma and Mohanan 1990, Feuillet 1998), or the degree of syntactic generalization that can be found among these constructions (Bossong 1998). Experiencer constructions have also been examined in work on non-canonical subject and object marking (Aikhenvald, Dixon, Onishi 2001 and Bhaskararao and Subbarao 2004, which includes an article on the Nakh-Daghestanian language Tsez). Semantically, experiencer predicates are usually assumed to form a homogeneous class. Yet there are no typological studies which deal with their semantic characteristics or specifically with the semantic relationships among experiencers of different verbs. The Nakh-Daghestanian languages are known for coding semantic roles straightforwardly. Often, the situational properties of a participant influence the valence pattern of the predicate. This is known as ‘role domination’ (see Foley and Van Valin 1984, Kibrik 1997). Compare the standard vs. involuntary agent opposition in Lezgian (Haspelmath 1993: 291–3):
(4) Zamira-di get’e xa-na. Zamira-erg pot break-pst ‘Zamira broke the pot.’
(5) Zamira.di-w-aj get’e xa-na. Zamira-ad-el pot break-pst ‘Zamira broke the pot accidentally/involuntarily.’
Nakh-Daghestanian languages possess a rich system of experiencer markers. For example, Andi uses four markers to encode the experiencer role: absolutive, dative, affective, and a locative form called cont-essive (location in contact with a landmark). Most Andic languages and also Tsakhur possess a distinct affective case to mark the experiencer with certain verbs. The set of markers and their distribution vary across the family. This paper presents a cross-linguistic comparison of the experiencer marking found in the Nakh-Daghestanian family. It attempts to determine several experiencer types and to establish semantic relations among them. Nakh-Daghestanian languages, with their rich inventory of role markers, are a natural choice for study since they grammaticalize situations that are not formally distinguished in many other languages. In addition to experiencer roles, some other functions including the recipient and the so-called involuntary agent (cf. 5) are also considered in connection with the experi-
Experiencer coding in Nakh-Daghestanian 181
encer’s functional domain. The study is based on a sample of eighteen languages representing all groups in Nakh-Daghestanian. Language data (listed in the appendix) were collected mostly from native consultants on the basis of an experiencer-oriented questionnaire, as well as from reference grammars, dictionaries and other secondary sources. The eighteen languages of the sample (arranged by genetic affiliation) are listed in Table 1. Table 1. The 18 languages of the sample Subgroup
Languages
Avar Andic Tsezic Lak Dargi Lezgic Nakh
Avar Andi, Chamalal, Akhvakh, Karata, Bagwalal, Godoberi Tsez Lak Akusha Dargi (very close to standard Dargi), Icari Dargi Lezgian, Agul, Tabasaran, Tsakhur, Archi Chechen, Ingush
2. An overview of experiencer coding in Nakh-Daghestanian 2.1 Introductory remarks This section deals with role-coding patterns of experiencer verbs. A detailed analysis of the morphological encoding of the experiencer role with different verbs shows that from a semantic point of view these predicates do not constitute a homogeneous class and can be classified into several groups. At first, for each language I examined the valence pattern of about twenty five verbs, but then I concluded that some verbs should be excluded from the study. First of all, here I do not consider experiencers expressed by possessive constructions. Neither internal possessors (genitive marked) nor external possessors (expressed by one of the locative cases) are taken into consideration. For example, the verb ‘remember’ is not within the scope of the present study since in virtually all Nakh-Daghestanian languages the meaning ‘remember’ is expressed by a possessive construction (literally ‘be on somebody’s heart’ or something similar). In contrast, the opposite meaning ‘forget’ is conceptualized as a possessive situation much more rarely, since the construction which translates as ‘go away from somebody’s heart’ is used only in two languages of the sample. So, experiencer marking with this verb is included into our study. An example of an external possessive construction from Andi is shown in (6), and an internal possessive construction from Lezgian is shown in (7):
(6) Di-č’u hono-w hek’a rok’o-lla. I-cont this-m person heart-super ‘I remember this person.’ (lit. ‘I have this person on heart.’)
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(7) I mani-di-n gaf-ar zi rik’e–l-aj fe-na. this song-obl-gen word-pl my heart-super-el go-pst ‘I forgot the words of this song.’ (lit. ‘The words of this song went away from my heart.’)
Verbs of thinking are also excluded from this study, since in all languages of the sample they either employ one of the canonical patterns (transitive in Lezgian and Chechen, intransitive in most other languages, e.g. Andi and Archi) or use an external possessive construction (as in Chamalal). Since the experiencer of this verb is not expressed by the same formal means as experiencers with other predicates, at least in Nakh-Daghestanian, I assume that ‘think’ differs conceptually from other verbs discussed here, and hence lies outside the experiencer domain. Finally, verbs of causation of emotion, such as ‘frighten’, ‘annoy’ etc., are also absent. Verb meanings of this sort are not easily identifiable in the languages of the sample. In any case, most of these verbs always use canonical constructions to encode the experiencer role (using either nominative marking or a causative construction). The final list of verbs considered in this paper is presented in Table 2 (although some argumentmarking patterns are lacking for some languages). Table 2. The 20 verbs examined in the paper 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.
‘see’ ‘hear’ ‘show’ ‘find’ ‘know’ ‘understand’ ‘forget’
8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14.
‘like/love’ ‘want’ ‘hate’ ‘be boring’ ‘suffice’ ‘need’ ‘be difficult’
15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20.
‘can (= know how)’ ‘be able’ ‘feel cold’ ‘be afraid’ ‘give’ ‘seem’
2.2 Three classes of experiencers and experiencer verbs In this section I propose a semantic classification of the experiencer verbs. This classification is built on formal distinctions in expressing the experiencer argument of the verbs. As is often assumed, the coincidence of linguistic form reflects the conceptual similarity of meanings expressed by this form. The more often cross-linguistically meanings are expressed by the same linguistic form, the closer semantically they are. The analysis of the formal means of encoding experiencers in the Nakh-Daghestanian languages allows us to distinguish three types of experiencers: 1. Perceptional: core experiencers that appear with perception verbs (‘see’, ‘hear’) and verbs of mental state (‘know’); 2. Recipiential: recipient-like experiencers that are typically expressed in the same way as recipient and appear with verbs of volition (‘want’), emotional states (‘love/like’, ‘hate’, ‘be boring’) and the predicate ‘be difficult (=experience difficulties with)’, as in It was difficult for me to catch up with him;
Experiencer coding in Nakh-Daghestanian 183
3. Involuntary: ‘involuntary agent’-like experiencers that are typically expressed in the same way as involuntary agents and appear with three verbs of the sample, ‘be able’, ‘find’, and ‘forget’. Below we consider the three classes of verbs in more detail.
2.2.1
Perceptional class
The core of the perceptional class consists of two predicates of perception (‘see’ and ‘hear’). The class often also includes the causative ‘show’ and some mental state verbs such as ‘know’, ‘understand’, ‘forget’, ‘seem’, ‘can (=know how)’, ‘be able’, and ‘find’. This means that in a considerable part of my sample these verbs encode the experiencer role with the same marker as the verbs ‘see’ and ‘hear’. Note that we distinguish the perceptional cluster not on purely semantic grounds, but taking into account formal distinctions, since in all cases when we say that the experiencer marking of a verb is identical to the marking of the experiencer of ‘see’, we mean that the recipient and the experiencer of ‘see’ are coded separately. The languages where the experiencer of ‘see’ and the recipient of ‘give’ are coded in the same way simply do not make a distinction between the perceptional and recipiential (see below) clusters and thus are not taken into consideration in classifying experiencer constructions. In all languages of the sample, the two perception verbs and the mental state verb ‘know’ express their experiencers with the same marker. Consider for example the valence patterns of these verbs in Bagwalal presented in (8) (Daniel 2001: 215).
(8) a. hã ‘see’ <Experiencer: Affective; Stimulus: Nominative> b. ãhã ‘hear’ <Experiencer: Affective; Stimulus: Nominative> c. bija ‘know’ <Experiencer: Affective; Stimulus: Nominative>
Other predicates in this group usually, but not always, mark their experiencers with the same case affix. For example, the verb ‘forget’ shows this pattern in twelve of the eighteen languages, while four languages use another marker (the remaining two languages use possessive constructions). Semantically the perceptional cluster is quite transparent in the sense that the semantic links between the verbs seem to be obvious. It is plausible that, diachronically, the marking specific to the perceptional cluster expanded from the perceptional predicates sensu stricto (‘see’ and ‘hear’). Two kinds of motivation for this semantic and diachronic development can be suggested. Extension by analogy can be assumed for those verbs that have a semantic component in common, or cases where one verb is derived from another by adding a new semantic component. This motivation underlies the semantic development of the experiencer coding for the verbs ‘see’ and ‘hear’ that have a common semantic component of passive perception (as opposed to active perception such as in ‘look’ and ‘listen’). The experiencer of ‘show’ borrows its marking from the experiencer of ‘see’, as the former is semantically derived by adding a causative component to the meaning of ‘see’. (In some languages this derivation is also present at the morphological level; cf. Godoberi haʔ-ali ‘show’, lit. ‘see-caus’).
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The second possible semantic motivation is a metaphoric shift from one conceptual domain, the source domain, to another (target) domain. In this case some more abstract target domain is conceptualized in terms of a more concrete source domain. Thus, treating the verbs of mental state together with the verbs of perception can be considered the result of a conceptual shift from the perceptual domain to the mental domain. Some mental state verbs, namely ‘know’, ‘understand’, and ‘seem’, arguably derive immediately from ‘see’. Presumably, this shift becomes possible by conceptualizing these situations in terms of visual perception. The meaning of the verb ‘seem’ is also close to the domain of visual perception — ‘If it seems to me that something happens, then I mentally see it’. The cognitive proximity of these senses (i.e. ‘see’ ~ ‘know’, ‘understand’, and ‘seem’) is also manifested in the frequency of polysemy between these senses, both cross-linguistically (cf. English verb see) and in Nakh-Daghestanian. For instance, the Agul verb ag̥as means both ‘see’ and ‘seem’ (9) depending on the wider context:
qaj-na agu-ne. (9) Za-s we ruš I-dat your daughter return-con see-pst ‘I saw that your daughter had returned.’ or ‘It seemed to me that your daughter had returned.’
In other contexts the same Agul verb means ‘understand’ (an inference from visual perception): (10) Za-s we ruš-a kitab ruXa–f agu-ne. I-dat your daughter-erg book read-part see-pst ‘I understood that your daughter would read the book (from how she behaved).’ The verb ‘find’ also borrows its argument-marking pattern from ‘see’. The motivation for this development is obvious. The situation of finding something is readily interpreted as if one has seen something accidentally or unexpectedly. If one ‘finds’ something after having looked for it a standard ergative marker is often used. The rest of the mental state verbs discussed here (i.e. ‘forget’ and ‘can (=know how)’) are connected with the perceptional domain indirectly, through the sense of ‘know’. Here, the first kind of semantic motivation — metonymic extension — comes into play again. The semantic association of ‘can (=know how)’ with ‘know’ is well manifested in many European languages. In Bulgarian (11), znam ‘(I) know’ is used for ‘can (=know how)’: (11) Zna-m da pluva-m. know-1sg subj swim-1sg ‘I can swim.’ The same holds true for the Nakh-Daghestanian languages, cf. the following examples from Karata:
Experiencer coding in Nakh-Daghestanian 185
(12) Dj a bii-dj a di-w wači w-oã-łer. I.dat know-prs my-m brother m-go-that ‘I know that my brother has gone.’ (13) Dj a bii-dj a k̥alč’aa-ła. I.dat know-prs swim-inf ‘I can swim.’ The experiencer of ‘can (=know how)’ may further serve as a source domain and shift to the experiencer of ‘be able’, so that a grammaticalization chain ‘know — can (=know how) — be able’ arises. Indeed, the development from ‘know’ to participant-internal possibility (I can eat 5 hamburgers at one sitting) through learned participant-internal possibility (cf. Je sais nager ‘I can swim’, where the French savoir ‘know’ is used) is common in the history of mental state predicates (see van der Auwera and Plungian 1998: 88–9, 92, Bybee et al. 1994: 187–90). The verb ‘forget’ is another instance of development by adding a semantic component to the meaning of a source verb. In this case the added component is negation, and ‘forget’ is interpreted as ‘not to know (any more)’. Thus, ‘forget’ is the counterpart to ‘know’ rather than to ‘remember’, which does not belong to this cluster or, at least, belongs to its periphery.
2.2.2
Recipiential class
The second cluster of experiencer verbs consists of those verbs that most often encode their experiencer arguments by a dative marker (i.e. the same marker as that of the typical non-agentive animate argument of ‘give’). Below, this class will be referred to as the recipiential cluster. As in 2.2.1, we should note that the experiencer marking of a verb is considered identical to the marking of the recipient only for those languages that distinguish between the perceptional and recipiential clusters, i.e. if the recipient and the experiencer of ‘see’ are coded separately. Within the recipiential cluster one can distinguish between three sub-groups depending on how frequently the marking appears with the recipient pattern. The first group includes those predicates that mark experiencers with the dative in all languages of the sample. These are ‘need’, ‘suffice’, and ‘be difficult (=experience difficulties)’. The examples in (14)–(16) are from Karata. (14) Dj a ʕarse q’ora idj a. I.dat money need cop ‘I need money.’ (15) Dja beʔũ bešãda Ruruš. I.dat suffice hundred rouble ‘Hundred roubles is enough for me.’
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(16) Dj a zaHmatob idj a rahada herč’a-ła. I.dat difficult cop early wake.up-inf ‘It’s difficult for me to wake up early (in the morning).’ The next group includes ‘want’, ‘like/love’, ‘hate’, and ‘be boring’, which encode the experiencer with the dative marker in all languages except Andi (where the experiencers of these verbs are expressed by the affective case and thus pattern with the perceptional cluster). Compare examples (17)–(19) from Chamalal: (17) Du-ła buq’u–d idak’a ehi jik’ula? you.sg-dat want-conv aux at.home cop ‘Do you want to stay at home?’ (18) Di-ła idal-ede aj mač’. I-dat love-prs this.f girl ‘I love this girl.’ (19) Di-ła mi č’alʕã. I-dat you.sg be.boring.pst ‘I’m fed up with you.’ Last come the verbs that often, but by no means always, express the experiencer role with the dative. These are ‘find’, ‘feel cold’, and ‘be afraid’. Interestingly, from this analysis of the recipiential cluster two other coding patterns general to Nakh-Daghestanian emerge: the ‘need’-‘suffice’-‘be difficult’ group (henceforth the ‘need’ subgroup) and the ‘want’-‘like’-‘hate’-‘be.boring’ group (henceforth the ‘want’ subgroup). Both the ‘need’ subgroup and the ‘want’ subgroup are semantically homogeneous, and the links with the recipient are quite obvious. For example, the sense ‘need’ is opposite to ‘suffice’ (‘If I have enough of something, then I do not need it’), so it seems rather natural to treat them together and code their experiencers in the same way. The experiencers of these verbs, on the one hand, and the recipient, on the other, are connected through the concept of receiving. For example, the experiencer of ‘need’ is presented as a participant who wants to receive something or, in other words, be given something. The verbs of the second subgroup can be referred to as emotional attitude verbs. The meanings of these predicates are closely related to each other. Thus, ‘hate’ and ‘be boring’ are semantically derived from ‘like’ by adding a component of negation, while the close connection between ‘want’ and ‘like’ is shown by the fact that they are generally expressed by the same verb in Nakh-Daghestanian languages. Kibrik and Kodzasov (1988: 175) suggest that this polysemy is present in all Daghestanian languages (although some languages also possess a distinct predicate for ‘like’; e.g. Bagwalal). Notably, it is not unfamiliar to European languages either. The Spanish verb querer and the Macedonian verb saka are ambiguous in the same way. The experiencers of emotional attitude verbs are arguably not related to the recipient directly (i.e. there are no obvious links between these verbs and the recipient), but
Experiencer coding in Nakh-Daghestanian 187
through another sub-group of experiencers, the ‘need’ sub-group. ‘Need’ and ‘want’ have much in common. The meaning of the verb ‘need’ contains a semantic component of wish — ‘If I need something, then I want to get it’. Presumably, it is this component that allows such verbs as ‘need’ to govern the same marker on the experiencer as ‘want’ (note that the diachronic development goes from ‘want’ to ‘need’, and not the other way round - see below). Moreover, some languages (Karata, Lezgian, Tsez) demonstrate the ‘want’ — ‘need’ polysemy, thus corroborating our hypothesis. Thus, during the semantic evolution of these verbs, the ‘need’ sub-group is a mediator between recipients and experiencers of the ‘want’ sub-group, since ‘need’ experiencers may be conceptualized in two different (though not mutually exclusive) ways. On the one hand, the experiencer of ‘need’ is a participant who wants to get something (at the present moment) and, on the other hand, it is a participant who (potentially) will be given this object. The third sub-group in the recipiential cluster consists of several semantically isolated verbs including ‘find’, ‘feel cold’ and ‘be afraid’. Each of these verbs uses a coding different from ‘give’ in a considerable part of the sample (from three to seven languages), but expresses its experiencer with the dative marker in the rest. This is the most clear with ‘find’. From the semantic viewpoint, the experiencer of ‘find’ is characterized as a participant who has just begun to possess an object, so it is natural to express him in the same way as a recipient. Therefore, the experiencer of ‘find’ can have two conceptual interpretations — a participant who sees something and a participant who receives something. The two predicates ‘feel cold’ and ‘be afraid’ are arguably aligned with verbs that are semantically similar, namely ‘be difficult’ (psychological state) is aligned with ‘feel cold’ (physiological state) and ‘like/love’ (emotional attitude) with ‘be afraid’ (emotional state). Note that as for ‘be afraid’ a non-canonical (dative) marking is attested only in three closely genetically related East-Lezgic languages (Lezgian, Agul, and Tabasaran), as is illustrated by the following example from Tabasaran (20), where the experiencer is expressed with the dative and the stimulus is marked by a locative case. In other languages canonical (intransitive) marking is used. (20) Uzu-z Xu-jir–i–q-an guč’ura. I-dat dog-pl-obl-post-el be.afraid ‘I am afraid of dogs.’
2.2.3
Involuntary class
The last experiencer cluster contains verbs that mark their experiencer as an involuntary agent, as shown in (5) from Lezgian, where a special marker is used to show that an agentive-like participant does not fully control the situation. The involuntary agent construction is found in all Daghestanian languages (except for Dargi and Archi where the standard transitive pattern is the only means of marking any type of agent). Nakh languages lack this distinction altogether. Typically, involuntary agents are marked by
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one of the locative cases with a meaning of motion from a landmark (as the Lezgian example shows). Bagwalal and Lak possess a special case marker for this semantic role. (This marker is also used in the valence patterns of several verbs like ‘take from’, but its main function is to mark involuntary agents.) It is important to note that the involuntary cluster exists only in Lezgic languages; other Daghestanian languages use the involuntary agent marking only for ‘be able’. In Lezgic, however, the cluster includes the verbs ‘be able’, ‘find’, and ‘forget’. (21) shows the valence patterns of these verbs in Tsakhur, as reported in Kibrik (1999: 352): <Experiencer: Ad-elative> (21) aIXas ‘be able’ awajkes ‘find’ <Experiencer: Ad-elative> k’eliXanas ‘forget’ <Experiencer: Ad-elative> What all of these verbs have in common is that the result of the situations described depends only in part on the participant’s will and does not at all depend on his efforts. It is not unusual for some of these verbs to be aligned with another cluster (most often, the perceptional cluster). The most stable member of the involuntary agent cluster is the verb ‘be able,’ which marks its actor similarly to involuntary agents in half of the languages in my sample. (The other half places this verb in the perceptional cluster or aligns it with the standard agent.) It is easy to account for this stability: what this verb refers to is an uncontrolled situation which does not depend on a participant’s efforts. In some languages there are two ways of marking the actor of ‘be able’ — the ‘perceptional’ marking and the ‘involuntary’ marking. The first way is much more common. The second way is typically related to a subject that tries to do something for a period of time and finally (often unexpectedly to himself) achieves his goal (cf. Daniel 2001: 217). The division of experiencer verbs into the three large clusters proposed here is a result of a cross-linguistic comparison within a group of closely related languages. Of course, this division is not necessarily formally encoded in all languages of the sample, since each individual language may have a reduced scheme conflating some (or all) of these clusters. Accordingly, we may classify the languages of the sample according to how many classes of experiencer verbs are distinguished by formal means (excluding canonical and possessive constructions): 1. The first group includes those languages that do not formally distinguish different types of experiencers. These are Ingush and Karata. 2. The second group of languages consists of Agul, Akhvakh, Archi, Chechen, Lezgian, Lak, Tabasaran and Tsez where different kinds of experiencers are not distinguished, except for the experiencer of ‘be able’, which is coded identically to an involuntary agent. 3. The third group includes Andi, Chamalal, Godoberi, Avar, Akusha Dargi, where just two types of experiencer are distinguished, these are the perceptional/involuntary cluster and the recipiential cluster.
Experiencer coding in Nakh-Daghestanian 189
4. The last group distinguishes all three clusters forming an opposition between perceptional, recipiential and involuntary experiencers. This group includes Bagwalal, Tsakhur and the Icari dialect of Dargi. Of course, verbs included in the clusters may to a certain extent vary from language to language. For example, in Tsakhur and Icari the involuntary cluster includes ‘be able’, ‘forget’ and ‘find’, while in Bagwalal it consists of only the verb ‘be able’. To sum up, this study distinguished three clusters of coding patterns for experiencer verbs: perceptional experiencers, recipiential experiencers, and ‘involuntary’ experiencers. We have shown relations among the verbs within these clusters and interconnections between the clusters themselves. Two mechanisms were posited to explain the semantic derivation from one group of verbs to another — metaphoric shift and extension by analogy. The first of these mechanisms is a shift from one conceptual domain to another (in our case from perceptual to mental and emotional predicates); it is made possible by a metaphoric interpretation of the mental domain in terms of less abstract perception predicates. The second mechanism expands the scope of a marker within the same conceptual domain due to the presence of identical components in verbal meaning. The next section outlines the semantic evolution of experiencer marking by analyzing the use of cognate markers in different languages of the family.
3. Diachronic origin and semantic evolution of experiencer marking Another aspect of experiencer marking in Nakh-Daghestanian is its diachronic origins and semantic development. Of all the languages of the family, a reliable reconstruction of experiencer markers is possible only for Andic, Avar and possibly Tsakhur, and in all cases the experiencer marker ultimately derives from a spatial meaning. 3.1 Spatial sources of experiencer markers All basic spatial meanings (allative, locative and ablative) are attested as giving rise to experiencer markers. The most frequent source is allative developing into an affective case marker (i.e. a distinct case marker for experiencers with some verbs, mostly perception predicates). This evolution is typical of Andic languages, where at least two different allative markers developed into experiencer markers. In most Andic languages (Andi, Bagwalal, Godoberi, and the Gigatli dialect of Chamalal) the affective case employs the reflexes of the Proto-Andic affix *-cl-o (Alekseev 1988: 83) where ‘cl’ stands for class agreement. All these languages have now lost the allative use of the marker; the only exception is Bagwalal where this marker is still used to form allatives for several local place names and in spatial adverbs (Daniel 2002: 159). Chamalal (excluding the Gigatli dialect) lost the Proto-Andic affix *-cl-o altogether
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and currently uses a different marker -Xe, whose main function is to denote movement towards a landmark (22), but with some verbs it also expresses the experiencer role (23): (22) Ĩc̥-da-X–e w-uR de: o-w. spring-obl-ad-all m-send.pst I.erg this-m ‘I send him to the spring.’ (23) Di-X-e haʔa di-w ima. I-ad-all see.pst I-m father ‘I saw my father.’ In Avar, experiencer functions developed from the locative. The marker -da normally expresses location on the (upper) surface of a landmark (24); but is also used for marking some experiencers (25): (24) Stol-al-da t’ex b-ugo. table-obl-super book n-cop ‘There is a book on the table.’ (25) Di-da do-b ric¯ˇ’a-na. I-super this-n understand-pst ‘I understood it (this word).’ Finally, in Tsakhur ablative has become a means to mark experiencers. This is most clear in the Sabunchi dialect of Tsakhur, where a super-elative affix -le (denoting motion from the upper surface of a landmark) marks experiencers of ‘see’, ‘hear’, and ‘know’ (Talibov 1979: 13). In other Tsakhur dialects the situation is obscured by the fact that the affective case marker -k’le is not formally identical to the super-elative marker -le. Historically, however, the affective case marker is likely to be derived from the superelative morpheme. Another possible explanation is that originally there were two different markers, namely experiential -k’le and spatial -le (this is the actual situation in most of the dialects). In the Sabunchi dialect, then, these two markers merged, and the spatial affix -le has been preserved. An additional argument in favour of this hypothesis comes from the Mikik dialect, where both forms are present, but the super-elative can be substituted for the affective marker -k’le in all contexts (Gal’perina 1973: 42–4).
3.2 Semantic development of experiencer markers The present analysis of diachronic evolution of the experiencer marker is based primarily on the data from Andic languages. These data are convenient because the Andic languages possess a set of relevant markers that indisputably derive from one proto-Andic suffix *-cl-o. Table 3 shows its reflexes in four Andic languages and provides a list of experiencer uses for each language.
Experiencer coding in Nakh-Daghestanian 191
Table 3. Reflexes of Proto-Andic *-cl-o and their experiencer uses Language
Marker
Uses with verbs
Andi
-cl-o
‘see’, ‘hear’, ‘show’, ‘know’, ‘forget’, ‘understand’, ‘seem’, ‘can (=know how)’, ‘be able’, ‘find’, ‘want’, ‘like/love’, ‘hate’, ‘be boring’
Bagwalal
-ba
‘see’, ‘hear’, ‘show’, ‘know’, ‘forget’, ‘understand’, ‘seem’, ‘can (=know how)’, ‘be able’, ‘find’
Godoberi
-ra
‘see’, ‘hear’, ‘know’, ‘forget’
Karata
-ja/-wa
‘see’, ‘hear’, ‘show’, ‘know’, ‘forget’, ‘understand’, ‘seem’, ‘can (=know how)’, ‘be able’, ‘find’, ‘want’, ‘like/love’, ‘hate’, ‘be boring’, ‘need’, ‘suffice’, ‘be difficult’, ‘give’
As Table 3 shows, the scope of these cognate morphemes varies a lot. The use of the corresponding marker is the most limited in Godoberi where only four experiencer verbs allow it (Godoberi ‘forget’ can also mark its experiencer with a marker denoting location in contact with a landmark). The next is Bagwalal with ten verbs governing forms with -ba. The cognate found in Andi has a much wider range of use. Finally, in Karata almost all the experiencer verbs we have been looking at are found with a cognate form. Note that -ja/-wa has also become the dative marker in Karata, replacing the Proto-Andic dative marker *-La (Alekseev 1988: 81–2). We may suspect that the reflexes of Proto-Andic *-cl-o in different Andic languages show different stages of semantic evolution. The problem is which of the verb frames represents the first step of this development, and is thus most directly connected to the original spatial meaning. Since Bagwalal is the only language that preserves the spatial meaning of the marker, it would be plausible to assume that the verb that is closest to the spatial domain should be one of the verbs that code their experiencers with -ba in Bagwalal. To comply with the adjacency requirement, we should assume that the semantic evolution starts from the perceptional cluster (the semantic-map method is discussed in Haspelmath (2003) and in van der Auwera and Plungian (1998) in more detail). Similarly, applying the adjacency requirement, we transform the grouping of the predicates in Table 3 above into the following scheme representing the functional spread of the markers under discussion: allative > ‘see’ > ‘hear’ ‘know’ ‘forget’
‘show’ > ‘understand’ ‘seem’ ‘know how’ ‘be able’ ‘find’
‘want’ > ‘like/love’ ‘hate’ ‘be boring’
‘need’ ‘suffice’ ‘be difficult’ ‘give’
I do not claim that this scheme reproduces the actual expansion of experiencer markers over time. Rather, by using the adjacency principle, we exclude some evolution paths that are implausible from the given distribution of markers. However, in order
192 Dmitry Ganenkov
to choose among the remaining paths we must examine the semantic relationships between the predicates. It was shown above that the verbs of the third and the fourth column (‘show’ and ‘want’) are semantically related to the verb ‘see’ (or ‘know’), and hence to the other verbs in the second column. Therefore, in a hypothetical semantic map these verbs should be adjacent to the ‘see’ group. Unlike the other groups, the ‘show’ group does not behave as a homogenous class; i.e. it is possible that some of these verbs encode the experiencer with allative, while others use a different affix. This is possible because these meanings develop independently from the same source (from the experiencers of ‘see’ or ‘know’). Now, let us consider the case of ‘show’. It is noteworthy that the allative develops into the marker of the experiencer of ‘show’ independently of its development into the marker of the experiencer of ‘see’, although the presence of a common semantic component may also support these changes. Compare Figure 1. If we look at other possible sources of experiencer markers in Nakh-Daghestanian languages, we will find that none of them contradict this semantic map. Thus, Avar, featuring the locative source of experiencer marker, meets all constraints of the map. Further, although an ablative source for experiencer coding (as in Tsakhur) is located at the other end of the map, the distribution of marking does not contradict the map. In the semantic analysis presented above we came to the conclusion that ‘understand’ and similar verbs do not represent intermediate stages of development between the ‘see’ and ‘want’ groups. Yet, in virtually all languages where the verbs of the recipiential cluster express the experiencer in the same way as ‘see’, the same marker is used by verbs like ‘seem’ or ‘understand’. A possible explanation would be that ‘seem’ and
show understand
motion to/ location at see hear
seem
want like/love hate be boring
know
forget
find
know how
be able
Involuntary agent
suffice need be difficult
Recipient
Agent
motion from Figure 1. A semantic map of experiencer and related functions (here and elsewhere the verb actually stands for the experiencer of that verb)
Experiencer coding in Nakh-Daghestanian 193
similar verbs are extremely close to the perceptual domain, so that when the semantic development expands to the ‘want’ group, which is farther from ‘see’, the verbs immediately connected with ‘see’ are likely to be included in the scope of this expanding experiencer marking. With these assumptions, the data of all languages in the sample perfectly fit in the map in Figure 1, which in fact suggests various hypotheses about possible and impossible combinations in experiencer marking. Two examples from Dargi dialects will illustrate how this map works. The first example comes from Akusha Dargi (which is close to Standard Dargi), where just two markers (ergative and dative) cover most of the map (cf. Figure 2). The ergative is used with ‘see’, ‘hear’, ‘know’, ‘forget’, ‘understand’, ‘can (=know how)’, ‘be able’, and ‘find’, while the rest of the verbs discussed here govern the dative. (The only exception is the verb ‘show’, which governs the in-allative.) Diachronically, the dative marker -s is assumed to have developed from the in-allative marker -zi (motion to the inner region). The semantic evolution may then be reconstructed as follows: first, the in‑allative marker began to encode experiencers with ‘see’, ‘hear’, and ‘know’; then it continued to gradually penetrate ‘deeper’ into the experiencer domain (the experiencers of ‘understand’, ‘want’, ‘need’ and, finally, recipient) and at a certain moment it lost its spatial uses and became a dative marker (along with several phonetic changes). The semantic contiguity was destroyed and an ergative marker began its expansion into the experiencer sphere. This expansion first of all concerned ‘be able’, ‘find’, and ‘forget’, which aligned their experiencer marking with involuntary agent constructions (given that the involuntary agent certainly is very close to the typical agent). The penetration of the ergative into the experiencer domain arguably triggered the process of syntactic generalization, and a number of other verbs turned into ordinary transitive verbs. Only the verb ‘show’ has preserved its original marking, presumably because it already had an ergative agent and could not align an experiencer marker with the ergative pattern. (Note that it uses a current phonetic form -zi (in-allative) rather than switching to the reduced form -s (dative), since the latter situation might violate the adjacency requirement.) One might expect that this process of shifting to the standard transitive constructions will continue. The distribution of the ergative and the dative in Akusha Dargi is shown in Figure 2. The second example is taken from the Icari dialect of Dargi, which diverges significantly from Standard Dargi (cf. Figure 3). The dialect arguably presents an earlier stage of the semantic evolution of experiencer marking. Similar to Akusha Dargi, Icari has two markers for experiencers — ergative and super-allative (motion to the surface). The distribution of the markers is as follows: the verbs ‘see’, ‘hear’, ‘know’, ‘forget’, ‘understand’, ‘can (=know how)’, ‘be able’, ‘find’ code the experiencers with the ergative, while the rest employ the super-allative (again, with the exception of ‘show’ which uses the in-allative just like in the Akusha dialect). The distribution is therefore quite close to that of the Akusha Dargi, the only difference being that instead of the dative mark-
194 Dmitry Ganenkov
show understand
motion to/ location at
DAT
see hear
seem
want like/love hate be boring
know
forget
find
know how
be able
Involuntary agent
suffice need be difficult
Recipient
ERG Agent
motion from Figure 2. The distribution of ergative and dative in Akusha Dargi
er Icari uses the super-allative. This would seem to violate the adjacency requirement, since the spatial meaning and the recipient role turn out to be expressed by the same marker, while ‘see’, which is placed between them in Figure 1, codes its experiencer with another marker. But, four verbs (‘see’, ‘hear’, ‘know’, and ‘understand’) optionally allow the super-allative marking on a par with the ergative marking. Consequently, we really have three groups of verbs: ergative only (‘be able’, ‘can (=know how)’, ‘find’, ‘forget’, note that they all belong to the involuntary cluster discussed above), ergative ~ super-allative in variation, and super-allative only. So the adjacency rule really holds true: the ergative expansion started from the periphery of this functional domain (agent or show understand
motion to
SUP-ALL
see hear
seem
want like/love hate be boring
know
forget
find
suffice need be difficult
Recipient
ERG know how
be able
Involuntary agent motion from
Figure 3. The distribution of ergative and super-allative in Icari
Agent
Experiencer coding in Nakh-Daghestanian 195
agent-like constructions) and then gradually penetrated into its very heart. But the super-allative coding pattern has been preserved in order to avoid a violation of semantic contiguity. As soon as the super-allative marker loses its spatial meaning, one can expect that the ergative marking will become the only way to mark the experiencer with these verbs, as is the case in Akusha Dargi. See Figure 3 for the distribution of the case markers in Icari. Curiously, the situation in Icari is very similar to Russian, where there are also three groups of verbs: 1. verbs that allow only nominative marking of the experiencer — ‘be able’, ‘can (=know how)’, ‘forget’, ‘find’; 2. verbs that encode the experiencer either with nominative or with dative — ‘see’, ‘hear’, ‘understand’, ‘want’, ‘like/love’, ‘hate’ (cf. constructions like ja vižu [I see-1sg] versus mne vidno [I-dat see-impers]); 3. verbs that code the experiencer only with dative — ‘be boring’, ‘be difficult’, ‘need’, ‘suffice’. The modern Russian dative developed from the allative, although the original spatial meaning is now lost. Thus, the distribution of experiencer marking in Russian is in many respects similar to that in Icari: nominative is governed by the verbs immediately connected to agentive constructions (involuntary experiencers), the nominative– dative alternation originally located in the center (‘see’, ‘hear’, ‘understand’) spreads to some verbs (‘want’, ‘like/love’, ‘hate’) in the periphery of the domain. Finally, experiencers that are closest to the recipient are expressed by the dative. We can see also that in Russian the transitive alignment expanded farther than in Icari. The last example to be considered here is Avar. Here, the modern dative marker -e is cognate to the Proto-Andic allative *-cl-o (see above). Avar shows the next step of the semantic evolution of experiencer marking after Karata, where the scope of this marker has been considerably extended, so that it became the dative marker which now covers both the experiencer domain and the recipient. In Avar, however, a new experiencer marker, the super-essive -da, arises from another spatial source and re-covers the center of the experiencer domain. This marker codes experiencers of ‘see’, ‘hear’, ‘show’, ‘know’, ‘can (=know how)’, ‘be able’, ‘seem’, ‘understand’, and ‘find’. The old experiential, now dative, marker -e is gradually pushed outside this domain and retreats to its periphery (experiencers of ‘want’, ‘need’ etc.). As a result, the coding pattern of the perceptional cluster is again formally distinct from that of the recipiential cluster.
4. Conclusion In this paper I examined the argument marking patterns of a number of experiencer verbs in Nakh-Daghestanian languages. This allowed us to distinguish several groups of predicates, which differ mainly in the ways they govern experiencers. The analysis
196 Dmitry Ganenkov
conducted in the paper shows that the morphological coding is determined to a great extent by the semantics of the corresponding verbs. In addition to this, a preliminary reconstruction of the semantic evolution of experiencer markers revealed two diachronic tendencies in this domain: 1. First, experiencer markers tend to arise from spatial sources and then gradually develop into dative markers; 2. Second, non-canonical experiencer arguments often turn into canonically marked transitive subjects, which are expressed by the ergative case in Nakh-Daghestanian languages. It may be relevant in this respect that in these languages the core arguments (i.e. S, A, and O) are not so strongly opposed to each other as far as their syntactic (subject) properties are concerned. For example, in Agul both A and O can control reflexive pronouns and behave similarly with respect to most other syntactic properties, so that none of them can be considered a true subject (from the viewpoint of typical European languages). Presumably, this could facilitate the above-mentioned processes of semantic development, although the details of this are still to be investigated. Unlike most cross-linguistic studies, which explore a sample of genetically and areally unrelated languages, this paper has considered a group of closely related languages. Such a methodology seems to be fruitful when one studies the details of the diachronic development via comparison of cognate markers. It is hoped that this study will help us to better understand the overall structure of this functional domain.
Acknowledgements I am very grateful to Michael Daniel, Yuri Lander, Vladimir Plungian and two anonymous reviewers for their comments on an earlier version of this paper as well as for improving my English.
Abbreviations acc accusative, ad location near a landmark, all allative, aor aorist, cont location in contact with a landmark, conv converb, cop copula, dat dative case, el elative (motion from a landmark), erg ergative case, ess location at a landmark, F feminine, gen genitive, ia involuntary agent, impers impersonal construction, in location in a container, inf infinitive, inter location in a mass, m masculine, n neuter, nom nominative, obl oblique stem, part participle, pl plural, post location behind a landmark, prs present, pst past, S sentential clause, sg singular, sub location under a landmark, super location on the surface of a landmark.
Experiencer coding in Nakh-Daghestanian 197
References Aikhenvald, A. Y., Dixon, R. M. W. and Onishi, M. (eds) 2001. Non-canonical Marking of Subjects and Objects. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: Benjamins. Alekseev, M. E. 1988. Sravnitel’no-istoričeskaja morfologija avaro-andijskix jazykov [Comparative-historical morphology of the Avar-Andic languages]. Moscow: Nauka. Bhaskararao, P. and Subbarao, K. V. (eds) 2004. Non-nominative Subjects. Volume 1–2. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Bossong, G. 1998. “Le marquage de l’expérient dans les langues de l’Europe”. In Actance et Valence, J. Feuillet (ed.), 259–94. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Bybee, J. L., Perkins, R. D. and Pagliuca, W. 1994. The Evolution of Grammar: Tense, Aspect, and Modality in the Languages of the World. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Daniel, M. A. 2001. “Padež i lokalizacija” [Case and localization]. In Bagvalinskij jazyk. Grammatika. Teksty. Slovari [Bagwalal. Grammar. Texts. Dictionaries], A. E. Kibrik (ed.), 203–31. Moscow: Nasledie. Daniel, M. A. 2002. “Bagvalinskie toponimy kak problema tipologii častej reči” [Bagwalal Place Names: A Case Study in Part-of-Speech Typology]. In Grammatikalizacija prostranstvennyx značenij [Grammaticalization of spatial meanings], V. A. Plungian (ed.), 157–66. Moscow: Russkie slovari. Feuillet, J. (ed.). 1998. Actance et valence dans les langues de l’Europe. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Foley, W. A. and Van Valin, R. D. Jr. 1984. Functional Syntax and Universal Grammar. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gal’perina, V. I. 1973. Padežnaja sistema caxurskogo jazyka [The case system of Tsakhur]. Unpublished manuscript. Moscow. Haspelmath, M. 1993. A Grammar of Lezgian. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Haspelmath, M. 2003. “The geometry of grammatical meaning: Semantic maps and cross-linguistic comparison”. In The New Psychology of Language II, M. Tomasello (ed.), 211–42, Mahwah, nj: Lawrence Erlbaum. Kibrik, A. E., Kodzasov, S. V., Olovjannikova, I. P. and Samedov, D. S. 1977. Arčinskij jazyk. Teksty i slovari [Archi. Texts and dictionaries]. Moscow: Izd-vo mgu. Kibrik, A. E. and Kodzasov, S. V. 1988. Sopostavitel’noe izučenie dagestanskix jazykov. Glagol [The contrastive study of Daghestanian languages. The verb]. Moscow: Izd-vo mgu. Kibrik, A. E. (ed.). 1996. Godoberi. München-Newcastle: Lincom Europa. Kibrik, A. E. 1997. “Beyond subject and object: Toward a comprehensive clause patterning typology”. Linguistic Typology 1: 279–346. Kibrik, A. E. (ed.). 1999. Elementy caxurskogo jazyka v tipologičeskom osveščenii [Elements of Tsakhur in a typological perspective]. Moscow: Nasledije. Kibrik, A. E. (ed.). 2001. Bagvalinskij jazyk. Grammatika. Teksty. Slovari [Bagwalal. Grammar. Texts. Dictionaries]. Moscow: Nasledije. Magomedova, P. T. 1999. Čamalinsko-russkij slovar’ [Chamalal-Russian dictionary]. Maxačkala: IIJaL. Magomedova, P. T. and Xalidova, R. S. 2001. Karatinsko-russkij slovar’ [Karata-Russian dictionary]. Maxačkala: IIJaL. Talibov, B. B. 1979. “Morfologičeskaja i sintaksičeskaja xarakteristika padežej caxurskogo jazyka” [Morphological and syntactical properties of cases in Tsakhur]. In Imennoe sklonenie
198 Dmitry Ganenkov v dagestanskix jazykax [Noun inflection in Daghestanian languages], U. A. Mejlanova (ed.), 4–23. Maxačkala: IIJaL. van der Auwera, J. and Plungian, V. A. 1998. “Modality’s semantic map”. Linguistic Typology 2: 79–124. Verma, M. K. and Mohanan, K. E. (eds) 1990. Experiencer Subjects in South Asian Languages. Stanford: Center for the Study of Language and Information.
Appendix Agul (f.n.) 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20.
ag̥as un xas ag̥arq’as ǯik’as Haa Rawurdi a jurk’uralas alat¯arxas k¯andea k¯andea — bizar xas — k¯andea — xas Haa xas mik’eldia guč’aa ic’as ag̥as
Andi (f.n.) dat; nom dat; nom erg; nom; dat dat; nom dat; nom dat; nom dat; nom dat; nom dat; nom dat; nom dat; nom ad-el; s dat; s ad-el (=ia); s dat dat; post-el erg; nom; dat dat; s
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20.
haG̥o anłi haG̥ołi b-ison c’inni bic¯ˇ’unni bec¯ˇ’o žilʔi žilʔi riXon č’alanni biGon q̥oreGod rec¯ˇin beReł¯i beReł¯i sodo sirdo c¯ˇi č’o
aff; nom aff; nom erg; nom; aff aff; nom aff; nom aff; nom aff; nom aff; nom aff; nom aff; nom aff; nom dat; nom dat; nom dat; s aff; s aff; s dat nom; cont-el erg; nom; dat aff; s
Experiencer coding in Nakh-Daghestanian 199
Akhvakh (f.n.) 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20.
harig̥ari ãLani harig̥a:de mičani beq’ari b-ic¯ˇ’ilari hidičari k̥ĩłari k̥ĩłari kit’ayari č’aʕinari miq̥’ani q¯̥araʕani zaHwãlilari beq’ari ĩdani, bažari w-uXari Leri oxede b-uxari
Archi (Kibrik et al. 1977) dat; nom dat; nom erg; nom; dat dat; nom dat; nom dat; nom dat; nom dat; nom dat; nom dat; nom dat; nom dat; nom dat; s dat; s dat; s erg; s nom nom; super-el erg; nom; dat dat; s
Akusha Dargi (f.n.) 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20.
če–b–aʔes b-aq’es če–b–iʔaqes b-urges b-ales irRes qumirtes digaqes digaqes Hejgaqes anc’ulq’es baʔes ʕaʕnili q¯ijanni wires wires buʕarli uruX-b-ires b-edes han-b-ikes
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20.
ak¯us kos ak¯us as Xos sini jaqI’an eXmus L’an L’an ¯ Ie kes beX — aXI k̥at’ bala bec¯’as bec¯’as XIe L’inčar Los ik’mis ekas boli
dat; nom dat; nom erg; nom; dat dat; nom dat; nom dat; nom dat; nom dat; nom dat; nom dat; nom dat; nom dat; nom dat; s erg; s erg; s dat nom; sub-el erg; nom; dat dat; s
Avar (f.n.) erg; nom erg; nom erg; nom; in-all erg; nom erg; nom erg; nom erg; nom dat; nom dat; nom dat; nom dat; nom dat; nom dat; nom dat; s erg; s erg; s dat nom; in-ess erg; nom; dat dat; s
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20.
b-ixize raʕize b-ixabize b-atize łaze b-ic¯ˇize k’očonteze b-oL’ize b-oL’ize rixine bizaryize ʕeze — zaHmat łaze k̥’eze k̥ačan Hinq’ize L’ eze k¯eze
super-ess; nom super-ess; nom erg; nom; super-ess super-ess; nom super-ess; nom super-ess; nom super-ess; nom dat; nom dat; nom dat; nom dat; nom dat; nom dat; s super-ess; s super-ess; s nom nom; ad-el erg; nom; dat super-ess; s
200 Dmitry Ganenkov
Bagwalal (Kibrik 2001) 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20.
hã: ãhã ãhẽ: b-isã b-ija b-uhã b-e:ča q’očã, b-oLiri q’očã hit’ali čalʕã b-uwã q’očã — b-ija b-ažeri, uhã — heri iči c̥’ani
Chechen (f.n., transcription simplified) aff; nom aff; nom erg; nom; aff aff; nom aff; nom aff; nom aff; nom dat; nom dat; nom dat; nom dat; nom dat; nom dat; nom aff; s aff || ia; s nom; cont-ess erg; nom; dat aff; s
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20.
guo Xaza gojta karade Xaʔa qeta dicluo deza laʔa ca deza k’ordade toʔa deza, ieša Xala Xaʔa possibilitive šello qera luo Xeta
dat; nom dat; nom erg; nom; dat; dat; nom dat; nom nom; inter-ess dat; nom dat; nom dat; nom dat; nom dat; nom dat; nom dat; nom dat; s dat; s in-ess; s nom nom; inter-ess erg; nom; dat dat; s
Chamalal (Magomedova 1999)
Godoberi (Kibrik 1996, f.n.)
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20.
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20.
haʔa woła haʔal b-isã ija bic¯ˇid b-ešuša idal idal jiXan čalʕan boXã buq’ud zaHmata-b ija, eX̥ã b-ažarid, eX̥ã sekul łed gud —
ad-all; nom ad-all; nom erg; nom; ad-all dat; nom ad-all; nom ad-all; nom cont-ess; nom dat; nom dat; nom dat; nom dat; nom dat; nom dat; nom dat; s ad-all; s ad-all; s nom nom; cont-el erg; nom; dat
haʔa anya haʔali b-isã b-iʔa b-ic¯ˇã b-eʔuča idałi idałi, q̥araʕĩ riXã č’alʕam boʔan q̥’araʕĩ zaHmat b-iʔa iX̥ã saji łibi ik¯i ruk¯i
aff; nom aff; nom erg; nom; aff dat; nom aff; nom cont-ess; nom aff || cont-ess; nom dat; nom dat; nom dat dat dat dat; nom dat aff; s dat; s dat nom; cont-el erg; nom; dat dat; s
Experiencer coding in Nakh-Daghestanian 201
Icari Dargi (f.n.) 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20.
či–b-aguj b-aq’uj či–b-ižaquj b-urk¯uj b-aRuj irRuj qumirtuj b-ic¯ˇaquj b-ic¯ˇaquj awic¯ˇaquj wit’araj habaRaraj HaIžatil q¯inni wiraraj wiraraj ¯ alli buX ¯ ̥–b-ik’uj uruX lu:k¯uj han-b-ikuj
Karata (Magomedova and Xalidova 2001) erg || super-all; nom erg || super-all; nom erg; in-all; nom erg; nom erg || super-all; nom erg || super-all; nom erg; nom super-all; nom super-all; nom super-all; nom super-all; nom super-all; nom super-all; nom super-all; s erg; s erg; s super-all; nom nom; ante-el erg; super-all; nom super-all; s
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20.
haʔã ãye haʔã: b-isã b-iʔa b-ic¯ˇe: b-ečeče L’abałe q’ora riXã čalʕã beʔũ q’ora zaHmato-b b-iʔa, gije b-ałe, gije zaraRu łebe b-ek¯e c¯’ane
Ingush (f.n., transcription simplified)
Lak (f.n.)
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20.
1. č’alan k¯ak¯an 2. bajan 3. k¯ak¯an d-an 4. laIq¯in 5. k’ulnu bik’an 6. buwč’in 7. qama bitan 8. viranu bik’an 9. c¯ˇan 10. q¯ac¯ˇan xun 11. bizar xun 12. — 13. aIrkinnu b-ur 14. zaHmatnu bik’an 15. k’ulnu bik’an 16. xun 17. aIwq¯unnu ik’an 18. niha lač’un 19. bulun 20. č’alan
go Xaza gojta korade Xa qetade dicde d-eza la goama Xila k’ordade toʔal d-eza Xala Xa maga šijla qera dala Xet
dat; nom dat; nom erg; nom; in-ess dat; nom dat; nom erg; nom dat; nom dat; nom dat; nom dat; nom dat; nom dat; nom dat; nom dat; s dat; s dat; s dat nom; inter-ess erg; nom; dat dat; s
dat; nom dat; nom erg; nom; dat dat; nom dat; nom dat; nom dat; nom dat; nom dat; nom dat; nom dat; nom dat; nom dat; nom dat; s dat; s dat || cont-el (=ia); s nom nom; cont-el erg; nom; dat dat; s
dat; nom dat; nom erg; nom; dat dat; nom dat; nom dat; nom dat; nom dat; nom dat; nom dat; nom dat; nom dat; nom dat; s dat; s ia; s dat nom; super-el erg; nom; dat dat; s
202 Dmitry Ganenkov
Lezgian (f.n.) 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20.
akun wan atun q¯alurun ǯuRun čida Rawurda aq’un rik’elaj fin k’an xun k’an xun — bizar xun bes xun k’an xun četin ja — xun meq’ida kič’eda gun akun
Tsakhur (Kibrik 1999) dat; nom dat; gen erg; nom; dat dat; nom dat; nom nom; gen gen; nom dat; nom dat; nom dat; nom dat; nom dat; nom dat; s ad-el (=ia); s dat dat; post-el erg; nom; dat dat; s
Tabasaran (f.n.) 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20.
raq¯Iub jebxub ulupub biqub aRIu xub Rawri xub k̥’aʔlan RIub k¯un xub k¯un xub — bizar xub bes xub k¯un RaRi ǯa — xub aq¯Iu ǯa guč’ xub tuwub aRIu ǯa
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20.
Gaǯes Gajxes hag̥as awajkes ac’a bašda-xes k’eliXanas ykki:kanas ykki:kanas — — Gajxaras ljazim-da daRam-da — aIXas myk’an qaIq’anas hiles —
aff; nom aff; nom erg; nom; aff ad-el; nom aff; nom nom; super-all ad-el; nom dat; nom dat; nom dat; nom dat; nom dat; nom ad-el (=ia); s dat nom; super-el erg; nom; dat
Tsez (f.n.) dat; nom dat; nom erg; nom; dat dat; nom dat; nom dat; nom gen; nom dat; nom dat; nom dat; nom dat; nom dat; nom dat; s ad-el (=ia); s dat dat; post-el erg; nom; dat dat; s
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20.
b-ikada te:q b-ikara b-esa b-ija bič’izi b-oqa šoL’a b-eta b-eta b-aca b-aca ʕela b-eta — b-ija, koL’a k’ezi b-oqa b-oč’i b-uq’a neLa b-ikada
dat; nom dat; nom erg; nom; cont-ess dat; nom dat; nom dat; nom dat; nom dat; nom dat; nom dat; nom dat; nom dat; nom dat; nom dat; s cont-ess (=ia); s dat nom; cont-el erg; nom; dat dat; s
chapter 9
‘Argument-sharing’ in Oriya serial verb constructions Kalyanamalini Sahoo Indian Institute of Science
Investigating the notion of ‘argument-sharing’ in Oriya serial verb constructions, this article presents an analysis which allows multiple verbal predicates sharing internal as well as external arguments, to enter into a mono-clausal structure without necessarily forming a complex predicate nucleus. The ‘shared object’, which poses a challenge for the cross-linguistic generalization on the syntactic position of the ‘shared object’, raises the choice between ‘token-sharing’ and ‘reference-sharing’. Having laid out possible theoretical construals of the notion ‘argument-sharing’, the paper concludes that Oriya VP-serialization exhibits the referent-based functionsharing between arguments profile.
1. Introduction This paper discusses the possible patterns of ‘argument-sharing’ in Oriya serial verb constructions (SVCs).1 A serial verb construction in Oriya is a succession of verbs and their complements and adjuncts (if any) in a single clause, with one subject and one tense value, and without any overt co-ordination or subordination. According to the various types of SVCs found in the literature referring to the layered structure of the clause as defined by Foley and Van Valin (1984), Foley and Olson (1985), Van Valin and LaPolla (1997: 25), SVCs in Oriya fall in the category of symmetrical (co-ranking) nuclear serialization. Such constructions consist of several co-ranking nuclei which belong to an open class, none of them determining either the semantic or the syntactic property of another verb of the sequence. They are time-iconic, refer to sequential actions which constitute one event or the various phases of a single event. Under this type of serialization (generally defined), several verbal heads combine to form one sentential projection.2 Although they share subject, tense and agreement marking, and semantic operators such as adverbs, each of them can select its own set of complements. Objects can be shared too. On the background of these patterns, we here investigate what the notion ‘sharing’, or ‘argument-sharing’, may mean in an analysis of Oriya SVC.3 In the case of argument-sharing, especially object-sharing, where the series of verbs have a common object, the ‘shared object’ poses a challenge for the cross-linguistic generalization on the syntactic position of the ‘shared object’. This raises the choice be-
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tween ‘token-sharing’ and ‘reference-sharing’ of the object. If one wants to pursue the idea of representing object-sharing as strictly token-based sharing, a first assumption to be made is that — wherever one posits the shared NP — the language in question allows for at least a dual mapping of argument functions into syntactic positions: one mapping system for simple clauses, and one for VP serializations. The former would follow the patterns standardly assumed, whereas the latter would make general allowance for the object functions to be realized in a designated position relative to the whole sharing sequence. What could such a general position be? This paper discusses all the possible positions for such a shared object. Discussing the possible patterns of ‘object-sharing’ in Malayalam SVCs, Jayaseelan (1996) suggests that the notion ‘argument-sharing’ ‘is a too strong notion’ to describe these patterns. Building on data from the Indo-Aryan language Oriya, this paper presents an analysis of SVC, which allows multiple verbal predicates sharing internal as well as external arguments, enter into a mono-clausal structure without necessarily forming a complex predicate nucleus. In this work, we refer to VP-serialization as ‘serial verb construction’. In VP-serialization, none of the serializing verbs takes any of the other verbs/VPs in the sequence as its complement, which, distinguishes VP-serialization from V–V serialization, or complex predicate formation (Alsina 1993, Butt 1995, 1997). The chapter is presented as follows. Section 2 discusses the notion of argument-sharing in SVCs, section 3 presents SVCs in Oriya and discusses various patterns of objectsharing available in the language. Section 4 demonstrates the syntactic structuring of SVCs and section 5 gives some concluding remarks.
2. ‘Argument-sharing’ in SVCs The term ‘argument-sharing’ is explained in the following serial verb construction in Oriya.4
(1) mun maachha-Te kiNi keLaai bhaaji khaa-il-i. I fish-indef buy clean fry eat-past-1sg ‘Having bought, cleaned and fried a fish, I ate it.’
In (1), each verb denotes an event, and the succession of verbs denotes the succession of events. The verbs are all ‘main’ verbs. Although there are four verbs in the clause, there is just one overt NP - mun ‘I’ - which is interpreted as subject, and, similarly, only one overt NP - maachhaTe ‘a fish’- which is interpreted as object. So, one can say that all the verbs in (1) ‘share’ a subject and an object. This illustrates what is called argument-sharing, here exemplified both as ‘subject sharing’ and ‘object-sharing’. In this sense, ‘argument-sharing’ can be interpreted as the following:
‘Argument-sharing’ in Oriya serial verb constructions 205
(2) Verbs V1, V2, V3, V4 share their subject argument - mun -, and they share their object argument - maachhaTe -.
However, question arises how each NP is shared between the verbs. Here, I assume, for sharing, there are two possibilities: token-sharing and reference-sharing. By token-sharing, I mean,
(3) a. mun as an argument of V1, V2, V3, and V4 all share the Grammatical Function (GF) subject, and the thematic role agent. maachhaTe as an argument of V1, V2, V3, and V4 b. all share the GF object, and the thematic role patient.
‘Sharing’ in this sense is something that holds among argument-taking relations, and what is shared are abstract values like GFs, thematic roles, and possibly other properties. Such token-sharing can be formally stated as follows:
(4) Argument-sharing - Sense I: A token-occurrence NP serves, for a set of consecutive verbs V1, V2, …, Vn, as the only NP which instantiates a given argument-function AF relative to each of the verbs.
In terms of an illustration from the seminal article Baker (1989), where he has discussed SVCs in the Kwa languages of West Africa and the Caribbean Creoles, argument-sharing - ‘many verbs take one argument together’ - may be shown by the lower arrows in Figure1: arrows from two distinct verbs, ‘hit’ and ‘kill’, here meet in the same NP ‘Amba’:
(5) Kofi naki amba kiri. Kofi hit Amba kill ‘Kofi killed Amba.’ S NP
VP
V′
Kofi
V′
NP
V
hit
Amba
V Kill
Figure 1. Many verbs taking one argument together
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This is naturally referred to as ‘token-sharing’: two or more verbs hold argument-relations to one and the same token occurrence NP. ‘Reference-sharing’ can be illustrated as follows:
(6) Argument-sharing – Sense II A token-occurrence of an NP serves, for a set of consecutive verbs V1, V2, …, Vn, as the only overt NP which instantiates a given argument-function AF relative to each of the verbs. Specifications: a. An NP counts as serving an AF with regard to verb V if i. it refers to an entity understood as carrying one of the thematic roles tied to V, and/or ii. it carries a ‘grammatical function’ (GF) relative to V. b. The argument-function instantiated relative to each verb can be understood either such that it is the same AF (thematic role, and/or GF) relative to each verb, or possibly different ones.5
Following (4), in the sense of Argument-sharing sense I, example (1) can be represented as follows: (1′) [muni [maachha-Tej kiNi keLaai bhaaji khaaili]VP]S . [I [fish-indef buy clean fry eat-past-1sg ‘Having bought, cleaned and fried a fish, I ate it.’ In short, what (4) requires is that each verb directly stands in a GF/role-assigning relation to the NP-token in question. We refer to this sense of ‘argument-sharing’ as token-shar ing. Moreover, we emphasize that this shared item is to be found at the syntactic level of representation.6 (4) excludes a situation where a grammar represents, say, only kiNi ‘buy’ as a verb to which mun bears a subject/agent relation and maachha-Te an object/ patient relation, whereas a referent is otherwise associated with the understood roles of the other verbs only through some version of argument binding at a semantic level. Note that for the satisfaction of (4), it is not necessary that the NP-token in question be ‘overt’, but in the following we will consider only cases where it is. Compared with token-sharing, in the case of reference-sharing, in addition to an overt NP, one or several non-overt NPs instantiate the argument function AF relative to the verbs in the sharing sequence. Following (6), in the sense of Argument-sharing sense II, example (1) can be represented as (7):
(7) [muni [proi maachha-Tej kiNi]VP [proi proj keLaai]VP [proi proj bhaaji]VP [I fish-indef buy clean fry [proj khaa-il-i]VP]S . eat-past-1sg ‘Having bought, cleaned and fried a fish, I ate it.’
In (7), apart from V1, which is associated with the overt NP in question, all the other
‘Argument-sharing’ in Oriya serial verb constructions 207
verbs take a non-overt NP (as a ‘pro’) in the syntactic position designated for the argument function in question. So, the difference between token-sharing and reference-sharing can be shown as in (8) and (9):
(8) Occurrence-token based function-sharing between arguments: a. Constraints on range of sharing: NP1 as an argument of V1, NP1 as an argument of V2, ... NP1 as an argument of Vn all share Grammatical Function (GF), and thematic role. b. Constraints on structural relationship between the verbs and the overt NP: ...
(9) Referent-based function-sharing between arguments: a. Constraints on range of sharing: NP1 with referent ‘i’ as an argument of V1, NP2 with referent ‘i’ as an argument of V2, ... NPn with referent ‘i’ as an argument of Vn can vary in Grammatical Function (GF), and in thematic role. b. Constraints on structural relationship between the verbs and the overt NP: ...
In the case of token-sharing, we can generally ask what argument functions they have in common: are they all, e.g., subjects, are they all, e.g., agents, with regard to the verb of which they are an argument? Such a question introduces argument-sharing as func tion-sharing. Subdivisions thereof can be made into GF-sharing, thematic role-sharing, and possibly other notions that take part in constituting argument functions. On the other hand, in the case of reference-sharing, there is no function-sharing at all. The only thing that all arguments would have in common under this construal is their reference. This is so, since the NP in question obviously has just one and the same reference throughout the relations it bears to all the arguments. A possible empirical enquiry may therefore reside in establishing how much of the functional grammatical information needs to be shared in order for a token-sharing constellation to arise. In (7), a mute syntactic element represents the shared argument relative to each verb. But such a ‘chain’ type of approach to argument-sharing (sense II) can also be analytically represented as a pure matter of functional or referential dependency rather than by empty prononominal elements in the syntactic representation. For instance, in HPSG, argument-sharing could be seen as residing in binding relations between items
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in arg-st (in the type of design proposed in Manning and Sag 1998). We will refer to such a construal of argument-sharing (binding on arg-st) as Reference-sharing. Our proposal is that such a situation indeed arises, namely that Oriya VP-serialization exhibits the referent-based function-sharing between arguments profile. Having laid out possible theoretical construals of the notion ‘argument-sharing’, we now turn to the investigation of ‘object-sharing’ in Oriya.7 Among predictions that a token-sharing construal would make in an SVC, one can presumably list the following: (10) i. For each V to which the NP bears the same AF, it should have the same configurational relation. ii. The NP cannot be subject to conflicting morphological Case markings induced by the various verbs it relates to. In contrast, in the case of reference-sharing, ‘object-sharing’ patterns do not provide empirical evidence for an equi-configured position of the shared NP, and in addition allow for deviance in Case-morphology, we briefly lay out some of the general properties of ‘object-sharing’ under VP-serialization in Oriya.
3. VP-serialization in Oriya 3.1 General patterns of ‘object-sharing’ As shown in (1), the verbs under VP-serialization in Oriya share subject, object, tense and agreement marking. Argument-sharing distinguishes these serial VPs from a sequence of adverbial VPs. Note that in (1), the verbs ‘kiNi’, ‘keLaai’ and ‘bhaaji’ are marked as non-finite, although suffixed by the frozen conjunctive suffix ‘i’, while the last verb ‘khaaili’ is finite, i.e. marked for Tense and Agr, which indicates that the sequence shares temporal specification, the last verb determining the tempus of the whole sequence of events. Although object-sharing looks to be a common case for the series of verbs under VPserialization, each of the verbs can still select its own set of complements. Each verb may have its own internal arguments (direct object and indirect object), and its own adverbial modifiers, which indicates that each V is a VP in itself. Consider examples (11)–(13): (11) kaali raati-re mun maachha-Te kiNi keLaai bhaaji khaa-il-i. yesterday night-pp I fish-indef buy clean fry eat-past-1sg ‘Last night, having bought, cleaned and fried a fish, I ate it.’ (12) mun haata dhoi bhaata khaa-il-i. I hand wash rice eat-past-1sg ‘Having washed my hand, I ate rice.’
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(13) mun maachha-Ti-ku bhalabhaabe dhoi dhire dhire kaaT-il-i. I fish-def-acc well wash slowly slowly cut-past-1sg ‘Having washed the fish well, I cut it slowly.’ In (11), along with the subject and object argument, the adverbial modifier kaali raatire ‘last night’ is shared by all the four verbs. But in (12), the verbs dhoi ‘wash’ and khaaili ‘ate’ have their own objects, and thus there is no object-sharing. In (13), although both the verbs dhoi ‘wash’ and kaaTili ‘cut’ share the object maachha ‘fish’, they have their own adverbial modifiers. Note that a shared object occurs in a position preceding the whole series of Vs (cf. (1)); while an unshared object occurs in the complement position of the verb it belongs to (as in (12)). VP-serialization in Oriya exhibits some of the crucial properties of mono-clausality that have been associated with SVC constructions (Kroeger 2001), such as shared marking of tense/aspect and adverbial functions. SVCs (verbs having a shared object) can be passivized too, which supports the claim that SVCs constitute a monoclausal structure (Sahoo 2001).
3.2 Keeping ‘on hold’ A further hypothesized characteristic of ‘referent-based function-sharing’ is the possibility of keeping the referent ‘on hold’. This possibility is instantiated in Oriya VP-serialization. In (14a), an intransitive verb intervenes between two transitive verbs, and the NP occurring as do of the first is understood as do also of the second, despite the intervening VP without ‘sharing’.8 In (14b), the same situation obtains, but now with two intervening intransitive verbs: (14) a. mun aamba-Taa nei baaDipaTa-ku jaai khaa-il-i. I mango-def take backyard-pp go eat-past-1sg ‘Having taken the mango, I went to the backyard and ate it there.’ b. mun aamba-Taa nei baaDipaTa-ku jaai basi khaa-il-i. I mango-def take backyard-pp go sit eat-past-1sg ‘Having taken the mango, I went to the backyard, sat and ate the mango there.’ Such ‘long distance’-sharing is not possible across a transitive verb with its own overt object, however: (15) *mun aamba-Taa nei bhaata khaai kaaTi khaa-il-i. I mango-def take rice eat cut eat-past-1sg Intended meaning: ‘Having taken the mango, I ate rice, then cut the mango and ate it.’ In (15), the subcategorization requirement of the verb kaaTi ‘cut’ and khaa-il-i ‘ate’ are not fulfilled, as the supposed to be argument aamba-Taa ‘the mango’ is far away in the
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local domain and even sharing is blocked by the transitive verb khaai ‘eat’ with its overt object. The restriction illustrated in (15) represents a possibility of keeping the referent ‘on hold’ which would be less expected on an occurrence-token-based function-sharing construal. This piece of specification, thus, is also compatible with the schema (9), and less so with the schema (8). The only exception to this pattern is when the object of an intervening transitive verb expresses a part of the entity that is expressed by the object in the preceding VP: (16) mun maachha-Te kiNi kaati na-chhaDaai khaa-il-i. I fish-indef buy shell neg-remove eat-past-1sg ‘I bought a fish and ate it without removing the shell.’ Here kaati ‘shell’ expresses a part of the fish, and so ‘the fish’ can be kept ‘on hold’ until the next VP. Thus, it seems that sharing can be maintained across an intervening object as long as the referent of the initial object plays a salient role also in the reference of the intervening object. (One might say that in part-whole relations the reference gets ‘confirmed’ rather than erased.) This makes good sense from the viewpoint of object-sharing as a mechanism for keeping up a referent across many verbs, but less so from the viewpoint of token-sharing, where it is the argument-taking as such of a given NP which is carried on — one would think of such a mechanism as one dependent on adjacency, or at least minimal obtrusion, between the partaking verbs. It is a form of locality that one would expect to hold under a token-sharing approach, and that could be added to the points in (10).
3.3 VP-serialization as distinct from co-ordination The relation between VP-coordination and VP-serialization seems particularly obvious for Oriya serial verb constructions, where a series of VPs describe a series of consecutive events. VP-coordination is exemplified in (17): (17) mun bajaara-ku ga-l-i o chakleT kiN-il-i. I market-pp go-past-1sg and chocolate buy-past-1sg ‘I went to the market and bought a chocolate.’ Notice that in (17) the conjunction marker -o (English ‘and’) occurs between the two conjuncts, and that each verb is marked for tense and agreement. However, unlike VP-coordination, VP serialization proceeds without any open marker of conjunction, and only the final verb is marked as finite (18a). Exemplifying VP-serialization in these respects, in (18a) the verb ‘buy’ is suffixed for past tense and agrees with the 1st person singular subject, while the preceding verb ‘go’ is marked as non-finite. In the construction in (18b), where the verbal morphology is the same as in (18a), the presence of o ‘and’ between the two VPs, makes the construction ungrammatical.
‘Argument-sharing’ in Oriya serial verb constructions
(18) a. mun bajaara-ku jaai goTe chakleT kiN-il-i. I market-pp go a chocolate buy-past-1sg ‘Having gone to the market, I bought a chocolate.’ b. *mun bajaara-ku jaai o goTe chakleT kiN-il-i. I market-pp go and a chocolate buy-past-1sg ‘Having gone to the market, I bought a chocolate.’ A further essential difference between these two construction types is that serialization presupposes sharing of the subject (19c), a restriction that does not hold for coordination (19b): (19) a. mun bajaara-ku ga-l-i o chakleT kiN-il-i. I market-pp go-past-1sg and chocolate buy-past-1sg ‘I went to the market, and bought a chocolate.’ b. mun bajaara-ku ga-l-i o se chakleT kiN-il-aa. I market-pp go-past-1sg and he chocolate buy-past-3sg ‘I went to the market, and he bought a chocolate.’ c. *mun bajaara-ku jaai se goTe chakleT kiN-il-aa. I market-pp go he a chocolate buy-past-3sg ‘I having gone to the market, he bought a chocolate.’ These differences set VP-serialization clearly apart from VP-coordination.
3.4 Argument-sharing and mismatching of case and grammatical roles 3.4.1
Subject sharing
Not only subject sharing is obligatory in serialization, the serialization of two predicates, having different Case marked subjects is not possible. E.g. (20) a. mote 9 jara he-u-chh-i aau mun ousadha I-dat fever happen-prog-aux-1sg and I medicine khaa-u-chh-i. eat-prog-aux-1sg ‘I am suffering from fever and I am taking medicine.’ b. *mote jara hoi ousadha khaa-il-i. I-dat fever happen medicine eat-past-1sg ‘Having had fever I took medicine.’
As the contrast between the grammatical coordination in (20a) and the ungrammatical serialization in (20b) shows, in (20a), serialization of two predicates, one requiring a dative subject, the other a nominative subject is ungrammatical.
3.4.2
Non-identities under object-sharing
Although in most cases, an NP shared by V1 and V2 functions as a direct object for both
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the verbs, it is fully possible for a shared NP to be the direct object (do) of V1, and be the understood indirect object (io) of V2 . This is shown in the following examples: (21) a. mun gariba pilaa-Ti-ku lugaa dei hoTel-ku nei piThaa khuaa-il-i. I poor child-def-io cloth give hotel-pp take pancake feed-past-1sg ‘Having given the child clothes and having taken him to a hotel, I fed him pancake.’ b. mun kaahaa-ku-bi hoTel-ku nei piThaa khuaa-e-ni. I no one-do-even hotel-pp take pancake feed-pres-1sg-neg ‘I don’t take anyone to a hotel and feed pancake.’ In (21a), the NP pilaaTi ‘the child’ is shared by all the three VPs. In its actual occurrence in the first VP, it functions as an io. Relative to the verb in the second VP, the GF of an argument referring to the same entity would standardly be do, while for an argument in the same capacity in the third VP, its GF would be io. In (21b), the NP kaahaakubi is shared by the two VPs, but analogous to the above case, it functions as a do in its actual occurrence and as an io in its ‘understood’ occurrence. Such a situation, as mentioned above, does not rule out the possibility that this construction is one of token-sharing, it only shows that, if so, it does not coincide with complete function-sharing as far as GFs are concerned. The do and io definite forms have the same Case suffix -ku, hence, although the examples considered present a conflict of grammatical functions, they do not instantiate a conflict of ‘virtual Case’. Thus, relative to the prediction in (10.ii), the situation does not contradict a construal as token-sharing. However, also Case conflict can obtain, as illustrated in (22)–(23). In (22), piThaa-re ‘on the cake’ has a postpositional affix, whereas in its ‘understood’ occurrence relative to the second verb, it would have the doform piThaaTaa-ku: (22) mun piThaa-re mahu lagei khaa-il-i. I pancake-on honey put eat-past-1sg ‘I put honey on the cake and ate it (the cake).’ (23) se (mo-Thaaru) Tankaa-Tie nei (mote) duiTaa anDaa de-l-aa. he (I-abl) rupee-one take (I-dat) two egg give-past-3sg ‘He gave me two eggs for one rupee.’ (lit. ‘Having taken a rupee from me, he gave me two eggs.’) In (23), one could drop either mote or both indirect objects (the bracketed ones). The shared object ‘I’ has distinct Case marking and distinct grammatical roles in the VPs. Note that the shared object carries a Case relative to the first verb it precedes although it can be shared by verbs with different Case requirements, and thus, different grammatical role requirements as Case reflects grammatical functions in the language. The assignment of such types of mismatched Case and different grammatical roles to the shared object indicates that in the case of object-sharing, it is not a case of ‘token-
‘Argument-sharing’ in Oriya serial verb constructions 213
sharing’, where each of the participating verbs takes exactly one and the same token NP as the item shared. Rather it is a case of reference-sharing, where what is shared between the verbs is only the individual referred to.10 When we now combine the possibility of conflicting Case noted above, with the grammaticality of examples like (14b), both facts detract from the likelihood that token-sharing is the construal of argument-sharing valid for the constructions in question. Summarizing the observations of this section, we have seen that – argument-sharing (in sense II) can be maintained on the basis of morphological Case conflict, and – no empirical evidence can be found for a position of the shared argument that would allow us to construct this NP as in a ‘syntactic-sharing pattern’ relative to all verbs in the sharing sequence. We conclude that token-sharing is a difficult notion to apply to Oriya VP-serialization, at least with respect to object-sharing. Subject sharing, on the other hand, seems to be less problematic to analyze under the notion of token-sharing, although we will not address this issue here.
4. Syntactic structure for SVCs in Oriya 4.1 Syntactic structuring of VP-sequences Let us now turn to equi-configuration, as one of the predictions that a token-sharing construal would make (cf. (10i)). Judging from linear sequence, it would appear, e.g., in a case like (1), that the NP that functions as the shared object is in a different configuration relative to each verb. To assess this, we first consider what may be the over-all syntactic structure of a VP-serialization sequence. The data in (24), exemplifying focus fronting of VPs, shows that the non-finite verbs cluster does not have a flat internal structure. In (24a), the NP maachha ‘fish’ is only shared with respect to the first two of the transitive verbs, the third one basi ‘sit’ is intransitive. Only the first two non-finite VPs can be preposed as a cluster (24b), whereas a sequence composed of only one of them (24c) will make the construction ungrammatical. (24) a. mun goTe maachha bhaaji khaai basi chiThi lekh-il-i. I one fish fry eat sit letter write-past-1sg ‘I fried a fish, ate it, sat and wrote a letter.’ b. goTe maachha bhaaji khaai mun basi chiThi lekh-il-i. one fish fry eat I sit letter write-past-1sg *goTe maachh bhaaji mun khaai basi chiThi lekh-il-i. c. one fish fry I eat sit letter write-past-1sg
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The pattern observed in (24) shows that fronting possibilities are determined relative to the sharing pattern: a VP containing a shared-object can only be fronted together with all verbs in the sharing sequence, independent of their morphological status. It follows that the sequence of non-finite verbs as such does not function as a constituent under fronting, thus disfavoring a syntactic representation as given in Figure 2. This is underlined by the fact that in a sentence like (14a), here repeated as (25a), the set of non-finite verbs (one sharing the object and the other without sharing the object) cannot be fronted (25b), since the sharing pattern includes the finite final verb, which shares the object. (25) a. mun aamba-Taa nei baaDipaTa-ku jaai khaa-il-i. I mango-def take backyard-pp go eat-past-1sg ‘Having taken the mango, I went to the backyard and ate it there.’ ?? b. aamba-Taa nei baaDipaTa-ku jaai mun khaa-il-i. mango-def take backyard-pp go I eat-past-1sg ‘Having taken the mango, I went to the backyard and ate it there.’ Considering the structure of VPs in an SVC, we can say that the morphological asymmetry between the sentence-final finite verb and the sequence of non-finite verbs that may precede it could be seen as a good reason to syntactically analyze VP-serialization in such a fashion that the final verb is preceded by a flat cluster of adjunctive nonfinite verbs. This is illustrated in Figure 2. VP VPnon-fin VP
VP
VPfin
…
Figure 2. Final verb preceded by adjunctive non-finite verbs
The last verb here is the only finite verb in the clause (carrying tense, and agreeing with the subject), and it clearly thereby qualifies as a syntactic head of the whole construction. The overall construction thus being an endocentric one, the VPs preceding the finite verb will, together, have the status as an adjunct. If one proposes a token-sharing construal for objects, the designated position of the shared NP would have to be in an equal position relative to the whole sharing sequence, confirming what has been stated in (10i). Observing the fact that the overt shared NP always occurs with the first of the sharing verbs, there are essentially two possibilities. It could be represented as appearing either ‘in-situ’ relative to the first verb (i.e., in the position it would standardly have relative to this verb if the verb were the head of a simple clause) or in a position left-adjoined to the whole cluster of sharing VPs. These possibilities are illustrated in Figure 3 and Figure 4, respectively (arbitrarily choosing the
‘Argument-sharing’ in Oriya serial verb constructions 215
number of sharing verbs as three), for the case that also the finite verb is among the sharing verbs: VP VPnon-fin VP NP
VP V1
VP VPfin
NP
V3
V2
Figure 3. ‘Shared’ object ‘in situ’
VP VPnon-fin
VPfin
VP
VP
V1
V2
V3
Figure 4. ‘Shared’ object at a higher position than all the ‘sharing’ verbs/VPs
On the option in Figure 4, the overt NP would be in a unique position relative to all the sharing verbs (i.e., left-adjoined to the highest VP).
4.2 Syntactic configuration for SVCs As in Figure3, the object cannot be assumed to be phonetically realized as a part of the first VP in the series either, since the shared object need not be always part of the initial VP as the first V in the series can be an intransitive one. But relative to the sequence of object-sharing VPs, it could be in the first one. Moreover, it does not occur in an equiconfigurational relation to all the verbs in the series. So, Figure 4 looks like a better choice. Following Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG) (Pollard and Sag, 1994), for object-sharing in SVCs, we propose a structure as in Figure 5, where, the final V, which exclusively carries the feature [+finite], is the head in the string of verbs, and thus the head of the clause. The subject daughter and the object daughter values of the clause are reference-shared by all the VPs in the series.11 The non-final VPs are adjoined to the final VP as one constituent, with category VP, and with flat internal structure, all daughters being VPs. This structure recapitulates the SVC with two non-finite VPs. Since the only type of complements that is considered here is the indirect and direct object, both NPs, we use obj as attribute instead of comps (moreover, we here cover only uni-transitive constructions, such that the list value of obj is always a singleton list). [7]VP represents the final VP, while [6]VP and [9]VP are the non-final ones. The nonfinal VPs are conjoined forming a flat-structure in a non-headed phrase like [3]VP, and any number of non-finite VPs are assumed to be conjoined in a similar way. Now the VP complex, that is [3]VP, gets adjoined to the final [7]VP, resulting in [20]VP. Following the Head Feature Principle, [5]V projects or is the head in the configuration of [20]VP. Because of the agreement concord between the subject and the final VP, we assume that subject belongs to the final VP, while all the other VPs share the referent. The subj is
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S
HEAD verb [0]VP
NP[1]
SUBJ 〈NP[1]〉 OBJ 〈 〉
VAL
NP[2] HEAD verb [20]VP
VAL
[7]VP]
SUBJ 〈NP[1]〉 OBJ 〈NP[2]〉
[HEAD [5]
HEAD [5]V
ARG-ST 〈NP[1] NP[2]〉 VAL
[3]VP
[6]VP
SUBJ 〈NP[1]〉 OBJ 〈 〉
[9]VP
HEAD [4]V
verb FINITE +
verb FINITE −
ARG-ST 〈NP[1] NP[2]〉 VAL
SUBJ 〈 〉 OBJ 〈 〉
HEAD [8]V
verb FINITE −
ARG-ST 〈NP[1] NP[2]〉 VAL
SUBJ 〈 〉 OBJ 〈 〉
Figure 5. Syntactic structure for SVCs
phonetically realized with [7]VP, and all the other VPs share the referent of the subject; this information is captured here as reference-sharing indicated by identical referential index on the first element in the arg-st list of all the VPs.12 The adjoined structure [20]VP structure-shares its head value with that of the final VP, hence, inherits the valence feature, which gets fully saturated at S, once the requirement for the subj argument is fulfilled.13 NP[2] stands for the shared object. Following a similar line of argument as for subject sharing, one might have assumed that the shared object should be represented as being realized only with one VP, while the rest of the Vs share the referent. However, ac-
‘Argument-sharing’ in Oriya serial verb constructions 217
cording to the discussion above, the shared object will be represented as occurring in a position preceding all the (sharing) VPs in the series. A problem is then how it gets formally licensed in such a position. Following the standard assumption in the literature to the effect that the mother’s subj and comps/obj values are identical to those of the head daughter, since the obj value in the valence list of all the VPs is an empty list, the valence of [20]VP should also inherit the same. If so, the empty list in the valence of [20]VP would not be able to license the object. What we have to say here, therefore, is that the lower configuration of Figure 5, that is (represented here as Figure 6), [3]VP [6]VP
[9]VP
Figure 6. Covert co-ordination of non-finite VPs
is not at all a headed construction, but one of covert co-ordination, and moreover, that in the higher configuration of Figure5, that is (represented here as Figure7), [20]VP [3]VPAdjunct
[7]VPHead
Figure 7. Adjoined structure of final and non-final VPs
the presence of ‘obj< NP[2]>’ in the higher VP follows from no general principles at all, but simply states the characteristic feature of SVC object-sharing. Thus, we stipulate that it is the higher VP ([20]VP, the adjoined structure of the final and non-final VPs) that subcategorizes for the object. Such a stipulation is of course quite compatible with our assumption of valence being a feature introduced at syntax.14 This strategy makes sense also for obj-sharing across an intransitive verb, and for that matter, for an intransitive verb at any non-initial position of the series of VPs. Such a representation of the valence feature goes against the standardly accepted assumption that the lexical entries of verbs specify what they can co-occur with, by listing the particular kinds of dependents they select; these dependents are listed under the valence attribute, through features like subj, and comps. As Manning and Sag (1998), Sag and Wasow (1999) discuss, each lexical entry should have a valence value, and there should be a one-to-one correspondence between the items of the valence specification and the arg-st list. But as valence refers to the realized arguments of a lexical item, in the case of Oriya SVCs, the subject and objects are not phonetically realized with all the VPs, rather they all share the referent of their ‘would be’ subject/object. So, in such a case, it will not be logical to have the subject/object represented in the valence list; that means, the value of the subj/obj in the valence list should be empty. If so, then this leads to the question whether there should be two lexical entries
218 Kalyanamalini Sahoo
for a verb, so that it will have an entry listing all the arguments (including the subj) it subcategorizes for, and another entry (for SVCs) where the value of its subj list would be empty, violating the locality of co-occurrence restrictions. So, to have a solution to this problem, our assumption would be that there is a one-to-one correspondence only between the lexical entry and the arg-st of an item, whereas the valence attribute is introduced only as part of the syntactic licensing schemata. Figure 5 is then an instance of one of the syntactic licensing schemata of Oriya. Such a valence representation is similar to the treatment of pro-drop in HPSG, where the null argument would not be realized on a valence list, as it is not a phonetically realized argument, but it would be realized on the arg-st list, since the argument has an interpretation.
5. Conclusion In this paper, the notion ‘argument-sharing’ has been explicated as it is used in connection with serial verb constructions, with the phenomenon of ‘object-sharing’ in Oriya as an illustration. The discussion has indicated how an analysis based on schemata for large structural configurations compatible with the syntactic facts of SVCs in Oriya, can account for patterns of argument-sharing (subject-sharing and object-sharing) in Oriya SVCs. The question arises how is Case marking determined in this analysis? We can say that the Case of the shared argument is determined by the verb the argument co-occurs with, and the Case-marking wishes of the other sharing-verbs are suppressed as the object is not overtly realized with them. As the main verb is marked differently from all other verbs in the construction, if serialization can be considered as just a type of embedding (such as English gerund) is left for further research.
Acknowledgement I am grateful to the anonymous reviewers of this paper for their insightful comments.
Abbreviations pp postposition, NP noun phrase, VP verb phrase, 1sg 1st person singular, 3sg 3rd person singular, acc accusative case, dat dative case, abl ablative case, do direct object, io indirect object, prog progressive aspect, aux auxiliary, neg negation, def definite marker, indef indefiniteness marker.
‘Argument-sharing’ in Oriya serial verb constructions 219
Notes 1. Oriya is an Indo-Aryan language spoken in the eastern part of India. It is an SOV language. Subjects agree with verbs in person, number and honorificity. Indefinite objects are not marked for Case, whereas definite objects, both indirect and direct, are marked by the Case suffix -ku, making direct and indirect definite objects morphologically indistinguishable. Given default linearization, however, the indirect object precedes the direct one. 2. The term serialization is used to describe a series of juxtaposed VPs that necessarily share a subject and might share one or more objects (see also Bisang 1996: 533, Dechaine 1993). 3. Argument-sharing is a powerful discriminating test for serial constructions (Foley and Olson, 1985) though subject to much language-specific variation since neither subject nor object-sharing is universally obligatory. 4. Note that the verbal ending -i in all the non-finite Vs refers to the conjunctive morpheme (cm) (Sahoo 2001). As a bare verbal root in Oriya cannot occur independently, it requires the cm to be attached to it. Since the morpheme -i does not carry any meaning or grammatical relation, we gloss the verbal form as the bare form of the V. Although in closely related languages like Bengali and Hindi, this morpheme -i (which is realized as -e and -i, respectively) has a subordinating function (Chatterji 1926), this is not the case in Oriya. In Oriya, although the suffix ‑i is form-identical to the perfective marker (Sahoo 2001), these two morphemes are different in meaning. E.g., (i) se has-i has-i kathaa kah-u-th-il-aa. talk-prog-past-3sg he laugh-cm laugh-cm tale ‘He was laughing while speaking.’ or ‘He was laughing and speaking.’ The verb ‘laugh’ is duplicated, to express the progressive aspect, while the cm -i, pertinent to VPserialization, is maintained. Hence, this -i is distinct from Bengali -e and Hindi -i. 5. However, it is not possible for the shared argument to be realized as an argument for one of the verbs and adjunct for the other. 6. That is, valence specification in HPSG (as in Sag and Wasow 1999), as we follow HPSG to account for the SVCs. 7. We will consider object-sharing only. 8. Any intransitive verb compatible with the context can be inserted between the two verbs. Even an intransitive verb with an embedded clause (as long as it does not affect sharing) is also possible. E.g., (ii) mun aamba-Taa nei baaDipaTa-ku jaai mote kehi na-dekhi-paaruthibaa mango-def take backyard-pp go me anyone neg-see-can I jaagaa-re basi khaa-il-i. place-in sit eat-past-1sg ‘Having taken the mango, I went to the backyard, sat in a place where nobody could see me and ate the mango there.’ 9. First-person singular pronoun mun is realized as mote in Dative Case. The subject is dative because it is the subject of a N–V complex predicate, which is how psych verb predications are commonly expressed in South Asian languages.
220 Kalyanamalini Sahoo
10. See Sahoo, Beermann and Hellan (2001) for details. 11. In HPSG, the internal structure of a sentence is encoded in terms of the feature daughters (dtrs) like head daughter, subject daughter, complement daughter and adjunct daughter. 12. The arguments of a lexical sign are expressed through arg-st. Selected arguments are the arguments which a lexical item truly subcategorizes for. This level is represented as a list-valued feature, called argument structure (arg-st) (Manning and Sag 1998). 13. valence encodes the combinatory potential of a sign, that is, a specification of what other signs a sign in question must be combined with in order to become saturated. 14. Another possibility is to postulate a gap feature here, so that some elements of the arg-st list are found in the gap list, although are missing from the valence list. This can be partially represented as follows. The gap feature tells us which of a word’s arguments are missing, and will be specified in all the mother nodes until it finds the missing element. But in such an analysis, the missing element is supposed to retain the same identity (in the sense of homogeneity in grammatical role relations, case marking and thematic roles) throughout all the GAPs. Thus, in a way this leads us to say that the shared argument is token-shared. As we have discussed earlier, the various object arguments in the sequence can have different grammatical functions, and even different Cases, which goes against a token-sharing approach. Moreover, gap feature in HPSG denoting a sort of underlying movement of the missing element from its original place of occurrence, goes against our assumption of SVCs, which is no way concerned with any sort of movement.
References Alsina, A. 1993. Predicate Composition: A Theory of Syntactic Function Alternations. PhD dissertation, Stanford University. Baker, M. 1989. “Object-sharing and projection in serial verb constructions”. Linguistic Inquiry 20: 513–53. Bisang, W. 1996. “Areal typology and grammaticalization: Processes of grammaticalization based on nouns and verbs in East and Mainland South East Asian Languages”. Studies in Language 20 (3): 519–97. Butt, M.1995. The Structure of Complex Predicates in Urdu [Dissertations in Linguistics], J. Bresnan, S. Inkelas, W. Poser and P. Sells (eds). csli Publications. Butt, M. 1997. “Complex predicates in Urdu”. In Complex Predicates, A. Alsina, J. Bresnan and P. Sells (eds), 107–49. Stanford: csli Publications. Chatterji, S. K. 1926. The Origin and Development of the Bengali Language. Volume II. Calcutta: Calcutta University Press. Dechaine, R. 1993. “Serial verb constructions”. In An International Handbook of Contemporary Research. Volume 1, J. Jacobs, A. von Stechow, W. Sternefeld and Th. Vennemann (eds), 799– 825. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Jayaseelan, K. 1996. “The serial verb construction in Malayalam”. Unpublished manuscript, Central Institute of English and Foreign Languages, Hyderabad. Foley, W. A. and Van Valin, R. D. Jr. 1984. Functional Syntax and Universal Grammar. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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Foley, W. A. and Olson, M. 1985. “Clausehood and verb serialization”. In Grammar Inside and Outside the Clause, J. Nichols and A. C. Woodbury (eds), 17–60. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kroeger, P. 2001. “Analyzing syntax: A lexical functional approach”. Unpublished manuscript. Manning, C. and Sag, I. 1998. “Argument structure, valence, and binding”. In Nordic Journal of Linguistics 21 (2): 107–44. Pollard, C. and Sag, I. 1994. Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Sag, I. and Wasow, T. 1999. Syntactic Theory: A Formal Introduction. Stanford: csli Publications. Sahoo, K. 2001. Oriya Verb Morphology and Complex Verb Constructions. PhD dissertation, Norwegian University of Science and Technology. Sahoo, K, Beermann, D. and Hellan, L. 2001. “What is ‘Argument-sharing’? A case study on argument-sharing under VP-serialization in Oriya”. Unpublished manuscript, Norwegian University of Science and Technology. Van Valin, R. D. Jr. and LaPolla, R. 1997. Syntax: Structure, Meaning and Function. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Case interpretation
chapter 10
Two approaches to specificity Lars Johanson University of Mainz
The present article discusses two different approaches to the grammatical analysis of ‘specificity’ and related concepts in Turkish nominals. It is argued that a purely functional analysis of ‘specificity’ in Turkish has strong limitations, yielding vague expression rules. It is demonstrated how a structural approach in the dimensions of specificity-definiteness-number establishes language-specific values, also for the bare nominal as the unmarked representative of all relevant oppositions. The conclusion is that the structural approach is indispensable for the analysis of the phenomena concerned.
1. Two approaches: Definitions and preliminary remarks This paper deals with two different approaches to the grammatical analysis of the pragmatically oriented category ‘specificity’ of nominals. The approaches will be illustrated with examples from Turkish, where a general marker of ‘specificity’ is lacking, but specific interpretations in certain cases are dependent on accusative and genitive case marking. The paper is not an overview article that aims at presenting past work on this subject with detailed and balanced references to earlier contributions. Neither is the aim to present new analyses. My intention is to point out and explain certain differences between a structural account of the problem as presented in Johanson (1977) and a possible functional account in frameworks such as, for example, Dik (1989). There is obviously disagreement between these two types of accounts. I will take a ‘functional’ approach to be one that departs from general cognitive contents and looks at their implementation in various language-specific grammars. By contrast, a ‘structural’ approach will be one that defines formally expressed languagespecific values and specifies their contextual determination. Though the two approaches may seem to be mutually exclusive, i.e. incompatible in one and the same analytical framework, they are complementary to each other and both necessary for interlingual comparison. This insight is not new, and there are certainly various interesting attempts in modern linguistics to capture semantic categories via formal means. But the insight has not yet been implemented as far as Turkish ‘specificity’ is concerned. My own contention is that a structural approach is an indispensable prerequisite for a functional approach.
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In functional approaches, the categories investigated are established on the basis of some kind of general grammar, cross-linguistic categories that are potentially universal, assumed to be grammatically relevant for any language, such as ‘specificity’, ‘non-specificity’, ‘definiteness’, ‘indefiniteness’, ‘plurality’ and ‘singularity’. The starting-point for establishing these cross-linguistic categories is thus the intended cognitive content, the intentum, the way the speaker wants a nominal expression to be understood. Since the intentum is interpreted by the hearer also by means of textual and extratextual information, the functional analysis goes far beyond the morphologically and syntactically coded content. Different language-specific values are not the primary concern of this analysis, but rather the formulation of expression rules for the categories in various contexts. In system-based structural approaches, any analysis starts with the question whether it is valid for a given language to recognize a certain category. The description is based on an account of which semantic notions get systematic formal expression by morphological or syntactic means. The relevant categories of grammaticalized meaning are established in language-specific oppositions expressed by formal means. The assumption is that languages divide conceptual spaces in idiosyncratic ways and that meaning is shaped differently by overtly coded language-specific values. Not all languages need to have ‘specificity’ or ‘definiteness’ as obligatory grammatical categories, though they certainly have devices to express similar notions, e.g. by means of other grammatical categories that acquire secondary meanings of a resembling kind, or by lexical means. According to principles of ‘immanent’ description, paradigmatic categories of language-specifically structured semantic content are set up, values acquired in oppositions such as ‘specific’ versus ‘non-specific’. The values are invariant meanings established by means of commutation tests in various syntactic positions and on the basis of uses in various contexts and situations. They represent languagespecifically delimited meaning types that provide particular reference possibilities. The values are meanings defined in abstraction of what is suggested by determining factors such as the co-text, circumstances of speech and speaker-hearer knowledge. On the other hand, in order to decide how the values may contribute to conveying the speaker’s intentum, we must investigate how they are determined in speech by textual and extratextual factors. Both approaches are justified and necessary. The structural analysis is needed to determine what devices a given language employs to implement the cross-linguistically defined notional categories. The structural analysis distinguishes between what may be communicated by a text and what is overtly signalled in it. Language-specific categories established by means of formally coded grammatical oppositions are necessary to capture the semantic precision, the ‘sharpness’ of the content expressed (Johanson 1994). There is no one-to-one correspondence between general and language-specific categories. General categories cannot be treated as a priori inherent to individual grammars. A general reference type may be coded in different ways. The reference area demarcated by a language-specific value may cover several general categories, or there may be various kinds of overlapping. Reference types such as ‘specificity’ are represent-
Two approaches to specificity 227
ed differently across languages; there is no universal system of expressing them. Analogous functions across languages may be found inductively, but they cannot be taken for granted in advance. Equating general categories with language-specific ones will blur the interlingual differences. Concepts that are inaccurate or irrelevant to the individual systems may be introduced—and the grammars will thus be burdened with categories that are not significant for them. Sometimes language-specific values may appear to correspond reasonably well to general categories. If some English grammatical values often seem to coincide with general categories, the reason may simply be that the English value has served to define the general category, in the same way as categories of Latin were formerly used as standards for linguistic analysis. In the grammar of English, the difference expressed by a book and the book represents signalled values that seem to be close to the general categories ‘indefiniteness’ and ‘definiteness’. This distinction has no exact counterpart in the grammar of Turkish. Expressions such as a book and bir kitap [a book] or the books and kitap-lar [book-pl] may have the same intended referents, but the English and Turkish means of referring are different. Intended referents must be distinguished from their linguistic conceptualization and representation. Reference types such as ‘plurality’ and ‘repetition’ must be distinguished from grammatical values such as [±plural] and [±iterative]. Languages are rather equal in what their speakers can refer to. Referential ‘sameness’ thus tells us little about differences and similarities between their specific semantic resources. The intended referents may be ‘the same’, but the specific means used for reference are not. Since the set of values found in one individual language cannot be compared to others directly, a grid of general conceptual types is needed as a tertium comparationis. In earlier work I have argued for a framework that confronts general cognitive-conceptual analyses with language-specific ones: in the domain of causal junctors (Johanson 1996), in the conceptual space of actionality, aspect and tense (Johanson 2000), etc. These combinations will enable us to find differences and similarities between language-specific categories and show us by virtue of which language-specific values certain reference types may be represented. Thus cross-linguistic types of categories in the respective conceptual spaces may be discovered, e.g. prototypical connections of cognitive categories with language-specific structures. The aim would be to elaborate cross-linguistically valid parameters of variation and a unified typological framework for these categories. For this task, in-depth studies of a large number of individual languages of various types are necessary.
2. Specificity in Turkish Categories such as ‘specificity’ and ‘definiteness’ are essentially discourse categories with semantic and pragmatic functions. There is so far little agreement on their definitions, the properties of the linguistic contexts that convey them, their connections
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with number, referentiality, topicality, etc., and their grammatical implementation in the respective contexts. The form-function relations are often vague. ‘Specificity’ as manifested in Turkish is a good example of this situation. It lacks constant morphological or syntactic marking, but accusative and genitive marking plays a certain role for its implementation. Accusative case marking of Turkish nominals has traditionally been claimed to be an indicator for ‘definiteness’. It has been assumed that ‘definite’ direct objects are marked with the accusative suffix, whereas ‘indefinite’ objects are not (e.g. Underhill 1976: 50). But this rule does not account for cases in which the nominal is in the accusative and at the same time ‘indefinite’ due to bir ‘one, a(n)’:
(1) bir kitab-ı a book-acc ‘a certain book’
In a conference paper written in 1975 and published in 1977, I rejected the common view that accusative marking of a direct object characterizes its referent as ‘definite’. It was pointed out that the case marker, given its combinability with the indefinite article, signals ‘specificity’ rather than ‘definiteness’. It was stressed that syntactic problems had to be considered, especially the position of nominals in the sentence. I showed that direct objects outside the position immediately in front of the predicate are normally marked by the accusative without signalling ‘specificity’ (cf. Dede 1986). This necessitated a tentative analysis of the sentence-perspective organization with respect to topic and comment positions. I compared the accusative-marked direct object with the genitive-marked subject in sentences embedded by means of the marker ‑dik and found similar rules for the genitive vs. nominative contrast as for the accusative vs. nominative contrast (Johanson 1977, cf. 1987, 1991, 1998).1 It is now generally accepted that accusative and genitive marking may be used to signal ‘specificity’ of Turkish direct objects and subjects, respectively. But the form-function relations are not straightforward, the case marking not being restricted to this function. The rule found in modern grammars states that the direct object can carry the accusative suffix except when it is ‘non-specific’.
(2) Examples of ‘specific’ a. Ali kitab-ı ara-dı. Ali book-acc search-past3 ‘Ali looked for the book.’ b. Ali bir kitab-ı ara-dı. Ali a book-acc search-past3 ‘Ali looked for a certain book.’
(3) Examples of ‘non-specific’ a. Ali kitap ara-dı. Ali book search-past3 ‘Ali looked for a book/books.’
Two approaches to specificity 229
b. Ali bir kitap ara-dı. Ali a book search-past3 ‘Ali looked for a book.’ The problems of ‘specificity’ and/or ‘definiteness’ have been dealt with by several modern linguists, mostly in some generativist or functionalist framework. References are found in von Heusinger & Kornfilt (2005), which is the most recent contribution to the topic. Partly due to different principles of grammatical analysis, the discussion of this issue has often been rather confusing, and there is still no general agreement on it. As already pointed out, the aim of the following short discussion is not to scrutinize and criticize the valuable contributions made by other linguists. The focus will be on the relations between general categories such as ‘specificity’ and language-specific values such as [±specific], on categories related to them such as number categories, and on related phenomena such as referentiality and topicality. The following terminological and notational distinctions will be made: – Cross-linguistic conceptual dimensions, e.g. number, definiteness. – General functional categories, e.g. ‘definite’, ‘specific’, ‘indefinite’, ‘generic’, ‘singular’, ‘plural’. – Language-specific structural, i.e. overtly marked, oppositions, e.g. [±specific], [±plural]. – Language-specific structural, i.e. overtly marked, values: positive such as [+specific], [+pl], and negative-neutral such as [–specific], [–pl]. – Morphological markers: accusative {i}, plural {ler}, singular {bir}, zero {Ø}. – Syntactic markers: constituent ordering. – Types of nominals with respect to marking: {~Ø}, {~ler}, {~i}, {bir ~}, {bir ~i}.
3. Functional analysis ‘Definiteness’ is mostly taken to be a referential property in the sense of ‘identifying reference’. It was defined as ‘identifying specificity’ in Johanson (1977): The intended referent of a ‘definite’ nominal is presented as identifiable from the linguistic or extralinguistic context, either ‘anaphorically’ or ‘deictically’. Similarly, according to Hawkins (1978: 123–5), a ‘definite’ description instructs the hearer to locate the referent by association to a previously mentioned nominal or through clues provided by the particular non-linguistic aspects of the speech situation. A definite nominal is thus an invitation to identify a referent which the speaker presumes to be identifiable to the hearer. The entity has been introduced in the preceding discourse (anaphoric reference), or information about it is available in the speech situation (deictic reference). The availability may also be due to other kinds of shared speaker-hearer knowledge, world knowledge or different kinds of inference. ‘Definiteness’ is normally expressed in English by the definite article.
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‘Indefiniteness’ establishes ‘constructive reference’, inviting the hearer to imagine, i.e. to ‘construe’ a mental picture of, an intended referent, typically one that has not been previously mentioned in the discourse. ‘Indefinite’ nominals are thus typically used to introduce a referent into the discourse. Indefinite referents are represented by English indefinite nominals with an indefinite article, e.g. a flower, and without an article, e.g. flowers. On ‘definiteness’ and ‘indefiniteness’, see Dik 1989: 139–43. ‘Specificity’ is another commonly applied general category. The intended referent of a ‘specific’ nominal is one or more particular, i.e. non-arbitrary, individual items of the entity designated. The reference is unique if the speaker assumes that the hearer can identify the referent uniquely, not only as belonging to a known class of entities but being identical with it. The intended referent of a ‘non-specific’ nominal is the entity designated by it, without consideration of any particular item(s). It is a class or a genus, or any arbitrary member(s) of it, as, for instance, in (4):
(4) I know a cat. I know cats. A cat is clever. Cats are clever.
It is a well-known fact that the expression of ‘specificity’ is not always unequivocal in English. Thus, I’m looking for a cat is ambiguous. If a cat is meant as ‘specific’, I am referring to a cat I know. If it is ‘non-specific’, there is not a specific cat I am referring to, but any cat. Terms such as ‘referential’ and ‘non-referential’ for ‘specific’ and ‘non-specific’ are inadequate, since any entity about which something can be predicated is referential. ‘Specificity’ denotes a particular referential property. In the number dimension, a first basic distinction can be made, for the purposes of the following discussion, between ‘single [token]’ (= a set with the extent one) and ‘set [of tokens]’ for countable entities. A regular expression of ‘set’ is found in English plural-marked nominals, e.g. cats, whereas ‘single’ is typically expressed by nominals unmarked for plural, e.g. cat, a cat. Deviating expressions of ‘single’ are found in collective nominals such as clothing instead of clothes, individual pieces of clothing. The categories ‘specificity’, ‘definiteness’ and ‘indefiniteness’ are intertwined in complex ways. Definite nominals are ‘specific’, but ‘specific’ nominals are not necessarily ‘definite’. ‘Indefinite’ reference is not tantamount to absence of ‘specific’ reference. It invites the hearer to construe a referent, but not to identify it, as ‘definiteness’ does. On the other hand, ‘indefinite’ nominals may also be ‘specific’. English examples of possible combinations with ‘specificity’:
(5) ‘Specific’ + ‘definite’ + ‘single’: I saw the cat. ‘Specific’ + ‘definite’ + ‘set’: I saw the cats. ‘Specific’ + ‘indefinite’ + ‘single’: I saw a [certain] cat. ‘Specific’ + ‘indefinite’ + ‘set’: I saw [certain] cats.
Two approaches to specificity 231
3.1 Expression rules It is difficult to formulate Turkish expression rules for the overt implementation of these general categories in the dimensions of specificity, definiteness and number. Turkish texts may contain elements that are more or less regularly interpretable as ‘definite’, demonstratives and certain classifiers, intrinsically ‘definite’ proper names, etc. But general markers for ‘specificity’ and ‘definiteness’ are lacking. The expression of ‘specificity’ by means of case-marking is highly restricted. The use of {bir} and {ler} is different from the use of the English indefinite article and plural marker, respectively. Constituent ordering is not a systematic indicator of the categories involved. It is hard to prove that ‘specificity’ and ‘definiteness’ behave in systematic ways with respect to other categories or known rules and principles in the grammar of Turkish. Lack of formal marking makes it difficult to set up criteria and systematic rules for the interpretation. How to establish the speaker’s intentum without overt signals, perceivable morphological and syntactic distinctions? On what grounds do we decide that a nominal should be interpreted as ‘specific’, ‘definite’, ‘indefinite’, ‘plural’, etc., if the unmarked nominal in Mektup gel-di [letter come-past3] can in principle be rendered as ‘a letter, the letter, letters’? Some tentative expression rules might be formulated as follows. • Accusative-marked direct objects, {~i}, {bir ~i}, refer to ‘specific’ entities. However, this is only possible in the position immediately in front of the predicate. In other syntactic positions, the direct object must normally be marked with the accusative. Thus the opposition between accusative marking and non-marking is neutralized. • ‘Non-specific’ direct objects do not take accusative marking. However, all positions except the one immediately in front of the predicate normally require the accusative irrespectively of ‘specificity’. • If the referent of the subject is a single token, {~Ø} refers to it as ‘definite’. However, {~Ø} may also refer to an ‘indefinite’ single token:
(6) Ali’-den mektup gel-di. Ali-abl letter arrive-past3 ‘A letter from Ali has arrived.’
• If the referent is a set, {~ler} refers to it as ‘specific’. However, {~ler} can also refer to a set as ‘non-specific’:
(7) Ev-de misafir-ler var. house-loc guest-pl existing ‘There are guests in the house.’
• {bir ~} refers to a particular single token:
(8) Ali bir kitap ar-ıyor. Ali a book search-pres3 ‘Ali is looking for a book.’
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However, {~Ø} can have the same reference:
(9) Ali kitap ar-ıyor. Ali book search-pres3
• A nominal that does not stand immediately in front of the predicate refers to a ‘specific’ entity: (10) Para bugün gel-di. money today come-past3 ‘The money has come today.’ However, it can also refer to a ‘non-specific’ entity: (11) Bir adam bahçe-de çalış-ıyor. a man garden-loc work-pres3 ‘A man is working in the garden.’ • A subject nominal standing immediately in front of the predicate refers to a ‘non-specific’ entity: (12) Vazo-da çiçek var. vase-loc flower existing ‘There is a flower/are flowers in the vase.’ (13) Vazo-da bir çiçek var. vase-loc a flower existing ‘There is a flower in the vase.’ However, it can also refer to a ‘specific’ entity: (14) Bahçe-de anne çalış-ıyor. garden-loc mother work-pres3 ‘In the garden mother is working.’ or ‘It is mother who is working in the garden.’ • Subject nominals standing immediately in front of the predicate and referring to a set are not marked for plural {~ler}: (15) Masa-da kitap var. table-loc book existing ‘There are books on the table.’ However, they can also be marked for plural: (16) a. Bahçe-de çocuk-lar var. garden-loc child-pl existing ‘There are children in the garden.’
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b. Ali ne-ler öğren-di? Ali what-pl learn-past3 ‘What (things) did Ali learn?’ • Nominals not standing immediately in front of the predicate and marked with {~ler} refer to a definite set of tokens: (17) Öğrenci-ler bahçe-ye gir-di. student-pl garden-dat enter-past3 ‘The students entered the garden.’ However, this is just an impression arising from the ‘information packaging structure’ of the sentence (see 4.4), and öğrenci-ler [student-pl] might also be translated as ‘students’. • A nominal standing immediately in front of the predicate and marked for plural {~ler} only refers to specific entities. In reality, however, it can also refer to non-specific entities: (18) Ali bu kitap-tan güzel şiir-ler seç-ti. Ali this book-abl beautiful poem-pl choose-past3 ‘Ali chose (individual) beautiful poems from this book.’ (19) Bahçe-de öğrenci-ler var. garden-loc student-pl existing ‘There are students in the garden.’ • {bir ~i} expresses ‘specificity’: (20) Ali bir kitab-ı ara-dı. Ali a book-acc search-past3 ‘Ali looked for a (certain) book.’ However, {bir ~} can refer to a ‘specific’ entity as well: (21) Ali güzel bir kitap ara-dı. Ali fine a book search-past3 ‘Ali looked for a good book.’ The expression of the relevant categories in the domains of specificity-definitenessnumber and their combinations cannot be captured in a systematic way by vague or trivial rules such as these. Virtually all expressions appear to cover all categories. Thus, {~Ø}, {~i}, {bir ~}, {~ler} and {~leri} may all be interpreted as ‘specific’, ‘non-specific’, ‘definite’ and ‘indefinite’.
3.2 Limitations Working with general, potentially universal meaning features has certain limitations. The linguist asks how a given general category is implemented in certain contexts. If a
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particular category proves to be irrelevant, other general categories are inspected. This leads to neglect of other possibly relevant meaning features. General categories and language-specific features do not fit into the same functional analysis. In a framework of this kind it is thus often impossible to account for differences between two expressions that cover the same general category. In order to assign referential properties to nominals, the linguist must consider contextual and pragmatic information, deictic reference and extra-linguistic factors such as shared speaker-hearer knowledge, etc. The interpretation of the pragmatic uses of nominals in discourse is often, however, based on intuition and vague criteria. It frequently remains unclear in what ways contextual and extratextual factors contribute to the readings and whether there are actually any grammatical rules and principles that are sensitive to a given supposedly relevant category. The discussions of categories in the dimensions of specificity-definitenessnumber are also often biased by the idiosyncratic uses of articles and plural markers in languages such as English. The criteria applied for defining the intended referents are frequently characterized by an analytic approach that ignores the distinction between extralinguistic reality and intentum. Entities may be conceived of and represented linguistically in different ways, irrespective of their ontological status. The functional analysis must be based on the linguistic representation of the intentum. Thus in the number dimension, a plural and a collective can, as already mentioned, refer to one and the same entity. A complication arises if the interpretation is also based on the communicative ability of the hearer, e.g. when ‘specificity’ is taken to involve not only an invitation to referent identification, but the successful identification as well. Identifying reference is not tantamount to actual identifiability. It is irrelevant for the intentum whether the referent is actually known to the hearer, and whether the invitation is such that the hearer can select exactly which particular entity is intended.
4. A structural approach A structural approach in the dimensions of specificity-definiteness-number as found in Johanson (1977) endeavours to determine the semantic effects of formal marking, establishing language-specific values by means of syntagmatically delimited paradigmatic oppositions and describing their complex interactions. Here I shall make a few comments on language-specific values as coded by means of case-marking and constituent ordering. The terms ‘marked’ and ‘unmarked’ will be used to indicate relationships within oppositions (cf. Johanson 1971). The unmarked member covers all the ground that is not covered by the marked member. I will finally comment on bare nominals, minimally specified items representing the unmarked member of all relevant oppositions.
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4.1 Specificity Specificity [+specific] is a language-specific value signalled by accusative marking in the [±specific] oppositions {~i} vs. {~Ø}, {bir ~i} vs. {bir ~}, and {~leri} vs. {~ler}. The accusative marked terms express the value [+specific] in the sense of identifying reference, an invitation to identify an entity supposed to be identifiable. The unmarked terms are negative or neutral in relation to this value. The opposition is realized exclusively in the syntagmatic position next to the predicate: (22) a. vs. b.
Ali çiçeğ-i sat-tı. Ali flower-acc sell-past3 ‘Ali sold the flower(s).’ Ali çiçek sat-tı. Ali flower sell-past3 ‘Ali sold a flower/flowers.’
In all other positions, the opposition is neutralized. If speakers of Turkish tend to interpret accusative direct objects as specific even if they are placed far away from the predicate, this is rather an effect of topicality (see 4.4). A particular variant of [+specific] is signalled by {bir ~i} as opposed to {bir ~}: (23) a. vs. b.
Ali bir kitab-ı ara-dı. Ali a book-acc search-past3 ‘Ali looked for a certain book.’ Ali bir kitap ara-dı. Ali a book search-past3 ‘Ali looked for a book.’
This combination has puzzled linguists who have defined {bir ~} as expressing ‘indefiniteness’ and {~i} as expressing ‘definiteness’. The nominal bir kitab-ı is in the accusative and at the same time preceded by the so-called indefinite article bir. The item could not possibly be ‘indefinite’ and ‘definite’ at the same time. In Johanson (1977) it was shown that {bir ~i} signals ‘specificity’ in the sense of ‘particularity’. It marks direct objects as pragmatically specific, indicating that the entity referred to is ‘particular’, i.e. non-arbitrary. It is now generally accepted that ‘indefinite’ nominals marked by bir may be ‘specific’ (Enç 1991: 24). The item {bir ~i} signals constructive reference, inviting the hearer to imagine an entity which is not meant to be identifiable from the context or the situation. At the same time, however, it signals that the referent of the object ‘though not yet determinable by the hearer, will be of relevance to the ensuing discourse’ (Comrie 1981: 129). The sentence (24) can thus be read as: ‘construe a particular individual referent that is still to be identified’.
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(24) Ali, bir kız-ı gör–dü. Ali a girl-acc see-past3 ‘Ali saw a [particular] girl.’ As opposed to {bir ~i}, the simple {bir ~} represents the value [–specific], covering cases that are negative to, or neutral towards, the value [+specific]. It introduces entities without indicating whether they will be of relevance to the subsequent discourse. In her discussion of different approaches to describing ‘definiteness’ in Turkish, Csató (1990) comments on the features ‘specificity’ and ‘uniqueness’, claiming that it is not the notion of ‘definiteness’, but the notions of ‘specificity’ and ‘uniqueness’ that are grammaticalized in Turkish. The author thus questions whether the term ‘definiteness’ should be employed at all for Turkish. The category of ‘definiteness’ is not grammaticalized, i.e. does not get systematic formal expression. Csató claims that any description should be based on an account of what is grammaticalized. Thus, when dealing with ’specificity’, she restricts herself to describing overtly signalled meaning elements. The author makes several proposals for the description of the referential properties of nominals modified by certain determiners. She shows that the item {bir ~i} is obligatory when the nominal is further qualified by an adjective denoting specific properties; there may be exceptions to this rule. The item {bir ~} is unmarked with respect to ‘specificity’ and expresses non-unique reference, which accounts for some co-occurrence restrictions: It cannot co-occur with öbür ‘the other’, aynı ‘the same’ or demonstrative pronouns, which have unique referential properties. The situation is similar in Persian. Accusative marking by means of ra: has traditionally been taken to signal ‘definiteness’ of the direct object, but Windfuhr remarks that what is marked by ra: is ‘not definiteness, but topicalization or specificity’ (1987: 534). Turkish (25a) thus corresponds to (25b), whereas (26a) corresponds to (26b). (25) a. b.
Bir ev-i yak-tılar. a house-acc burn-past3pl ‘They burned a [particular] house.’ Persian Xa:ne‑i‑ra: a:teš zad-and. house-indef-acc fire strike-past3pl ‘They burned a [particular] house.’
(26) a. b.
Bir ev yak-tılar. a house burn-past3pl ‘They burned a house.’ Persian Xa:ne‑i a:teš zad-and. house-indef fire strike-past3pl ‘They burned a house.’
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An entity introduced into the discourse as the direct object for subsequent reference is usually marked by {bir ~i}. However, Erguvanlı (1984) shows that {bir ~} can be referred to via pronouns in subsequent discourse. Schroeder (1999) claims that the ‘pragmatic specificity’ coded by the accusative marking is essential for the referent to be treated as identifiable in the subsequent discourse.
4.2 Singularity Singularity [+singular] is signalled by {bir ~} and {bir ~i} as opposed to {~Ø} and {~i}. It expresses individual singularity (‘individuelle Singularität’) in the sense of ‘single unit’ and may be applied to all referents that can be conceived of as units. With count nominals it expresses individualization as ‘a token’, a distinct singular entity, e.g. bir balık ‘a fish’. With collective count nominals, it expresses ‘a set of tokens’. With mass nominals, [+singular] gets a different kind of count reading, expressing an individual unit in the sense of ‘a portion’ or ‘a kind’, e.g. bir çay ‘a glass of tea’ or ‘a kind of tea’, bir para ‘an amount of money’. The unmarked terms {~Ø} and {~i} signal negation of, or neutrality towards, this number value. Nominals whose referents are more susceptible to individualization tend to prefer [+singular] marking in (27): (27) Bir yabancı gel-di. a foreigner come-past3 ‘A foreigner came.’ With referents less susceptible to individualization, [+singular] is often dispensable. Both (28a) and (28b) can be understood as ‘Ali bought a book’. (28) a. b.
Ali bir kitap al-dı. Ali a book buy-past3 ‘Ali bought a book.’ Ali kitap al-dı. Ali book buy-past3 ‘Ali bought a book/books.’
‘Indefiniteness’ is thus not a separate value in this language-specific analysis. If we may take {~Ø} and {bir ~} to express ‘indefiniteness’, it is only because of their unmarkedness and not because of any signalled value. The unmarked items have the potential to cover a wide referential range including indefinite interpretations.
4.3 Plurality Plurality [+pl] is signalled by {~ler} and {~leri} as opposed to the non-plural items {~Ø} and {~i}. It expresses individual plurality (‘individuelle Vielheit’) in the sense of ‘set of units’. It marks the extent of sets of distinct units and may be applied to all refer-
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ents that can be conceived of as units. With count nominals it expresses a set of distinct entities, e.g. balık-lar [fish-pl] ‘fishes’. With collective count nominals, it expresses a set of sets, e.g. aile-ler [family-pl] ‘families’. With mass nominals, which are indifferent to quantification and individualization of this kind, [+pl] expresses ‘large amounts’ or gets a different kind of count reading, expressing units in the sense of distinct individual portions or kinds of the entity in question, e.g. çay-lar [tea-pl] ‘kinds/portions of tea’, para-lar [money-pl] ‘amounts of money’, su-lar [water-pl] ‘occurrences of water’, ‘masses of water’. Nominals marked for [+pl] can be ‘specific’ or ‘non-specific’: (29) a. vs. b.
Birsel güzel yemek-ler-i pişir-di. Birsel fine food-pl-acc cook-past3 ‘Birsel prepared the fine dishes.’ Birsel güzel yemek-ler pişir-di. Birsel fine food-pl cook-past3 ‘Birsel prepared fine dishes.’
Plural nominals used in a generic sense are ‘specific’ (Tura 1973). Even nominals marked for [+singular] may be characterized by [+pl], i.e. in the item {bir ~ler}, e.g. bir ses-ler [a sound-pl] ‘some sounds’, ‘sounds of some kind’, bir şey-ler [a thing-pl] ‘some things’, ‘things of some kind’, bir yer-ler [a place-pl] ‘some places’, ‘places of some kind’. Here the so-called indefinite article co-occurs with plural forms. The item {bir ~} expresses [+singular] in the sense of ‘single unit’, whereas {~ler} expresses [+pl] ‘kinds’. The meaning of bir has been described as similar to that of bazı ‘certain’ (Deny 1921: 221) and the whole expression as ‘vaguer’ than a corresponding singular or plural noun (Lewis 1967: 54). According to Csató (1990), the restriction that bir cannot co-occur with plural nouns and plural quantifiers holds true in general. The exceptions are rulegoverned. There are restrictions with respect to what sort of nouns can occur in {bir ~ler} constructions. One group consists of lexical pro-forms such as şey ‘thing’, yer ‘place’ and zaman ‘time’. The forms bir şey, bir yer and bir zaman can be regarded as lexicalized in the meanings ‘something’, ‘somewhere’ and ‘sometime’. The other group contains nouns denoting sensory perception such as ses ‘sound’, ışık ‘light’ and gürültü ‘noise’: (30) Ali bir ses-ler duy-du. Ali a sound-pl hear-past3 ‘Ali heard some sounds.’ The unmarked terms {~Ø} and {~i} signal negation of, or neutrality towards, the number value [+pl]. They may refer to a single token, a set of tokens, a class or a genus: (31) a. Ali balık al-dı. Ali fish buy-past3 ‘Ali bought fish/a fish/fishes.’
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b. Ali çay iç-ti. Ali tea drink-past3 ‘Ali had tea.’ Unmarked nominals can be rendered by English singular or plural forms, e.g. çiçek ‘flower’, ‘flowers’. Count nominals can be recategorized to get mass or collective readings. Count nominals whose referents are more susceptible to individualization, in particular human referents, tend to prefer [+pl] marking: (32) Yabancı-lar gel-di. foreigner-pl come-past3 ‘(The) foreigners have come.’ Referents less sensitive to quantification and individualization are typically referred to by the unmarked terms; see (33) where the unmarked nominal may refer to a set: ‘letters’. (33) Mektup gel-di. letter come-past3 Possible reading: ‘Letters have come.’ The unmarked item {~Ø} is used instead of {~ler} with ‘non-specific’ direct objects, e.g. (34a) rather than (34b): (34) a. Ali mektup yaz-dı. Ali letter write‑past3 ‘Ali wrote letters.’ ?? b. Ali mektup-lar yaz-dı. Ali letter-pl write‑past3 Intended meaning: ‘Ali wrote letters.’ {~ler} is licensed with non-specific direct objects preceded by determiners, as in (29b) and (30). The use of plural marking is sensitive to the degree of animacy and the speaker’s intentum to refer to a quantity of distinct units or not. The unmarked items are neither singulars nor plurals, but just represent the absence of number marking. Even if the referent in the real world is a set with a certain extent, this plurality is not necessarily signalled. It is possible to regard both [+singular] and [+pl] as values representing a category ‘individuality’ in the sense of reference to distinct units, as opposed to ‘non-individuality’. In an analysis of the functional kind, however, oppositions such as [±singular] and [±plural] could hardly be used as parameters, since they are not clear-cut enough and blur the boundaries between the general number categories set up for the analysis.
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4.4 Constituent ordering Constituent ordering may be relevant for interpretations in terms of specificity, definiteness and number. For example, it is often claimed for languages lacking a definite article, e.g. Russian, that ‘definiteness’ may be expressed by means of constituent ordering. In Turkish, however, the ordering does not determine the interpretations in any systematic way. Still there are certain correlations between constituent order and interpretations in terms of language-specific values. These correlations depend on the functional perspective, the ‘information packaging structure’ of the sentence. Nominals may exhibit looser or tighter junction with the predicate and thus possess different status with respect to their semantic/referential dependence on it. They may display less or more semantic cohesion with the predicate, higher or lower referential status, more or less prominence with respect to the informational value, etc. In the formulas used below, N designates a nominal, S a subject nominal, O a direct object nominal, P a predicate, X a constituent intervening between the nominal and the predicate. A looser junction will be denoted with N//P, a tighter junction as N/P. A nominal standing immediately in front of the predicate—possibly separated from it by the particles de ‘also’, bile ‘even’ and mi (yes/no question marker)—can be interpreted in different ways. (35) Misafir gel-di. guest come-past3 ‘There came guests/a guest.’ or ‘The guest arrived.’ (35) may be interpreted as a thetic utterance with misafir as a thetic subject: ‘There came guests/a guest’ (N/P), answering the question ‘What is the matter, what happened?’. It may also be interpreted as a categorial statement about misafir: ‘The guest arrived’ (N//P), answering the question ‘What happened to the guest?’. The distinction may be overtly marked by means of accentuation or sentence intonation, but not by other devices. This position is used to establish [±specific] oppositions for direct objects since it offers a choice between the accusative and the nominative. This leads to the interpretation of (36a) as [+specific] and of (36b) as [–specific]: (36) a. b.
Ali resm-i çek-ti. Ali picture-acc take-past3 ‘Ali took the picture.’ Ali resim çek-ti. Ali picture take-past3 ‘Ali took a picture/pictures.’
Similarly (37a) vs. (37b) and (38a) vs. (38b): (37) a. Ali çay-ı iç-ti. Ali tea-acc drink-past3 ‘Ali drank the tea.’
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b. Ali çay iç-ti. Ali tea drink-past3 ‘Ali drank tea.’ (38) a. b.
Ali para-yı al-dı. Ali money-acc take-past3 ‘Ali received the money.’ Ali para al-dı. Ali money take-past3 ‘Ali received money.’
If the nominal is detached from the predicate by an intervening constituent, the junction is looser. (39) is a categorial statement about some soldier(s): (39) Asker buraya gel-di. soldier here come-past3 (= N//XP) ‘A soldier/the soldier/soldiers/the soldiers came here.’ Since a direct object in this opposition is regularly accusative-marked, there is no ground for the [±specific] oppositions {~i} vs. {~Ø}, {bir ~i} vs. {bir ~}, and {~leri} vs. {~ler}. In (40), para cannot be substituted for para-yı [money-acc]. (40) Ali para-yı bugün al-dı. Ali money-acc today get-past3 (= O//P) ‘Ali received (the) money today.’ However, certain speakers of Turkish seem to accept this substitution under particular pragmatic circumstances. These order phenomena are closely related to the functional sentence perspective. The subject nominal in a categorial S//P utterance such as Misafir gel-di [guest comepast3] is the topic that the predicate comments on: ‘The guest has arrived’, answering the question ‘What is said about the guest?’. Nominals detached from the predicate are typically used as topic constituents. There are multiple topic-comment structures, in which each constituent is the topic of the rest of the sentence and each topic has a higher prominence with respect to information packaging than the following ones. In the SXOP sentence (42a) and the SOXP sentence (41b) the subject is the most prominent constituent and the leading topic: ‘What is said about Ali?’. (41) a. b.
Ali Emine’-ye çiçeğ-i ver-di. Ali Emine-dat flower-acc give-past3 ‘Ali gave Emine the flower.’ Ali çiçeğ-i Emine’-ye ver-di. Ali flower-acc Emine-dative give-past3 ‘Ali gave the flower to Emine.’
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The SXOP sequence tells us what Ali did to Emine, the SOXP sequence what Ali did to the flower. The information structures are thus (S(O(XP))) and S(X(OP)), respectively, each nominal being a topic about which the rest provides information. On topicalization (‘Thematisierung’), see Johanson (1977). Topic and comment have pragmatic properties definable in terms of ‘givenness’ and ‘newness’. Topic constituents of the type N//P tend to suggest ‘specific’ interpretations, because they typically contain ‘given’ information. If the S//P subject in (42a) or the O// P object in (42b) suggests ‘specific’ readings, this cannot, however, be due to any contrast with ‘non-specific’ nominals. (42) a. b.
Öğrenci kapı-da bekle-di. student gate-loc wait-past3 ‘The student waited at the gate.’ Resm-i Ali çek-ti. picture-acc Ali take-past3 ‘It was Ali who took the picture.’
Not even the object resm-i [picture-acc] can signal [+specific] in this position. The nominals may suggest known information, but they are in principle open to both ‘specific’ and ‘non-specific’ interpretations. Similarly, constituents in the position immediately in front of the predicate may tend to suggest ‘non-specific’ interpretations, because they typically convey new information or give focus to the relatively most important information. This position is the least prominent one with respect to known information. Thus the S//P subject in (43) may suggest a ‘non-specific’ reading. (43) Masa-da çiçek dur-uyor. table-loc flower stand-pres3 ‘There is a flower/are flowers on the table.’ However, neither type signals [+specific] or [–specific]. The respective ‘definiteness’ and ‘indefiniteness’ readings are only inferred from properties regarding the information package structure and thus lack semantic ‘sharpness’. The relation of ‘specificity’ to topicality in Turkish is still rather unclear. In some functional frameworks it might be possible to define ‘definiteness’ as implied by ‘givenness’ and to claim that topics are ‘definite’ in Turkish, but this is impossible in a analysis based on values signalled by virtue of a [±specific] opposition.
4.5 Accusative and genitive marking Accusative marking thus plays a rather limited role for the expression of [+specific] in Turkish. It does not serve the opposition [±specific] if the direct object is separated from the predicate by another constituent. The accusative functions as a segment divider marking a potential gap into which other constituents can be inserted. It breaks a chain of constituents which might otherwise be interpreted as belonging closer together.
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The gap may also be indicated by suprasegmental means such as sentence intonation. The constituents separated from the predicate have a considerable syntactic mobility. These facts may suggests that the primary task of accusative marking has been to signal topicalization and that the ‘specificity’ opposition is the result of secondary development. This is also suggested by the use of accusative marking in certain other Turkic languages. The Persian accusative marker ra: is used for topicalization in similar ways. The rules for accusative marking of direct objects closely parallel those for genitive marking with subjects of complement clauses marked with ‑dik. (Other markers of this kind are -ma and -(y)iş.) The choice between the marked and unmarked term permits analogous distinctions (Johanson 1977). When (44) competes with (45) in front of the predicate, the genitive subject signals [+specific]: ‘that the water flows’ vs. ‘that water flows’. ak-tığı (44) suy-un water-gen flow-inf ‘that the water flows’ (45) su ak-tığı water flow-inf ‘that water flows’ A subject separated from the predicate is regularly genitive-marked. Thus (46) can be read in both ways: ‘that water flows here’ or ‘that the water flows here’. (46) suy-un bura-dan ak-tığı water-gen here-abl flow-inf ‘that (the) water flows here’ In (47) the subject can be understood as ‘money’ or ‘the money’: (47) para-nın bugün gel-diği money-gen today come-inf ‘that (the) money has come today’ This use has a strong affinity to topic function and may, by virtue of this affinity, suggest ‘unsharp’ readings of ‘specificity’ in various contexts. The functions of accusative and genitive marking can thus be characterized as follows: Where an opposition is possible, accusative and genitive signal [+specific]. In positions where such an opposition is not possible, they are just topic markers.
4.6 Bare nominals The structural analysis suggested so far has an important consequence with respect to bare nominals, {~Ø} items such as kitap ‘book’, çiçek ‘flower’, kedi ‘cat’, misafir ‘guest’. These items represent the unmarked member of three relevant language-specific oppo-
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sitions and thus signal the values [–specific], [–singular], [–pl]. They are minimally specified items, covering all referents that do not need explicitly signalled individualization, quantification or specification. The fact that they do not carry positive values in the dimensions of specificity and number does not, however, mean that the entities they refer to have no relation to the concepts in these dimensions. The position in front of the predicate has a special status with respect to the interpretation of {~Ø} nominals. Corresponding to the syntactic closeness to the predicate, they often exhibit a high degree of semantic dependence, a low degree of topicality and weak referentiality, i.e. a low status in terms of distinctness, constructive reference and identifying reference. {~Ø} nominals can be used here in a merely characterizing sense, referring to a category or class, the consideration of specific individual referents being irrelevant or impossible. This interpretation has been generalized, and thus exaggerated, in traditional descriptions (e.g. Grönbech 1936: 70, 150–1). The semantic closeness of {~Ø} object nominals to a following verbal predicate has been claimed to be so strong that the nominals are incorporated into the verb, forming an expanded predicate, a compound, with it, thus losing its status as syntactic arguments or clause constituents. In traditional literature constructions such as balık tut- [fish catch] are taken to be compounds analogous to the type balık kuyruğu [fish tail-possessive], the {~Ø} direct object nominal just specifying the activity of ‘catching’ as one of ‘fishing’, i.e. ‘to fishcatch’. According to this idea, (48a) would mean ‘Ali book-read’, and (48b) ‘Ali flower-gave to the girl’. (48) a. b.
Ali kitap oku-du. Ali book read-past3 ‘Ali read a book/books.’ Ali kız–a çiçek ver-di. Ali girl-dat flower give-past3 ‘Ali gave a flower/flowers to the girl.’
The pre-predicate position is, however, a multi-functional position, allowing for lower or higher degrees of cohesion with the predicate and thus for N//P as well as N/P readings. In Johanson (1977) it was stressed that the accusative marks a separation of the object nominal from its predicate, thus preventing an interpretation of semantic coalescence of object and predicate. But this does not mean that all cases of non-marked object + predicate must be interpreted as instances of coalescence. The strong semantic coalescence typical of incorporation is not the only option. The reference is not necessarily restricted to ‘class’ or ‘category’ readings. {~Ø} nominals are minimally specified and thus open to various interpretations with regard to referential properties. The fact that the bare {~Ø} nominal in front of the predicate is unspecified for [±specific], [±plural] and [±singular] does not mean that the entity referred to must be indifferent to distinctions in these dimensions. It can still be an identifiable entity with clear properties with respect to distinctness and number extent. It is possible to refer to such entities without highlighting their properties by signalling any of the three positive val-
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ues. {~Ø} items can be used in cases where individuality and number are less relevant and where it does not matter semantically whether [+specific], [+pl] and [+singular] are signalled. The nominals may still refer to distinct entities. The readings may include ‘unspecified amount’, ‘ensemble’, ‘collective’, ‘multitude’, ‘single token’ and ‘set of tokens’. The unmarked item does not imply any characterization with respect to individuality, or, a fortiori, with respect to number (Johanson 1977: 1187). The bare direct object in (50) can be interpreted at least in three ways: (49) Ali gazete oku-du. Ali newspaper read-past3 a. ‘Ali read a newspaper.’ b. ‘Ali read newspapers.’ c. ‘Ali did newspaper-reading.’ It would be wrong to identify a certain formal type—a bare {~Ø} object nominal in front of the verb—with one particular semantic interpretation and to interpret gazete oku‑ [newspaper read] as ‘newspaper-reading taking place’. ‘Incorporation’ and ‘non-incorporation’ readings are not distinguished morphologically, but the two types exhibit different behaviour in discourse. Unlike incorporated nominals, non-incorporated nominals can take preceding modifiers that qualify them: (50) a. b.
Ali yeni dergi çıkar-acak. Ali new journal bring.out-fut3 ‘Ali will publish a new journal.’ Ankara’-da yeni dergi çık-acak. Ankara-loc new journal come.out-fut3 ‘A new journal will be published in Ankara.’
In nominal compounding, the first member has neither constructive nor identifying reference. Thus balık ‘fish’ has a different status in balık lokantası [fish restaurant-possessive] ‘fish restaurant’ than in balık tut- [fish catch] ‘to catch fish’. Incorporation is often thought to be much more productive in Turkish than in languages such as English and German (e.g. German radfahren ‘to ride a bicyle’). The reason is that this Turkish syntactic type in reality also includes nominals which do not form a compound with the verb, or lose their status as constituents, or refer to ‘class’ or ‘category’ only.
5. Conclusion The present article has discussed two different approaches to the grammatical analysis of ‘specificity’ and related concepts in Turkish nominals. It has been shown that a purely functional analysis of ‘specificity’ in Turkish has strong limitations, yielding vague expression rules. It has been demonstrated how a structural approach in the dimensions
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of specificity–definiteness–number establishes language-specific values, also for the bare nominal as the unmarked representative of all relevant oppositions. The conclusion is that the structural approach is indispensable for the analysis of the phenomena concerned.
Abbreviations abl ablative, acc accusative, dat dative, fut future, gen genitive, indef indefinite, inf infinitivizer, loc locative, pl plural, pres present.
Notes 1. An anonymous reviewer informs me that this had already been suggested in a manuscript which has never been published: E. Sezer (1972): ‘Some observations on the role of genitive phrases in Turkish nominalizations’, Harvard University.
References Comrie, B. 1981. Language Universals and Linguistic Typology. Oxford: Blackwell. Csató, É. Á. 1990. “Referential properties of some Turkish determiners”. In Studies on Turkish Linguistics, S. Koç (ed.), 117–46. Ankara: Middle East Technical University. Dede, M. 1986. “Definiteness and referentiality in Turkish verbal sentences”. In Studies in Turkish Linguistics, D. I. Slobin and K. Zimmer (eds), 147–63. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Deny, J. 1921. Grammaire de la langue turque (dialecte Osmanli). Paris: Éditions Ernest Leroux. Dik, S. C. 1989. The Theory of Functional Grammar 1. The Structure of the Clause [Functional Grammar Series 9]. Dordrecht: Foris Publications. Enç, M. 1991. “The semantics of specificity”. Linguistic Inquiry 22: 1–25. Erguvanlı, E. E. 1984. The Function of Word Order in Turkish Grammar [University of California Publications in Linguistics 106]. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press. Grönbech, K. 1936. Der Türkische Sprachbau. Kopenhagen: Levin & Munksgaard. Hawkins, J. A. 1978. Definiteness and Indefiniteness. A Study in Reference and Grammaticality Prediction. London: Croom Helm. Heusinger, K. von and Kornfilt, J. 2005. “The case of the direct object in Turkish: Semantics, syntax and morphology”. Turkic Languages 9: 3–44. Johanson, L. 1971. Aspekt im Türkischen. Vorstudien zu einer Beschreibung des türkeitürkischen Aspektsystems. Studia Turcica Upsaliensia 1. Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksell. Johanson, L. 1977. “Bestimmtheit und Mitteilungsperspektive im türkischen Satz”. Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft, Supplement 3 (2): 1186–1203. Johanson, L. 1987. “Opredelennost’ i aktual’noe členenie v tureckom jazyke” [Definiteness and information structure in Turkish]. In Problemy sovremennoj tjurkologii [Novoe v zarubež
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noj lingvistike 19] [Topics in contemporary Turcology, vol. 19 of New Trends in Linguistics], A. N. Barulin (ed.), 398–425. Moskva: Progress. Johanson, L. 1991. Linguistische Beiträge zur Gesamtturkologie [Bibliotheca Orientalis Hungarica 37]. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó. Johanson, L. 1994. “Türkeitürkische Aspektotempora”. In Tense Systems in European Languages, R. Thieroff and J. Ballweg (eds), 247–66. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Johanson, L. 1996. “Kopierte Satzjunktoren im Türkischen”. Sprachtypologie und Universalienforschung 49: 39–49. Johanson, L. 1998. “The structure of Turkic”. In The Turkic Languages, L. Johanson and É.Á. Csató (eds), 30–66. London: Routledge. Johanson, L. 2000. “Viewpoint operators in European languages”. In Tense and Aspect in the Languages of Europe, Ö. Dahl (ed.), 27–187. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Lewis, G. L. 1967. Turkish Grammar. Oxford: Clarendon. Schroeder, C. 1999. The Turkish Nominal Phrase in Spoken Discourse [Turcologica 40]. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. Sezer, E. 1972. “Some observations on the role of genitive phrases in Turkish nominalizations”. Unpublished manuscript, Harvard University. Tura, S. S. 1973. A Study on the Articles in English and their Counterparts in Turkish. Ph. D. dissertation, University of Michigan. Underhill, R. 1976. Turkish Grammar. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press. Windfuhr, G. 1987. “Persian”. In The World’s Major Languages, B. Comrie (ed.), 523–65. London: Routledge.
chapter 11
Case markedness Peter de Swart Radboud University Nijmegen
This paper examines languages in which differential object marking is used as a means to avoid ambiguity of grammatical functions. I argue that in these languages a constraint Minimal Semantic Distinctness is at work which requires subjects and objects to be distinguishable from each other either on the morphosyntactic level or on the semantic level. I discuss how this approach relates to theories of transitivity found in the work of Hopper and Thompson (1980) and Comrie (1989). Finally, I implement this Distinctness constraint in the framework of Bidirectional Optimality Theory which gives a natural interpretation of the relation between markedness in form and markedness in meaning found in these differential object marking systems.
1. Introduction Hopper and Thompson (1980) formulated ten parameters on basis of which the degree of transitivity of a clause can be determined. Examples of such parameters are number of participants, aspect, mode, agency, and individuation of O (see e.g. Malchukov, this volume, for a detailed discussion). According to their hypothesis a higher value on these parameters surfaces as more morphosyntactic marking for transitivity. In this paper I look at one of these transitivity parameters, individuation of O, and examine how it interacts with case marking. More specifically, I focus on so-called differential object marking systems which can be characterized in the following way: some languages overtly mark a subset of their direct objects whereas they leave another subset unmarked depending on the semantic properties of these direct objects, the predicate or the clause as a whole. Most commonly the marking of direct objects is triggered by their degree of animacy, definiteness, and/or specificity. Highly individuated objects, i.e., those that are animate and definite (cf., Hopper and Thompson 1980), are marked with (accusative) case and non-individuated ones, i.e., inanimate and indefinite, stay unmarked. An example of a system that differentiates its object marking based on animacy is found in the Dravidian language Malayalam. In Malayalam animate objects are accusative marked and inanimate ones are typically left unmarked.
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(1) Malayalam (Dravidian; Asher and Kumari 1997) a. Avan oru paʃuvine vaaɲɲi. he a cow.acc buy.past ‘He bought a cow.’ b. ɲaan teeɲɲa vaaɲɲi. I coconut buy.past ‘I bought some coconut.’
Some languages use more than one semantic property to determine the case marking of their objects. Such systems are sometimes referred to as two-dimensional differential object marking systems (Aissen 2003). Examples of such two-dimensional systems can be found in the Romance languages. Except for standard French and Italian which do not show differential object marking at all, most Romance languages, those dubbed peripheral Romance by de Jong (1996), mark direct objects depending on their animacy and specificity.
(2) Spanish (Romance; Hopper and Thompson 1980; Brugè and Brugger 1996) a. Celia quiere mirar a un bailarín. Celia wants watch.inf obj a ballet.dancer ‘Celia wants to watch a ballet dancer.’ [animate, specific] b. Celia quiere mirar un bailarín. Celia wants watch.inf a ballet.dancer ‘Celia wants to watch a ballet dancer.’ [animate, non-specific] c. Esta mañana he visto la nueva iglesia. this morning have.1sg seen the new church ‘This morning I saw the new church.’ [inanimate, specific]
The examples in (2) show that in principle the object marker a is only used for direct objects that are both animate and specific. If one of the features is missing, like in (2b) and (2c), the object marker does not appear. In terms of Hopper and Thompson’s approach to transitivity we can explain the appearance of the object marker as a signal of a higher degree of transitivity of the clause due to the individuation of the object argument; objects that are animate and/or specific are more individuated than inanimate and/or non-specific objects. A different conception of the phenomenon of differential object marking can be found in the work of Comrie (1989) in which the marker signals a deviation from the transitive prototype in which direct objects are inanimate and non-specific. In this paper I propose a new analysis in terms of the principle minimal semantic distinctness. In this view a sentence with no semantic contrast between subject and object should show a morphological contrast between the two arguments. This principle allows us to discard the notions of high or natural transitivity as found in Hopper and Thompson (1980) and Comrie (1989) and view the relation between form and meaning as one between markedness scales. The interaction between those scales can be formalized in a natural way in the framework of Bidirectional Optimality Theory (Blutner
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2000). This formal framework allows us to formalize the observation that a meaning with no semantic contrast between subject and object should be paired with a morphological form showing morphological contrast. The paper is organized in the following way: in the next section I introduce the principle of minimal semantic distinctness in an informal way and I provide data supporting this principle. In section 3 I discuss and compare the views on prototypical transitivity found in Hopper and Thompson (1980) and Comrie (1989) and relate them to the proposed account. The principle of minimal semantic distinctness is implemented in the formal framework of Bidirectional Optimality Theory in section 4. In section 5 I contrast this new proposal with the recent Optimality Theoretic formalization found in Aissen (2003).
2. (Minimal Semantic) Distinctness In a recent paper (Aissen 2003) an attempt is made to formalize the phenomenon of differential object marking (dom) within the framework of Optimality Theory. The basis of this formalization is Comrie’s observation of the natural transitive construction (Comrie 1989: 128). According to him ‘the most natural kind of transitive construction is one where the A is high in animacy and definiteness, and the P is lower in animacy and definiteness; and any deviation from this pattern leads to a more marked construction.’ Following Comrie (1989) and Bossong (1991), Aissen (2003) states that the marking patterns found in differential object marking systems can be understood in terms of markedness reversal ‘what is marked for a subject is unmarked for an object and vice versa’. If we look at features such as animacy, definiteness and topicality, it is unmarked for a transitive subject to be animate, definite and topical and marked for objects to have these features. On the other hand, it is unmarked for an object and marked for a subject to be inanimate, indefinite and rhematic. In this view, objects that resemble prototypical subjects to a great extent are in need of disambiguation with respect to those subjects and will receive overt (case) marking. In other words, semantically marked objects have concomitant morphosyntactically marked forms, whereas semantically unmarked objects are formally unmarked. This is a manifestation of the iconicity principle, which states that markedness of form goes hand in hand with markedness of meaning. The notions of markedness reversal and iconicity play a crucial role in the formalization Aissen (2003) proposes for differential object marking patterns. In this conception of dom the occurrence of morphological marking is restricted to situations in which the object is semantically marked. The model thus rules out situations in which morphological marking (on objects) is due to the semantic markedness of subjects. This is, nevertheless, contradicted by what we find in natural languages. In Spanish, for instance, the rule of thumb with respect to the marking of direct objects is that only those objects that are both human and specific are preceded by
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the object marker a, cf. (2) above. There are, however, also situations in which objects which do not meet those requirements are marked with a. The examples in (3) below show that inanimate objects, those that are deemed prototypical by markedness reversal approaches in general and Aissen’s model in particular, can be (optionally) marked when the subject of the sentence is also inanimate.
(3) Spanish (Romance; De Jong 1996) a. El entusiasmo vence (a) la difficultad. the enthusiasm conquer.3sg (obj) the difficulty ‘Enthusiasm conquers difficulties.’ b. A la difficultad vence el entusiasmo. obj the difficulty conquer.3sg the enthusiasm ‘Enthusiasm conquers difficulties.’
In (3a) the marking with a is optional, which means that some speakers will use the object marker where others judge it unnecessary. However, when the object is preposed, the use of a becomes obligatory. The marking of the object in (3) can still be explained in terms of markedness reversal, yet an important difference is that it is not the object’s semantic markedness that causes the marking but rather the semantic markedness of the subject. A similar example can be found in Malayalam. Recall from the introduction that in this language normally only animate objects receive accusative case. Now take a look at the examples in (4) below.
(4) Malayalam (Dravidian; Asher and Kumari 1997) a. Kappal tiramaalakaɭe bheediccu. ship wave.pl.acc split.past ‘The ship broke through the waves.’ b. Tiramaalakaɭ kappaline bheediccu. wave.pl ship.acc split.past ‘The waves split the ship.’
Since an event of splitting that involves a ship and waves can be interpreted in two ways, the inanimate object is marked with accusative in order to make clear which participant is the patient. Again we see an example of an inanimate object that receives case marking, something that cannot be explained in terms of markedness reversal as proposed in Aissen’s model. Approaches in terms of markedness reversal state that those subjects that look too much like prototypical objects and those objects that look too much like prototypical subjects are in need of disambiguation and therefore are formally marked. From the examples presented in this section we can infer, however, that this is not (always) the case. The marking of objects can also be determined by the properties of both arguments in the clause, to be more precise by the relation between these two arguments. In other words, differential object marking is a clausal property, just as transitivity is said to be
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a clausal property (cf. Comrie 1989, Hopper and Thompson 1980). Since differential bject marking is thought to be closely connected to transitivity, I propose an approach o to differential object marking that takes into account these clausal properties. As stated above with respect to the Malayalam example in (4), the marking of objects is employed when it is not clear which grammatical function has to be assigned to which participant. In other words, when the two participants look too much like each other, we need to mark one in order to make clear which participant is the object. To capture this need of disambiguation I propose the principle of Distinctness.
(5) Distinctness If the two arguments of a transitive relation are not minimally distinct they must be morphologically distinct. If they are minimally semantic distinct they do not need to be morphologically distinct. Minimal Semantic Distinctness: the agent must outrank the patient on the relevant semantic scales. Morphological Distinctness: two arguments are morphologically distinct when they are formally marked in different ways.
This principle takes into account that transitivity is a clausal feature and links the lack of contrast on the semantic level to the presence of contrast on the morphosyntactic level. The contrast on the two levels is determined by the principles of minimal semantic distinctness and morphological distinctness respectively. The relevant semantic dimensions include animacy, definiteness, specificity, topicality and discourse status, but are largely language dependent (see de Hoop and Lamers (this volume) for additional discussion). The morphological feature of case is what concerns us in this paper. In Malayalam the dimension of animacy is the dominant one, where in Spanish both animacy and definiteness/specificity play a role. If we look again at the Malayalam example in (4), we can now explain it in the following way. Since both arguments in the transitive relation are inanimate the sentence violates minimal semantic distinctness. Since there is no contrast at the semantic level, there has to be contrast at the morphosyntactic level and this is fulfilled by the use of accusative case. Additional evidence for the Distinctness principle comes from the Papuan language Awtuw (due to Malchukov 2005). This language clearly shows the global (sentence level) aspect of differential object marking, as in this language the object is only marked when it equals or is higher than the subject in animacy. Compare (6a) with (6b).
(6) Awtuw (Papuan; Feldman 1986) a. tey tale-re yaw d-æl–i 3.f.sg woman-obj pig fac-bite-past ‘The pig bit the woman.’ b. tey tale yaw d-æl–i 3.f.sg woman pig fac-bite-past ‘The woman bit the pig.’
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In (6a) the subject ‘pig’ is lower in animacy than the object ‘woman’ (animate vs. human) and therefore the object ‘woman’ has to be marked with an object marker. In (6b), on the other hand, the subject outranks the object in animacy and no object marking is needed. The Distinctness principle resembles to a great extent Comrie’s natural transitive construction, but is more explicit about the relation between meaning and form. In my view formal marking is only employed when the need of disambiguation between subject and object is at its peak, i.e., when they are not sufficiently distinct (for a similar yet different view on distinctness see Næss, 2004b, this volume). The Distinctness principle can also easily explain the rules of thumb formulated for differential object marking in Spanish and Malayalam (see the discussion of examples (3) and (4)). These rules make reference to elements that are ranked at the highest end of the semantic scales, i.e., that are [+animate] and [+specific]. Since these objects are ranked at the highest end of the semantic scales they can never be outranked by subjects, and therefore they always violate minimal semantic distinctness which results in a requirement for morphological distinctness, hence the overt case marking. This shows that Distinctness can also account for the ‘traditional’ differential object marking data. 2.1 Influence of World Knowledge In the previous section I argued that case marking on objects is employed when the two arguments are not longer semantically distinct. This means that case marking of objects essentially is a device to avoid ambiguity. In this section I present examples in which case-marking patterns surface not predicted by the Distinctness principle. I argue that these case-marking patterns are due to the (dis)appearance of a potential ambiguity because of our knowledge of the world. In the examples in (4) above we saw sentences from Malayalam with two inanimate arguments of which the object was marked with accusative. Now let us consider the examples in (7) below.
(7) Malayalam (Dravidian; Asher and Kumari 1997) a. Tiiyyə kuʈil naʃippiccu. fire hut destroy.past ‘Fire destroyed the hut.’ b. Veɭɭam tiiyyə keʈutti. water fire extinguish.past ‘Water extinguished the fire.’
Again we find sentences with two inanimate arguments but this time the object is not marked with accusative case. This seems to be a counterexample to the proposed Distinctness principle. In this light let us look at the following comment from Asher and Kumari (1997: 204): ‘When both subject and object are [−anim] and both are in the nominative, their function is determined by semantic features of the verb, since it can-
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not be determined by word order. However, in the presence of a [−anim] subject it is possible for a [−anim] object to be in the accusative case to resolve potential ambiguity’. Since it is clear from our world knowledge that fire tends to destroy huts and not the other way round, we do not have to be concerned about a potential ambiguity that could arise because the participants are not semantically distinct. Such an ambiguity was at stake in the examples in (4), in which both participants are equally capable of performing the action upon the other participant, and therefore the object had to be marked with accusative. In other words, a violation of minimal semantic distinctness only plays a role when a potential ambiguity is not ruled out by world knowledge. A similar example from Hindi is shown in (8) below.
(8) Hindi (Indo-Aryan; Mohanan 1990) a. Ilaa-ne yah k hat lik haa. Ila-erg this.nom letter.nom write.perf ‘Ila wrote this letter.’ b. *Ilaa-ne is k hat-ko lik haa. Ila-erg this letter-acc write.perf ‘Ila wrote this letter.’
In Hindi object marking is determined by the features animacy and definiteness and canonically found with objects that are animate and/or definite.1 In (8) we see, however, that a sentence with an accusative marked definite object is ungrammatical. According to Mohanan (1990: 105–6) this can be explained in the following way: ‘a verb by virtue of its meaning may either require that its object be animate, or that it be inanimate. It may also be neutral to animacy. The choice between acc and nom is available only to the objects of those verbs that are neutral to the animacy of their objects. Thus, in contrast to the verb ut haa ‘lift’, the verb lik h ‘write’, can only take inanimate objects, and does not allow acc objects even when they are definite’. This seems similar to the Malayalam example we saw in (7) above. Again world knowledge seems to be involved because of which extra marking in order to avoid a potential ambiguity is unnecessary. These two examples showed that world knowledge deems case-marking patterns predicted by Distinctness superfluous. There are, however, also examples in which world knowledge asks for overt case on an object deemed unnecessary by the Distinctness principle. In the Sino-Tibetan language Zaiwa direct objects are usually only marked when they are animate. In (9b) we see, nevertheless, an inanimate object followed by the object marker r55.2
(9) Zaiwa (Sino-Tibetan; Lustig 2002) a. Nye 11 sing=31 lye 31. bamboo.thong split(bamboo) also+I ‘I am/we are splitting bamboo thongs.’
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b. Nui 31 r 55 sing=31 gvan 31-aq1. vine obj split(bamboo) put.into-sg.imp ‘Make thongs out of vines.’ The principle of minimal semantic distinctness does not predict this marking. Lustig (2002), however, gives us an explanation for the unexpected use of the object marking in (9b). According to him ‘the direct object is marked by an object marker because it is unusual for this entity to be used in this context, since mostly bamboo, not vines are used to make thongs’. Later on he adds: ‘either it is for reasons of clarity, since otherwise the utterance is not readily understood, or the object in question is not the one which is normally expected’. In this case we see that a violation of minimal semantic distinctness is overruled by world knowledge, but in the opposite direction from the examples in (7) and (8). In those examples world knowledge cancelled a case-marking pattern predicted by Distinctness and in (9) it forces a case-marking pattern that was not predicted by Distinctness. I conclude that the differential object marking patterns discussed are determined by the interaction between world knowledge and Distinctness in order to avoid potential ambiguity. In this interaction world knowledge is prior to Distinctness or put in Optimality Theoretic terms: world knowledge outranks Distinctness.
3. Two views on prototypical transitivity: The relation between meaning and form In the previous section I proposed the Distinctness principle, which on the one hand follows the argumentation of Comrie and Aissen by treating differential object marking as a disambiguation driven phenomenon. On the other hand, it follows Hopper and Thompson’s notion of Transitivity as a clausal feature. In this section I want to discuss the differences between the approach advocated by Comrie/Aissen on the one hand and Hopper and Thompson on the other and relate them to the proposed account in terms of Distinctness. Næss (2004a) notes that the notion of typical object as advocated by Comrie (1989), and formalized in Aissen’s framework, seems to be in contradiction with the view Hopper and Thompson develop in their 1980 article on transitivity. As Næss (2004a) notes ‘functional typology assumes a ‘natural’ correlation between a high degree of individuation — that is, animacy and definiteness — and (transitive) subjects, on the one hand, and between a low degree of individuation and transitive objects on the other’.3 This view is the direct opposite to the notion of high transitivity as we find it in Hopper and Thompson (1980) in which, as Næss (2004a) states, ‘typical objects, contrary to the functional-typological analysis, are considered to be highly individuated’. Thus, in Hopper and Thompson’s view a sentence like ‘John beat his wife’ is considered a prototypical transitive sentence, and in Comrie’s account something like ‘John read a book’. Næss
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continues by showing that objects that are conceived as prototypical in Comrie’s view and Aissen’s model are often not formally encoded as objects at all. Rather, constructions with objects low in individuation are often expressed as formally intransitive constructions, as shown by the phenomenon of object incorporation. If we adopt Comrie’s view it thus seems that we will run into a mismatch between semantic and formal transitivity. Now, let us first look at the formulations of the relation between the two levels of transitivity as found in the two views. Hopper and Thompson (1980: 255) note the following about the relation between semantic transitivity and formal transitivity: ‘If two clauses (a) and (b) in a language differ in that (a) is higher in Transitivity according to any of the [transitivity] features, then, if a concomitant grammatical or semantic difference appears elsewhere in the clause, that difference will also show (a) to be higher in Transitivity’. When we look at the relation between semantic and formal transitivity we could state that according to Hopper and Thompson (1980) unmarked or high transitivity coincides with a more marked morphosyntactic structure, whereas marked or low transitivity is reflected by a morphosyntactically less marked structure. Comrie (1989: 128) on the other hand has the following to say about the relation between semantic and formal transitivity: ‘… the most natural kind of transitive construction is one where the A is high in animacy and definiteness, and the P lower in animacy and definiteness; and any deviation from this pattern leads to a more marked construction’. In a footnote, he adds ‘In particular, as noted by DeLancey, and also by Hopper and Thompson (1980), it is misleading to claim that Ps are typically inanimate/ indefinite, rather than just less animate/definite than As’ (Comrie 1989: 136). The idea that prototypical objects are low in individuation seems to be new to Aissen’s model and not necessarily a formalization of Comrie’s view on prototypical objects. Comrie’s view of the relation between the two levels of transitivity is, however, still in opposition with Hopper and Thompson’s view. In Comrie’s view prototypical unmarked semantic transitivity is paralleled by a less marked morphosyntactic structure whereas marked semantic transitivity is reflected by a morphosyntactically more marked structure. Let us now briefly look how these two views can account for data that involve the marking of both high and low individuated objects. First look at the examples from Spanish in (10) below. (10) Spanish (Romance; Hopper and Thompson 1980) a. Celia quiere mirar un bailarín. Celia wants watch.inf a ballet.dancer ‘Celia wants to watch a ballet dancer.’ [non-specific] b. Celia quiere mirar a un bailarín. Celia wants watch.inf obj a ballet.dancer ‘Celia wants to watch a ballet dancer.’ [specific] In (10a) the object bailarín is not preceded by the object marker a and is interpreted as non-specific, i.e., Celia is satisfied with seeing any ballet dancer. In (10b), on the other hand, bailarín is preceded by a and it is interpreted as specific, i.e., there is only one
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specific ballet dancer Celia wants to see. In terms of Hopper and Thompson (1980) the difference between the two sentences in (10) would be explained in the following way: the sentence in (10a) is lower in transitivity due to the low-individuated object and therefore the structure is formally less marked compared to (10b), which is higher in transitivity because of its high-individuated object. Following Comrie (1989), on the other hand, we say that (10a) resembles the natural transitive construction and that this clause is therefore less marked compared to (10b), which has deviated from the natural transitive construction in that its object has the same level of individuation as the subject. The deviation from the natural transitive construction is accompanied by a more marked structure, hence the marking with a in (10b). Although they proceed along different lines, both approaches seem equally capable of explaining the formal difference found in (10). Now consider the examples in (11). (11) Chukchee [Paleo-Siberian; Hopper and Thompson 1980] a. Tumg-e nantəwat-ən kupre-n. friends-erg set-tr net-abs ‘The friends set the net.’ [specific] b. Tumg-ət kopra-ntəwat-gʔat. friends-abs net-set-intr ‘The friends set nets.’ [non-specific] Again we find a contrast between objects based on specificity. In (11a) the specific object is realized as a distinct morphological unit marked with absolutive case, whereas the non-specific object in (11b) is incorporated into the verb. Along the lines of Hopper and Thompson (1980) we would claim that (11a) is high in transitivity and therefore we find more morphosyntactic marking. In (11a) this is shown by the fact that the object is realized as a separate morphological unit distinct from the verb and marked with absolutive case. Furthermore the subject of the clause is marked with ergative case. (11b), however, is low in transitivity due to the non-individuated object and shows less morphological marking: the object is incorporated into the verb and the subject is marked with absolutive. In terms of Comrie (1989), (11a) is a deviation from the natural transitive construction and hence we find more morphosyntactic marking as explained above. The sentence in (11b), however, resembles the natural transitive construction but the formal structure is marked as intransitive. According to Næss this shows that there is a mismatch: an allegedly prototypical semantic configuration is realized as a formally intransitive structure. In Næss (2004b:4) she writes ‘a model of semantic transitivity is inadequate if there are constructions which are classified by the model as semantically transitive, but which are not encoded as transitive formally.’ I would like to claim, however, that there is not necessarily a mismatch. Rather instead of saying that our model of semantic transitivity is wrong, I think we should address our model of the relation between meaning and form. In Figure 1 I have given such a model based on the Distinctness principle, which states that lack of contrast on one level is compensated by contrast on another level.
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Language-particular markedness strategies
Semantic configuration
Spanish
P(Aspec , Onspec)
P(Aspec , Ospec)
Contrast; unmarked
No contrast; marked
No case on O
Case on O
Chukchee Incorporation of O No contrast; unmarked
O is morphologically distinct Contrast; marked
Morphosyntactic Structure Figure 1. The relation between meaning and form
In the figure the levels of meaning (semantic transitivity) and form (morphosyntactic transitivity) are given above and below the shaded cells respectively. In the shaded cells we see which marking strategies languages use to formally mark (lack of) contrast on the semantic level. Different languages have different strategies of marking this mapping of meaning to form. In Spanish the object marker a is used whereas Chukchee uses the strategy of noun incorporation.4 In Figure 1 (lack of) contrast is equated with a markedness value. However for the two levels we find a difference in this equation. On the semantic level lack of contrast is equated with the value marked whereas contrast is said to be unmarked. On the morphosyntactic level, on the other hand, contrast is said to be marked, and lack of contrast is equated with unmarked. In both cases the notion of markedness is assessed on the basis of the markedness scales given in (12) below (‘<’ indicates ‘less marked than’). (12) a. Transitivity continuum: intransitive–low transitive–high transitive. b. Semantic markedness: intransitive < transitive with low-individuated O < transitive with high-individuated O. c. Formal markedness: intransitive < transitive without case on O < transitive with case on O. I assume a transitivity continuum (12a) along the lines of Hopper and Thompson (1980). However, instead of assuming the existence of a prototypical transitive construction, I assume the markedness scales in (12b) and (12c). Markedness in both cases is determined by the subprinciples, minimal semantic distinctness and morphological distinctness, of the Distinctness principle: on the semantic level the least marked construction is an intransitive one, whereas a transitive construction with a fully individuated patient is deemed most marked, since it violates minimal semantic distinctness more than a construction with either a non-individuated patient or no patient at all.5 On the morphosyntactic level the least marked structure is an intransitive one and the most marked is a transitive structure with an object that is overtly marked with case.6 Instead of mapping levels of transitivity this model maps markedness values. How this can be formalized is shown in the next section.
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4. Bidirectional optimization of differential object marking In this section I show how the Distinctness principle together with the model in Figure 1 can be formalized using the framework of Bidirectional Optimality Theory as developed in Blutner (2000).7 Central in this framework is the observation found in the literature (see for example Batistella 1990, Horn 1984, Levinson 2000) that in natural languages marked forms often also have marked meanings. In the words of Horn (1984: 26): ‘unmarked forms tend to be used for unmarked situations and marked forms for marked situations’. Within the framework of Bidirectional Optimality Theory this iconicity relation follows from the interaction of general economy considerations and thus becomes epiphenomenal. Bidirectional Optimality Theory is an extension of standard Optimality theory a constraint based grammar formalism which maps an input to its optimal output. The optimal output for a given input is determined by evaluating each output candidate against a set of ranked constraints. These constraints are violable and (potentially) conflicting. In unidirectional optimization approaches either the viewpoint of the speaker (OT syntax) or the viewpoint of the hearer (OT semantics) is taken. Bidirectional OT, however, takes both the speaker’s and hearer’s perspective as well as their interaction into account. In standard Optimality Theory only one candidate output survives as the optimal one and all the others are deemed suboptimal. Bidirectional OT, in contrast, gives one suboptimal output form/meaning the chance to survive the evaluation by combining it with a suboptimal output meaning/ form. Critically Bidirectional OT optimizes form-meaning pairs instead of only forms or meanings as does unidirectional OT. The notion of super-optimality plays an important role in this respect and is defined as in (13) (where ‘<’ indicates ‘is more economical than, less marked than’). (13) A form-meaning pair 〈f,m〉 is super-optimal iff 〈f,m〉 ∈ gen, and (Q) there is no other super-optimal pair 〈f′,m〉: 〈f′,m〉 < 〈f,m〉, and (I) there is no other super-optimal pair 〈f,m′〉: 〈f,m′〉 < 〈f,m〉. In other words Bidirectional OT picks out those form-meaning pairs for which no better (more economical) alternative form (f′) exists to express the meaning (m) and for which at the same time no better (more economical) alternative meaning (m′) exists for the given form (f). Let us illustrate this at hand of Figure 2. 〈F1, M1〉 ↑ 〈F2, M1〉
← ←
〈F1, M2〉 ↑ 〈F2, M2〉
Figure 2. Super-optimality
Suppose we have two forms F1 and F2 for which it holds that F1 < F2, i.e., F1 is unmarked with respect to F2. Furthermore, we have two meanings M1 and M2 available for which it holds that M1 (unmarked) < M2 (marked). On the basis of the definition in (13) we can distinguish two super-optimal pairs in Figure 2 –indicated with the symbol –
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one consisting of an unmarked form and an unmarked meaning 〈F1, M1〉 and another consisting of a marked form and a marked meaning 〈F2, M2〉. The form-meaning pair 〈F1, M1〉 is super-optimal because there is no better form to go with the meaning and no better meaning to go with the form. The alternative form F2 is more marked than the form F1 and the same holds for the alternative meaning M2 which is more marked than the meaning M1. In accordance with definition (13) the pair 〈F1, M1〉 is super-optimal. The same thing holds for the pair 〈F2, M2〉 although this takes a bit more reasoning. In principle the form-meaning pairs 〈F1, M2〉 and 〈F2, M1〉 are better or more economic pairs than 〈F2, M2〉 because the form F1 of 〈F1, M2〉 is better than the form F2 of 〈F2, M2〉 and the meaning M1 of 〈F2, M1〉 is better than the meaning M2 of 〈F2, M2〉. The fact that these two pairs are better pairs than 〈F2, M2〉 is shown in Figure 2 by means of the arrows starting from 〈F2, M2〉 (the blocked pair) to 〈F1, M2〉 and 〈F2, M1〉 (the blocking pairs). However, these two pairs are blocked themselves by 〈F1, M1〉 because for 〈F2, M1〉 M1 is more economically paired with F1 than with F2 (F1 < F2) and for 〈F1, M2〉 F1 is more economically paired with M1 than with M2 (M1 < M2) hence the super-optimal pair 〈F1, M1〉. The pairs 〈F2, M1〉 and 〈F1, M2〉 are blocked by the pair 〈F1, M1〉 and as a result the pair 〈F2, M2〉 comes out as super-optimal as well as there are no better pairings available for F2 and M2. In general we can state that in a bidirectional view of optimization the structures that compete in one direction of optimization are constrained by the outcomes of the other direction and vice versa. Because of its natural linking of markedness of meaning to markedness of form this framework seems well-suited to describe differential object marking patterns discussed in this paper. The blockings described in Figure 2 rest crucially on the relative markedness of the forms and meanings involved. The difference in markedness is determined by constraints as is well known from standard Optimality Theory. Forms/meanings with the better violation patterns are considered unmarked. In order to determine the markedness of the forms and meanings involved in differential object marking I formulate two constraints. First, a constraint on form ‘Star Structure’ (*Struc) adapted from Aissen (1999, 2003), which is an economy constraint penalizing the presence of morphological case (avoid Case) and reflecting the insights of the markedness scale in (12c) on which structures with case marked objects are considered to be more marked than ones without case. The second constraint is called Minimal Semantic Distinctness (msd) and this constraint states that the transitive subject A must outrank the object O on the relevant semantic distinctions (cf. (5) and (12b)). On the basis of these constraints we can conclude that meanings which are minimally semantically distinct are unmarked with respect to meanings which are not, i.e., +msd < −msd. Objects that are case marked, on their turn, are more marked than objects which are not case marked, i.e., −Case < +Case. Following the reasoning applied to Figure 2 we can conclude from Figure 3 that again we have two super-optimal pairs, i.e., 〈−Case,+msd〉 and 〈+Case, −msd〉. The form without case is unmarked with respect to the form with case and the meaning which is minimally semantically distinct is unmarked with respect to the one which is not. The first super-optimal pair is the one combining absence of overt case with a
262 Peter de Swart Figure 3. Two super-optimal dom pairs 〈−Case,+msd〉 ↑ 〈+Case,−msd〉
← ←
〈−Case,−msd〉 ↑ 〈+Case,−msd〉
minimally semantically distinct meaning and the other super-optimal pair is the one combining overt case with a meaning which is not minimally semantically distinct. The two other possible pairs are blocked by the super-optimal pair 〈−Case,+msd〉. Let us now consider how this analysis works when applied to actual differential object marking patterns. In order to illustrate the analysis I make use of tableaux which are slightly different from the ones used in standard Optimality Theory. Instead of giving output candidates which either consists of forms or meanings as is practice in OT syntax and OT semantics respectively, these tableaux give us form-meaning pairs as output candidates. For each candidate output the form (presence or absence of case) and the referential features of subject and object are specified. Furthermore, the two constraints are given separated by a dashed line which indicates that they are not ranked with respect to each other. The constraint msd determines the markedness of the meaning of each form-meaning pair and the constraint *Struc determines the markedness of the form of each form-meaning pair. The more violations of a constraint –indicated by the number of *– the higher the markedness of the form/meaning. On the basis of the constraint violation patterns the Bidirectional OT system, as shown in Figures 2 and 3, provides us with the super-optimal pairs indicated in the tableau with the symbol . First consider the pattern found in Spanish in which the presence or absence of the object marker a is determined by the features animacy and specificity. Tableau 1 demonstrates the most common pattern, i.e., only animate and specific objects receive the object marker, on the basis of the examples in (2a) and (2b). Tableau 1 Spanish (examples 2a and 2b)
msd
*Struc
a. 〈+case, Su(an,spec)–Oj(an,spec)〉
**
*
b. 〈+case, Su(an,spec)–Oj(an,nspec)〉
*
*
c. 〈−case, Su(an,spec)–Oj(an,spec)〉
**
d. 〈−case, Su(an,spec)–Oj(an,nspec)〉
*
In Tableau 1, we can see that only the candidates with the object marker a, i.e., candidate a and b, violate the constraint *Struc. The constraint Minimal Semantic Distinctness, on the other hand, is violated by all candidates although to a different degree. Candidates with a specific interpretation of the object violate the constraint minimal semantic distinctness twice, one time for the dimension of animacy and once for the dimension of specificity. The non-specific reading only violates the constraint minimal semantic distinctness on the dimension of animacy. Thus, the case marked
Case markedness 263
object is the marked form and the specific interpretation the marked interpretation. The object without case marking, on the other hand, is the unmarked form and the non-specific interpretation the unmarked interpretation. From the Tableau we see that the unmarked form is linked to the unmarked interpretation and vice versa, resulting in the super-optimal pairs 〈+case,Su(an,spec)-Oj(an,spec)〉 and 〈−Case,Su(an,spec)Oj(an,nspec)〉 indicated by the symbol . This correctly describes the pattern found in (2a) and (2b). For Malayalam we can construct the same argument. Let us first discuss the difference between animate and inanimate objects. As we saw in example (1), in this language animate objects are marked with accusative case and inanimates are typically unmarked. This situation is illustrated in Tableau 2. Tableau 2 Malayalam (examples 1a and 1b) a. 〈+case, Su(an)-Oj(an)〉
msd *
b. 〈+case, Su(an)-Oj(in)〉 c. 〈−case, Su(an)-Oj(an)〉
*Struc * *
*
d. 〈−case, Su(an)-Oj(in)〉
Again we can see that only the candidates with a case marked object, i.e., candidate a and b, violate the constraint *Struc. The constraint Minimal Semantic Distinctness, on the other hand, is only violated by candidates a and c as for these candidates the subject and object share the feature of animacy. The candidates that satisfy *Struc are unmarked and the ones that violate it are marked. With respect to Minimal Semantic Distinctness the candidates that satisfy it are unmarked and the ones that violate it are marked. From Tableau 2 it can be seen that this analysis in terms of Bidirectional Optimality Theory again predicts the right pattern: in case of an animate subject only animate objects but not inanimate object receive overt case marking. Finally, let us look at the case in which inanimate objects do receive accusative marking in Malayalam, i.e., in sentences with an inanimate subject (cf., (4) above), and contrast it with the situation in which inanimate objects do not receive overt case, i.e., in sentences with an animate subject, cf. (1b). From Tableau 3, we can see that when a sentence has an animate subject, the presTableau 3 Malayalam (examples 1b and 4) a. 〈+case, Su(in)-Oj(in)〉
msd *
b. 〈+case, Su(an)-Oj(in)〉 c. 〈−case, Su(in)-Oj(in)〉 d. 〈−case, Su(an)-Oj(in)〉
*Struc * *
*
264 Peter de Swart
ence of an inanimate object does not violate the constraint msd, i.e., in candidates b and d. However, in case of both an inanimate subject and an inanimate object the constraint is violated, i.e., in candidates a and c. For the constraint on overt case marking *Struc we again find the same pattern: candidates a and b with case violate it and candidates c and d without case do not. Following again the reasoning that pairs of unmarked forms and unmarked meanings and of marked forms and marked meanings are super-optimal, we can conclude that this analysis gives us the right results.
5. Comparison to Aissen (2003) The framework of Aissen (2003) in terms of markedness reversal and constraint derivation through harmonic alignment has been very influential in recent years and has been widely discussed for its merits and problems (see among others Woolford 2001, Morimoto 2002, de Swart 2003, for discussion). In this section I briefly discuss the empirical coverage of Aissen’s model and the model proposed in this paper. The major difference between the two models lies in the prediction they make for the occurrence of overt marking on objects. Aissen’s model generalizes over prototypical objects and predicts that only those objects that look like prototypical subjects receive overt marking whereas the model in terms of minimal semantic distinctness looks at the relation between the subject and the object in a particular sentence and does not generalize over prototypical features of subjects or objects. The difference between the two models seems to be reflected in the differential object marking systems attested in natural language. On the one hand, we find systems as the ones discussed in this paper in which the marking of the object seems to be subject to variation and dependent on the degree of ambiguity of grammatical relations in the sentence. Such systems can be termed pragmatic dom systems (following terminology from Jäger 2004) or global, i.e., the marking is dependent on both subject and object features. On the other hand, we find so-called local or structural dom systems in which the marking of the object is dependent only on the features of the object and does not involve any relation to the features of the subject. The latter system seems to be at work in Turkish, for instance, in which specific objects receive accusative case and non-specific ones no case marking independent of the specificity feature of the subject. As might be clear from the above discussion, the global dom systems can easily be captured in the minimal semantic distinctness model but present problems (as discussed in section 2) to Aissen’s model. The local systems, on the other hand, can be described in a straightforward manner in Aissen’s model but seem to confront the minimal semantic distinctness approach with problems as discussed by Morimoto and de Swart (2005). Morimoto and de Swart (2005) argue that the two models should not be seen as competitors but rather as extensions of each other. Only when combined they can give a complete analysis of the full range of facts found in (the development of) differential object marking systems.
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6. Conclusion In the previous sections I examined the relation between meaning and form in transitive constructions. I presented some cross-linguistic data of differential object marking systems and discussed how they can be accounted for in terms of the Distinctness principle. This principle states that the two arguments of a transitive relation must be minimally distinct and if not this must be marked in the realized structure. I presented evidence for this principle from various differential object marking languages and showed how the principle can be formalized. The formalization is developed within the framework of Bidirectional Optimality Theory and makes use of two constraints which determine the markedness of forms and meanings. The relation between meaning and form found in differential object marking systems can be accounted for in an elegant way using the bidirectional system of minimal semantic distinctness. Instead of relying on a notion of prototypical transitivity, I based my model on the interaction between a semantic and a formal markedness scale. Future research has to show how this account can be extended to differential systems that are based on other transitivity parameters and/or use other marking strategies then the one discussed in this paper.
Acknowledgements I would like to thank Miriam Butt, Andrej Malchukov, Pieter Muysken, and the members of the pionier Project ‘Case Cross-linguistically’ and the nwo-Cognition project ‘Conflicts in Interpretations’ for valuable comments on and discussion of the issues and ideas presented in this paper. I am especially indebted to Helen de Hoop for ongoing discussion. Furthermore, I would like to thank the two reviewers for their constructive comments, and the audiences at the pionier workshop ‘Case, Valency and Transitivity’ (June 2003) and a University of British Columbia Linguistics Colloquium (December 2003) for their input. The Netherlands Organisation of Scientific Research (nwo) [pionier Project ‘Case Cross-linguistically’ grant 220-70-003] provided financial support which is gratefully acknowledged. All errors are the responsibility of the author.
Abbreviations 1 1st person, 3 3rd person, abs absolutive, acc accusative, erg ergative, f female, fac factive, imp imperative, inf infinitive, intr intransitive, nom nominative, obj object marker, perf perfective, pl plural, sg singular, tr transitive.
Notes 1. Mohanan (1990) analyzes differential object marking in Hindi in terms of animacy and definiteness. In a footnote (Mohanan 1990: 105 fn34) she gives examples in which specificity seems
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to play an important role. Butt (1993) analyses Hindi differential object marking in terms of animacy and specificity. This discussion does not affect the present analysis. 2. Superscripted numbers indicate tones. 3. Comrie’s view is called the functional-typological view by Næss. 4. See also Malchukov, this volume, for a discussion of the similarity in function between antipassive in ergative languages and differential object marking in accusative languages. 5. The scale in (12b) assumes that A is constantly high-individuated. If we want to take into account the possible fluctuation in the individuation of A the markedness scale should read: intransitive < transitive with low-individuated O < transitive with low-individuated A and O/ transitive with high-individuated A and O < transitive with low-individuated A and high-individuated O. 6. A formal markedness scale is markedness strategy specific. For incorporating languages we could construct the scale: intransitive < intransitive with incorporated O < transitive with morphologically individuated O. 7. See de Swart (2003) for an extended discussion.
References Aissen, J. 1999. “Markedness and Subject Choice in Optimality Theory”. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 17: 673–711. Aissen, J. 2003. “Differential Object Marking: Iconicity vs. economy”. in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 21: 435–83. Asher, R. E. and Kumari, T. C. 1997. Malayalam. London and New York: Routledge. Battistella, E. 1990. Markedness: The Evaluative Superstructure of Language. Albany: State University of New York Press. Blutner, R. 2000. “Some Aspects of Optimality in Natural Language Interpretation.” Journal of Semantics 17: 189–216. Bossong, G. 1991. “Differential object marking in Romance and beyond.” In New Analyses in Romance Linguistics, Selected papers from the XVIII Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages 1988, D. Wanner and D. Kibbee (eds). Amsterdam: Benjamins. Brugè, L. and Brugger, G. 1996. “On the accusative a in Spanish.” Probus 8: 1–51. Butt, M. 1993. “Object Specificity and Agreement in Hindi/Urdu.” In Papers from the 29th Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society. Volume 1: The Main Session, K. Beats, G. Cooke, D. Kathman, S. Kita, K. McCullough and D. Testen (eds), 89–104. Comrie, B. 1989. Language Universals and Linguistic Typology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Feldman, H. 1986. A Grammar of Awtuw [Series B.94]. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics. de Hoop, H. and Lamers, M. (this volume). “Incremental distinguishability of subject and object”. Hopper, P. and Thompson, S. 1980. “Transitivity in Grammar and Discourse.” Language 56: 251– 99. Horn, L. 1984. “Towards a new taxonomy of pragmatic inference: Q-based and R-based implicature.” In Meaning, form, and use in context: Linguistic applications, D. Schiffrin (ed.), 11–42. Washington: Georgetown University Press.
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Jäger, G. 2004. “Learning constraint sub-hierarchies. The bidirectional gradual learning algorithm.” In Pragmatics and Optimality Theory, R. Blutner and H. Zeevat (eds), 251–87. Houndsmill, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan. de Jong, J. J. 1996. The Case of Bound Pronouns in Peripheral Romance [Dissertations in Linguistics 16]. Groningen. Levinson, S. C. 2000. Presumptive Meanings: The Theory of Generalized Conversational Implicature. Cambridge, ma: The MIT Press. Lustig, A. 2002. Zaiwa Grammar. PhD dissertation, University of Leiden. Malchukov, A. this volume. “Transitivity parameters and transitivity alternations: Constraining co-variation”. Malchukov, A. 2005. “Animacy and asymmetries in case marking.” Talk presented at the pionier Workshop on Animacy. Radboud University Nijmegen, May 19, 2005. Mohanan. T. 1990. Arguments in Hindi. PhD dissertation, Stanford University. Morimoto, Y. 2002. “Prominence Mismatches and Differential Object Marking in Bantu”. In Proceedings of the LFG02 Conference, M. Butt and T. H. King (eds), 292–314. Stanford: csli Publications. Morimoto, Y. and De Swart, P. 2005. “Language variation and historical change: The emergence of dom in Romance”. Manuscript ZAS Berlin and Radboud University Nijmegen. Næss, Å. this volume. “Case semantics and the Agent–Patient opposition”. Næss, Å. 2004a. “What Markedness Marks: The Markedness Problem with Direct Objects.” Lingua 114, 1186–1212. Næss, Å. 2004b. Transitivity: From Semantics to Structure. PhD dissertation, University of Nijmegen. de Swart, P. 2003. The Case Mirror. ma Thesis, University of Nijmegen. Woolford, E. 2001. “Case Patterns”. In Optimality Theoretic Syntax, G. Legendre, S. Vikner and J. Grimshaw (eds), 509–43. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press.
chapter 12
Incremental distinguishability of subject and object Helen de Hoop and Monique Lamers Radboud University Nijmegen
The subject and the object in a transitive clause should be distinguishable. We discuss five different ways in which distinguishability can be obtained: (i) case morphology, (ii) agreement, (iii) selectional criteria of the verb, (iv) word order, and (v) prominence, in particular animacy. We argue that these different sources of information can be viewed as violable and potentially conflicting constraints that play an important role in the incremental process of interpretation. We propose a new model of incremental optimization of interpretation and argue that we can thus account for the findings of several on-line studies in which distinguishability was manipulated.
1. Introduction In 1981 a paper appeared by the Dutch linguist Frans Zwarts, entitled “Negatief polaire uitdrukkingen 1” (“Negative Polarity Items – Part 1”). This title triggered the expectation among linguists in the Netherlands that some day, part 2 on negative polarity items would appear. So far this has not happened. To call something part 1 triggers the expectation that there is or will be a part 2 as well. Maybe this expectation is even stronger if one encounters something that is called part 2: there has to be a part 1 then. Similarly, if one encounters an accusatively marked direct object in German (a part 2), the expectation is triggered that there must be a subject as well (a part 1).
habe ich zerbrochen. (1) Den Zaun [the fence].acc have I.nom broken ‘I broke the fence.’
Within the domain of language comprehension, it is well established that syntactic dependencies give rise to predictive parsing (Gibson, 1998). For example, the processing of an unambiguously identifiable object will give rise to the prediction of a subject. In languages that have ergative case marking, this case marking can be conceived of as calling this noun phrase part 1, which gives rise to the expectation that there will be a part 2. Note that with respect to subject and object marking, it usually appears to be sufficient to mark just one of the two arguments of a two-place predicate (either accu-
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sative case on the direct object, or ergative case on the subject), the other one can stay unmarked. That is, nominative and absolutive case forms (in nominative–accusative and ergative–absolutive languages respectively) are often the forms which lack morphological case marking. An example from Yup’ik is given below.
(2) Angutem tangrr-aa arnaq. man.erg sees woman.abs ‘The man sees the woman.’
In other words, one function of accusative case and ergative case may be viewed as similar, namely as distinguishing between the two arguments of a transitive (two-place) relation. Accordingly, whenever there is only one argument, i.e., in the case of a one-place predicate, this argument does not have to be case-marked at all from a functional point of view. The most unmarked and often morphologically null case is the nominative case in nominative–accusative case systems and the absolutive case in ergative–absolutive case systems. The morphologically unmarked case is sometimes referred to as the obligatory case because it is usually present in both transitive and intransitive sentences (cf. Bobaljik 1993). That is, nominative/absolutive case captures the unmarked ‘other part’ of a transitive construction as well as the one and only argument of an intransitive construction.
Mann tanzt. (3) Der the.nom man dances ‘The man dances.’
(4) Arnaq yruartuq. woman.abs dances ‘The woman dances.’
In other words, if there is only one argument (of a one-place predicate) it does not have to be (case) marked to distinguish it from another argument. Similarly indeed, it does not make sense to call a paper on negative polarity items part 1 if there is no and will not be a part 2. In languages that do have morphological case, the case properties of arguments reflect not only the grammatical function (part 1 or part 2), but also to a certain degree their thematic and other semantic properties. The choice for a certain case may, for instance, depend on temporal or aspectual properties of the predicate or on individual properties of the relevant noun phrase arguments, such as animacy and specificity (cf. de Swart, this volume). Although this can often be related to the distinguishing function of case marking, i.e., to avoid (potential) ambiguity with respect to the argument structure of a transitive predicate, other cases of potential ambiguity may also trigger case marking.
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2. Five ways to distinguish between subjects and objects In the previous section we discussed what might be called a general strategy to avoid ambiguity with regard to the arguments in a two-place transitive relation. This leads us to propose the following universal constraint:
(5) distinguishability The two arguments of a transitive relation should be distinguishable.
The principle of Distinguishability specifies that, in a transitive relation, the two arguments should be distinct from each other (variants of this constraint and elaborate discussions are found in recent work, e.g. Bornkessel 2002, Næss 2004, and de Swart 2003, this volume). For the sake of convenience, we will refer to the first argument of a transitive relation as the subject and to the second one as the object (yet, we are aware of the fact that subject and object are grammatical labels that do not always link straightforwardly to the argument structure of a transitive verb or do only partially so). Distinguishability can be satisfied in many different ways of which we will briefly discuss five. One way of distinguishing the two arguments of a transitive relation is by the use of morphological marking, in particular case. As we have seen above, two arguments can already be distinguished when only one bears unambiguous morphological case marking, e.g., when the object bears accusative case. Secondly, arguments may be distinguished on the basis of prominence in the sense that the subject is often more prominent (in the discourse) than the object. Prominence can be measured along different scales, such as animacy, specificity, or (pronominal) person (cf. a.o. Comrie 1989, Aissen 2003, Lee 2003). We take animacy to be one important factor on the basis of which the condition that the subject outranks the object on a relevant scale of discourse prominence may be fulfilled. Although it is not the only factor, we mostly limit ourselves in this article to cases in which the subject outranks the object on the scale of animacy, that is where the subject is animate while the object is inanimate. At some point, we will also see an example in which definiteness or specificity plays a similar role. Thirdly, the use of word order may give us a clue as to which argument is the subject and which is the object in the transitive sentence, for example when the canonical word order is such that the subject precedes the object. Fourthly, the verb itself may provide the necessary information in order to distinguish the two arguments. For example, please takes an experiencer (animate) object, while like takes an experiencer (animate) subject. Therefore, when there is an animate and an inanimate noun phrase available, it is clear which one has to be the subject and which one the object in the context of one of these verbs. The case of like with an animate subject and an inanimate object not only satisfies distinguishability on the basis of selection criteria of the verb, but this goes hand in hand with a satisfaction of distinguishability on the basis of prominence or animacy. By contrast, the case of please with an animate object and an inanimate subject satisfies distinguishability on the basis of
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selection criteria of the verb but at the same time it violates distinguishability on the basis of prominence or animacy, since the subject does not outrank the object on the animacy scale. Last but not least, agreement with the verb may determine the subject in languages such as German and English, and both subject and object in languages with subject and object agreement. Obviously, there may be other ways to distinguish between the two arguments of a transitive relation, such as prosody or surrounding context, but in this paper we will limit our discussion to the five factors mentioned above.
3. Conflicts among distinguishability constraints As outlined above, we conceive of Distinguishability as a family of constraints that contribute to the distinguishability of the two arguments of a transitive relation on the basis of (i) morphological case marking; (ii) a difference in (discourse) prominence such that the subject outranks the object in prominence (e.g., animacy); (iii) word order such that the subject precedes the object in linear word order; (iv) selection criteria of the verb, when the verb selects an animate subject or an animate object; (v) agreement such that the verb agrees with the subject. We will refer to these constraints as case, prominence, precedence, selection, and agreement respectively. At this point, let us formulate these constraints in a precise way so that they can be evaluated for a given input, and let us determine the ranking of the constraints in German.
(6) Distinguishability constraints: a. case: the subject is in the nominative case, the object is in the accusative case b. agreement: the verb agrees with the subject c. selection: fit the selectional restrictions of the verb (animacy) d. precedence: the subject (linearly) precedes the object e. prominence: the subject outranks the object in prominence (animacy)
As a first example of how the constraints are applied in the process of interpretation, consider the following German sentence.
(7) Ich habe den Zaun zerbrochen. I.nom have [the fence].acc broken ‘I broke the fence.’
In (7) the two arguments of the transitive predicate can be distinguished on the basis of all of the Distinguishability-constraints: (i) den Zaun must be the object because of the accusative case marking, while the subject is in the nominative; (ii) the finite verb agrees with the first person subject, while the object is third person; (iii) the transitive verb to break normally selects an animate agent subject; (iv) the arguments are in the
Incremental distinguishability of subject and object 273
canonical order, i.e., subject before object; and finally (v) the subject is animate while the object is inanimate. The conclusion must be that it will not be hard for a hearer to distinguish between the subject and the object in (7) on the basis of the five constraints discussed. This is illustrated with help of the following tableau:
(8) Optimal interpretation of sentence (7) Ich habe den Zaun zerbrochen
case
agree ment
selec tion
prece dence
promin ence
*
*
*
*
*
☞ Subject-initial (SI) Object-initial (OI)
What we see very clearly in the tableau in (8) is that there is one interpretation which satisfies all five constraints. This optimal interpretation is the subject-initial interpretation, the one where ich ‘I’ is the subject and den Zaun ‘the fence’ the object. The ranking as indicated in the tableau above, where Case and Agreement are not ranked with respect to each other (as can be seen from the dotted line between them) while the other constraints are lower ranked (as can be seen from the order in which they occur in the tableau), does not follow from the interpretation of sentence (7). Rather, the tableau already presents the constraints in the ranking that we will develop in the course of this section. Obviously, cases such as (7) in which the optimal candidate does not violate any constraints at all do not allow us to determine the ranking within a set of constraints. In order to decide the ranking, we need to look at cases in which there is a conflict between constraints. Consider sentence (9) for example, where the optimal interpretation turns out to be the object-initial interpretation, which is illustrated in the tableau in (10):
(9) Den Zaun habe ich zerbrochen. [the fence].acc have I.nom broken ‘I broke the fence.’
(10) Optimal interpretation of sentence (9) Den Zaun habe ich zerbrochen SI ☞ OI
case
agree ment
selec tion
*
*
*
prece dence
promin ence *
*
From the constraint violation pattern of the two candidates and the fact that the objectinitial reading is the winner of the competition, we can deduce the following partial ranking: at least one of the constraints case, agreement, selection, or prominence outranks precedence. When we consider the interpretation of sentence (11) next, and the tableau in (12), we conclude that case by itself outranks precedence, also when the other constraints are (vacuously) satisfied or violated (agreement because both
274 Helen de Hoop and Monique Lamers
arguments are third person singular, selection and prominence because both arguments are equally prominent/ animate). (11) Den Lehrer hat [der Junge] geschlagen. [the teacher].acc has [the boy].nom hit ‘The boy hit the teacher.’ (12) Optimal interpretation of sentence (11) Den Lehrer hat der Junge geschlagen. SI
case
agree ment
selec tion
prece dence
*
promin ence *
☞ OI
*
*
In the next example then, it becomes clear that in the absence of unambiguous case marking, agreement by itself outranks precedence too: (13) Die Lehrerinnen hat Bernhard geschlagen. [the teachers].nom/acc has Bernhard.nom/acc hit ‘Bernhard hit the teachers.’ (14) Optimal interpretation of (13) Die Lehrerinnen hat Bernhard geschlagen.
case
SI
agree ment
selec tion
prece dence
promin ence
*
*
*
*
☞ OI
Subsequently, in (15)–(16) the constraint selection (this could also be prominence, but see the discussion later) is shown to outrank precedence. (15) Die Jacke hat Bernhard gesehen. [the coat].nom/acc has Bernhard.nom/acc seen ‘Bernhard saw the coat.’ (16) Optimal interpretation of (15) Die Jacke hat Bernhard gesehen. SI ☞ OI
case
agree ment
selec tion
prece dence
*
promin ence *
*
Furthermore, from (17)–(18) we may deduce that case outranks selection and prominence:
Incremental distinguishability of subject and object 275
(17) Der Zaun hat Bernhard zerbrochen. [the fence].nom has Bernhard.nom/acc broken ‘The fence broke Bernhard.’ (18) Optimal interpretation of (17) Der Zaun hat Bernhard zerbrochen.
case
agree ment
prece dence
*
☞ SI OI
selec tion
*
promin ence *
*
That selection outranks precedence as well as prominence is deduced from the object-initial interpretation obtained for sentence (19), as shown in the tableau in (20). (19) Bernhard hat die Vorstellung deprimiert. Bernhard.nom/acc has [the performance].nom/acc depressed ‘The performance depressed Bernhard.’ (20) Optimal interpretation of (19) Bernhard hat die Vorstellung deprimiert.
case
agree ment
SI
selec tion
prece dence
promin ence
*
*
*
☞ OI
Finally, we can show that precedence outranks prominence in a context where selec tion is not involved. That is, the verb streifen ‘brush’ does not select for an animate subject nor for an animate object and the optimal reading we get for the ambiguous sentence in (21) is the subject-initial reading, which satisfies precedence yet violates prominence. (21) Die Pflanze streifte Bernhard. [The plant].nom/acc brushed Bernhard.nom/acc ‘The plant brushed Bernhard.’ (22) Optimal interpretation of (21) Die Pflanze streifte Bernhard.
case
agree ment
selec tion
prece dence
*
☞ SI OI
promin ence
*
On the basis of the above sentences and their optimal (i.e., preferred) interpretations, we can establish the following ranking of our five Distinguishability constraints:
276 Helen de Hoop and Monique Lamers
(23) { case, agreement } ≫ selection ≫ precedence ≫ prominence We have not been able to determine the ranking between agreement and case, yet both constraints are stronger than the others and both give rise to ungrammatical sentences when violated. However, in this paper we are not interested in grammaticality per se, but in how the constraints and the conflicts among them help the hearer to arrive at the optimal interpretation of a given sentence (input). Consider sentence (24) as a final example of this optimization process of interpretation. (24) Die Professorin hat die Studentin geschlagen. professor].nom/acc has [the student].nom acc hit [the /. ‘The professor hit the student.’ In sentence (24) case cannot distinguish between the two noun phrases as they are both ambiguous between nominative and accusative case. Neither can prominence, selec tion or agreement make the distinction. In other words, in this sentence only prece dence can be used to determine which argument is the subject and which one is the object. This constraint favours the reading such that the subject precedes the object and this is indeed the reading we get, at least when no additional contextual or intonational information to the contrary interferes. The following tableau illustrates that the objectinitial reading becomes sub-optimal on the basis of one constraint violation only. (25) Optimal interpretation of sentence (24) Die Professorin hat die Studentin geschlagen.
case
agree ment
selec tion
prece dence
promin ence
☞ SI OI
*
The phenomenon in which only word order determines the optimal interpretation is known as word-order freezing in the literature (cf. Lee 2003, Zeevat, to appear). In this example, when two arguments of a transitive relation cannot be distinguished on the basis of case, agreement, animacy, the selection criteria of the verb or our world knowledge, only the canonical word order with its concomitant (subject precedes object) reading is available. Zeevat illustrates the phenomenon of freezing with Jakobson’s (1984) observation that the Russian sentence Mat’ ljubit doč’ ‘The mother loves the daughter’ only allows a subject initial reading because mat’ and doč’ do not have different forms in the nominative and accusative.
4. A model of incremental optimization of interpretation The theoretical perspective that we have so far taken and will continue to take in the remainder of this paper is that of Optimality Theory (cf. Prince and Smolensky 1997,
Incremental distinguishability of subject and object 277
2004). The basic assumption of this type of linguistic theory is that the connectionist well-formedness measure called Harmony can be used to model linguistic well-formedness. The goal of Harmonic Grammar, as well as of its successor Optimality Theory (ot), is to provide a framework in which linguistic regularities are expressed by the use of violable constraints, rather than hard rules. Within this perspective, constraints are naturally conceived of as violable, and potentially conflicting. A constraint is never violated without any reason, however, but only in order to satisfy another, stronger constraint. The fact that the conditions are soft has far-reaching consequences: if all possible output candidates violate (or if all satisfy) a certain constraint, then this constraint is not relevant anymore for the determination of the optimal output. This basic principle must have its effects on on-line comprehension. We assume that when a sentence (a form) is being processed, i.e., interpreted, the optimal interpretation of this form is being built up incrementally. Hence, we assume the process of optimization itself to be incremental. We are not the first to explore the use of ot constraints to explain sentence processing (cf. Gibson and Broihier 1998, Fanselow et al. 1999, Stevenson and Smolensky 2005). However, as far as we know we are the first who explore ot semantics rather than ot syntax to deal with processing. A subsequent account along these lines is offered by Hoeks and Hendriks (2005). We think that Optimality Theoretic semantics (cf. Hendriks and de Hoop 2001) gives a straightforward tool for analysing processing. Hendriks and de Hoop (2001) take as a point of departure free generation of interpretations in combination with the parallel evaluation of violable constraints. The integration of pragmatic, semantic, and syntactic information in a system of ranked constraints is proposed to correctly derive the optimal interpretations for inputs that consist of utterances, i.e., forms. So, in ot semantics, the direction of optimization is from form to meaning, it is optimization from the hearer’s point of view. To use this approach for our purpose of analysing experimental results of processing requires an incremental approach to optimization. That is, the process of optimization of interpretation proceeds while the information comes in word by word, or constituent by constituent (for a similar approach to the role of animacy in transitive relations, see Lamers and de Hoop, 2005). How does this work? We will illustrate the idea with help of two examples, first the incremental optimization of sentence (7), repeated below for convenience. (26) Ich habe den Zaun zerbrochen. I.nom have [the fence].acc broken ‘I broke the fence.’ As we have argued above, the optimal interpretation of sentence (26) is the subjectinitial interpretation. But how does this interpretation come about in the course of processing the sentence? We assume that hearers start to optimize the interpretation of an incoming sentence right away. When the first noun phrase of (26) comes in, the optimal interpretation is the subject-initial interpretation as that one does not violate any of the relevant constraints, while the object-initial interpretation would immediately
278 Helen de Hoop and Monique Lamers
violate precedence as well as case. This is shown in the following tableau: (27) Incremental optimization of sentence (26): Stage I Ich …
case
agree ment
selec tion
prece dence
promin ence
☞ SI OI
*
*
At the next incoming word, habe ‘have’, the subject-initial interpretation would be maintained while at the third constituent, den Zaun ‘the fence’, the object-initial interpretation would moreover violate agreement and prominence . (28) Incremental optimization of sentence (26): Stage III Ich habe den Zaun …
case
agree ment
*
*
selec tion
prece dence
promin ence
*
*
☞ SI OI
Finally, at the last word, the verb, the object-initial interpretation would cause a violation of selection as well. (29) Incremental optimization of sentence (26): Stage IV Ich habe den Zaun zerbrochen.
case
agree ment
selec tion
prece dence
promin ence
*
*
*
*
*
☞ SI OI
Clearly, then, the subject-initial interpretation is maintained as the optimal interpretation from the first word until the last one, whereas the Harmony value of the objectinitial interpretation more and more decreases in time. Not all sentences maintain the same optimal interpretation in the course of processing. We also find examples that show a ‘jump’ from one optimal interpretation to another at a certain stage. For example, reconsider sentence (15), repeated below as (30), and note that in this case we begin with a subject-initial reading as the optimal interpretation but we end up with the object-initial reading as the optimal one. (30) Die Jacke hat Bernhard gesehen. [the coat].nom/acc has Bernhard.nom/acc seen ‘Bernhard saw the coat.’ How does this interpretation arise incrementally? When the first noun phrase is encountered, we interpret it as the subject despite the violation of prominence that this
Incremental distinguishability of subject and object 279
interpretation gives rise to, since the other candidate reading, the object-initial one, would violate the higher ranked constraint precedence. Crucially, the case morphology is ambiguous between nominative and accusative marking. (31) Incremental optimization of sentence (30): Stage I Die Jacke …
case
agree ment
selec tion
prece dence
promin ence *
☞ SI *
OI
Because the second noun phrase is ambiguous in case marking as well, and moreover, both noun phrases are third person singular, the subject-initial reading is actually maintained as the optimal interpretation until the final word, the verb. Then, selec tion comes into play, and the result is that the object-initial interpretation becomes the optimal one. This is illustrated in the tableau below: (32) Incremental optimization of sentence (30): Stages III and IV Die Jacke hat Bernhard … …gesehen. ☞ SI
SI
OI
☞ OI
case
agree ment
selec tion
prece dence
*
promin ence *
*
So, while at stage III the subject-initial reading is still the optimal one, at stage IV we observe a crucial change. Due to the selection properties of the verb gesehen ‘seen’, the best interpretation is now the object-initial one, since only that one can satisfy selection (to see requires an animate subject), at the cost of violating precedence though. In the tableau above the constraint violation pattern corresponds to the fourth stage only. In the earlier stage (stage III), selection had not been violated yet because the verb had not been processed yet. We say that the hearer ‘jumps’ from the subject-initial reading of stage III to the object-initial reading of stage IV. Obviously, we have also seen examples where the object-initial reading is the optimal one right from the beginning. This is for example the case with respect to sentence (1) above, where because of its unambiguous case morphology Den Zaun ‘the fence.acc’ is readily interpreted as the object despite the fact that it is sentence-initial. Finally, it goes without saying that the Distinguishability subconstraints we have discussed above are not the only constraints that play a part in determining the optimal interpretation of transitive sentences. And satisfaction of Distinguishability may itself be in conflict with other violable constraints, such as, from the perspective of the speaker, a constraint that penalizes marking of an otherwise unmarked argument (cf. Malchukov, this volume).
280 Helen de Hoop and Monique Lamers
5. Processing effects related to distinguishability Having proposed our new model of incremental optimization of interpretation, we can use it to evaluate sentences used in on-line studies in which Distinguishability was manipulated. We will apply our model to four studies in which event related brain potentials were measured, two studies by Lamers (2001), one by Frisch and Schlesewsky (2001), and one by Schlesewsky and Frisch (submitted). The latter two studies are discussed in Schlesewsky and Bornkessel (2004). Event related brain potentials (ERPs) are small changes in spontaneous electrical activity of the brain that occur in response to certain stimuli. They can be recorded continuously and noninvasively by means of electrodes attached to the scalp. Because of the high temporal resolution of the erp signal with its various dimensions, ERPs have been proven to be particularly useful to investigate the time-course of brain activity related to language processing without introducing an extra unrelated task. One wellknown effect (‘component’) is the so-called N400, which is an enhanced negative effect with a peak around 400 ms post-stimulus largest over central and right posterior electrode sites that is found for difficulties related to semantic/pragmatic integration processes. In relation to syntactic difficulties a late positivity has been reported with an onset of approximately 500 ms with a maximum at 600 ms after onset of the critical word at centroparietal sites (usually referred to as the P600). In this section, we will discuss some relevant erp-effects in terms of incremental distinguishability between subjects and objects when interpreting transitive sentences. We evaluate the information constituent by constituent against the ranked constraints case ≫ selection ≫ prece dence ≫ prominence (agreement will not play a role in the remainder of this article) under the assumption that Dutch has the same ranking as German. Lamers (2001) in two erp studies investigated Dutch sentences such as given in (33), (34) and (35): (33) De oude vrouw in de straat verzorgde hem … the old woman in the street took-care-of him … ‘The old woman in the street took care of him …’ (34) Het oude park in de straat verzorgde hij … the old park in the street took-care-of he … ‘He took care of the old park in the street …’ (35) De oude vrouw in de straat verzorgde hij … the old woman in the street took-care-of he … ‘He took care of the old woman in the street …’ When people start to interpret sentences (33)–(35), they interpret the initial noun phrase as the subject (in accordance with Precedence). However, when the verb is encountered, the inanimate initial noun phrase in (34) can no longer be interpreted
Incremental distinguishability of subject and object 281
as the subject because of the selectional restrictions of the verb (verzorgde ‘took care of ’ requires an animate subject). The sentences in (33) and (35), on the other hand, maintain the subject-initial reading as the optimal interpretation until the second noun phrase. However, when the nominative case-marked pronoun is encountered in (35), Case overrules Precedence. As a result, the object-initial reading becomes the optimal interpretation for (35). Only sentence (33) can maintain the preferred subjectinitial reading until the very end of the sentence. At this point, let us have a look at the the tableau of sentence (33). The interpretations at the three stages of processing are given in the first three columns. The violation pattern of the constraints shown in the three rightmost columns of the tableau reflects the pattern of only the final - third — stage (in the first two stages, Case is not violated by the object-initial reading yet, only Precedence is). The subject-initial reading is maintained throughout the three stages of interpretation. Only the three distinguishability constraints that are relevant for this example are given in the tableau. (36) Incremental optimization of sentence (33): Stages I, II and III De oude vrouw… ‘the old lady’
verzorgde… ‘took care of ’
hem… ‘him’
☞ SI
☞ SI
☞SI
OI
OI
OI
Case
Selec tion
*
Prece dence
*
Subsequently, consider the tableau in (37) below that gives the incremental interpretation of sentence (34). Up to the verb Selection does not play a role in the parsing process but at the verb, it becomes clear that the subject has to be animate. Hence, the optimal interpretation of the initial inanimate NP changes from subject to object. The optimal (object-initial) interpretation clearly violates Precedence but the stronger constraint Selection is satisfied. The incremental interpretation of sentence (34) involves a ‘jump’ from the subject-initial to the object-initial interpretation. It is at this point in the sentence (i.e., at the verb) that Lamers (2001) found significant erp effects (early and late positivities) for sentence (34) compared to (33). (37) Incremental optimization of sentence (34): Stages I and II Het oude park… ‘the old park’
verzorgde… ‘took care of ’
☞ SI
SI
OI
☞ OI
Case
Selec tion
Prece dence
* *
Finally, the tableau in (38) presents a schematic overview of the constraint violations pattern of the crucial words of sentence (35).
282 Helen de Hoop and Monique Lamers
(38) Incremental optimization of sentence (35): Stages I, II and III De oude vrouw… ‘the old lady’ verzorgde… ‘took care of ’
hij… ‘he’
☞ SI
☞ SI
SI
OI
OI
☞ OI
Case
Selec tion
Prece dence
* *
Let us now compare the pattern of constraint violations found at the nominative casemarked pronoun to the pattern observed at the verb of the sentence starting with the inanimate NP. At the nominative case-marked pronoun the object-initial interpretation overrules the subject-initial interpretation, which was optimal until that point. At that time (i.e., at the second noun phrase), we get a similar ‘jump’ from one interpretation to the other, as we have seen with respect to the incremental interpretation of sentence (34). Again, the object-initial interpretation violates Precedence but the stronger constraint, Case, is satisfied. In other words, the resulting pattern is basically the same pattern as the one created at the verb in the inanimate condition (34). And since Lamers found similar erp effects, i.e., early and late positivities at the case-marked pronoun in (35) as well as at the verb in (34), we conclude that the erp effects indeed reflect the similar constraint violation patterns in our model. Note that until the pronoun is encountered Prominence does not play a role because only one argument is present. The nominative case-marked pronoun is the second argument and then it becomes clear that both arguments are animate. However, we assume that Prominence is not violated since in discourse/animacy hierarchies pronouns are considered to be higher in prominence than noun phrases (cf. Yamamoto 1999). An interesting question is whether structures in which different (types of) constraints are violated give rise to (qualitatively) different effects (in terms of erp measures). We will show below that existing evidence from German suggests that a violation of prominence is associated with an N400. First, consider the following (ungrammatical) indirect questions that were used in an experiment by Frisch and Schlesewsky (2001): der Zweig streifte. (39) *… welcher Bischof *… [which bishop].nom [the twig].nom brushed (40) *… welcher Bischof der Priester begleitete. *… [which bishop].nom [the priest].nom accompanied Both sentences above are rendered ungrammatical at the position of the second noun phrase because sentences with two nominative arguments are ill-formed in German. In other words, in both sentences Case is vacuously violated, albeit unexpectedly. In terms of Distinguishability, the second nominative-marked argument induces a problem, since the case marking of each argument suggests that this argument is the subject. However, the sentences differ with respect to Prominence. The latter constraint can
Incremental distinguishability of subject and object 283
still be satisfied in (39) where the two arguments differ in terms of animacy, but not in (40) where there is no difference in animacy between the two noun phrases. Hence, in addition to the violation of Case in both sentences, sentence (40) is ‘worse’ or more difficult to process since Prominence is violated as well. And indeed, Frisch and Schlesew sky (2001) observed a biphasic erp pattern of an N400 and a P600 component for the ungrammatical sentence (40), while only a P600 for the equally ungrammatical (39), in comparison to minimally differing, grammatical control conditions. Thus, the N400 in the above example apparently reflects a violation of Prominence and therefore in combination with the lack of a morphological case distinction a reduced fulfilment of Distinguishability. Although the sentences in (39) and (40) are equally ungrammatical because both noun phrases bear nominative case, sentence (40) gives rise to an extra processing problem because of the violation of Prominence. In a tableau: (41) Incremental optimization of sentence (39): Stages I and II Welcher Bischof… ‘which bishop’
der Zweig… ‘the twig’
☞ SI
☞ SI
*
OI
OI
*
Case
Prece Promin dence ence *
**
We assume that the object initial reading of sentence (39) gives in fact a double violation of Prominence because not only does the subject fail to outrank the object in animacy, but moroever, the object outranks the subject. We need to assume this ‘double violation’ (the object outranks the subject in animacy) also in order to be able to explain the findings of the other erp study, that we discuss at the end of this section. Now compare the tableau in (41) to the tableau in (42) which represents the incremental interpretation of sentence (40): (42) Incremental optimization of sentence (40): Stages I and II Welcher Bischof… ‘which bishop’ der Priester… ‘the priest’
Case
☞ SI
☞ SI
*
OI
OI
*
Prece Promin dence ence * *
*
The difference between the constraint violation patterns of sentence (39) and (40) is clearly a difference with respect to the distinguishability condition Prominence and that difference gives rise to an N400 at the second noun phrase in sentence (40). As we can see from a comparison of the constraint violation patterns of the optimal subject-initial interpretation, the N400 in stage II of the processing of (40) in comparison to the sentence in (39) corresponds to a violation of Prominence. In principle, Prece dence would still favour the subject-initial reading. However, as Vogel (2004) pointed out, the effect of Precedence is much weaker, or even seems to disappear, when one
284 Helen de Hoop and Monique Lamers
noun phrase is a wh-phrase, while the other is not. This corresponds to the fact that a wh-phrase preferably occupies the sentence-initial position for reasons of questionmarking and question-scope, so we may expect a conflict between Precedence and a constraint of wh-movement here (cf. Ackema and Neeleman 1998). Whatever the exact role of Precedence is in (39) and (40), it cannot make a difference between the sentences, while on the other hand Prominence clearly distinguishes between the two. We would like to argue that in German the absence of accusative case marking is worse in sentence (40) than in (39) because in (40) both noun phrases are animate, although in fact both (39) and (40) are ungrammatical due to the lack of accusative case. In other languages, we find a similar effect of animacy. In Malayalam, for instance, accusative case marking is only present when the subject and the object are both animate (as in (44)). However, if the subject outranks the object in animacy (as in (43)), distinguishability is saved and the accusative case marking is omitted (Asher and Kumari, 1997). (43) ɲaan teenjnja vaanjnji. I coconut bought ‘I bought a coconut.’ (44) avan oru pasjuvin-e vaanjnji. he a cow-acc bought ‘He bought a cow.’ Another trigger for an N400 effect arises at the position of an inanimate second argument in indirect questions, in comparison to an animate nominative argument in the same position (Schlesewsky and Bornkessel, 2004). Schlesewsky and Bornkessel (2004) discuss some results from Schlesewsky and Frisch (submitted) indicating that the processing of an initial animate accusative marked wh-argument gives rise to the prediction of an animate, nominative marked argument. If this prediction is not borne out and an inanimate nominative argument is encountered instead, an N400 is elicited. Thus, sentence (46) shows an N400 effect at the second noun phrase compared to sentence (45): (45) … [welchen Bischof [der Priester begleitete. … [which bishop].acc [the priest].nom accompanied (46) … [welchen Bischof [der Zweig streifte. … [which bishop].acc [the twig].nom brushed We claim that the N400 effect again reflects a (worse) violation of Prominence. We assume that while a constraint such as Precedence can only be satisfied (when the subject precedes the object) or violated (when the object precedes the subject), a constraint like Prominence can be violated to different degrees. One violation (indicated with one asterisk) is when the subject does not outrank the object in prominence (e.g.,
Incremental distinguishability of subject and object 285
the subject and object are either both animate, or they are both inanimate). A worse violation (indicated with two asterisks) is when the object in fact outranks the subject, which is the case in sentence (46). Consider the corresponding tableaux: (47) Incremental optimization of sentence (45): Stages I and II Welchen Bischof… ‘which bishop’ der Priester… ‘the priest’ SI
SI
☞ OI
☞ OI
Case
Prece Promin dence ence
*
* *
*
(48) Incremental optimization of sentence (46): Stages I and II Welchen Bischof… ‘which bishop’ der Zweig… ‘the twig’ SI
SI
☞ OI
☞ OI
Case
Prece Promin dence ence
* *
**
As we can see from a comparison of the constraint violation patterns, the N400 for sentence (46) compared to sentence (45) corresponds to a worse violation of Prominence under the optimal (here the object-initial) interpretation. The object-initial interpretation is optimal in both sentences because the subject-initial interpretation would induce a violation of the highest ranked constraint Case. The difference between (45) and (46) is that in (46) the object in fact outranks the subject in terms of animacy and thus, we get a worse violation of Prominence than when there is no difference in animacy between the subject and the object, as in (45). Again similar erp effects from two studies (Frisch and Schlesewsky 2001, Schlesewsky and Frisch, submitted) appear to reflect similar constraint violation patterns in our incremental optimization of interpretation model.
6. Conclusion When a hearer or reader interprets a transitive sentence, the two arguments of the transitive verb, to wit the subject and the object, should be distinguishable. We claim that such disinguishability is guaranteed by violable Distinguishability-subconstraints, that distinguish between transitive subjects and objects on the basis of (i) case morphology, (ii) agreement, (iii) selectional criteria of the verb, (iv) word order, and (v) prominence, in particular animacy. In this paper we have shown how the application of Distinguishability may be examined from an incremental optimization perspective. We propose a new model of incremental optimization of interpretation and we argue that this model can straightforwardly account for the findings of several on-line studies in which Distinguishability was manipulated. We have shown that the violation
286 Helen de Hoop and Monique Lamers
patterns that come about by checking the constraints incrementally (i.e. on each word or constituent) correspond to the differences in waveforms found in the relevant erp studies.
Acknowledgements We greatly benefited from discussions with Ina Bornkessel and Matthias Schlesewsky about the matters discussed in the present paper. Furthermore, we thank two anonymous reviewers, the editors of this volume, as well as Gerlof Bouma, Petra Hendriks, Irene Krämer, Yukiko Mori moto, Henriëtte de Swart, and Joost Zwarts for helpful comments. The Netherlands Organisation of Scientific Research (nwo) is gratefully acknowledged for financial support (pionier project ‘Case cross-linguistically’, NWO Cognition project ‘Conflicts in Interpretation’, NWODFG project ‘Incremental interpretation of case and prominence’).
References Ackema, P. and Neeleman, A. 1998. “Optimal Questions”. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 16: 443–90. Aissen, J. 2003. “Differential Object Marking: Iconicity vs. Economy”. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 21: 435–83. Asher, R. and Kumari, T. 1997. Malayalam. London and New York: Routledge. Bobaljik, J. 1993. “Nominally Absolutive is not Absolutely Nominative”. Proceedings of the Eleventh West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics. Stanford: csli, 44–60. Bornkessel, I. 2002. The Argument Dependency Model: A Neurocognitive Approach to Incremental Interpretation [MPI-Series in Cognitive Neuroscience, 28]. Leipzig. Comrie, B. 1989. Language Universals and Linguistic Typology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Fanselow, G., Schlesewsky, M., Cavar, D. and Kliegl, R. 1999. “Optimal parsing: Syntactic parsing preferences and Optimality Theory”. Unpublished manuscript, University of Potsdam. [roa, 367–1299]. Frisch, S. and Schlesewsky, M. 2001. “The N400 indicates problems of thematic hierarchising”. NeuroReport 12: 3391–4. Gibson, E. 1998. “Linguistic complexity: Locality of syntactic dependencies”. Cognition 68: 1– 76. Gibson, E., and Broihier, K. 1998. “Optimality theory and human sentence processing”. In Is the Best Good Enough? Optimality and Competition in Syntax, P. Barbosa, D. Fox, P. Hagstrom, M. McGinnis, and D. Pesetsky (eds), 157–91. Cambridge: MIT. Hendriks, P. and de Hoop, H. 2001. “Optimality Theoretic Semantics” in Linguistics and Philosophy 24: 1–32. Hoeks, J. C. J. and Hendriks, P. 2005. “Optimality Theory and human sentence processing: The case of coordination”. In Proceedings of the Twenty-Seventh Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, B. G. Bara, L. Barsalou, and M. Bucciarelli (eds), 959–64. Mahwah, nj: Erlbaum.
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Jakobson, R. 1984. “Morphological observations on Slavic declension (the structure of Russian case forms)”. In Roman Jakobson. Russian and Slavic Grammar: Studies 1931–1981, L. R. Waugh and M. Halle (eds), 105–33. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Lamers, M. J. A. 2001. Sentence Processing: Using Syntactic, Semantic, and Thematic Information. PhD dissertation, University of Groningen. Lamers, M. J. A. and de Hoop, H. 2005. “Animacy information in human sentence processing: An incremental optimization of interpretation approach”. In Constraint Solving and Language Processing [Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence 3438], H. Christiansen, P. R. Skadhauge, and J. Villadsen (eds), 158–71. Berlin and Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag. Lee, H. 2003. “Parallel Optimization in Case Systems”. In Nominals: Inside and Out, M. Butt and T. King (eds), 15–58. Stanford: csli. Malchukov, A. this volume. “Transitivity parameters and transitivity alternations: Constraining co-variation”. Næss, Å. 2004. “What markedness marks: The markedness problem with direct objects”. Lingua 114: 1186–1212. Prince, A. and Smolensky, P. 1997. “Optimality: From neural networks to universal grammar”. Science 275: 1604–1610. Prince, A. and Smolensky, P. 2004. Optimality Theory: Constraint Interaction in Generative Grammar. Oxford: Blackwell. Schlesewsky, M. and Bornkessel, I. 2004. “On incremental interpretation: Degrees of meaning accessed during sentence comprehension”. Lingua 114: 1213–1234. Schlesewsky, M. and Frisch, S. (submitted) “Why the ‘subject preference’ is more than a ‘subject’ preference: The role of non-syntactic features in parsing expectations”. Manuscript, University of Marburg and University of Potsdam. Stevenson, S. and Smolensky, P. 2005. “Optimality in sentence processing”. In The Harmonic Mind, P. Smolensky and G. Legendre (eds), 827–58. Cambridge: MIT. de Swart, P. 2003. The Case Mirror, MA Thesis, University of Nijmegen. de Swart, P. (this volume) “Case Markedness”. Vogel, R. 2004. “Correspondence in ot Syntax and Minimal Link Effects”. In Minimality Effects in Syntax, A. Stepanov, G. Fanselow, and R. Vogel (eds). Berlin: de Gruyter. Yamamoto, M. 1999. Animacy and Reference: A Cognitive Approach to Corpus Linguistics. John Benjamins, Amsterdam and Philadelphia. Zeevat, H. (to appear) “Freezing and Marking”. To appear in Linguistics (2006). Zwarts, F. 1981. “Negatief polaire uitdrukkingen 1”. GLOT 4: 35–132.
Case and the typology of transitivity
chapter 13
The woman showed the baby to her sister On resolving humanness-driven ambiguity in ditransitives Seppo Kittilä University of Turku
In canonical ditransitive events, such as ‘I gave the book to the teacher’, animacy disambiguates the semantic role assignment of the two objects; the animate object refers to the recipient, while the inanimate object bears the role of theme. Things change if both objects have an animate referent. If this occurs, disambiguation needs to be assured linguistically: either the marking of the recipient or the marking of the theme changes. Languages can accordingly be divided into theme- and recipient-prominent languages. In the former case, the theme retains its status as a direct object irrespective of the animacy of its referent, while in the latter case the recipient surfaces as a direct object, while the marking of the theme is modified.
1. Introduction The present paper examines the strategies languages use for resolving ambiguity in ditransitives in which both objects (Recipient1 and Theme) have an animate2 referent. Canonical three-participant events involve an animate agent, an inanimate theme and an animate recipient, as below (see also e.g. Blansitt (1973: 2), Sedlak (1975: 125), Tuggy (1996: 411, 419) and Newman (1998: 1) for similar definitions): Agent: animate — Theme: inanimate — Recipient: animate. Figure 1.
Canonical three-participant events are thus represented by events like ‘the mimic gave a book to the back stroke swimmer’ or ‘the phonetician sent a letter to Santa Claus’. Different ways of encoding the event type in question are illustrated in (1) and (2).
(1) Sinhala (Gair & Paolillo 1997: 32) a. siri gunpaalə-Tə gæhuwa. pn pn-dat hit ‘Siri hit Gunapala.’
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b. siri gunpaalə-Tə potak dunna. pn pn-dat book.indef gave ‘Siri gave Gunapala a book.’
(2) Sesotho (Demuth 2003: 2, handout) bana ba-pheh-el-a mme nama. children agr-cook-appl-fv mother meat ‘The children are cooking meat for my mother.’
The events denoted in (1b) and (2) correspond directly to the simple definition of canonical three-participant events given above. In both cases, there is an animate agent, an inanimate theme and an animate recipient. The animacy of the recipient is a characteristic feature of canonical three-participant events (see the references mentioned above), but the theme is rather unspecified for animacy. The events in (1b) and (2) are, however, regarded as canonical three-participant events in the present paper, because verbs such as ‘give’ and ‘buy’ typically require an inanimate Theme. This approach is justified also in light of the fact that clauses with an animate Theme constitute marked constructions in many languages, which suggests that they are also marked ontologically. The distribution of animacy in canonical three-participant events has clear linguistic consequences. The semantic role assignment is usually retrievable from animacy hierarchies alone, and no further marking is necessary for assuring the intended reading of canonical ditransitive clauses. This occurs in (2), where the Theme and the Recipient bear no overt case (or similar) marking. On the other hand, the strong correlation of the recipient role with animacy is evident in Sinhala, where the animate object marker has rather developed into a marker of role in ditransitives. The accusative/dative suffix -tə cannot attach to the Theme irrespective of animacy, which means that it no longer marks the animacy of an object, but rather the semantic role of a recipient. In (1b) and (2), the semantic role assignment of the two objects is clear, because one of the objects has an inanimate referent, while the other object denotes an animate participant. On the basis of our knowledge of three-participant events, we know that the former refers to the theme, while the latter bears the semantic role of a recipient. The situation is radically different in (3), cf.
(3) Sesotho (Demuth: ibidem) re-tlis-ets-a ngwana nkono. agr-bring-appl-fv child grandmother ‘We’re bringing the child for the grandmother.’ or ‘We’re bringing the grandmother for the child.’
The only relevant difference between (2) and (3) is that in (3) both object arguments have an animate referent. This means that they both should bear the role of a recipient given the nature of canonical three-participant events. Needless to say, however, that only one of the objects can bear this role. As a result, the semantic roles of the two objects are no longer retrievable from animacy hierarchies. In addition, Sesotho lacks for-
On resolving humanness-driven ambiguity in ditransitives 293
mal disambiguating mechanisms (such as an overt marking for Recipient or the freezing of the constituent order), which renders the example in (3) ambiguous. There are, however, also languages that resort to formal mechanisms in resolving the ambiguity in cases like (3). An example is provided in (4), cf.
(4) Lango (Noonan 1992: 121) a. lóc òmÌyá búk. 3sg.give.perf.1sg book man ‘The man gave me the book.’ b. lóc òmÌyɛ bòtɘ. man 3sg.give.perf.3sg to.1sg ‘The man gave him (e.g. a slave) to me.’
In (4a), the Recipient is cross-referenced in the verb, while the Theme is not. In (4b), in which both objects have an animate referent, the situation changes, and the Theme occurs in the verb, and the Recipient bears oblique marking. The change in the marking of the Recipient disambiguates the clause, since the two objects bear distinct coding. A closer examination of cases such as (4) is the goal of this paper. The paper thus examines how languages deal with resolving the animacy-driven ambiguity in cases where both objects of a ditransitive clause have an animate referent. Only formal means of disambiguation will be considered below, i.e. languages such as Sesotho lacking formal means of disambiguation lie outside the scope of this paper. The examined mechanisms comprise (case) marking and the constituent order. Languages will be divided into theme-prominent and recipient-prominent languages on the basis of whether the Theme or the Recipient is treated as a direct object (in all the examined cases, at least one of the objects of ditransitives bears the same marking as the direct object). Themeprominent languages accord the Theme direct object status in cases such as (4b), which means that the Theme is the grammatically more prominent object (and semantically the role of theme is given more prominence). The marking of the Recipient either remains constant (as in Retuarã, see (8)), or the marking shifts from core to oblique (as in Araki, see (10)). In recipient-prominent languages, on the other hand, the Recipient ranks higher with regard to its status as a direct object.3 This means that the Recipient retains the marking it has in canonical ditransitives, while the marking of the Theme is modified. The focus of the paper lies on languages in which the marking of the two objects is primarily determined by animacy. These are languages which follow the animacy-based strategy in the object marking (see section 2 for a brief description of this and the other object marking strategies). Languages in which the two objects are not marked overtly for their roles are also investigated, provided that they display morphological mechanisms of disambiguation for cases such as (4b). On the other hand, languages following the role-based strategy will not be considered, as the objects are always marked for the role they bear (see below). The organization of the paper is as follows: in section 2, I will briefly illustrate the strategies of object marking following Kittilä (2006), since they are relevant to the dis-
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cussion in section 3. In section 3, theme- and recipient-prominent languages are studied in detail. The focus of the presentation lies on animacy-based cases, even though a couple of object-based cases are taken into account as well. Section 4 discusses the rationale behind the examined language types.
2. Object-, animacy- and role-based strategies In this section, object-, animacy- and role-based strategies of object marking are briefly examined, as they are relevant to the upcoming discussion (a more detailed examination of the strategies is found in Kittilä 2006). The first two types are of greater interest for the purposes of this paper. As was noted above, ditransitive clauses involve two objects, one of which is typically animate and bears the role of a recipient, while the other is typically inanimate and has the semantic role of a theme. Hence, there are three features conditioning the marking of objects, which are the mere objecthood (as opposed to subjecthood), animacy and the semantic roles that the objects bear. An example of each is provided below:
(5) Martuthunira (Dench 1995: 230f) a. ngayu ngurnu kanyara-a thathu-lalha nganaju-u kurntal-yu. 1sg.nom that.acc man-acc send-past 1sg.gen-acc daughter-acc ‘I sent that man to my daughter.’ b. ngayu murnta-lalha murla-a ngurnu pawulu-u. 1sg.nom take.from-past meat-acc that.acc child-acc ‘I took the meat away from the child.’
(6) Maithili (Yadava 1998: 97f) a. raam-Ø hari-k kitaab-Ø delak. raam-nom.subj Hari-dat book-nom give ‘Ram gave a book to Hari.’ b. ahãa ham-raa ae aadami-k dia. 2sg me-dat this man-dat give ‘You gave me this man.’
(7) Finnish (personal knowledge) fysioterapeutti anto-i kirja-n lapse-lle. physiotherapist.nom give.3sg.past book-acc child-all ‘The physiotherapist gave the book to the child.’
Martuthunira is very loyal to the object-based strategy in its object marking; both the Theme and the Recipient (and even the Source) occur in the accusative. In addition, the syntactic status of Theme and Recipient is the same in that both are allowed to be promoted to the subject of passive, in addition to which the constituent order is free (Dench: ibidem). Maithili, in turn, provides us with an illustrative example of the ani-
On resolving humanness-driven ambiguity in ditransitives 295
macy-based strategy. In (6a), only the Recipient is marked for animacy in the dative. This is expected, since the Theme has an inanimate referent in (6a). The contribution of animacy becomes evident in (6b), in which both objects have an animate referent and thus bear overt dative marking.4 As opposed to Martuthunira, the mere objecthood does not suffice for an object to occur in the dative, but the referent of a dative-marked object has to be animate. On the other hand, the object marking is semantically less explicit in Maithili than in Finnish, in which the marking is determined by the semantic roles borne by the objects. Neither objecthood nor animacy suffices to explain the marking illustrated in (7), but we have to resort to semantic roles for this. The three strategies, which condition the object marking in (5)–(7) can be summarized as follows (the definitions are taken directly from Kittilä 2006: 2): – An object-based strategy is a strategy in which Theme and Recipient are marked in the same way, and differently from the Agent. – An animacy-based strategy is a strategy in which the marking of Theme and Recipient is determined by the animacy of their referents. – A role-based strategy is a strategy in which the marking of Theme and Recipient is determined by the semantic roles they bear. The three strategies briefly examined above are all explainable based on the nature of canonical three-participant events. The object-based strategy stresses the common features shared by the two objects, the most important of which is their non-agentive nature. Moreover, as noted above, the semantic role assignment of the two objects is usually retrievable non-linguistically, which makes an overt linguistic distinction superfluous. This is explicitly stated by Sedlak (1975: 125), cf. As discussed above, the bitransitive clause par excellence contains an inanimate direct object and an animate indirect object. It is therefore possible to state that because direct and indirect object are already indicated by semantic features, indication of the relationship either through word order or through morphological marking is redundant.
Sedlak’s claim is able to explain the distribution of marking in canonical ditransitive clauses. The animacy-based strategy, on the other hand, exploits the strong tendency that recipients are usually animate entities. This usually disambiguates the semantic role assignment of the two objects, although the overt marking of the Recipient can be regarded as redundant, since the semantic nature of the objects suffices. The role-based strategy, for its part, stresses the differences between the roles that are also rather evident. The three object-marking strategies also differ from each other according to the degree and nature of ambiguity related to them. The object-based strategy inherently yields formal ambiguity, since the Theme and the Recipient receive the same formal treatment. Genuine ambiguity arises, however, only if the objects rank equally for animacy. The animacy-based strategy overtly marks what is left covert by the objectbased strategy. This resolves ambiguity in canonical ditransitive clauses, both semantically and formally. However, what makes the animacy-based strategy interesting is
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that the strategy yields ambiguity in clauses where both objects have an animate referent. The strategy thus seems to violate the principle of distinctiveness (see e.g. Kibrik 1985: 271), and it also militates against the discriminatory view of argument marking (see Comrie 1978 and Dixon 1979). Moreover, the ambiguity results from the overt marking of the feature in question, which would be avoided, if one of the objects was left unmarked (see also the discussion of this in section 4). This is radically different from the object-based strategy in which the ambiguity is covert, and semantically conditioned. Hence, the overt marking of an animate Theme can justly be considered dysfunctional. This also means that languages often have to resort to other means of disambiguation in genuinely ambiguous cases. The role-based strategy is not relevant to the purposes of the present paper, since the disambiguation has extended to cover all clauses irrespective of ambiguity. Moreover, animacy does not affect the object marking in any way.
3. Theme- vs. recipient-prominent languages In this section, I proceed to discuss how languages resolve ambiguity resulting from the animacy of both objects in ditransitive clauses. The discussion only considers object- and animacy-based strategies due to reasons given above. Languages are divided into theme-prominent and recipient-prominent types on the basis of which object of an ambiguous ditransitive clause, such as (4b), receives the formal treatment of a direct object. In the case of the animacy-based strategy, the division is based on whether the Theme or the Recipient retains the overt marking for animacy (the marking coincides in form with the marking of animate direct objects). In the case of the object-based strategy, on the other hand, the division is based on whether the Theme or the Recipient surfaces as the direct object (the marking of the other object is modified). Objectbased cases could also be analysed depending on which object is overtly marked, but a uniform approach is preferred here. In both of these cases, the Theme is marked in the same way as the (animate) direct object, while the marking of the Recipient deviates from this. Pure instances of the animacy-based strategy are not discussed below, since they do not constitute a part of the present study due to the lack of overt disambiguating mechanisms for potentially ambiguous cases. The types can be schematically illustrated as in Figure 2. Animacy-based
Object-based
Theme-prominent
See §3.1.1 and 3.1.2.
See §3.1.3.
Recipient-prominent
See §3.2. (ex. (13))
See §3.2. (ex. (14))
Figure 2
On resolving humanness-driven ambiguity in ditransitives 297
3.1 Theme-prominent languages This section is concerned with languages in which the Theme outranks the Recipient in its status as a direct object if they both have an animate referent. The formal manifestation of theme-prominence varies. Three types, labelled as syntactic, morphological and object-based type, will be distinguished. As for the animacy-based strategy, the theme-prominence means that the Theme is the only object marked on the basis of animacy (typically like an animate direct object). It usually inherits the marking of the Recipient of canonical ditransitive clauses. Examples of this are examined in 3.1.1. and 3.1.2. As for the object-based strategy, on the other hand, theme-prominence indicates that only the Theme is accorded the status of a direct object in ditransitive clauses with two animate objects. An example of this is examined in 3.1.3.
3.1.1
The syntactic type
The syntactic subtype of theme-prominent languages is illustrated by languages in which the Theme and the Recipient bear identical morphological marking and in which the higher status of the Theme is manifested only via constituent order. The marking follows the animacy-based strategy, and the potential ambiguity is resolved by the rigid word order:
(8) Retuarã (Strom 1992: 118f, 114) a. ernesto-te alvaro-te heyobaa-rape. pn-term pn-term help-past ‘Ernest helped Alvaro.’ b. lui-re ki-re baʔarika hĩ-rĩ eta-royi-reʔka. pn-term 3m.sg-term food give-purp arrive-impf-past ‘Lui was coming to give him food.’ c. ko-re ki-re yi-bea-yu. 3f.sg-term 3m.sg-term 1sg-show-pres ‘I show her to him.’ (*’I show him to her.’) d. waʔia pisarãka ki-hiʔa-koʔo. fish cat 3m.sg-feed-past ‘He fed the fish to the cat.’
(9) Kinnauri (Sharma 1988: 79ff)5 a. chanəs kitab hušeš. boy:erg book read.past.sg ‘The boy read the book.’ b. dekhracis checac-u khio. boy:erg girl-acc see:past.sg ‘The boy saw the girl.’
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c. d.
gəs än bapu-pən cithi cemigduk. 1sg.erg 1sg.gen uncle-acc letter write.subj ‘I have to write a letter to my uncle.’ amas anu chan-u ane-pən rano. mother.erg she.refl child-acc maternal.aunt-acc send ‘The mother sent her son to the maternal aunt.’
As the examples above demonstrate, both Retuarã and Kinnauri follow the animacybased strategy in their object marking. Retuarã illustrates the extreme example of the type, since the marking of the subject is also governed by animacy. In both Retuarã and Kinnauri, the Recipient precedes the Theme in canonical ditransitives, as in (8b) and (9c). In other words, objects with an animate referent precede inanimate objects. The order of Theme and Recipient changes, if both of them refer to a human participant. In these cases, the Theme occupies the slot occupied by the animate Recipient in canonical ditransitives, and the order thus changes from Recipient–Theme to Theme–Recipient. In other words, the Theme becomes the more prominent argument with regard to the position it takes. The order Theme–Recipient is very rigid in Retuarã, and a reading based on the order Recipient–Theme is not possible if both objects are animate. What is of further interest in Retuarã is that the order Theme–Recipient also seems to hold for cases in which both objects have a non-human referent, as in (8d). In this case, ambiguity cannot be resolved by animacy alone either, which freezes the word order. Kinnauri behaves very much like Retuarã, since the order in (9c) is animacy-driven, while in (9d) the role determines the order (i.e. the Theme precedes the Recipient).
3.1.2
The morphological type
In (8) and (9), theme-prominence is manifested only via the rigidification of the word order. The formal changes in the object marking are more evident in the morphological type, which is illustrated in (10) and (11), cf. (10) Araki (François 2002: 161) a. nam dogo na sile-ko n-re presin. 1sg.real feel 1sg.irr give-2sg obl-some present ‘I feel like giving you a present.’ b. rasi-ku mo sle naru-na isa-n pira nohoni. brother-3sg 3sg.real give child-3sg to-cst woman that ‘My brother gave his child to that woman.’ (11) Sahaptin (Rude 1997: 329, 334) a. tílaaki i–nánan-a k’úsi(-na). woman 3.nom-bring-past horse(-obj) ‘The woman brought the horse.’ b. pa-ní-ya k’úsi miyuux-na. 3pl.nom-give-past horse chief-obj ‘They gave the horse to the chief.’
On resolving humanness-driven ambiguity in ditransitives 299
c. d. e. f.
pa-ní-ya tílaaki-na miyuux-mí-yaw. 3pl.nom-give-past woman-obj chief-gen-all ‘They gave the woman to the chief.’ pa-ní-ya tílaaki miyuux-na. 3pl.nom-give-past woman chief-obj ‘They gave the woman to the chief.’ miyuux-mí-yaw. pa-ní-ya=aš (ína) 3pl.nom-give-past=1sg (1sg.obj) chief-gen-all ‘They gave me to the chief.’ pa-ní-ya=am (imaná) in-mí-yaw. 3pl.nom-give-past=2sg (2sg.obj) 1sg-gen-all ‘They gave you to me.’
In both Araki and Sahaptin, animacy of both objects has clear consequences for the marking of the Recipient (the Recipient is a direct object in canonical ditransitives). The Theme, on the other hand, either retains its marking or it inherits the animacy-based marking of the Recipient. Thus, the role of the object which receives the formal treatment of a direct object (is it the Theme or the Recipient) varies depending on animacy. The formal manifestation of recipient-prominence is different in the two languages above. In Araki, the Recipient is cross-referenced in the verb, and it is not preceded by an oblique marker in canonical ditransitives. On the other hand, the Theme occupies the direct object slot, and the Recipient is demoted to an oblique status, if the Theme is animate. In Sahaptin, both objects can bear the -na-affix (but not simultaneously). The primary function of this affix is to disambiguate case roles (Rude 1997: 329), in addition to which it also marks the definiteness/animacy of objects (see (11a)). As predicted, the marked object is the Recipient in canonical cases, as in (11b). If both the Theme and the Recipient have a human referent, as in (11c) and (11d), both of them may bear the -nasuffix and thus be marked in the same way as an animate direct object. However, what renders Sahaptin a theme-prominent language is the demotion of the Recipient to oblique in cases like (11c). This occurs if the Theme carries overt direct object marking. Sahaptin does not have a similar demoting mechanism for the Theme, but the Theme is a bare noun, if the Recipient is overtly marked as a direct object. It should also be noted that the variation in the coding of Theme and Recipient is excluded, if the Theme is a speech act participant, as in (11e) and (11f). In these cases, the Theme invariably bears overt direct object marking. The theme-prominence is very obvious in (11f), since although the Recipient is a first person pronoun, and thus outranks the Theme on animacy hierarchies, the Theme is overtly coded as a direct object. The humanness (not merely animacy) of the Theme is the triggering factor here.
3.1.3
The object-based type
The languages examined in 3.1.1. and 3.1.2. all follow the animacy-based strategy in their object marking. I will end the discussion of theme-prominent languages by exam-
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ining an object-based case, where the Theme retains its marking, while the Recipient is demoted, if the Theme and the Recipient both have an animate referent. The language in question is Kikuyu: (12) Kikuyu (Blansitt 1973: 11) a. mūthuri ūriā mukūrū nīanengerire mūtumīa ihūa. man ? old gave woman flower ‘The old man gave the woman the flower.’ b. mūtumīa nīanengerire mwarī wake gwī kahīī’ daughter her to boy woman gave ‘The woman gave her daughter to the boy.’ In (12a), the Theme and the Recipient receive the same formal treatment. Animacy is not relevant to the case(-like) marking of objects. Example (12b) illustrates a marked case both semantically and formally. First, in contrast to (12a), both objects have an animate referent in (12b). Second, this has morpho-syntactic consequences for the Recipient. As in (10) and (11), the Theme retains the marking it has in canonical ditransitives, while the Recipient is demoted to oblique. Consequently, Kikuyu is here labelled as theme-prominent, even though, as was briefly noted above, we could also label Kikuyu-type languages on the basis of the overtly marked role, which is the Recipient in (12b).
3.2 Recipient-prominent languages Section 3.1. was concerned with languages in which the Theme is accorded direct object status in case both objects are animate. In this section, the opposite is examined, which means that the Recipient retains its marking, if the marking of objects is modified due to animacy-driven ambiguity. The prototypical, but on the other hand, the least manifest realizations of the recipient-prominent type are exhibited by languages such as Sinhala, in which the Recipient invariably bears dative marking typical of animate direct objects as well. A further example is examined in detail below: (13) Awa Pit (Curnow 1997: 72ff) a. ishu=na pitikku ku-m. tiger=top sloth eat-adjzr ‘Tigers eat sloths.’ b. santos=ta=na mɨza pyan-a-ma-t. Santos=acc=top almost hit-pl:subj-comp-pfpart ‘They almost beat up Santos.’ c. Camilo=na santos=ta pala kwin-tɨ-zi. Camilo=top Santos=acc plantain give-past-nonlocut ‘Camilo gave Santos a plantain.’
On resolving humanness-driven ambiguity in ditransitives 301
d. e.
na=na santos=ta pashu mɨla-ta-w. 1sg:nom=top Santos=acc daughter give-past-locut:subj ‘I gave my daughter to Santos.’ na=na kwizha=ta=na comida kwin-ta-w. 1sg:nom=top dog=acc=top food give-past-locut:subj ‘I gave food to the dog.’
As (13a) and (13b) demonstrate, Awa Pit exhibits rather canonical differential object marking. Animate (non-human) direct objects do not bear overt case marking (see (13a)), while animate arguments in the same function bear accusative marking (see (13b)). The marking of animacy extends to Recipients as well, which is illustrated in (13c). However, as (13d) and (13e) illustrate, the object marking in Awa Pit is not genuinely animacy-based (cf. (6) from Maithili), since the accusative marker =ta cannot be attached to the Theme regardless of animacy. This means that the animate Theme of (13d) cannot bear an accusative marker. The marker is thus best regarded as a Recipient marker in ditransitives. This argument is strengthened by example (13e), in which an inanimate (more precisely non-human) Recipient bears the accusative marker. The marker is, however, not a genuine role-marker (cf. (7) from Finnish), since the affix in question marks both animate direct objects, and Recipients irrespective of animacy. As was noted above, Awa Pit-type languages pose potential problems for the classification proposed here. Ambiguity avoidance has been grammaticalized to such an extent that there are no options in the marking of clauses with two animate objects. This means that animacy does not affect the marking of the Theme or the Recipient in any way; the Recipient bears the =ta affix, while the Theme is a bare noun in both ‘the music pedagogue showed the book to the linguist’ and ‘the music pedagogue showed the baby to the linguist’. However, Awa Pit-type languages are best labelled as Recipient-prominent, because the Recipient retains its (animacy-based) marking, if both the Theme and the Recipient are animate. This is a clear contrast to Araki and Sahaptin, in which the marking of the Recipient is modified in similar cases. The sentences in (14) illustrate an example of another kind of Recipient-prominent language in the sense the label is employed in the present context. (14) Marquesan (Lynch 2002: 874) a. ‘u titi’i te mihi ‘i te manini ‘i te tau to’iki. perf throw art missionary obj art sweets obj art cl child ‘The priest threw the sweets to the children.’ b. ‘ua tuku ia te tama ‘i te kui. perf give 3sg art child obj art mother ‘He gave the child to the mother.’ Marquesan is loyal to the object-based strategy, since, as shown in (14a), both objects are preceded by the object marking particle ‘i in canonical ditransitives. In this regard, Marquesan is very similar to e.g. Kikuyu. However, differences arise, if we consider
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(14b), in which both the Theme and the Recipient are animate. In contrast to Kikuyu, the Recipient retains its marking in this case (as in (14b)), whereas the overt marking of the Theme is dropped. The Recipient is thus the only overtly marked object in (14b). What also distinguishes between Marquesan and Kikuyu is that neither the Theme nor the Recipient is overtly marked for the role they bear. The marker ‘i is in principle ambiguous (it can mark both a Theme and a Recipient), although in (14b) the role referred to should be retrievable from the zero-marking of the Theme. Thus far, I have examined cases in which the theme- or recipient-prominence is mandatory and clauses with two identically marked animate objects are avoided. I will end the presentation by examining a language in which the recipient-prominence is in principle optional, although preferred. The language in question is Hindi/Urdu, cf. (15) Hindi/Urdu (examples in courtesy of Bertil Tikkanen) a. ādmiī ne aurat ko kitāb dī. man erg woman dat book.abs give.sg.f.pret ‘The man gave a/the (that) book to the woman.’ b. ādmiī ne us kitāb ko aurat ko dīyā. man erg that.obl book dat woman dat give.sg.m.pret ‘The man gave that (particular) book to the woman.’ c. ādmī ne apn-e bet-e ko aurat ko diyā. man erg own-obl son-obl dat woman dat give.sg.m.pret ‘The man gave his own son to the woman.’ d. ādmī ne apnā betā aurat ko diyā. man erg own son.abs woman dat give.sg.m.pret ‘The man gave his (own) son to the woman.’ As is typical of any language that follows the animacy-based strategy, only the Recipient bears dative marking in the canonical ditransitives of Hindi, as in (15a). Hindi exhibits canonical differential object marking, which means that also definite and animate direct objects bear dative marking, while the particle ko is dropped, if the direct object is inanimate and indefinite. The dative particle may also attach to the Theme in some cases, as in (15b) and (15c). However, double dative marking of objects is usually avoided. This occurs in (15d), in which the Recipient retains the dative particle, while the Theme surfaces as a bare noun (in the absolutive). Moreover, the Theme may also appear in an oblique case, if it is followed by the dative particle ko, as in (15b) and (15c). The oblique marking of the Theme is also a mechanism of ambiguity avoidance, since only the Theme may bear this marking and the semantic roles of the objects are thus retrievable linguistically. In this case, the marking of the Recipient also remains unaffected. The marking of the Recipient is thus more consistent in ditransitives with two animate objects. Therefore, we may conclude that Hindi is an optionally recipientprominent language.
On resolving humanness-driven ambiguity in ditransitives 303
4. Discussion This paper has examined the mechanisms languages use to resolve ambiguity in ditransitives in which both the Theme and the Recipient are animate. Languages have been divided into theme- and recipient-prominent types based on whether the Theme or the Recipient is accorded the status of a direct object. I end the paper by discussing the rationale behind the theme prominence and the recipient prominence in light of their relation to disambiguation and the marking of animacy. I will also try to explain the more frequent occurrence of theme-prominent languages on this basis. In this paper, I have argued that the occurrence of the examined language types can be explained by the need to resolve potential ambiguity caused by animacy of both objects in ditransitives. Animacy is intimately associated with the role of the recipient in canonical three-participant events, which usually renders it possible to say which object bears the role of the recipient. As a consequence, there are languages in which the role of the recipient is indicated via formal marking of animate objects only, and also languages in which the Theme and the Recipient are not formally distinguished, if animacy distinguishes between the theme and the recipient (see also Sedlak 1975: 125). However, the correlation of animacy with the semantic role of the recipient is not helpful, if both objects refer to an animate participant. In this case, the default role of both objects would be the recipient. The information needed for disambiguation may be contextually recoverable, but there are also languages that resort to overt disambiguating mechanisms in these cases. This is especially typical of languages that follow the animacy-based strategy, since the mere animacy marking does not suffice for distinguishing between the Theme and the Recipient. Ambiguity can be formally resolved by the rigidification of the constituent order and by morphological changes in the object marking (including case-marking particles). In the cases examined above, the illustrated changes primarily serve the function of disambiguating the semantic role assignment of the two objects. This is thus rather close to differential object marking with the crucial difference that what is distinguished from what is different. In differential object marking, the function is to distinguish between two potential agents. This is crucial in cases like (16b) and (17b), in which the intrinsic nature of both arguments implies the role of an agent, cf. (16) Sierra Popoluca (Payne 1997: 151, examples from Ben Elson) a. i-ku’t-pa xiwan wi’kkuy. 3p3a-eat-perf Juan food ‘Juan ate food.’ b. i-ko’ts-pa xiwan petoj. 3p3a-hit-perf Juan Pedro ‘Juan hit Pedro.’ or ‘Pedro hit Juan.’
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(17) Dâw (Martins & Martins 1999: 263f) a. ʔyãmʃɨʔ yũt ţo:(ɨ:yʔ). jaguar kill deer-(O.topical) ‘A jaguar killed the deer.’ b. laka:h ʃɔɔh-êʔ meţ-ɨ:yʔ. hen peck-past jacamin-O.topical ‘As for the jacamin bird, a hen pecked it.’ Examples from Sierra Popoluca illustrate ambiguity within a transitive construction (parallel to ambiguity attested in ditransitive constructions in (2) and (3)). In (16a), only one reading is possible, since inanimacy of the direct object excludes agency, which means that only ‘Juan’ can be the agent of the profiled event. (16b), on the other hand, is ambiguous, since both participants involved in the denoted event are potential agents. As there are no overt disambiguating mechanisms available in Sierra Popopluca, (16b) is ambiguous. Examples in (17) illustrate a case in which similar ambiguity is formally resolved. The object marking is mandatory, if contextual information does not disambiguate the semantic roles of the participants. Quite similarly, overt disambiguating mechanisms are needed, if a three-participant event involves two potential recipients. As for the linguistic encoding of these events, this means that either the Theme or the Recipient needs to be marked on the basis of the role it bears. The role of the other object can be inferred by default from the role borne by the overtly marked object. The two language types discussed in section 3 differ according to whether the marking of objects is conditioned primarily by the role borne by the objects or by animacy. The marking of the Theme and Recipient is at some level primarily conditioned by animacy (especially in the animacy-based type), and the role borne by an object is relevant only if both objects have an animate referent. The significance of the role distinguishes between theme-prominent and recipient-prominent languages. As the chosen label implies the status — both semantic and morpho-syntactic — of the Theme is higher in Theme-prominent languages. The hierarchy of the roles is thus Theme–Recipient. The first of these with an animate referent is coded as a direct object, and is marked overtly for animacy. The Theme is therefore chosen as the direct object only if it is animate. Otherwise, and far more often, it is the Recipient that is marked as a direct object, since it is the only animate object present. As a consequence, the theme prominence is manifested only if the Theme is animate. The animacy-based marking of the Theme potentially yields ambiguity, since the animacy-based marking of only one object does not tell us which of the roles it refers to in case both objects are animate. Moreover, in languages such as Awa Pit, only the Recipient may be marked based on animacy in similar cases. Hence, in a number of theme-prominent languages, the Recipient is demoted to oblique, and/or is marked on the basis of its semantic role, if the Theme is accorded animacy-based direct object marking. This occurs, for example, in Araki and Sahaptin, as was shown above. I have no examples of languages in which the only change in ditransitives with two animate objects would be the shift in animacy-based object mark-
On resolving humanness-driven ambiguity in ditransitives 305
ing from Recipient to Theme. Ambiguity avoidance definitely makes an important contribution here. What also underlines the higher grammatical status accorded to the Theme is the demotion of the Recipient to oblique status. There are no similar mechanisms available for the Theme in recipient-prominent languages (a marginal counterexample is, however, provided by Hindi; see examples in (15)). In Theme-prominent languages, there is a shift in what is marked. Animacy makes an important contribution, but the marked role varies, as discussed above. In recipient-prominent languages, on the other hand, the marking is more consistent, since the animacy-based marking is confined to Recipients only (in ditransitive clauses). The Recipient is thus consistently the grammatically more prominent object; the animacy of the Theme is irrelevant as regards its marking as an animate object. However, we are not entitled to claim that the marking of the two objects would be genuinely conditioned by animacy in recipient-prominent languages either, since only the Recipient can be marked on the basis of animacy (languages with genuine animacy-based marking, such as Maithili in (6), are not considered here). The marking of role is the most evident in languages such as Awa Pit, in which the suffix =ta can only attach to the Recipient, and never to the Theme irrespective of animacy. In addition, it also marks nonhuman Recipients, even though non-human Themes invariably surface as bare nouns. The examples analyzed in this paper suggest that theme-prominent languages outnumber recipient-prominent languages cross-linguistically. This is probably not a mere coincidence; the uneven distribution of the language types is explainable based on disambiguation. The role-based strategy is relevant to the following discussion as well. As was noted above, the role-based strategy never yields ambiguity regardless of the animacy of the objects. This follows, since the two objects are marked overtly for the roles they bear. The two language types discussed in the paper at hand differ from each other according to whether they apply the role-based strategy for resolving ambiguity. As noted above, the marking of only one of the two animate objects does not usually suffice for disambiguating their semantic role assignment. The unmarked object is, nevertheless, a potential recipient based on animacy. Ambiguity will not arise only if the marker of animacy has fully developed into a marker of role. The easiest and the most secure way of assuring the intended reading of these clauses is to apply the role-based strategy, which occurs in many Theme-prominent languages, such as Sahaptin and Araki. Moreover, languages frequently have a distinct marker for the Recipient, but not for the Theme. The Theme usually inherits its marking from the direct object. However, in languages in which the marking of the Theme and the Recipient is at least to some extent determined by animacy, the options are usually zero or overt animacy marking (of inanimate and animate objects, respectively). This has the consequence that animate Themes either bear overt marking for animacy or they surface as bare nouns. Both options possibly yield ambiguity, which means that other disambiguating mechanisms are necessary. As a consequence, either the Theme or the Recipient needs to be marked overtly for the role it bears. There are two reasons why languages rather opt for marking the Recipient overtly in these cases. First, a distinct marker for an animate Theme
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is needed in a rather limited number of cases, since the Recipient is the only animate object in canonical ditransitives. Second, it is natural for the Recipient to be marked identically with a noun indicating (an inanimate) goal of an event such as ‘the limnologist sent a book to Paimio’ due to the features recipients and goals have in common. On the other hand, such an option is not readily available for the Theme, since the Theme is semantically closest to a direct object. Consequently, the Theme is often marked identically with a direct object, which renders theme prominence more frequent cross-linguistically. It is also worth noting that theme prominence is more typical in languages in which the disambiguation is achieved via a rigid word order only, even though there are not as evident formal reasons for this. The sample is naturally too small to draw any broader cross-linguistic generalizations.
Acknowledgements Academy of Finland (project number 105771) has provided financial support for the present study. I thank Leonid Kulikov, Andrej Malchukov, Peter de Swart and the two anonymous referees of the paper for their invaluable comments on earlier versions of this paper. I also wish to express my gratitude to Pekka Lintunen for improving my English. All the remaining flaws are naturally my sole responsibility.
Abbreviations A agent of a transitive clause, abs absolutive, acc accusative, adjzr adjectivizer, agr agreement marker, all allative, appl applicative, art article, cl classifier, cst construct suffix, dat dative, erg ergative case, f feminine, gen genitive, impf imperfective, irr irrealis, locut locator, m masculine, nom nominative, nonlocut non-locutor, O/obj object, obl oblique, P patient of a transitive clause, past past tense, perf perfect, pfpart perfective particle, pl plural, pn personal name, pres present tense, pret preterite, purp purposive, real realis, refl, reflexive, sg singular, subj subject, term animate argument in Retuarã, top topic.
Notes 1. Throughout this paper, grammatical arguments are referred to by using initial capitals, as in Recipient and Theme (direct object and subject are not marked with initial capitals). The lack of initial capitals (as in recipient and theme) indicates the underlying semantic roles. 2. Animacy is used here as a cover term that pertains both to animate/inanimate and human/ non-human distinctions (some languages may be sensitive to either the former distinction or to the latter). In most of the examined cases, the Recipient refers to a human participant, but it is usually not possible to exclude a similar marking of other animate participants, whence the labels ‘animate’ and ‘animacy’ are favoured.
On resolving humanness-driven ambiguity in ditransitives 307
3. Since the objects in the discussed examples in some cases certainly could be analyzed as primary objects, the label in the spirit of Dryer (1986) could be employed as well. I have, however, opted for using the ‘more traditional’ label of direct object. First, the difference between the labels is not relevant to my purposes, and second, the label ‘direct object’ suffices to capture the relevant traits of objects in the present context. 4. The variation of the dative marking affix follows from the nature of the argument; pronouns receive -raa, while human nouns are marked with -k in object function. 5. The attested variation in the form of the object affix is phonetically conditioned, -pən is attached to nouns ending in a vowel, while -u is employed in the case of consonant ending, see Sharma (1988: 74).
References Blansitt, E. L. Jr. 1973. “Bitransitive clauses”. Working Papers on Language Universals. University of Southern California. Comrie, B. 1978. “Ergativity”. In Syntactic Typology, W. P. Lehmann (ed.), 329–94. Sussex: The Harvester Press. Curnow, T. 1997. A Grammar of Awa Pit (Cuaiquer). An Indigenous Language of South-western Colombia. PhD dissertation, The Australian National University. Demuth, K. 2003. “Learning the syntax of Sesotho 3-place predicates”. Talk given at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen on May 16, 2003. Dench, A. C. 1995. Martuthunira. A Language of the Pilbara Region of Western Australia. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics. Dixon, R. M. W. 1979. “Ergativity”. Language 55 (1): 59–138. Dryer, M. 1986. “Primary objects, secondary objects, and antidative”. Language 62 (4): 808–43. François, A. 2002. Araki. A Disappearing Language of Vanuatu. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics. Gair, J. W. and Paolillo, J. C. 1997. Sinhala. München and Newcastle: Lincom Europa. Kibrik, A. E. 1985. “Toward a typology of ergativity”. In Grammar Inside and Outside the Clause, J. Nichols and A. C. Woodbury (eds), 268–323. Cambridge University Press. Kittilä, S. 2006. “Object-, animacy- and role-based strategies: A typology of object marking”. Studies in Language 30 (1): 1–32. Lynch, J. 2002. “Marquesan”. In The Oceanic Languages, J. Lynch, M. Ross and T. Crowley (eds), 865–76. Richmond: Curzon Press. Martins, S. and Martins, V. 1999. “Makú”. In The Amazonian Languages, R. M. W. Dixon and A. Y. Aikhenvald (eds), 251–91. Cambridge University Press. Newman, J. 1998. “Recipients and ‘give’ constructions”. In The Dative. Volume 2: Theoretical and Contransitive Studies, W. van Langendonck and W. van Belle (eds), 1–28. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Noonan, M. 1992. A Grammar of Lango. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Payne, T. E. 1997. Describing Morphosyntax. Cambridge University Press. Rude, N. 1997. “Dative shifting and double objects in Sahaptin”. In Grammatical Relations. A Functionalist Perspective, T. Givón (ed.), 323–49. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
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Sedlak, P. A. S. 1975. “Direct/indirect object word order: A cross-linguistic analysis”. Working Papers on Language Universals. University of Southern California. Sharma, D. D. 1988. A Descriptive Grammar of Kinnauri. Delhi: Mittal Publications. Strom, C. 1992. Retuarã Syntax. Dallas: SIL Publications. Tuggy, D. 1996. “Dative-like constructions in Orizaba Nahuatl”. In The Dative. Volume 1: Descriptive studies, W. van Langendonck and W. van Belle (eds), 407–52. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Yadava, Y. 1998. Issues in Maithili Syntax: A Government-binding Approach [Lincom Studies in Asian Linguistics 26]. München and Newcastle: Lincom Europa.
chapter 14
Case semantics and the agent–patient opposition Åshild Næss University of Oslo
The ‘discriminatory’ and ‘indexing’ approaches to case marking each address aspects of the crosslinguistic function of case marking, but both fail to account for certain data where case seems to have neither a purely discriminatory nor a strictly indexing function. The two approaches can be unified if we assume that the prototypical function of case marking is to discriminate between the participants of a semantically transitive clause: it typically applies when the clause contains both a semantic Agent and Patient, rather than discriminating strictly between syntactic subjects and objects. Such an analysis explains why case marking on objects may be influenced by semantic properties of the subject, or vice versa; furthermore, it provides a tool for the analysis of crosslinguistic variation in case-marking systems.
1. Introduction The question of exactly what is the function of case marking has been subject to a considerable amount of debate in linguistic literature. Some case categories, such as the instrumental and various local cases, clearly have a primarily semantic function, and are uncontroversially analysed as encoding certain semantic properties of the argument to which they apply. For the case categories typically found on the core arguments of transitive and intransitive clauses — the ergative, accusative, and nominative/absolutive cases — matters are considerably more complicated. Traditionally, such categories have been termed ‘structural’, but it has frequently been claimed that semantic concerns may be relevant even for these ‘core’ case categories. Modern linguistic typology roughly divides into two camps as far as the appropriate analysis of core cases is concerned. The ‘discriminatory’ view takes the main function of core case marking to be that of distinguishing between the arguments of a bivalent clause — that is, to facilitate the identification of the argument NPs in the clause with their respective grammatical functions by overtly marking one argument as the subject and/or the other as the object (see e.g. Comrie 1989, Aissen 2003). In this approach, semantic properties of individual arguments are relevant only to the extent that they influence such identification — for example, an inanimate object is more easily identifiable as an object than an animate one, and therefore less in need of overt case marking.
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On the ‘indexing’ view, on the other hand, core case markers directly reflect certain semantic properties of the participants of the clause. Thus an accusative case marker, for instance, is not simply there for the purely syntactic purpose of identifying the object as opposed to the subject, but typically marks participants with specific semantic properties, such as bearing a ‘patientive’ role in the event in question, while the ergative typically marks ‘agentive’ participants (see e.g. Wierzbicka 1981, 1983). Many researchers allow that both of these functions of case may be present in language and necessary for a crosslinguistically adequate account of core case marking. Even so, they are generally considered as distinct, independent functions; that is, the discriminatory function of case is taken to be a different thing entirely from its indexing function. This paper will attempt to relate the discriminatory and indexing functions of case to each other as parts of a single integrated system. It will present a set of case-marking data which does not seem to be readily explainable from either a purely discriminatory or a purely indexing point of view. In a number of languages, case marking on one core argument appears to depend on semantic properties not of the case-marked argument itself, but of the other argument of the clause, sometimes even on an argument which is not overtly expressed. Such case marking cannot be said to ‘index’ any properties of the argument it is attached to, since this argument may have identical semantic properties in all instances; it is the properties of the other argument of the clause, which is not case-marked, which vary. Nor is it obvious how such cases should be approached from the point of view of the discriminatory analysis, since this analysis also typically takes the need for discrimination to depend on properties of the case-marked argument, and since it is often difficult to see why the need for overt discrimination should be greater in the case-marked clauses than in those without overt case marking. I will argue that an adequate analysis of these case-marking patterns must recognise that case marking has both discriminatory and semantic aspects. The approach I will take is fundamentally semantic in nature, but links the semantics of core case marking to the semantics of transitive situations as a whole, not just to the semantic properties of individual arguments. I will argue that the notion of prototypical transitivity must be defined in terms of a maximal semantic distinction between the arguments involved, and that core case marking in the prototypical instance makes reference to this distinction: only when the arguments of a bivalent clause are maximally distinct with respect to the properties of volitionality, instigation and affectedness does core case marking (in the sense of overt ergative or accusative case) necessarily apply. Thus these case markers do have a discriminatory function, but with respect to a semantically defined construction: the accusative case marks a patient participant in a prototypically transitive situation, that is, when the patient is opposed in the clause to a semantic agent, while conversely the ergative case must be understood as a marker of an agentive participant in opposition to a semantic patient. I will argue that this approach can account for core-case marking in general, although different languages extend the use of core case markers beyond this central function in various ways.
Case semantics and the agent–patient opposition
2. Patient/object marking In Marwari (Indo-Aryan, India), the case marker -ne has a number of different uses; it marks a number of ‘dative’-like functions (goals, recipients, experiencers), ‘saliently affected’ objects, and the causee argument of some causative constructions (Magier 1985). It also, however, occurs on the subjects of some passive clauses — that is, on the semantic patient argument. In these constructions, however, the use of -ne does not depend directly on any properties of this patient argument. Instead, it reflects the property of volitionality on the part of the semantic agent: (1a), with an unmarked subject argument, simply means that Ram was killed, with no implications as to whether or not the act of killing was intentionally performed by some agent. In (1b), however, where the subject is marked with -ne, the only possible reading is that Ram was deliberately murdered, in other words that the agent of ‘kill’ was acting intentionally. It should be noted that there is no overt NP corresponding to this agent, and so ‑ne in fact reflects a property of a participant which has no overt expression in the clause:
(1) Marwari, Indo-Aryan (Magier 1985: 155) a. Rām mārīj-iyo. Ram kill-pass ‘Ram was killed.’ b. Rām-ne mārīj-iyo. Ram-ne kill-pass ‘Ram was murdered.’
In the Tibeto-Burman language Chepang (Nepal), the ‘goal’ marker ‑kay similarly applies to objects/patients only when they are presented as the intended goal of the act performed by the agent. In (2a), where the object is unmarked, the death of the younger brother was not the intended outcome of the agents’ act, whereas (2b), with the casemarked object, can only be interpreted as meaning that the agent performed the act with the intention of causing the patient’s death:1
(2) Chepang, Tibeto-Burman (Caughley 1982: 68) a. puʔ-nis-ʔi həw sat-ʔaka–c–u. OBro-du-ag YoBro kill-past-du-ag ‘The two older brothers killed the younger brother (accidentally).’ b. həw-kay puʔ-nis-ʔi sat-ʔa-thəy. YoBro-gl OBro-du-ag kill-past-gl ‘The two older brothers killed the younger brother (on purpose).’
There does not appear to be any obvious way of explaining case alternations like those illustrated in (1)–(2) within current approaches to case marking. The discriminatory analysis takes differential marking of objects, as in (2a–b), to reflect the greater need for some types of objects to be overtly distinguished from subjects. That is, for languages which, for example, case mark definite objects but not indefinite ones (3), or animate
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objects but not inanimate ones (4), it is argued that definiteness/animacy are typically subject characteristics, and that therefore definite and/or animate objects are more ‘subject-like’ than indefinite/inanimate ones; consequently such objects are in greater need of overt marking to distinguish them from the subject of the clause, which is also typically definite and animate.
(3) Hebrew, Semitic (Hopper and Thompson 1980: 256) a. David natan matana lərina. David gave present to.Rina ‘David gave a present to Rina.’ b. David natan et ha-matana lərina. David gave obj def-present to.Rina ‘David gave the present to Rina.’
(4) Catalan, Romance (Hualde 1992: 87, 241) a. El pagès va obrir les finestres. the peasant paux.3sg open.inf the windows ‘The peasant opened the windows.’ b. Veuré a la Maria. see.fut.1sg obj art Maria ‘I will see Maria.’
There are in fact a number of problems with this standard analysis of dom; they are discussed in detail in Næss (2004), and some of them will be addressed below. However, even if one does accept the analysis of dom as marking ‘unnatural’ or ‘subject-like’ objects, examples like (2) do not readily fit in with this type of explanation. Firstly, the case marker in (2b) does not correlate with any properties of the object which would make this object more in need of overt marking than that of (2a); both clauses have a definite, animate, human object. The property of being an ‘intended goal’ is actually a property deriving from the agent; it is the agent’s intentions which are reflected in the overt marking on the object. Furthermore, even if one were still to consider the object-marker in (2b) to be triggered by a greater need to differentiate subject from object in (2b) than in (2a), it remains to be explained why the involvement of the agent’s intention should trigger such a need. If the need for overt marking is greater the more semantically similar the subject and object arguments are, then an intentionally acting agent should, if anything, be expected to diminish this need; since a patient/object is typically not intentionally involved in the event, an intentionally acting agent is less like a patient than is a nonintentional agent. Alternatively, one might attempt an explanation in terms of the indexing analysis and claim that the case marker reflects a semantic property of the object, but one that is dependent on the volitionality of the agent; in other words that the objects of (2a) and (2b) are perceived as differing in some property as a result of the difference in agent vo-
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litionality. The most likely candidate for such a property would be degree of affectedness; for instance, Hopper and Thompson (1980: 252) claim that ‘the effect on the patient is typically more apparent when the A is presented as acting purposefully’. However, there is absolutely no evidence of any difference in the effect on the patients/objects in examples like (1ab) and (2ab). The act of killing has exactly the same effect whether or not it is performed with intent — either way, the victim is just as dead. There is no observable real-world distinction between the effects of the acts described in (2a) and (2b) (or (1a) and (1b)), and so there does not seem to be any justification for claiming that the case marker reflects such a distinction. A similar case-marking alternation is found in some types of constructions in German, although here, the contrast is not between overt case marking versus no marking of the object, but between accusative and dative marking. In a construction where a possessor of a body part is encoded as object of an action affecting the body part, this possessor may take either the dative or accusative case when the subject is human. However, when the subject is inanimate and therefore necessarily nonvolitional, the accusative case — the typical case of transitive objects — is no longer allowed:
(5) German, Germanic (Lamiroy and Delbecque 1998: 38) a. Der Mann hat mir/mich ins Gesicht geschlagen. the man has 1sg.dat/acc in.the face hit ‘The man hit me in the face.’ b. Der Regen hat mir/*mich ins Gesicht geschlagen. the rain has 1sg.dat/*acc in.the face hit ‘The rain hit me in the face.’
It should be noted, however, that not all German speakers find (5a) acceptable with accusative case. Japanese similarly alternates between accusative and nominative case for the objects of certain pairs of perception verbs. The semantic contrast is the same: the accusative case is used when the verb denotes volitionally controlled perception, whereas a verb denoting spontaneous perception takes a nominative-marked object:
(6) Japanese (Jacobsen 1985: 92) a. Yama o mita. mountain acc look.at ‘I looked at the mountain.’ b. Yama ga mieta. mountain nom be.visible ‘I saw the mountain.’
According to Jacobsen (1985: 92), ‘[t]he difference is not in the object of perception, which is equally unaffected in both [(6a) and (6b)]. It instead has to do with whether the perception is an intentional act or not. In [(6a)] the perception satisfies an intention of the perceiver, whereas in [(b)] the perception is spontaneous.’
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In a number of languages, then, case marking does not necessarily seem to depend either on the need to discriminate between subject and object — indeed, in the Marwari examples, there is only one overt argument and so no distinction to be made — nor on properties of the case-marked argument. Rather, object case marking (henceforth referred to as ‘accusative case’) may depend on properties of the other argument of the clause. Similar phenomena as those exemplified above can be found e.g. in Comox (Salishan, Canada; Harris 1981) and Mam (Mayan, Guatemala; England 1983). Neither a strictly discriminatory nor a strictly indexing analysis can properly explain these patterns, and we are left with the question of how to account for them.
3. Agent/subject marking The examples in section 2 treated marking of semantic patients and/or syntactic objects in what appears to be basically accusative-marking languages.2 However, some ergativemarking languages also show unusual patterns of marking vs. nonmarking of the agent/ subject argument, which to a certain extent may be seen as parallel to the examples involving object marking, and which may help shed light on the problem. In the Panoan language Shipibo-Conibo (Peru), ergative case applies to the A argument of a transitive clause only when the O argument is referential; in clauses with a nonreferential O the A must be unmarked:3
(7) Shipibo-Conibo, Panoan (Kittilä 2002: 212) a. ea-Ø-ra yapa-Ø pi-kas-ai. I-abs-as fish-abs eat-des-incompl ‘I want to eat fish (referential or nonreferential).’ b. e–n-ra yapa-Ø pi-kas-ai. I-erg-as fish-abs eat-des-incompl ‘I want to eat the fish (referential only).’
Here, again, the case marking of the A depends on properties of the other argument of the clause rather than on the case-marked argument itself. A somewhat similar phenomenon is found in the Polynesian language Niuean, where the ergative case, normally used for the A argument of transitive verbs, may be extended to the basically intransitive verbs nofo ‘sit, stay’ and mohe ‘sleep’, if the act in question is ‘viewed as having a direct effect on the location involved’ (Seiter 1980: 63). Thus one may get the contrast in (8):
(8) Niuean, Polynesian (Seiter 1980: 63) a. Kua mohe a ia he fale. perf sleep abs he in house ‘He has slept in the house.’
Case semantics and the agent–patient opposition
b. Kua mohe e ia e timeni. perf sleep erg he abs floor ‘He has slept on the floor.’ (some effect on the floor implied) The function of the ergative case in (8b) does not appear to be purely discriminatory, as there are two overtly expressed participants, one human and one inanimate and definite, in both (a) and (b). Nor does it index any semantic properties of the argument which it case-marks, since the act performed by this participant is exactly the same in (a) as in (b). The claim sometimes made that ergative case is used to mark subjects which are agents does not account for the alternations in (7) and (8), as there is no obvious difference in the agentivity in the subjects of the (a) and (b) examples. Instead, the use of the ergative case here depends on the way the other argument of the clause is construed: whether or not this argument is seen as affected by the act in question. A similar effect is found in Australian language Bunuba, where ergative case marking is allowed on the subject of some formally intransitive verbs, but only if another participant besides the agent is presupposed to be involved in, or affected by, the event. The use of the ergative case on intransitive subjects ‘implicate[s] a second object-like participant that ranks relatively highly in terms of … individuation’ (Rumsey 2000: 109). In other words, the ergative case is used for participants whose act is seen as affecting another entity (cf. Wierzbicka 1981: 70).
(9) Bunuba, Bunuban (Rumsey 2000: 109) Nyirraji-ingga baga ’ranganggi. this.one-erg sleep 3sg.ra.pres.2sg.obl ‘This one is sleeping with your wife.’ (lit. ‘sleeping, affecting you.’)
The influence of the notion of individuation in Bunuba is interesting; the implicated participant is one that is relatively highly individuated. The notion of referentiality which influences A marking in Shipibo-Conibo (see (7)) also has to do with individuation; a referential entity is generally considered to be more highly individuated than a nonreferential one (see e.g. Hopper and Thompson 1980). Thus in all of the above examples, ergative marking depends on the presence of an individuated and/or affected object. The notion of affectedness is in fact often taken to depend on individuation: according to Hopper and Thompson (1980: 253), ‘[a]n action can be more effectively transferred to a patient which is individuated than one which is not’. Moravcsik (1978) found a correlation between individuation and affectedness with respect to the use of the accusative case: this case tends to appear on objects which are definite, human or animate, and highly affected. As far as referentiality is concerned, it seems difficult to predicate affectedness of a nonreferential object, since there is no concrete, specific entity to which affectedness might be ascribed. In other words, what the examples above have in common is that ergative marking is applied only when there is a clearly affected object. By comparison, the languages discussed in section 2 applied patient/object case marking only when the agent was acting
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volitionally. These two properties — volitionality of the agent and affectedness of the patient participants — are generally recognized as fundamental characteristics of the notion of transitivity. As a first approximation, then, we might state that the languages we have been discussing apply ergative/accusative case marking only in clauses describing transitive situations. That is, case marking depends not only on the properties of the case-marked argument, but on the semantics of the clause as a whole. However, in order to be able to fully exploit this insight we need a clear understanding of what exactly constitutes a transitive situation.
4. Affected agents In a number of languages, one finds clauses which appear to conform to the tentative notion of transitivity outlined above — referring to situations where a volitionally acting agent participant performs an act having an effect on a patient — but where core case marking nevertheless does not apply. Consider the following pair of examples from the Northeast Caucasian language Lak (Russia): (10) Lak, Northeast Caucasian (Kazenin 1998: 112) a. Ga-nal q¯at¯a bax-l-ej bu-r. he-erg house.abs 3cl.sell-dur-conv-pres 3cl.aux-3sg ‘He has sold the house.’ b. Ga q¯at¯a bax-l-ej u-r. he house.abs 3cl.sell-dur-conv-pres 1cl.aux-3sg ‘He has sold the house.’ Both the act performed by the agent and the resultant effect on the object is the same in (10b) and in (10a); nevertheless only (10a) shows ergative case on the agent. The difference between these two clauses is that (10b) implies that the agent is affected by the action in some crucial way. In (10a), nothing is stated beyond the fact that the agent performed the act of selling the house. (10b), however, implies that this act has some effect upon the present state of the agent, for example that he is now homeless, or that he has acquired a lot of money as a result of the sale. The notion of affectedness of the agent is relevant to another example from Chepang. Recall that the Chepang goal marker ‑kay is not used when the agent does not intend to cause the described effect in the object (see (2)). In general, the goal marker does not apply when the object is not ‘intentionally affected’ or ‘only incidentally affected’ (Caughley 1982: 65); as an example of this, Caughley (1982) presents the following clause: (11) Chepang, Tibeto-Burman (Caughley 1982: 65) Ni-ci-ʔi ʔamh jeʔ-na-ŋʔ–c–u. we-du-ag food eat-npt-1excl-du-ag ‘We two eat food.’
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It seems rather peculiar to characterise the object of a verb such as ‘eat’ as ‘not intentionally affected’ or ‘only incidentally affected’. Not only is an object which gets eaten very highly affected indeed, but the agent’s intention is necessarily involved in bringing this effect about. It is possible to speak of ‘eating something unintentionally’, but this can only mean that one chooses to eat something while unaware of certain characteristics of the object which would otherwise make one refrain from eating it, such as it belonging to someone else (I accidentally ate John’s sandwich instead of my own) or being poisonous or otherwise unhealthy (I accidentally ate some poisonous mushrooms along with the edible ones). It cannot, however, be taken to mean that the actual act of eating was unintentional, except perhaps in cases where the thing eaten literally flies into one’s mouth: I accidentally ate a bug. In other words, intention is an integral part of the semantics of the verb ‘eat’, and so one would expect the object of an act of eating to be construed as ‘intentionally affected’. However, as Saksena (1982) points out, a central characteristic of the act of eating is that it affects its agent. Moreover, this affectedness of the agent in most cases constitutes the agent’s main motivation for performing the act of eating: the main effect that we seek to achieve through eating is that on ourselves — stilling our hunger, acquiring necessary energy and nutrition — rather than that on the food. From this perspective, the object of ‘eat’ is indeed ‘only incidentally affected’, because the effect that the agent intends to achieve is that on himself, and what happens to the food in the process is merely a kind of necessary side-effect. In Chepang, then, not only nonvolitionality of the agent but also affectedness of the agent leads to omission of object case marking. Lak, similarly, does not apply ergative case when the agent is construed as being affected. To summarise, case marking in two-argument clauses can be shown crosslinguistically to depend on at least the following factors: (1) whether or not the agent is construed as acting volitionally; (2) whether or not the object is construed as affected; (3) whether or not the agent is construed as affected by his own act. Crucially, it is not only the marking of the argument to which these properties are ascribed that is influenced by these semantic properties; rather, a change in any of the properties mentioned may in principle be reflected in the marking of either argument. It was proposed above that these marking patterns reflect the semantic notion of transitivity: only in clauses describing semantically transitive situations does core case marking necessarily apply. However, while volitionality of the agent and affectedness of the patient are generally recognized as relevant for semantic transitivity, affectedness on the part of the agent has not generally been addressed as a factor influencing the transitivity of a clause. It is a fact, however, that many languages treat verbs with affected agents as less transitive than verbs with nonaffected agents. In addition to the examples just mentioned, languages such as Trumai (unclassified, Brazil; Guirardello 1999), Bororo (Macro-Gê, Brazil; Crowell 1979) and Movima (unclassified, Bolivia; Haude 2003) use an oblique rather than a direct object for the verb ‘eat’; in a large number of languages including Amharic (Semitic, Ethiopia; Amberber 2002), Sinhala (Indo-Ar-
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yan, Sri Lanka; Gair 1970) and Maricopa (Yuman, usa; Gordon 1986; for more examples see Amberber 2002 and Dixon 2000), affected-agent verbs like ‘eat’ and ‘drink’ may occur in causative constructions otherwise reserved for intransitive verbs; in Yukatek (Mayan, Mexico; Krämer and Wunderlich 1999), the verb ‘eat’ is lexically intransitive, and the only way to use it with an object is by deriving an applicative form through morphological affixation; and in English and many other languages, verbs like ‘eat’ and ‘drink’ have both transitive and intransitive uses (see Næss 2003 for a thorough discussion of the various ways in which verbs with affected agents occur in formally intransitive constructions crosslinguistically). The fact that not only volitionality of the agent and affectedness of the patient, but also affectedness of the agent appears to be relevant to the morphosyntactic encoding of clauses as more or less transitive offers a clue to the understanding of the case-marking patterns discussed above. We have seen that not only the semantic properties of the case-marked argument, but also the properties of the argument to which it is opposed in the clause, may be relevant for case marking. The fact that the object must be construed as affected for case marking to apply in some languages (examples (7)–(9)), while the agent must be nonaffected (examples (10)–(11)) suggests that the existence of a semantic opposition between the arguments of the clause influences case marking: core case marking applies when the agent is volitional and the patient is not (examples (1)–(2), (5)–(6)), and when the patient is affected but the agent is not (examples (7)–(9)), but not necessarily when the agent and patient are both affected (examples (10)–(11)).
5. The distinguishability of arguments It is generally recognized that a large set of semantic properties typically correlate with the syntactic construction known as a transitive clause. Hopper and Thompson (1980) list ten semantic parameters which they refer to as ‘the component parts of the Transitivity notion’; similar lists of ‘transitivity properties’ may be found for instance in Lakoff (1977), Kittilä (2002), and Lazard (2003). Broadly speaking, a transitive clause is taken to refer to a concrete, dynamic action performed by a volitionally acting ‘agent’ participant and having a perceptible effect on a ‘patient’. Furthermore, the action should be presented as real rather than prospective or hypothetical, and as concluded rather than ongoing. Kemmer (1993) proposes another principle as relevant for transitivity: that of distinguishability of participants. That is, a fully transitive situation is one which does not simply have two participants, but two participants which are clearly distinct from each other. This notion of distinguishability has a couple of different aspects. One is purely physical distinguishability: the participants encoded by the two arguments of a clause should be physically distinct entities in order for the clause to be fully transitive. An example of a type of situation which is often construed as having two participants, but where these
Case semantics and the agent–patient opposition 319
participants are not physically distinct, is that found with reflexives: in a clause like He hit himself, the entities referred to by He and himself are physically the same entity. While some languages, like English, encode this situation in what is formally a transitive clause, with two syntactic arguments, others use various kinds of intransitive constructions, because situations which involve only one physical entitity are less transitive than ones involving two distinct entities. Somewhat more complex is the notion of conceptual distinguishability, which is to do with the extent to which the two participants are involved in the situation in clearly distinct ways. Reciprocals, for example, involve two physically distinct participants, and so should be good candidates for encoding in transitive clauses. However, with respect to the way that these participants interact with each other, there is no clear distinction between them, because both are involved in the event in the same way: both take part in instigating the event, and both receive its effects. Since there is no clear distinction between one purely agentive and one purely patientive entity — what Kemmer calls an Instigator and an Endpoint — this situation is also less than fully transitive, and consequently many languages use various kinds of formally intransitive constructions to encode it. In other words, Kemmer assumes that it is a basic principle of transitivity that a transitive event must involve not only two participants, but two participants which are clearly distinguishable from each other. Crucially, this requirement refers not only to simple, physical distinctness — the involvement of two distinct physical entities — but also to the nature of the participants’ involvement in the event. The implication of this approach is that the arguments of a clause are seen as more clearly distinguishable when they play clearly distinct roles in an event — that is, when only one of the participants shows agentive properties (is an ‘Instigator’) and only the other participant shows patientive properties (is an ‘Endpoint’). If this notion of distinguishability of arguments is indeed a criterion for transitivity, then a highly transitive clause would require two arguments which are not only physically distinct from each other, but semantically distinct: if both arguments show agentlike properties, or both show patient-like properties, they are no longer clearly distinct semantically, and consequently the situation is not fully transitive. As noted above, transitive situations are usually defined in terms of having a volitionally causing or instigating agent argument, and an affected patient argument. In accordance with Kemmer’s principle of distinguishability of participants, I propose that the arguments of a fully transitive clause should be defined in maximal semantic opposition to each other. That is, if one argument — for instance, the agent — is characterized by having property A, then not A should be specifically taken to be a characteristic property of the other argument. It is not sufficient, in other words, to define an agent as a volitional causer and a patient as an affected entity, because such a definition does not exclude the possibility that the patient might also be volitional or causing, or that the agent might be affected. But if this should be the case, then these roles are no longer clearly distinct from each other semantically — and if the semantic distinguishability
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of arguments is indeed relevant to transitivity, one would expect that a clause involving such non-distinct roles would not be encoded as fully transitive. I therefore propose to define the notion of ‘transitive situation’ as follows: a transitive situation is one in which an agent acts upon a patient, where the agent is volitionally involved in the event, causes or instigates the event, and is not affected by the event; while the patient is not volitionally involved, does not participate in the instigation of the event, but is affected by it. A simple underived clause which describes such a situation, or which is formally identical to a clause describing such a situation, is a transitive clause. Schematically, the semantic opposition between an agent and a patient may be represented as follows:
Volitionality Instigation Affectedness
Agent
Patient
+ + −
− − +
It is possible to show that for any deviation from this configuration of semantic properties, some language will use a construction other than the canonical transitive clause (see Næss 2003). A number of examples of this were seen above: when the agent as well as the patient is nonvolitional, Chepang omits object case marking altogether, while German may change it from accusative to dative; when the patient as well as the agent is nonaffected, Shipibo-Conibo does not permit the ergative case; and when the agent as well as the patient is affected, Lak no longer applies ergative case, and Chepang once again omits the object case marker. Another example is found in Icelandic, where the dative rather than the accusative case is used on the object of some verbs if this object is volitionally involved in the event: (12) Icelandic, Germanic (Barðdal 2001: 146) a. Hann klóraði mig. he.nom scratched me.acc ‘He scratched me.’ b. Hann klóraði mér. he.nom scratched me.dat ‘He scratched me.’ While the English translations are the same for both these sentences, there is nevertheless a clear difference in meaning. (12a) refers to scratching as an act of violence, causing the patient to feel pain. (12b), on the other hand, means that the person in question had an itch and submitted to being scratched as a means of relieving it. The difference between the accusative and the dative case corresponds to a difference in the semantic parameter of volitionality with respect to the object participant: in (a), he does not volitionally participate in the event, while in (b) he does. Only when the object participant is nonvolitional — that is, maximally semantically distinct from the volitional agent — is
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the clause fully transitive, with accusative case on the object. The dative case, by contrast, typically appears crosslinguistically in cases where a participant is both affected and to some extent volitionally involved, as in (12b) (see Næss 2003 for more examples). It is important to note that the proposed principle of maximal semantic distinction is only taken to hold at the level of properties defining the relationship of the participants to the event, i.e. the properties that specify semantic ‘agenthood’ and ‘patienthood’. This is in contrast to the standard analysis of differential object marking, which assumes an opposition in terms of the inherent properties of the participants themselves, that is, definiteness and animacy. This analysis claims that in an ‘unmarked’ transitive clause, there is an opposition between a definite, animate subject and an indefinite, inanimate object. My claim is rather that a fully transitive situation involves two clearly individuated participants, which interact with the event in maximally distinct ways; thus the subject and object of a fully transitive clause share the property of being highly individuated. Where this is not the case, languages frequently employ formally intransitive constructions, as will be shown below.
6. Case marking and transitive semantics Let us now reexamine the case patterns discussed in sections 2 to 4 in light of the above discussion. We see that in all the examples above, the presence or absence of ergative or accusative case depends on the existence of a semantic opposition between the arguments with respect to the properties of volitionality and affectedness. The ‑ne marker in Marwari applies when the agent is volitional, i.e. when it is maximally semantically distinct from the patient, but not when it is not.4 Something similar holds for the ‑kay marker in Chepang, which is also influenced by another reduction in the agent–patient opposition: it does not apply when the agent as well as the patient is affected. The German body-part construction does not allow the accusative case when the agent is inanimate and therefore nonvolitional, reducing the semantic opposition with respect to the equally nonvolitional patient. The ergative in Shipibo-Conibo only applies when the nonaffected agent is opposed to a clearly affected patient, and the ergative in Lak is no longer applicable when the semantic opposition between a nonaffected agent and an affected patient is reduced. Assuming the definition of semantic transitivity presented in section 5, then, we see that the case markers in question in these languages function to discriminate, not between subjects and objects, but between the participants of a fully transitive situation. That is, the discriminatory function of case marking is basically semantic rather than syntactic: the ergative and accusative case markers discriminate between arguments which are semantically agents and patients, as defined above, rather than between the syntactic categories of subject and object. In a sense, therefore, it is accurate to say that the accusative case typically applies to objects which are patients (i.e. affected, nonvolitional, and noninstigating) and the
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ergative case typically applies to subjects which are agents. However, this is only onehalf of the picture: ergative case typically applies to agents which are opposed in the clause to a semantic patient, and conversely, the accusative case typically applies to patients which are opposed to a semantic agent. If the argument to which the patient is opposed is not an agent but an inanimate force, as in (5), or a nonvolitional actor, as in (2), object case marking may no longer apply even though the object is a patient in all instances. The ne marker in the Marwari examples in (1) marks semantic patients regardless of their syntactic position, whether they are transitive objects or passive subjects, but it nevertheless depends on the agent–patient opposition: it applies to the semantic patient only when it is construed as being affected by a clearly volitional agent.5 This analysis also provides an alternative account of ‘classical’ differential object marking, as exemplified in (3–4) above. One of the problems with the analysis that definite objects get case-marked because they are in some sense ‘less natural’ or ‘more marked’ than indefinite objects is that in many languages, indefinite O arguments are not encoded formally as direct objects at all. Many languages employ various kinds of formally intransitive constructions such as antipassives or object incorporation constructions when the O is indefinite. West Greenlandic (Eskimo-Aleut, Greenland) chooses the former option (13), while Tongan (Austronesian, Tonga) uses the latter (14): (13) West Greenlandic, Eskimo-Aleut (Fortescue 1984: 85, glosses from Cooreman 1994) a. inuit tuqup-pai. people.abs kill-tr.indic.3sg.erg.3pl ‘He killed the people.’ b. inun-nik tuqut-si-vuq. people-inst kill-antip-intr.indic./3sg-abs ‘He killed people.’ (14) Tongan, Austronesian (Mithun 1984) a. Na’e inu ‘a e kavá ‘é Sione. past drink abs conn kava erg John ‘John drank the kava.’ b. Na’e inu kava ‘a Sione. past drink kava abs John ‘John drank kava.’ (For more examples and discussion see Næss 2004.) In other words, the lesser degree of individuation of the object leads to a less semantically transitive construction because of the lesser degree of distinguishability of the arguments, and this is reflected in a formally intransitive construction. This represents a problem for the standard analysis of dom since the ‘most natural direct objects’ in this theory in fact turns out in many languages not to be direct objects at all. Instead, the accusative marker can be taken to reflect the status of the definite object as a clearly affected patient (for argu-
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ments that definite objects are construed as more affected than indefinite objects, see Moravcsik 1978, Hopper and Thompson 1980, Næss 2004) in a fully semantically transitive construction. By contrast, when the O is indefinite, the construction is not fully transitive — semantically, or indeed syntactically in languages like West Greenlandic and Tongan — and so core case marking does not apply. In other words, core case marking has both a discriminatory and a semantic dimension. The case markers do function to discriminate between arguments, but they typically discriminate between participants in a certain semantically defined construction: the transitive clause, as defined above. That is, the discriminatory function of case markers is mediated by the semantic opposition between agents and patients: the basic function of core case markers is to discriminate between arguments in a clause where there is maximal semantic distinction of arguments. By ‘basic’ I mean that this function of case marking provides a theoretical startingpoint for the analysis of case marking uses which do not conform to those described above, not that languages like Marwari, Chepang or Lak in some sense represent the ‘standard’ system. The hypothesis to be derived from the above discussion is the following: All languages which case-mark either or both core arguments will apply this case marking at least in clauses which conform to the semantic transitive prototype as defined above. What happens in clauses where there is no maximal semantic distinction of arguments, on the other hand, is subject to crosslinguistic variation. What seems exceptional about the data presented above is precisely that these languages appear to restrict case marking to situations with maximal semantic distinction of arguments only. This is clearly unusual, and most languages will apply core case marking in a wider range of contexts. However, the notion of case marking as comprising both a semantic and a discriminatory dimension allows for a clearer understanding of the sources of variation. For the encoding of a situation described by a two-argument clause which does not correspond exactly to the transitive situation with two maximally semantically distinct arguments, a language would have three possible options: restricting core case marking absolutely to clauses that do fulfill the criterion of maximal semantic distinction, extending core case marking along the semantic dimension, or extending it along the discriminatory dimension. The first option is illustrated by the languages discussed in this paper: when the two arguments of a bivalent clause are not maximally semantically distinct, some strategy other than ergative/accusative case marking is chosen. As is evident from the relative rareness of such examples, however, this is probably not a very common strategy; most languages in one way or another extend core case marking to some instances not conforming to the transitive prototype as defined above. If the central function of core case marking is to discriminate between certain types of semantically specified arguments, then there are two possible ways in which such marking might be extended to noncentral instances. One would be to focus on the semantic dimension, that is, to mark participants with a certain semantic specification regardless of whether or not they are in maximal opposition to another argument. Thus
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the ergative case might be used to mark agents or agent-like participants regardless of whether or not the other argument of the clause is a patient, or accusative case might be used for patient-like arguments whether or not these are construed as being acted on by a volitional agent. The extreme case of such semantically extended case marking are the so-called split-S and fluid-S systems, where case marking is entirely independent of the agent–patient opposition: participants which are construed as agentive are marked one way, while participants which are construed as patientive are marked in another, regardless of whether there is another argument in the clause from which they might need to be distinguished. On the other hand, core case marking might be extended along the discriminatory dimension, applying in all or most cases where two arguments need to be distinguished, regardless of whether or not they fulfill the criteria for semantic transitivity. The extreme case would be a language applying a case marker only when there is a need for overt discrimination between two arguments, regardless of their roles as agent-like or patientlike participants in the situation described. The Malayalam data presented in de Swart (2003) would seem to come close to such a system, though even here some semantic considerations may well be involved; see Næss (2004) for an argument that animacy-conditioned object marking should ultimately be understood in terms of relative affectedness. In most languages, however, the case system appears to embody both the dimensions of semantics and of discrimination, to varying extents. In Finnish, for example, the accusative case clearly correlates with degree of affectedness of objects, alternating with the partitive for less-affected or nonaffected objects; nevertheless it does not apply if there is no second argument from which the affected patient would need to be distinguished, such as in imperatives (Comrie 1975). Languages like Chepang simply take this criterion one step further, requiring not just that there be a second argument for object case marking to apply, but that this argument be a semantic agent. In other words, languages may emphasise the semantic and discriminatory aspects of case marking to varying extents, but both are needed for a coherent account of the crosslinguistic data. The notion of transitivity defined through maximal semantic distinction of arguments provides a principled way to unite these two aspects in one single analysis: a transitive clause is one which has two maximally semantically distinct arguments, and core case marking prototypically functions to distinguish between the participants in this semantically defined situation.
Abbreviations abs absolutive, acc accusative, ag agent marker, art article, as aseverative, aux auxiliary, cl classifier, conv converb, dat dative, def definite, des desiderative, du dual, erg ergative, excl exclusive, gl goal, incompl incompletive, inf infinitive, nom nominative, npt nonpast, obj object marker, obl oblique, pass passive, paux preterit auxiliary, perf perfective, pres present tense, sg singular.
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Notes 1. I have no information on the relevance of the difference in word order between (2a) and (2b). It has been suggested to me that the use of the object marker ‑kay might be linked to topicality, and that the fronting of the marked object on (2b) might be an indication of this. In fact it is likely that topicality does play a role; presenting an object as the intended goal of an action rather than something accidentally or peripherally involved would quite naturally seem to involve a higher degree of topicality. However, according to Caughley (1982) it is the property of marking the intended goal of an action that is the main function of the ‑kay suffix, and it is this function that is of relevance for the current discussion. Note further that what is indicated by the ‑kay marker is not simply that the agent’s intention was exercised in performing the act, but that this intention was directed towards the object in question. That is, in (2a) the act as such may still have been volitionally performed, but the intended goal was not the brother. This shows that the concept of ‘volitionality’ involved in semantic transitivity should be specified as directed towards the actual patient for a clause to be fully transitive. 2. It is obviously an oversimplification to call a language ‘accusative’ simply because it shows case marking of (some) objects. Please refer to the sources cited for details of the case systems of the languages in question. 3. This marking pattern is all the more interesting in light of the fact that differential subject marking based on the definiteness of the subject itself, expected according to the discriminatory theory of differential subject and object marking, does not appear to be attested (Comrie 1989: 130); for a discussion of this see Næss (2003, 2004). 4. It also applies to causee arguments of causative constructions which are construed as ‘saliently affected’ by the causation event, but not to causees which are ascribed some degree of control over the event; the latter are more semantically similar to the agent and therefore not in maximal semantic opposition. 5. This analysis can also account for the alternation between ‑ne and the instrumental case on the causee argument of causative constructions (Magier 1985): the instrumental case is applied when the causee retains some degree of control over his act and so is more semantically similar to the causer-agent than the ne-marked causee, which is not perceived as controlling and therefore is maximally semantically distinct from the causer-agent.
References Aissen, J. 2003. “Differential object marking: Iconicity vs. economy”. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 21: 435–83. Amberber, M. 2002. “Quirky alternations of transitivity: The case of ingestive predicates”. In Language Universals and Variation, M. Amberber and P. Collins (eds), 1–20. Westport, Connecticut: Praeger. Barðdal, J. 2001. Case in Icelandic - A Synchronic, Diachronic, and Comparative Approach [Lundastudier i Nordisk Språkvetenskap 57]. Department of Scandinavian Languages, Lund University. Caughley, R. C. 1982. The Syntax and Morphology of the Verb in Chepang [Pacific Linguistics Series B 84]. Research School of Pacific Studies, Australian National University.
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Comrie, B. 1975. “The antiergative: Finland’s answer to Basque”. Papers from the 11th Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society, 112–21. Chicago: CLS. Comrie, B. 1989. Language Universals and Linguistic Typology. Oxford: Blackwell. Cooreman, A. 1994. “A functional typology of antipassives”. In Voice: Form and Function, B. Fox and P. J. Hopper (eds), 49–88. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Crowell, T. H. 1979. A Grammar of Bororo. PhD dissertation, Cornell University. Dixon, R. M. W. 2000. “A typology of causatives: Form, syntax, and meaning”. In Changing Valency: Case Studies in Transitivity, R. M. W. Dixon and A. Aikhenvald (eds), 30–83. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. England, N. C. 1983. A Grammar of Mam, a Mayan Language. Austin: University of Texas Press. Fortescue, M. 1984. West Greenlandic. London: Croom Helm. Gair, J. W. 1970. Colloquial Sinhalese Clause Structures. The Hague: Mouton. Gordon, L. 1986. Maricopa Morphology and Syntax. Berkeley: University of California Press. Guirardello, R. 1999. “Trumai”. In The Amazonian Languages, R. M. W. Dixon and A. Aikhenvald (eds), 351–3. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Harris, H. R. 1981. A Grammatical Sketch of Comox. PhD dissertation, University of Kansas. Haude, K. 2003. “Transitivity in Movima”. pionier talk, University of Nijmegen, May 2003. Hopper, P. J. and Thompson, S. A. 1980. “Transitivity in grammar and discourse”. Language 56: 251–99. Hualde, J. I. 1992. Catalan. London and New York: Routledge. Jacobsen, W. M. 1985. “Morphosyntactic transitivity and semantic markedness”. In Papers from the Parasession on Causatives and Agentivity at the 21st Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society, 89–104. Chicago: CLS. Kazenin, K. 1998. “On patient demotion in Lak”. In Typology of Verbal Categories: Papers Presented to Vladimir Nedjalkov of the Occasion of his 70th Birthday, L. Kulikov and H. Vater (eds), 95–116. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Kemmer, S. 1993. The Middle Voice [Typological Studies in Language 23]. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Kittilä, S. 2002. Transitivity: Towards a Comprehensive Typology [University of Turku Publications in General Linguistics 5]. Turku/Åbo: Åbo Akademis Tryckeri. Krämer, M. and Wunderlich, D. 1999. “Transitivity alternations in Yucatec, and the correlation between aspect and argument roles”. Linguistics 37 (3): 431–79. Lakoff, G. 1977. “Linguistic gestalts”. Papers from the 13th Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society, 236–87. Chicago: CLS. Lamiroy, B. and Delbecque, N. 1998. “The possessive dative in Romance and Germanic languages”. In The dative. Volume 2: Theoretical and Contrastive studies, W. Van Langendonck and W. Van Belle (eds), 29–74. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Lazard, G. 2003. “Transitivity revisited as an example of a more strict approach in typological research”. Folia Linguistica XXXVI (3–4): 141–90. Magier, D. 1985. “Case and transitivity in Marwari”. In Proceedings of the Conference on Participant Roles: South Asia and Adjacent Areas, A. R. K. Zide, D. Magier and E. Schiller (eds), 149–59. Bloomington: Indiana University Linguistics Club. Mithun, M. 1984. “The evolution of noun incorporation”. Language 60: 847–94. Moravcsik, E. A. 1978. “On the case marking of objects”. In Universals of Human Language. Volume 4, J. Greenberg (ed.), 249–89. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
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Næss, Å. 2003. Transitivity: From Semantics to Structure. PhD dissertation, University of Nijmegen. Næss, Å. 2004. “What markedness marks: The markedness problem with direct objects”. Lingua 114: 1186–1212. Rumsey, A. 2000. “Bunuba”. In Handbook of Australian Languages. Volume 5, R. M. W. Dixon and B. J. Blake (eds), 357–489. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Saksena, A. 1982. Topics in the Analysis of Causatives with an Account of Hindi Paradigms. Berkeley: University of California Press. Seiter, W. J. 1980. Studies in Niuean Syntax. New York and London: Garland. de Swart, P. 2003. The Case Mirror. ma thesis, University of Nijmegen. Wierzbicka, A. 1981. “Case marking and human nature”. Australian Journal of Linguistics 1: 43– 80. Wierzbicka, A. 1983. “The semantics of case marking”. Studies in Language 7 (2): 247–75.
chapter 15
Transitivity parameters and transitivity alternations Constraining co-variation Andrej Malchukov Radboud University Nijmegen and Institute for Linguistic Studies, St. Petersburg
The paper addresses the relation between transitivity parameters, as formulated by Hopper and Thompson, and transitivity alternations (i.e. alternations in case-marking patterns). It is argued that co-variation between the two is constrained by two general principles: the Relevance Principle and the Primary Actant Immunity Principle. The former is basically an iconic principle, stating that a transitivity parameter should be preferably encoded on the ‘relevant’ constituent (i.e. the constituent to which this parameter pertains). The latter is a structural principle, which prohibits case marking of the ‘primary’ (i.e. unmarked) actant without a concomitant diathetic shift. It is shown how interaction of these two principles can predict cross-linguistically preferred patterns of transitivity alternations.
1. Introduction This paper deals with the relation between transitivity parameters, as formulated by Hopper and Thompson (1980), and transitivity alternations (i.e. variation in case marking of the core participants in a transitive clause). After introducing the list of transitivity parameters in section 2, I summarize the evidence presented by Hopper and Thompson for the multi-factoral notion of transitivity. The point of this section is also to demonstrate the diversity of transitivity alternation strategies. In section 3 I suggest to recast the list of transitivity parameters in the form of scale, stretching from subjectrelated parameters (e.g., agentivity) via verb-related (e.g., tense/aspect) to object-related properties (e.g., affectedness). This Transitivity Scale is instrumental in formulating the Relevance Principle stating that a transitivity parameter should be preferably encoded on the ‘relevant’ constituent (i.e., the constituent to which this parameter pertains). Section 4 presents cross-linguistic evidence for the role of the Relevance Principle in constraining the patterns of transitivity alternations. It is further demonstrated in section 5 that possible counterexamples to the Relevance Principle can be accounted for by a competing ‘Primary Argument Immunity Principle’ (PAIP) predicting that a
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transitivity parameter should not be encoded on a primary (unmarked) argument. In some other cases, discussed in section 6, the Relevance Principle is satisfied, but at the cost of violating the PAIP. Within the optimality-theoretic approach adopted in section 7, these two principles can be conceived as two conflicting constraints on the marking of transitivity parameters. It is shown how the interaction of these two principles can predict the cross-linguistically preferred patterns of transitivity alternations, as well as constrain co-variation between transitivity alternations and transitivity parameters.
2. Transitivity parameters In a well known paper Hopper and Thompson (1980) argued for a multi-factoral approach to the notion of transitivity. In particular Hopper and Thompson (1980) have identified the following parameters contributing to transitivity of a construction: Transitivity parameters Parameter High A. Participants 2 B. Kinesis action C. Aspect telic D. Punctuality punctual E. Volitionality volitional F. Affirmation affirmative G. Mode realis H. Agency A high in potency I. Affectedness of O O totally affected J. O individuation O highly individuated
Low 1 non-action atelic non-punctual non-volitional negative irrealis A low in potency O not (totally) affected O non-individuated
Hopper and Thompson (1980) demonstrate the relevance of each of these parameters, showing that if a certain feature contributing to high transitivity is missing it can lead in some language to a less transitive construction. For example, in Estonian agentivity and volitionality (Hopper and Thompson’s parameters H and E) arguably contribute to high transitivity inasmuch as non-agentive verbs (of emotion, perception, etc) take the object in the partitive rather than the accusative-genitive case (Hopper and Thompson 1980, 264). In languages like Hindi or Georgian transitivity alternations are conditioned by tense/aspect (parameter C). For example, in Georgian a transitive construction follows a nominative pattern in imperfective tenses (‘present series’), an ergative pattern in perfective (‘aorist’), and an inverse pattern in the perfect (A stands in dat and O in nom case). In Russian, the O under negation (parameter F) can change from acc to gen.
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(1) Russian On ne ljubit obeščanij. he not like promise.gen.pl ‘He does not like promises.’
The role of mode (parameter G) as a contributing factor is illustrated by data from the Australian language Yukulta, where in irrealis (non-past) clauses O is cross-referenced on the verb by oblique rather than absolutive agreement.
(2) Yukulta (Hopper and Thompson 1980: 277, cited from Keen 1972: 189) Kurita-pa-ka-ø. see.des-2sg.obl-1sg.abs-pres.intr ‘I’d like to see you.’
In Estonian, the partitive case replaces the accusative/genitive to indicate a partial affectedness of O (parameter I).
(3) Estonian (Hopper and Thompson 1980: 264 cited from Oinas 1966: 224) Me peame kohe bensiini võtma. we aux at.once petrol.part take ‘We’ll have to take some petrol right away.’
O-individuation (parameter J) is used by Hopper and Thompson (1980) as a cover term for a bundle of parameters, including such features of the prototypical O as animacy, definiteness, referentiality. In some languages case marking primarily depends on definiteness (e.g. in Persian only a definite O is marked with the ‘postposition’ ra), in other languages on animacy (e.g. in Guaraní only animate Os are introduced by postposition pe), in some other languages on both. In Hindi the choice between nom and acc on O, depends primarily on animacy and additionally on definiteness/specificity: animate Os (as in (4)) must take acc, unless they are non-specific, while inanimate (as in (5–6)) may take acc only if definite (as in (6)).
(4) Hindi (Mohanan 1990: 104) Ilaa-ne bacce-ko (*baccaa) uṭaayaa. Ila-erg child-acc (*child.nom) lift.perf ‘Ila lifted a/the child.’
(5) Ilaa-ne haar uṭaayaa. Ila-erg necklace lift.perf ‘Ila lifted a/the necklace.’
(6) Ilaa-ne haar-ko uṭaayaa. Ila-erg necklace-acc lift.perf ‘Ila lifted the necklace.’
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Some languages may employ different types of transitivity alternations to encode different transitivity parameters pertaining to O-individuation. For example, in (Greenlandic) Eskimo according to Fortescue (1984), clauses with a referential-indefinite O (as in (8)) are rendered through an antipassive construction (note that in (8) A changes its case from erg to abs, while O is demoted from abs to an oblique case), while nonreferential (as in (9)) are incorporated.1
(7) Eskimo (Fortescue 1984: 86) Tuttu taku-aa. caribou.abs see-ind.3s->3s ‘He saw the caribou.’
(8) Tuttu-mik taku-nnip-puq. caribou-instr see-anti-ind.3s ‘He saw a caribou.’
(9) Tuttu-si-vuq. caribou-see-ind.3s ‘He saw a caribou.’
This selective presentation of transitivity parameters served not only to demonstrate the relevance of individual parameters but also to illustrate different morpho-syntactic manifestations of transitivity alternations, which can involve a change in case marking (as, e.g., in the Russian example (1)); a change in agreement (e.g., in the Yukulta example (2)); an actancy split, i.e. change of case marking of both arguments (as in Georgian); a diathetic shift, involving antipassive (as in (8) from Eskimo); incorporation (as in (9) from Eskimo). Given such an immense variation in encoding of transitivity parameters, one may wonder whether there any constraints on co-variation between transitivity parameters and transitivity alternations? The authors who address this question usually confine themselves to stating the most typical functions of a particular type of transitivity alternations. For example, Lazard (1998: 230; cf. Lazard 2003) notes in particular that alternations in case marking of O mainly correlates with O definiteness and/or animacy, incorporation with non-referentiality of the O, passive with low agentivity and antipassive with a partitive object or incompletive aspect. However, a principled account of the relations between transitivity parameters and transitivity alternations is still lacking.
3. Transitivity parameters as a scale As noted above, Hopper and Thompson’s paper has been highly influential and their approach to transitivity as a gradable and multifactoral notion is currently generally accepted in the functional-typological literature (cf. e.g., two recent dissertations dealing with cross-linguistic aspects of transitivity: Kittilä 2002 and Næss 2004). In their article
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Hopper and Thompson put forward another general claim, known as the Transitivity Hypothesis which predicts that ‘component features of Transitivity co-vary extensively and systematically <…>; whenever an obligatory pairing of two transitivity features occurs in the morphosyntax or semantics of a clause, the paired features are always on the same side of the High–Low Transitivity Scale’ (Hopper and Thompson 1980: 254). This claim is more controversial, since as noted by Tsunoda (1981; 1985) and Lazard (1998) not all parameters are related and therefore need not show a systematic co-variation. Indeed, while some of these parameters, such as (total) affectedness and aspect (completeness of the transitive event) are clearly related, some others such as volitionality and affectedness are not.2 These features can be even in conflict as in ‘see’/‘look’ pairs, discussed by Tsunoda (1985) and Lazard (1998), where the first verb is resultative (an object, that is its visual image, is attained), but not necessarily volitional, while the latter is volitional, but not (necessarily) resultative (as one can look without seeing). Another major discrepancy, between the parameters of volitionality and aspect, emerges in the domain of intransitive predicates (note that Hopper and Thompson’s Transitivity Hypothesis is not confined to two argument verbs, as the number of arguments figures as one of transitivity parameters). Thus, recent research on ‘unaccusativity’ (see, e.g., Levin and Rappaport Hovav 1995), has revealed that unaccusative verbs are typically nonvolitional, but telic (change-of-state verbs), while unergatives are volitional, but atelic (activity verbs). Note further that the list of transitivity parameters as presented by Hopper and Thompson is rather heterogeneous: some of the parameters primarily pertain to O, some to A, while some others to the verbal action itself. This is implicitly acknowledged already in Hopper and Thompson’s original publication, but is more explicitly stated e.g. by Givón (1985: 90, 106), who clearly differentiates between Agent-related, Patientrelated and Verb-related parameters and argues against regarding them as an ‘unhierarchized list’. In order to explicate mutual semantic affinities between particular transitivity parameters I suggest to recast the ‘unhierarchized list’ of parameters into the following scale: Transitivity scale A-features V-features O-features [animacy3] [volitionality] [kinesis] [factivity] [tense/aspect] [affectedness] [(O-)individuation]
This scale is intended to represent selective semantic affinities between individual parameters through placement of the related parameters adjacently on the scale. Some of these affinities can be captured in semantic terms while some other are rather pragmatic in nature and based on world knowledge. Thus, volitionality presupposes animacy of the A argument while completeness/noncompleteness of a transitive action entails that O is completely/partially affected.4 Affectedness in its turn is related to O-individuation, inasmuch as total affectedness is easier to envisage in case of definite objects (cf.
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Moravcsik 1978). On the other hand, the partial affectedness is related to indefiniteness. This is most clear in case of non-count or plural NPs where partial affectedness pertains to some indefinite portion of substance (drank some wine) or some indefinite member(s) of the group (met some friends).5 The relation of affectedness to animacy is more subtle; but it could be argued with Wierzbicka (1980) that inanimate Os are usually not interpreted as affected unless they undergo a change as a result of a transitive action (cf. hit the wall vs. break the wall), while for animate O the change of state is not necessary for such an interpretation (hit the boy). The feature ‘kinesis’ pertaining to the ‘degree of directed physical activity of an event’ (Hopper and Thompson 1980: 264) is related to V-features (the distinction between actions and states), on the one hand, and to A-features (volitionality or control), on the other hand. While volitionality is instrumental in distinguishing actions from processes, both actions and processes are opposed to states in being more ‘concrete’. States are generic and cannot be envisaged at some particular moment of time, which links them to the irrealis domain (cf., e.g., Van Valin and Lapolla 1997: 93). Finally, it is well known that tense is related — both in synchronic and diachronic terms — to mood (cf. future/non-future and irrealis–realis distinction), on the one hand, and to aspect (cf. past/nonpast and perfective vs. imperfective distinction), on the other hand. Thus the presented scale stretches from A-features via V-features to O-features. At the ends of the scale we find features that inhere to semantics of an argument (e.g., animacy of A and O argument), in the centre of the scale we find intrinsically V features (pertaining to mode/factivity). Still other features are intermediate and serve as ‘semantic bridges’ linking different domains: kinesis is related both to A and V properties, while aspect is related both to properties of V and O. Thus, we assume here a weaker form of the Transitivity Hypothesis that predicts that only parameters that are semantically related (and placed adjacently on the Transitivity Scale) will show a systematic co-variation.6 In the next section I shall demonstrate how the Transitivity Scale can be used to predict encoding of transitivity parameters (which would be impossible if one regards them as as an ‘unhierarchized list’). Here, however, I would like to mention another possible application of the proposed Transitivity Scale. Since the Transitivity Scale has been claimed to reflect semantic affinities between the individual transitivity features, it can be viewed as a semantic map of transitivity parameters. Given the standard iconicity assumptions underlying the semantic map approach (similar functions tend to be similarly encoded, in particular, can be subsumed under the same form; Haspelmath 2003), the Transitivity Scale, inasmuch as it is semantically grounded, should comply with the ‘contiguity’ constraints on semantic maps. Thus it can be used to constrain polysemy patterns of polyfunctional transitivity alternation markers: the range of meanings of individual markers should occupy a continuous segment on the scale. In particular, the Transitivity Scale allows the following prediction: if a form/construction can express (some) of both A- and O- related parameters, it will encode some of the V-related parameters, pertaining to (non)-realization of action as well. The question, whether the hy-
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pothesis embodied in this scale about the possible and impossible polysemy patterns is borne out, will be addressed in a separate paper.7
4. Functional constraints on transitivity alternations and the Relevance Principle 4.1 Introducing the Relevance Principle How can the proposed Transitivity Scale be used to constrain co-variation between transitivity parameters and transitivity alternations? My claim is that it can be used to predict the ‘locus’ of a Transitivity Alternation (i.e. which argument’s case marking will be affected by the transitivity alternation), if we assume the following ‘Relevance Principle’. Relevance Principle (RelP) Mark the Transitivity Parameter on the relevant constituent (i.e. on the constituent to which the feature pertains) The Relevance Principle predicts that all other things being equal features pertaining to A (e.g. volitionality) should be marked on A (exclusively or not-exclusively), and features of O (e.g., affectedness, O-individuation) should be encoded on O (again exclusively or not-exclusively). Features related to V, such as tense/mood and negation8 are preferably marked on V (alone) or — given that they have a clausal scope - on V plus its arguments, resulting in an actancy split. Again the parameters that fall in-between will be intermediate in that respect. For example, verbal aspect has been argued above to pertain both to V and O, hence RelP would predict that this parameter would be marked on V and/or O (or both), rather than on A. Note that RelP is basically an iconic principle that relates variation in form to variation in meaning and predicts that meanings that belong together conceptually will be related in form as well (see Haiman 1985 on iconicity). Therefore it need not be postulated as a separate principle, but can be regarded an instantiation of the iconicity principle with respect to the encoding of transitivity parameters.
4.2 Evidence for the Relevance Principle In this section I shall present some cross-linguistic evidence for the Relevance Principle considering (a) languages with an NP-based split ergativity; (b) split ergative languages with semantically driven case alternations; (c) languages with Differential Object Marking and (d) Differential Subject Marking.
4.2.1
Split ergative languages with an NP-based split
Dyirbal and many other Australian languages with an NP-based split-ergativity provide
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straightforward evidence for the RelP. In these languages the choice of case of the nominal is conditioned by the nature (lexical properties) of arguments, such as the distinction between pronominal and non-pronominal or animate and inanimate arguments (an ‘NP-based split’). In Dyirbal, for example, the clause with two lexical NPs patterns ergatively, while the clause with two pronominal arguments (1,2 person pronouns) patterns accusatively. When one argument is pronominal and another a lexical NP we find unorthodox ‘mixed’ alignment patterns, such as nom-abs in (10) and erg–acc in (11). (10) Dyirbal (Dixon 1972: 60) Ŋada bayi yaRa balgan. I.nom det.abs man hit.nfut ‘I am hitting the man.’ (11) Ŋayguna baŋgul yaRa-ŋgu balgan. I.acc det.erg man-erg hit.nfut ‘The man is hitting me.’ According to Dixon, in Dyirbal ‘sentences can mix nouns and pronouns quite freely without any possibility of ambiguity’ (Dixon 1972: 60). This is so since the potential ambiguities are resolved on the basis of the lexical category that instantiates a particular case: for example the unmarked case would be interpreted as absolutive if instantiated by the lexical noun, but as nominative on a pronoun. Other ergative languages with an NP–based split show a similar behavior. As noted by Blake (2001: 141), ‘in most languages with a partial ergative or accusative case marking, A and P are marked independently, i.e. simply according to the category of the nominal instantiating them, e.g., A is marked erg if it is a noun and P is marked acc if it is a pronoun’. This pattern conforms to the RelP inasmuch as case marking is ‘local’ (in the sense of Silverstein 1976), that is the choice of case on an argument depends on its own lexical properties and is quite independent of the properties of other arguments.
4.2.2
Split ergative languages with ‘independent’ case alternations
Hindi is another language with ‘independent’ case alternations on A and O. However, unlike Dyirbal, in Hindi case alternations are determined by semantic features rather than inherent lexical properties of core arguments. As we noted above, in Hindi casealternation on O is dependent on animacy and definiteness (see (4)–(6)). On the other hand, the alternative marking of A by erg vs. nom found in the perfective aspect with some transitives is dependent on volitionality: (12) Hindi (Mohanan 1990: 94) Ravii-ne davaaii pii daalii. Ravi-erg medicine.nom drink pour.perf ‘Ravi (deliberately) drank up the medicine.’
Transitivity parameters and transitivity alternations 337
(13) Ravii davaaii pii gayaa. Ravi.nom medicine.nom drink go.perf ‘Ravi (impulsively) drank up the medicine.’ This alternation in subject marking in Hindi is totally independent of O-marking. Indeed the same erg–nom alternation can be found with some intransitive verbs as well: for example, as noted by Mohanan, the verb cillaa ‘shout/scream’ will mean ‘(involuntarily) scream’ when combined with a nominative subject, but ‘(deliberately) shout’ when combined with an ergative subject. Thus in this case, as in the case of Dyirbal, case marking of a core argument depends on its own characteristics, and is totally oblivious to characteristics of other NPs. As predicted by RelP, O-related features pertaining to O-individuation are marked on O, while A-related features of volitionality are encoded on A. One finds more evidence for the RelP in languages where case marking of arguments directly encodes their semantic role (role-dominated languages in terms of Role and Reference Grammar; Van Valin and Lapolla 1997), as well as in languages with an active/stative (split-S) system, where the case of intransitive subject depends on its (macro)role (cf. Dixon 1994 on languages with a split-S system).
4.2.3
Differential Object Marking
4.2.4
Differential Subject Marking
In the split ergative languages considered above case alternations involve both core arguments in a transitive clause. If case alternations pertain only to O we are dealing with the phenomenon of ‘Differential Object Marking’ (dom), which has been the subject of a lively discussion in the literature; see (Moravcsik 1978; Hopper and Thompson 1980; Bossong 1985; Lazard 1998; Aissen 2003). Some examples of dom have been cited in Section 1: as noted above, case marking of O in Persian depends on its definiteness, while in Guaraní it depends on animacy. On a broader interpretation of dom, it can manifest itself either in dependent marking (case alternation as above), or in headmarking (object agreement). The latter case can be illustrated by Hungarian where only definite Os trigger object agreement on V (Moravcsik 1978; Hopper and Thompson 1980, 258). In all cases under discussion it is clear that change in the case marking is triggered by some O-related parameter (degree of O-individuation) and is not related to any features of the A-constituent.
Differential Subject Marking (dsm) is a less-studied phenomenon (except for cases of A-alternations in split ergative languages of the Dyirbal type).9 Some relevant examples of dsm, without use of this term, have been recently discussed by Kittilä (2002). As is clear from the examples below, A-alternations are related to some of the A-features, such as animacy and volitionality. Thus, in Tsakhur and Nêlêmwa dsm is triggered by animacy: these languages have different erg cases for the encoding of animate and inanimate As (see Kittilä 2002: 234
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for references). Still clearer examples of dsm (since these alternations cannot be dismissed as merely a morphological matter, i.e., availability of distinct declensional classes for animates and inanimates) are provided by Archi and Samoan where inanimate Agents may be demoted from erg to obl: (14) Samoan (Mosel and Hovdhaugen 1992: 423) Na tapuni e le matagi le faitoto’a. past close erg art wind art door ‘The wind closed the door.’ (15) Na tapuni i le matagi le faitoto’a. past close loc art wind art door ‘The wind closed the door.’ The Samoan examples in (14)–(15) represent a dsm pattern, since structural changes concern exclusively the form of the A-argument: note that the rest of the clausal structure, in particular, the marking of O remains unchanged. The role of volitionality as a trigger for dsm is evident in such languages as Gugu Yimidhirr, Tibetan and Lezgian where A loses the erg marking if A is nonvolitional. In Gugu Yimidhirr, A switches from ergative to adessive in case of unintentional actions (Tsunoda 1981). In Tibetan the marking of A changes from erg to abs (see Kittilä 2002: 239 citing Denwood 1999: 137). In Lezgian some transitive verbs take A in the adelative rather than erg case when they refer to an involuntary event: (16) Lezgian (Haspelmath 1993: 292) Ajal-di get’e xa-na. child-erg pot(abs) break-aor ‘The child broke the pot.’ (17) Zamiira.di-waj get’e xa-na. Zamira-adel pot(abs) break-aor ‘Zamira broke the pot (accidentally/involuntarily).’ Again as in the case of dom, dsm may manifest itself either in dependent-marking (case morphology) or in head-marking (verb agreement). The latter case is found in Abkhaz, which is a head-marking language, lacking case morphology altogether. In Abkhaz transitive Vs that contain the (non-)potential (‘X cannot V’) and ‘unwillingness’ marker (‘X doesn’t want to V’), cross-reference A by a set of agreement prefixes otherwise used to cross-reference an indirect object (‘set II agreement prefixes’, in terms of Hewitt 1979), rather than by a special set of transitive subject prefixes (‘set III’, in terms of Hewitt 1979). (18) Abkhaz (Hewitt 1979: 195) ye-š-s-àmxa-qa’-co 3sg.O-that-1sg.io-unw-prev-do.nfin ‘that I am doing it unwillingly.’
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The change in agreement pattern attested in non-volitional and non-potential forms in head-marking Abkhaz corresponds to the demotion of the ergative A to oblique in a dependent-marking language like Lezgian. To conclude, Differential Subject Marking is induced by features of A (such as animacy and volitionality)10, just as Differential Object Marking is triggered by some features of O (e.g., affectedness or O-individuation). Also in languages like Dyirbal and Hindi where both core arguments are involved in a case alternation, the alternations operate independently and — in accordance with the Relevance Principle — are used to mark some features of the respective arguments. This fact is actually acknowledged even by authors who otherwise emphasize the discriminating function of case marking. For example, Comrie (1989: 130) admits that ‘in most languages case marking of A and P is determined independently’. And, of course, the RelP is consistent with the indexing approach to case marking which takes case as indication of some role-related property of an NP and presupposes an iconic relation between variation in form and variation in meaning.
5. Structural constraints on transitivity alternations 5.1 Counterexamples to the Relevance Principle Thus in general the RelP receives an overwhelming cross-linguistic support, and the reason why it has not been formulated explicitly before may be that it has been taken for granted in the literature. Yet, there are some problematic cases where from the functional perspective the case marking targets the ‘wrong’ argument and thus violates RelP.
5.1.1
An A-feature encoded on O?
Consider again the case of Estonian cited in section 1 where non-agentive verbs of perception and cognition combine with the O in Partitive. Here it can be argued that case marking of O depends on a feature (volitionality or control) of the A argument. Admittedly, this is not a genuine transitivity alternation but rather a case of a ‘verb split’ in terms of Tsunoda (1985), i.e., different verbal lexemes subcategorise for different case frames. A better example is provided by Russian where some verbs can take an O either in accusative or instrumental case depending on volitionality of the performed action.
(19) Russian On krutil rul′/rulj-om. he rotate wheel.acc/wheel-instr ‘He rotated the wheel consciously/unconsciously.’ As observed by Wierzbicka (1980: 16–18), the use of the construction with O in the instrumental case characterizes an event as an ‘idle, aimless activity’; in other words, it
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describes the A as non-volitional. Here then we are dealing with a case where encoding of an A-related parameter (volitionality) affects the form of O, a case-marking pattern that violates the RelP.
5.1.2
An O feature encoded on A?
An opposite case where the choice of case marking for A depends on some feature of O is found in Pitjantjatjara. In this Australian language case marking of A depends on the animacy of O: A is marked by erg case in case of an animate O (see (20)), but erg switches to abs if O is inanimate (see (21)): (20) Pitjantjatjara (Rose 1996: 295 cited in Kittilä 2002: 231) Ilyatjari-lu pony tati-nu. Ilyatjari-erg pony climb-past ‘Ilyatjari mounted the pony.’ (21) Nyantju wala winki puli tati-nu. horse very quickly hill climb-past ‘The horse climbed the hill flat out.’ A somewhat similar case of a RelP violation is found in languages like Kanum and Shipibo, discussed by Kittilä (2002: 252). In both languages A changes its case from erg to abs when the O is indefinite. Note, however, that such cases are less straightforward since the switch from erg to abs can be interpreted as a side-effect of O-incorporation.
5.2 Primary Argument Immunity Principle In general, such violations of the RelP when case marking targets the ‘wrong’ argument are rare and therefore considered as remarkable exceptions in the literature (cf., also Næss, this volume). Furthermore, RelP on its own cannot explain why Differential Object Marking is predominantly found in accusative languages, while Differential Subject Marking is mostly found in ergative languages (cf. Bossong 1986a: 5–6; Drossard 199111).12 To account for these facts I assume, following some earlier suggestions by Tsunoda (1981), Lazard (1998) and Kittilä (2002), the ‘Primary Argument Immunity Principle’ (PAIP), which reads as follows: Primary Argument Immunity Principle (PAIP) Avoid manipulating the case marking of the primary argument exclusively The term ‘primary argument’ (or a ‘primary term’ in Palmer’s 1994 terminology) refers here to the transitive clause argument that is encoded identically to the intransitive subject and is formally unmarked (typically, has a zero case marker).13 For accusative languages the primary argument in a transitive construction is the nominative subject,
Transitivity parameters and transitivity alternations 341
while for ergative languages it is the absolutive object. In accordance with PAIP, manipulation of (that is, change in) case marking of the primary argument normally results in a diathetic shift (a voice alternation). Similar observations have been made earlier by Tsunoda (1981), Lazard (1998) and Kittilä (2002), among others. Thus, Tsunoda (1981) proposes the ‘Unmarked Case Constraint’ to the effect that every non-elliptical sentence should contain one NP in the unmarked case (nominative/absolutive). This constraint explains why case alternations resulting in the loss of an unmarked NP are cross-linguistically disfavoured. Lazard (1998: 207) notes that in most accusative languages, if A is demoted or suppressed, passive applies automatically and conversely in many ergative languages in case of demotion of O, antipassive must apply. In the same line Kittilä (2002: 133) points out that for an accusative language it is more ‘convenient’ to express differences in affectedness while for an ergative language it is more ‘convenient’ to express differences in agentivity: manipulation on these parameters does not necessitate a voice alternation. These observations relating a diathetic shift to a loss of a primary argument are also consistent with the currently widely accepted ‘demotional’ analysis of voice alternations.14 Thus, Givón (2001) following Shibatani (1985) and Cooreman (1994) defines the main function of passive and antipassive as A-‘defocusing’ and O-‘defocusing’, respectively. In particular, with regard to passive, Givón (2001: 125) states that ‘the prototypical passive voice is used primarily for A-suppression or de-topicalization. The fact that a non-agent argument — most commonly the patient — is then topicalized is but a default consequence of agent suppression’. The functional difference between passive and antipassive construction is maintained even in languages that like Kuuku Yalanji use the same marker in both functions. In this Australian language the same detransitivizing suffix ‑ji- is used both in a passive and antipassive constructions. Notably, in the former case it is used to characterize A as non-specific or non-intentional, while in the latter case it is used to characterize O as non-specific/indefinite (Dixon 1994: 151 with reference to Patz 1982). Note that like RelP, PAIP can be viewed as an instantiation of a more general principle (such as Tsunoda’s ‘Unmarked Case Constraint’), and for many theories need not to be postulated as a separate principle.15 Alternatively one can derive PAIP by defining a primary argument as an obligatory NP constituent (in a non-elliptical sentence). This is consistent with the position taken by Dixon (1994: 152), who states that in an accusative language A and S arguments are obligatory while in an ergative O and S arguments are obligatory. This accounts for the fact that if a nominative A is omitted, passive should apply, and when an absolutive O is omitted, antipassive applies. In any case, PAIP provides a straightforward explanation why dom is mostly found in accusative languages.16 In an ergative language the (absolutive) O is the primary argument, hence its demotion/omission leads to a diathetic shift (antipassivization). Similarly, PAIP accounts for the fact that dsm usually occurs in ergative languages: in an accusative language the (nominative) A is the primary argument, hence its demotion/omission leads to passivization. In what follows we shall see that other counter-
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examples to RelP can be attributed to PAIP as well. First however, I shall present evidence for PAIP more systematically.
5.3 Evidence for PAIP In this section I shall present further evidence for PAIP, considering in turn the effects of O- and A-related alternations in accusative and ergative languages. As will be clear from the discussion below the consequences of these alternations would be quite different for languages of different alignment types.
5.3.1
O-related alternations in accusative and ergative languages
As noted above, marking of O-features (e.g. reduced affectedness of O) in accusative languages usually leads to dom effects. Moreover, in accusative languages even V (or rather O/V) related features such as aspect can be encoded on O. As is well known, in Estonian (or Finnish) the acc–part alternation is used to encode an aspectual distinction: the marking of O by the partitive case instead of accusative/genitive yields an imperfective interpretation. (22) Estonian (Hopper and Thompson 1980: 264 cited from Oinas 1966: 224) Mu sõber pakkis oma asju. my friend pack his thing(part) ‘My friend was packing his things.’ And of course, many other languages express a similar aspectual distinction through an alternation between a direct and an oblique object of the hit/hit at type (Hopper and Thompson 1980; Tsunoda 1981; Drossard 1991; Lazard 1998). In an ergative language, on the other hand, manipulation on O-features is less ‘convenient’, as correctly pointed out by Kittilä (2002). Indeed, in accordance with PAIP it normally results in a diathetic shift, involving the use of antipassive.17 Thus, the antipassive construction is regularly used in an ergative language when either O is indefinite or unimportant in the discourse, as in the following Yidiɲ example (cf. also (8) from Eskimo above): (23) Yidiɲ (Dixon 1977: 279) Yiŋu buŋa buga:-diŋ. this woman eat-anti.pres ‘This woman is eating.’ As noted by Heath (1976) and Cooreman (1994), this function of antipassive, known as ‘indefinite antipassive’, is most common cross-linguistically. Note that in an accusative language it often suffices to omit an indefinite object in cases, when an ergative language requires the use of an ‘indefinite antipassive’ (compare the English translational equivalent of (23)).18 Two other frequent uses of antipassive are to indicate partial affectedness of O (as in Tongan ex. (25)), or to characterize an event as non-completed
Transitivity parameters and transitivity alternations 343
or merely attempted, as in Warrungu ex. (27) (contrasted with the transitive clause in (26)): (24) Tongan (Hopper and Thompson 1980: 263 cited from Clark 1973: 600) Nu’e kai-i ’a e ika ’e he tomasi’i. past eat-tr abs def fish erg the boy ‘The boy ate the fish.’ (25) Nu’e kai ’a e tomasi’i ’i he ika. obl the boy past eat abs def boy ‘The boy ate some of the fish.’ (26) Warrungu (Tsunoda 1985) Pama-ngku yuri nyaka-n. man-erg kangaroo.abs see-nfut ‘A man saw (found) a kangaroo.’ (27) Pama yuri-wa nyaka-kali-n. man.abs kangaroo-dat see-anti-nfut ‘A man was (is) looking for a kangaroo.’ These are the most typical uses of antipassive, although in some languages it can be found in other functions as well (Tsunoda 1981; Cooreman 1994).19 Note that the same features such as reduced O-individuation, reduced affectedness or noncompleteness of action that lead to dom-effects in accusative languages, license antipassive in ergative languages. This conclusion confirms Lazard’s (1998: 234) observation that functions of antipassive in ergative languages are parallel to the functions of differential object marking, ‘indirect alternations’ [i.e. alternations of the hit -> hit at type], and object (non-)agreement in accusative languages. This asymmetry between accusative and ergative languages is straightforwardly explained by PAIP: the encoding of an O related parameter on O in accordance with the RelP is prohibited by PAIP in an ergative language, as the absolutive O is an unmarked argument.
5.3.2
A-related alternations in ergative and accusative languages
Now consider what are the consequences of manipulating an A-related parameter (agency, volitionality, etc) in ergative and accusative languages. As noted above, in some ergative languages a change in A-related parameters affects exclusively the form of A, while the rest of the clause structure remains unchanged (see examples of Differential Subject Marking from Samoan, Lezgian and Abkhaz in 3.4. above). Furthermore, V-related features (tam) are sometimes rendered by A-alternations as well, which is reminiscent of cases when V-related parameters have been encoded on O in accusative languages. Consider the case of Manipuri where in the perfect tense the erg (‘agentive’) case on A alternates with the gen.
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(28) Manipuri (Bhat and Ningomba 1997: 130) Tomb-n/gi kophi thk–e. Tomba-erg/gen coffee drink-perf ‘Tomba has drunk coffee.’ On the other hand, in accusative languages the need to encode a low transitivity value for an A-related feature usually leads to passivization. As noted in 4.2, the primary function of passives has been defined in the literature as A-defocusing (by Shibatani), A-detopicalization (by Givón), or ‘blurring of agency of the A participant’ (by Lazard 1998: 227).20 Thus, a passive regularly applies when A is indefinite, non-specific or not important in the discourse, in which case A is normally omitted. A possibility to omit an indefinite/non-specific A is probably a universal feature of passives, moreover in some languages passives are obligatory agentless (Khrakovsky 1974; Siewierska 1984;21 Shibatani 1985; Keenan 1985). Note that in an ergative language it often suffices to omit an indefinite A in such cases (Dixon 1994: 194). For example, Haspelmath (1993: 287) notes that a transitive clause without the ergative NP is the nearest equivalent to passive in Lezgian. In New Indo-Arian languages it is the lack of control/volitionality that licenses the use of passive. This holds, in particular, for the ‘involitive’22 forms in Sinhala and Dhivehi, which historically derive from passives (Masica 1991: 316). The involitive passive construction in Dhivehi is exemplified in (30) (and contrasted with the transitive construction in (29)). (29) Dhivehi (Cain and Gair 2000: 57) Aharen doru leppin. I door close.past.non.3 ‘I closed the door.’ (30) Ahannaš doru leppunu. I.dat door close.inv.past ‘I closed the door (involuntarily).’ Note that the verb in (30) takes a special involitive form, while the A of the transitive construction (29) is demoted to dat (note also that subject agreement on the verb is hereby lost). Lazard (1998: 226) considers impersonal passive constructions such as the Russian Detjam ne spitsja ‘Children (dat) cannot sleep (pass.3sg)’ as a related case, since such constructions often include negation and indicate lack of control on the part of the A. More generally, Shibatani (1998) observes that accessibility of an NP to the Agent-of-passive function is determined by the ‘reversed empathy scale’ where (non-volitional) Force and Instrument arguments rank higher than (volitional) Agents. Indeed, some languages like (Arizona) Tewa disallow volitional Agents in a passive construction, while such restriction does not hold for (non-volitional) Force and Instrument arguments.
Transitivity parameters and transitivity alternations 345
Perhaps, more usually, non-volitionality licences the use of an ‘experiencer–anticausative construction’, as familiar from many European languages. Here it is exemplified with the Russian example (32) contrasted with its transitive counterpart in (31). (31) Russian Ja slomal zub. I.nom broke.3sg tooth.acc ‘I broke (my) tooth.’ (32) U menja slomal-sja zub. to me broke.3sg-refl tooth.nom ‘I have a tooth broken.’ In the ‘experiencer–anticausative construction’ (32) the verb appears in the reflexive/ passive form -sja and denotes a spontaneous process, the underlying O (O of the basic transitive clause in (31)) appears in the subject position, and the underlying A is rendered by an oblique experiencer phrase, used otherwise to encode a predicative possessor (cf. U menja dom ‘I have a house’). Notably, while for the basic transitive clause in (31) both a volitional and non-volitional interpretation is available, the experiencer– anticausative construction in (32) may only refer to a spontaneous non-volitional event. Note again that the same features - volitionality/definiteness - that trigger A demotion/omission in an ergative language, cause a diathetic shift (to a passive or anticausative construction) in an accusative language. In the same way animacy distinctions, which determine the choice of case marker in some ergative languages (between the two ergative cases in Tsakhur or between erg and loc in Samoan), can license differential case marking of the agent in a passive construction; cf. the choice between von/durch in German used respectively for animate/inanimate passive agents (for more examples of differential marking of passive agents see Drossard 1991: 467 ff., Kittilä 2002: 280–2).23 Thus, although the RelP would predict that the Differential Subject Marking is universally a preferred option for encoding of A-properties, this option is blocked by PAIP in an accusative language, since the nominative A counts as a primary argument.
6. Counterexamples to PAIP 6.1 Nominative A demotion in accusative languages Like the Relevance Principle considered above, PAIP is not exceptionless. After all, some accusative languages do permit demotion of a nominative subject, which yields an impersonal construction. Thus Russian permits an alternation between nom and instr case for A, when A refers to an inanimate entity, normally natural Force:
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(33) Russian Lodk-u uneslo tečenie/tečeni-em. boat-acc drive.away.past.3sg current.nom/current-instr ‘The boat was driven away by the current.’ While in Russian the use of such an impersonal construction is highly restricted, similar ‘deagentive’ constructions involving demotion of A for non-controllable/non-volitional actions to an obl, are wide-spread in New Indo-Aryan languages (Masica 1991: 346– 50). Importantly, such an alternation is not confined to (split) ergative languages, where it does not constitute a PAIP violation, but is found in accusative languages like Bengali as well (Onishi 2001). An example of the Genitive-Subject construction in Bengali, used to express lack of control on the part of the subject, is given in (35). Note that in (35) the V is nominalized and followed by the aux hɔ- ‘happen, become’, and the subject of the corresponding transitive construction (34) appears in the gen. (34) Bengali (Onishi 2001: 120) Tumi (bondhu-ke) Teliphon kor-ech-o? you (friend-obj) telephone do-pf-pres.3 ‘Have you made a telephone call to your friend?’ (35) Toma-r (bondhu-ke) Teliphon kɔr–a ho-ech-e? you-gen (friend-obj) telephone do-nzr become-pf-pres.3 ‘Have you finished a telephone call to your friend?’ Why do languages allow a PAIP violation? While this question will be addressed in the next section, it is worth to point out here one factor facilitating a PAIP violation. Apparently, a PAIP violation is permitted if some other constituent in the resultant structure may qualify as a primary argument or identification of a primary argument is otherwise problematic. Thus, it may be important that in Bengali, which makes a liberal use of the genitive subject construction, oblique subjects usually appear in constructions with complex predicates involving a verbal noun in the unmarked case and the auxiliary verb hɔ- ‘become’. Historically, the genitive subject construction developed from reanalysis of nominalized clauses in the subject position: the former subject (deverbal noun) was reanalyzed as a part of a complex predicate, and the possessor of the nominalized clause as a new subject (see Onishi 2001: 125–7).24 Note that the original subject reanalyzed as a part of a complex predicate can still on formal grounds qualify as an unmarked argument, which arguably makes a PAIP violation possible here.
6.2 Absolutive O-demotion in ergative languages For ergative languages, a transitivity alternation that affects exclusively the form of the absolutive O constitutes a PAIP violation. Although most ergative languages indeed disfavour the change from erg–abs to erg–obl pattern, that lacks a primary argument, such constructions are attested, for example, in Warlpiri and Djaru (Tsunoda 1985).
Transitivity parameters and transitivity alternations 347
(36) Warlpiri (Hale 1973) Njuntulu-lu npa-tju pantu-nu ŋatju. 2sg-erg 2sg-1sg spear-past 1sg.abs ‘You speared me.’ (37) Njuntulu-lu npa-tju-la pantu-nu ŋatju-ku. 2sg-erg 2sg-1sg-la spear-past 1sg-dat ‘You speared at me.’/‘You tried to spear me.’ Note that the erg–dat pattern in (37) performs a function similar to an antipassive, which is also often used to render the continuous or conative meaning (cf. ex. (27) from Warrungu). Yet, unlike what happens in other ergative languages, O-demotion does not result in a diathetic shift in Warlpiri. Note in particular that the case of A is preserved: erg does not switch to abs. Thus this type of transitivity alternation is more similar to dom or an ‘indirect alternation’, as found in many accusative languages, since the changes in case marking pertain only to O. Again it is an interesting question (which is raised by Tsunoda 1981, but left unanswered), why languages such as Warlpiri and Djaru permit a PAIP violation. Note, that both Warlpiri and Djaru are ‘surface ergative’ languages, which hardly display any ergative features apart from case marking. In case of Warlpiri case marking on nouns appears to be the only ergative feature; note that even the agreement system functions on an accusative basis. Djaru has no verb agreement in the strict sense but is syntactically accusative as well; e.g., rules of switch-reference as well as cross-referencing by enclitic pronouns function on an accusative basis (Tsunoda, p.c., see also Andrews 1985 for some discussion). Thus, for these languages the status of O as a primary argument is questionable, as A competes with O for the status of the primary argument. For example, in Warlpiri, S is similar to O in terms of dependent-marking (case morphology), but is similar to A in terms of head-marking (agreement). On the other hand, ‘deep ergative’ languages like Dyirbal, Yidiɲ, and Eskimo do not permit clauses without abs arguments; demotion of O leads to an antipassive construction. Thus, in both accusative and ergative languages there may be additional factors that facilitate a PAIP violation. In the next section I shall offer a more principled explanation for PAIP violations in terms of constraint interaction.
7. RelP and PAIP as conflicting constraints Above I have proposed two general principles that determine the encoding of a transitivity parameter; the RelP predicting that a parameter should be marked on the argument to which the parameter pertains, and PAIP predicting that the parameter should not be marked on the primary argument. The functionally motivated RelP and the structurally motivated PAIP represent then two competing motivations, jointly determining the pattern of a transitivity alternation. Within an Optimality-Theoretic approach (Prince
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and Smolensky 2004), these two principles can be viewed as two conflicting and violable constraints on the marking of transitivity alternations. As is clear from the discussion above, these principles need not be in conflict, though. There are ‘harmonic’ cases where both principles reinforce each other, rather than conflict. Thus, both principles predict that O-related features should be encoded on O in accusative languages. This is so, because O is the most ‘natural’ target for marking of O-features given the RelP, and this marking is further permitted by PAIP, since the accusative O is not a primary argument. The competition of the two transitivity alternation patterns involving case marking of A and O arguments for a certain O-related feature is represented by the following ‘generalized’ tableau, which is a somewhat simplified form of tableaux familiar from the ot literature: Tableau 1. Marking O-features in an accusative language
A-marking
RelP
PAIP
*
*
O-marking
The tableau above is called ‘generalized’ since it is designed to predict a cross-linguistically preferred (harmonic) patterns given a certain set of constraints, rather than to account for the (un)grammaticality of certain patterns in individual languages in terms of language particular constraint rankings. Thus the tableau above shows that the Omarking pattern will be the winning candidate irrespective of a language particular ranking of the PAIP and RelP constraints, since it violates neither of the proposed constraints, while A-marking violates both (this is shown by the asterisks in the respective cells). As is clear from the discussion above this prediction is borne out, hence the attested dom-effects in accusative languages. Secondly, both constraints predict that an A-related feature will be encoded on A in ergative languages, giving rise to Differential Subject Marking. Again A is the preferred target for case marking of A-features in accordance with RelP and case marking of A may be changed since the ergative NP does not count as a primary argument. The following tableau shows how dsm emerges as a winning candidate, irrespective of a language particular ranking of the PAIP and RelP: Tableau 2. Marking A-features in an ergative language RelP
PAIP
*
*
A-marking O-marking
This prediction is borne out for ergative languages such as Samoan and Lezgian discussed in 3.4, where a manipulation of an A-parameter (e.g. animacy, volitionality) li-
Transitivity parameters and transitivity alternations 349
censes dsm. Yet not all ergative languages permit dsm. Thus, dsm is less typical for ‘surface ergative’ languages, which is arguably due to the fact that A competes here with O for the primary argument status (recall the discussion of Warlpiri in 5.2.). For such languages a preferred option to encode an A-related parameter may be a diathetic shift, similarly to what is attested for accusative languages (see below). It is well known that passive is mostly confined to ‘surface ergative’ languages, which show accusative features elsewhere (Palmer 1994: 158).25 Above we have considered ‘harmonic’ combinations of the transitivity parameter and the alignment type where both constraints are satisfied. However, there are ‘nonharmonic’ cases as well, when the two principles are in conflict. Consider again expression of A features in the accusative language. In accordance with RelP the (low) transitivity value for an A-related parameter should be marked on A, hence resulting in dsm. Yet this option violates PAIP that prohibits demotion of the nominative subject. The conflict may be resolved in favour of one of the principles. If RelP outranks PAIP, the nominative A is demoted giving rise to an impersonal construction. This case has been exemplified by impersonal constructions in Bengali where a non-volitional A is demoted to gen (see (35)). If PAIP outranks RelP, an A-feature is encoded on O, since the accusative O is not a primary argument and therefore is more amenable for case manipulation. Recall the case alternation on O in Russian as in (19) above, where the choice between the accusative and instrumental case of O depends on volitionality of the A argument. Thus, any of the constraints can win at the cost of violating the other constraint. More usually, however, a conflict between RelP and PAIP results in a diathetic shift to passive, which is a way to satisfy both constraints: the relevant constituent will be marked, yet the primary argument will be available in the resultant structure, due to promotion of another NP into this position. As noted above, when there is a need to encode a (low transitivity value for) A-features in a nominative language, passive applies. The competition between different patterns is reflected in the following Tableau, which shows a passive construction as the winning candidate, since it provides a way to satisfy the higher ranking RelP and PAIP constraints. This happens however at cost of violating the lower ranking constraint against the use of a marked diathesis (symbolized as DiaFaith constraint): Tableau 3. Marking A-features in accusative languages RelP A-marking O-marking D-marking (passive)
PAIP
…
DiaFaith
* * *
The Tableau shows that marking A-features in accusative languages will be less consistent cross-linguistically than marking of O-features.26 Additionally it shows that a voice
350 Andrej Malchukov
alternation (passive) is a cross-linguistically preferred option as DiaFaith ranks lower than the RelP and PAIP constraints. Indeed cases of RelP and PAIP violations are rare and often require some special preconditions (recall the discussion of factors facilitating a PAIP violation in Bengali in Section 5). Another ‘non-harmonic’ pairing of a transitivity parameter and the alignment type concerns encoding of O-features in an ergative language. Again the conflict between RelP prescribing marking of O for its own feature and PAIP prohibiting this option may be resolved in favour of one of the principles. Ranking PAIP below RelP would result in demotion of the absolutive O in an ergative language. This is what happens in Warlpiri and Djaru, when non-affected O is demoted from abs to obl, leaving the resultant structure without the primary argument. An opposite ranking would result in coding of an O feature on the transitive subject. This option is found in Pitjantjatjara, where A changes its ergative case to absolutive when O is inanimate (as in (21)). Alternatively, when there is need to encode a low transitivity value for O features antipassive can apply. The Tableau below demonstrates that antipassive derivation is a preferred option for marking of O-features in an ergative language, as it provides a way to satisfy the higher ranking RelP and PAIP constraint. Tableau 4. Marking O-features in ergative languages RelP A-marking O-marking D-marking (passive)
PAIP
…
DiaFaith
* * *
8. Conclusions In this paper I have argued that the encoding of Transitivity Parameters is determined by two interacting constraints: the functional Relevance Principle, that prescribes that a transitivity parameter should be encoded on the ‘relevant’ constituent, and the structural Primary Argument Immunity Principle that penalizes the marking of the parameter on the primary (unmarked) argument. It has been shown how interaction of these two constraints can predict the cross-linguistically preferred patterns of transitivity alternations. In particular, this account allows to explain why differential object marking is usually found in accusative languages, while differential subject marking is mostly restricted to ergative languages: these are ‘harmonic’ pairings of a transitivity parameter and the alignment type, where both principles reinforce each other rather than conflict. This account also explains why there is less cross-linguistic consistency in encoding of transitivity parameters in cases when the two constraints are in conflict. In this case a diathetic shift to a passive or antipassive construction may be an optimal option to satisfy both constraints.
Transitivity parameters and transitivity alternations 351
Acknowledgements I am grateful to H. de Hoop, L. Kulikov, P. de Swart and two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments. I have also profited from comments by B. Bickel, M. Haspelmath, S. Kittilä, A. Ogawa, P. Pardeshi, M. Shibatani and T. Tsunoda on an earlier version of this paper. I acknowledge the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (nwo) for financial support, grant 220-70-003 for the pionier project ‘Case cross-linguistically’.
Abbreviations A transitive subject, abs absolutive, acc accusative, agr agreement, aor aorist, anti antipassive, art article/determiner, aux auxiliary, cl class/gender marker, dat dative case, det determiner, erg ergative case, F feminine (gender), ind indicative, intr intransitive, inv involitive, loc locative case, M masculine gender, N neutrum (gender), nfin non-finite, nfut nonfuture, nom nominative case, nzr nominalizer, O (direct) object, obj object marker, obl oblique object, part partitive (case), perf perfect, pl plural, adel adelative case, pres present tense, refl reflexive marker, S intransitive subject, sg singular, tam tense/aspect/mood marker, tr transitive marker, unw ‘unwillingness’ marker, 3->3 3rd p. A acting upon 3rd person O.
Notes 1. This may be a simplification; see, e.g., Manning (1996: 88–96) for a discussion of the semantics of the antipassive construction in Eskimo. 2. Cf. Lazard (1998: 256): ‘Transitivity hypothesis assuming co-variation of the different transitivity parameters is not borne out. It is true that certain parameters tend to co-vary, as in the case of aspect and O-definiteness. But agentivity, as noted by Tsunoda (1981), is independent of this process’. 3. I follow Hopper and Thompson in singling out animacy as the most important among parameters pertaining to A-individuation. It should be noted, however, that in some languages other parameters related to A-individuation (definiteness, specificity) can also trigger a transitivity alternation. Thus, in Navajo indefiniteness of A yields a formal decrease of transitivity (Kibrik 1996). Another A-related parameter (agent’s affectedness) is mentioned in n. 10. 4. The connection of aspect to O-affectedness is reflected in the semantic analyses such as Tenny’s (1994) that try to reduce the former to the latter: the degree of O-affectedness is taken to ‘measure out’ the completeness of an event. Another option, advocated by Kiparsky (1998), is to reduce both parameters to a common feature such as [±boundedness]. This feature operates on the VP level and may pertain either to the verb itself (yielding an aspectual distinction) or to the internal argument (yielding a distinction in the degree of affectedness). 5. Note that some languages like French use the partitive construction (the ‘partitive article’) only to indicate indefiniteness for plural or mass nouns (des journaux ‘some journals’), for singulars an indefinite article is used instead (Lyons 1999: 100–1). 6. In a recent paper Lazard (2003) denies any co-variation between transitivity parameters, even between those which like aspect, O-affectedness and O-individuation are semantically related.
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In particular, he notes that while in Hungarian a perfective verb can only combine with a definite object, in English there is no co-variation between the parameters of aspect and object definiteness; cf. kick a/the ball and kick at a/the ball. Hence ‘the co-variation that obtains in certain languages as Hungarian should not be raised to the status of a general law’ (Lazard 2003: 175). Note however that the term co-variation as used by Hopper and Thompson and also in the present paper does not suggest that this co-variation is observable in every single language. Rather it suggests that there is a mutual dependency between the parameters: there may be languages where perfective verbs can take only definite object and imperfective only indefinite, but there may be no language that will show an opposite restriction (e.g. perfective verbs combining exclusively with indefinite objects). As is clear from the discussion above, on the present account such mutual dependencies are explained by selective semantic affinities among individual parameters. 7. Most interesting for testing this hypothesis are transitivity alternation markers which reveal greater polysemy. An instructive case is provided by a highly polyfunctional transitivity increase (‘causative’) marker in Komi as described by (Kalinina, Kolomatsky and Sudobina, this volume). In this language the ‘causative’ marker, in addition to marking increase in valency (Hopper and Thompson’s parameter A), can mark an O-related parameter (animacy of O), an O/V-related parameter (total affectedness), a V-related parameter (intensity, related to Hopper and Thompson’s Kinesis), as well as an A-related parameter (volitionality). This polysemy pattern conforms to the Transitivity Scale inasmuch as it includes some V-related parameters in addition to A-related and O-related parameters constituting the two poles of the scale . 8. An interesting example brought to my attention by T. Tsunoda (see also Tsunoda 1981) is provided by Kala Lagaw Langgus (an Australian language), where the ergative pattern found in affirmative clauses is replaced by the gen–gen pattern (genitive marking of both A and O) in negative clauses. 9. See, however, two recently published volumes on ‘non-canonical subject marking’ addressing this issue: Aikhenvald, Dixon and Onishi (2001) and Bhaskararao and Subbarao (2004). Not all cases of non-canonical subject marking are relevant for the present discussion, though, as many involve a ‘split’ in the encoding of A (different verbs select different valency patterns) rather than dsm-alternations discussed in this paper. 10. Some other features pertaining to A such as affectedness can also influence case marking. For example, Kazenin (1998) observes that in Lak, if A is affected by the results of a transitive action its case can change from erg to abs. See Testelets (1998) and Næss (2004 and in this volume) for further discussion of the deviant case marking of affected agents. 11. Drossard (1991: 452, 479) notes, in particular, that ergative languages unlike accusative, but similar to active allow more formal differentiation of the role of A participant (Agent, Force, Experiencer). 12. In the present context, this generalization pertains to cases of transitivity alternations on subjects and objects, rather to cases of ‘transitivity splits’ discussed by Tsunoda (1981; 1985), where different verbal lexemes subcategorize for different case-frames. Constraints on ‘transitivity splits’ are discussed in (Malchukov 2005). It should be noted, however, that recent research on non-canonical subject marking (see references in n. 9) has revealed few uncontroversial cases of dsm-splits in accusative languages. In most accusative languages the subject status of ‘quirky’ (non-nominative) subjects is questionable (for example, the experiencer argument in the German construction such as Mir gefällt das Buch fails most tests for subjecthood). In this
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respect German is representative for accusative languages, while Icelandic is exceptional (see Abraham, this volume, and Barðdal and Eythórsson, this volume, for discussion of the German/ Icelandic contrasts and references). 13. As is clear from its formulation, PAIP presupposes that the primary actant can be uniquely identified in a given construction, which may be problematic for some languages (‘surface ergative’ languages, split intransitive languages, etc). Notably, when a primary actant cannot be uniquely identified within a transitive construction, a language is more prone to permitting a PAIP violation (see the discussion of the examples from Bengali and Warlpiri in section 6). 14. The most important argument in favor of the demotional analysis of voice alternations is that demotion of an argument can occur independently of promotion (cf. demotion of subject in an impersonal passive construction), while promotion always presupposes demotion. Indeed, a promotion without demotion would lead to doubling of a grammatical relation, a situation hardly attested empirically and explicitly excluded in many theoretical frameworks. Van Valin and Lapolla (1997), who draw a distinction between ‘foregrounding’ and ‘backgrounding’ passives, do admit foregrounding without backgrounding as a possible option, citing Lango as an example. Yet, ‘passivization’ in Lango is more reminiscent of topicalization and has been actually characterized as such by Noonan (1992). Cf. Palmer (1994: 93) for a similar conclusion regarding the Lango data. 15. For example, in generative grammar PAIP can be arguably derived from the Extended Projection Principle that ensures that every clause has a subject. Admittedly, that would need some special assumptions with regard to ergative languages, given a controversy about what counts as a subject (an external argument) in these languages (see Manning 1996 for discussion). More directly PAIP can be derived from the Obligatory Case Constraint proposed by Bobaljik (1993). 16. A correlation between accusative alignment and availability of dom alternations, on the one hand, and ergative alignment and availability of dsm alternations, on the other hand, is also evident in the case of split ergative languages with a tense/aspect based split. Thus, in Indic languages showing a tense-based split, dsm of the type illustrated for Hindi in (12), (13) is only found in the ergative domain (perfective tenses), and is excluded from the accusative domain (imperfective tenses). Although dom is found in many languages (also in Hindi) in both domains, in some languages (like Kashmiri) it is restricted to the accusative domain (see Klaiman 1987: 77). 17. The term antipassive is used here in a broad sense to include both morphologically marked antipassives as well as antipassive constructions involving the change of case pattern from erg– abs to abs–obl or abs–abs. 18. See Heath (1976), Tsunoda (1981), Naess (2004) on parallels between antipassivization in ergative languages and indefinite object deletion in accusative languages. 19. Hopper and Thompson (1980) mention that antipassives in some languages can also indicate lack of control or volitionality on the part of A. Cooreman (1994: 72) however notes that the latter function is less characteristic of antipassives. She further relates such uses to the fact that in some languages like Diyari and Warrungu antipassive and passive are not formally differentiated, and correctly attributes expression of A-related properties (lack of control/volitionality) to the use of these polyfunctional affixes in the passive function (cf. also the case of Kuuku Yalanji mentioned in 4.2.). Cooreman also discusses syntactic — detransitivizing — functions of antipassive most typical of certain types of subordinate clauses.
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20. Here we are mainly concerned with the semantic functions of passive related to encoding of transitivity parameters, rather than with its discourse function (topicalization) and syntactic function (detransitivization). On the distinction between semantic, discourse and syntactic functions of voice alternations, see Lazard (1998: 226–7). 21. Siewierska (1984: 35ff.) also notes some exceptional passive constructions where agents of passives seem to be obligatory. However the status of these constructions as passives is controversial (cf. Shibatani 1998: 134). 22. The involitive passives should not be confused with adversative passives, as found in Japanese, which express the inadvertant effect of an action with regard to the subject of passive. 23. Similarly, in an ergative language dom effects are more likely to be found in the antipassive construction, where the demoted O is not a primary argument (Drossard 1991: 470). Thus, in Yidiɲ the O of the antipassive construction can take either loc or dat case depending on its animacy. 24. This reanalysis is not complete though. Oblique subjects display some subject-properties (control of converb subject, reflexivization) but do not control verbal agreement; see Onishi (2001: 121ff.) for discussion. 25. Another feature that disfavors dsm in an ergative language, which is independent of the distinction between morphologically and syntactically ergative languages, is cross-referencing of A on the verb (cf. Drossard 1991; Shibatani 1985). For example, Eskimo, where both the ergative A and the absolutive O are cross-referenced by the cumulative agreement markers on the verb, does not permit A-demotion of the type attested in Caucasian languages. This restriction is understandable if we follow Shibatani (1985) and Drossard (1991) in their assumption that cross-referencing on the verb turns an argument into an obligatory clause constituent. On this account A has the status of a primary argument not only in the morphologically ergative Basque but also in the syntactically ergative Eskimo. Importantly, in both cases the resistance against Ademotion is related to the fact that the ergative A reveals certain features of a primary argument. In a similar fashion, one can argue that cross-referencing of O on the verb accrues it the status of the primary argument in an accusative language as well. Hence such languages will show resistance to dom alternations, taking recourse to a diathetic shift instead. This is consistent with Nichols’ conclusion that ‘antipassives are associated with languages in which the O is central to clause morphosyntax: ergative languages, where O takes the unmarked case, and those accusative languages in which there is agreement with the O’ (Nichols 1992: 158). Incidentally, this also explains why antipassives are widespread among the accusative languages in Polinsky’s (2005: 438) sample: most of these languages take object agreement. 26. In fact, as the examples (19) and (33) from Russian show, there can be inconsistency in ranking of RelP and PAIP within one language as well. This variation in ranking, unexpected under the standard ot analysis, can be accounted for if we conceive RelP as a family of constraints pertaining to individual transitivity parameters and allow individual constraints rank differently with respect to PAIP. On this account, the Russian impersonal constructions with inanimate As (as in (33)) result from ranking RelPanim (that requires marking of subject’s animacy feature on As) higher than PAIP. On the other hand, instrumental marking of objects with non-volitional As (as in (19)) is a result of ranking PAIP over RelPvol (that requires marking of subject’s volitionality feature on As rather than Os).
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References Aikhenvald, A., Dixon, R. W. M. and Onishi, M. (eds). 2001. Non-canonical Marking of Subjects and Objects. [Typological studies in languages 46]. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Aissen, J. 2003. “Differential Object Marking: Iconicity vs. Economy”. In Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 21: 435–83. Andrews, A. 1985. “The major functions of the noun phrase”. In Language Typology and Syntactic Description. Volume 1. Clause Structure, T. Shopen (ed.), 62–154. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bhat, D. N. S. and Ningomba, M. S. 1997. Manipuri Grammar. München and Newcastle: Lincom. Blake, B. J. 2001. Case. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bobaljik, J. 1993. “Nominally Absolutive is not Absolutely Nominative”. Proceedings of the Eleventh West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics. Stanford: CLSI. Bhaskararao, P. and Subbarao, K. V. (eds). 2004. Non-nominative Subjects. Volume 1–2. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Bossong, G. 1985. Differentielle Objectmarkierung in den Neuiranischen Sprachen. Tübingen: Narr. Bossong, G. 1985a. “Markierung von Aktantenfunktionen in Guarani. Zur Frage der differentiellen Objektmarkierung in nicht-akkusativischen Sprachen”. In Relational Typology, F. Plank (ed.), 1–31. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Cain, B. D. and Gair, J. W. 2000. Dhivehi (Maldivian). München and Newcastle: Lincom. Clark, R. 1973. “Transitivity and case in Eastern Oceanic languages”. Oceanic Linguistics 12: 559– 606. Comrie, B. 1989. Language Universals and Linguistic Typology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Cooreman, A. 1994. “A functional typology of antipassives”. In Voice: Form and Function [Typological Studies in Language 27], B. Fox and P. Hopper (eds). Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Denwood, F. 1999. Tibetan. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Dixon, R. M. W. 1972. The Dyirbal Language of North Queensland. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dixon, R. M. W. 1977. A Grammar of Yidiɲ. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dixon, R. M. W. 1994. Ergativity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Drossard, W.1991. “Kasusmarkierung: zur Zenntralitaet und Peripherizitaet von Partizipanten”. In Partizipation: Das Sprachliche Erfassen von Sachverhalten, H. Seiler and W. Premper (eds), 447–80. Tübingen: Narr. Fortescue, M. 1984. West Greenlandic. London: Croom Helm. Givón, T. 1985. “Ergative morphology and transitivity gradients in Newari”. In Relational Typology, F. Plank (ed.), 89–107. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Givón, T. 2001. Syntax. A Functional-Typological Introduction. Volume II. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Haiman, J. 1985. Natural Syntax. Iconicity and Erosion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
356 Andrej Malchukov Hale, K. 1973. “Person marking in Walbiri”. In A Festschrift for Morris Halle, S. Anderson, and P. Kiparsky (eds), 308–44. New York: Holt et al. Haspelmath, M. 1993. A Grammar of Lezgian. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Haspelmath, M. 2003. “The geometry of grammatical meaning: Semantic maps and cross-linguistic comparison”. In The New Psychology of Language. Volume 2, M. Tomasello (ed.), 211–43. New York: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers. Hopper, P. J. and Thompson, S. A. 1980. “Transitivity in Grammar and Discourse”. Language 56: 251–99. Heath, J. 1976. “Antipassivization: A functional typology”. Proceedings of the Second Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistic Society, 202–11. Berkeley: BLS. Hewitt, B. G. 1979. Abkhaz. [Lingua Descriptive Studies. Volume 2]. Amsterdam: North Holland. Kazenin, K. 1998. “On patient demotion in Lak”. In Typology of Verbal Categories [Papers presented to V. Nedjalkov on the occasion of his 70th birthday], L. Kulikov and H. Vater (eds), 95–116. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Keen, S. 1972. A Description of the Yukulta Language. ma Thesis, Monash University. Keenan, E. 1985. “Passive in the world’s languages”. In Language Typology and Syntactic Description. Volume 1. Clause Structure, T. Shopen (ed.), 243–81. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kibrik, A. 1996. “Transitivity decrease in Navajo and Athabaskan: Actor-affecting propositional derivations”. Athabaskan Language Studies, E. Jelinek (ed.), 259–305. University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. Kiparsky, P. 1998. “Partitive case and aspect”. In The Projection of Arguments: Lexical and Compositional Factors, M. Butt and W. Geuder (eds), 259–305. Stanford: csli. Kittilä, S. 2002. Transitivity: Towards a Comprehensive Typology [University of Turku publications in general linguistics 5]. Turku: Åbo Akademis Tryckeri. Klaiman, M. H. 1987. “Mechanisms of ergativity in South Asia”. In Studies in Ergativity, R. M. W. Dixon (ed.), 61–103. Amsterdam: North Holland. Khrakovsky, V. S. 1974. “Passivnye konstrukcii” [Passive constructions]. In Tipologija passivnyx konstrukcij [Typology of passive constructions], A. A. Kholodovich (ed.), 5–45. Leningrad: Nauka. Lazard, G. 1998. Actancy. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Lazard, G. 2003. “Transitivity revisited as an example of a more strict approach to typological research”. Folia Linguistica. XXXVI (3/4), 141–90. Levin, B. and Rappaport Hovav, M. 1995. Unaccusativity: At the Syntax–Lexical Semantics Interface. Cambridge: MIT Press. Lyons, C. 1999. Definiteness [Cambridge textbooks in linguistics]. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Malchukov, A. 2005. “Case pattern splits, verb types, and construction competition”. In Competition and Variation in Natural Languages: The Case for Case, M. Amberber and H. de Hoop (eds), 73–117. London and New York: Elsevier. Manning, C. D. 1996. Ergativity: Argument Structure and Grammatical Relations. Stanford: csli. Masica, C. 1991. The Indo-Arian Languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mohanan. T. 1990. Arguments in Hindi. PhD dissertation, Stanford University. Moravcsik, E. 1978. “On the case marking of objects”. In Universals of Human Language. Volume 4, J. Greenberg (ed.), 249–89. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
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Mosel, U. and Hovdhaugen, E. 1992. Samoan Reference Grammar. Oslo: Scandinavian University Press. Nichols, J. 1992. Linguistic Diversity in Space and Time. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Noonan, M. 1992. A Grammar of Lango. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Næss, Å. 2004. Transitivity: From Semantics to Structure. PhD dissertation, University of Nijmegen. Næss, Å. this volume. “Case semantics and the agent–patient opposition”. Oinas, F. J. 1966. Basic Course in Estonian. Bloomington: Indiana University. Onishi, M. 2001. “Non-canonically marked A/S in Bengali”. In Non-canonical Marking of Subjects and Objects, A. Aikhenvald, R.W. M. Dixon and M. Onishi (eds), 113–49. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Palmer, F. R. 1994. Grammatical Roles and Relations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Patz, E. 1982. A Grammar of Kuuku Yalanyi Language of North Queensland. PhD dissertation, Australian National University. Polinsky, M. 2005. “Antipassive constructions”. In World Atlas of Language Structure, M. Haspelmath, M. S. Dryer, D. Gil, and B. Comrie (eds), 438–41. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Prince, A. and Smolensky, P. 2004. Optimality Theory. Constraint Interaction in Generative Grammar. Oxford: Blackwell. Rose, D. 1996. “Pitjantjatjara processes. An Australian experiential grammar”. In Functional Descriptions: Theory and Practice, R. Hasan and C. Cloran (eds), 287–33. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Shibatani, M. 1998. “Voice parameters”. In Typology of Verbal Categories [Papers presented to V. Nedjalkov on the occasion of his 70th birthday], L. Kulikov and H. Vater (eds), 117–39. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Shibatani, M. 1985. “Passive and related constructions: A prototype analysis”. Language 61: 821– 48. Siewierska, A. 1984. The Passive: A Comparative Linguistic Analysis. London: Croom Helm Silverstein, M. 1976. “Hierarchy of features and ergativity”. In Grammatical Categories in Australian Languages, R. M. W. Dixon (ed.), 112–71. Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies. Tenny, C. 1994. Aspectual Roles and the Syntax/Semantics Interface. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Testelets, J. 1998. “On the two parameters of transitivity”. In Typology of Verbal Categories [Papers presented to V. Nedjalkov on the occasion of his 70th birthday], L. Kulikov and H. Vater (eds), 29–45. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Tsunoda, T. 1981. “Split case marking in verb types and tense/aspect/mood”. Linguistics 19: 389– 438. Tsunoda, T. 1985. “Remarks on transitivity”. Journal of Linguistics 21: 385–96. van Valin, R. and Lapolla, R. 1997. Syntax: Structure, Meaning and Function. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wierzbicka, A. 1980. The Case for Surface Case. Ann Arbor: Karoma Publishers.
chapter 16
Transitivity in Songhay Julia Galiamina Institute of Linguistics, Russian Academy of Sciences
The present paper is concerned with the grammatical and semantic features of transitivity in Songhay of Gao, a West-African language. I demonstrate that in this language some semantic features proposed by Hopper and Thompson (1980) influence transitivity on the lexical level and determine the degree of transitivity that is fixed in the verbal lexeme. Furthermore, I show that some other parameters change the transitivity degree on the level of the clause. I briefly characterize different types of basic (underived) verbal lexemes, define several classes of verbs with non-canonical objects and demonstrate the correlation between different types of morphosyntactic middle verbs and their semantic features. I also discuss lability in Songhay and present different syntactic and semantic types of labile verbs.
1. Introduction The present paper is concerned with the grammatical and semantic features of transitivity in the Songhay language, in particular the Songhay of Gao , a West-African language. Transitivity, its definition and meaning in the lexico-grammatical structure of a language, is one of the most interesting problems of contemporary linguistics. The term is used by linguists on two different levels. On the first one, transitivity is understood as a feature of the clause. Hopper and Thompson (1980) regard it as a multifactored notion consisting of many parameters. The term ‘transitivity’ is also used in connection with the verbal system of a language. Transitivity, as a lexical characteristic, can be determined on both the syntactic and the semantic level. Verbal lexemes of a language can be divided into semantically transitive, semantically intransitive, and semantically middle (Testelec 1998). In accordance with their semantic transitivity all verbs are divided into several syntactic (grammatical) classes. Syntactically middle verbs, for instance, have as a rule that the subject or the object receives non-canonical marking. In addition to this classification of verbs, transitivity also can be expressed or modified through the use of verbal derivation. As for verbal transitivity, there are several types of alternations between syntactically transitive, syntactically intransitive and syntactically middle verbs. I will distinguish two main types of alternations: marking (derivational) and non-marking alternations. Examples of the first type of alternation are
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different derivational categories such as causative, decausative, transitive, detransitive and so on. The second type is the labile alternation, in which the same verb is used in different ways (either transitively or intransitively). In the following sections I will describe transitivity in Songhay of Gao. The article will deal with both clausal transitivity and lexical transitivity in Songhay. First of all this paper will demonstrate which of Hopper and Thompson’s parameters are relevant for transitivity in the Songhay clause. I will discuss the structure of the semantic scale of clausal transitivity for this language and try to show what morphological and syntactic features can be considered relevant for the expression of high semantic transitivity of a Songhay clause. However, in this language transitivity of the verbal system is more complicated than transitivity of the clause. Basic verbs in Songhay are distributed among several syntactic groups. I will analyze the semantic characters that underlie these syntactic differences. Various semantic criteria are used for this examination: affectedness of the Patient, control (Tsunoda 1985, Testelec 1998), presence or absence of agent-oriented and object-oriented meaning components (Haspelmath 1993). Furthermore, I will demonstrate that the ‘extra-linguistic’ component plays an important role when choosing a transitive verb. I will use the same criteria for analyzing the phenomenon of Songhay lability. Several syntactic types of labile verbs will be distinguished and described from a semantic point of view. The research is based on the vocabulary and grammar of Songhay of Gao (Heath 1998, 1999) and on the results of work with a native speaker. I will use the data mentioned in Heath’s grammar and his semantic analysis of some types of verbs with noncanonical object marking. For instance, his description of the semantics of VO and Dative-verbs is very accurate but his grammar lacks a discussion of any theoretical facets of semantic features of middle verbs. The paper is organized as follows: Section 2 introduces transitivity of the Songhay clause, concentrating on Hopper and Thompson’s semantic parameters of Transitivity. In Section 3 we will discuss lexical transitivity in Songhay. Section 3.1. briefly characterizes different types of basic (underived) verbal lexemes. After this, we will define several classes of verbs with non-canonical objects and demonstrate the correlation between different types of morphosyntactic middle verbs and their semantic features. Section 4 discusses lability in Songhay. We will present different syntactic and semantic types of labile verbs. In the last section the Songhay strategy of expressing transitivity will be discussed.
2. Transitivity of the Songhay clause The basic word order in Songhay is S(Odir)V(Oobl). The morphemes that mark mood, aspect and negation (man) are placed between the subject NP and the VP. The verb phrase begins either with a verb or with a direct object NP (Heath 1999). The centrally
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important man categories are given in Table 1 and illustrated with an example in (1), in which the marked man pattern is interpreted as imperfective-indicative-positive. Table 1. man categories of the Songhay VP (Heath 1999: 191) Mood Aspect Negation
subjunctive -ma imperfective -ga negative -mana
indicative (unmarked) perfective (unmarked) positive (unmarked)
(1) a ga ham ŋaa. 3sgS impf meat eat ‘He eats meat.’
It is possible to combine all three categories in one sentence. The forms presented in Table 1 are the forms used when all three man categories are combined but only one of them is marked. The combination of two marked categories, wherever possible, is expressed by special man forms. As the subjunctive mood allows no aspectual distinctions, only two combinations with the simultaneous expression of two marked man features are attested: impf+neg (si/ši) and subj + neg (ma si/ši).
(2) ay ši i bey. 1sgS impfneg 3plO know ‘I don’t know them.’
Also in intransitive clauses we find either man or zero marking. The absence of a marked pattern is interpreted as perfective-indicative-positive. Compare (3) with (4).
(3) a ga mooru. 3sgS impf be-far ‘He is far.’
(4) ay koy. 1sgS go ‘I went (perfective).’ (Heath 1999)
If a clause with two core arguments is not marked by man markers the morpheme na is inserted between the two NPs.
(5) ay na ni kar. 1sgS tr.perf 2sgO hit ‘I hit you (perfective).’ (Heath 1999)
One can insert na only in a perfective-indicative-positive clause with a subject NP and a preverbal object NP (canonical object). Na is not used in clauses with intransitive or syntactic middle verbs or in a clause with a marked man pattern and conversely clauses lacking this marker cannot be interpreted as a perfective-indicative-positive clause. Thus, we can define na as a marker of clausal transitivity. The morpheme na designates
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a high degree of transitivity of a Songhay clause. All sentences which have a low rank on the scale of Transitivity are not marked by the transitive morpheme na. From the above discussion we can conclude that only 5 transitivity features determine the semantic transitivity of the Songhay clause: 4 of Hopper and Thompson’s semantic parameters (participants, aspect, mood and affirmation) and 1 other - degree of syntactic transitivity of verb. Table 2. Parameters of high semantic transitivity of Songhay clause Parameter
Value
Participants Lexical transitivity Mood Aspect Affirmation
2 transitive or labile indicative perfective affirmative
All other parameters proposed by Hopper and Thompson are not connected with clausal transitivity in Songhay. Some of them determine the degree of the semantic and, therefore, syntactic feature of lexical transitivity, which cannot be changed in clausal context. In Table 2 Hopper and Thompson’s parameters that influence the transitivity of the verbal lexeme are not listed because I analyze lexical and clausal transitivity separately. Below I will demonstrate how two other of Hopper and Thompson’s parameters — affectedness and control — determine the degree of lexical transitivity. Analyzing transitivity on two levels reflects the structure of this phenomenon: Some of the parameters pertain to semantic transitivity which is inherent to a verbal lexeme, while the others pertain to syntactic transitivity, which manifests itself at the clausal level. Transitive, intransitive, middle and labile verbs behave differently when used in constructions which display high clausal transitivity (i.e., in perfective-indicative-positive clauses). In what follows, I refer to such constructions as a ‘strong transitive context’.
3. Lexical transitivity 3.1 Subcategories of Songhay predicates In order to find out which subcategories of predicates exist in the language I used the data collected in Heath’s dictionary of the Gao dialect. About 1000 basic (underived) verbs were classified according to the following criteria: number of valencies, coding properties and syntactic properties which they exhibit in the strong transitive context mentioned above. Finally, I calculated a ratio between the different types of the verbs. In Songhay we can distinguish the following types of basic (underived) verbal lexemes:
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1. Quasi-verbs: predicates of location (goo ‘be somewhere’, sii ‘not be somewhere’), of identification (no — ‘be’). They constitute less then 1% of the basic lexemes.1 2. Basic (underived) intransitives: huna (‘be alive, be living’), zuru (‘run’), deeši (‘be in flight, fly away’), kaŋ (‘fall’), dandi (‘flow’), hunsa (‘breathe’), taabi (‘be tired’), faati (‘die’), bibi (‘be black’), boo (‘(day) break’). — about 44% of the basic lexemes. 3. Syntactic middle verbs (4%): discussed below. 4. Labile verbs (14%): 11% of them are transitive-intransitive verbs. I will examine them in Section 4. 5. Basic (underived) transitives (36%): daŋ (‘put’), huri (‘look for’), čin (‘build’), kar (‘hit, beat’), zaa (‘take, pick up, carry’), četu (‘hurl’), wii (‘kill’), boogu (‘work (field) collectively’), hina (‘cook’), kaama (‘chew on’), daaru (‘step over, lay out’). 6. Basic (underived) ditransitives (less than 1%), these are transitive verbs with a pp: hii (‘Х lend Y to Z’ with dative Object), zuku (‘X pile Y on top of Z’ with the postposition boŋ). Additionally, there are several special serial verbs. However, most often their functions are realized by verbs in finite form. The language also has derived verbs, which are produced by means of valency-increasing and valency-decreasing morphology. Unfortunately, these verbs are beyond the scope of this paper. Below I will first describe different types of verbs with non-canonical objects followed by a discussion of labile verbs. Basic transitives and intransitives will not be discussed in detail because of the high number of predicates belonging to this class. But it should be noted that transitive verbs always have two arguments and canonical ov order without postpositions. In the strong transitive context transitive verbs are used with the morpheme na. Intransitive verbs, on the other hand, have only one argument (in subject position) and cannot be used with na.
3.2 Syntactic middle verbs Songhay has several classes of verbs with non-canonical objects (syntactic middle) which are marked by two morphosyntactic mechanisms (coding properties in the terminology of Aikhenvald 2000): word order and the system of case marking postpositions. These verbs qualify as middle verbs, as they do not show the na marker in the strong transitive context. As mentioned in the introduction, the verbs with non-canonical arguments have, as a rule, a non-prototypical transitive meaning. In other words, this type of verbs can be identified as semantically middle. In the following sections I will demonstrate the correlation between different types of morphosyntactic middle verbs and their semantics features. I propose to analyze the semantics of middle verbs according to the criterion of affectedness of the direct objects - one of Hopper and Thompson’s parameters. An affected undergoer signals a high degree of transitivity. Tsunoda (1985) proposes a classification of two-place predicates according to the degree of affectedness of the object:
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(6) Direct effect on Patient > Perception > Pursuit > Knowledge > Feeling > Relationship > Ability
The degree of affectedness, represented in this scale, manifests itself in the marking of objects: the more affected argument is expressed as a canonical (direct) object, the less the affected one is expressed as a non-canonical object. Of course, not all distinctions in the degree of affectedness resulting in the ranking above are relevant to every language. In different languages non-canonical marking of objects can begin at different points of the presented scale. Below I will examine three types of Songhay verbal lexemes. My goal is to show how the feature of affectedness determines the syntactic type of Songhay middle verbs.
3.3 VO verbs Case marking is the most widespread coding property which distinguishes canonically marked arguments from non-canonical ones (Aikhenvald et al. 2000: 4). The order of core NPs infrequently plays a similar role. As we have already seen, canonical word order in Songhay is SOV in constructions with a direct object. However, there are several verbs that are used in SVO constructions. It is evident that the verbs with a post-verbal NP complement can be described as predicates with a non-canonical object (non-canonical transitives — Heath 1999: 16). This specification predicts correctly that VO-verbs are not used with the transitive morpheme na. But we can draw the same conclusion when we consider the semantic features of the verbs and their arguments: all VO-verbs denote events which have a low rank on Tsunoda’s scale, i.e. they are noncanonical transitives. VO-verbs denote perception (dii ‘see’, maa ‘hear’) pursuit (haŋga ‘follow’, man ‘approach’), knowledge (waani ‘know’, dirŋa ‘forget’), feeling (humbur ‘be afraid of ’, baa ‘love, want’), relationship (hima ‘resemble’, woŋga ‘decline’, duu ‘get’). Furthermore, VO verbs can denote modality: baa (‘want’), muraadu (‘need’). Some labile verbs with VO-usage denote motion in the direction of a point that is marked by the indirect object. It should be noted that not all verbs belonging to the listed semantic domains are VO-verbs. But it is undoubtedly the case that all VO-verbs have a low rank on this scale of affectedness.
3.4 Verbs with Dative There are certain verbs, which regularly take a dative argument. Dative case is marked by the postposition se(še). Almost every verb of this group denotes a relationship between a person and some other person, event or thing. For example, the following verbs take a dative argument: faaji (‘miss, long for’), tamalla (‘have pity on’), gaara (‘bless’). The last verb can be an example of different semantics, also found with verbs with a dative argument. This is the semantic domain of speech: tuuru (‘reply to (sb)’), nee (‘call, say, tell’), čiya (‘call for (sb to come), summon’). In this case the argument marked by se is more active than the prototypical Patient.2
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We can conclude that the verbs with dative arguments have a low rank on Tsunoda’s scale. Furthermore, the verbs of speech can be defined either as a subtype of the domain of knowledge or as a separate class of verbs located on the lower side of the scale.
3.5 Verbs with non-dative adverbial complements Almost all verbs of motion and of transfer take a locative argument which alternatively can be expressed by an adverb. There are a number of verbs that take pp complements with the postposition ga. The semantics of the verbs that take ga is complicated. In most of the cases these are verbs of motion or feeling. The semantics of predicates of motion is concerned with contact (sometimes physical) between Agent and Patient: čebu (‘stumble on’), kabey (‘briefly visit (sb) en route, detour to drop in on (sb)’), sallam (‘greet (sb)’), denji (‘adhere to’).
4. Labile verbs Labile verbs are those verbs that allow both transitive and intransitive usage without any change in the verbal morphology (Kulikov 1999). There are two main types of lability: (1) agent-preserving lability (A-lability, see Kibrik 1996). In this case the Agent argument is always there, and the Patient argument may be present or absent. (2) patientpreserving lability (P-lability). In this case the Patient argument is always retained in the valence pattern, and the Agent argument may be there or not. In this section I discuss the two types of lability in turn.
4.1 A-Lability Consider the following sentences.3
(7) ay na koyra senne čow. 1sgS tr.perf Songhay language study ‘I studied the Songhay language.’
(8) ay čow. 1sgS study ‘I studied.’
In (7) the verb čow has two arguments (Agent and Patient). In (8) this verb in the same form has only one argument (Agent). This is an example of A-lability. This type of construction is found with three different semantic classes of predicates: 1. The largest group of predicates is formed by verbs with a low degree of affectedness of the Patient (type 4 on Tsunoda’s scale). These are verbs of phonation and of knowledge: don (‘sing (tr.)’/‘sing (intr.)’), faham (‘understand (tr.)’/‘understand
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(intr.)’), denden (‘learn (tr.)’/‘learn (intr.)’). The degree of affectedness of the Agent is higher than that of the second argument. The Agent is affected in a situation mentally and sometimes physically, while the Patient is non-material, a sound or a symbolic object, which does not change. This is what distinguishes these verbs from prototypical transitives. At the same time some information about the Patient is present in the semantics of A-labile verbs of this type. This information has two functions: it indicates the existence of a Patient, and restricts its possible characteristics. This property distinguishes these verbs from prototypical intransitives. In the intransitive usage of A-labile verbs referential and communicative characteristics are reduced. It is clear from the context (in intransitive usage) whether it is necessary to specify information about Patient. 2. The second group of A-labile verbs consists of predicates with a Patient, which has a high rank on the scale of affectedness (types 1 or 2 on Tsunoda’s scale) as transitive verbs. The predicates of this group of A-labile verbs incorporate restrictions on the Patient’s semantics. Most often the meaning of such verbs is concerned with the tearing away of an object. For example: hay (‘give birth’/‘give birth to (sb)’), haŋ (‘be drinking’/‘drink (smth)’), hoo (‘be hunting’/‘hunt for’), looje (‘feel like vomiting’/ ‘cough up (food)’). This semantic component which restricts the Patient’s semantics is revealed best of all when a Songhay verb cannot be translated into English with just one word. Thus, jufu (‘plunge abruptly into water (for fish)’) can be both transitive and intransitive, in other words the fish in a sentence with the verb jufu can be marked by a separate word or not. In my opinion this has to do with communicative aspects of the verb’s usage. If it is important for the speaker to specify the Patient’s reference, he can use a special word. But the speaker may not do so if there is enough information about the Patient in the semantics of the verb. 3. The third group of A-labile verb includes verbs with non-patient objects, which on the surface level are marked as a direct object. Examples are: sootiya (‘be interesting’/ ‘be interesting for’, benefactive) and dira (‘walk’/‘walk around, travel to’, locative, target). However, this group is not large. Many of the verbs of this semantic type are expressed by middle verbs because the second argument has a low degree of affectedness. As we have seen, the following two semantic features are typical for A-labile verbs: (1) degree of affectedness of the Patient/object must be lower than the degree of affectedness of the Agent/subject; (2) and/or strong restrictions on the semantics of the Patient must be incorporated into the meaning of the verb.
4.2 P-Lability An example of this phenomenon is given in (9) and (10).
(9) a na haw-oo fey. 1sgS tr.perf cow-def.sg detach ‘I have detached the cow.’
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(10) haw-oo fey. cow-def.sgS detach ‘The cow came detached (by herself).’ Labile verbs of this type have no Agent in their intransitive usage. Depending on the type of verb and the situation it denotes, the Agent is either completely removed from the semantics of the verb in the intransitive usage, or it is kept with low communicative and referential status. The former example has a decausative meaning, and the latter is closer to that of an unagentive passive. However, no clear boundary can be drawn between the two types of verbs, mainly because these verbs can take different meanings with different types of Patients. 1. The first group includes verbs, which in intransitive usage have inchoative, spontaneous meaning. When used transitively the verb denotes that the situation, which affected the Patient was caused by an external Agent: keyri (‘break (tr.)’/‘break (intr)’), lamba (‘hide (tr.)’/‘hide (intr.)’), dor (‘hurt’/‘be sick’). The second argument (in the transitive usage) is a prototypical Patient, which has a high rank on the scale of affectedness. Thus, these verbs denote events, which, on the one hand occur spontaneously, without external causator (including cases of autocausation), and on the other hand may occur as a result of external causation. When used intransitively the controller can be absent (in the case of spontaneous events), or the Patient can be the controller (in the case of autocausation). Important in this respect is the notion of conceptual stereotype (Haspelmath 1993: 107). This notion can be fully defined only in the frame of a particular culture and language. Apparently, certain events form inchoative/causative verb alternations because of their physical nature (‘break (tr.)’/‘break (intr.)’, ‘fire (tr.)’/‘fire(intr.)’ etc.). However, there are inchoative/causative verb alternations, which occur only in a given culture. For example, in Songhay, kaati (‘shout, yell’/‘(inner demon) take possession of (sb)’). In this case, this prototypical inchoative event is understood as causative in this language and culture. Moreover, the most important specific semantic condition of the verbs in this group is the absence of agent-oriented meaning components (Haspelmath 1993). 2. The second, much smaller group of P-labile verbs includes verbs with a different type of correlation between intransitive and transitive usages. The intransitive usages denote a resultative state of the Patient, which was caused by an external Agent. The latter can be marked in transitive usage: taa (‘sew’/‘be sewn’), fiji (‘bury’/‘be buried’), taka (‘(God) create’/‘be created (by God)’). Here in the transitive usage the first argument is a controlling Agent, and the second is a Patient with a high degree of affectedness. Nevertheless, the Agent does not disappear from the semantic structure of the word, it is absent only on the syntactic level. As was mentioned above, the intransitive usages of such verbs are semantically close to the unagentive resultative passive. Information about the Agent is incorporated in the semantics of the intransitive verb. Thus, a small group of prototypical transitives denoting events, which are not part of the inchoative-
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causative alternation (because the event cannot occur spontaneously, and also because of agent-oriented components in their meanings - Haspelmath 1993) can nevertheless have an intransitive usage in which the Agent is absent. Such broadening of the syntactic and, consequently, of the semantic structure, is typical for verb-deriving morphology and voice. In diachronic typology cases of the transition from decausative to an unagentive passive are well documented (Kemmer 1993). The situation in Songhay is different, because in this language a new passive meaning of the lexeme appears, without morphological marking.
4.3 Labile verbs of the mixed type There is a special group of lexemes, which can be interpreted as either P-Labile or A-Labile. 1. Labile verbs denoting two-participants events, where both participants have almost the same rank of affectedness and control. These are so called symmetrical agentive verbs: hiiji (‘get married’), taŋgam (‘get into a fight’). In the intransitive usage both arguments, being simultaneously Agent and Patient, are denoted in the sentence by a plural subject NP or by a complex subject. 2. Moreover, labile verbs denoting events with two animate participants (a controlling Agent and an affected Patient), which can be interpreted as co-referential: ñumey (‘bathe’/‘wash, cause to bathe’), tur (‘(woman) get her hair braided’/‘braid the hair of (woman)’), čabu (‘shave (tr.)’/‘shave (intr.)’). In the intransitive usage this event is considered to be reflexive. The only syntactic argument marks two referentially coinciding semantical arguments (a controlling Agent and an affected Patient). There are no coinciding referents in the transitive usage. 3. Aside from the above described groups, there are also several labile verbs with a nontrivial semantic correlation between the intransitive and transitive usages: kotey ( ‘be caught (in trap)’/‘put (mat) over one’s shoulder, carry (baby) on shoulder or side’), sarfatu (‘pull (rope) hard’/‘collapse, drop dead’).
4.4 Discussion As we can see now, in order to be expressed as labile verbs of different types, events must have at least two arguments ranking differently on the scale of affectedness and control. There are additional parameters important for defining such events, for example, probability of external causation (or autocausation), or incorporation of the semantic restrictions on one of the arguments. There can also be cases, where one and the same event has characteristics necessary for both type A and type P (see above): ŋaa (‘eat (tr.)’/‘eat (intr.)’/‘be eaten’); barmey (‘change (tr.)’/‘change (intr.)’), bana (‘pay’/‘be paid’). Type A is possible because the Patient of these verbs posesses a high rank of affectedness, and information about the Patient is incorporated in the semantics of the
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verb. Type P is possible due to the same characteristics of the Patient, and also because of the dual understanding of the event as a case of prototypical autocausation and prototypical causation. Thus, labile verbs demonstrate a wide range of middle meanings. The intransitive verbs of the labile pairs can mark reflexive, reciprocal, decausative, agentless-passive and detransitive. All these meanings are often rendered similarly in many languages and pertain to the semantic domain of middle voice (Kemmer 1993, Klaiman 1991).
4.5 Other types of Lability Aside from the above described cases of pure lability (i.e., for one verbal lexeme both intransitive and transitive usages exist), there are also verbs in Songhay with one or both basic usages on the one hand, and with one of the middle usages (VO, Dative etc.) on the other hand. These verbs are not numerous, and they can all be divided into subtypes depending on the correlation between transitive, middle and intransitive usages, and also on the type of the middle usage. Let us consider some characteristics of the nonstandard labile verbs. Most importantly, one should note, that the middle usages can be included in labile structures not only with either instransitive or transitive usages, but also with both usages simultaneously. On the contrary, non-dative and non-VO middle verbs can form a labile pair only with transitive variants. These cases are described in terms of Agent–Patient relationships, and with middle usage the Agent has a lower degree of control over the Patient, and the Patient is less affected by the situation. For example, tonton-tr.: ‘add (concrete object)’; intr. + ga: ‘increase (abstract object)’ gaabu-tr.: ‘keep, retain possession of ’; intr. + nda X: — ‘have control over X’. VO-verbs frequently have a meaning identical to the transitive usages of the same verbs bappa (‘carry (infant) wrapped on back’), booney (‘crave’). One of the exceptions is the verb fey, which in the transitive usage means ‘divide, separate’, аnd in its VO-variant means ‘divorce (wife)’. However, if VO-verbs happen to be in one pair with intransitive usages, they are differentiated by the presence of the second argument, which is not a Patient though and has a low rank of affectedness. Most often these verbs denote spatial relationships (mooru ‘be or go far’/‘go far from’), man ‘be or come near’/‘approach (sth)’, zigi ‘go up’/‘go up on’, too ‘arrive’/‘reach’). Verbs with an argument in Dative can be distinguished from their transitive usage by a lower degree of affectedness of the second argument (gaaru-tr.: ‘stand broadside to’, intr. + dat: ‘get in the way of ’) or can have a meaning identical in both usages (yaffa ‘forgive (debt)’). In the case of intransitive-middle lability, the situation with dative verbs is similar to the situation with VO-verbs. Dative variants are distinguished from the intransitive ones by the presence of a second argument, which has a low rank of affectedness (for example bara ‘belong to’, haŋahaŋa ‘stalk, pursue at a distance’, fom ‘lie in wait for (sb)’).
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5. Conclusion The above discussed examples illustrate that the argument structure of a verb is largely dependent on semantics. It is important to consider the semantics of the verb itself, as well as the semantics of its possible arguments and their characteristics. Moreover, according to the hypothesis of iconicity, verbs, which are structurally less marked, denote verbal meanings conceptualized by the language as basic ones (Givón 1991: 106). Thus, in the meaning of labile verbs the basic ones are considered both events with one participant, and events with two participants. For transitive, intransitive and middle verbs only one type of events is conceptualized as the basic one. As shown above, Songhay has about the same number of transitive and intransitive verbs. Therefore, unlike the languages like Tsez (a Caucasian language), where the majority of verbs is intransitive (Comrie 2000), it is impossible to argue that one of the verb classes should be considered as unmarked. This allows us to conclude that transitivity of verbal lexemes in Songhay is determined more by lexical semantics of a particular verb, than that it follows from typological properties of language in general.
Abbreviations dat dative, def definite, dir direct, impf imperfective, impfneg imperfective negative, intr. intransitive usage, man mood–aspect–negation, O object, obl oblique, perf perfective, pl plural, S subject, sg singular, tr transitive, tr. transitive usage.
Notes 1. We can define these words as a special lexical class whose members do not have the same syntactic and morphological characteristics as regular verbs. Unfortunately, these verbs are beyond the scope of this paper. 2. Dative arguments can also appear with ditransitive verbs. In this case se marks the argument with the semantic role of addressee. 3. These examples are elicited from a native speaker.
References Aikhenvald A. Y., Dixon R. M. W., and Onishi M. (eds) 2000. Non-canonical Marking of Subjects and Objects. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Comrie, B. 2000. “Valency-changing derivations in Tsez”. In Changing valency: Case studies in transitivity, R. M. W. Dixon and A. Y. Aikhenvald (eds), 360–74. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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Comrie, B. and Polinsky, M. (eds). 1993. Causatives and Transitivity. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Givón, T. 1991. “Isomorphism in the grammatical code: Cognitive and biological considerations”. Studies in Language 15: 85–114. Haspelmath, M. 1993. “More on the typology of inchoative/causative verb alternations”. In Causatives and Transitivity, B. Comrie and M. Polinsky (eds), 87–120. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Heath, J. 1998. Dictionnaire Songhay–Anglais–Français. Volume 3: Koroborosenni. Montreal: L’Harmattan. Heath, J. 1999. A grammar of Koyraboro Senni/ The Songhay of Gao, Mali. Koln: Rudiger Koppe. Hopper, P. J. and Tompson, S. A. 1980. “Transitivity in grammar and discourse”. Language 56: 251–99. Kibrik, A. A. 1996. “Transitivity in lexicon and grammar”. In Godoberi [Lincom Studies in Caucasian Linguistics 02], A. E. Kibrik (ed.). München and Newcastle: Lincom. Klaiman, M. N. 1991. Grammatical Voice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kemmer, S. 1993. The Middle Voice. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Kulikov, L. 1999. “May he prosper in offspring and wealth”. In Tipologija i Teoriya Jazyka [Typology and Theory of Language], E. V. Rakhilina and Y. G. Testelec (eds), 224–45. Moscow: Jazyki russkoj kultury. Testelec,Y. G. 1998. “On two parameters of transitivity”. In Typology of Verbal Categories, L. Kulikov and H. Vater (eds), 29–45. Tubingen: Niemeyer. Tsunoda,T. 1985. “Remarks on Transitivity”. Journal of Linguistics 21: 385–96.
part 3
Transitivity and valency change
chapter 17
Syntactic valence, information structure, and passive constructions in Kaqchikel George Aaron Broadwell University at Albany, State University of New York
This paper examines two passives in Kaqchikel, a Mayan language of highland Guatemala. These two passives — the standard passive and the ki-passive — have identical properties at the syntactic level. However differences between the two passives emerge when we examine constructions that are sensitive to the information structure of the clause. In particular, the agent and patient in the ki-passive must be old, topical information, while the arguments of the standard passive show no such restriction. The informational difference is not predictable from the syntactic structure of the clause. These facts argue for a constructional approach to the passive. In such an approach, different passive constructions may specify identical syntactic properties but differ at the informational level.
1. Introduction1 Kaqchikel, a Mayan language of highland Guatemala, has two passives with intriguingly different syntax — the standard passive and the ki-passive.2 This paper will argue that while the two passives both have the same syntactic valence, they differ from each other at the informational level. The two passives have the same syntactic valence pattern because both types of passive are associated with the same argument structure and the same grammatical relations. But they differ at the informational level because the two arguments of the ki-passive are restricted to previously-established, topical noun phrases, while the arguments of the standard passive show no such restriction. The implication for grammatical theory is to support the necessity of a more complex understanding of the relationship between semantic, syntactic, and informational effects of valence and transitivity. It is frequently noted that though passives are syntactically intransitive, they still imply the existence of two arguments, and are thus semantically transitive (Keenan 1985, Sadler and Spencer 1988). In this case the syntactic and semantic notions of transitivity diverge. Another divergence between different levels of grammar involves clauses which show the same transitivity in syntax and semantics, but differ in the information-structure status of their arguments (Hopper and Thompson 1980, Lam brecht 1994).
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This chapter argues for such a divergence between the two passives of Kaqchikel. The Kaqchikel data support the conclusion that passive-like constructions may affect either the syntactic valence or the informational content of a verb, or both of these two. Most generative approaches fall short in ignoring the possibility that passives may diverge in this way. The notion of ‘grammatical construction’ appears to be the most promising way to capture such distinctions between valence, transitivity, and information.
2. Background 2.1 Two root types There are two morphological types of bivalent roots. One root kind is inherently bivalent, while in the other bivalence is indicated by the addition of a suffix.3 The two types are distinctive morphologically and form their passives differently. Inherent bivalents typically have the phonological shape CVC, where the vowel is lax (indicated by diaresis in this orthography):
(1) Ri achin x-u-ch’äy ri tz’i’. the man com-3sE-hit the dog ‘The man hit the dog.’
Inherent bivalent
For derived bivalents, the active voice root is suffixed with /–Vj/, traditionally called the transitive marker (Dayley 1978, 1981). The quality of the vowel in this suffix is not synchronically predictable, and so must be specified in the lexical entry of a verb.
(2) x-u-pax-ij ri achin ri b’ojoy. com-3sE-break-bi the man the pot ‘The man broke the pot.’
Derived bivalent
2.2 Ergative–absolutive agreement Kaqchikel verb agreement works on an ergative–absolutive basis. The agreement markers are shown in Table 1. Table 1. Agreement markers in Kaqchikel Ergative 1s 2s 3s 1p 2p 3p
Absolutive
Preconsonantal
Prevocalic
nuaru- /V__, u- /#C __ qaiki-
wawrqiwk-
inatØ ojixe-
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The following sentences provide some examples of the ergative and absolutive morphology.
(3) X-in-ki-k’utuj. com-1sA-3pE-ask ‘They asked me.’
(4) X-e-wär. com-3pA-sleep ‘They slept.’
(5) Y-e-ru-näq kan ri alab’om. inc-3pA-3sE-bother dir the children ‘She was bothering the children.’
3. The passives Two distinct passive types, based on morphological, phonological, and syntactic variation, are found in Kaqchikel. This paper focuses on a comparison of the standard passive and the ki-passive.
3.1 The standard passive The standard passive for inherent bivalent roots is marked by either zero or change of vowel. Normally a bivalent verb root will have the shape CVC, where the vowel is lax. To mark a root as passive, the typically lax vowel of the root changes to tense. Compare the following
(6) Ri achin x-u-ch’äy ri tz’i’. the man com-3sE-hit the dog ‘The man hit the dog.’
(7) Ri tz’i’ x-ch’ay r-oma’ ri achin. the dog com-hit:pass 3sE-by the man ‘The dog was hit by the man.’
In this example, notice that ri achin ‘the man’ is subject of the active verb and triggers ergative agreement. In the passive, by contrast, ri achin appears as the possessor of a relational noun.4 Third person singular absolutive arguments trigger no overt agreement, so there is no agreement with ri tz’i’ ‘the dog’ in either the active or the passive. Our primary consultant, Alberto Esquit Choy, speaks a dialect of Kaqchikel with only six phonemic vowels. In his dialect the tense/lax contrast is only found for the low vowel pair /a/ vs. /ä/. As a consequence, many inherent bivalents with a non-low vowel show identical active and passive roots:
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(8) Ri a Juan x-u-tij ri wä’y. the cl Juan com-3sE-eat the tortilla ‘Juan ate the tortilla.’
(9) Ri wä’y x-tij r-oma’ ri a Juan. the tortilla com-eat:pass 3sE-by the cl Juan ‘The tortilla was eaten by Juan.’
For the passive of a derived bivalent root, the standard passive is marked with /–Vx/, where the vowel of the suffix is a lax version of that found in the active. (10) x-u-pax-ij ri achin ri b’ojoy. com-3sE-break-bi the man the pot ‘The man broke the pot.’ (11) Ri b’ojoy x-pax-ix r-oma’ ri achin. the pot com-break-pass 3sE-by the man ‘The pot was broken by the man.’ The agreement marker arrangement has changed as well. As we would expect, the passive is intransitive, so its single argument triggers absolutive agreement, which is Ø for the 3rd person singular.
3.2 The ki-passive The ki-passive is an innovative feature of some Kaqchikel dialects which was first described in detail in Broadwell and Duncan (2002). It is substantially different from the standard passive in morphology and in agreement marker behavior. Consider the following examples: (12) Ri tz’i’ x-ki-chäp r-oma’ ri achin. the dog com-pass-grab 3sE-by the man ‘The dog was grabbed by the man.’ (13) Ri b’ojoy x-ki-pax-ij r-oma’ rija’. the pot com-pass-break-bi 3sE-by him ‘The pot was broken by him.’ Syntactically, these clauses appear to be passive since there is one direct argument, the subject, and a relational noun phrase with the demoted agent. However, the verbal morphology has not undergone the expected morphological changes. Note that the vowel of the inherently bivalent root chäp in (12) is still lax, as in the active. And the derived bivalent root pax-ij in (13) still retains its bivalent suffix.5 In addition, this passive is marked, unexpectedly, by a morpheme /-ki-/ which is homophonous with the third person plural ergative agreement marker. Furthermore, this passive /ki-/ shows the same allomorphy as the 3rd plural ergative, with a /k-/ allomorph before a vowelinitial root.
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4. Properties of the ki-passive 4.1 Agreement and the ki-passive Although the /ki-/ morpheme that appears in these examples looks like the 3rd person plural ergative agreement marker, that cannot be its synchronic function in the ki-passive. (14) Ri b’ojoy x-ki-pax-ij r-oma’ rija’. the pot com-pass-break-bi 3sE-by him ‘The pot was broken by him.’ (15) Ri b’ojoy x-ki-pax-ij k-oma’ rije’. the pot com-pass-break-bi 3pE-by them ‘The pot was broken by them.’ These examples show that the ki-passive construction may be used with both a singular and a plural third person NP in the relational noun phrase. Thus the demoted agent in the relational noun phrase does not agree with the third person plural ergative pronominal /ki-/. Non-third-person agents are also allowed with the ki-passive, giving further evidence that the /ki-/ which occurs in these forms does not function as an agreement marker. q-oma’ roj. (16) Ri b’ojoy x-ki-pax-ij the pot com-pass-break-bi 1pE-by us ‘The pot was broken by us.’ (17) Ri tz’i’ x-ki-tz’et aw-oma’ rat. the dog com-pass-see 2sE-by you ‘The dog was seen by you (sg).’
4.2 A possible ambiguity In many cases, the examples of ki-passives that we cite are subject to two readings, one transitive and one intransitive. This ambiguity arises from two facts: 1) the /ki-/ morpheme can be either a passive marker or a 3rd plural ergative agreement marker, and 2) -oma’ is a relational noun that may correspond both to ‘by’ and to ‘because’. So, for instance, the following example has two possible readings: (18) a. b.
Rin x-in-ki-b’a’ r-oma’ ri tz’i’. I com-1sA-pass-bite 3sE-by the dog ‘I was bitten by the dog.’ Rin x-in-ki-b’a’ r-oma’ ri tz’i’. I com-1sA-3pE-bite 3sE-because the dog ‘They bit me because of the dog.’
Passive reading Transitive reading
380 George Aaron Broadwell
As is evident, the truth-conditions of the two readings are quite distinct. The passive reading cannot be derived in some way from the transitive reading. In what follows, I focus only on the passive interpretation of these examples.
4.3 The subject status of the patient in the ki-passive Since Kaqchikel has an ergative–absolutive agreement system, absolutive markers are used for both objects of transitive verbs and subjects of intransitive verbs. So when we look an example like (18a), we cannot tell from the agreement whether ‘I’ is in the subject or the object position. Two possibilities arise. One possibility is that the grammatical relations are like those implied by the English translation: the patient is in subject position and the verb is intransitive. Another possibility is that the patient is in object position, the verb is transitive, and the subject position is occupied by an arbitrary 3rd person plural subject. As I have just said, the morphology of these examples is compatible with both hypotheses. The word order tells us very little about the grammatical relations in such examples. Broadwell (2000) shows that Kaqchikel has the sort of word-order typically called discourse-configurational. Word order following the verb is not determined by grammatical relations, but by relative definiteness and animacy.6 If a transitive verb is followed by two NPs with equal degrees of definiteness, then either order is grammatical and the sentence is ambiguous. (19) X-r-oqotaj ri tz’i’ ri me’s. com-3sE-chase the dog the cat ‘The dog chased the cat.’ ‘The cat chased the dog.’ (20) X-r-oqotaj ri me’s ri tz’i’. com-3sE-chase the cat the dog ‘The dog chased the cat.’ ‘The cat chased the dog.’ If one of the NPs is definite and the other is indefinite, then a) the definite NP must follow the indefinite (a strong preference) and b) the definite is interpreted as the subject (an inviolable rule). (21) X-r-oqotaj jun me’s ri tz’i’. com-3sE-chase a cat the dog ‘The dog chased a cat.’ * ‘A cat chased the dog.’ ? (22) *X-r-oqotaj ri tz’i’ jun me’s. com-3sE-chase the dog a cat
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There is also a clear but violable preference for proper nouns to follow common nouns: (23) a. X-u-loq’ ri wä’y Maria. com-3sE-buy the tortilla Maria ‘Maria bought the tortillas.’ ? X-u-loq’ Maria ri wä’y. b. com-3sE-buy Maria the tortilla If two proper nouns follow the verb, the sentence is ambiguous: (24) X-r-oqotaj ri xta Maria ri a Juan. com-3sE-chase the cl Maria the cl Juan ‘Maria chased Juan.’ ‘Juan chased Maria.’ Preverbal positions are associated with discourse functions like topic, contrastive focus, negative focus, and interrogative focus. It also seems that any subject may appear preverbally, whether it bears a special discourse function or not.7 The subject of the ki-passive may appear in either the preverbal subject/topic position (as in (25 = 13)), or in a postverbal position (as in (26)): (25) Ri b’ojoy x-ki-pax-ij r-oma’ rija’. the pot com-pass-break-bi 3sE-by him ‘The pot was broken by him.’ (26) X-ki-pax-ij ri b’ojoy r-oma’ rija’. com-pass-break-bi the pot 3sE-by him ‘The pot was broken by him.’ The result of this word order pattern is that all the logically possible orders of patient, verb, and agent phrase are possible in (25) and (26). So far as we can tell, there are no word-order possibilities that distinguish the two hypotheses. We turn instead to two somewhat subtler tests for subject. The first strategy involves using subject-oriented relational noun phrases. We find that a phrase like rik’i rurayb’äl ‘because of his/her desire’ or ‘voluntarily’ consistently modifies subjects. (27) A Juan x-u-tz’ub’-aj xta Maria r-ik’i ru-rayb’äl. cl Juan com-3sE-kiss-bi cl Maria 3sE-because:of 3sE-desire ‘Juan kissed Maria voluntarily.’ (=Juan’s choice) (28) Xta Maria x-tz’ub’-äx r-oma’ a Juan r-ik’i cl Maria com-kiss-pass 3sE-by cl Juan 3sE-because:of ru-rayb’ äl. 3sE-desire ‘Maria was kissed by Juan voluntarily.’ (= Maria’s choice.)
Active
Standard passive
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When we examine the ki-passive, we find that rik’i ru-rayb’äl modifies the patient: (29) Xta Maria x-ki-tz’ub’-aj r-oma’ a Juan cl Maria com-pass kiss-bi 3sE-by cl Juan r-ik’i ru-rayb’äl. 3sE-because:of 3sE-desire ‘Maria was kissed by Juan voluntarily.’ (= Maria’s choice)
ki-passive
Here, the adverbial expression ‘voluntarily’ modifies the subject of the ki-passive, ‘Maria.’ This suggests that the patient in the ki-passive construction is, in fact, the subject. The second strategy in identifying the subject of the passive is to examine complement clauses. The complementizer chi ‘that’ is obligatory in cases when the matrix subject is different than the embedded subject. If the matrix and embedded subjects are identical, however, then the complementizer may be omitted. Consider the following examples:8 (30) A Juan n-r-ajo’ (chi) n-u-loq’ saqmolo. cl Juan inc-3sE-want (comp) inc-3sE-buy eggs ‘Juan wants to buy eggs.’9 (31) A Juan n-r-ajo’ chi (rija’) n-u-loq’ saqmolo. cl Juan inc-3sE-want comp he inc-3sE-buy eggs ‘Juani wants himj to buy eggs.’ (32) *A Juan n-r-ajo’ rija’ n-u-loq’ saqmolo. cl Juan inc-3sE-want he inc-3sE-buy eggs ‘Juani wants himj to buy eggs.’ A coreferent argument other than the subject does not license complementizer omission: (33) A Juan x-u-b’ij ch-w-e chi ja ri tz’i’ x-ba’-o’. cl Juan com-3sE-tell prep-1sE-to comp foc the dog com-bite-af ‘Juan1 told me that it was the dog that bit him1.’ (34) *A Juan x-u-b’ij ch-w-e ja ri tz’i’ x-ba’-o’. cl Juan com-3sE-tell prep-1sE-to foc the dog com-bite-af ‘Juan1 told me that it was the dog that bit him1.’ Use of complementizer, then, constitutes a subject test. The complementizer is omissible if the subject of its clause is the same as the subject of the higher clause. By this test, the patients of both the standard passives and the ki-passives qualify as subjects: (35) A Juan x-u-b’ij ch-w-e (chi) x-ki-b’a’ cl Juan com-3sE-tell prep-3sE-to (comp) com-pass-bite r-oma’ ri tz’i’. 3sE-by the dog ‘Juan1 told me that he1 was bitten by the dog.’
ki-passive
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(36) A Juan x-u-b’ij ch-w-e (chi) x-b’a-x cl Juan com-3sE-tell prep-3sE-to (comp) com-pass-bite r-oma’ ri tz’i’. 3sE-by the dog ‘Juan1 told me that he1 was bitten by the dog.’
Standard passive
We conclude that the ki-passive is truly a passive in the synchronic grammar of Kaqchikel. Broadwell and Duncan (2002) discuss the diachronic development of the kipassive out of a generalized subject construction.
5. A comparison of the standard passive and the ki-passive In many respects the ki-passive and the standard passive show very similar syntax. Both apply to nearly all bivalent verbs in the language.10 We have found no differences in the classes of verbs which take the standard and ki-passives. Both passives occur with a full range of aspect marking and adverbial modification. There also appear to be no word order differences between the two passives. Alberto Esquit Choy, our primary consultant, comments that the two passives mean the same thing, but they sound as if they should be used in different contexts. We interpret this to mean that the two passives have different discourse properties. The differing contexts for the two passives do not seem to be readily accessible to speaker intuition, and we hope that as the corpus of analyzed Kaqchikel texts grows we may be able to get a better idea of the use of these two passives in discourse. However, differences of grammaticality do appear in elicitation contexts when we examine the topicality of the arguments in the ki-passive, relative to the standard passive. Overall, both the agent and patient of the ki-passive appear to be restricted to old/ presupposed/topical information. The standard passive does not impose such a restriction on its arguments. From our viewpoint, the arguments of the two passives have a different status at information structure which must be formalized in any account of the two passives. This difference in status at information structure has a number of effects, which we explore in the following sections.
5.1 Focusing and the arguments of the ki-passive 5.1.1
Interrogative focus
Focusing either the agent or the patient of the ki-passive is severely restricted. Interrogative focus in Kaqchikel involves obligatory fronting to a preverbal position. Interrogative focus is available for subject of the standard passive but not for the ki-passive:
384 George Aaron Broadwell
(37) Chike x-b’a-x r-oma’ jun tz’i’? who com-bite-pass 3sE-by a dog ‘Who was bitten by a dog?’
Standard passive
(38) *Chike x-ki-b’a’ r-oma’ jun tz’i’? who com-pass-bite 3sE-by a dog ‘Who was bitten by a dog?’
ki-passive
We find the same result for interrogative focus of the agent. This is possible for the standard passive (though judged a bit odd), but is completely ungrammatical for the ki-passive: ri a Juan? (39) ?Choj oma’ x-b’a-x what by com-bite-pass the cl Juan ‘What was Juan bitten by?’
Standard passive
(40) *Choj oma’ x-ki-b’a’ ri a Juan? what by com-pass-bite the cl Juan ‘What was Juan bitten by?’11
ki-passive
However it is necessary to be more precise about the interaction of interrogative focus and the ki-passive. It is ungrammatical for either the agent or the patient of the ki-passive as a whole to be interrogative. It is, however, acceptable for a determiner within the NP to be interrogative: r-oma’ jun tz’ i’? (41) Chike achin x-ki-b’a’ which man com-pass-bite 3sE-by a dog ‘Which man was bitten by a dog?’
ki-passive
(42) R-oma’ achike tz’i’ x-ki-b’a’ ri a Juan? 3sE-by which dog com-pass-bite the cl Juan ‘Which dog was Juan bitten by?’
ki-passive
We believe the relevant notion may be ‘identifiability’ (or d-linking). It seems that the subject of a ki-passive must either be identifiable or be a member of a set which is identifiable. In a case like ‘which dog’, the individual is not identifiable, but the set of dogs is.
5.1.2
Negative focus
Negative focus for the subject patient of a ki-passive is also ruled out, though it is acceptable with the standard passive: (43) Ma jun achi’ x-b’a-x r-oma’ ri tz’i’. neg a man com-bite-pass 3sE-by the dog ‘No man was bitten by the dog.’
Standard passive
Passive constructions in Kaqchikel 385
(44) *Ma jun achi’ x-ki-b’a’ r-oma’ ri tz’i’. neg a man com-pass-bite 3sE-by the dog ‘No man was bitten by the dog.’
ki-passive
Similarly, negative focus for the agent of a ki-passive is bad, but for a standard passive it is acceptable: (45) Man r-oma’ ta jun Kaqchikel x-eleq’-äx neg 3sE-by neg a Kaqchikel com-steal-pass ri nu-ch’ich. the 1sE-car ‘My car wasn’t stolen by a Kaqchikel.’ ‘It wasn’t a Kaqchikel my car was stolen by.’ (46) *Man r-oma’ ta jun Kaqchikel x-k-eleq’-aj neg 3sE-by neg a Kaqchikel com-pass-steal-bi ri nu-ch’ich. the 1sE-car ‘My car wasn’t stolen by a Kaqchikel.’ ‘It wasn’t a Kaqchikel my car was stolen by.’
Standard passive
ki-passive
The restriction on focusing arguments of the ki-passive seems to follow from the hypothesis that both the agent and patient of this passive are presupposed, old information. Since focusing constructions present information as either unknown or new, they are incompatible with the ki-passive.
5.2 Non-specific patients and the ki-passive Non-specific patients appear to be incompatible with the ki-passive. In the following example, the transitive has a non-specific object. It is possible to form a corresponding standard passive, but the ki-passive is blocked. (47) A Juan n-r-ajo’ jun ch’ich. cl Juan inc-3sE-want a car ‘Juan wants a car.’ (non-specific reading)
Transitive
(48) Jun ch’ich n-ajow-äx r-oma’ a Juan. a car inc-want-pass 3sE-by cl Juan ‘A car is wanted by John.’
Standard passive
(49) *Jun ch’ich ni-k-ajo’ r-oma’ a Juan. a car inc-pass-want 3sE-by cl Juan ‘A car is wanted by John.’
ki-passive
This restriction follows if the arguments of the ki-passive must be previously established, topical noun phrases, since non-specificity is typically incompatible with topicality.
386 George Aaron Broadwell
5.3 Inanimate agents Animacy is also relevant to the topicality of the arguments in the ki-passive. There is in general no restriction against inanimate subjects of transitive verbs in Kaqchikel: (50) Ri che’ x-u-tzäq ri ja’y. The tree com-3sE-knock:down the house ‘The tree knocked down the house.’
Transitive
Inanimate agents are permissible in the standard passive, but not in the ki-passive:12 (51) Ri ja’y x-tzaq r-oma’ ri che’. the house com-knock:down:pass 3sE-by the tree ‘The house was knocked down by the tree.’
Standard passive
(52) *Ri ja’y x-ki-tzäq r-oma’ ri che’. the house com-pass-knock:down 3sE-by the tree ‘The house was knocked down by the tree.’
ki-passive
There is no animacy restriction on the patient of either passive: (53) Ri wä’y x-ki-tij r-oma’ ri achin. the tortilla com-pass-eat 3sE-by the man ‘The tortilla was eaten by the man.’
ki-passive
(54) Ri wä’y x-tij r-oma’ ri achin. the tortilla com-eat:pass 3sE-by the man ‘The tortilla was eaten by the man.’
Standard passive
Using the approach of Aissen (1997, 1999a, 1999b) we hypothesize that the agent of the ki-passive outranks the patient in obviation status. But proximate inanimates are in general strongly marked relative to obviative inanimates, and in a number of languages they are ungrammatical. Although we will not formalize the optimality-theoretic treatment here, we believe the ki-passive is suboptimal relative to the standard passive because it involves the assignment of proximate to an inanimate.
5.4 Summary Table 2 summarizes the differences between the active, the standard passive, and the ki-passive.
6. Formalizing these results The existence of languages with multiple passives has been known for some time (e.g. Dutch, Kirsner 1976; Irish, Noonan 1994; Akatek, Zavala 1997), but it seems to us that
Passive constructions in Kaqchikel 387
Table 2. A comparison of the active, standard passive, and ki-passive Interrogative agent Interrogative det of agent Interrogative patient Interrogative det of patient Negative focused agent Negative focused patient Inanimate agent Non-specific patient
Active
Standard passive ki-passive
yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes
yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes
no yes no yes no no no no
generative theory has not fully appreciated their significance. The focus of most explanation has been the relation-changing nature of the passive, and on developing models that predict just these relation changes. Furthermore, generative theory generally focussess only on changes in valence and transitivity in a way that makes differences in informational context difficult to explain. For example, in most views of the passive prevalent in Principles and Parameters theory, the action of the passive morpheme should be restricted to very local effects — absorbing the external θ-role and thus the case-assigning properties of the verb (Chomsky 1981, Jaeggli 1986). All the other properties of the passive, e.g. NP-movement and consequent changes in grammatical relation should follow from independent properties of the grammar. There is no provision in such a model for different passives to assign varying informational content to their associated arguments. The model is thus silent on possible differences among multiple passives. In our view, the most promising approach to these data treats the two Kaqchikel passives as typed constructions, exemplified in (55) and (56).13 (55)
(56)
arg-str
〈θ̑ ,
θ〉
func-str (OBL θ) SUBJ
passive
〈θ̑ , arg-str θ〉 func-str (OBL θ) SUBJ info-str [−new] [−new]
ki-passive
These constructional templates present the pairings of argument-structure, functionalstructure, and informational-structure settings associated with the two passive types. A more complete theory of what such constructions should look like is presented in Ackerman and Webelhuth (1998). The theories of Construction Grammar (Fillmore, Kay, and O’Connor 1988) and Role and Reference Grammar (Van Valin and LaPolla 1997) share similar general conceptions of the place of constructions in the grammar, albeit formalized in somewhat different ways.
388 George Aaron Broadwell
For the sake of this discussion, let us assume the following feature decompositions of the discourse functions, modifying suggestions by Choi (1999: 92): (57) TOPIC −new +prom −neg −wh
FOCUScont +new +prom −neg −wh
FOCUSNeg +new +prom +neg −wh
FOCUSInterrog +new +prom −neg +wh
Under this view, an argument that is constructionally specified as [−new] cannot appear in a syntactic position (such as focus) where it will receive a [+new] interpretation. In my view of Kaqchikel phrase-structure, the overall clausal organization looks something like Figure 1 (Broadwell 2000). CP Comp NP SUBJ or TOPIC
IP NP Contrastive focus
NP Negative focus
I′
Infl
S V
Figure 1. Kaqchikel clause structure
NP GF
NP GF
The two positions after the verb are labeled gf, meaning grammatical function because NPs with any grammatical function (subj, obj, obl) can appear here. The preverbal positions labeled Negative Focus and Contrastive Focus each assign the features specified in (57). If the features that are constructionally specified conflict with those that are syntactically assigned, the sentence is ungrammatical. For example, the following example involves the ki-passive and negative focus: (58) *Man r-oma’ ta jun Kaqchikel x-k-eleq’-aj not 3sE-by neg a Kaqchikel com-pass-steal-bi ri nu-ch’ich. the 1sE-car ‘My car wasn’t stolen by a Kaqchikel.’ ‘It wasn’t a Kaqchikel my car was stolen by.’
ki-passive
This sentence is ungrammatical because the ki-passive construction specifies that the constituent bearing the obl function in the sentence receives the feature [−new]. How-
Passive constructions in Kaqchikel 389
ever, the initial relational NP man roma’ ta jun Kaqchikel ‘not by a Kaqchikel’ is in the syntactic Negative Focus position, which assigns the feature [+new]. Because these features conflict, the sentence is ungrammatical. The restriction against non-specific arguments of the ki-passive also follows from the constructional assignment of the feature [−new] to both arguments. Choi (1999: 69), following prior work by Webelhuth (1992), Pesetsky (1987) and others, states the generalization concisely as ‘an unspecific indefinite phrase is inherently new information.’ This is the unmarked relationship between newness and specificity, but because this relationship may be violated in some instances, Choi (1999: 109) formulates the following violable constraint: (59) A nonspecific phrase should not be [−new]. Finally, there is a clear relationship between the analysis proposed here and the discourse-based treatment of transitivity in Hopper and Thompson (1980). They propose that clauses with lower transitivity are associated with backgrounding in discourse, while clauses with high transitivity are associated with foregrounding. If the ki-passive constructionally assigns the feature [−new] to its agent and patient, then this will result in ki-passives occurring primarily in backgrounded clauses, where they provide additional information about participants in the discourse which have been introduced in other clauses. The constructional view of passive presented here allows us to capture the differing effects of the two passive at different levels of grammar. At the syntactic level, both passives change valence in the argument-structure and the functional-structure. However, the ki-passive has an additional effect in the information-structure. A model of this type allows for the possibility that two passives may have identical effects on valence but different effects on information structure, and thus succeeds in accurately capturing the difference between these two passives in Kaqchikel.
Acknowledgements I thank our consultant Alberto Esquit Choy, who not only provided all the Kaqchikel data, but also contributed cogent suggestions for this analysis. I also thank Agustina Teleguario Ejcalou de Esquit, a speaker of the Patzún dialect of Kaqchikel, for providing us with comparative data on her dialect. Finally, I thank Farrell Ackerman, Nora England, Leonid Kulikov, Jack Martin, Timothy Smith, and two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper. Much of the work reported on in this paper was done in collaboration with Lachlan Duncan, and an earlier version of this paper appears as Broadwell and Duncan (2002).
390 George Aaron Broadwell
Abbreviations A absolutive, af actor focus, bi bivalent, cl personal classifier (markers of the age and sex of human referents), com completive aspect, dir directional, E ergative, foc focus, inc incompletive aspect, p plural, pass passive, prep preposition, s singular.
Notes 1. Kaqchikel is a Mayan language spoken by about half a million people in Guatemala. This paper reports on the dialect of Patzicía as spoken by Alberto Esquit Choy. The paper uses the conventions of the national orthography (García Matzar and Guaján Rodríguez 1997), in which <x> is a voiceless alveopalatal sibilant (IPA [ʃ]), <j> is a glottal fricative (IPA [h]), is a high front glide (IPA [j]), is a voiceless dental affricate (IPA [ʦ]), is a voiceless alveopalatal affricate (IPA [ʧ ]), <ä> is schwa (IPA [ə]), is a uvular stop and apostrophe is glottal stop (following a vowel) or glottalization (following a consonant). Other symbols have their usual IPA values. Kaqchikel dialects differ in the number of phonemic vowels. Although the national orthography represents ten distinct vowels, the Patzicía dialect has six (a, ä, e, i, o, u), and I write only those vowels here. 2. As Broadwell and Duncan (2002) note, there is also a third passive, called the perfective passive, which appears to differ from the standard passive only in aspect. I will not discuss the perfective passive in this paper. 3. The traditional Mayanist literature (Dayley 1978) calls the first root transitive, and the second a derived transitive. 4. Several notions typically conveyed by adpositions in other languages are expressed in Mayan through the use of what are traditionally termed ‘relational nouns’. They express location and logical relationships and generally show ergative agreement with the NP that follows. Despite the fact that they are frequently identical to body-part nouns and show the typical morphology for nouns, it is not clear whether they are synchronically nouns or prepositions. See Lillehaugen (2003) for an argument that analogous body-part nouns in Zapotec have been reanalysed as prepositions. 5. In fact the occurrence of the /-Vj/ suffix in ki-passives seems to show that it does not always have the synchronic status of a bivalent marker in Kaqchikel. 6. Kaqchikel word order also appears to show effects of heaviness and specificity, but these factors are less well-understood. 7. In Bresnan (2001: 98), subj is cross-classified as both a discourse function and a grammatical function, recognizing the special discourse role of subject as default topic. Kaqchikel has a single preverbal position for either subjects or topics, which is essentially the set of [−new] discourse functions. 8. Although some of these examples involve infinitival complements and other tensed complements, there is no corresponding morphological difference in Kaqchikel. 9. In general the complementizer would be omitted here. There is a subtle semantic effect of inserting the complement, roughly comparable to the difference between infinitival and tensed complements in English. Thus the two readings of this example might be paraphrased ‘John
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wishes to buy eggs’ and ‘John wishes he could/would buy eggs’. In the second reading, the matrix subject seems to have less control over the event in the complement. 10. The exceptions are a small number of equational predicates like -pajon ‘to weigh’ to which neither the standard passive nor the ki-passive can apply. 11. This is grammatical on the irrelevant transitive reading ‘What did they bite Juan because of?’, where oma’ is interpreted as ‘because’, rather than ‘by’. 12. Compare the impersonal passive in Dutch. Kirsner (1976) notes that in Er wordt gefloten ‘Someone whistled’ (lit. ‘There is whistled’), the whistling must have been done by a human and not by ‘birds, teakettles, or the wind.’ 13. θ with a circumfix (‘theta-hat’) represents the most prominent argument role of the predicate.
References Ackerman, F. and Webelhuth, G. 1998. A Theory of Predicates. Stanford: csli. Aissen, J. 1997. “On the syntax of obviation”. Language 73: 705–50. Aissen, J. 1999a. “Agent choice and inverse in Tzotzil”. Language 75: 451–85. Aissen, J. 1999b. “Markedness and subject choice in optimality theory”. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 17: 673–711. Bresnan, J. 2001. Lexical-functional Syntax. Oxford: Blackwell. Broadwell, G. A. 2000. “Word order and markedness in Kaqchikel”. Proceedings of the LFG 2000 Conference. (http://csli-publications.stanford.edu/LFG/5/lfg00-toc.html). Broadwell, G. A. and Duncan, L. 2002. “A new passive in Kaqchikel”. Linguistic Discovery 1 (2). (http://linguistic-discovery.dartmouth.edu/WebObjects/Linguistics) Choi, H.-W. 1999. Optimizing Structure in Context. Stanford: csli. Chomsky, N. 1981. Lectures on Government and Binding. Dordrecht: Foris. Dayley, J. 1978. “Voice in Tzutujil”. Journal of Mayan Linguistics 1 (1): 20–52. Dayley, J. 1981. “Voice and ergativity in Mayan languages”. Journal of Mayan Linguistics 2 (2): 3–82. Fillmore, C., Kay, P. and O’Connor, M. C. 1988. “Regularity and idiomaticity in grammatical constructions: The case of let alone”. Language 64 (3): 501–38. García Matzar, P. (Lolmay), and Rodríguez Guaján, J. O. (Pakal B’alam). 1997. Rukemik ri Kaqchikel Chi’: Gramática Kaqchikel. Guatemala City: Editorial Cholsamaj Okma. Hopper, P. and Thompson, S. 1980. “Transitivity in grammar and discourse”. Language 56: 251– 99. Jaeggli, O. 1986. “Passive”. Linguistic Inquiry 17: 587–633. Keenan, E. L. 1985. “Passive in the world’s languages”. In Language Typology and Syntactic Description. Volume 1. Clause structure, T. Shopen (ed.), 243–81. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kirsner, R. 1976. “On the subjectless ‘pseudo-passive’ in Standard Dutch and the semantics of background agents”. In Subject and Topic, C. Li (ed.), 385–416. New York: Academic Press. Lambrecht, K. 1994. Informational Structure and Sentence Form. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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Lillehaugen, B. D. 2003. The Categorial Status of Body Part Prepositions in Valley Zapotec Languages. MA thesis: UCLA. Noonan, M. 1994. “A tale of two passives in Irish”. In Voice: Form and Function, P. Hopper and B. Fox (eds), 279–312. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Pesetsky, D. 1987. “Wh-in-situ: Movement and unselective binding”. In The Representation of (In)definiteness, E. Reuland and A. ter Meulen (eds), 98–129. Cambridge, Ma: MIT Press. Sadler, L. and Spencer, A. 1988. “Morphology and argument structure” In Handbook of Morphology, A. Spencer and A. M. Zwicky (eds), 206–36. Oxford: Blackwell. Van Valin, R. Jr. and LaPolla, R. 1997. Syntax: Structure, Meaning, and Function. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Webelhuth, G. 1992. Principles and Parameters of Syntactic Saturation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Zavala, R. 1997. “Functional analysis of Akatek voice constructions”. International Journal of American Linguistics 63: 439–74.
chapter 18
A very active passive Functional similarities between passive and causative in Balkar Ekaterina Lyutikova and Anastasia Bonch-Osmolovskaya Moscow State University
The paper considers the passive derivation in Balkar (Turkic). The Balkar passive provides evidence for a functional parallelism of causative and detransitive derivations. It exhibits multiple functions, some of them seem to be typologically uncommon. Thus, the passive constructions can derive from one-place verbs, carrying out an interesting semantic alternation in the meaning of the denoted event: it is interpreted as being motivated by some external cause. Another specific feature of the Balkar passive is the formation of recursive passive chains. The second passive (with two passive morphemes) is employed to introduce a backgrounded agent or initiator of the action. It is also used to mark deliberateness, volitionality, or reiteration of the denoted action, and it shows interesting parallels with much more common recursive causative derivations.
1. Introduction Parallelism of valence increasing (causative) and valence decreasing (decausative/reflexive/passive) derivations has been observed in several functional domains. Haspelmath (1993), elaborating on an idea suggested by Nedjalkov (1966), has convincingly shown that there is a class of verbs that, in different languages, can be treated either as transitive or intransitive. Causative or decausative morphemes are then used to derive their (in)transitive counterparts. Thus, their functions in this domain are opposite. Another observation, made both by McCawley (1976), and by Ackerman and Moore (1994), is that emotive verbs use causative derivation to change the focus of attention from experiencer to stimulus, which in some sense looks like the usual passive function of changing the communicative perspective of the utterance. Diachronic typological data (V. Nedjalkov 1964, Haspelmath 1990, I. Nedyalkov 1991, and Kulikov 2001) show that there are languages in which the passive morpheme has evolved from a causative marker. Therefore, in some cases causative derivation expands into the functional domain normally dominated by valence-decreasing derivations and/or passive voice.
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The Balkar passive furnishes new evidence for the causative/passive functional contiguity. In the case of Balkar, however, this similarity arises due to the expansion of the passive into the traditional ‘causative’ domain. Another intriguing feature of Balkar is the striking parallelism between double causative and double passive derivations. The aim of this paper is to show that the passive and causative derivations do have some mutual, shared functions, and to outline the corresponding functional domains. The data considered in the paper were collected during two fieldwork sessions. First, a derivational database containing 173 verbal stems was created. Then, every stem was checked for its derivational productivity, including not only simple (passive, causative, reflexive, reciprocal), but also recursive derivations. Finally, the meaning of the derived verbs was verified in different contexts. The paper is organized as follows. Section 2 provides a short introduction on the Balkar passive. In section 3, we discuss the uses of the Balkar passive construction, focusing on those characteristics which deviate from both Turkic and cross-linguistic typological standards. Section 4 contains a detailed characterization of the Balkar double passive derivations. Further discussion and conclusions are presented in section 5.
2. Some basic features of the Balkar passive 2.1 Derivations in Balkar: An overview Like other Turkic languages, Balkar possesses four derivational morphemes that are traditionally referred to as ‘voices’.1 According to Aliev (1972), there are five voices in Balkar: active (no marking), passive (-l/-n2), reflexive (-n), reciprocal (marker -š), and causative (-tɨr, -t, -r and some infrequent others). All these affixes are inherited by Turkic languages from the proto-language. Their function in the actual language system, however, underwent different changes in different descendants, and therefore varies from one language to another. Balkar, our language of interest, preserves all four morphemes, although their use differs in some respect from most Turkic languages. The most striking feature of Balkar is the unusually wide occurrence of the passive marker and, correspondingly, the low productivity of the reflexive marker found generally with the verbs of grooming and body care. The Balkar passive, however, not only replaced the reflexive in a number of contexts but also developed some other uses which are functionally new compared to those found in most Turkic languages.
2.2 Morphological rules The passive morpheme -l is attached directly to the verbal stem (which coincides with the second-person singular imperative form) if the stem ends in a vowel, and it follows on a vowel - ɨ-/-i-/-u-/-ü- (according to vowel harmony) if the stem ends in a consonant.
Functional similarities between passive and causative in Balkar 395
However, -n is used instead of -l if the verbal stem already has a segment -l. This makes passive and reflexive derivations from a stem containing -l- morphologically indistinguishable as both derivations use -n. In such cases we shall consider the construction passive, although for some verbs this may well be an arbitrary decision.
2.3 Passive in Balkar: preliminary remarks In this section we shall briefly discuss some specific properties of the Balkar passive. The Russian turkological tradition (adhered to in most descriptive grammars of the Turkic languages of the former USSR and Russia) treats all the derivational morphemes discussed above in the same way, i.e., as expressing the verbal category of voice. Indeed, the Balkar passive has features in common with Indo-European passive constructions. If we compare examples (1a–b), there is no difference in meaning between the English and Balkar passive:
(1) a. b.
Taš (marat-tan) sɨz-ɨl-dɨ. stone.nom (Marat-abl throw-pass-pst ‘The stone was thrown (by Marat).’ The stone was thrown (by Marat).
Both in (1a) and (1b), an agent is expressed or at least presumed. No change in the semantic structure of the event is observed — the passive form renders the same situation of ‘throwing’ that presupposes a volitional agent and a patient undergoing the action of being moved from one place to another. Examples (1a) and (1b) differ from the corresponding active sentences in many respects but all of these differences have nothing to do with the propositional meaning, which remains intact. Still, the passive derivation in Balkar differs from passive in Indo-European languages in some significant respects (a–e): a. -l applies to verbs of different syntactic and semantic classes (not only to transitives): Sentence (2) exemplifies the ‘passivization’ of the intransitive two-place verb ‘climb’; we can observe that the syntactic function of -l is to demote the subject NP, which in this case cannot be expressed explicitly.
(2) a. b.
Men terek-ke min-di-m. I.nom tree-dat climb-pst-1sg ‘I climbed the tree.’ Terek-ke min-il-di. tree-dat climb-pass-pst ‘The tree was climbed at.’
This is the case of the so-called lenient passive (passive without promotion), observed in some Slavic languages like Polish or Ukrainian. Example (3) shows that -l applies also to unaccusative verbs, which exhibit no valence alternation.
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(3) a. b.
Tɨlɨ köp-tü. dough.nom swell-pst ‘The dough rose.’ Tɨlɨ köb-ül-dü. dough.nom swell-pass-pst ‘The dough rose.’
b. -l allows multiple occurrence: Voice morphemes are generally expected not to apply more than once. However this is not the case in Balkar, where the passive marker can double.
(4) a. b.
Inek urla-n-ŋan-dɨ. cow.nom steal-pass-pf-3 ‘The cow was stolen.’ Inek urla-n-ɨl-ʁan-dɨ. cow.nom steal-pass-pass-pf-3 ‘The cow was stolen (according to somebody’s order).’
c. -l is not in complementary distribution with other ‘voice’ morphemes: Example (5) shows the multiple cooccurrence of ‘causative’ and ‘passive’ morphemes.
(5) Suwu tög-ül-dür-ül-dü. water pour-pass-caus-pass-pst ‘Water was made to pour out.’
d. -l frequently produces idiosyncratic syntactic and semantic effects, as in (6):
(6) a. b. c. d.
qɨs → tie ‘tie’ züz → swim ‘swim’ bat → sink ‘sink’ qara → look ‘look (at smb.)’
qɨs-ɨl tie-pass ‘pester (a girl)’ züz-ül swim-pass ‘move sliding/gliding’ bat-ɨl sink-pass ‘plunge’ qara-l look-pass ‘feel offended’
e. -l applies not only to verbal but also to nominal stems: In this case, -l can be considered as a verbalizer producing intransitive inchoative verbs. It is worth mentioning that the transitive counterpart can be derived using one of the causative markers as in (7):
Functional similarities between passive and causative in Balkar 397
(7) a. aʁar b. aʁar-ɨl c. aʁar-t white white-pass white-caus ‘white’ (adj) ‘turn grey (hair)’ ‘whiten’ Sometimes, the initial stem does not occur synchronically, and only the inchoative and causative forms of the verb exist:
(8) а. b.
Men cɨraq-nɨ öcür-dü-m. I.nom light-acc put.out.caus-pst-1sg ‘I switched the light off.’ Cɨraq öcül-dü. light.nom go.out.pass-pst ‘The light went off.’
From the above discussion it can be concluded that the morpheme -l covers a wide functional domain. Its uses are characterized in detail below.
3. Range of uses of the Balkar morpheme -l Haspelmath (1990: 32–5) describes the following uses of passive morphemes as the most important ones: passive proper (promotional passive), reflexive, reciprocal, resultative, anticausative (=decausative), potential passive, fientive, reflexive-causative, de-objective, and desubjective (=impersonal passive). In Balkar, all of these are observed, except for the reciprocal3 and, probably, the reflexive–causative. In addition to the uses of the passive morpheme listed by Haspelmath, two further types of passive constructions are found in Balkar. The experiential passive discussed in section 3.6 is normally found with experiential verbs in other Turkic languages. The second one seems to be typologically uncommon and is termed below the ‘causal passive’ 4 (see 3.7).
3.1 Passive proper All transitive verbs denoting agent’s effect on patient form a promotional passive. The patientive noun phrase (NP) is put in the nominative case, and acquires all subject properties, for instance, control over verb agreement, cf. (9a–b):
(9) a. b.
It-xe taš (alim-den) sɨz-ɨl-dɨ. dog-dat stone.nom Alim-abl throw-pass-pst ‘The stone was thrown to the dog (by Alim).’ It-xe taš-la (alim-den) sɨz-ɨl-dɨ-la. dog-dat stone-nom.pl Alim-abl throw-pass-pst-pl ‘The stones were thrown to the dog (by Alim).’
The expression of the agent in the passive construction deserves special discussion. Normally the agent remains unexpressed in the passive. Still, if necessary, the agent
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may be denoted by ablative case, or by postpositional phrases headed by kücü bla ‘by the force of ’, qollu bla ‘by the hand of ’, and χajɨrɨnnan ‘thanks to’. What is interesting about these constructions is that their interpretation as agentive is contextually bound, and their distribution is lexically specified. For instance, in (9) the ablative NP is interpreted as agentive because the agent of ‘throwing’ coincides with the starting point of the patient’s itinerary. Example (9c) shows that an inanimate ablative NP indeed does have this spatial meaning:5
(9) c. It-xe taš üj-ü-n-den sɨz-ɨl-dɨ dog-dat stone.nom house-3-obl-abl throw-pass-pst ‘The stone was thrown to the dog from the house.’
As for the postpositional phrases kücü bla ‘by the force of ’ and qollu bla ‘by the hand of ’, these imply some special physical activity of the agent which is incompatible with the meaning of many transitive verbs like ‘eat’, ‘find’ or ‘read’. The postposition χajɨrɨnnan ‘thanks to’ introduces an external causer or a secondary participant rather than an agent. The causer initiates the action or helps the real agent in his activity. Thus, passive sentences with χajɨrɨnnan are ambiguous, and the agent can or cannot coincide with the participant marked by this postpositions. The sentence in (10) has two possible interpretations: (10) Lejla marat-χa farida-nɨ χajɨrɨnnan til-in-di. Leila.nom Marat-dat Farida-gen thanks.to ask.in.marriage-pass-pst ‘Leila was asked by Farida to marry Marat.’ OR ‘Leila was asked to marry Marat thanks to Farida.’ [Farida advised Marat to marry Leila or let somebody ask Leila to marry Marat] It is not surprising that many transitive verbs are incompatible with the above-mentioned semantic restrictions. In this case, there is no possibility of indicating the demoted agent in the passive, cf. (11): (11) a. Alim-ni qoj-lar-ɨ aša-l-dɨ-la. Alim-gen sheep-pl-3 eat-pass-pst-3pl ‘Alim’s sheep were eaten.’ b. *Alim-ni qoj-lar-ɨ marat-tan aša-l-dɨ-la. Alim-gen sheep-pl-3 Marat-abl eat-pass-pst-3pl c. *alim-ni qoj-lar-ɨ marat-nɨ qollu bla aša-l-dɨ-la. Alim-gen sheep-pl-3 Marat-gen by.the.hand.of eat-pass-pst-3pl d. *Alim-ni qoj-lar-ɨ marat-nɨ kücü bla aša-l-dɨ-la. Alim-gen sheep-pl-3 Marat-gen by.the force.of eat-pass-pst-3pl e. Alim-ni qoj-lar-ɨ marat-nɨ χajɨrɨnnan aša-l-dɨ-la. Alim-gen sheep-pl-3 Marat-gen thanks.to eat-pass-pst-3pl ‘Alim’s sheep were eaten thanks to Marat.’ [Marat let somebody eat Alim’s sheep]
Functional similarities between passive and causative in Balkar 399
Thus, we can conclude that Balkar lacks specialized means to express the demoted agent in the passive construction. A standardized expression of the agent is thought to arise at the last stage of the development of passive constructions (Haspelmath 1990). All languages which have a passive can leave passive agents unexpressed, and some of them do not allow for an overtly expressed agent alltogether. In this respect, the situation in Balkar is not uncommon. In the lenient passive discussed above the agent is demoted, but no promotion of the non-accusative argument takes place (see (2) above and (12)): (12) a. b.
Lejla alim-ge ɨnan-a-dɨ. Leila.nom Alim-dat believe-prs-3 ‘Leila trusts Alim.’ Alim-ge ɨnan-ɨl-a-dɨ. Alim-dat believe-pass-prs-3 ‘Alim is trusted.’
There seem to be no restrictions on the morphological form of the second argument: it can be expressed by any case except nominative and accusative, as well as by a postpositional phrase with nominative NP: (13) a. b.
Lejla alim üsünden unut-tu. Leila.nom Alim.nom about forget-pst ‘Leila forgot Alim.’ Alim üsünden unut-ul-du. Alim.nom about forget-pass-pst ‘Alim was forgotten.’
3.2 Potential passive The potential passive (also known as ‘facilitative’) is traditionally regarded as a subtype of the proper passive.6 This potential reading is often supported by specific adverbials like ‘well’, ‘easily’, ‘badly’, etc. Compare the proper passive in (14a) with the potential passive in (14b): (14) a. b.
Ol zoruq aŋɨla-n-dɨ. this rule.nom understand-pass-pst ‘This rule was understood (by the students).’ Ol zoruq igi aŋɨla-n-a-dɨ. this rule.nom good understand-pass-prs-3 ‘This rule is easy to understand (lit. is understood good).’
Thus, all transitive verbs have a potential passive (with the meaning ‘the patient is likely to undergo the agent’s activity denoted by the base verb’). The crucial fact is that one-place verbs, which are incompatible with the passive proper, do allow for a potential reading. Compare (15) with the intransitive verb cab ‘run’:
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(15) Zas-ta igi cab-ɨl-a-dɨ. summer-loc good run-pass-prs-3 ‘In the summer, it is good to run.’ It seems that the only restriction on the use of the potential passive is the animacy of the verb’s argument. The potential passive can be employed not only for activities (sing, dance, jump) but also for the states of an animate patient (sleep, live, lay): (16) Ekinči etaž-de igi zuqla-n-a-dɨ. second floor-loc good sleep-pass-prs-3 ‘It is good to sleep on the first floor.’ The demoted argument of the agentless potential passives has a generic interpretation which means, that (14) can be interpreted as ‘any person can understand this rule’ in (14), and (15) as ‘it is good to run for everyone’. But, in contrast to the passive proper, the potential passive allows for an explicitly expressed NP denoting the participant in the scope of ‘potential’ modality. Not surprisingly, the experiential dative is chosen for encoding this argument: (17) Maŋa bügün sočinenije tɨnc zaz-ɨl-a-dɨ. I.dat today essay.nom easily write-pass-prs-3 ‘It is easy for me to write the essay today.’ (18) Alim-ge tɨnc sekir-il-e-di. Alim-dat easily jump-pass-prs-3 ‘Alim jumps easily.’
3.3 Decausative The decausative is the most widespread valence-decreasing derivation in the languages of the world. The function of the decausative is to eliminate the agent not only from syntactic but also from the semantic structure. In other words, while agentless passives presuppose activity of the agent (when sheep are eaten, somebody ate them), decausatives denote spontaneous events that do not involve obligatory participation of the agent. A good test of decausative meaning is the possibility of using the pronoun kesi ‘itself ’ in the same case as marking the subject. If a pronoun can be used, then only a decausative interpretation is possible, as in (19): (19) Ešik (kesi) ac-ɨl-dɨ. door.nom itself.nom open-pass-pst ‘The door opened (by itself).’ Haspelmath (1993) compiled a list of verbal meanings that correspond to pairs of transitive and intransitive verbs, related derivationally. Languages differ in what member of each pair is morphologically basic. This choice is determined by the derivational means
Functional similarities between passive and causative in Balkar 401
(causative/decausative) that a language possesses, and also correlates with the position of the given verbal meaning on the scale of the probability of spontaneous occurrence. Balkar makes use of both causative and passive derivations in this semantic domain. Their distribution generally corresponds to Haspelmath’s scale. Thus, the verbs ac ‘open’ and oj ‘break’ are transitive and use the decausative derivation to build their intransitive counterparts: acɨl ‘open.intr’, ojul ‘break.intr’. The verbs buzla ‘freeze’ and quru ‘dry’ are intransitive and derive their transitive counterparts with the causative morpheme: buzlat ‘freeze.tr’, qurut ‘dry.tr’.
3.4 Middle The term ‘middle’ here applies to the range of realizations of the morpheme -l that express the indistinguishability of initiator and endpoint of the event (Kemmer 1993). The core of the domain is represented by reflexive uses of -l-derived verbs. In (20), for instance, Marat is both Initiator (he performed the act of covering) and Endpoint (it was Marat who was covered with a blanket). (20) Marat zuwurʁan bla zab-ɨl-dɨ. Marat.nom blanket.nom with cover-pass-pst ‘Marat covered himself with a blanket.’ The main middle uses of the Balkar -l include verbs of grooming and body care (tasala ‘clean’ - tasalan ‘clean oneself ’, boja ‘colour’ - bojal ‘make up’), non-translational motion (tart ‘draw’ - tartɨl ‘draw oneself up’, bur ‘turn.tr’ - burul ‘turn round.intr’), and change in body posture (kötür ‘raise up.tr’ - kötürül ‘chin oneself up’). Another group of meanings can be labelled as ‘unvolitional hurting/damage’ (cf. tɨrna ‘scratch’ - kesin tɨrna ‘scratch oneself deliberately’ - tɨrnal ‘scratch oneself unwillingly’, ur ‘hit’ - kesin ur ‘hit oneself deliberately’ - urul ‘hit against something unwillingly’. Compared to most other Turkic languages, the Balkar -l exhibits a wider expansion in the middle domain. According to Bogdankevič (2003), the -l-derivation in Turkic languages in the middle domain is restricted to situations of non-translational motion, whereas other middle situation types, when expressed by a special marker, make use of the ‘reflexive’ marker -n.7 In Balkar, however, the -l and -n-derivations share the domain of ‘reflexive’ uses in a rather sophisticated way (21): (21) a. b. c.
sat a.′ sat-ɨl a.′′ *sat-ɨn sell sell-pass sell-refl ‘sell’ ‘sell oneself ’ boja b.′ boja-l b.′′ *boja-n colour colour-pass colour-refl ‘colour’ ‘make up’ ajɨr c.′ ajɨr-ɨl c.′′ *ajɨr-ɨn separate separate-pass separate-refl ‘separate.tr’ ‘part from one’s people, divorce’
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d. e. f. g.
tara d.′ tara-l d.′′ comb comb-pass ‘comb.tr’ ‘comb one’s hair’ zuu e.′ zuu-l e.′′ wash wash-pass ‘wash.tr’ ‘be washed’ kij f.′ kij-il f.′′ put.on put.on-pass ‘put on’ ‘be put on’ ujat g.′ ujat-ɨl g.′′ wake.up wake.up-pass ‘wake up.tr’ ‘be woken by smbd’
*tara-n comb-refl zuu-n wash-refl ‘wash oneself ’ kij-in put.on-refl ‘dress oneself ’ ujat-ɨn wake.up-refl ‘wake up.intr’
3.5 Depatientive A small number of verbs have an -l-derivation with a depatientive (=de-objective, antipassive) meaning. A demoted object can be explicitly expressed with the dative. Otherwise, it will have a generic interpretation. (22) Kištik maŋa ɨšɨ-l-a-dɨ. cat.nom I.dat rub-pass-prs-3 ‘The cat rubs against me.’ The two other verbs with the depatientive -l in our database are tɨrnal ‘scratch (everyone)’ from tɨrna ‘scratch’ and zalan ‘smooch, spoon’ from zala ‘lick’.
3.6 Experiential passive A specific group of verbs including verbs of perception such as kör ‘see’, ešt ‘hear’, aŋɨla ‘feel, understand’, and two emotive verbs (büsüre ‘like’ and süj ‘love’), use the passive derivation to change the communicative structure of the predication, and correspondingly, the initial case frame. All these verbs have an experiencer as their first syntactic argument, marked with the nominative, and a stimulus as the second syntactic argument, in dative with the verb büsüre ‘like’, and in the accusative with other verbs of this group. The -l-derivation allows the stimulus to be expressed as a nominative subject, the speaker’s attention shifting from experiencer to stimulus. The experiencer recieves semantically based dative case marking. (23) a. b.
Men bu tauš-nɨ ešt-ti-m. I.nom this sound-acc hear-pst-1sg ‘I heard this sound.’ Maŋa bu tauš ešt-il-di. I.dat this sound.nom hear-pass-pst ‘This sound was audible to me.’
Functional similarities between passive and causative in Balkar 403
With the verb büsüre ‘like’, the -l-derivation produces the most striking syntactic effect, as the argument encoding changes mirrorwise: (24) a. b.
Men aŋa büsüre-di-m. I.nom he.dat like-pst-1sg ‘I liked him.’ Ol maŋa büsüre-l-di. he.nom I.dat like-pass-pst ‘He pleased me.’
Passive and causatives derivatives of experiential verbs share some important features. An interesting semantic peculiarity of this class of verbs is that their two arguments, experiencer and stimulus, have both some agentive and some patientive properties. Like an agent, the experiencer is always animate but, like a patient, undergoes changes (of his/ her mental state). The stimulus can be inanimate like a patient but, like an agent, causes some changes of the experiencer’s state. Thus, both arguments of the experiential verb can be treated as subjects. Even within Turkic languages, we can observe that the choice of subject may be made in different languages either in favour of the experiencer or in favour of the stimulus. What is crucial for our discussion is that both causative and passive derivations can be used to change this choice. Let us compare the Balkar example (24) with the Tatar and the Chuvash sentences in (25) and (26) respectively. (25) Tatar a. Renat zexrä-gä ɤš-ɤj. Renat.nom Zuhra-dat like-st.ipfv ‘Renat pleases Zuhra.’ b. Zexrä renat-nɤ ɤš-a-t-a. Zuhra.nom Renat-acc like-st-caus-st.ipfv ‘Zuhra likes Renat.’ (26) Chuvash a. Ivan maša-na kilěš-e-tj. Ivan.nom Masha-dat/acc like-st-prs.3 ‘Ivan pleases Masha.’ b. Maša ivan-a kilěš-ter-e-tj. Masha.nom Ivan-dat/acc like-caus-st-prs.3 ‘Masha likes Ivan.’ We see that Tatar and Chuvash choose the stimulus as the nominative argument of the non-derived verb and use causative derivation to make the experiencer the subject. Balkar does it mirrorwise: it has the experiencer as the subject of the non-derived verb and makes the stimulus the subject with the help of passive derivation. Thus, not only causatives of experiential verbs look like passives, as McCawley (1976) notes; but also passives of experiential verbs can look like causatives.
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3.7 ‘Causal’ passive The most interesting syntactic and semantic effect of the passive derivation arises with one-place patientive verbs. First, let us consider one-place patientive verbs with an inanimate argument (like ‘fill’, ‘boil’, and ‘drop’). Applying -l to such stems does not seem to trigger any change in the syntactic structure, cf. (27a–b): (27) a. b.
Cojun tol-du. pot.nom fill.intr-pst ‘The pot filled (with water).’ Cojun tol-un-du. pot.nom fill.intr-pass-pst ‘The pot filled (with water).’
Semantically, there is a slight difference between sentences (a) and (b). Native speakers note that in (27b), there was some event which led to the filling of the pot, for instance, it rained. It was already mentioned above that the cause of the event is usually expressed by ablative case. The same encoding is normally observed in our casual passive (cf. (28) and (29)), although the cause can be also expressed by postpositional phrases headed by ücün ‘because of ’, narrative converbs (in terms of Nedjalkov 1995) or even by independent clauses. (28) Cojun zawun-nan tol-un-du. pot.nom rain-abl fill.intr-pass-pst ‘Because of the rain, the pot filled.’ (29) Tɨšɨn-da asɨrɨ suuq-tan, suwu terk suu-l-du. outside-loc so cool-abl water.nom quickly cool.intr-pass-pst ‘It was so cool outside that the water cooled down quickly.’ Note that the passive morpheme in (27b), (28) and (29) refers to a causing situation rather than to a causer (agent). Thus, (30a) is grammatical, but (30b) is not. (30) a. Alim tɨšɨn-da sal-ʁan-nan cojun tol-un-du. Alim.nom outside-loc put-pf-abl pot.nom fill-pass-pst ‘The pot filled because Alim had left it outside.’ b. *Alim-den cojun tol-un-du. Alim-abl pot.nom fill-pass-pst ‘The pot was filled by Alim.’ This interpretation can also be confirmed by the distribution of the reflexive pronoun kesi ‘itself ’, which in sentences like (28)–(29) definitively signals that no agent is presumed in the event: (31) Cojun kesi zawun-nan tol-un-du. pot.nom itself.nom rain-abl fill.intr-pass-pst ‘Because of the rain, the pot filled by itself.’
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The same causal effect is observed with the passives of a number of one-place verbs with an inanimate patientive argument, such as öcül ‘extend’, teb ‘move.intr’, ijil ‘bend. intr’, buzul ‘become rotten’, aq ‘drop’, buzla ‘freeze’, zabɨš ‘stick.intr’, zan ‘burn.intr’, köp ‘swell’, suu ‘cool.intr’, biš ‘ripen’, qajna ‘boil’, quru ‘fade’. Another interesting semantic effect is observed when verbs with an animate (human) patientive argument are passivized. There is a set of one-place verbs which can be regarded as patientive only with an inanimate argument. With a human argument, they are rather intermediate between patientive and agentive: this argument undergoes changes like a patient but takes some control over the event like an agent. When the stone moves, it is clearly a patient, whereas the semantic role of the moving boy is ambiguous. Balkar verbs of this kind are, for instance, toxta ‘stop (rain/person)’, teb ‘move (car/person)’, züz ‘float/swim’, ijil ‘bend (tree/person)’, ket ‘leave (disease/person)’, buχ ‘be hidden/hide’, qal ‘remain/stay’.8 If the passive construction is derived, the human participant of such verbs is preferably omitted, though its referent remains clear from the context. But it can also be overtly expressed, in which case it keeps the nominative case marking, as in (32c). (32) a. b. c.
Alim ü-de qal-dɨ. Alim.nom house-loc stay-pst ‘Alim stayed at home.’ Ü-de qal-ɨn-dɨ. house-loc stay-pass-pst ‘One had to stay at home.’ Alim ü-de qal-ɨn-dɨ. Alim.nom house-loc stay-pass-pst ‘Alim had to stay at home.’
The idea of the causing event is also relevant in this case; it gives rise to an agent-oriented modality, which modifies the meaning of the verb. Native speakers usually give two interpretations to this use of the passive — the participant was obliged/had to participate in the event or he managed to do it, due to some other event which can be directly reported or presumed. (33) Alim men-den qac-ɨp qalɨn qɨrdɨq icende Alim.nom I-abl escape-conv dense bush.nom whithin buʁ-ul-du. hide.intr-pass-pst ‘Having escaped from me, Alim had to hide in the dense bushes.’ OR ‘Having escaped from me, Alim managed to hide in the dense bushes.’ Thus, the interpretation of passives derived from patientive verbs depends on the animacy of their argument: the modal meanings arise only with animate participants.
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(34) a. b.
Köp alma-la bol-ʁan-nɨ ücün butaq ešxe many apple-pl ripen-part.pf-gen because.of branch.nom down ijil-in-di. bend-pass-pst ‘The branch bent down because many apples ripened.’ Ručka tüš-ken-ni ücün ešxe ijil-in-di. pen.nom fall-part.pf-gen because.of down bend-pass-pst ‘One had to bend down because the pen fell.’
4. Double passive A specific feature of Balkar not found in other Turkic languages (at least at such a large scale) is the recursive passive.9 The passive morpheme can be applied more than once to any transitive verb. (35) a. b. c.
Madina marat-nɨ ujat-tɨ. Madina.nom Marat-acc wake.up-pst ‘Madina woke up Marat.’ Marat ujat-ɨl-dɨ. Marat.nom wake.up-pass-pst ‘Marat was woken up.’ Marat ujat-ɨl-ɨn-dɨ. Marat.nom wake.up-pass-pass-pst ‘Marat was woken up.’
If the first passive was formed with an -l affix, then its allomorph -n is added to derive the double passive. So the subsequent passives follow the general morphonological rule of passive affix choice defined in section 2.2: stems ending in -l combine with the -n passive affix. There seems to be no grammatical constraint against further passivization. In (36), we find ‘triple’ and even ‘quadruple’ passives built on the verb ‘wake up’ (cf. (35)). (36) a. Marat ujat-ɨl-ɨn-ɨl-dɨ. Marat.nom wake.up-pass-pass-pass-pst ‘Marat was woken up.’ b. ?Marat ujat-ɨl-ɨn-ɨl-ɨn-dɨ. Marat.nom wake.up-pass-pass-pass-pass-pst ‘Marat was woken up.’ However, extended passive chains as in (36) are rarely used. No distinctive semantic change of the verbal meaning is brought about by the addition of the third or forth passive morpheme to the verb stem. At the same time the semantic effects rendered
Functional similarities between passive and causative in Balkar 407
by the double passive affix can be quite significant and in some sense unexpected. In short, they divide into two groups of possible meanings: those introducing the causative subevent (see section 4.1) and those denoting reiteration of the action (see section 4.2).
4.1 The causal meanings of the double passive The major function of the double passive derivation is to reveal a causal relation between two events: an external event (which is, most often, indirectly implied or indicated) and an event denoted by the base verb. This general function suggests several semantic characteristics which include, in particular, the introduction of a backgrounded agent, the deliberate character of the event, or volitionality of the action, denoted by the double passive verb, and the indirect passive meaning which is in many respects similar to the indirect causative meaning.
4.1.1 Passive meaning proper
As shown in section 3.3, passive can function as a decausative and derive an intransitive verb, denoting an event with only one participant. On the other hand, passives can be formed from intransitives to render the idea that the denoted event happened because of some external cause (see section 3.7). Thus, the second passive morpheme attached to a decausative derived by means of the first passive morpheme indicates that the event described by the verb should be treated as the result of some cause or effect. These intransitives are derived verbs and preserve a semantic connection with the base transitive event. That is why the most suitable candidate for an implicit causer is the agent of the basic transitive verb, which was completely eliminated by the single passive derivation and now partly restored. (37) a. b.
Mešok teš-il-gen-di. sack.nom untie-pass-pf-3 ‘The sack got untied (by itself).’ Mešok teš-il-in-ŋen-di. sack.nom untie-pass-pass-pf-3 ‘The sack was untied by somebody.’
Thus the double passive can serve to distinguish the proper passive meaning from its other possible detransitive interpretations (such as decausative, middle, etc.). (38) a. b.
Qoj-la küt-ül-e-di-le. sheep-pl graze-pass-prs-3-pl ‘The sheep graze.’ Qoj-la küt-ül-ün-e-di-le. sheep-pl graze-pass-pass-prs-3-pl ‘The sheep are put to graze (by a shepherd).’
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4.1.2 Deliberateness and volitionality
The opposition between the single and double passive meanings can often be formulated as the opposition between accidental/non-accidental events or non-volitional/volitional actions. (39) a. b.
Kerti bil-in-ŋen-di. truth.nom know-pass-pf-3 ‘The truth was discovered (accidentally).’ Kerti bil-in-il-gen-di. truth.nom know-pass-pass-pf-3 ‘The truth was discovered (as a result of somebody’s inquiry).’
This semantic contrast directly results from the fact that the event expressed by a double passive is considered non-accidental (= caused by an external event) and, in the case of a human implied causer, as volitional/deliberate (cf. (39)). The deliberate character of the event suggests the idea of a special will on the part of the agent to perform the action. Note that in example (40) the causer is the speaker, expressed with the help of the possessive pronoun meni ‘my’: (40) a. Sɨrt-ɨm meni qollu bla qaš-ɨl-ʁan-dɨ. back-1sg I.gen hand with scratch-pass-pf-3 ‘My back was scratched with my hand (it happened accidentally as a non- controlled movement).’ b. Sɨrt-ɨm meni qollu bla qaš-ɨl-ɨn-ŋan-dɨ. back-1sg I.gen hand with scratch-pass-pass-pf-3 ‘My back was scratched with my hand (it was a volitional action).’ The volitional meaning is most often observed with the double passives of experiential verbs. Their single passives normally describe some accidental events, or at least those which do not appear to have a definite cause (to be seen, to be loved). The causal meaning introduced by the double passive usually extends to the idea of some special efforts performed by the stimulus consciously willing to achieve a certain effect on the experiencer. (41) a. Madina kerim-ge kör-ün-e-di. Madina.nom Kerim-dat see-pass-prs-3 ‘Madina is seen by Kerim (accidentally).’ b. Madina kerim-ge kör-ün-ül-e-di. Madina.nom Kerim-dat see-pass-pass-prs-3 ‘Madina is seen by Kerim (Madina makes some special efforts to be seen by Kerim).’ (42) a. Kerim fatima-ʁa süj-ül-gen-di. Kerim.nom Fatima-dat love-pass-pf-3 ‘Fatima liked Kerim.’
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b. Kerim fatima-ʁa süj-ül-ün-ŋen-di. Kerim.nom Fatima-dat love-pass-pass-pf-3 ‘Fatima liked Kerim (because of Kerim’s special efforts, gifts etc.).’ The volitional interpretation is possible only with a human stimulus. If the stimulus is inanimate, the double passive introduces at least implicitly some external event that caused the one denoted by the verb: (43) a. b.
Bu zauluq fatima-ʁa süj-ül-gen-di. this shawl.nom Fatima-dat love-pass-pf-3 ‘Fatima liked the shawl.’ Bu zauluq fatima-ʁa süj-ül-ün-ŋen-di. this shawl.nom Fatima-dat love-pass-pass-pf-3 ‘Fatima liked the shawl (e.g. because it was a gift from her fiancé).’
4.1.3 Indirect passive The term ‘indirect’ used in the title of this section is usually employed to characterize causative derivations. The indirect (or causee-controlled) meaning of the causative is typical of the causatives of transitive verbs or double causative constructions (Kulikov 1993, 1999). In this case, the causer, who is the initiator but not the agent of the action, does not control or participate physically in its performance, and even can be absent when the event takes place. As a rule, indirect causation is interpreted as a kind of command or demand given by the causer to the causee, cf. (44) (Nedjalkov and Sil′nickij 1969/1973; Kulikov 1993, 2001). (44) a. b.
Alim fatima-ʁa kerim-ni mahta-t-tɨ. Alim.nom Fatima-dat Kerim-acc praise-caus-pst ‘Alim let Fatima praise Kerim.’ Fatima alim-ge et-ni eri-t-tir-di. Fatima.nom Alim-dat meat-acc melt.intr-caus-caus-pst ‘Fatima let Alim unfreeze meat.’
Balkar double passives show a striking semantic parallelism with indirect causatives if formed from a verb with a proper passive meaning. In other words, if the basic passive retains the semantic structure of the original verb, i.e. retains the demoted agent either expressed by a prepositional phrase or non-specified, the double passive is used to introduce an external indirect causer of the event. This causer does not participate in the action but initiates it. At the same time, the demoted agent of the transitive verb is now treated as a causee (or a second causer) carrying out an external demand or order. (45) a. b.
Körek alim-ni qollu bla et-il-gen-di. spade.nom Alim-gen by.the.hand.of make-pass-pf-3 ‘The spade was made by Alim.’ Körek alim-ni qollu bla et-il-in-ŋen-di. spade.nom Alim-gen by.the.hand.of make-pass-pass-pf-3 ‘The spade was made by Alim (but ordered by somebody else).’
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(46) a. b.
Inek urla-n-ŋan-dɨ. cow.nom steal-pass-pf-3 ‘The cow was stolen (by the thief).’ Inek urla-n-ɨl-ʁan-dɨ. cow.nom steal-pass-pass-pf-3 ‘The cow was stolen (somebody ordered the thief to steal the cow).’
4.2 The meaning of reiteration Another important function of the double passive is to express the multiple character of the action. This can be explained as follows. One of the grammatical means commonly associated with the meaning of reiteration is reduplication. In fact, the double passive can be analysed as a reduplication of passive affixes. Thus reiteration of the passive affixes is treated as an iconic way to express the iteration of the denoted action. (47) a. b.
Gitara ojna-l-ʁan-dɨ. guitar.nom play-pass-pf-3 ‘The guitar was played on (once).’ Gitara ojna-l-ɨn-ŋan-dɨ. guitar.nom play-pass-pass-pf-3 ‘The guitar was played on (repeatedly).’
(48) a. b.
Stol türt-ül-dü. table.nom push-pass-pst ‘The table was pushed (one movement).’ Stol türt-ül-ün-dü. table.nom push-pass-pass-pst ‘The table was pushed (several movements).’
4.2.1 The meaning of intensification
The correlation between reiteration and intensification is quite common in the languages of the world (Dressler 1968); in other words, doing something many times is commonly treated as equivalent to doing something intensively. Accordingly, double passives can also denote forceful and intense actions. (49) a. b.
Zašcɨq qorq-ul-du. boy.nom fear-pass-pst ‘The boy was frightened.’ Zašcɨq qorq-ul-un-du. boy.nom fear-pass-pass-pst ‘The boy was frightened to death.’
(50) a. Ešik türt-ül-gen-di. door.nom push-pass-pf-3 ‘The door was pushed.’
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b. Ešik türt-ül-ün-ŋen-di. door.nom push-pass-pass-pf-3 ‘The door was pushed (with special force).’ A similar phenomenon is observed for double causative formations: verbs with two causative affixes may express both repeated and intensive causativization; cf. Kulikov 1993: 128 ff., 1999. Apparently, as in the case of double passives, a sequence of two functionally (and sometimes formally) identical affixes can readily be interpreted as denoting repeated or intensive activity.
4.2.2 Reiteration of the pre-final stage
A less obvious modification of the repetitive meaning is the iteration of the stage that precedes the final point (culmination) of the event. The prolongation of the pre-final stage of the action, denoted by the double passive, by no means cancels its finalizing: the action is completed, as the basic passive semantics of affected patient persists. In other words, the whole situation is conceptualized as a single event, but its execution mode differs from that expressed by the simple passive: it is extended and, perhaps, more complicated, i.e. demanding more time and effort to carry out. (51) a. b.
Bu kitap oqu-l-ʁan-dɨ. this book.nom read-pass-pf-3 ‘The book was read.’ Bu kitap oqu-l-un-ŋan-dɨ. this book.nom read-pass-pass-pf-3 ‘The book was read (it took some time and special effort to finish it).’
The semantic properties of the basic verb have much influence on how the meaning of process stage reiteration is understood. If the patient’s change of state is attained by continuous or consecutive directed action, then the double passive derivation will denote the prolongation of this action. Thus, in (51), we find the prolongation of the ‘reading’ action. To have the book read, one should read it from the very beginning to the very end. Example (52) presents a prolongation of the process stage of a decausative event. In this case, there are no obvious complications to the action (these usually arise from some inability on the part of the agent), but still the stage that precedes the final result is prolonged. This meaning is best conveyed with the help of the adverb ‘finally’: (52) a. b.
Zɨjrɨq kij-il-gen-di. dress.nom tear-pass-pf-3 ‘The dress got torn (e.g. once it caught on a nail).’ Zɨjrɨq kij-il-in-ŋen-di. dress.nom tear-pass-pass-pf-3 ‘The dress got torn (e.g. finally, because it was worn for a long time).’
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If the verb denotes a momentary achievement, then the process stage is viewed as a preparation rather than the action itself. This meaning is likely to occur with verbs that retain the notion of the agent’s participation in the action: it is the agent that plans, prepares or arranges the action. In this case, the semantics of an extended first stage merges with the meaning of a non-accidental, volitional event, which, as shown above, can also be rendered by the double passive (see 4.1.2.). A good example is the double passive of the verb ‘kill’. While (53a) simply states the fact of Kerim’s murder, in (53b) this event is presented as a thoroughly planned realization of somebody’s deliberate will. (53) a. b.
Kerim öltür-ül-dü. Kerim.nom kill-pass-pst ‘Kerim was killed.’ Kerim öltür-ül-ün-dü. Kerim.nom kill-pass-pass-pst ‘Kerim was assassinated (the action was thoroughly planned).’
4.3 The polysemy of the double passive meanings It should be mentioned that there is no pre-set lexical rule that defines the choice between different interpretations of the double passive meanings. Most often, the meaning depends on the context of the sentence. Thus (53b) can also have the meaning of intensification, see (54): (54) Kerim öltür-ül-ün-dü. Kerim.nom kill-pass-pass-pst ‘Kerim was murdered brutally.’ Sentence (55) is an example of the iterative–causative polysemy of the double passive: (55) a. Ottun-la zar-ɨl-ʁan-dɨ-la. firewood-pl chop-pass-pf-3-pl ‘Firewood was chopped.’ b. Ottun-la zar-ɨl-ɨn-ŋan-dɨ-la. firewood-pl chop-pass-pass-pf-3-pl ‘Firewood was chopped (it was somebody’s order / it was a long, repetitive action/it was planned beforehand and finally it happened).’
5. Discussion In this section, we shall discuss two problems that relate to the causal meaning of the passive construction, which is surely one of the most remarkable features of the Balkar passive. We begin by formulating a few assumptions on the semantic sources of this meaning and then outline the points of interaction between the causal passive and the causative.
Functional similarities between passive and causative in Balkar 413
5.1 Causes and effects As suggested in Sevortjan (1962), many Proto-Turkic verbs were originally labile. Then the -l-derivation (passive to become) and the -t- and -r-derivations (future causatives) started to be used to distinguish transitive and intransitive verbs. This means that in its basic function the passive morpheme was used as a detransitivizer. It removed the most active element of the verb’s semantic structure (agent) and profiled the verbal meaning as denoting an event that happened to the patient and resulted in some change of the patient’s state or properties. Thus, the presupposed direct participation of the agent in the event is semantically bleached, giving rise to a much more abstract meaning of some distant indirect influence, which is the cause of the patient’s change of state. This evolution led to an extension of the passive, in particular to the possibility of deriving passives from intransitives. With one‑place patientive verbs denoting a change of state of the single argument, the passive is used to introduce some external event which causes or initiates this change of state. Thus arose the causal meaning of the passive. The possibility of recursive passive derivation seems to be based on the causal meaning of the passive. Since Balkar -l- is able to introduce a new (causing) subevent, this morpheme can, in principle, be applied as many times as needed, forming unlimited derivational chains. Finally, it should be noted that even the meaning of the proper passive can be regarded as a special case of the causal passive. This claim can be supported by the list of the means for the expression of the agent given in section 3.1. All such means refer to a variety of semantic relations between the event and its starting point, which, when personified, may (or may not) coincide with the agent of the basic transitive verb.
5.2 Causal passive and causative Given that the passive can express causal relations, it is not surprising that it shares some functional characteristics with the causative. The most general common property is that both the causative and the causal passive can denote causal relations external to the semantic structure of the event. In other words, these derivations can be used to indicate two related events: the one denoted by the verb and an implied one that has influenced the former. This results in the development of indirect meaning, typically rendered by recursive derivations. The second common feature is that both the causative and the double passive derivations can also express the iterative meaning and the meaning of intensification. Finally, both the causative and the causal passive treat animate (and agentive) arguments of one‑place verbs in a similar way. In both cases, the causal influence applies to agentive properties of the primary argument rather than to the entire event. This claim is illustrated by (56). Example (56a) is a causative derivation from an intransitive verb with a non-human primary argument. It is the causer that both initiates and controls
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the action. In example (56b), the causer and a human causee share the agentive properties, with the former being the initiator of the action and the latter the controller of its execution. (56) a. b.
Alim taš-nɨ tep-tir-di. Alim.nom stone-acc move-caus-pst ‘Alim moved the stone.’ Alim kerim-ni tep-tir-di. Alim.nom Kerim-acc move-caus-pst ‘Alim let Kerim move (asked/forced/allowed).’
The important point is that the relations between the causer and the causee are strongly reminiscent of the agent-oriented modality rendered by the passive of one-place verbs with a human subject. As shown in section 3.7, there are two main interpretations of the derived verb in this case: the main participant is obliged to perform the action due to some external cause or managed it thanks to some circumstances. Compare this with sentence (56b) in which the ambiguity of the role of the causee in the event is very similar: ‘Kerim had to move’ (because he was forced or asked) or ‘Kerim managed, succeeded to move’ (because he was allowed to do it). The fact that the causative can develop into a passive has been observed in different languages, including some Turkic languages such as Yakut and Tuvan (V. Nedjalkov 1964; Haspelmath 1990; I. Nedyalkov 1991; Kulikov 2001). The passive derivation in Balkar provides an example of the grammatical development in the opposite direction: the expansion of passive into the causative domain. The multidirectional grammatical development in genetically related languages is a challenging fact that should be taken into account in the study of valence-changing derivations.
Acknowledgements The data presented in this paper were collected by the authors during the field trips to the village of Verxnjaja Balkarija organized by the department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics of the Moscow State University in August 2002, 2004 and supported by the Russian Foundation for Humanities and by the Russian Foundation for Fundamental Research (grant 05-06-80258‑a). We would like to thank the head of our department Prof. Aleksandr Kibrik, under whose patronage the trip took place, to the organizers of the trip Konstantin Kazenin and Sergei Tatevosov, and to all the participants of this field trip, especially M.Bogdankevič and A.Podobrjaev. We are highly indebted to the native speakers whose selfless and patient work made this paper possible. We also take this opportunity to express our cordial gratitude to Leonid Kulikov who has encouraged us at every stage of our work.
Functional similarities between passive and causative in Balkar 415
Abbreviations 1 first person, 3 third person, abl ablative, acc accusative, caus causative, conv converb, dat dative, gen genitive, intr intransitive, ipfv imperfective, loc locative, nom nominative, obl oblique, part participle, pass passive, pf perfective, pl plural, prs present, pst past, refl reflexive, sg singular, st stem, tr transitive.
Notes 1. See, for example, Zinnatulina (1969), Kharitonov (1963), Sevortjan (1962) on actancy derivations in other Turkic languages. 2. The distribution of -l/-n is discussed in 1.2. 3. Balkar possesses a specialized reciprocal morpheme ‑š. 4. The same phenomenon, according to Irina Nikolaeva (p.c.), seems to be attested in Udihe (Tungus/Altaic). 5. It is worth mentioning that inanimate NPs with event semantics (e.g., nominalizations) have a causal meaning in the ablative case (aminat qorqχan-nan ‘because Aminat was afraid’). It is possible that some animate NPs in ablative have an agentive reading due to this causal relation. 6. Indeed, all Balkar verbs that allow the usual passive allow the potential meaning as well, particularly in the present tense. Syntactically, there is no difference between the usual passive and the potential passive. 7. The only exception is Chuvash where -l/-n derivations are morphologically and semantically indistinguishable, see also note 3. 8. Levin and Rappaport Hovav (1995: 102ff) note that certain verbs of spatial configuration are unergative when they take an agentive subject (Terry leaned against the wall) but unaccusative when they take a non-agentive subject (The ladder leaned against the wall). 9. On double passives in Turkic see Özkaragöz (1986).
References Ackerman, F. and Moore, J. 1994. “Valence and the semantics of causatives”. Proceedings of the annual meeting of Berkley Linguistic Society, 1–13. Aliev, U.B. 1973. Sintaksis karačaevo-balkarskogo jazyka [Syntax of the Karachay-Balkar language]. Moscow: Nauka. Bogdankevič, M. 2003. Ponižajuščije aktantnyje derivacii v tjurkskix jazykax [Valence decreasing derivations in Turkic languages]. Manuscript, Moscow State University. Comrie, B. and Polinsky, M. (eds). 1993. Causatives and Transitivity [Studies in language companion series 23]. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Dressler, W. 1968. Studien zur Verbalen Pluralität: Iterativum, Distributivum, Durativum, Intensivum in der Allgemeinen Grammatik, im Lateinischen und Hethitischen. Wien: Böhlau.
416 Ekaterina Lyutikova and Anastasia Bonch-Osmolovskaya Haspelmath, M. 1990. “The grammaticization of passive morphology”. Studies in Language 14 (1): 25–72. Haspelmath, M. 1993. “More on the typology of inchoative/causative verb alternations”. In Causatives and Transitivity [Studies in language companion series 23], B. Comrie and M. Polinsky (eds), 87–120. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Hetzron, R. 1976. “Two principles of genetic reconstruction”. Lingua 38: 89–106. Kemmer, S. 1993. The Middle Voice. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Kulikov, L. 1993. “The ‘second causative’: A typological sketch”. In Causatives and transitivity. [Studies in language companion series 23], B. Comrie and M. Polinsky (eds), 121–54. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Kulikov, L. 1999. “Remarks on double causatives in Tuvan and other Turkic languages”. Journal de la Société Finno-Ugrienne 88: 49–58. Kulikov, L. 2001. “Causatives”. In Language Typology and Language Universals. An International Handbook. Volume 2, M. Haspelmath, E. König, W. Oesterreicher and W. Raible (eds), 886–98. Berlin etc.: Walter de Gruyter. Levin, B. and Rappaport Hovav, M. 1995. Unaccusativity: At the Syntax–Lexical Semantics Interface. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. McCawley, J. 1976. “Remarks on what can cause what.” In The grammar of Causative Constructions [Syntax and semantics 6], M. Shibatani (ed.), 117–29. New York: Academic Press. Nedjalkov, V. 1964. “O svjazi kauzativnosti i passivnosti [On the relations between causativity and passivity]”. Učenye zapiski Baškirskogo Universiteta 21 [Papers of Bashkir University 21]. Serija filologičeskix nauk [Philological series] 9 (13): 301–10. Nedjalkov, V. 1966. “Ob areal’nyx universalijax (na materiale kauzativnyx glagolov) [On areal universals: causative data] In Konferencija po problemam izučenija universal’nyx svojstv jazykov [Conference on universal characteristics of languages], 55–8. Moskva: Nauka. Nedjalkov, V. 1995. “Some typological parameters of converbs”. In Converbs in cross-linguistic perspective, M. Haspelmath and E. König (eds), 97–126. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Nedjalkov, V. and Sil′nickij, G. 1969. “Tipologija kauzativnyx konstrukcij [Typology of causative constructions]”. In Tipologija kausativnyx konstrukcij. Morfologičeskij kausativ, Xolodovič, A. (ed.), 5–19. Leningrad: Nauka. [English translation: Nedjalkov, V and Sil′nickij, G. 1973. “The typology of morphological and lexical causatives”. In Trends in Soviet theoretical linguistics [Foundations of language. Supplementary series 18], F. Kiefer (ed.), 1–32. Dordrecht: Reidel]. Nedyalkov, I. 1991. “Recessive accessive polysemy of verbal affixes”. Languages of the World 1: 4– 31. Özkaragöz, I. 1986. “Monoclausal double passive in Turkish”. In Studies in Turkish linguistics, D. I. Slobin and K. Zimmer (eds), 77–93. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Sevortjan, E. 1962. Affiksy glagoloobrazovanija v azerbajdžanskom jazyke. Opyt sravnitel’nogo issledovanija [Affixes of verbal derivation in Azerbaijanian. A comparative analysis]. Moscow: Izd-vo vostočnoj literatury. Xaritonov, L.N. 1963. Zalogovye formy glagolov v jakutskom jazyke [Voice in Jakut]. MoscowLeningrad. Zinnatulina, K.Z. 1969. Zalogi glagola v sovremennom tatarskom literaturnom jazyke [Voice in contemporary Tatar]. Kazan.
chapter 19
Case marking, possession and syntactic hierarchies in Khakas causative constructions in comparison with other Turkic languages Alexander Letuchiy Russian State University for Humanities
The present article deals with case marking of arguments in Turkic causative constructions. I show that the rule proposed by Comrie (1976) (‘the causee occupies the highest vacant position’) does not explain the case marking facts found in Khakas, Altai and Balkar. In fact, other factors, such as word order, markedness/unmarkedness of the initial direct object and the lexical class of the causee are relevant. The lower the direct object is in definiteness and topicality, the higher the status of the causee, and the higher the chance it will get accusative marking. This conclusion is supported by data from Turkic reflexive constructions. In the conclusion I classify the factors of case marking in Turkic causative constructions.
1. Introduction This paper offers an analysis of case marking in causative constructions derived from non-causative transitive constructions in Khakas and a comparison with analogous constructions in some other Turkic languages, including Balkar, Altai and Turkish. I will show that case marking in causative constructions in different Turkic languages depends on different factors, including pragmatic, semantic and syntactic ones. Khakas is a language of the South Siberian subbranch of the North Eastern branch of the Turkic family spoken by more than 60 000 people in South Siberia (Russia). As in most Turkic languages, in Khakas a direct object can either take the accusative case marker or be unmarked (in which case it does not differ from the nominative). Usually it are non-referential, non-topical or indefinite objects that remain unmarked. This form is usually called ‘unmarked accusative’. In section 2, I discuss the problem of case marking in causative constructions and present Comrie’s (1976) rule Paradigm Case. In section 3, instances of violation of this rule are examined and explained by different groups of factors. In section 4, distinctive syntactic properties of sentences with accusative causees are summarized. In section 5, I analyze rules of case marking in causative constructions with an omitted initial direct
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object. Finally, in section 6, I draw conclusions about factors relevant for case marking in causative constructions in Turkic languages. In this paper, data from the Sagay dialect of the Khakas language will be discussed. The data were collected in 2001 and 2002 in Kazanovka village (Khakasia Republic) during expeditions of the Russian State University for the Humanities. The Sagay data used in this paper were mainly collected from interviews with native speakers of Sagay, who often disagree. That is why I have tried to use only data confirmed by several informants. I have also used some examples from texts collected during the field trips in 2001–2002. However, these examples are not numerous, because causative derivates are rather infrequent in (these) texts. The examples are transliterated from the Khakas alphabet, which is based on Cyrillic script.
2. Case marking in causative constructions Case marking of the arguments in causative constructions has attracted the attention of linguists for the last decades (see, for example, the contributions in Shibatani (1976), and Xolodovič (1969)). The most important aspect of this problem is the case marking of the causee, i.e. the initial subject, which becomes an object when the causer occupies the subject position. The meaning of a causative (derived) verb includes a combination of two predicates: ‘caus(ation)’ and the basic predicate. Correspondingly, the subject of the initial verb (causee) has two sets of properties — properties of the patient of caus and of the subject of the initial verb (which is often agentive) — at the same time. On the one hand, the causee is the agent of the dependent predication, encoding the caused situation. On the other hand, it is the patient of the main predication, encoding the causation. The causee cannot be encoded as a subject. That is why a coding conflict between the causee and the initial object(s) of transitive verbs can arise. Kozinsky and Polinsky (1993: 180) showed that most languages tend to avoid coding conflicts. A coding conflict is ‘the absolute identity in the marking of two or more distinct grammatical, semantic or pragmatic functions by free or bound segmental elements and/or by suprasegmental elements’ (Kozinsky and Polinsky 1993: 180).1 Most languages follow one of two main strategies for marking the causee: they either (i) follow syntactic rules, based on the valency structure of the initial verb or (ii) choose a way of marking the causee depending on its semantic properties, connected with the type of causation. In many languages, the case marking of the causee is determined by the case marking of the arguments of the initial non-causative verb. These languages follow a wellknown rule formulated in Comrie (1976): Comrie’s rule (Paradigm Case) In the causative construction, the causee (the original subject) occupies the high-
Case marking, possession and syntactic hierarchies in Khakas causative constructions 419
est vacant position in the hierarchy Subject>Direct object (do)>Indirect object (io) (>Oblique object). Comrie discusses many examples of languages in which case marking in causative constructions follows this rule (Italian, Hindi, Georgian, Turkish, etc.). In all these languages, the marking of the causee depends on the argument structure of the initial verb (intransitive, transitive or ditransitive). Consider the following examples from Turkish (Comrie 1976: 263, 268):
(1) Mahmut oguz-u kork-ut-uyor. Mahmud Oguz-acc (do) fear-caus-prs ‘Mahmud frightens Oguz.’
(2) Dišči mektub-u müdür-e imzala-t-tı. dentist letter-acc (do) boss-dat (io) sign-caus-pst ‘The dentist made the boss sign the letter.’
(3) Dišči hasan-a mektub-u müdür tarafından göster-t-ti. dentist Hasan-dat (io) letter-acc (do) boss by (obl) show-caus-pst ‘The dentist made the boss show the letter to Hasan.’
In (1), the causee is marked with the accusative case, because the initial verb is intransitive and the position of the direct object is vacant. In (2), the causee receives the dative marking, because the direct object position is already occupied by the noun ‘letter’. In (3) it is marked as a by-phrase, because the positions of both the direct and the indirect object are occupied. In Turkish causative constructions derived from transitive verbs, the causee cannot take the position of the do, even when the initial do is omitted. All verbs have an inherent characteristic (‘transitive’ vs. ‘intransitive’), which does not depend on the overt presence of the arguments. At the same time, there are many languages which do not obey any such syntactic rule. A number of these languages were analyzed by Cole (1983), who showed that in many languages (Hebrew, Hungarian, Kannada, etc.) the marking of the causee is determined by its role properties, which, in turn, depend on the semantics of the initial verb and on the semantic type of causation. For instance, in Hungarian, the causee of the sentence ‘the man made the boy cough’ can get different marking depending on the causation type: if the man ordered or asked the boy to cough, the NP ‘boy’ is not treated as a patient and is marked by the instrumental; if the man performed some action(s) that could cause the boy to cough, the boy is marked by the accusative (Hetzron 1976: 394; morphological glosses are mine):
(4) a. Köhögtettem a gyerekkel. cough.caus.1sg det boy:ins ‘I had the boy cough.’ (by asking him to do so)
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b. Köhögtettem a gyereket. cough.caus.1sg det boy:acc ‘I induced the boy to cough.’ (by my actions) The authors of many typological works on causatives (see, for example, Kulikov 1994) suggest that the case marking of arguments in causative constructions can be determined either by strictly syntactic properties of the initial and derived verb (Turkish, Georgian etc.) or by their semantic properties such as causation type or inherent semantics of the initial verb (Hebrew, Hungarian etc.), or by their interaction. Yet there exists at least a theoretical possibility that it can be influenced by other groups of factors. Some data of Turkic languages seem to support this suggestion. For instance, in Tuvinian (Kulikov 1998), case marking in causative constructions generally follows Comrie’s rule. However, if the ‘initial’ direct object of a causative derived from a transitive verb is unmarked for case, the causee can get accusative marking:
(5) Ašak Bayïr-nï inek oorla-t-kan. old man:nom Bayïr-acc cow steal-caus-pst ‘The old man made Bayïr steal a cow.’
Absence or presence of case marking in Tuvinian and other Turkic languages depends on pragmatic properties of the NP: unmarked forms are normally chosen for non-referential, indefinite or non-topical NPs (see, among others, Murav’jeva 1989; Kulikov 1998; this phenomenon was described from the turkological point of view in Baskakov 1975, Kornfilt 1987 a.o.). This means that in Tuvinian, case marking in causative constructions is influenced by pragmatic factors. Below we shall try to single out the pragmatic factors influencing the syntax of causative constructions in Khakas and (in less detail) in two other Turkic languages, Altai and Balkar.2
3. Case marking in Khakas, Altai and Balkar causative constructions 3.1 Case-marking patterns Causative derivates in Khakas are formed from most transitive and intransitive verbs. There are several causative suffixes (-γys-, -ir-, -kir-, -t-, -tyr-), the most productive suffix being ‑tyr- (-dyr-/-tir-/-dir-). In most cases each verb can combine only with one of these suffixes to build the causative form, but the causative form of the verb is- ‘drink’ can be built by means of suffixes -tir-, -ir- or -irt-, the last of these being initially a combination of two causative suffixes. The contemporary language does not give any evidence that these variants of the causative form differ in their meaning or syntactic behaviour. Khakas causative constructions show several patterns of case marking, where there are several case options for both the initial object and the causee. A problematic case in
Case marking, possession and syntactic hierarchies in Khakas causative constructions 421
Khakas is analogous to what Kulikov (1998) observed in Tuvinian. These are the constructions with causative verbs derived from basic transitive verbs where the initial do remains unmarked for case. These constructions allow two alternative strategies: the causee can be marked either with the accusative case (as in example 6), or with the dative (7):
(6) S’erg’ej maša-ny kizi-ler syjlat-tyr-γan. Sergey Masha-acc person-pl feed-caus-pst ‘Sergey made Masha feed people.’
(7) Iže-zi pala-zy-na vino is-tir-gen. mother-3sg child-3sg-dat wine drink-caus-pst ‘The mother made her child drink wine.’
Causees usually cannot be accusative when the initial do is also overtly marked: a causative construction with two marked accusatives is in many cases ungrammatical, cf. (8):
(8) Pastax toγasš’y-zy-na/-*n mašyna-ny š’un-dur-š’e. boss worker-3sg-dat/-acc car-acc wash-caus-prs ‘The boss makes his worker wash the car.’
However, some informants consider such constructions possible, though highly improbable:
?? (9) Pastax toγasčy-zy-n mašyna-ny š’un-dur-γan. boss worker-3sg-acc car-acc wash-caus-pst ‘The boss made the worker wash his car.’
This case-marking pattern seems to result from a direct translation from Russian. Russian has no productive morphological causative, and the basic causative meaning is expressed in a biclausal construction where two accusative NPs are governed by two different verbs: the initial verb and the causative verb zastavljat’ ‘force, cause’. Another marking pattern violating Comrie’s rule is observed in (10): (10) Maša vas’a-ny pu sok-taŋ is-tir-š’e. Masha Vasja-acc this juice-ins drink-caus-prs ‘Masha gives Vasja this juice to drink.’ The object sok ‘juice’, initially accusative, receives the instrumental case, the causee accusative.3 Instrumental marking is usually found in constructions with the so called ingestive verbs (‘eat’, ‘drink’, etc.).4 So causative constructions with these verbs allow three marking patterns (cf. 10 and 11a,b): (11) a. Maša vas’a-γa sok iz-irt-č’e. Masha Vasja-dat juice drink-caus-prs ‘Masha gives Vas’a juice to drink.’
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b. Maša vas’a-ny sok iz-irt-če. Masha Vasja-acc juice drink-caus-prs ‘Masha gives Vas’a juice to drink.’ The ‘instrumental’ marking pattern is probably another result of Russian influence. In Russian, an inanimate object of the verbs kormit’ ‘feed’ and poit’ ‘make drink’ is marked by the instrumental case: (12) a. b.
Ja je-m mjas-o. I.nom eat-prs.1sg meat-acc ‘I am eating meat.’ Mam-a korm-it menja mjas-om. mother-nom feed-3sg I.acc meat-ins ‘My mother feeds me meat.’
Resulting from Russian influence, this marking pattern is nevertheless motivated by role properties of the instrumental object, which combines the feature of a prototypical patient (being affected in course of the action) and those of an instrument. So the Khakas causative constructions derived from transitive verbs show five marking patterns, as is shown in Table 1. Table 1. Patterns of causative construction in Khakas Causee
Initial do
Example
1. 2. 3.
dat dat acc
acc unmarked unmarked
(8) (11a) (11b)
4. 5.
acc acc
acc instr
(9) (10)
Note: Unproductive patterns are shaded.
Pattern 5 is limited to ingestive verbs. Pattern 4 is extremely rare and perhaps a calque of the case-marking pattern in corresponding Russian sentences. The opposition between accusative and unmarked forms of the object (1 vs. 2 and 3 vs. 4) is not confined to causative constructions and is not directly connected with any of its properties (Murav’jeva 1989; Kuznecova 2002). I will mainly concentrate on the factors determining the choice between accusative and dative marking of the causee both when the direct object is accusative and when it remains unmarked (pattern 1 vs. 4 and 2 vs. 3). Pattern 2 is more widespread than pattern 3: there are native speakers who only admit 2, but no speakers who admit only 3. At the same time, in some examples pattern 3 seems to be judged more appropriate than pattern 2.
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3.2 Factors relevant for causee case marking in causative constructions 3.2.1
Case marking of initial objects
When the initial object is unmarked, the causee is either dative or accusative (patterns 2 and 3). When the initial object is marked with the accusative morpheme, the causee is normally dative (pattern 1; exceptions are very rare). In studies of Turkic languages, variants of marking the initial objects and properties of unmarked objects have been among the most discussed problems. As regards the Khakas language, properties of the unmarked object are discussed in Kuznecova (2002). Pattern 1 follows Comrie’s rule. The interpretation of two other cases depends on whether we treat unmarked patients as full-fledged direct objects or as a kind of incorporated object (as suggested in Murav’jeva 1989), or at least not proper direct objects. This second approach looks attractive because the unmarked objects in Khakas do not show the full range of syntactic properties of direct objects. In passive constructions derived from causative verbs, the opposition of patterns 1 vs. 2 and 3 is not present: the causee is always dative, cf. (13) and (14): (13) Čaj vas’a-neŋ xys-xa iz-irt-il’-š’e. tea Vasja-ins girl-dat drink-caus-pass-prs ‘Tea is given to the girl (to drink) by Vasja.’ (14) *Čaj vas’a-neŋ xys-ty iz-ir-t-il’-š’e. tea Vasja-ins girl-acc drink-caus-pass-prs This means that constructions following pattern 3 cannot be passivized. A possible explanation is that unmarked NPs are not proper direct objects. That is why they cannot be raised to the subject position.5 Murav’jeva (1989: 98) argued that in some Turkic languages (for example in Turkish and Tuvinian) unmarked NPs in many respects show a lower degree of independence than marked ones. For instance, unlike marked objects, they cannot be separated from the verb. On the other hand, promoted subjects of passive constructions are highly topical, which should be incompatible with the indefinite, rhematic, non-referential status of unmarked objects. Besides, a passive construction derived from a causative construction of pattern 3 (accusative–unmarked) would be transitive, whereas other passive constructions in Khakas are normally intransitive. If unmarked objects are not proper direct objects, the syntactic position of a direct object remains vacant and can be occupied by the causee, as in pattern 3. However, this interpretation still suggests that we should describe the factors influencing the choice between patterns 2 and 3, both possible with unmarked, i.e. non-referential, non-topical, indefinite, arguments.
3.2.2
Formal class of the causee
The choice between patterns 2 and 3 depends in part on whether the causee is expressed by a pronoun or an NP headed by a noun. Pronominal causees are marked with the
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accusative marker more frequently than other NP types: (15) a. b.
Iže-zi vas’a-γa/?-ny süt iz-ir-š’e. mother-3sg Vasja-dat/-acc milk drink-caus-prs ‘His mother makes Vasja drink milk.’ Iže-zi a-γa/-ny süt iz-ir-š’e. mother-3sg he-dat/-acc milk drink-caus-prs ‘His mother makes him drink milk.’
On the other hand, if the causee is an NP headed by a possessive noun (=noun marked with a possessive suffix), accusative marking is highly improbable: (16) a. b.
Maša ajdo-γa/-ny xys ödis-tir-š’e. Masha Ajdo-dat/-acc girl accompany-caus-prs ‘Masha tells Ajdo to take a girl home.’ Maša xaryndaz-y-na/?-n xys ödis-tir-š’e. Masha brother-3sg-dat/-acc girl accompany-caus-prs ‘Masha tells her brother to take a girl home.’
Three NP types form the hierarchy pronoun > proper noun > possessive noun. NPs higher in the hierarchy are more readily marked by the accusative case when used as a causee in a construction with a causative verb derived from an underlying transitive verb. Non-possessive common nouns usually behave like proper nouns — that is, they are marked by the accusative case more readily than possessive nouns and less readily than pronouns — although this must be further investigated: case marking of common nouns, of course depends on their pragmatic properties. This formal hierarchy correlates with the opposition of ‘above-mentioned vs. not mentioned objects’. Anaphoric pronouns by definition have their antecedents in the previous context. Possessive noun phrases, on the other hand, I believe, tend to introduce objects which are mentioned for the first time. However, these objects are referentially accessible for the addressee. For instance, in (16b), Masha’s brother is already in a sense known to the addressee because the addressee knows Masha. The accusative marking in the position of the causee is accessible to the phrases which belong to lexical categories which have typical pragmatic properties of accusative causees (for example, pronouns are topical and above-mentioned). My data suggest that the accusative marking is characteristic of causees, which either are anaphoric, as pronouns are, or have been mentioned themselves. Possessive and non-possessive nouns also have different pragmatic properties. Possessive nominal phrases are often referentially accessible through their possessors, even if the possessee has not been mentioned before. We conclude that in Khakas, case marking of the causee is sensitive to its pragmatic properties: it distinguishes objects that have been mentioned before from the ones that have not. Possessive objects, which are often introduced by their possessors, are normally expected to be mentioned only once (because in all other cases only their
Case marking, possession and syntactic hierarchies in Khakas causative constructions 425
osssessor needs to be expressed), so possessive causees are mostly marked with the p dative case.
3.2.3
Word order
Some Khakas informants prefer to mark the causee by the accusative when the initial object and the causee are not adjacent to each other:
(17) a. b.
Paba-zy vas’a-ny/*-γa küs-neŋ xyz-y-na father-3sg Vasja-acc/*-dat force-ins girl-3sg-dat pčik-ter ys-tyr-γan. letter-pl send-caus-pst ‘Father forced Vasja to send letters to his girlfriend.’ Paba-zy dima:/*dima-ny süt iz-ir-š’e. father-3sg Dima.dat/*Dima-acc milk drink-caus-prs ‘Father makes Dima drink milk.’
In Khakas, word order seems to be less important for case marking than pragmatic features of the causee and the initial direct object or transitivity. The only exception are constructions with unmarked objects, as these objects prefer the position immediately before the verb. It is possible that the fact that the initial verb in (17) has a dative argument ‘girlfriend’ is also relevant for the case marking of the causee, but the role of this factor has to be investigated further. Word order is more important in Balkar and Altai. Altai causative constructions differ from Khakas ones in a significant way: in Altai the causee tends to stay before the initial object and is more frequently marked with the accusative when it is separated from the verb by two or more NPs, cf. the Altai examples in (18) and (19): (18) a. Bir banga varenje ij-gen učun vova-ny vas’a ja:nak-ka one jar jam send-pst for Vova-acc Vasja grandmother-dat byjan aj-tyrt-kan. thank send-caus-pst ‘Vasja made Vova thank their grandmother, because she sent them a jar of jam.’ b. Bir banga varenje ij-gen učun vas’a vova-ga ja:nak-ka one jar jam send-pst for Vasja Vova-dat grandmother-dat byjan aj-tyrt-kan. thank send-caus-pst ‘Vasja made Vova thank their grandmother, because she sent them a jar of jam.’ Word order is also relevant in the constructions with a second causative:
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(19) Vas’a ja:na-zy-n ajylčy-lar-γa kyzyl araky ič-ir-t-ken. Vasja grandma-3sg-acc guest-pl-dat red vodka drink-caus-caus-pst ‘Vasja told his grandma to give guests wine to drink.’ The initial direct object (kyzyl araky ‘wine’) is unmarked for case. The first causee ajylčylar-γa ‘guests’,6 which is placed to the left of the direct object, has dative marking. The second causee ja:na-zy-n ‘grandmother’ (Acc) is near a dative NP and is marked with accusative case. The same situation holds in Balkar: (20) Vova ynna-ny qonaq-la-γa vino ič-tir-gendi. Vova grandma-acc guest-pl-dat wine drink-caus-pst ‘Vova ordered his grandma to give guests wine to drink.’ Some Altai speakers, probably imitating the Russian pattern, mark the initial object with the instrumental case (especially when it is definite). In this situation the case of the first causee depends on its linear position: when the causee is before the instrumental object, it is accusative; when it occupies the position before the accusative or unmarked initial object, it is dative. For example, in (19) the first causee (ajylčy-lar ‘guestpl’) is dative, because it is followed by the initial object (although it is unmarked). The second causee (ja:na-zy ‘grandmother-3sg’) is accusative. In (21), the first causee occupies the position before the instrumental object and gets the accusative marking. The second causee is marked with the dative morpheme: (21) Vas’a ja:na-zy-na ajylčy-lar-ny kyzyl araky-la ič-ir-t-ken. Vasja grandma-3sg-dat guest-pl-acc red vodka-ins drink-caus-caus-pst ‘Vasja ordered his grandma to give guests wine to drink.’ This dependence between word order and case marking indicates that in the Altai language causative sentences are different from non-causative simple sentences (perhaps they have some properties of biclausal constructions, though this requires a more detailed analysis). A causative verb behaves differently from any non-causative verb — as it can have three objects, two of which can be direct objects. The three objects of a causative verb are connected less strongly than objects in simple clauses and do not influence each other’s case marking: the first and the third object (according to the linear word order) are not connected, so the initial object kyzyl araky ‘wine’ in (19) does not prevent the second causee ja:na ‘grandmother’ from getting the accusative marking. Two non-related accusative NPs governed by one verb are not usual in languages with developed case systems. In Altai, non-causative verbs cannot have two direct objects. This means that the causative verbs constitute a special syntactic class, and the clauses headed by these verbs show properties, which are not characteristic for ‘normal’ monopredicative sentences — an accusative or unmarked argument (kyzyl araky ‘wine’ in example 19) is governed by the initial verb ičir ‘give to drink’), and the unmarked accusative argument (ja:nazyn ‘grandmother’) is governed by the matrix predicate caus.
Case marking, possession and syntactic hierarchies in Khakas causative constructions 427
It would be interesting to find out whether Altai causative constructions really have properties of biclausal constructions.
3.2.4
Declension type of the initial object
Khakas has two types of nominal declension: (1) a standard declension and (2) a possessive declension (declension of nouns with possessive markers). The accusative forms of these two types of nouns are different. Some speakers allow two accusatives when the initial object and the causee belong to different declension types.7 (22) а. b.
Pastax toγasčy-zy-n mašyna-ny š’un-dur-γan. boss worker-3sg-acc car-acc wash-caus-pst ‘The boss made his worker wash the car.’ Pastax *toγasčy-ny mašyna-ny š’un-dur-γan. boss worker-acc car-acc wash-caus-pst ‘The boss made the worker wash the car.’
This factor, not really important in Khakas, is more important in Altai, where possessive nouns are also marked with a different declension from other nouns: if the initial object is possessive, the causee much more readily gets accusative marking. Consider (23) and (24) from Altai: kol-dor-y-n jun-durt-at. (23) Ene-zi pet’a-ny/?-ga mother-3sg Petja-acc/?-dat hand-pl-3sg-acc wash-caus-prs ‘The mother makes Petja wash his hands.’ (24) Erten tura vova pet’a-ga/?-ny üzüm-der-di jun-durt-ty. early morning Vova Petja-dat/?-acc grape-pl-acc wash-caus-pst. ‘(Everyone went to picnic.) In the morning Vova made Petja wash the grapes.’ These facts together with the facts about occurrence before an accusative or instrumental object discussed in section 3.2.3 show rather clearly that in Altai the formal properties of the initial object, the causee and the construction as a whole are generally very relevant. This way of marking is probably connected with the fact that in Turkic languages nouns with possessive affixes of the third person cannot be unmarked for case when used as a direct object. Possessive forms (like kol-dor-yn ‘hands’), marked with the accusative suffix, do not have an unmarked counterpart (in this respect they differ from non-possessive nouns). In a clause like (23), two accusative forms belong to different formal classes, which probably makes accusative marking of both the initial object and the causee more acceptable. The difference between constructions with non-possessive and possessive initial objects is that in the former the causee can be marked with the accusative case, because unmarked objects do not have all the syntactic properties of full-fledged direct objects. In the latter we have no reason to assume that possessive objects do not have all the
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syntactic properties of direct objects — they differ from ‘normal’, non-possessive direct objects only by their morphology. The sections 3.2.3. and 3.2.4 show that in Altai (in fact, also in Balkar), the accusative marking of the causee is the most natural. Only in special cases must the causee be marked with the dative case.
4. Constructions with accusative causees In section 3 it was shown that case marking of the causee (accusative vs. dative) in Khakas causative constructions depends not only on the transitivity/intransitivity of the initial verb, but also on a number of other factors: (i) low/high topicality of the causee; (ii) formal/lexical class of the causee (pronoun ~ noun ~ possessive noun); (iii) word order; (iv) declension type of the causee and the initial object. Sentences with accusative causees show some special referential and syntactic features, which are clearly induced by pragmatic properties of these causees (topicality, definiteness). Specific pragmatic features of the causee, which lead to marking with accusative case, therefore influence syntactic properties of the sentence and the causee. In this section we describe some of these syntactic properties.
4.1 Control of reflexive pronouns and possessive affixes Khakas has a reflexive pronoun pozy ‘self ’. The genitive case of this pronoun is used as a reflexive possessive pronoun. Possessive affixes can also function as possessive reflexive pronouns, i.e., they can be coreferent to some core arguments within a clause. Accusative causees tend to control both reflexive pronouns and reflexive possessive affixes, which is not characteristic of dative causees, cf. (25a) and (25b): (25) a. b.
Ajdo vas’a-ny poz-y-n xyr-yn-dyr-š’a. Ajdo Vasja-acc self-3sg-acc shave-refl-caus-prs ‘Ajdoi makes Vasjaj shave himselfj.’ Ajdo vas’a-γa poz-y-n xyr-yn-dyr-š’a. Ajdo Vasja-dat self-3sg-acc shave-refl-caus-prs ‘Ajdoi makes Vasjaj shave himi.’
In (25a), the reflexive pronoun in the position of a do is controlled by the accusative cause and in (25b) by the subject/causer. (26) shows similar examples with the reflexive pronoun in an attributive position:
Case marking, possession and syntactic hierarchies in Khakas causative constructions 429
(26) a. b.
E:-zi ol kize: poz-y-nyŋ tura-zy-n owner-3sg this person.dat self-3sg-gen house-3sg-acc saja-tyr-š’a. take.apart-caus-prs ‘The housekeeperi asks this manj to take apart hisi house.’ E:-zi ol kizi-ni poz-y-nyŋ tura-zy-n owner-3sg this person-acc self-3sg-gen house-3sg-acc saja-tyr-š’a. take.apart-caus-prs ‘The housekeeperi asks this manj to take apart hisj house.’
In (27b), the accusative causee controls the third person possessive affix -ni/-n (cf. 27a where the same affix is controlled by the causer): (27) a. b.
E:-zi ol kize: tura-zy-n saja-tyr-š’a. owner-3sg this person.dat house-3sg-acc take.apart-caus-prs ‘The housekeeperi asks this manj to take apart hisi house.’ E:-zi ol kizi-ni tura-zy-n saja-tyr-š’a. owner-3sg this person-acc house-3sg-acc take.apart-caus-prs ‘The housekeeperi asks this manj to take apart hisj house.’
The difference in control properties of accusative and dative causees cannot be reduced to a binary opposition: in sentences with accusative causees, reflexives are either controlled by the causee only or they can be controlled by the causee or the causer; in sentences with dative causees, the control belongs either to the causer only or to both the causer and the causee. However, in neither case do dative causees show more control possibilities than accusative causees.
4.2 The meaning of the verb form and the order of derivational affixes In most verb stems in Turkic languages, the derivational affixes are situated in iconic order: if affix A is closer to the stem than affix B, then B modifies the meaning of the stem modified by A. For example, in the prototypical case, kick-recip-caus means ‘cause (somebody) to kick each other’ and kick-caus-recip means ‘cause each other to kick smb.’. This tendency is often violated in Khakas causative constructions. For example, the combination xyr-yn-dyr- ‘shave-refl-caus’ is expected to mean ‘cause smb. to shave himself ’, but in example (28) it actually means ‘cause smb. to shave the causer’: (28) Ajdo vas’a-γa poz-y-n xyr-yn-dyr-š’a. Ajdo Vasja-dat self-3sg-acc shave-refl-caus-prs ‘Ajdoi makes Vasjaj shave himi.’ In sentences with dative causees, the reflexive pronoun pozy ‘self ’ is normally controlled by the sentence subject. In (28) we face a conflict of two control strategies: the reflexive
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pronoun pozyn refers to the subject Ajdo, while the reflexive marker -yn- should refer to the causee Vasja (subject of the initial predication). Examples like (28) show that the rules of reflexive pronoun control are stronger. The above-mentioned violations of the iconicity principle occur in sentences with dative causees, for which, as we have shown, control of reflexives is not characteristic. Native speakers who allow dative causees only, admit both meanings: ‘A causes B to shave B’ and ‘A causes B to shave A’, and their interpretation of the sentence does not depend on the order of the derivational markers: (29) a. b.
Ajdo vas’a-γa saγyl-y-n xyr-yn-dyr-γan. Ajdo Vasja-dat beard-3sg-acc shave-refl-caus-pst ‘Ajdoi caused Vasjaj to shave hisi/j beard.’ Ajdo vas’a-γa poz-y-n xyr-yn-dyr-γan. Ajdo Vasja-dat self-3sg-acc shave-refl-caus-pst ‘Ajdoi caused Vasjaj to shave himi/j.’
Pragmatic factors which are relevant for the syntax of the causative constructions are evidently stronger than strict rules regulating the order of the affixes.
4.3 Initial unmarked object in sentences with accusative causees Murav’jeva (1989: 98) showed that the features of the unmarked forms in Turkish are much less autonomous than marked ones — for instance, they are not able to change their position and they have to occupy the position immediately before the predicate. However, this is not the case in Khakas: they can be separated from the verb by an adjective phrase, or by a nominal phrase. Position of the unmarked accusative form can be flexible or rigid — it depends on the case of the causee. As illustrated in (30), in constructions with accusative causees the word order is more rigid (30) a. Pastax toγasčy-γa pol š’un-dur-š’e. boss worker-dat floor wash-caus-prs b. Pastax pol toγasčy-γa š’un-dur-š’e. boss floor worker-dat wash-caus-prs c. Pastax toγasčy-ny pol š’un-dur-š’e. boss worker-acc floor wash-caus-prs d. *Pastax pol toγasčy-ny š’un-dur-š’e. boss floor worker-acc wash-caus-prs ‘The boss makes the worker wash the floor.’ In (30a) and (30b), where the causee (toγasčy ‘worker’) is marked with the dative case, the unmarked initial direct object can change its position: the causee can stand before the verb and the initial direct object before the causee. This is impossible in (30c) and (30d), where the causee is accusative: in this case, the initial object invariably occupies
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the position right before the verb. Of course, these four variants of the sentence can also differ in their pragmatic properties; here we analyze only their grammatical acceptability. If the causee is marked by the accusative marker, the initial object is less autonomous from the verb and does not behave like a canonical direct object. A natural hypothesis is that accusative marking means that the causee, not the initial object, becomes the direct object, and the initial object must have non-argument status, which is also natural because it is not marked for case, while proper arguments tend to be marked for case.
4.4 Summary of the properties of sentences with accusative causees The phenomena that have been discussed in sections 4.1–4.3 show that causative constructions with accusative causees form an autonomous class of constructions, which differ from simple sentences. Perhaps this means that the causative construction with an accusative causee is a biclausal structure: the initial object and the verb form a clause, separate from the clause, in which the subject and the causee occur (the structure is (S CauseeAcc (Initial object Verb)), opposed to (S CauseeDat Initial object Verb) in sentences with dative causees). Though each clause has to have its own predicate, the question about the predicate of the external clause remains open — perhaps the predicate caus belongs to the ‘big’ clause. If this is the case, the phenomena, discussed in 4.1–4.3 are explained by the following rule: arguments of the embedded predicate cannot move across the boundary between the two clauses: (S CauseeAcc (Initial object Verb)) vs.(S CauseeDat Initial object Verb) (cf. 3.3.). As was shown in 3.1–3.2, accusative causees tend to control reflexive pronouns and suffixes, which is also not characteristic for dative causees. It makes accusative causees similar to subjects and partially proves biclausal properties of constructions with accusative causees. Though not only subjects but also topics control reflexives, the word order shows that our examples have something to do with subject properties of accusative causees. At the same time the properties of constructions with accusative causees may be connected with the properties of the causee itself (cf. section 3): high topicality of accusative causees seems to make them possible antecedents of reflexives. Interestingly, we see that some properties of the causee (e.g. topical/non-topical) correlate with the properties of initial direct objects (an autonomous object vs. a nonindependent argument with a rigid position before the verb). In Table 2, the main features of the constructions with accusative and dative causees are summarized. We have compared the three most common case-marking patterns in causative constructions and can conclude that speakers of Khakas follow one of two strategies of case marking choice. For certain speakers, case marking in a causative construction is fully determined by the syntactic properties of the corresponding non-causative construc-
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Table 2. Features of constructions with accusative and dative causees
Causee Construction Initial direct object Word order
Construction with an accusative causee
Construction with a dative causee
Topical, definite Biclausal/not prototypically monoclausal Non-autonomous Rigid
Non-topical, indefinite Monoclausal Autonomous Free
tion. With causatives derived from transitive verbs, these speakers invariably mark the causee with the dative case (case-marking patterns 1 and 2). This is a syntactically-oriented strategy, which follows the predictions made in Comrie 1976. There is another group of speakers, who, when choosing the case-marking pattern in a causative construction, also take into account different pragmatic factors (see section 3). This strategy can be called pragmatically-oriented. The pragmatically-oriented strategy does not treat causative constructions as a result of a syntactic derivation: on the contrary, case marking in causative constructions is based on properties of the derived constructions. Following this strategy, a speaker uses pattern 3 and even pattern 4 (acc–acc).
5. Causative constructions without direct objects In sections 3 and 4 we observed that case marking of the causee in Khakas causative constructions depends on the argument structure of the initial verb and certain properties of the arguments of the causative verb, the causee and the direct object. In this section, I am going to have a look at causative constructions where the initial direct object is not overtly present. Two types of causative constructions will be discussed here: causative constructions in the passive usage (these constructions are syntactically intransitive), and causative constructions with an omitted initial object.
5.1 Causatives in passive usages The passive–causative polysemy, which is quite common typologically (cf., for instance, Nedjalkov and Sil’nickij 1969; Baskakov 1975; Shibatani 1985; Galiamina 2001), is also widespread in Turkic languages, cf. examples from Tofalar (31) and Khakas (32): (31) (Galiamina 2001: 187; Nedjalkov and Sil’nickij 1969) Men bo emshee emne-dir-men. I this doctor.dat treat-caus-fut.1sg ‘I will be treated by this doctor.’
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(32) Paba-m xyr-tyr-š’a parikmaxer-γa. father-1sg shave-caus-prs hairdresser-dat ‘My father has a shave by the hairdresser.’ Diachronically, this type of passive construction can go back to the full variant of the causative construction with reflexive-causative (reflexive-permissive) meaning: ‘X lets Y to beat X’ → ‘X is beaten by Y’ (see, e.g. Haspelmath 1990); however, the diachrony of this construction remains rather unclear. In the ‘passive causative’ construction the agent/causee is always in the dative case, cf. (32) above and (33): (33) *Paba-m xyr-tyr-š’a parikmaxer-dy. father-1sg shave-caus-prs hairdresser-acc ‘My father has a shave by the hairdresser.’ At the same time, in the parallel construction with a reflexive pronoun in the direct object position, the causee can be accusative, though this marking is rather marginal: (34) Paba-m poz-y-n xyr-tyr-š’a parikmaxer-dy. father-1sg self-3sg-acc shave-caus-prs hairdresser-acc ‘My father makes the hairdresser shave him.’ Therefore, the causee in the ‘passive causative’ construction cannot take the accusative case, while this does not hold for the causee in the canonical causative construction, which is exemplified by (34). This observation is not surprising, since the dative marking is generally much more acceptable for the demoted subject of a passive construction than accusative marking.
5.2 do-omission in sentences with causative meaning In colloquial speech, non-elliptical causative constructions (with all arguments present) are not very common. Frequently, either the causee or the initial direct object is omitted. We could expect that in sentences with omitted objects causees will be more easily marked with the accusative case than in their full counterparts. However, this is not the case in Turkish, cf. (35): (35) Dün o bana o.kadar ye-dir-di yesterday (s)he I.dat/*acc so.much eat-caus-pst ki yürü-ye-me-di-m. that walk-can-neg-pst-1sg ‘Yesterday she fed me so much that I couldn’t walk.’ The verb ye ‘eat’ is transitive, therefore, according to Comrie’s rule, the causee should be marked with the dative. This is what we also observe in example (35) where the direct
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object is not present. Direct object omission, which is possible only under certain pragmatic conditions (an omitted argument is supposed to be either well known or non-important), does not influence case marking in Turkish. This conforms with the fact that case marking in Turkish causative constructions (as shown in Comrie 1976) is consistently syntactic: it obeys Comrie’s rule and is not influenced by any pragmatic properties of the arguments or by word order — in Turkish causative constructions derived from transitive verbs, the causee is almost always marked with the dative case. According to (Islamov et al. 1967: 156), the situation in Kazakh is the same: (36) Muγalim oqušy-γa žaz-dyr-dy. teacher student-dat write-caus-pst ‘The teacher made the student write.’ (the initial do of the verb žaz‑ is omitted) In sections 3 and 4 I tried to show that in Khakas the pragmatic properties of the initial direct object and the causee are relevant for case marking in causative constructions. However, in clauses with do-omission in Khakas the causee must be marked with the dative: (37) Iže-zi a-γa: iz-irt-ken. mother-3sg (s)he-dat drink-caus-pst ‘His/her mother gave him/her (something) to drink.’ Examples like (37) show that case marking of the causee depends on the lexical class of the verb. The semantics of the verb is- ‘drink’ requires the patient to be present, although not obligatorily expressed in the sentence. On the other hand, the verb sarna ‘sing’ does not obligatorily presuppose that the object is present — we can use this verb to describe a process, not meaning any particular song. Not surprisingly, in sentences like (38) the causee is marked with the accusative case, as it would be with an intransitive verb — it is not even clear whether omission of an initial object has taken place or the verb sarna is really intransitive in (38): (38) Ol pale-ny klas-te sarna-tyr-š’a. he child-acc class-loc sing-caus-prs ‘He makes the child sing in the classroom.’ According to Rassadin (1978), in Tofalar, unlike in Turkish, Kazakh and Khakas, the causee of the verb čy-irt ‘feed’ can be marked with the accusative case if the initial object is omitted. (38) Sen a:lEčžy-ny čy-irt. you guest-acc eat-caus ‘You, feed your guest.’ Case marking in sentences with initial object omission shows us that when the initial object is omitted, the causee should be marked with dative case in a language where Comrie’s rule is obeyed consistently (cf. Turkish), but prototypically takes accusative
Case marking, possession and syntactic hierarchies in Khakas causative constructions 435
case if there are violations of Comrie’s rule in causative constructions with expressed direct objects. In the latter case certain properties of the particular sentence (e.g. referentiality of the arguments) play a role, so it is not surprising that an omitted object is not relevant — as it does not occur in the sentence. In this section we have mainly examined examples of omission of non-referential object. We do not exclude that constructions with omission of a referential above-mentioned or topical object can behave in a different way.
6. Conclusions In the previous sections we observed that in Khakas and some other Turkic languages to Comrie’s rule is often violated. More than that, these violations are systematic and obey their own rules. Table 3 summarizes the main factors influencing case marking in causative constructions in five languages. Table 3. Factors affecting case marking in causative constructions Language
Factors relevant for case marking
Turkish Tuvinian
Argument structure of the verb; transitivity Argument structure of the verb; pragmatic properties of the initial object (definiteness) Argument structure of the verb, pragmatic properties of the initial object, lexical class and pragmatic properties of the causee Word order, case of the initial object
Khakas Altai, Balkar
There are at least two tendencies that can be observed in the languages discussed. On the one hand, in causative constructions derived from transitive verbs, causees, according to their semantic properties, may be more similar to patients than to agents. It is not surprising that many languages develop variants of case marking where causees are marked with the accusative, like prototypical patients (as was mentioned above, in Altai and Balkar, the accusative marking is the most neutral for a causee). On the other hand, the two objects of a causative verb tend to receive different case marking in order to avoid a coding conflict. For native speakers the properties of the causee are relevant, and case marking depends on definiteness, topicality, referentiality and other properties; for direct objects, for example, it is possible to choose between the marked and unmarked form depending on referentiality and topicality. These tendencies reflect a general rule. Causative constructions in Turkic languages tend to behave like all standard, non-derived constructions: the role of the direct object is given to an NP in accordance with the properties of the relevant arguments of the causative verb, and not according to the properties of the verb that the causative is derived from.
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At the same time, in Balkar, Altai, Khakas and Tuvinian languages (see section 3), causative constructions allow two direct objects governed by one verb, while this is impossible with non-causative verbs. In section 4, I have shown that causative constructions with an accusative causee show some features which distinguish them from other monoclausal constructions (see 3.4) — in the future I hope to analyze them further in order to find out whether such causative constructions can be truly called biclausal. Further, it is possible to make a conclusion about properties of case marking in the examined languages. Although case marking of the causee and the initial do in Turkic languages depends on the argument structure of the initial verb, in some of them case marking can also be conditioned by semantic and/or pragmatic factors. It is crucially important to note the Altai case, where the word order (adjacency of the causee to the initial object) influences the case of the causee. In general, case marking depends on pragmatic properties — cf. differences between marked accusative (definite, thematic objects) and unmarked accusative. Case marking in Turkic causative constructions can be influenced by many factors of different types including morphological, syntactic and semantic factors. Comrie’s rule, implies that there is a one-to-one correspondence between the participants of the situation on the semantic level (and arguments of the basic verb) and the syntactic arguments of the causative verb: if the situation has two participants — an agent and a patient — on the semantic level, they must become the subject and the direct object on the syntactic level and the causee of the causative construction must be marked with the dative case. However, there are many examples violating this correspondence between the participants of the situation on the semantic level and syntactic arguments, where two or more factors influencing case marking (pragmatic properties of arguments, word order and so on), can contradict each other — in this case one of the factors can play the most important role. In such cases it is really important where the rule works: in the lexicon, where the number of arguments is fixed, or in the sentence itself, where nominal phrases can be omitted or change their places. For example, in Khakas, accusative marking of the causee in causative constructions formed from transitive verbs is possible, because referential and pragmatic properties of the causee and the initial object are relevant. This means that not only the number of semantic participants of the basic verb plays a role, but also their properties in the particular construction. Semantic and syntactic properties of the initial verb are not enough for predicting the case marking of the causee; it can depend on much more concrete factors, connected with the particular situation, described by an instance of the verb form and the relevant context.
Case marking, possession and syntactic hierarchies in Khakas causative constructions 437
Abbreviations 1 first person, 2 second person, 3 third person, caus causative, dat dative case, pst past tense, loc locative case, prs present tense, fut future tense, sg singular, acc accusative case, pl plural, neg negation, pot potential, rfl reflexive, ins instrumental case.
Acknowledgements I am very grateful to Nina R. Sumbatova and Leonid I. Kulikov for their constant help and useful advice during my work. In addition, I thank all my informants: M. Majnagaševa, T. Kyržynakova and others (Khakas), B. Ooržak (Tuvinian), A. Tazranova (Altai, Telengit dialect), M. Bujmistrova (Balkar) and M. Karadajy (Turkish)– this paper could not have been written without them.
Notes 1. The problem of coding conflict distinguishes the causative derivation from some other ones, such as benefactive. The benefactive derivation includes an argument with the particular syntactic role of indirect object, though this derivation can be prohibited when an indirect object is present in the initial clause. 2. All examples from Khakas, Altai and Balkar are from my field data. I am grateful to all my language consultants, especially to B. Ooržak, A. Tazranova, M. Bujmistrova, M. Maynagaševa. 3. This phenomenon is even more widespread in Balkar and Altai languages, cf. (i): (i) vas’a ja:na-zy-na ajylčy-lar-ny kyzyl araky-la ič-ir-t-ken. Vasja grandma-3sg-acc guest-pl-acc red vodka-ins drink-caus-caus-pst ‘Vasja ordered his grandma to give guests red wine to drink.’ The form soktaŋ in this example cannot be understood as ablative/instrumental with a partitive reading, because the instrumental in Khakas cannot express this meaning. 4. The group of ingestive verbs ‘have in common a semantic feature of taking something into the body or mind …’ (Shibatani and Pardeshi 2002: 94), see also (Masica 1976). 5. This also means that sentences like (13) correspond to non-passive causative constructions following pattern 1 (not 2). 6. In Altai, markedness of the initial object is not relevant for the case marking in causative constructions. 7. Other speakers do not allow two marked accusatives in a causative construction in any case.
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References Baskakov, N. A. (ed.). 1975. Grammatika Xakasskogo Jazyka. [Grammar of Khakas]. Moscow: Nauka. Cole, P. 1983. “The grammatical role of the causee in universal grammar”. International Journal of American Linguistics 49: 115–33. Comrie, B. 1976. “The syntax of causative constructions: Cross-language similarities and divergences”. In Syntax and Semantics. Volume 6. The Grammar of Causative Constructions, M. Shibatani (ed.), 261–312. San Diego and London: Academic Press. Galiamina, J. 2001. “Akcessivno-recessivnaja polisemija pokazatelej zaloga i aktantnoj derivacii” [Accessive–recessive polysemy of voice and valency changing categories]. In Glagol’nyje Kategorii [Verbal categories], V. A. Plungian (ed.), 178–97. Moscow: Russkie slovari. Haspelmath, M. 1990. “The grammaticization of passive morphology”. In Studies in Language 14 (1): 25–71. Hetzron, R. 1976. “On the Hungarian causative verb and its syntax”. Syntax and Semantics. Volume 6. The Grammar of Causative Constructions, M. Shibatani (ed.), 371–98. San Diego and London: Academic Press. Islamov, A., Tursunov, D. and Hasanov, B. 1967. Sopostavitel’naja grammatika russkogo i kazakh skogo jazykov. [Contrastive grammar of Kazakh and Russian]. Alma-Ata: Nauka. Kornfilt, J. 1987. “Turkish and the Turkic languages”. In The World’s Major Languages, B. Comrie (ed.), 619–44. London and Sydney: Croom Helm. Kozinsky, I. and Polinsky, M. 1993. “Causee and patient in the causative of transitive: Coding conflict or doubling of grammatical relations?”. In Causatives and transitivity, B. Comrie and M. Polinsky (eds), 177–241. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Kulikov, L. I. 1994. “Tipologija kauzativnyx konstrukcij v sovremennyx sintaksičeskix teorijax: Opyt rešenija odnoj lingvističeskoj metazadači”. [Typology of causative constructions and contemporary syntactic theories: a solution of one meta-linguistic problem]. In Znak [Sign] (in memory of A. N. Žurinskij). Moscow: Russkij učebnyj centr. Kulikov, L. I. 1998. “Causative constructions in Tuvinian: Towards a typology of transitivity”. In Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Turkish Linguistics. Wiesbaden: Harrasowitz Verlag. Kuznecova, J. 2002. “Nemarkirovannyj akkuzativ v xakasskom jazyke”. [Unmarked accusative in Khakas]. Unpublished manuscript. Masica, C. 1976. Defining Linguistic Area: South Asia. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Murav’jeva, I. A. 1989. “K postrojeniju obščej modeli inkorporacii”. [Towards a general model of incorporation]. In Problemy Semantičeskoy i Sintaksičeskoy Tipologii [Problems of semantic and syntactic typology], V. I. Podlesskaya and L. I. Kulikov. (eds), 83–103. Moscow: Nauka. Nedjalkov, V. P. and Sil’nickij, G. G. 1969. “Tipologija kauzativnyx konstrukcij: morfologičeskij i leksičeskij kauzativy”. [Typology of causative constructions: morphological and lexical causatives]. In Tipologija Kauzativnyx Konstrukcij [Typology of causative constructions], A. A. Xolodovich (ed.), 5–19. Leningrad: Nauka. Nedjalkov, V. P. and Sil’nickij, G. G. 1973. “Typologie der kausativen Konstruktionen”. Folia Linguistica 6 (3/4): 273–90.
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Rassadin, V. I. 1978. Morfologija Tofalarskogo Jazyka v Sravnitel’nom Osveščenii. [Morphology of Tofalar in a comparative perspective]. Moskva: Nauka. Shibatani, M. (ed.). 1976. The Grammar of Causative Constructions. [Syntax and semantics, vol. VI]. New York: Academic Press. Shibatani, M. 1985. “Passives and related constructions: A prototype analysis”. Language 61: 821– 48. Shibatani, M. and Pardeshi, P. 2002. “The causative continuum”. In The Grammar of Causation and Interpersonal Manipulation, M. Shibatani (ed.), 85–126. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Xolodovič, A. A. (ed.). 1969. Tipologija kauzativnyx konstruckcij [A typology of causative constructions]. Leningrad: Nauka.
chapter 20
Transitivity increase markers interacting with verb semantics Evidence from Finno-Ugric languages Elena Kalinina, Dmitriy Kolomatsky, and Alexandra Sudobina Moscow State University
This paper deals with two Finno-Ugric languages, Mari and Komi-Zyrjan. We show that the understanding of valency change in these languages hinges upon verb semantics. In Mari, the transitivity increase marker projects an external agent in the verb argument frame, because the verb may lack an agent in its semantic representation (theoretically all Mari verbs could be unaccusative by nature). In Komi, transitivity increase basically involves introduction of a new animate counteragent into the verbal frame. The exact nature of the semantic relationship between the participants depends on the verb’s lexical semantics. The paper makes an empirical contribution to the study of the lexicon–syntax interface by highlighting some less documented functions of causation/transitivity increase.
1. Introduction In most current research transitivity is understood as a syntactic property of verbs: transitive verbs subcategorize for a direct object NP. Sometimes transitive verbs are defined via the number of arguments, as in Bowers (2002: 183): ‘A predicate is commonly said to be transitive if it has two arguments and intransitive if it has just one’. Under the alternative approach, termed the ‘semantic core approach’ in Testelets (1998), verbs are characterized as transitive or intransitive based on the number and roles of their semantic arguments (Comrie 1978, Dixon 1979). Transitive verbs have two core arguments: agent and patient; intransitive verbs have only one argument in their semantic frame, and it can be either a typical agent (unergative verbs) or a typical patient (unaccusative verbs) (Perlmutter 1978, Burzio 1986, Levin and Rappaport Hovav 1995). As noted in Testelets (2003), transitivity cannot be regarded as a purely semantic classificatory parameter because of its obvious relevance for grammatical relations. However, there is no one-to-one correspondence in the way semantic roles are mapped onto syntactic functions: syntactic subjects can correspond to various semantic roles (agent, experiencer, patient with ‘unaccusative’ verbs, possessor), and the same is true
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of syntactic objects. One can mention multiple examples of mismatches between semantic and syntactic argument structure (Ackermann and Moore 2001), various types of split marking (Dixon and Aikhenvald 2000: 5), diathesis shift (Krifka 2000, 2001; Levin and Rappaport Hovav 2002, a.o.), double objects and possibly some others. Under some approaches, the syntax of verbs is studied without any reference to their semantics (for such an approach see Hale and Keyser 1993). Hopper and Thomson (1980) is an attempt to capture all dimensions of transitivity. In their article transitivity is no longer regarded as a mere verb classification feature: it is presented as a multifactored notion comprising several parameters; this set of parameters characterizes clauses, not just verbs. According to Hopper and Thompson (1980), transitivity increase affects more aspects of a clause than just a change in the argument structure. It is a bundle of interrelated clausal parameters, including (1) (number of) Participants; (2) Kinesis (action vs. non-action); (3) Aspect; (4) Punctuality; (5) Volitionality; (6) Affirmation; (7) Mood; (8) Agency; (9) Affectedness of O(bject); (10) Individuation of O(bject). This framework helps to explain many aspects of grammatical marking (e.g. Accusative/Partitive object marking in Finnish; see also Malchukov (this volume) on A-oriented and O-oriented features) and semantic sideeffects observed in many languages where valency changing suffixes can have aspectual meanings (Xolodovič 1969, Kibrik 1993, Kulikov 1999, Mithun 2000, Reid 2000, Rice 2000 and many others). However, Hopper and Thomson’s hypothesis has also been criticized (cf. Abraham 1983, 1984; as noted in Kulikov 1999). Testelets (1998) argues that Hopper and Thompson’s theory predicts that the classes of grammatical constructions should form a bipolar continuum, while in fact languages have just a small number of constructions defined by the syntactic properties of lexical verbs: ‘It seems obvious that morphosyntactic classes of constructions in most languages do not seem to represent anything like a transitivity continuum with two polar points, as one might expect if Hopper and Thompson’s hypothesis were true. What we really observe are rather scalar systems that include rarely more than several most frequent patterns of predicative constructions’ (Testelets 1998: 31). In this paper we examine data from two Finno-Ugric languages, Mari and KomiZyrjan and make an empirical contribution to the study of the lexicon–syntax interface by highlighting some less documented functions of causation/transitivity increase. In both languages there are valency-increasing verbal suffixes that are applied to intransitive verbs to derive transitives. At the same time, these suffixes express transitivity properties listed in Hopper and Thompson (1980). Therefore, we will further refer to these suffixes as Transitivity Increase markers (similar to those described in Kibrik 1993). Paradoxically, the Mari transitivity increase marker appears also in agent demoting constructions (passives, reflexives, impersonals). This fact makes it plausible to hypothesize that Mari verbs are lexically unaccusative (i.e. verb stems project only internal arguments), while agent demoting operations have to be performed on external arguments. The Transitivity Increase suffix thus projects an external argument (the agent), and in valency decreasing constructions it preserves the argument structure
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of the verb, acting as a placeholder for the demoted agent. Agent demotion in Mari is managed via a change in Agreement Type. In Komi, the core function of transitivity increase markers is to introduce a new highly individuated argument into the verbal lexical frame. A more precise characteristic of this argument in terms of roles is determined by the lexical semantics of the verb. Furthermore, this new argument is subject to animacy restrictions: it has to be animate, which is in line with Hopper and Thompson’s understanding of increase in transitivity.
2. Mari 2.1 Some grammatical characteristics Mari (Eastern Mari, or Cheremis) is spoken in the bend of the Volga river, in the Republic of Mari El by about half a million speakers. The language has an SOV word order and nominative–accusative case-marking pattern. In Mari, unmarked accusatives are disallowed in finite clauses and occur only in non-finite ones. In this respect Mari grammar differs from grammars of Permic languages where unmarked accusatives are widely used in finite clauses (this is exactly the case in Komi). Nouns are inflected for case. Verbs have three basic simple tense forms: Past I, Past II and Non-Past (for present and future) and three mood forms: imperative, debitative and desiderative (only desiderative is inflected for tense and person). The difference between the two past tense forms is allegedly that of evidentiality (evidential vs. non-evidential past, as claimed in Pengitov 1961). However, in the dialect we worked with, evidentiality meanings had been lost (Sumbatova and Čumakina 2001). In this dialect Past I can be termed unmarked past while Past II forms have the meaning of recent past. The verb agrees with the subject in person and number. There are two agreement types: Agreement Type I and Agreement Type II. Table 1 shows all person endings for the two types. Table 1. Mari Agreement Types Person– number
Sg
Pl
Present
Past 1 Past II (unmarked past) (recent past)
Desiderative
Type II 5
6
∅
-m -t -že
-na -da -t
-št
Type I 1
Type II 2
Type I/II 3
1 2 3
-am -at -eš
-em -et -a
-am -at ∅
1 2 3
-əna -əda -ət
-ena -eda -at
-ət
Type I 4
-e
-əč
-əm -əč
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In Past I, the difference between the two types of agreement shows in the tense marker that immediately precedes the agreement morphemes: it is -ən with Type I and ‑en with Type II. In Past II, only Type II has a special tense marker (-əš), while Type I agreement morphemes are affixed directly to the stem. According to the traditional view, the primary motivation for two agreement types in the history of Mari is phonological rather than syntactic and has to do with the quality of the stem-final vowel: stems ending in -e produced Agreement Type I, stems whose final vowel was -a/ä formed the basis of Agreement Type II (Lytkin et al. 1976: 62, Ravila 1938). On a different view, the two agreement types correlate with differences in transitivity (Galkin 1966, Ravila 1938): intransitive verbs tend to inflect according to Type I, while most transitive verbs belong to Type II. The proponents of this hypothesis reconstruct the reflexive marker -va- which at some point in history preceded the agreement marker. We are not going to discuss the arguments pro and contra each view; important for the remainder of the paper is that although the distribution of non-derived verbs in modern Mari over the two types is not motivated by transitivity, the distribution of derived verb stems is highly motivated: Type I–II alternations play an important role in valency changing operations.
2.2 Valency alternations in Mari In Mari the -alt suffix can form prototypical causatives in the sense of Dixon and Aikhenvald (2000: 13): the suffix is applied to an intransitive verb to derive a transitive verb; the argument in the underlying S (intransitive subject) position — the causee — goes into O (transitive object) position in the causative construction. A new argument, the causer, is introduced into the A (transitive subject) position (examples (1a) and (1b), (2a) and (2b)).1 tul jül-eš’. light burn-npst.3sg.I ‘Light is on (lit. light is burning).’ jüšö jeŋ pört-š-əm jül-alt-əš-∅. drunk man house-3sg.poss-acc burn-tr-pst2-3sg.II ‘A drunk man set his house on fire (lit. caused his house to burn).’
(1) a. b.
(2) a. šukerte ožno küs-oto voktene čodəra šog-en-∅. long.ago in.old.times holy-grove near forest stand-pst1-3sg.II ‘Long ago, in old times, there was (lit. stood) a forest next to the holy grove (the place for performing pagan rites).’ b. tudo ustel-əm šog-alt-en-∅. s/he table-acc stand-tr-pst1-3sg.II ‘He placed a table (over there).’
The suffix -alt can have both valency-changing and aspectual meanings with different verbs. Static and non-terminative verbs are more likely to produce prototypical causa-
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tives (examples (1a) and (1b) contain a non-terminative verb, examples (2a) and (2b) a static verb). Multipicative verbs (both transitive and intransitive) with the -alt suffix yield punctual verbs (examples (3) and (4)) without undergoing any change in valency. In (3), the verb sakaš is transitive (its intransitive counterpart is kečaš) and multiplicative: it denotes an action which consists of many single iterated acts (like ‘hang out the bedding on a line’). Examples (3a) and (4a) show the verbs in their multiplicative meaning; in examples (3b) and (4b) both verbs become punctual.2
(3) (Vostrikova 2001)3 a. tudo vurgem-əm sak-en nal’-e s/he clothes-acc hang-conv.II take-pst2.3sg.I da kočkaš əšt-aš piž-e. and meal make-inf start-pst2.3sg.I ‘She hung out clothes (on the line to dry) and started cooking (lit. making) the meal.’ b. məj kurtk-əm sak-alt-əš-əm. 1sg jacket-acc hang-tr-pst2-1sg.II ‘I hung my jacket.’
(4) (Serdobol’skaya 2001) a. məj üšan-em što məj parašut dene 1sg be.sure-npst.1sg.II that 1sg parachute with töršt-aš tunem-am. jump-inf learn-npst.1sg.I ‘I am sure I will learn parachute-jumping (lit. jumping with the parachute).’ b. meče küškö töršt-alt-ən-∅. ball high bounce-tr-pst1-3sg.I ‘The ball bounced high up.’
Another meaning expressed by the -alt suffix is declarative causative: ‘to speak about smb. as if s/he were bringing about P’ (instead of ‘cause smb. to bring about P’) (declarative causatives have been attested in, for instance, Arabic and Lakhota (Kulikov 2001: 892). Declarative causative utterances are produced in very marked, emotionally loaded contexts. For instance, example (5) is typically uttered in the situation of teasing: producing the declarative causative the speaker is trying to imitate the person s/he is talking about.
(5) üp-še-m təge šer-alt-en kolt-en-∅! hair-3sg.poss-acc in.this.way comb-tr-conv.II send-pst1-3sg.II ‘Just look at the way she has combed her hair!’
It should be noted that -alt never has a causative meaning with transitive verbs: i.e. the form šeralten in example (5) cannot be translated as ‘made somebody comb his/her
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hair’. Causatives are formed by means of a different suffix, -əkt:
(6) pet’a lena-lan/lena-m šür-əm šolt-əkt-en-∅. Peter Helen-dat/Helen-acc soup-acc boil-caus-pst1-3sg.II ‘Peter made Helen cook (lit. boil) soup.’4
The causative suffix -əkt also forms causatives from intransitive verbs with animate subjects.5
(7) a. b.
tide kino deč məjən šol-em lüd-ən-∅. this film from 1sg.gen brother-1sg.poss fear-pst1-3sg.I ‘My brother got scared by this film (lit. my brother feared from the film).’ məj šol-em-əm lüd-əkt-əš-əm. 1sg brother-1sg.poss-acc fear-caus-pst2-1sg.II ‘I scared my brother (lit. I caused him to fear).’6
This shows that in Mari a special suffix is reserved for the expression of the causative meaning. Reverting to the -alt suffix we can suggest that it marks increase in transitivity, as it derives transitive verbs from intransitive ones. Furthermore, according to Hopper and Thompson (1980), punctuality also belongs to the domain of higher transitivity, and this type of polysemy of transitivity increase markers has been widely attested. However, this is not the complete story. Interestingly, the suffix -alt also actively participates in all types of agent demoting constructions: passives (examples (8a, b)), decausatives (examples (10a, b)), ‘middle’ constructions (examples (11a, b)) termed ‘potential passives’ in Lyutikova and Bonch-Osmolovskaya, this volume), reflexive (example (12), see also (3)) and impersonals (examples (13a, b)):7
(8) Passive a. tud-əm tače vurs-em. s/he-acc today reproach-npst.1sg.II ‘I will reproach him/her today.’ b. məj tače vurs-alt-ən-am. 1sg today reproach-tr-pst1-1sg.I ‘I have been reproached today.’
The Agent Demotion construction with -alt is the only passive construction in Mari. The agent in passive constructions receives dative marking:
(9) a. tide tema još’a-vlak-lan jös-ən uməl-alt-eš-∅. this subject child-pl-dat hard-adv understand-tr-npst-3pl.I ‘This subject is hard for children to understand (lit. this subject is understood by the children with difficulty).’ b. još’a-vlak čəla uməl-en-ət. child-pl everything understand-pst1-3pl.II ‘The children understood everything.’
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(10) Decausatives a. ava-m kinde-m kükt-en-∅. mother-1sg.poss bread-acc bake-pst1-3sg.II ‘Mother has baked bread.’ b. kinde kükt-alt-ən-∅. bread bake-tr-pst1-3sg.I ‘Bread has baked.’ (11) Middle constructions (potential passives) (Volkova 2001) a. p’et’a šken-ž-əm ške pušeŋge vokte-k kəld-en-∅. Peter self-sg.poss-acc self tree to-lat tie.up-pst1-3sg.II ‘(Peter was going to deceive his friends. So,) he tied himself up to a tree (and started shouting very loudly).’ b. korsən šürte šükš-ən kəld-alt-eš-∅. silk thread hard-adv tie-tr-npst-3sg.I ‘A silky thread is hard to tie up.’ (12) Reflexives tudo sak-alt-ən-∅. s/he hang-tr-pst1-3sg.I ‘He hanged himself.’ (13) Impersonals (Arkhipov 2000) a. kol-əm kučə-mekə-na pərəs tudə-m kočk-ən-∅. fish-acc catch-when-1pl cat s/he/it-acc eat-pst1-3sg.I ‘When we caught a fish, the cat ate it’. b. ončəč šud-əm kočk-alt-ən-∅. before grass-асс eat-tr-pst1-3sg.I ‘In those times (=before) (you) had to eat grass {you were caused or forced to eat grass because there was nothing else to eat}.’ Example (13b) deserves a more detailed discussion. From a formal point of view, it is an impersonal construction: the surface expression of the nominative subject is suppressed. If we could express the subject overtly, the resulting sentence becomes ungrammatical: *ončəč tudo šud-əm kočk-alt-ən-∅. (13) c. before s/he grass-acc eat-tr-pst1-3sg.I ‘In those times (=before) he had to eat grass.’ Formally the Mari impersonals are similar to the well-known Polish -no/-to passives (or rather impersonals, according to Kibort (2004)); the same construction type has been registered in Estonian (Blevins 2003, Mürk 1997, Tuldava 1994) and in some Russian dialects. In impersonal constructions, the direct object receives accusative case marking and cannot be moved into subject position:
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(13) d. *ončəč šud kočk-alt-ən-∅. before grass eat-tr-pst1-3sg.I ‘In those times (=before) (you) had to eat grass {you were caused or forced to eat grass because there was nothing else to eat}.’ The use of impersonal constructions in Mari is not driven by the need to eliminate nonspecific or known subjects. The interpretation given in (13e) for the sentence (13b) is unacceptable: (13) e. ončəč šud-əm kočk-alt-ən-∅. before grass-acc eat-tr-pst1-3sg.I *‘Somebody (or they) used to eat grass before.’ Impersonals in Mari rather express the modal meaning of necessity: the subject was caused to perform the action denoted by the verb by virtue of some external circumstances, cause or force. Normally, the omitted subject in such constructions is the speaker who talks about some past experience, though this is a strong preference rather than a strict rule. Non-modal interpretation of impersonals is impossible as shown in (13f): (13) f. ončəč šud-əm kočk-alt-ən-∅. before grass-acc eat-tr-pst1-3sg.I *‘In those times (=before) we ate grass.’ The agent can be expressed in an oblique phrase — dative (cf. the agent expression in (9a)). (14) tud-lan tür’ma-əšte šuko gana šinč-alt-ən-∅. he-dat prison-loc many time sit-tr-pst2-3sg.I ‘He had to serve a prison term many times (lit. he had to sit in prison many times).’ Intransitive verbs are widely used in impersonal constructions: (15) a. pureŋkaj-alt-eš-∅. fall-tr-npst-3sg.I ‘Sometimes (you) have to fall {you are caused or forced to fall}.’ (Sumba tova and Čumakina 2001) b. püč-mö jol-an püken pureŋkaj-en kert-eš-∅. cut-part.pass leg-attr chair fall-conv.II be.able-npst-3sg.I ‘A chair whose leg had been cut can fall.’ The Mari data seem to present us with a case of polysemy: on the one hand, the ‑alt suffix denotes an increase in transitivity; on the other, it marks the verb in agent demoting constructions where the agent is supressed. Polysemy (or rather homonymy) of causative/passive markers is not uncommon: cross-linguistic distribution of such affixes has been extensively examined, for instance, in some recent work by Galiamina (2003); see
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also (V. Nedjalkov 1964, Haspelmath 1990, I. Nedyalkov 1991, and Kulikov 2001). This sort of phenomena has been offered a historic explanation: the passive meaning of such morphemes is derived from the causative. But a closer look at the Mari data suggests that there is no polysemy of the -alt suffix. Rather, the apparent two-faced behaviour of this suffix is due to the agreement type used. In all agent demoting constructions the verb receives Agreement Type I markers. Agent demoting constructions in which verbs are marked with -alt and Type II agreement suffixes are in principle ungrammatical: (16) a. *pareŋge žaritl-alt-en-∅. potatoes fry-tr-pst1-3sg.II ‘Potatoes have fried.’ b. *ončəč šud-əm kočk-alt-en-∅. before grass-acc eat-tr-pst1-3sg.I ‘In those times (=before) (you) had to eat grass {you were caused or forced to eat grass because there was nothing else to eat}.’ A switch in agreement type is possible, but such a switch changes the meaning of the construction. Consider the following pair of contrasting examples: (17) a. b.
tudo šuko magər-alt-ən-∅. he much shout-tr-pst1-3sg.I ‘He has been shouted at many times.’ tudo šuko magər-alt-en-∅! he much shout-tr-pst1-3sg.II ‘Just listen how much he shouts!’
These examples demonstrate that if the verb marked with -alt receives Type II agreement morphemes, the sentence is given a declarative causative reading (see also example (5)). This is in contrast to Type I, in which the sentence is given a normal passive reading. A switch in Agreement Type thus has a clear effect on the interpretation of -alt marked verbs. Interestingly, we also find other effects caused by this switch. There are inchoative–causative pairs, where the same verb is either transitive or intransitive according to the agreement type (this kind of relationship between the inchoative and causative verb is termed non-directed alternation in Haspelmath (1993)). For instance, the same root tem- can mean either ‘to fill’ or ‘to be filled’ depending on the Agreement Type used: (18) a. b.
tem-a. fill-npst.3sg.II ‘(She is) filling (the bucket).’ tem-eš. fill-npst.3sg.I ‘(The bucket) is filling.’
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Such causative–inchoative pairs are quite numerous and include such verbs as vašaltaš ‘to change, to be changed’, velaš ‘to fall down, to drop’, lüŋalaš ‘to rock (tr/intr)’, kodaš ‘to stay/to leave smth’, tüŋalaš ‘to start (tr/intr)’ and many others. Another interesting fact about these agreement types is that the distribution of the two types is based on agentivity as well. The most obvious contrast in agentivity is that between animate and inanimate actors. Agreement type alternations in Mari are used to highlight this difference: intransitive -alt verbs with an animate subject receive Type II agreement markers like transitive verbs whereas such verbs with an inanimate subject are marked with Type I agreement: (19) a. b.
rveze küškö töršt-alt-en-∅. boy high bounce-tr-pst1-3sg.II ‘The boy jumped high up.’ meče pərdəž deš’in töršt-alt-ən-∅. ball wall from bounce-tr-pst1-3sg.I ‘The ball bounced from the wall.’
In (19a) the subject of the -alt verb is animate, and the verb is marked with Agreement Type II; in (19b) the ball as an inanimate entity is obviously treated as less agent-like, and the verb conjugates according to Type I. Though animacy has always been placed among the most important agent properties by many researchers (see, for instance, Dowty (1991), Ackerman and Moore (2001)), inanimate subjects can also differ in the degree of agentivity. Many language consultants often used Type II not only when the argument of a one-argument verb was animate, but also when it was more agent-like. Consider the following pair of examples: (20) a. b.
izi ener jog-alt-en-∅! small river flow-tr-pst1-3sg.II ‘(Look!) A small river is flowing!’ vüd kran gəč jog-alt-ən-∅. water tap from flow-tr-pst1-3sg.I ‘(We did not see how) water started flowing from the tap.’
In (20a) ‘the river’ is the agent because it performs the action of flowing; in (20b), the switch to Type I is obviously caused by the difference in agentivity: tap water, unlike the river, runs by virtue of some external force, not by itself. So, we have shown that there is a certain logic behind the distribution of -alt verbs between agreement types. This is a surprising result especially when we take into consideration that there is no obvious principle underlying the distribution of bare verb stems between agreement types.8 Moreover, all derived verbs (i.e. verb stems with derivational affixes) are distributed over the two types in a predictable manner. For instance, causative -əkt verbs (see examples (6, 7b)) belong to Agreement Type II. There is one more derivation suffix, -əlt, that, applied to verb stems, yields an iterative or distributive meaning (example (21)). All -əlt verbs belong to Agreement Type I:
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(21) jatər ver-e pundəš türlö kaška pərn ’ a-vlak kij-əlt-ən-ət. many place-loc stub various tree.stump log-pl lie-distr-pst1-3pl.I ‘Stubs, stumps, logs were lying all over the place.’ Compare this with a bare verb stem taking Agreement Type II in (22): (22) tidə-že mogaj jədal kij-a man-ən, jod-ne-m əle. this-3sg.poss what bast.shoe lie-npst.3sg.II say-conv ask-des-1sg was ‘I was just going to ask why this bast shoe (lit. what sort of bast shoe) was lying (over there).’ The suffix -əlt often turns up with verbs from Kemmer’s list of middle semantics (Kemmer 1993). For instance, this list comprises verbs denoting positions (like be hanging). The Mari verb kečaš ‘to hang’ is a Type II verb; however, when used with the -əlt suffix, it receives Type I agreement marking: (23) tudo pušeŋg-əšte keč-əlt-eš. s/he tree-abl hang-distr-npst.3sg.I ‘He is suspended on the tree (lit. he is hanging from the tree).’ Examples (21)–(23) suggest that the distribution of derived verbs (bare stem+valency changing suffixes) is far from random. Verbs with a higher number of transitivity features listed by Hopper and Thompson (volitionality, control, punctuality, intensive action) belong to Type II; less transitive verbs (with regard to the same transitivity properties) fall into Type I. This distribution of derived verbs makes us take more seriously the hypothesis that historically the distribution of verbs between agreement types was somehow related to their valency pattern or semantic transitivity. In fact, in Erzya and Moksha (both languages are closely related to Mari) the verb has two agreement patterns: one is for intransitive verbs, and the other is for transitive ones, where the transitive type is a polypersonal agreement pattern: transitive verbs agree with both subjects and objects.9 In view of the data on agreement types the line of the present argument is as follows: -alt marks increase in transitivity; though it is also possible on verbs in agent demoting constructions, it does not signal agent demotion. Rather, agent demotion is signaled by agreement type change: the verb in passives, decausatives, reflexives and impersonals is conjugated according to Type I. This statement may give rise to a question regarding the core meaning of -alt — marking increase in transitivity: does it change in agent demotion construction?
2.3 Discussion To answer these questions we have to analyze the contribution of both -alt and agreement type alternations in the formation of Mari agent demoting constructions. The data on the two Agreement Types suggests a tentative hypothesis that Type I/II patterns
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highlight an ‘active’ system of inflectional morphology, where the subject of both transitives and intransitives which are semantically agents/actors (and animate) are treated identically for grammatical purposes (i.e. represented with Type II morphology). In other words, examples (17)–(20) point to an unergative–unaccusative distinction: Type II morphology is associated with transitive and unergative subjects interpreted as agent/actors, while Type I is reserved for more unaccusative-like predicates. Causative–inchoative pairs in Mari are manipulated through the Type I–II distinctions. Table 2 shows the correlation between agreement types and the unergative–unaccusative distinction. Table 2. Unergative–unaccusative distinction in Mari Unaccusative (non-agent/actor) Unergative (actor) Ergative (agent)
Type I Type II Type II
Example (20b) Example (20a) Example (7b)
Agent demoting operations (passives, decausatives, and impersonals) all involve nonprototypical mapping of semantic arguments onto the syntactic structure. All three operations target the agent: Passivisation renders the predicate syntactically intransitive by preventing the first, most important, argument from becoming the subject. Anticausativisation renders the predicate lexically intransitive by deleting the first argument, linked to the agent (causer), from the transitivity matrix representing the predicate’s lexical entry.10 Finally, impersonalisation suppresses the surface syntactic representation of the first argument of the predicate. (Kibort 2004: 15)
The choice of formal marking in agent demoting constructions should manifest the fact that the agent is semantically present, but that syntactically it is not mapped onto the subject position. Therefore, we claim that -alt in agent demoting constructions is used in accordance with its core meaning — that of transitivity increase — and marks the presence of an agent in the semantic representation. The use of Agreement Type I in passives, reflexives, decausatives and impersonals shows that the argument mapped onto the nominative is not the agent. Agent demoting constructions marking in Mari appears to be compositional: the -alt derivation shows that semantically there is an agent, but it is not mapped onto the subject position for reasons that vary for each type of construction (‘The three operations can be thought of as applying at different abstract levels of representation of the predicate and, consequently, they are sensitive to different restricting factors present at those levels of representation’ (Kibort 2004: 15)). The mismatch between the semantic and syntactic structure, when the agent is not mapped onto the subject role, entails the use of Agreement Type I — the intransitive type. Impersonal constructions require some additional comments. As we demonstrated in examples (9)–(11), Mari impersonals have a clear modal meaning of external obligation or necessity. Now we can state that this meaning arises because the ‑alt suffix, be-
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ing added to the verb stem, signals the presence of an agent, but the subject position is empty, because the object does not get promoted into it. In this case, the null agent in the subject position is interpreted as an external cause which forces the participant to perform the action denoted by the verb. The subject of the action or the causee (who is typically the speaker herself, but not necessarily) can be expressed in the sentence, even though it is never the nominative subject. The causee when present is marked with the dative, like oblique agent phrases (cf. examples (9a) and (14)).
2.4 Сonclusion The paradox of -alt as a suffix that marks both increase in transitivity and demotion of the agent is only an illusion. The -alt suffix functions in conjunction with the Type I–II alternations as a placeholder for the agent argument (either present or demoted). In the latter case, it preserves the valency (or argument structure) of the transitive verb.11 The solution we offer rules out the polysemy of two mutually exclusive meanings (agent demotion and causativization) but poses another serious question: why is it necessary to mark the presence of an agent in the semantic frame? Why can we not tell whether the verb is transitive (i.e. has an agent) or not by the type of situation it denotes and by the number and character of semantic variables in its argument frame? We could try to answer this question by hypothesizing that all Mari verb roots are basically unaccusative; they project only internal arguments and external arguments have to be projected by some functional heads. However, testing this hypothesis would require deeper understanding of Mari agreement types and testing other contexts which are sensitive to unergative–unaccusative distinction. At present, we can say that this hypothesis has typological parallels.12
3. Komi In this section, we will examine transitivity increase markers in Komi-Zyrjan. Like in Mari, in Komi the markers of valency change interact with the lexical semantics of the verb and affect not only the verb argument structure, but also some clause parameters listed in Hopper and Thompson (1980).
3.1 Some grammatical features of Komi Komi-Zyrjan belongs to the Permic group of Finno-Ugric languages. The unmarked word order is SOV, though SVO combinations are quite frequent. Case marking follows the nominative–accusative pattern. Nouns are inflected for case. Verbs have three basic simple forms: Past I, Past II and Nonpast (this is a form expressing both future and present). The difference between the two tense forms is that of evidentiality (evidential vs. non-evidential past). The verb agrees with the subject in person and number.
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The grammar of Komi is very similar to that of Mari, though there are a few very marked differences (common for all languages of the Permic group). Komi-Zyrjan is characterized by wide use of so-called unmarked accusatives in finite clauses: direct objects of finite clauses under certain conditions do not get any case marking (unmarked accusatives occur in examples (25)–(27) and (31a); object nouns are marked with accusative case in examples (28)–(29), (31b), (32b), (33); pronouns in object position always have an accusative case form, see example (24)).
3.2 Causative markers In Komi-Zyrjan, the causative suffix -əd can form prototypical causatives from both intransitive (example (24)) and transitive (example (25a)) verbs. (24) a. b.
me tenə polž-əd-ɨ-∅? 1sg you.acc frighten-tr-pst1-1sg ‘Have I frightened you?’ polži-nɨ — polž-əd-nɨ. ‘to be frightened — to frighten.’
(25) a. me vur-əd-ɨ-∅ plat’je menam sijəs tšɨk-əd-əm-nɨ. 1sg sow-tr-pst1-1sg dress 1sg.dat this.acc spoil-tr-pst2-3pl ‘I had my dress made, but they spoiled it.’ b. me vur-ɨ-∅ dərəm. 1sg sow-pst1-1sg shirt ‘(What did you do today?) I spent some time on making a shirt (but I did not finish it).’ Intransitive verbs form causatives in a quite regular manner, while transitive verbs lack consistency in causative formation. Sometimes, apart from the basic meaning, the causative morpheme can modify the semantics of the bare verb in many other ways. The modifications of the base semantics can be listed as follows: 1. total affectedness of the direct object (examples (26b, 27)); 2. intensive action with added force (example (28b)); 3. volitionality increase. The derived verb must be interpreted as purposive action (example (29b)). (26) a. vasš’a lept-ɨ-s kartapel. Basil lift-pst1-3sg potato ‘Basil lifted some potatoes (from the basement).’ b. vasš’a lept-əd-ɨ-s kartapel. Basil lift-tr-pst1-3sg potato ‘Basil lifted all potatoes, (that were in the basement, there are no more potatoes left in the basement).’
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(27) me vur-əd-ɨ-∅ dərəm. 1sg sow-caus-pst1-1sg shirt ‘(What did you do today?) I’ve made a shirt.’ (28) a. b.
menam kolə sɨvd-ənɨ ji-sə tenad š’ələm-ɨš’. 1sg.dat need thaw-inf ice-acc.3sg.poss 2sg.gen heart-el ‘I have to thaw the ice of your heart.’ menam kolə sɨvd-əd-nɨ ji-sə tenad š’eləm-ɨš’. 1sg.dat need thaw-caus-inf ice-acc.3sg.poss 2sg.gen heart-el ‘I have to (make a lot of effort) to thaw the ice of your heart.’
(29) a. b.
Taj-ə n’an’-sə kol-əd-ɨ-s tan’a. this-acc bread-acc.3sg.poss leave-tr-pst1-3sg Tanya ‘Tanya deliberately left this bread here (in a shop).’ tan’a. Taj-ə n’an’-sə kol-ɨ-s this-acc bread-acc.3sg.poss leave-pst1-3sg Tanya ‘Tanya left this bread here by chance (she forgot it).’
In (26a) the verb is not marked with the causative suffix, and the hearer does not know whether there are any potatoes left in the basement or not. But in the (26b) it is pointed out, that all potatoes have been lifted and no potatoes are left. Example (27) can be contrasted with (25b): only in the former case, the speaker using the causative morpheme clearly implies that the action has been completed. In (28b) the action is said to be transmitted from the agent to the object more forcefully and more intentionally. This is in line with Hopper and Thompson (1980) who claim that there are some languages where the causative morpheme can also express an intensive action. Consider the Bantu examples in (30). (30) a. b.
gwir-a-m chi-ngwe! hold-imp-2pl string ‘Hold the string!’ gwir-its-a-m chi-ngwe! hold-caus-imp-2pl string ‘Hold the string firmly!’
In (29b) the verb is clearly marked as denoting a purposive, volitional action. It is obvious that the way the ‘causative’ suffix affects the semantics of the input verb practically follows the list of high transitivity features in Hopper and Thompson (1980). However, it seems possible to state certain generalizations about the semantics of the causative. It is evident that the causative suffix can modify the lexical meaning of the derived transitive verbs in a number of ways. Nevertheless, the majority of language consultants followed a recurrent pattern: the causative marker introduced an animate, highly individuated counteragent into the verb’s argument frame. In many cases it was manifested in animacy restrictions imposed by the causative verb on its object. For instance, the verb ‘to wash’ plus causative does not yield the expected ‘make somebody
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wash something’; instead, the resulting verb has restrictions on the semantics of the direct object: ‘wash’ plus causative yields the meaning ‘to wash an animate being (a boy, a girl, a cat, a dog)’ (example (31b)). The same holds true for the verb ‘to carry’ (examples (32b) and (33)). (31) a. b.
bat′ čəkt-ɨ-s nɨl-ɨs-lɨ mɨšk-av-nɨ ǯoǯ. father order-pst1-3sg daughter-3sg.poss-dat wash-pf-inf floor ‘Father told his daughter to wash the floor.’ me mɨš’k-əd-a vok-əs/*ǯoǯ/*ki-əs. 1sg wash-tr-npst.1sg brother-acc.1sg.poss/floor/hands-1sg.poss.acc ‘I am washing my brother (*floor,* hands).’
(32) a. eš’e em sumka, mɨj-sə n’ekod o-z nu. more was.3sg bag which-acc.3sg.poss nobody neg.npst-3 carry ‘There was another bag left that nobody (wanted) to carry.’ (Brykina 2002) b. me nu-əd-a kan’-pi-əs kodi 1sg carry-tr-npst.1sg cat-son-acc which aǯ’-i bokš-a-ɨs. find-pst1.1sg ravine-loc.poss-3sg ‘I am carrying a kitten (=a cat’s son), that I have found in the ravine.’ (33) kol’a nu-əd-ɨ-s č’el’ad’-əs lečtuj kuž’a. Nick carry-tr-pst1-3sg children-acc hunter’s.path by ‘Nick guided the children along a hunter’s path.’ Table 3 gives some more examples of causative verbs whose grammatical object is subject to animacy restrictions: Table 3. The meanings of some causative verbs in Komi Verb
Meaning
vuǯ’-nɨ
To cross smth., to go over vuǯ’-əd-nɨ smth. To write smth. down giž-əd-nɨ kɨš-əd-nɨ To put on smth.
giž-nɨ kɨšal-nɨ
Causative verb
Meaning To take smb. over, to help smb. cross smth To register a new-born baby To dress smb.
With some verbs, the causative derivation leaves the object intact, while instead a new, animate participant is introduced into the verb’s argument frame. In this case the semantic relation between the two animate arguments might be that of causation (example (25a)), but more often the verb has assistive or comitative meaning (examples 34– 37). Both intransitive (examples (34–36)) and transitive (example (37)) verbs produce assistive and comitative causatives. The comitative meaning is particularly prominent for motion verbs (like ‘run’, ‘fly’, ‘draw’). Some examples are given in (34)–(39).
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(34) kotərtnɨ — kotərt-əd-nɨ ‘to run — to run and tow somebody along’ (35) lebnɨ — leb-əd-nɨ ‘to fly — to fly together, to fly with somebody else’ (36) jəktɨnɨ — jəkt-əd-nɨ ‘to dance — to dance with somebody’ (37) vajnɨ — vaj-əd-nɨ ‘to bring — to bring with somebody’s help’ (38) zmej-gorɨnɨč leb-əd-ɨ-s vaš’al’isa-prekrasnaja. firedrake fly-tr-pst1-3sg Vasilissa the Beautiful ‘The Firedrake flew and took Vasilissa the Beautiful with him.’ (39) petja vaš’a-əs jəkt-əd-ɨ-s vals. Petja Basil-acc dance-tr-pst1-3sg waltz ‘Peter waltzed with Basil.’ Example (39) is an instantiation of the double object construction. With causative verbs this construction is possible but rare. In this construction, it is always the causee that carries the accusative case marker. The object in such constructions has to be unmarked — see above for discussion of unmarked accusatives in Komi: (40) sija menə (vaš’a-əs) god’-əd-ɨ-s s/he 1sg.acc (Basil-acc) dig-tr-pst1-3sg gu (*gu-əs // *gu-sə). hole (*hole-acc // *hole-acc.3sg.poss) ‘He made me (or Basil) dig out a hole.’ There are typological parallels to the Komi-Zyrjan causative: in Ngan’gityemerri (Reid 2000) the valency increasing suffix can have comitative (‘She lives with X’) or dative (‘She is waving at X’) meaning. So, the basic meaning of the causative in Komi is to mark the presence of an animate counteragent. Transitivity increase in this language is a bundle of primarily semantic features which accompany the basic meaning of the causative morpheme — introducing an animate object with a high degree of individuation. Depending on the verb semantics the derived causative form may be interpreted as expressing either the basic or one of the concomitant meanings (total affectedness of the direct object, intensity, volitionality). It is obvious that the way the derived form is interpreted depends radically on the lexical semantics of the input verb. In particular, the relationship between the agent and counteragent (when it is introduced) has to be established with reference to the lexical semantics of the verb as well (it can be causative, assistive or comitative). However, we cannot make reliable predictions about the meaning of the causative verb based on the semantics of the bare verb unless more insights are provided into the lexical structure of Komi verbs.
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4. Conclusion We hope to have shown that the understanding of valency change in two Finno-Ugric languages hinges upon verb semantics. In Mari, the transitivity increase marker projects an external agent in the verb’s argument frame, because the verb may lack an agent in its semantic representation (we even hypothesize that all Mari verbs could be unaccusative by nature). In Komi, transitivity increase basically involves introduction of a new animate counteragent into the verbal frame. The exact nature of the semantic relationship between the participants depends on the verb’s lexical semantics, and the relationship of causation is just one of many other possible options. The idea that the study of transitivity and valency change require more research into conceptualization of events in different languages has been expressed in many works (see, for instance, Haspelmath 1993, Dixon and Aikhenvald 2000, Kibort 2004). Kibrik (1993) shows that a more precise understanding of transitivity increase mechanisms depends on our ability to penetrate into an alien conceptual system: … Athabaskan (and presumably all non-Standard-Average-European languages) frequently conceptualize situations of reality in a way that is very foreign to the native speakers of European languages and is hardly a priori predictable. Moreover, situations that seem to us very similar (like e.g. going and running) can be conceptualized in a completely different manner for some cultural, historical or whatever reasons, or simply by chance… The assumption about unmotivatedness of form should be the last hypothesis considered by a linguist. (Kibrik 1993: 63)
We have contributed to this issue by showing how transitivity increase and valency change operations in Finno-Ugric languages interact with the verb’s semantic representation. The outcome of these interactions is quite different from what one would expect based on Standard-Average-European bias.
Acknowledgements The data on Komi-Zyrjan have been collected during two field trips (summer 2002, winter 2003) to the village of Yeremei located in the Troitsko-Pechorsky district of the Komi Republic. The Mari data have been gathered during three field trips to the village of Stary Toryal in the Republic of Mari El (summer 2000, summer 2001 and winter 2004). We would like to express our enormous gratitude to all the language consultants whose patience, understanding and creativity helped us to arrive at the insights into grammatical structures of the two languages. We also gratefully acknowledge financial support from the Russian State Foundation for Humanities in the form of grants which allowed us to organize field trips to Komi and Mari El. Our deeply felt thanks go to Dunstan Brown, Tyler Peterson and another anonymous reviewer of the volume; we really appreciate their insightful comments that made it possible to substantially improve the paper. All theoretical misconceptions and mistakes in data representation are totally our fault. We would like to thank Barbara H. Partee for providing some helpful references.
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Abbreviations 1,2,3sg 1st, 2nd, 3rd person singular, 1,2,3 pl 1st, 2nd, 3rd person plural, abl ablative, acc accusative, adv adverb, attr attrubutivizer, caus causativizer, conv converb, dat dative, des desiderative, distr distributive, el elative, gen genitive, imp imperative, inf infinitive, lat lative, loc locative, neg negative, npst nonpast, part participle, pass passive, pf perfective, pl plural, poss possessive, pst past (tense), tr transitivizer.
Notes 1. In the interlinear gloss Roman numbers refer to the Agreement Types (I,II). Arabic figures will distinguish between Past tense forms (Past 1 and Past 2). -alt is being glossed as tr (transitivizer) to distinguish it from another Mari causative suffix, -əkt. 2. The terms ‘static’, ‘non-terminative’ and ‘multiplicative’ are used in line with Tatevosov (2002). Static verbs (‘stative’ in Comrie 1976) are verbs denoting states (Vendler 1957); Paducheva (1995) applies this term to verbs denoting atemporal properties and inherent states. Nonterminative are verbs denoting activities (Vendler 1957) or atelic processes, the term is used after Paducheva (1995). ‘The notion ‘multiplicative’ derives from Xrakovskij’s (1986, 1989) and Dolinina’s (1996, 1999) work on ‘verbal plurality’ …, together with two other notions, iterative and distributive. Multiplicative verbs refer to situations that repeat many times with the same participant and occupy a single time span. In other words, multiplicative is associated with repeating simplex situations that constitute one complex situation’ (Tatevosov 2002: 332). 3. The verb ‘to take’ in this example forms a complex, or serialized, predicate with the lexical verb ‘to hang’; complex (serialized) predicates are quite common in Mari. See also Vostrikova (2001). 4. Intransitives are not uniform in their reaction to morphological causativization. i.e. unaccusative predicates (examples (1a,b)–(2a,b)) are causativized differently from unergatives (example (7a,b)). This situation seems to hold for other languages as well: as Tyler Peterson (p.c.) pointed out, all Athabascan languages can causativize all unaccusative predicates and also a subset of unergatives and transitives. 5. In causative constructions, the causee normally receives dative case, but double object constructions where the causee is in the accusative case are also possible though rare. We think that double object constructions arise under the influence of Russian; in fact, they occur only in younger people’s speech. 6. This suffix too has an aspectual meaning denoting a prolonged (example (i)) or intensive action: (i) məj vüd-əm šol-əkt-em. 1sg water-acc boil-caus-npst2.1sg.II ‘I boil water for a long time.’ It looks like all valency changing suffixes in Mari have parallel aspectual meanings. 7. We are using the term ‘middle’ to denote this type of construction, following Kibort (2004). 8. The proponents of the theory of stem vowels usually argue that now the number of transitive verbs of Type I is quite large. However, there is an interesting fact regarding transitive verbs
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of Type I: unlike transitive verbs of Type II, they can form agent demoting constructions with another suffix, -əlt. Furthermore, some of them cannot form passives at all, like, for instance the verb užaš ‘to see’. So, the question of two agreement types in Mari needs further attention. 9. Polypersonal agreement can take various forms; in some languages (Adyghe or Circassian, for instance), the verb agrees with all its arguments (subject and different object types, direct vs. indirect) by means of special affixes. In Uralic languages (Hungarian, Nenets a.o.) there are special sets of verbal endings, separate for transitive and intransitive verbs. This type of polypersonal agreement is less ‘classical’ in a certain sense, but nevertheless, the presence of a direct object is reflected in the verbal agreement. 10. Decausatives are a very controversial matter. Following Kibort (2004), we consider decausatives (or anticausatives in her terminology) as derived from transitive verbs. In her dissertation Kibort convincingly argues that in decausatives, the event is represented as spontaneous, though at the semantic level there is always a cause or an agent. 11. In generative grammar terms we could say that -alt heads the voice phrase vP, which is also the locus of the external argument (Larson (1988), Kratzer (1989, 1996), Hale and Keyser (1993), Bowers (2002)). Tyler Peterson (p.c.) also noticed that -alt shows a surprising similarity to the English passive, where participial morphology (i.e. -en) absorbs the agent theta-role assigned by the verb creating a subject position for the patient/object to move into. 12. In many languages of the Pacific Northwest, it is claimed that all verb roots are unaccusative, thus every transitive predicate is morphologically derived with a transitivizer. This is even true of verbs that intuitively seem strongly transitive, such as kill. We thank Tyler Peterson for pointing this out to us.
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Dolinina, I. B. 1996. “Količestvennost’ v sfere predikatov (Kategoriya glagol’noj množestvennosti) [Quantity in the predicate sphere (The category of verbal plurality)]”. In Teorija funkcional’noj grammatiki. Kačestvennost’. Količestvennost’ [The Theory of Functional Grammar. Quality. Quantity], A. Bondarko (ed.), 219–45. St. Petersburg: Nauka. Dolinina, I. B. 1999. “Distributivity: More than aspect”. In Tense–Aspect, Transitivity and Causativity: Essays in Honour of Vladimir Nedjalkov, L. Kulikov and W. Abraham (eds), 185–206. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Dowty, D. R. 1991. “Thematic Proto-roles and argument selection”. Language 67: 547–619. Galiamina, J. 2003. “Tranzitivnost’ i zalog v jazyke songaj [Transitivity and voice in Songhay]”. In Osnovy afrikanskogo jazykoznanija. Glagol [A Survey of African Linguistics], V. A. Vinogradov and I. N. Toporova (eds), 581–606. Moscow: Vostočnaja literatura. Galkin, I. S. 1966. Istoričeskaja grammatika marijskogo jazyka. Čast’ II: Morfologija [A historical grammar of the Mari Language. Part II: Morphology]. Joškar-Ola. Hale, K. and Keyser, S. J. 1993. “On argument structure and the lexical expression of syntactic relations”. In The View from Building 20: Essays in Honor of Sylvain Bromberger, K. Hale and S. Keyser (eds), 53–109. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Haspelmath, M. 1990. “The grammaticization of passive morphology”. Studies in Language 14 (1): 25–72. Haspelmath, M. 1993. “More on the typology of inchoative/causative verb alternations”. In Causatives and Transitivity, B. Comrie and M. Polinsky (eds), 87–120. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Hopper, P. J. and Thompson, S. A. 1980. “Transitivity in grammar and discourse”. Language 56: 251–99. Kemmer, S. 1993. The Middle Voice. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Kibort, A. 2004. Passive and passive-like constructions in English and Polish. PhD dissertation, Pembrook College, Cambridge University. Kibrik, A. A. 1993. “Transitivity increase in Athabaskan languages”. In Causatives and Transitivity, B. Comrie and M. Polinsky (eds), 47–68. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Kratzer, A. 1989. “Stage-level and individual-level predicates”. In Papers on Quantification, E. Bach, A. Kratzer and B. Partee (eds). Amherst: umass. Kratzer, A. 1996. “Severing the External Argument from its Verb”. In Phrase Structure and the Lexicon, J. Rooryck and L. Zaring (eds), 109–37. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Krifka, M. 2000. “Manner in dative alternation”. In wccfl 18: Proceedings of the Eighteenth West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics, S. Bird, A. Carnie, J. D. Haugen and P. Norquest (eds), 1–14. Somerville and Medford, ma: Cascadilla Press. Krifka, M. 2001. “Lexical Representations and the Nature of the Dative Alternation”. dip Colloquium, University of Amsterdam, November 9, 2001. Kulikov, L. 1999. “Split causativity. Remarks on correlations between transitivity, aspect and tense”. In Tense–Aspect, Transitivity and Causativity. Essays in Honour of Vladimir Nedjal kov, W. Abraham and L. Kulikov (eds), 21–43. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Kulikov, L. 2001. “Causatives”. In Language Typology and Language Universals. An International Handbook, M. Haspelmath, E. König, W. Oesterreicher and W. Raible (eds), Vol. 2: 886–98. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Larson, R. 1988. “On the double object construction”. Linguistic Inquiry 19: 335–91. Levin, B. and Rappaport Hovav, M. 1995. Unaccusativity. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Levin, B. and Rappaport Hovav, M. 2002. “What Alternates in the Dative Alternation?” The 2002 Conference on Role and Reference Grammar: New Topics in Functional Linguistics.
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The Cognitive and Discoursive Dimension of Morphology, Syntax and Semantics, Universidad de La Rioja, Logrono, Spain, July 27–8, 2002. Lytkin, V. I. et al. 1976. Osnovy finno-ugorskogo jazykoznanija [A Survey of Finno-Ugric Linguistics]. Moscow: Nauka. Lyutikova, E. and Bonch-Osmolovskaja, A. (this volume) “A very active passive: Functional similarities between Passive and Causative in Balkar”. Malchukov, A. (this volume) “Transitivity Parameters and Transitivity Alternations: constraining co-variation”. Mithun, M. 2000. “Valency-changing derivation in Central Alaskan Yup’ik”. In Changing Valency, R. M. W. Dixon and A. Aikhenvald (eds), 84–114. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mürk, H. W. 1997. A Handbook of Estonian: Nouns, Adjectives and Verbs [Indiana University Uralic and Altaic Series 163]. Bloomington: Indiana University. Nedjalkov, V. P. 1964. “O svjazi kauzativnosti i passivnosti” [On the relationship between causativity and passivity]. Učenye zapiski Baškirskogo universiteta 21. Serija filologičeskix nauk 9 [Papers of Bashkir University 21. Philological Series] (13): 301–10. Nedyalkov, I. 1991. “Recessive accessive polysemy of verbal affixes”. Languages of the World 1: 4–31. Paducheva, E. V. 1995. “Taxonomic categories and semantics of aspectual opposition”. In Temporal Reference, Aspect and Actionality. Volume 1, P.-M. Bertinetto, V. Bianchi, Ö. Dahl and M. Squartini (eds), 71–90. Torino: Rosenberg and Sellier. Pengitov, N. T. 1961. Sovremennyj marijskij jazyk. Morfologija. [The Modern Mari Language. Morphology]. Joškar-Ola: Marijskij naučno-issledovatel’skij institut jazyka, literatury i istorii. Perlmutter, D. 1978. “Impersonal passive and the Unaccusative Hypothesis”. In Proceedings of the Fourth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society. J. Jaeger, A. C. Woodbury and F. Ackerman (eds), 159–89. Berkeley: University of California at Berkeley. Ravila, P. 1938. “Über die Entstehung des tscheremissischen Konjugationssystems”. FinnischUgrische Forschungen XXV: 1–25. Reid, N. 2000. “Complex verb collocations in Ngan’gityemerri: A non-derivational strategy for encoding valency alternations”. In Changing Valency, R. M. W. Dixon and A. Aikhenvald (eds), 333–59. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rice, K. 2000. “Voice and valency in the Athapaskan family”. In Changing Valency, R. M. W. Dixon and A. Aikhenvald (eds), 173–235. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sumbatova, N. and Čumakina, M. 2001. “Glagol’naja sistema marijskogo jazyka” [The verbal system of Mari]. A fieldwork report. Manuscript, Moscow State University. Tatevosov, S. 2002. “The parameter of actionality”. Linguistic Typology 6: 317–401. Testelets, Y. 1998. “On two parameters of Transitivity”. In Typology of Verbal Categories, L. Kulikov and H. Vater (eds), 29–45. Tuebingen: Niemeyer. Testelets, Y. 2003. Grammatičeskie ierarxii i tipologija predloženija [Grammatical hierarchies and the typology of sentence]. Doctoral dissertation, Russian State University for Humanities. Tuldava, J. 1994. Estonian Textbook [Indiana University Uralic and Altaic Series 159]. Bloomington: Indiana University. Vendler, Z. 1957. “Verbs and Times”. The Philosophical Review 66: 143–60. Volkova, A. 2001. “Refleksivy v marijskom jazyke” [Reflexives in Mari: A fieldwork report]. Manuscript, Moscow State University.
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Vostrikova, N. 2001. “Složnye glagoly v marijskom jazyke” [Complex predicates in Mari: A fieldwork report]. Manuscript, Moscow State University. Xolodovič, A. A. (ed.). 1969. Tipologija Kauzativnyx Konstrukcij [A typology of causative constructions]. Leningrad: Nauka. Xrakovskij, V. S. 1986. “Semantičeskie tipy množestva situacij (opyt klassifikacii)” [Semantic types of multiple situations (a tentative classification)]. Izvestija Akademii Nauk SSSR. Otdelenie literatury i jazyka 45 (2): 149–58. Xrakovskij, V. S. 1989. “Semantičeskie tipy množestva situacij i ix estestvennaja klassifikacija” [Semantic types of multiple situations and their natural classification]. In Tipologija Itera tivnyx Konstrukcij [A Typology of Iterative Constructions], V. S. Xrakovskij (ed.), 5–53. Leningrad: Nauka.
chapter 21
Extraversive transitivization in Yucatec Maya and the nature of the applicative Christian Lehmann and Elisabeth Verhoeven University of Erfurt/University of Bremen
Just as actor-focused transitivization may essentially be equated with causativization, undergoer-focused transitivization is often equated with applicative formation. Transitivization in Yucatec Maya by means of the morpheme -t resembles applicative formation in other languages to some extent. However, it differs from the latter in being basically a lexical operation with only limited syntactic regularity. Yucatec Mayan transitivization by the suffix -t is described and analyzed with the aim of refining the concept of applicative. Special attention is given to a possible functional transition between plain undergoer-focused transitivization (named ‘extraversion’) and applicative formation. Such a transition is based on the kind of thematic roles typically involved in the two constructions.
1. Introduction The aim of this contribution is to assess the place of a particular transitivization process of Yucatec Maya (YM), called extraversion, in the functional typology of participation, in particular of operations of installation and suppression of argument positions, of promotion and demotion of verbal dependents. We will compare extraversion with current assumptions about applicative formation and try to show that while it does render some of the service commonly attributed to applicatives, it is peculiar in other ways and does not obey certain generalizations that have been made about applicatives. The solution that we propose is to restrict the concept of applicative to certain syntactic ally regular promotion processes and to distinguish it from the concept of the extraversive, which is essentially a lexical-derivational process of providing an intransitive base with an undergoer slot. The paper is organized as follows: Section 2 gives an outline of the theoretical background and sets out the basic concepts of the analysis. Section 3 introduces extraversion in YM, concentrating on the types of thematic roles affected by this process. It is shown that while some cases of extraversion are indeed similar to what is commonly called applicative formation, most cases do not afford the promotion associated with the latter. Section 4 characterizes and defines the operations of applicative formation and extraversion in more detail and delimits them against each other. It thus sets the
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frame for a closer investigation of undergoer-focused transitivization in YM, which is undertaken in section 5. Here, it is shown that the YM operation mainly sticks to the lexical side of the continuum of undergoer-focused transitivization. Those cases that are more productive and regular seem to be either a more recent development, as e.g. addressee-applied-objects of communication verbs, or extraversion is combined with incorporation, resembling thus the rearrangement type of applicative formation. Section 6 posits a functional transition between extraversion and applicative formation.
2. Basic concepts The analysis of the YM situation and its typological comparison will involve a few concepts that have been used in different ways and which we therefore do better in defining at the outset. A verb with its dependents designates a situation consisting of participants assembled around an immaterial center called the situation core. Depending on the specificity of the selection restrictions, a certain kind of participant may be more or less inherent in the concept of a predicate. Extreme cases of inherence are provided by verbs like ‘dream’ and ‘dance’, whose second participant may be exteriorized in the form of a cognate object. The conceptual operation of exteriorization1 has a counterpart in interiorization, which manifests itself in the incorporation of nominal expressions in the verb. Figure 1 serves to enumerate those thematic roles that will be taken up below and to arrange them by the two most important parameters, involvement and control/affectedness. A participant may be more or less intimately involved in a situation (cf. Lehmann, Shin and Verhoeven 2000, section 2.3.1). A central participant is inherent in the con-
control actor
involvement
central
agent
affectedness undergoer force
theme experiencer
recipient/addressee/goal emitter/source beneficiary/place
peripheral
comitative/instrument
Figure 1. Involvement and control of participants
patient
Extraversive transitivization in Yucatec Maya and the nature of the applicative 467
cept of the predicate, so that if it is subtracted, the concept of the predicate changes. Peripheral participants do not concern the concept of the predicate, are compatible with many different predicates and may be so remote from the situation core that they may rather be part of another situation. Central participants are typically coded as verb complements, peripheral participants are typically coded as dependents of additional relators which may be case relators or even (subordinate or ‘co-subordinate’) verbs. The terms ‘predicate’ and ‘argument’ will be used to refer to the language-specific semantic representation of a verb and its complement. There are operations of moving a peripheral participant to the center or, conversely, moving a participant out of the center of the situation. At the level of syntax, these appear as operations of promotion and demotion of verbal dependents. These concepts presuppose a hierarchy of syntactic functions that may roughly be depicted as in Figure 2 (where, for the sake of simplicity, syntactic ergativity is ignored): 1 2 3 4 5
subject direct object / primary object indirect object / secondary object other complement adjunct
Figure 2. Hierarchy of syntactic functions
Any operation that assigns a verbal dependent a syntactic function higher up in Figure 2 is an operation of promotion; any operation that assigns it a function lower down is an operation of demotion. If a participant is interiorized or not exteriorized, it has no syntactic function. In section 4.3, we will come back to the issue of whether ‘no syntactic function’ is the lowest position on Figure 2. In Figure 1, the two most central participants are the agent who controls the situation, and the patient who is affected by it. These two notions are schematized in the form of the two macroroles of ‘actor’ and ‘undergoer’.2 The semantic valence of most bivalent verbs uses the template of opposing an actor to an undergoer, i.e. a dependent that has more vs. less control in the situation. Promoting a peripheral participant often amounts to subsuming it under the undergoer macrorole. Many languages provide for a third macrorole, the indirectus (cf. Lehmann, Shin and Verhoeven 2000), which essentially neutralizes those roles in the center of Figure 1 that belong to highly empathic participants that are neutral or ambivalent as to the control cline, such as recipient, addressee, experiencer and beneficiary. There are essentially two motivations for promoting a dependent on Figure 2. It may either be motivated semantically as drawing it into the control cline and subsuming it under one of the macroroles of actor, undergoer or indirectus. Or else the promotion may be motivated by functional sentence perspective (alias information structure), more particularly as granting topic continuity to the participant in question. For instance, given the context She led him to her desk and __, (1a) (without the repeated she) is a more likely continuation than (1b).
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(1) a. She showed him a book. b. She showed a book to him.
Operations of promotion and demotion lead to a rearrangement of the syntactic structure of the clause, in other words to a paradigmatic relationship between two syntactic constructions. For the morphological structure of the verb whose dependents are concerned, this may mean either of two things: - either a deverbal verb derivation transfers the stem into a different valence class and marks this by some morphological process on the verb stem, - or the same verb stem is used in two distinct valence frames, which may be described as (valence) conversion of the stem. We will keep these two processes apart, i.e. we will not consider conversion as a kind of ‘zero-marked’ derivation.3 In the case of a derivation, it is generally easy to recognize its direction, i.e. to tell which stem is the base and which is derived. In the case of conversion, the verb stem itself is not affected. Of the two syntactic constructions, one may be simpler than the other, i.e. involve syntactic functions higher up on Figure 2 or use less marking by case relators; and this may then be considered basic. By this criterion, we may say that in the English dative shift illustrated in (1), the direction of conversion is from a to b. There may be other criteria such as increased constraints on the distribution of the converted version, which we may forego here. Sometimes, no direction of conversion may be discerned, in which case we simply recognize categorical indeterminacy for such a verb stem. The syntactic or derivational operations involved may be viewed as installing or blocking a valence position — a ‘slot’ — on a verb. The two slots most commonly affected by such operations are the ones associated with the actor and the undergoer macroroles. Those are then transitivity changing operations, which may be classified as in Table 1. We have not used the terms ‘valence increase’ and ‘valence reduction’ to label the row entries of Table 1. First, quantitative valence — the number of argument slots of a verb — is not what is at stake here. Very often, it remains unchanged after such an operation. Especially, the installation of a valence slot for a new argument is often at the Table 1. Transitivity-changing operations macrorole operation
actor
undergoer
installation
actor-focused transitivization: causative
undergoer-focused transitivization: applicative, extraversive
suppression
actor-focused detransitivization: passive, anticausative
undergoer-focused detransitivization: antipassive, introversive
Extraversive transitivization in Yucatec Maya and the nature of the applicative 469
expense of the demotion or suppression of an argument provided in the base. What these operations aim at is either to accommodate a certain argument in verb valence or, on the contrary, to eliminate it from verb valence. Augmentation or reduction of the number of slots may be a contingent consequence. Furthermore, valence is a property of a verb stem, not of a verb form. Therefore, inflectional operations such as sae-style passive or Australia-style antipassive are not, strictly speaking, valence-changing operations. On the other hand, these operations are sometimes called ‘(direct) object addition/ deletion’ etc. (e.g. Dixon and Aikhenvald 1997, Haspelmath and Müller-Bardey 2004). However, whether a noun phrase (in a certain syntactic function) is mentioned or not mentioned is one matter; and the manipulation of valence slots of a verb is another matter. Grammatical and derivational operations are essentially concerned with the latter. We intend our conception to apply generally to languages with different alignment types of fundamental relations. Therefore we have resorted to the terms ‘actor’ and ‘undergoer’, because these are neutral as to syntactic ergativity or even active-inactive clause structure. However, in what follows, only accusative clause structures will be considered, so we may as well speak of ‘(transitive) subject’ and ‘direct object’ instead. Here we are not concerned with the ‘actor’ column of Table 1. The two operations affecting the undergoer slot may be exemplified from YM:
(2) a. b.
hun-túul máak túun yáakan one-cl.an person prog:sbj.3 groan mèen hach yah ba’x k yúuchul ti’ because very ache what impf sbj.3:happen:incmpl him ‘a person groans because it hurts him what is happening to him’ (MPK_016) tu yáakan-t-ah u yahilo’ prv:sbj.3 groan-trr-cmpl poss.3 ache:rel:d2 ‘he bemoaned his pain’ (ACC_0463)
(3) a. b.
tin bul-ah tuláakal in tàak’in prv:sbj.1.sg gamble-cmpl all poss.1.sg money ‘I gambled away all my money’ (RMC_0231) ko’ne’x bùul lets.go gamble.intrv ‘let’s play cards’ (RMC_0234)
The terms ‘extraversion’ and ‘introversion’ (introduced in Paris 1985: 145–6) refer to derivational operations on a verb stem, thus lexical operations that change the syntactic potential of that stem. The main verb in (2a) is intransitive; in (2b), a direct object slot is installed on it by extraversion, the derivational process that is the object of this study. The main verb in (3a) is transitive; in (3b) its direct object slot is blocked by in-
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troversion, whose morphological mark is low tone in the base. The latter process will briefly be resumed in section 4.2.
3. Extraversion in Yucatec Maya 3.1 Basic facts YM has actor-focused transitivization by means of a causative suffix whose main allomorph is -s, and undergoer-focused transitivization by means of the suffix -t (glossed as trr ‘transitivizer’ throughout). The latter is a very common and frequent process in YM grammar (cf. Lehmann 1993, 2002, ch. 2.4.3, 5.3; Bohnemeyer 2004). Most commonly, it works on an intransitive verbal base. The action denoted by the verb is thus extended to an undergoer which is affected by it. Verbal bases that take the suffix -t typically belong to the active class of intransitive verbs. Suffixation of -t results in a recategorization so that the derived verb belongs to the class of transitive verbs. This was already illustrated in (2) above and is schematized in Figure 3. [ [ X ] V-intr -t ]V-tr action Figure 3. Extraversion in Yucatec Maya
YM has a set of more than 150 (mostly verbal) roots which can be marked by the suffix -t. Furthermore ‑t is productive and obligatory in transitive compound and incorporative verbs (cf. Owen 1973), which we will come back to in section 5.5. Moreover, all transitive verb stems based on Spanish loans, like k-in formar-t-ik (impf-sbj.1.sg formtrr-incmpl) ‘I form it’, bear a final ‑t. Next to verbs, nouns and, very rarely, adjectives occur as bases. Thus, this process is clearly defined by its output, which is a transitive verb stem, whereas it is more liberal with respect to input categories. In contrast to certain other languages that have a single generic transitivization process, YM generally keeps actor-focused and undergoer-focused transitivization apart. One exception is constituted by some active intransitive verbs of sound emission and manner of motion that derive a causative verb with ‑t (e.g. tirix ~ tirix-t ‘rattle ~ make rattle’, balak’ ~ balak’-t ‘roll ~ roll sth.’, cf. Bohnemeyer 2004). Factitive verbs are a further exception: on such deadjectival transitive verb stems as chak-kun-t (red-fact-trr) ‘redden’, ‑s and ‑t appear to be in free variation with most such verbs for most speakers. However, derivation in ‑t is the only process of undergoer-focused transitivization that the language has. In particular, there is no contrast among derivational suffixes to disambiguate the thematic role of the direct object. Thus, ‑t is a rather general marker of transitivity.
3.2 Peripheral thematic roles Transitivization is commonly analyzed by seeking a transformational relationship between the transitive construction and an intransitive base version such that the partici-
Extraversive transitivization in Yucatec Maya and the nature of the applicative 471
pant coded as the direct object of the former corresponds to some adjunct of the latter. This adjunct is typically adjoined by some suitable case relator. In YM, this could be one of a set of prepositions. We will first review a set of verbs in which such a regular syntactic relationship between an intransitive base verb and its transitivized counterpart does work out. In (4a) the experiential stimulus u na’ ‘his mother’ is joined to the intransitive verb ts’íikil ‘feel angry’ by the generic preposition ti’ (loc) ‘at, to’ etc., while in the transitivized version of (4b) it takes the function of the direct object. (5) illustrates a similar alternation with a local participant.
(4) a. b.
táan u ts’íikil (ti’ u na’) prog sbj.3 feel.angry (loc poss.3 mother ‘he is annoyed (with his mother)’ (HNAZ_0019.01) na’ táan u ts’íikil-t-ik u prog sbj.3.sg feel.angry-trr-incmpl poss.3.sg mother ‘he is annoyed with / is scolding his mother’ (NMP_0362)
(5) a. b.
táan u bin bàab (ich le ha’-o’) prog sbj.3 go swim (in def water-d2 táan u bin u bàab-t le ha’-o’ prog sbj.3 go sbj.3 swim-trr(subj) def water-d2 ‘he is going to swim (in the water)’ (MPK_018/EMB)
These examples resemble intransitive-based applicatives in other languages: the applied objects of the b-versions are prepositional adjuncts in the intransitive frame of the aversions. We now apply the same method to various groups of extraversive verbs. That is, we try to paraphrase the transitive version with a construction based on the intransitive version, trying out such prepositions that promise to be viable, i.e. to lead to a construction that is grammatical, synonymous with the transitive version and in a regular (‘transformational’) relationship with it. The verbs will be grouped by the thematic role mapped onto the direct object function of the extraversive verb. In the present section, we consider various peripheral participants; in the next section, we apply the method to central participants. We start with (6), where a verb of emotional expression is directed towards its metaphorical goal, coded as a direct object in (6b).
(6) a. láahk’ìin táan u che’h all:day prog sbj.3 laugh ‘he laughs the whole day’ (CPP_0018) b. t-in che’h-t-ah in wíits’in prv-sbj.1.sg laugh-trr-cmpl poss.1.sg younger.sibling ‘I laughed at / derided my younger sibling’ (AVC_0031) c. *h che’h-nah-en ti’ in wíits’in prv laugh-cmpl-abs.1.sg loc poss.1.sg younger.sibling intended meaning: ‘I laughed at/about my younger sibling’ (ACC)
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d. h che’h-nah-en yéetel/yóosal in wíits’in prv laugh-cmpl-abs.1.sg with/because.of poss.1.sg younger.sibling ‘I laughed with/because of my younger sibling’ (AVC_0033) (6c) and (6d) represent various attempts at accommodating that participant in the intransitive base frame of (6a). (6c) uses the preposition ti’ which worked for (4); but it is ungrammatical. (6d) uses other prepositions; but then the participant in question clearly bears different roles. Similar verbs include òok’(ol)(-t) ‘cry, weep ~ mourn’, áakan(t) ‘groan, complain’ (cf. (2) above), sunkal(-t) ‘grunt; roar, bawl’, héenkal(-t) ‘grunt, roar (of wild animals)’, etc. With another subgroup of transitivized verbs, the direct object represents the addressee. In (7b) the verb xóob ‘whistle’ is transitivized and in this way directed towards the addressee.
(7) a. le xibpal-o’ túun xóob def man:child-d2 prog:sbj.3 whistle ‘the boy is whistling’ (ACC) b. le xibpal-o’ túun xóob-t-ik def man:child-d2 prog:sbj.3 whistle-trr-incmpl le chàan x ch’úuppal-o’ def little f woman:child-d2 ‘the boy is whistling at the girl’ (AME_0052) c. *le xibpal-o’ túun xóob ti’ le chàan x ch’úuppal-o’ def boy-d2 prog:sbj.3 whistle loc def little f woman:child-d2 Intended meaning: ‘the boy is whistling at the girl’ (ACC)
As before, (7c) represents a futile attempt at accommodating the same participant in the intransitive base frame of (7a). A further subgroup includes experiential verbs which, if transitivized, code the stimulus in direct object function. In (8), the experiential verb tùukul ‘think’ is directed toward the stimulus in na’ ‘my mother’.
(8) a. táan in tùukul prog sbj.1 think ‘I am thinking’ (ACC) b. táan in tùukult-ik in na’ prog sbj.1 think:trr-incmpl poss.1sg mother ‘I miss my mother’ (ACC) c. *táan in tùukul ti’ in na’ prog sbj.1.sg think loc poss.3 mother Intended meaning: ‘I am thinking about / missing my mother’ (ACC)
And again, there is no way of expressing the same thematic role with the intransitive verb. Similar cases are náay(-t) and wayáak’(-t), both ‘dream of/about’, cha’n(-t) ‘contemplate, look at, enjoy seeing’, kanáan(-t) ‘watch over’, etc.
Extraversive transitivization in Yucatec Maya and the nature of the applicative 473
With a further set of YM verbs, prepositional objects in intransitive frames do seem to alternate with direct objects in the transitivized frame, but they represent different thematic roles.4 For example, with the motion verb síit’ ‘jump’ the direct object refers to the traversed entity, as in (9a). (9b) shows that this participant cannot be joined as an adjunct to the respective intransitive verb. Instead, a complex sentence has to be formed which explicates the role of the participant in question. Joining a prepositional phrase with óok’ol ‘on/above/over’ directly to the intransitive verb results in a change in meaning: in (9c), the object is not traversed, but serves as the support of the action.
(9) a. b. c.
táan in sen síit’-t-ik le sùum-a’ prog sbj.1.sg very jump-trr-cmpl def rope-d1 ‘I am (perpetually / really) jumping over this rope’ (AVC_0038) h síit’-nah-en prv jump-cmpl-abs.1.sg káa h máan-en yóok’ol le kòot-o’ cnj prv pass(cmpl)-abs.1.sg on def wall-d2 ‘I jumped over the wall’ (AVC_0037) h síit’-nah-en yóok’ol le kòot-o’ prv jump-cmpl-abs.1.sg on def wall-d2 ‘I jumped (being) on the wall’ (AVC_0036)
Other verbs that adjoin different undergoer roles in their intransitive vs. transitive frames are báaxal ~ báaxt ‘play’, ba’te’l(-t) ‘fight’, meyah(-t) ‘work’, náahal(-t) ‘earn’, pàakat ~ pakt ‘look at, gaze’, cha’n(-t) ‘contemplate, look at, enjoy seeing’, ch’èeneb(-t) ‘peek, peer, spy’, kanáan(-t) ‘watch over’, óok’ot(-t) ‘dance’ etc. The upshot of this section is that while the direct object of an extraversive verb may code a variety of participants, only exceptionally may the same participant be coded as an adjunct of the intransitive base.
3.3 Central thematic roles We now move on to such transitivized verbs whose direct object plays a central thematic role such as patient or theme. YM lexicalizes a number of action concepts involving a patient like ‘write’, ‘sweep’, ‘weed’, ‘shell’ (some of which are labile in English or German) by intransitive verbs, adding the transitive marker when the verb is used with an object. This group of verbs includes mahàan(-t) ‘borrow, lend’, páay(-t) ‘haul water, pull on a rope’, ya’ch’(-t) ‘dissolve’, tsi’k(-t) ‘shred’, cháal(-t) ‘lute’, máay(-t) ‘strain’, húuy(-t) ‘stir’, tsíik(-t) ‘comb’, pak’ach(-t) ‘make tortilla’, sakal(-t) ‘weave’, lòobil(-t) ‘fight, slap’, wáay(-t) ‘bewitch, put a spell on’, etc. Their use is illustrated by (10). (10) a. Húuy-t le sa’-o’ bik táak’-ak! stir-trr(imp) def atole-d2 prohib stick\deag-subj ‘Stir the atole lest it sticks!’ (ACC_0265)
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b. h húuy-nah-en prv stir-cmpl-abs.1.sg ‘I stirred (sth.)’ (ACC) c. *Húuy-nen ti’ / ich le sa’-o’! stir-itr.imp loc / in def atole-d2 Intended meaning: ‘Stir (in) the atole!’ (ACC) Again, the transitivized versions of tsikbal(-t) ‘converse, talk about’, nu’k(-t) ‘explain’, tse’k(-t) ‘preach, lecture, advise, scold’, p’a’s(-t) ‘mock, criticize, ridicule’, xíix(-t) ‘sift through, cull’, éets’(-t) ‘imitate’, se’n(-t) ‘cough’, síin(-t) ‘blow nose’, etc. take a theme argument as direct object, as illustrated in (11). (11) a. t-in p’a’s-t-ah le ba’x t-u mèet-ah-o’ prv-sbj.1.sg mock-trr-cmpl def thing prv-sbj.3 do-cmpl-d2 ‘I mocked / criticized the thing he did’ (RMC_1073) b. h p’àa’s-nah-en prv mock-cmpl-abs.1.sg ‘I mocked (sth./sb.).’ c. *h p’àa’s-nah-en ti’ / yéetel le ba’x t-u mèet-ah-o’ prv mock-cmpl-abs.1.sg loc / with def thing prv-sbj.3 do-cmpl-d2 Intended: ‘I mocked / criticized the thing he did’ (ACC) These two sets of verbs share with the ones represented by (6)–(9) the fact that the participant figuring as direct object of the transitive verb cannot be adjoined to the intransitive verb. The sets of verbs of this and of the previous section differ in the centrality of the participant coded as direct object. However, the examples show that this semantic difference is only partly correlated with different structural behavior: while some peripheral participants can be adjoined to the intransitive base verb, no central participant ever can. The latter is, in fact, less surprising, because a participant that could be adjoined in a regular way by a preposition would probably not be a central participant. The data of this section shows that YM lexicalizes as intransitive verbs not only verbal concepts that range in the central region of the effectiveness continuum5 as e.g. ‘look at’, ‘laugh at’, etc., but also concepts with a higher effectiveness value, e.g. the equivalents of ‘lend’, ‘shred’, ‘strain’, stir’, ‘shell’ and others. Both may have their origin in two classes of nouns common to most Mayan languages. The first of these comprises action concepts like ts’íib ‘writing, write’, meyah ‘work, worker’, tsikbal ‘chat, chatting, story’ etc. (cf. Kaufman 1990). The second class comprises concrete nouns (denoting physical objects) such as oxo’m ‘shelled corn’ ~ oxo’m-t ‘shell’, pak’ach ‘tortilla’ ~ pak’ach-t ‘make tortilla’, sakal ‘cloth’ ~ sakal-t ‘weave’. According to Bohnemeyer 2002a: 179, 2002b, both classes of nouns would have been recategorized as active intransitive verbs in YM or in the Yucatecan branch.
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To summarize section 3, we may say that YM extraversion shares with applicative formation of other languages its basic nature of being an undergoer-focused transitivization process. It also sometimes behaves specifically like applicative formation in taking part in a transformational relationship between two constructions, one in which a certain participant is coded as an adjunct of an intransitive base and another in which the same participant is coded as the direct object of the transitivized base. This is, however, not typical of the YM extraversive. In general, the intransitive base is not used to speak about that participant that appears with the extraversive. Therefore we do not subsume the YM extraversive under the typological concept of the applicative, but instead compare them in the following section.
4. Types of undergoer-focused transitivization In Table 1, we have introduced the applicative and the extraversive as two kinds of undergoer-focused transitivization. The distinction intended thereby is not generally made in the literature. Typically, the term ‘applicative (formation)’ is used for what we call undergoer-focused transitivization. Here are two representative examples: Corresponding to the first row of our Table 1, Dixon and Aikhenvald 2000 have the following subdivision: ‘5. Valency increase … (1) Causative … (2) Applicative’. Haspelmath and Müller-Bardey 2004 have the section headings: ‘3. Valency-increasing categories … 3.1. Object-adding categories: the applicative … 3.2. Agent-adding categories: the causative’. This concept commonly embodies the following two suppositions, although these are not necessarily stated explicitly: First, although the processes in question are derivational processes, they can be stated in syntactic terms, i.e. a version of the transformational approach that we have applied in section 3 is taken for granted. Secondly and more specifically, installing a direct object slot on a verb amounts to a promotion of one of its dependents. This is stated explicitly in Dixon and Aikhenvald 2000: 14: ‘Applicative derivations all have a common syntactic effect, with a peripheral participant being brought into O function …’. Occasionally, an even broader concept of the applicative is found. Peterson’s (1999) concept of applicative involves coding a ‘semantically peripheral object in a more central morphosyntactic (and sometimes discourse) way than would otherwise be expected for it’. This includes promotion to the indirect or secondary object slot, thus presumably any upward movement in Figure 2 that does not reach level 1. Haspelmath and Müller-Bardey (2004: 1136), too, speak of ‘dative-adding applicatives’. In what follows, we shall argue for a narrower concept of applicative which is opposed to extraversive. In characterizing the two concepts, we consider both formal and functional criteria.6 We begin by discussing applicative formation (section 4.1) followed by extraversion (section 4.2) before arranging both processes on a continuum of undergoer-focused transitivization in section 4.3.
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4.1 Applicative formation 4.1.1
Applicative as a promotion process
The simplest form of applicative is found with intransitive bases, as in (12) from Indonesian (Shibatani 1996: 159). (12) a. b.
Saya duduk di kursi. I sit in chair ‘I am sitting on the chair.’ Saya men-duduk-i kursi. act-sit-appl chair I ‘I am occupying the chair.’
Here the adjunct of the intransitive version (12a) is promoted to direct object in the applicative transitive version (12b). If the base is already transitive, as in (13), then the first phase of the process is the same as before. This, however, ousts the direct object of (13a) from its position; so in a second phase, this is demoted onto some lower level of Figure 2, in the present case, into the function of a secondary object. (13) a. b.
Saya akan mem-beli buku untuk orang itu. I fut act-buy book for person def ‘I will buy a book for the man.’ Saya akan mem-beli-kan orang itu buku. I fut act-buy-appl person def book ‘I will buy the man a book.’
German does not have a secondary object function. Here the demoted direct object ends up as an adjunct, as in (14) (from Comrie 1985: 313f). (14) a. b.
Hans pflanzt [Bäume]do [im Garten]po. ‘Hans plants trees in the garden.’ Hans bepflanzt [den Garten]do [mit Bäumen]po. ‘Hans plants the garden with trees.’
The German derivation by the prefix be- may promote to direct object function not only peripheral dependents, as in (14), but also indirect objects, as in (15). (15) a. b.
Maria schenkte [dem Mann]io [ein Buch]do . ‘Mary gave a book to the man (as a present).’ Maria beschenkte [den Mann]do [mit einem Buch]po. ‘Mary presented the man with a book.’
Various Bantu languages including Swahili, Chichewa and ChiMwi:ni possess an applicative operation of the same type. (16) from Chichewa (Baker 1988: 229) features the recipient as a prepositional object in the a-version. In the applicative b-version it is
Extraversive transitivization in Yucatec Maya and the nature of the applicative 477
promoted to primary object, while the erstwhile primary object is demoted to secondary object. (16) a. b.
Mbidzi zi-na-perek-a msampha kwa nkhandwe. zebras sbj-pst-hand-fv trap to fox ‘The zebras handed the trap to the fox.’ Mbidzi zi-na-perek-er-a nkhandwe msampha. zebras sbj-pst-hand-appl-fv fox trap ‘The zebras handed the fox the trap.’
Thus, irrespective of the transitivity of the base verb and the resulting valence of the derived verb, applicative formation presupposes the hierarchy of syntactic functions introduced in Figure 2 and involves a promotion to direct or primary object function as visualized in Figure 4. 1
subject
2
direct object / primary object
3
indirect object / secondary object
4
other complement
5
adjunct
Figure 4. Applicative formation
4.1.2
Functions of the applicative
The main function of applicative formation is the centralization of the participant concerned. In semantic terms, this entails an increase in involvement and affectedness, where these concepts are understood as visualized in Figure 1. In the German (17a), the burglar is involved more indirectly and coded as an indirect object, while in (17a′) he is directly involved in the situation and coded as a direct object. The verb is transitivized by the prefix ver-. A similar functional distinction of involvement is conveyed by the prepositional vs. direct object marking in (17b)/(17b′), featuring again the applicative prefix be- (cf. (14)). (17) a. a.′ b. b.′
Paul folgte dem Einbrecher. ‘Paul followed the burglar.’ Paul verfolgte den Einbrecher. ‘Paul pursued the burglar.’ Paul herrschte über die Teutonen. ‘Paul reigned over the Teutons.’ Paul beherrschte die Teutonen. ‘Paul governed/controlled the Teutons.’ (Lehmann 1991: 207–8)
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Note that the examples in (17) differ from those of (14) and (15) regarding the transitivity of the base verb. However, irrespectively of whether the promotion involved in applicative formation occasions the demotion of an argument occupying the direct object function of the base verb, as in (14) and (15), or the direct object function is newly installed on the verb, as in (17), applicative formation principally aims at heightening the involvement of the promoted participant. In (14) and (17), there is not only an increase in involvement of a peripheral participant but also an increase in its affectedness in the situation. In the basic versions, the participant in question is only weakly or partly affected. Through the operation of applicative formation it becomes strongly or totally affected. In the a-version of (14), for instance, the locative participant may only be partly affected, the trees occupying only part of the garden, while in the applicative version (14b), the whole garden is planted with trees (cf. Comrie 1985: 314).7 From the point of view of information structure, topic continuity plays an important role in the foregrounding of a participant (cf. Givón 1983). Given that topic continuity requires topical participants to be in higher-ranked syntactic functions and applicative formation enables a peripheral participant to appear in just such a function, it is often performed on a peripheral participant that is repeated or topicalized (cf. Rude 1986, Peterson 1999, ch. 3). The examples in (18) and (19) show a participant that is topical in the first clause and then referred to again in the second clause. The relative pronouns in (18a) and (19a) are in direct object function with respect to the subordinate applicative verbs, while in (18b) and (19b) they depend on appropriate local prepositions. From the point of view of functional sentence perspective, (18a) is better than (18b); and the same goes for (19a) and (19b). (18) a. b.
das Appartment, das Nicole besitzt und das Chantal bewohnt ‘the apartment that Nicole owns and Chantal inhabits’ das Appartment, das Nicole besitzt und in dem Chantal wohnt ‘the apartment that Nicole owns and that Chantal lives in’
(19) a. der Bürgersteig, der vor unserem Haus ist und den er (mit Sand) (be)streuen muß ‘the pavement that is in front of our house and that he has to strew (with sand)’ b. der Bürgersteig, der vor unserem Haus ist und auf den er (Sand) streuen muß ‘the pavement that is in front of our house and that he has to strew (sand) on’ Thus, promotion of a peripheral participant in applicative formation is motivated by goals concerning thematic roles and/or information structure.
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4.2 Extraversion Extraversion is well attested in those languages (e.g. Oceanic languages) whose basic verbs are usually intransitive and which mark the verb as transitive when it is used with a direct object. In this case, there is generally no regular alternative that would allow accommodating the direct object participant of the derived transitive verb in the ‘underlying’ intransitive frame. One such Oceanic language is Tolai, illustrated by (20): (20) a. b.
A vavina i momo. art woman sbj.3 drink ‘The woman drank (something).’ A vavina i mom-e ra tava. art woman sbj.3 drink-trr art water ‘The woman drank the water.’ (Mosel 1991: 248)
(20) shows a derivation of an intransitive base verb with the aim of joining a further ‘new’ participant in direct object function, thus extraversion as in YM. The semantics of the process consists in directing the action denoted by the verb towards a further participant. The participant in question is typically intrinsic to the situation denoted by the base verb, as the patient in (20).8 In (20b) the participant is exteriorized, i.e. it receives its own lexical representation. It appears that languages have a choice as to the valence pattern they use in the lexicalization of action concepts involving such an intrinsic undergoer.9 One alternative is to lexicalize such concepts as basic intransitive verbs and to apply extraversion if the undergoer must be exteriorized. This is illustrated by (20) and equally by the YM verb for ‘eat’: hàan is basically intransitive and has to be transitivized if the thing eaten is to be joined, viz. hàan-t ‘eat sth.’. The other alternative is to lexicalize such concepts as basic transitive verbs and to apply introversion — the mirror image of extraversion — to focus on the action as such. This is shown in (21) from YM with the basic transitive verb kon ‘sell’, which is detransitivized in the b-version by introversion. (21) a. Úuchak wáah a kon-ik to’n le kùuts-o’? possible int sbj.2 sell-incmpl us def pheasant-d2 ‘Is it possible that you sell us the pheasant?’ (HK’AN_481.1) b. Bix u k’áat-a’l hun-p’éel tìimbreh how sbj.3 ask-pass.incmpl one-cl.inan stamp ti’ le máak k-u kòon-ol-o’? loc def person impf-sbj.3 sell\intrv-incmpl-d2 ‘How does one ask for a stamp from the man who sells [things]?’ (BVS_11.01.22) In other languages like English or German, action verbs are basically transitive but possess an optional direct object, i.e. there is no morphological indication of transitivization or detransitivization.10
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In some respects, the central participant exteriorized from intransitive bases by extraversion is like a cognate object (e.g. with dream, dance) or an object of result, as with verbs of bodily action/function (e.g. laugh, cough). The respective predicates are said to be ‘pregnant’ with the participant in question. However, exteriorization of such closely related internal participants seems to be subject to restrictions in many languages, e.g. they need to be modified or they do not take regular object marking. This indicates that these objects do not have the same degree of independence vis-à-vis the verb as a normal object, including an extraversive object (cf. Lehmann 1991: 192f).
4.3 Applicative vs. extraversive Extraversion and applicative formation are two processes of undergoer-focused transitivization. They are not in opposition, but rather in complementary distribution on an asymmetric gradience.11 The common semantic denominator of both processes may be paraphrased by ‘direction of action towards an undergoing participant’ (which, incidentally, is also the idea behind the term ‘transitive’). Extraversion is a derivation, thus a lexical process and not productive for all verbs of some class in a language. Applicative formation may be productive to different degrees. Some languages have rather productive applicatives, as is e.g. reported for the Wolof instrument applicative (Comrie 1985: 318f). Furthermore, extraversion is restricted to intransitive bases while applicative formation operates both on intransitive and transitive bases. Thus, extraversion is valence-increasing, while applicative formation may be valence-increasing (with (in)transitive base verbs) or valence-rearranging (with transitive base verbs), as established in Comrie 1985. While applicative formation promotes adjuncts in diverse relatively peripheral roles, extraversion exteriorizes a participant closely related to the situation core designated by the base verb. It thus serves the individuation of this participant. The broad concept of applicative is liable to obscure this difference if a participant that cannot be accommodated in the frame of an intransitive base verb is said to be promoted in the transitivized version, as if ‘no syntactic function’ were the lowest position on the hierarchy of syntactic functions Figure 2. This difference between the two processes is visualized in Figure 5. The regular relationship between an adjunct construction and an applicative construction as illustrated, e.g, in (12a) and (12b) is often conceived thus: The dependent in question is joined to the verb by means of a case relator. In the adjunct construction, this takes the form of an adposition heading the adjunct. In the applicative construction, the case relator instead attaches to the verb so that what was the complement of the adposition now becomes a direct complement of the verb. The same can happen with different case relators which then correspond to local, benefactive, instrumental etc. applicatives. Whether or not this can be verified as an historical change in some languages, it is certainly a useful approach to understand the mechanism of applicative formation. At the same time, this model is not applicable to extraversion because in the prototypical case, there is no adjunct construction to begin with. Instead, there is just transfer of an intransitive base into the transitive valence class by means of a transitivizer.
Extraversive transitivization in Yucatec Maya and the nature of the applicative 481
semantic configuration
situation core
situation core
situation core
participant
participant
participant semantic process construction
derivational process
exteriorization intransitive verb – extraversion
centralization
transitive verb direct object
intransitive verb adjunct
applicative formation
Figure 5. Undergoer-focused transitivization
Finally, since applicative formation is a promotion process, it may play a role in functional sentence perspective, a function that is not accessible to extraversion because there is no alternative syntactic frame, and thus, no choice of coding. Figure 6 summarizes the differences between the two processes. Some of the parameters mentioned on the left side of Figure 6 hold for both extraversive and applicative formation, while those mentioned on the right side exclusively characterize applicative formation. We are now prepared to take a closer look at the thematic roles involved in both processes. Figure 7 visualizes the semantic space of thematic roles relevant in applicative and extraversive constructions. The horizontal distribution is arranged according to a role’s position in the causal chain of an event (following Croft 1991 and Luraghi 2001). Further parameters considered in Figure 7 are the empathy of the participant, its macrorole and its cross-linguistic frequency in applicative constructions. The empathic roles are positioned in the upper part of Figure 7, the anempathic ones in the lower part and the neutral ones (theme, patient, stimulus) in between. The macroroles undergoer and indirectus are included in a box in the same way as the local, the concomitant and the antecedent roles. Since extraversion is a lexical process, it involves thematic roles that are more or less inherent in the lexical frame of the base verb. These are prototypically patient and
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lexical
syntactic
non-productive
productive
base has no direct object slot
base may have direct object slot
purely valence-increasing
valence-increasing or rearranging
exteriorized roles determined by lexical base
applied roles determined by applicative marker
(increased) individuation of exteriorized object
increased affectedness of applied object feeds topic continuity
– extraversive
applicative
Figure 6. Continuum of undergoer-focused valence-increasing operations
theme, as indicated by the dark gray field in Figure 7. The same goes for the stimulus with experiential verbs, addressee or theme with communication verbs and place, goal or source with position and motion verbs. Applicative formation, on the other hand, is (at least potentially) open to all roles posited in Figure 7. Following the typological study of Peterson (1999), however, peripheral roles such as beneficiary, comitative and instrument are predominant. Applicative conANIMATE ANTECEDENT emitter
INDIRECTUS benificiary recipient
addressee
comitative theme instrument
stimulus
patient
UNDERGOER
CONCOMITANT source
place
goal LOCAL
INANIMATE Figure 7. Focal instances of thematic roles in extraversive and applicative constructions
Extraversive transitivization in Yucatec Maya and the nature of the applicative 483
structions are in general most productive with these latter roles.12 Furthermore, these roles may be added to different kinds of situations such as creation or destruction, action in general, motion, transfer and others. These roles have been included in the light gray area in Figure 7.
5. Assessing Yucatec Maya extraversion 5.1 Frequency Table 2 shows the distribution of roles over undergoers created by transitivization of 63 YM verbs with the -t suffix. Patient (as in (10)) and theme roles (as in (11)) predominate clearly, followed by the stimulus (as in (4), (8)) and local roles (as in (5), (9)). Roles subsumed under the indirectus, such as addressee (as in (7)), beneficiary, recipient, are seldom involved in YM extraversion. Certain thematic roles frequently involved in applicative formation in other languages, such as the instrument and the comitative, do not occur at all. Table 2. Frequency of thematic roles occurring in YM extraversion13 thematic role
frequency
patient theme stimulus goal/source/path place addressee beneficiary recipient
22 17 11 11 8 5 2 2
5.2 Nature of roles: central vs. peripheral participants In addition to theme and patient extraversion, other central or closely related participants may be exteriorized. (22) shows that a verb-inherent local participant such as the path of a motion may be the direct object of the transitivized verb. Contrast this with (23), where it is not the local adjunct of (23a) that underlies the direct object of (23b). In general, peripheral local roles — here a location with respect to a perception verb — cannot be represented by the direct object of an extraversive verb. (22) a. b.
h áalkab-nah-en t–u bèel-il in kòol prv run-cmpl-abs.1.sg loc-poss.3 way-rel poss.1.sg milpa ‘I ran on the way to my milpa’ 14 (AVC_0003/4) t-in wáalkab-t-ah u bèel-il in kòol prv-sbj.1.sg run-trr-cmpl poss.3 way-rel poss.1.sg milpa ‘I ran the way to my milpa’
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(23) a. b.
le ko’lel-o’ táan u ch’èeneb ti’ le hòol-o’ def woman-d2 prog sbj.3 peek loc def hole-d2 ‘the woman is peeking through the door’ (MPK_031) le ko’lel-o’ táan u ch’èeneb-t-ik def woman-d2 prog sbj.3 peek-trr-incmpl (bix yan-il) le hòol-o’ how exist:efoc def hole-d2 ‘the woman is examining the door’ (MPK_032)
Promotion of such peripheral roles is, however, well attested with local adjuncts of action verbs in languages with applicative systems, witness (24) from Chichewa (Mchombo 1998: 506–7) and (25) from Kichaga (Tanzania, Bresnan and Moshi 1993: 49).15 (24) a. b.
Kalúlú a-ku-phík-á maûngu pa chulu. 1a:hare 1.sbj-prs-cook-fv 6:pumpkin 16:on 7:ant.hill16 ‘The hare is cooking some pumpkins on the ant-hill.’ Kalúlú a-ku-phík-ír–a pa chulu maûngu. 1a:hare 1.sbj-prs-cook-appl-fv 16:on 7:ant.hill 6:pumpkin ‘The hare is cooking on ant-hill the pumpkins.’
(25) a. b.
N-a˝-ı˝-ly-à k-élyà. foc-1.sg-prs-eat-fv 7-food ‘He/she is eating food.’ ` -rì-nyì k-élyà. N-a˝-ı˝-lyì-í-à m foc-1.sg-prs-eat-appl-fv 3-homestead-loc 7-food ‘He/She is eating food at the homestead.’
This confirms that YM extraversion chiefly allows for central participants to appear in direct object function, while applicative formation chiefly allows for peripheral participants to appear in direct object function.
5.3 Nature of roles: affected human participants The direct object of an extraverted intransitive root practically never codes an affected human participant. The closest one can get is the addressee of a verb of communication. However, this is not really affected, and even there the construction is marginal. The canonical frame for a verb of communication is ‘message = direct object, addressee = indirect object’, as shown in (26a) and (27), first variant. An alternate frame has the addressee as direct object if there is no NP referring to the theme, as in (26b). Some speakers allow for absolutive (i.e. direct object) marking of the addressee even with the basic communication verb tsikbat ‘tell, chat’, as is shown in (27), second variant, though conservative speakers judge it as ungrammatical. Note that this pattern is restricted for a number of reasons. First, it violates rules of YM grammar since there is no cross-reference marking of the lexical NP in object function hun-p’éel ba’l ‘one
Extraversive transitivization in Yucatec Maya and the nature of the applicative 485
thing’, the absolutive suffix-slot being occupied by the absolutive marker for the second person. Furthermore, this frame seems to be conditioned by overt marking of the addressee appearing as an absolutive suffix on the verb. Since the third person singular absolutive suffix is zero in non-clause-final position, a third person (singular) addressee could not be distinguished from cross-referencing the message argument. Note furthermore that in any case, the addressee of tsikbat cannot become the subject of a passive version, from which we may conclude that it is not a canonical direct object.17 (26) a. káa in tse’kt te’x u t’àan diyos cnj sbj.1.sg preach:trr(subj) you.all poss.3 speech god ‘so that I preach you the word of god’ (ACC) b. táan in tse’k-t-ik le máak-o’b-a’ prog sbj.1.sg preach-trr-incmpl def person-pl-d1 káa y-ohel-t-o’b cnj sbj.3-know-trr(subj)-3.pl ba’x k-u tàal u yúuch-ul what impf-sbj.3 come sbj.3 happen-incmpl ‘I am preaching to these people so that they come to know what is going to happen’ (AVC_0019) (27)
tsikbat-ik tèech chat:trr-incmpl(abs.3.sg) you ? tsikbat-ik-ech chat:trr-incmpl-abs.2.sg ‘I am telling you something’ (RMC_1324) táan in prog sbj.1.sg
hun-p’éel ba’l one-cl.inan thing
Thus, applicative promotion of the addressee is heavily constrained in several respects: First, in a complete frame displaying message and addressee, the message is always coded as the direct object while the addressee takes the function of the indirect object. Second, absolutive coding of the addressee is restricted for basic verbs of communication, as explained above. It may be of relevance that the most basic verb of communication, a’l ‘say’, is only used in the canonical frame illustrated in (27), first variant and excluded from a frame like (27), second variant. We therefore hypothesize that the addressee in the position of a direct object of an extraversive verb is a secondary development.
5.4 Development: locative alternation There are a number of contact verbs displaying extraversion together with a valence alternation. With these either the theme/patient (28a) or the place of contact (28b) is in direct object function. While there is no alternative intransitive frame for the patient (28a′), the place may as well be accommodated in an intransitive frame (28b′).
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(28) a. táan in ts’íib-t-ik hun-p’éel t’àan màayah prog sbj.1.sg write-trr-incmpl one-cl.inan speech maya ‘I am writing a Mayan word’ (RMC_2011) *táan in ts’íib ti’ hun-p’éel t’àan a.′ prog sbj.1.sg write loc one-cl.inan speech b. táan in ts’íib-t-ik hun-p’éel hu’n/pak’ prog sbj.1.sg write-trr-incmpl one-cl.inan paper/brickwork ‘I am writing on a paper / a wall’ (RMC_2011) b.′ táan in ts’íib ti’ hun-p’éel hu’n/pak’ prog sbj.1.sg write loc one-cl.inan paper/brickwork ‘I am writing on a paper / a wall’ (ACC) Example (28) involves two alternations. The alternation between (28b) and (28b’) looks like applicative formation, as the place argument is promoted to direct object function. The relationship between (28a) and (28b), however, is a commutation of two participants in direct object function and thus looks like a semantic valence alternation, one frame displaying the theme/patient of writing in direct object function, the other displaying the place of writing in direct object function. (29) suggests that the frame with a local direct object, as in (28b), is secondary or derived. While in (29a) both participants, i.e. the theme and the place, can be accommodated, this is not the case in (29b) (~(28b)). Speakers judge the adjunction of the effected object as infelicitous since the verb ts’íib(t) ‘write’ already implies the ‘object’ t’àan ‘speech, words’ so that its coding in a concomitant phrase seems to be superfluous. (29) a. táan in ts’íib-t-ik le t’àan ti’ le hu’n-o’ prog sbj.1.sg write-trr-incmpl def speech loc def paper-d2 ‘I am writing that word on the paper’ (EMB_0630) b. táan in ts’íib-t-ik hun-p’éel hu’n (?yéetel t’àan-o’b) prog sbj.1.sg write-trr-incmpl one-cl.inan paper with speech-pl ‘I am writing on a paper (words)’ (lit.: ‘I am writing a paper with words.’) (ACC) Total demotion of the underlying patient may also be observed in genuine applicative constructions, e.g. in examples like (14), where applicative formation, promoting the place to direct object function, may be used in order not to mention the patient anymore. This may be due to the fact that the patient is understood in the context or is implicit in the verb, so that it would be infelicitous to mention it.
5.5 Development: incorporation plus transitivization To complete the picture, we have to look at incorporative verbs, i.e. verbs that have an incorporated noun. These take the transitivizing suffix ‑t, too.18 Part of them displays
Extraversive transitivization in Yucatec Maya and the nature of the applicative 487
the rearranging type of applicative construction, in the following form: The underlying direct object is demoted by being incorporated in the verb. The incorporative verb is intransitive. Subsequent transitivization reopens the direct object slot for another participant. (30) illustrates promotion of a place adjunct, (31) demonstrates promotion of a (human) goal adjunct to direct object function.19 (30) a. t-in ch’ak-ah che’ ichil in kòol prv-sbj.1.sg cut-cmpl tree in poss.1.sg milpa b. t-in ch’ak-che’-t-ah in kòol prv-sbj.1.sg cut-tree-trr-cmpl poss.1.sg milpa ‘I chopped trees in my cornfield’ (Bricker, Po’ot Yah and Dzul de Po’ot 1998: 354 / RMC_1685) (31) a. b.
t-in wek-ah ha’ ti’ h–pìil prv-sbj.1.sg spill-cmpl water loc m-Philip t-in wek-ha’-t-ah h–pìil prv-sbj.1.sg spill-water-trr-cmpl m-Philip ‘I threw water on Philip’ (Bricker, Po’ot Yah and Dzul de Po’ot 1998: 354)
In such cases, the function of -t is indistinguishable from the applicative. However, not all combinations of incorporation plus transitivization are applicative in this sense. There are a number of lexicalized incorporatives, as in (32a), which do not possess a regular paraphrase such that the participant underlying their direct object would be accommodated in their base verb frame. Here, the function is again extraversive, the intransitive incorporative verb lek’ich being the basis of derivation. The direct object participant of the transitivized incorporative verb is a new participant arising from the semantic change brought about by the operation of incorporation. (32) a. t‑u lek’-ich-t-ah u xùun prv-sbj.3 open-eye-trr-cmpl poss.3 spouse b. ?t–u lek’ah u yich ti’ u xùun prv-sbj.3 open-cmpl poss.3 eye loc poss.3 spouse ‘he looked scornfully at his wife’ (EMB_0176, RMC_2000) Summarizing the YM constructions involving derivation in ‑t, there are only a few that fulfill the criteria of applicative constructions. Most of these are derived or secondary with regard to extraversion, or a recent development, as in the case of addressee-directobjects.
6. Conclusion Peterson (1999, section 5.4) postulates the following implicational relationship between different applicative types: locative and circumstantial applicatives depend on
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the presence of other applicative constructions, while benefactive and instrumental/ comitative applicatives do not. That is, the locus of applicative formation is in the promotion of benefactive and instrumental/comitative arguments. These serve as anchors, as it were, for the development of additional applicative constructions marked either by the same or distinct morphology. This is visualized in the upper half of Figure 8. The upper half of Figure 8 represents a developmental path for the extension of applicative constructions. The facts of YM now suggest that the picture can be completed by looking at the process of extraversion with its developmental characteristics. Extraversion and the thematic roles affected by it are shown in the lower half of Figure 8. The locus of extraversion is in the exteriorization of the patient and theme. If other, more peripheral, roles like goal, place, stimulus etc. join the transitive pattern, this may take on features of applicative marking, provided there is a regular, transformational relationship between alternative alignments. Such favorable circumstances may be provided, e.g., by incorporation or by the locative alternation. Extraversion may then fulfill functions proper to applicative formation. Thus, a derivational process may develop from extraversive to applicative passing through the less inherent roles on the left side of Figure 8. Given that the two processes are related as shown in Figure 6 above, each of them may expand over part of the overall domain of thematic roles. In purely structural terms and disregarding paraphrase relationships, extraversion and applicative formation are the same thing. We have repeatedly emphasized that the distinction we are making is gradual. It may be rephrased this way: Undergoer-focused transitivization is called applicative formation to the extent that it is a syntactic process marked on the verb; it is called extraversion to the extent it is a lexical process with syntactic consequences. applicative concomitant comitative instrument
affected human beneficiary recipient addressee
local place, path goal, source
experiential stimulus
inherent undergoer patient theme
extraversive Figure 8. Expansion of constructions with respect to thematic roles
Extraversive transitivization in Yucatec Maya and the nature of the applicative 489
We do not want to be misunderstood. We are not objecting to the attempt to provide a syntactic analysis of constructions involving processes of word-formation. We have tried it ourselves. Discovering and formulating regularities is an important facet of the epistemic interest of linguistics. However, we suspect that in the case of applicative constructions, transformational relationships have been overemphasized. That is, if our proposal to distinguish between applicative and extraversive is accepted, then we expect that many applicatives which figure in linguistic descriptions will turn out to be more like an extraversive upon critical examination.20
Acknowledgements We thank Julia Galiamina and an anonymous reviewer for very helpful comments on an earlier version.
Abbreviations 1 1st person, 2 2nd person, 3 3rd person, abs absolutive, act active, an animate, appl applicative, art article, cl classifier, cmpl completive, cnj conjunction, d1 proximal deixis, d2 distal deixis, deag deagentive, def definite, efoc extrafocal, exist existential, f feminine, foc focus, fut future, fv final vowel, imp imperative, impf imperfective, inan inanimate, incmpl incompletive, int interrogative, intrv introversive, itr intransitive, loc locative, m masculine, pass passive, pl plural, poss possessive, prog progressive, prohib prohibitive, prs present, prv perfective, pst past, rel relator, sbj subject, sg singular, subj subjunctive, trr transitivizer.
Notes 1. Cf. Lehmann (1991, section 3.2) on exteriorization of participants. A holistic, undifferentiated situation is semantically represented just by the situation core which contains the participants. Exteriorization of a participant means that it receives its own linguistic representation which in turn comes along with individuation and referential independence. Thus, exteriorization can be conceived as an operation which gradually brings participants (included in the situation core) to the fore and opposes them syntagmatically to the situation core. 2. For the concept of macroroles, see Foley and Van Valin (1984), Van Valin and LaPolla (1997) and Lehmann, Shin and Verhoeven (2000). 3. We are thereby radicalizing the position taken in Dixon and Aikhenvald (1997, 2000) and Peterson (1999), for which derivational marking of the applicative is only the prototypical case. 4. This does not, however, imply that a given verb may take only one type of participant as direct object. As with basic transitive verbs, the semantics of the direct object may be very general covering all kinds of undergoers. In certain cases, the concrete role depends on the empathy of the participant in question and is additionally inferred from the situation denoted and from the general context.
490 Christian Lehmann and Elisabeth Verhoeven 5. See Tsunoda (1981), and cf. the concept of ‘transitivity’ in Hopper and Thompson (1980). 6. Cf. Comrie (1985), Drossard (1991), Lehmann (1991), Dixon and Aikhenvald (1997, 2000), Peterson (1999), Haspelmath and Müller-Bardey (2004). 7. Cf. furthermore Michaelis and Ruppenhofer (2001, ch. 5.3.3), who identify an intensification of the action after applicative derivation with be- in examples like (17b) and other pairs such as schimpfen ~ beschimpfen ‘scold at ~ insult’, lehren ~ belehren ‘teach ~ instruct, inform’ etc. 8. Cf. the discussion of omitted objects in English in Rice 1987, section 5.4, where it is argued that they are present on a conceptual level. 9. There is an analogous alternative concerning the provision of an actor with process concepts such as ‘break’. Such verbs may either be basically intransitive and be transitivized by causativization, or they may be basically transitive and be detransitivized by anticausativization. Cf. Haspelmath 1993 and Nichols, Peterson and Barnes (2004). 10. For English cf. Lemmens (1998, ch. 5.4) on ‘objectless transitives’, who notes that these verbs often have a restricted set of possible objects which are understood in the intransitive version. 11. The position of the dashed line in Figure 6 is intended to reflect this asymmetry. 12. Cf. again the instrument applicative in Wolof (Comrie 1985). 13. Since some verbs allow for more than one participant type as object, the total number of roles is higher than that of verbs. 14. A milpa is a cleared field, usually located in the rainforest, which is used for agriculture. 15. Although the local marking is preserved with the local dependents in the applicative constructions in (24b) and (25b), these exhibit syntactic properties of a primary object in Bantu, i.e. adjacency to the verb, passivizability, and possible object cross-reference on the verb (see Alsina and Mchombo 1993, section 4.3, Bresnan and Moshi 1993). 16. In the Bantu examples, arabic numerals (occasionally followed by a small letter) in front of nouns indicate noun classes. 17. This is, in fact, the only sentence in our corpus that might lead one to suspect a primary/secondary object distinction for YM. 18. For a comprehensive analysis of incorporation and related processes in YM, cf. Lehmann and Verhoeven 2005. 19. Other languages that display rearranging applicative constructions on the basis of incorporation include Chukchee (cf. Nedjalkov 1976, Spencer 1995), Ainu (cf. Kaiser 1997) and Oluta Popoluca (cf. Zavala Maldonado 1999). 20. This can be hypothesized on the basis of statements like the following: ‘The applicative derivation is seldom fully productive, being normally restricted to a limited set of intransitive roots.’ (Dixon and Aikhenvald 1997: 80). Here features like reduced productivity and restriction to intransitive bases, which are typical of extraversion, are diagnosed on the applicative instead. `
Text sources BVS Blair, Robert W. and Vermont‑Salas, Refugio 1965‑7, Spoken (Yucatec) Maya. 2 vols. Chicago: University of Chicago, Dept. of Anthropology. Reprint: Columbia, Miss.: Lucas Brothers, 1979.
Extraversive transitivization in Yucatec Maya and the nature of the applicative 491
HK’AN Dzul Poot, Domingo 1986, ‘J‑k’an yajaw’. In: Cuentos mayas (tomo II). Edición bilingüe: español — maya. Mérida, Yucatán: Maldonado; inah, sep; 89–114. HNAZ Bolio, Antonio 1930, ‘H Nazario’. Andrade, Manuel J. and Máas Collí, Hilaria (eds) 1991, Cuentos mayas yucatecos; Tomo II, Mérida: Universidad Autónoma de Yucatán; 64–127. Amedée Colli Colli, Felipe Carrillo Puerto, Q. Roo, Mexico, ACC AME Antonio May Ek, Yaxley, Q. Roo, Mexico, AVC Aniceto Velázquez Chi, F. Carrillo Puerto, Q., Mexico, CPP Catalino Poot Peña, Yaxley, Q. Roo, Mexico EMB Ernesto May Balam, Yaxley, Q. Roo, Mexico MPK María Puk Ciau, Yaxley, Q. Roo, Mexico NMP Norma May Pool, Yaxley, Q. Roo, Mexico RMC Ramón May Cupul, Yaxley, Q. Roo, Mexico
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Givón, T. 1983. “Topic continuity in discourse: An introduction”. In Topic Continuity in Discourse: A Quantitative Cross-language Study, T. Givón (ed.), 1–41. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Foley, W. A. and Van Valin, R. D. 1984. Functional Syntax and Universal Grammar [Cambridge Studies in Linguistics 38]. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Haspelmath, M. 1993. “More on the typology of inchoative/causative verb alternations”. In Causatives and Transitivity [Studies in Language Companion Series 23], B. Comrie and M. Polinsky (eds), 87–120. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Haspelmath, M. and Müller-Bardey, T. 2004. “Valence change”. In Morphology. Volume 2, G. Booij, Ch. Lehmann, and J. Mugdan (eds), 1130–1145. Berlin and New York: de Gruyter. Hopper, P. and Thompson, S. 1980. “Transitivity in grammar and discourse.” Language 56: 251– 99. Kaiser, L. 1997. “The interaction of noun incorporation and applicative formation in Ainu”. In Yearbook of Morphology 1997, G. Booij and J. van Marle (eds), 157–78. Boston: Kluwer Aca demic Publishers. Kaufman, T. 1990. “Algunos rasgos estructurales de los idiomas Mayances”. In Lecturas sobre la Lingüística Maya, N. C. England and S. R. Elliot (eds), 59–114. La Antigua, Guatemala: Centro de Investigaciones Regionales de Mesoamérica. Lehmann, Ch. 1991. “Predicate classes and Participation”. In Partizipation: Das sprachliche Erfassen von Sachverhalten [Language Universal Series 6], H. Seiler and W. Premper (eds), 183–239. Tübingen: Narr. Lehmann, Ch. 1993. “Predicate classes in Yucatec Maya”. Función (Guadalajara) 13/14: 195– 272. Lehmann, Ch. 2002. Possession in Yucatec Maya [ASSidUE 10]. Erfurt: Seminar für Sprachwissenschaft der Universität. Lehmann, Ch., Shin, Y.-M. and Verhoeven, E. 2000. Direkte und indirekte Partizipation: Zur Typologie der sprachlichen Repräsentation konzeptueller Relationen [Lincom Studies in Language Typology 4]. München: Lincom Europa. Lehmann, Ch. and Verhoeven, E. 2005. “Noun incorporation and participation. A typological study on participant association with particular reference to Yucatec Maya”. In Aspects of Participation: Typological Studies on Concomitance and Incorporation [Studia Typologica 7], Ch. Lehmann (ed.), 103–204. Berlin: Akademie Verlag. Lemmens, M. 1998. Lexical Perspectives on Transitivity and Ergativity: Causative Constructions in English [Current issues in linguistic theory 166]. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Luraghi, S. 2001. “Syncretism and the classification of semantic roles”. STUF 54: 35–51. Mchombo, S. A. 1998. “Chichewa (Bantu)”. In The Handbook of Morphology, A. Spencer and A. M. Zwicky (eds), 500–20. Oxford and Massachusetts: Blackwell. Michaelis, L. and Ruppenhofer, J. 2001. Beyond Alternations: A Constructional Model of the German Applicative Pattern. Stanford: csli Publications. Mosel, U. 1991. “Towards a typology of valence”. In Partizipation: Das sprachliche Erfassen von Sachverhalten [Language Universal Series 6], H. Seiler and W. Premper (eds), 240–51. Tübingen: Narr. Nedjalkov, V. P. 1976. “Diathesen und Satzstruktur im Tschuktschischen”. In Satzstruktur und Genus Verbi [Studia Grammatica XIII], R. Lötzsch and R. Růžička (eds), 181–211. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag.
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Nichols, J., Peterson, D. A. and Barnes, J. 2004, “Causativizing and decausativizing languages”. Linguistic Typology 8: 149–211. Owen, M. G. 1973. “Semantic aspects of Yucatec dual-object constructions”. In Meaning in Mayan Language. Ethnolinguistic Studies [Jan. ling. Ser. Pract 158], M. S. Edmonson (ed.), 51–7. The Hague and Paris: Mouton. Paris, C. 1985. “Relations actancielles et valence verbale en avar: Effacement de l’actant et mise au jour du sens”. Actances 1: 135–53. Peterson, D. A. 1999. Discourse-functional, Historical, and Typological Aspects of Applicative Constructions. PhD dissertation, University of California, Berkeley. Rice, S. A. 1987. Towards a cognitive model of transitivity. PhD dissertation, University of California, San Diego. Rude, N. 1986. “Topicality, transitivity, and the direct object in Nez Perce”. International Journal of American Linguistics 52: 124–53. Shibatani, M. 1996. “Applicatives and benefactives: A cognitive account”. In Grammatical Constructions: Their Form and Meaning, M. Shibatani and S. A. Thompson (eds), 157–94. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Spencer, A. 1995. “Incorporation in Chukchi”. Language 71 (III): 439–89. Tsunoda, T. 1981. “Split case-marking patterns in verb types and tense/aspect/mood”. Linguistics 19: 389–438. Van Valin, R. D. and LaPolla, R. J. 1997. Syntax: Structure, Meaning and Function. Cambridge etc.: Cambridge University Press. Zavala Maldonado, R. 1999. “External possessor in Oluta Popoluca (Mixean). Applicatives and incorporation of relational terms”. In External Possession, D. Payne and I. Barshi (eds), 339– 72. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Language index Abaza 73 Abkhaz 73, 338–9 Abkhaz-Adyghe (North-West Caucasian) 30, 73 Adyghe (Circassian) 460 Afrikaans 117, 137–40 Agul 184, 187–8, 196,198 Ainu 490 Akatek 386 Akhvakh 188, 199 Albanian 40 Algonquian 91–111 Altai 425–8, 435–7 Amharic 317 Andi 188, 191, 198 Apabhraṃ śa Prakrit 26 Araki 298–9 Archi 188, 199, 338 Armenian 39–40 Assamese 24 Athabascan 459 Australian 8, 30, 335–6, 340–1, 352, 469 Avar 80, 188, 190, 195, 199 Awa Pit 300–1, 304–5 Awtuw 253–4 Bagwalal 183, 189, 191, 200 Balkan (languages) 41 Balkar 393–416, 425–6, 428, 435–7 Baltic 40–2 Bantu 455 Basque 354 Bengali 219, 346 Berber 29 Bororo 317 Bulgarian 32, 41, 184 Bunuba 315 Burji 29 Catalan 312 Caucasian (languages) 29–30, 73, 179–202, 316, 354, 370 Chamalal 186, 188, 200 Chechen 188, 200 Chepang 311, 316–17, 320–4 Chichewa 476–7 Chukchee 6–8, 13–16, 258–9, 490 Chuvash 403 Circassian see Adyghe Common Slavic 32, 38–9, 41, 44 Cushitic 29 Czech 8–9, 16
Daghestanian see Nakh-Daghestanian Dan 59–60 Gweetaa dialect 60–1 Kla dialect 58 Dargi xviii, 193 Akusha dialect 188, 193–5, 199 Icari dialect 189, 194–5, 201 Dâw 304 Dhivehi (Maldivian) 344 Diyari 353 Djaru 347 Dravidian 4, 41, 249–50 Dutch 116–18, 127–35, 140–1, 143, 280, 386, 391 Dyirbal 335–6, 347 Early Middle English 148–9, 163, 167, 172 English 5–6, 117–19, 141, 149, 150, 163, 168, 172–4, 184, 218, 227, 230–1, 234, 239, 245, 272, 318–20, 352, 390, 395, 460, 468, 473, 490 Erzya 451 Eskimo 347, 354 see also West Greenlandic Estonian 6, 330–1, 342, 447 European (languages) 184, 186, 196, 458 Faroese 147–51, 156–8, 162, 167, 171–2 Finnish 6, 27–9, 42, 135, 294–5, 301, 324, 342, 442 Finno-Ugric 27–9, 40–2, 441–63 French 36–7, 115, 185, 250, 351 Frisian see West Frisian Georgian 29–30, 330 German 9–11, 16–19, 116–37, 140–3, 147–77, 245, 269–70, 272, 280, 282, 284, 313, 320, 321, 352– 3, 473, 476, 479 Germanic 40, 115–45, 147–77 Gitksan 66, 68, 70, 74, 81–5, 88 Godoberi 188, 191, 200 Greek 40–1 Guaraní 331, 337 Gugu Yimidhirr 338 Guro 51–7, 59, 62 Hebrew 312 Hindi(/Urdu) 26–7, 73, 80, 219, 254, 265–6, 302, 305, 330–1, 336–7 Hungarian 5, 135, 337, 352, 419–20 Icelandic 117–19, 123–6, 142, 143, 147–51, 156–63, 320 Indo-Aryan 24–7, 40–1, 204, 219, 311
496 Case, Valency, and Transitivity
Indo-European 27, 33, 37–8, 41–4, 50, 395 see also Proto-Indo-European Ingush 188, 201 Irish 386 Italian 35, 250 Italic 40, 43 Jacaltec 73, 80 Japanese 313, 354 Jingulu 30 Kabardian 30 Kala Lagaw Langgus 352 Kaqchikel 375–92 Karata 184–8, 191, 195, 201 Kartvelian 29–30, 43 Kashmiri 353 Khakas 417–39 Kikuyu 300, 302 Kinnauri 297–8 Kla-Dan see Dan, Kla dialect Komi, Komi-Zyrjan 352, 441–63 Kuuku Yalanji 341 Kwa 205 Lak 188, 201, 316, 323, 352 Lango 293, 353 Latin 5–6, 33–6, 43, 133, 142, 167, 227 Laz 29 Lezgian 180–2, 187–8, 202, 338 Lithuanian 27–8, 40–2 Maithili 294–5, 305 Malayalam 204, 249–50, 252, 254, 263, 284, 324 Maldivian see Dhivehi Mande 49–64 Manipuri 343–4 Mari 441–63 Maricopa 317 Marquesan 301–2 Martuthunira 294–5 Marwari 311, 321–3 Mayan 80, 314, 375–92, 474 Megrelian (Mingrelian) 29 Menominee 91–111 Middle English see Early Middle English Middle Indo-Aryan 24–5, 41 see also Indo-Aryan Mingrelian see Megrelian Moksha 451 Movima 317 Mwan 59 Nakh-Daghestanian 179–202, 316, 370 Nêlêmwa 337 New Indo-Aryan 24–7, 40, 346 Ngan’gityemerri 457 Nisgha’a 66–7, 69, 72, 74–5, 81–3 Niuean 314–15
North-East Caucasian see Nakh-Daghestanian North-West Caucasian see Abkhaz-Adyghe Norwegian 116, 119, 127–35, 140–1 Nyulnyulan 30 Old Church Slavonic 38, 44 Old English 143 Old French 36–7 Old Georgian 30 Old Germanic 148 Old Icelandic see Old Norse Old Indo-Aryan see Sanskrit, Vedic see also Indo-Aryan Old Norse 141, 148–9, 163–7, 172, 174 Old Norse-Icelandic see Old Norse Old Russian 31, 32, 39 Old Swedish 148–9, 163, 167, 172 Oluta Popoluca 490 Oriya 203–21 Persian 236, 243, 331, 337 Pitjantjatjara 340 Polish 32, 39 Potawatomi 94–100, 103, 109, Proto-Indo-European 24, 27, 31–5, 38–40 see also Indo-European Proto-Italo-Celtic 43 Proto-Slavic see Common Slavic Retuarã 297–8 Romance 35–7, 40–1, 250 Rumanian 35, 41 Russian 31–2, 39, 41–4, 179–80, 195, 240, 276, 330–1, 339, 344–6, 349, 354, 421–2, 447 Sahaptin 298–9, 305 Samoan 338 Sanskrit 24–6 Selayarese 73 Sesotho 292–3 Sgüüxs 66, 73, 77, 83 Shambala 60 Shipibo-Conibo 314, 320, 321 Sierra Popoluca 303–4 Sinhala (Sinhalese) 24–6, 41, 291–2, 300, 317, 344 Slavic 32, 38–41, 44, 395 Sm’algyax 66–7, 72, 77–8, 81, 83, 85, 89 Songhay 359–71 South Mande 49–64 Spanish 35–6, 186, 250–4, 257–9, 262, 470 Standard-Average-European (languages) 458 see also European (languages) Swedish 163, 172 see also Old Swedish Tabasaran 187–8, 202 Tatar 403 Tibetan 338
Tocharian 40 Tofalar 432–4 Tolai 479 Tongan 322–3, 343 Trumai 317 Tsakhur 188–90, 202, 337 Tsez 180–1, 187–8, 202, 370 Tsimshian 65–90 Tura 58–60 Turkic 40, 243, 394, 397, 401, 403, 406, 413–15, 417–39 Turkish 225–47, 419, 433–5 Tuvan (Tuvinian) 414, 420, 435–6 Ubykh 30 Udihe 415 Uralic see Finno-Ugric Urdu see Hindi
Language index 497
Vedic 25 Warlpiri 346–7 Warrungu 343, 353 West Frisian 118 West Greenlandic 322–3 Wolof 480, 490 Yakut 414 Yaure 57–8 Yiddish 118 Yidiɲ 342, 347 Yucatec (Yukatek) Maya 318, 465– 93 Yukulta 63, 331 Yup’ik 270 Zaiwa 255–6
Subject index ablative 24, 33–4, 189–90, 192, 398, 404, 415 absolutive 7, 14, 258, 270, 336, 340, 343, 346–7, 377–80 agreement 331, 378 accusative 4, 6, 12, 17, 26–7, 38–9, 76, 87, 95, 118– 19, 123, 143, 152, 163–5, 225–40, 252–5, 264, 270–2, 276, 279, 284, 294, 310, 313–15, 320–4, 339, 417–37, 447, 454 unmarked see (unmarked) object see also direct object accusative causee 428–32, 459 accusative language 325, 340, 343, 345–9, 354 accusative-genitive 330–1 accusative-marking language 314 active/stative system, active language 63, 337, 352 actor 93, 99–103, 188, 322, 450, 452, 465–70, 490 actor-focused transitivization 468, 470 addressee 141, 370, 424, 466–7, 472, 482–8 adelative 338 adessive 27–9, 338 adposition 23–4, 43, 88, 179, 390, 480 affected see affectedness, (affected) agent, (affected) object affectedness 315–18, 320, 324, 352, 363–6, 369, 466, 477, 478, 482 of agent 316–18, 366 of O(bject) 310, 313, 315–21, 324, 331, 333, 339, 342, 351–2, 369, 454, 478 of subject 366 affirmation 330, 362, 442 agent 122, 180, 192, 194–5, 205–6, 252–3, 292, 295, 309–27, 365–8 affected 316–18, 352; see also affectedness of agent involuntary 180, 183, 187–8, 192–3 of passive construction (passive agent) 345, 354, 397–9, 446 agent demoting construction 442, 446–52, 460 agenthood see agentivity, agentive agentive (properties) 57, 143, 187, 319, 403, 413, 415, 418 participant see agent predicate 156, 161–2; see also agentive verb subject 415 verb 120, 143, 368 see also agentive predicate agentivity xiv, 315, 321, 330–2, 341, 351, 450, agent-preserving lability (A-lability) 365–6 agreement 4–5, 7, 19, 27, 62, 65–90, 91–111, 123–6, 143, 208, 215, 272–80, 285, 331–2, 338–9, 347, 354, 397, 443–4, 449–53, 460 formal 124
substantive 124 see also absolutive agreement, ergative agreement, nominative agreement, oblique agreement allative 27, 189–92 animacy 7–8, 38–9, 41, 73–4, 91, 99–104, 116, 239, 249–57, 262–6, 270–2, 276–7, 282–5, 291–306, 312, 321, 324, 331–40, 345, 348, 351–2, 354, 380, 386, 400, 405, 443, 450, 455–6 animacy hierarchy 56, 99–101, 292 animacy-based strategy (of object marking) 295–6, 301 animate see animacy, (animate) argument, (animate) object, (animate) subject anticausative see decausative antipassive 7, 266, 322, 332, 341–3, 347, 350, 353–4, 402, 468–9 applicative 318, 465–93 circumstantial 487–8 instrumental 487–8 locative 487–8 argument animate 93, 106, 110, 185, 301, 456 external 102, 124–6, 204, 353, 442, 453, 460 inanimate 93, 100, 103, 254, 336, 404–5 primary 340–1, 345–50, 354, 413 see also object, subject argument structure 220, 270–1, 370, 375, 387, 389, 419, 432, 435–6, 442, 453 argument-sharing 203–21 argument-structure see argument structure article 9, 29–30, 228–40, 351 aspect 270, 330, 333–5, 351, 360–2, 383, 442, 444, 459 assistive 456–7 benefactive argument 8, 366 derivation 437, 480, 488 Bidirectional Optimality Theory 250–1, 260–4 bitransitive see ditransitive boundedness 351 British National Corpus 168 case assignment 5, 17, 91, 121 differentiation 116 markedness 249–67 marking differential see differential case marking discriminatory approach to 309 exceptional 120
multilayer 27–9, 41–2 of agent 314, 339–40, 345, 348, 352 of causee 417–39 of object 85, 115, 250, 254, 325, 332, 337, 339, 348, 423 of patient 339 of subject 83–4 morphological 3–21, 49–64, 65, 68, 73–4, 79–82, 85–7, 118, 120, 122, 141, 208, 261, 270–2, 283 pattern 119, 321, 353 pronominal 50–8 syncretism 34, 37–40, 118 syntactic 3–21 ‘virtual’ 212 case-increasing (language) 40–2 case-reducing (language) 40–2 case-stable (language) 40–2 causal passive 404–6, 413–14 causation see causative causative xv, 325, 352, 360, 393–4, 396, 403, 409, 413–14, 417–39, 441–63, 475 construction 325, 417–39 double 394, 409, 411 in passive usage 432–3 indirect 407–10 see also assistive, declarative, factitive, permissive causee 325, 413–14, 417–39, 444 accusative 419–36, 459 case marking of 417–39 dative 419–36, 453, 459 instrumental 325, 419 topicality of 428 causer 319, 325, 398, 409, 413–14, 418, 428–9, 444, 452 coherence constraint 107–8, 110 comitative case 8, 466, 482–3, 488 verb 456–7 comment see topic Comrie’s rule (Paradigm Case) 418–36 connective 65–90 Construction Grammar 387 contrastive focus 138, 381, 388 control infinitives 117, 147–77 of participants 466 converb 24–6, 404 core 170–1, 466 argument 180, 182, 196, 293, 309–10, 316–18, 323–4, 329, 336–7, 339, 361, 364, 428, 441, 481 case see core argument participant see core argument dative 8–9, 16–20, 26, 57, 115, 119, 127–37, 142–3, 152, 157–8, 163–4, 173, 179, 185–96, 219, 295, 300, 302, 313, 320–1, 364–5, 400, 402, 417–37, 446, 448, 457, 475
Subject index 499
see also (dative) causee, (dative) object, (dative) passive, (dative) subject dative-adding applicative 475 dative-PRO 143 decausative (= anticausative) 360, 367–9, 397, 400–1, 407, 411, 446–7, 451–2, 460 declarative 445, 449 declension (type) 5–9, 14, 17, 30–1, 50, 338, 427–8 definite see definiteness definiteness 5, 29, 55, 73, 116, 140, 225–47, 249–57, 265–6, 271, 299, 312, 321, 325, 331–7, 345, 351–2, 380, 428, 435 of A(gent) 351 of object (O-definiteness) 236, 255, 299, 331–2, 336–7, 351–2, 435 of subject 325, 351 deliberateness see volitionality depatientive 402 desubjective see (impersonal) passive determinative predicate 161–2 determiner 9, 11–12, 16–17, 19, 65–90, 236, 239, 384 detransitivization 7, 354, 468, 479 differential case marking x, 115–45 object marking (DOM) x, 115, 129, 253, 256, 261, 265–6, 312, 322, 337, 342–3, 353–4 subject marking x, 325, 337–40, 343, 345, 348, 350, 353 direct-inverse marking 91–111 discourse functions 126, 135, 137, 139–40, 354, 381, 388, 390 distinctness 244, 251–65, 319 distinguishability (of arguments) 219, 249, 269– 87, 318–21 distinguishability constraints 272–6, 280–5 see also incremental distinguishability ditransitive 142–3, 291–308, 363, 370, 419 d-linking 135, 384 elative 28–9 ergative 7, 14, 24, 50–7, 63, 193, 194, 310, 376– 80 agreement see ergative–absolutive agreement language 29, 270, 336, 340–54 syntactically ergative language 354; see also (syntactic) ergativity pattern(ing) 7, 193, 330, 352 ergative–absolutive agreement 65–90, 376–80, 390 distinction 71 language see ergative language see also split-ergative (language) ergative-marking language 314 ergative–nominative agreement 66, 84 distinction 71 ergativity 56–7, 62, 65–90, 469 syntactic 354, 467, 469
500 Case, Valency, and Transitivity
experiencer 173, 179–202, 271, 311, 345, 403 involuntary 183, 187–8, 195 perceptional 182–5 experiencer verb 142, 156, 179–91, 195, 472 experiential stimulus 471 exteriorization 466–7, 489 extraversion = extraversive transitivization 465– 93 facilitative 399–400 factitive 470 fluid-S system 324 frequency 50, 148–9, 162–72, 184, 481, 483 generic 150, 157, 161, 229, 238, 334, 400, 402 predicate 161–2 genitive 9–13, 16–20, 24, 26, 31–2, 38–9, 44, 115– 16, 119–20, 123, 134, 137, 181, 228, 242–3, 346, 352, 428 second genitive 31 genitive subject construction 243, 346 grammatical relation vii, 6, 9, 76, 108, 219, 264, 353, 375, 380, 387, 441, grammaticality judgments 148, 153–62, 166, 168–73 grammaticalization 23–6, 119, 129, 142, 185 Harmonic Grammar 277 hierarchy of syntactic functions 467 historical and comparative reconstruction 24, 28– 30, 33, 50, 79–85, 189–96, 444 historical linguistics 24, 33, 167 identifiability 129, 234, 384 illative 27 imperfective 51, 330, 334, 342, 352, 361 impersonal (construction) 345–6, 349, 354, 442, 446–8, 451–2 predicate 147–77 see also (impersonal) passive in-allative 193 inchoative-causative alternation 367, 449–50 incorporation (= noun incorporation) 7, 257–9, 332, 340, 466, 486–8, 491 incremental distinguishability 269–87 optimization 276–9 indefinite(ness) 56, 93, 99–103, 117, 128, 140–1, 150, 161, 219, 225–40, 249, 251, 257, 302, 311– 12, 321–3, 332, 334, 340–4, 351–3, 380, 417, 420, 424, 432 indexical 29–30 indexing approach to case marking 309–10 indicative 67–88, 361–2 individuation 257–8, 266, 315 see also O-individuation information structure 242, 375–92, 467, 478 instigation 310, 319–21 instrumental 7–8, 14, 24, 33–4, 43, 309, 325, 339,
349, 354, 419, 421–2, 426, 437 intensification 410–11 intensity 352 interrogative focus 381, 383–4 intransitive clause 69, 72, 76, 83, 309, 361 verb 88, 95, 217, 219, 315, 318, 337, 363, 367, 369, 370, 380, 400, 407, 413, 434, 441–4, 451, 454, 460, 470–4, 479, 481 intransitivity 428 introversion 469, 479 inverse marking see direct-inverse marking involvement (of participants) 319, 466, 477–8 iterative-causative polysemy 412 Kant, Immanuel 154–5 lability 365–9 see also (labile) verb Leningrad/St. Petersburg Typology Group xv lexicon–syntax interface 442 linguistic area 41–2 locative 7–9, 24, 27, 31, 33–4, 42–3, 59–61, 181, 187, 190, 192, 365–6, 478 alternation 485–6, 488 second locative 31 macrorole 467, 481, 489 markedness formal x, 259, 265–6 maximal semantic distinction (of arguments) 310, 323 middle (voice, construction) 117, 122–3, 369, 401–2, 446–7, 451, 459 see also (middle) verb Minimal Semantic Distinctness 250–6, 261–3 morphosyntactic features 4–6, 14, 18, 66, 79, 92, 95–6, 126, 129, 354 marking 249–58, 318, 363 morphosyntax see morphosyntactic features, morphosyntactic marking N400 280, 282 negation 44, 57, 97–8, 185, 330, 335, 344, 352, 360–1 negative focus 381, 384–9 nominal compound 25–6, 244–5 nominative 4, 6, 29, 76, 80, 87, 119, 121, 123–5, 150, 152, 158, 161, 163–5, 173, 195, 228, 240, 254, 270, 272, 281–4, 313, 336–7, 340–1, 345–6, 349, 397, 402–3, 405, 447, 453–3 agreement 68–88, 123 substitution 158 nominative–accusative (language, system) 56, 270 non-agentive participant, subject 185, 310, 415 verb 142, 330, 339 non-referential 230, 417, 420, 423, 435 see also referentiality
non-specific, non-specificity 140, 225–47, 250, 257–8, 263–4, 331, 341, 344, 385, 389 non-topical see topic North American News Text Corpus 169 noun incorporation see incorporation object 269–87, 291–308, 312, 339, 351–2 affected 311, 315; see also affectedness of object animate 93, 249, 252, 263, 271–2, 275, 292, 296– 306, 312, 457 dative 119, 127, 152–4, 363 direct 6–7, 44, 116–19, 129, 137–9, 211–12, 228, 231, 235–45, 250–1, 255–6, 269–70, 293–307, 317, 322, 364, 417–36, 457, 467, 475–8, 487, 489; see also accusative inanimate 7, 125, 252, 255, 263–4, 271, 291, 298, 309, 321, 422 indirect 59, 117, 119, 129, 212, 219, 295, 419, 437, 476–7, 484–5 individuated 249, 257–8, 315; see also O-individuation non-canonical 364 oblique 300–5, 317, 332, 339, 342; see also oblique (case) prepositional 123, 138 prototypical (= prototypical O) 252, 257, 264, 331 unmarked 296, 305, 420–31, 443, 454, 457 object agreement 68, 72–3, 79, 86–7, 272, 337, 343, 354 object marking 44, 85–6, 115, 137, 180, 249–50, 255–6, 270, 291–308, 311–14, 360, 442, 477– 80; see also differential object marking object-based strategy (of object marking) 294–6, 299–302 objecthood 294–5 object-sharing 208–19 oblique (case) 6–9, 24–7, 117, 158, 163, 293, 299– 305, 332, 345, 448, 453 oblique agreement 331 oblique object see (oblique) object obviation 86, 94–6, 101, 103, 109, 386 obviative 93–103, 109–10, 386 O-definiteness see definiteness of object O-individuation 331–7, 343, 351 see also (individuated) object Optimality Theoretic semantics 277 Optimality Theory viii, 100, 104–8, 116, 250–1, 256, 260–4, 276–7, 347–50 P600 280 paradigm-based lexicalism 13 parse constraint 106–10 partitive 29, 31, 42, 330–2, 342, 351, 442 passive xv, 93, 137, 143, 152, 154, 311, 332, 341, 344–5, 349–50, 353–4, 367–8, 375–92, 393– 416, 423, 469 causative see derived from causative
Subject index 501
dative 147, 152–3 derived from causative 423 double 394, 406–12 experiential 402–3 impersonal 344, 353, 391, 397; see also impersonal (construction) indirect 409–10 lenient 395–6, 399 nominative 152–3 potential 397, 399–400, 415, 446–7 promotional 397–9 passive–causative polysemy xv, 432–3 patient 205–6, 252–3, 259, 309–27, 341, 364–9, 395, 397, 399–400, 422, 466, 473, 481–2, 486 patienthood 321 patient-preserving lability (P-lability) 365–8 perception verbs see verbs of perception perceptional cluster 183, 191, 195 perfective 63, 137, 219, 330, 334, 336, 352–3, 361–2, 390 performance error 147, 149, 153–6, 167–71 periphery 170–1 see also (peripheral) thematic roles permissive 433 plurality 92, 226–7, 237–9 verbal 459 possessive (form, case) 6, 9, 40, 50, 55–62, 424–7 adjective see possessive form construction 6, 133–4, 181–3, noun 49, 424, 427–8 pronoun see (possessive) pronoun postposition 23–7, 49, 57–61, 363–4, 398–9 postpositional phrase 14, 24–7, 398 precedence 280–1, 284 preposition 8–11, 23, 42–3, 115–19, 127–9, 131, 134–43, 390, 471–4, 477–8 prepositional object 123, 138 phrase 127, 409, 473 preverb, preverbal morpheme 67, 136 Primary Argument Immunity Principle (PAIP) 340–50, 353, 354 Principles and Parameters (theory) 4, 387 prominence 282–4 pronoun 6–7, 29–30, 50–8, 140–1, 237, 281–2, 307, 336, 347, 423–4, 428, 454 anaphoric 424 demonstrative 29–30, 236 personal 6, 14, 30, 49–63, 67–73, 85–8, 101, 116– 17, 219, 299, 336 possessive 408, 428 reflexive 51, 53–6, 134, 196, 404, 428–31, 433 relative 478 proper name 6–7, 10–11, 32 proto-case 25, 86 proximate 93–6, 99–104, 109–10, 386 quirky subject 115, 117, 125–7, 140–1 see also (oblique) subject
502 Case, Valency, and Transitivity
raising-to-object 149, 162, 164–5 raising-to-subject 149, 165–6, 170, 173 recipient 8, 179–89, 192–5, 292–3, 296–306, 311, 466–7, 476–7, 482–3, 488 recipiential experiencer(s) 182, 185–7 recipient-prominent language 296, 299, 300–2, 305 reciprocal (verb, construction) 319, 369, 394, 397, 415 reconstruction see historical and comparative reconstruction reference-sharing 205–8, 216 referential features, referential properties see referentiality referentiality 73, 228–30, 234, 236, 240, 244, 262, 314–15, 332, 366–7, 435–6, 489 see also non-referential reflexive (verb, construction) 55, 57, 133, 164, 319, 345, 368–9, 393–7, 401, 430, 442, 444, 446–7, 451–2 see also (reflexive) pronoun reflexive-causative 397, 433 reiteration 410–12 Relevance Principle 329–30, 335–50 Role and Reference Grammar 337, 387 role domination 180 role-based strategy (of object marking) 295–6, 305 role-dominated language 337 scrambling 117, 123, 125–6, 135, 141, 143 second position clitic 70 semantic licensing 125 map of experiencer 192 markedness 251–2, 259 role xiii, 74–9, 86, 180, 292, 295, 302–6, 337, 441; see also thematic role serial verb (construction), serialization 203–21, 363, 459 singularity 226, 237 specific, specificity 14, 102, 116, 140, 225–47, 250, 253, 257–8, 262–6, 271, 331, 351, 389–90 split ergative (language, system), splitergativity 50–7, 335–7, 346, 353 split-S system 324 stative case 63 predicate 161–2, 459 preposition 123, 129 subject 56, 85–7, 102–3, 116, 122–6, 141, 147–8, 161, 171–2, 180, 204, 215–17, 254, 269–87, 294, 311–16, 329, 352–3, 380–3, 390–1, 403, 418– 19, 436, 452–3, 467 agentive 415 animate 93, 263, 271–5, 279, 321, 446, 450 dative 122, 143, 150, 157–61, 211 formal 124–5 inanimate 102–3, 263–4, 271, 386, 450 intransitive 67–73, 76–8, 82, 315, 337, 340, 444
non-agentive 185, 310, 415 non-nominative see oblique oblique 147–77, 346, 354, 448, 453 passive (= subject of passive construction) 118, 122, 142, 294, 311, 322, 354, 423, 433 prototypical 251–2, 264 quirky 115, 117, 125–7, 140–1; see also (oblique) subject substantive 124 transitive 7–8, 14, 67–85, 196, 251, 256, 261, 285, 350, 444, 469 unaccusative 142, 452 subject agreement 86, 94, 99, 125, 272, 344 subject marking 37, 80–5, 140, 314–16, 337, 352 see also differential subject marking subject properties 124, 149–51, 171, 196, 354, 397, 431 subjecthood see subject subject-sharing 211 subjunctive 67–88, 361 subordination 92, 161–2, 173, 203, 219, 353, 467, 478 substantive licensing 125 super-allative 193–5 super-elative 190 switch-reference 347 syncretism see case syncretism syntactic-sharing pattern 213 syntax–morphology mapping 8, 14–19 tense 125, 208–10, 227, 329–35, 353, 415, 443, 453 thematic role 125, 205–7, 220, 470–5, 478, 481–4, 488 central 473–5 peripheral 470–3, 483–4 see also semantic role theme 88, 118, 292–3, 297–306, 466, 473–4, 481–8 theme-prominent language 296–300, 306 three-place verb 119, 127–36 token-sharing 206 topic(al), topicality 126, 138, 141–2, 228–9, 235, 241–4, 251, 253, 325, 375, 381–90, 417, 420, 423–4, 428, 431–5, 478 topic continuity 467, 478, 482 topicality of causee 428 topicalization 129, 135, 236, 242–3, 341, 344, 353–4 transitive clause 71, 140, 269, 314, 320, 337, 344–5 non-canonical 364 objectless 490 situation 310, 316–23 verb 7, 88, 95, 102–7, 110, 193, 209, 271–2, 285, 314, 338, 360, 363, 366, 370, 380, 397–7, 400, 406–9, 413, 418–24, 432, 435–6, 441, 446, 450– 5, 459–60, 470, 474, 479, 481, 489 transitivity vii, xiii, 75, 77–8, 139–40, 249–53, 256– 9, 265, 310, 316–25, 329–57, 359–71, 375–6,
387–9, 425, 428, 435, 451–3, 458, 470, 477–8, 490 alternation xiii, 329–57, 468 continuum 259, 333–5, 352, 442 increase see valence-increasing lexical 360, 362–5 prototypical 251, 256–9, 265, 310, 363, 366 scale see transitivity continuum split 352 see also transitive clause, transitive situation transitivity-changing (operation) see transitivity alternation transitivization 465–93 see also valence-increasing unaccusative see (unaccusative) subject, (unaccusative) verb see also unergative unaccusativity 333 undergoer 363, 465–9, 481, 488–9 undergoer-focused transitivization 475–83 unergative 333, 415, 441, 452, 459 unergative–unaccusative distinction 452–3 valence vii, 3, 117–18, 136–7, 216–20, 375–6, 387–9, 393, 414, 418, 453, 467–9, 477, 480, 485–6 alternation see valence-changing lexical 126 pattern 124, 143, 180–3, 188, 352, 365, 451, 479 reduction see valence-decreasing valence-changing (category, operation, derivation) xv, 442, 444–51, 458–9, 469 valence-decreasing (category, operation, derivation) 363, 393, 400, 442, 468 valence-increasing (category, operation, derivation) 352, 363, 441–4, 452–3, 457–8, 468, 475, 446, 458, 480, 482 valency see valence verb agentive 120, 143, 368 experiential see experiencer verb
Subject index 503
ingestive 422, 437 intransitive see intransitive verb labile 360, 365–70, 413, 473 middle 359–60, 363–4 modal 163, 173–4 non-agentive 142, 330, 339 of bodily action/function 480 of causation of emotion 182 of cognition 339 of communication 485–6 of emotional state 182 of feeling 365 of grooming and body care 394, 401 of knowledge 365 of mental state 182, 184 of motion 365, 470 of perception 182–7, 313, 339, 364, 402, 483 of phonation 365 of sound emission 470 of spatial configuration 415 of speech 365 of thinking 182 of transfer 365 of volition 182 three-place 119, 127–36 transitive see transitive verb unaccusative 333, 396, 415, 441–2, 452–3, 458– 60 verbal plurality 459 vocative 31–2, 41, 43 voice vii, xv, 341, 349–50, 353, 368, 394–6, 460 volitionality 311, 320, 330, 333–45, 348–9, 352–4, 407–9, 442, 451, 454, 457 V-proximity 123 V-proximity hierarchy 123 VP-serialization see serial verb word order 49, 88, 117, 126, 128, 138, 255, 271–2, 276, 285, 295, 298, 306, 325, 360, 363–4, 380–1, 383, 390, 425–7, 428, 430–2, 434–6, 443, 453 word-order freezing 276
Studies in Language Companion Series 84 Wanner, Leo (ed.): Selected Lexical and Grammatical Issues in the Meaning-Text Theory. In honour of Igor Mel'čuk. Expected January 2007 83 Hannay, Mike and Gerard J. Steen (eds.): Structural-Functional Studies in English Grammar. In honor of Lachlan Mackenzie. vi, 387 pp. + index. Expected January 2007 82 Ziegeler, Debra: Interfaces with English Aspect. Diachronic and empirical studies. xv, 332 pp. + index. Expected November 2006 81 Peeters, Bert (ed.): Semantic Primes and Universal Grammar. Empirical evidence from the Romance languages. 2006. xvi, 374 pp. 80 Birner, Betty J. and Gregory Ward (eds.): Drawing the Boundaries of Meaning. Neo-Gricean studies in pragmatics and semantics in honor of Laurence R. Horn. vi, 348 pp. + index. Expected November 2006 79 Laffut, An: Three-Participant Constructions in English. A functional-cognitive approach to caused relations. 2006. ix, 268 pp. 78 Yamamoto, Mutsumi: Agency and Impersonality. Their Linguistic and Cultural Manifestations. 2006. x, 152 pp. 77 Kulikov, Leonid, Andrej Malchukov and Peter de Swart (eds.): Case, Valency and Transitivity. 2006. xix, 503 pp. 76 Nevalainen, Terttu, Juhani Klemola and Mikko Laitinen (eds.): Types of Variation. Diachronic, dialectal and typological interfaces. 2006. viii, 378 pp. 75 Hole, Daniel, André Meinunger and Werner Abraham (eds.): Datives and Other Cases. Between argument structure and event structure. 2006. viii, 385 pp. 74 Pietrandrea, Paola: Epistemic Modality. Functional properties and the Italian system. 2005. xii, 232 pp. 73 Xiao, Richard and Tony McEnery: Aspect in Mandarin Chinese. A corpus-based study. 2004. x, 305 pp. 72 Frajzyngier, Zygmunt, Adam Hodges and David S. Rood (eds.): Linguistic Diversity and Language Theories. 2005. xii, 432 pp. 71 Dahl, Östen: The Growth and Maintenance of Linguistic Complexity. 2004. x, 336 pp. 70 Lefebvre, Claire: Issues in the Study of Pidgin and Creole Languages. 2004. xvi, 358 pp. 69 Tanaka, Lidia: Gender, Language and Culture. A study of Japanese television interview discourse. 2004. xvii, 233 pp. 68 Moder, Carol Lynn and Aida Martinovic-Zic (eds.): Discourse Across Languages and Cultures. 2004. vi, 366 pp. 67 Luraghi, Silvia: On the Meaning of Prepositions and Cases. The expression of semantic roles in Ancient Greek. 2003. xii, 366 pp. 66 Nariyama, Shigeko: Ellipsis and Reference Tracking in Japanese. 2003. xvi, 400 pp. 65 Matsumoto, Kazuko: Intonation Units in Japanese Conversation. Syntactic, informational and functional structures. 2003. xviii, 215 pp. 64 Butler, Christopher S.: Structure and Function – A Guide to Three Major Structural-Functional Theories. Part 2: From clause to discourse and beyond. 2003. xiv, 579 pp. 63 Butler, Christopher S.: Structure and Function – A Guide to Three Major Structural-Functional Theories. Part 1: Approaches to the simplex clause. 2003. xx, 573 pp. 62 Field, Fredric W.: Linguistic Borrowing in Bilingual Contexts. With a foreword by Bernard Comrie. 2002. xviii, 255 pp. 61 Goddard, Cliff and Anna Wierzbicka (eds.): Meaning and Universal Grammar. Theory and empirical findings. Volume 2. 2002. xvi, 337 pp. 60 Goddard, Cliff and Anna Wierzbicka (eds.): Meaning and Universal Grammar. Theory and empirical findings. Volume 1. 2002. xvi, 337 pp. 59 Shi, Yuzhi: The Establishment of Modern Chinese Grammar. The formation of the resultative construction and its effects. 2002. xiv, 262 pp. 58 Maylor, B. Roger: Lexical Template Morphology. Change of state and the verbal prefixes in German. 2002. x, 273 pp. 57 Mel’čuk, Igor A.: Communicative Organization in Natural Language. The semantic-communicative structure of sentences. 2001. xii, 393 pp. 56 Faarlund, Jan Terje (ed.): Grammatical Relations in Change. 2001. viii, 326 pp. 55 Dahl, Östen and Maria Koptjevskaja-Tamm (eds.): Circum-Baltic Languages. Volume 2: Grammar and Typology. 2001. xx, 423 pp.
54 Dahl, Östen and Maria Koptjevskaja-Tamm (eds.): Circum-Baltic Languages. Volume 1: Past and Present. 2001. xx, 382 pp. 53 Fischer, Olga, Anette Rosenbach and Dieter Stein (eds.): Pathways of Change. Grammaticalization in English. 2000. x, 391 pp. 52 Torres Cacoullos, Rena: Grammaticization, Synchronic Variation, and Language Contact. A study of Spanish progressive -ndo constructions. 2000. xvi, 255 pp. 51 Ziegeler, Debra: Hypothetical Modality. Grammaticalisation in an L2 dialect. 2000. xx, 290 pp. 50 Abraham, Werner and Leonid Kulikov (eds.): Tense-Aspect, Transitivity and Causativity. Essays in honour of Vladimir Nedjalkov. 1999. xxxiv, 359 pp. 49 Bhat, D.N.S.: The Prominence of Tense, Aspect and Mood. 1999. xii, 198 pp. 48 Manney, Linda Joyce: Middle Voice in Modern Greek. Meaning and function of an inflectional category. 2000. xiii, 262 pp. 47 Brinton, Laurel J. and Minoji Akimoto (eds.): Collocational and Idiomatic Aspects of Composite Predicates in the History of English. 1999. xiv, 283 pp. 46 Yamamoto, Mutsumi: Animacy and Reference. A cognitive approach to corpus linguistics. 1999. xviii, 278 pp. 45 Collins, Peter C. and David Lee (eds.): The Clause in English. In honour of Rodney Huddleston. 1999. xv, 342 pp. 44 Hannay, Mike and A. Machtelt Bolkestein (eds.): Functional Grammar and Verbal Interaction. 1998. xii, 304 pp. 43 Olbertz, Hella, Kees Hengeveld and Jesús Sánchez García (eds.): The Structure of the Lexicon in Functional Grammar. 1998. xii, 312 pp. 42 Darnell, Michael, Edith Moravcsik, Michael Noonan, Frederick J. Newmeyer and Kathleen M. Wheatley (eds.): Functionalism and Formalism in Linguistics. Volume II: Case studies. 1999. vi, 407 pp. 41 Darnell, Michael, Edith Moravcsik, Michael Noonan, Frederick J. Newmeyer and Kathleen M. Wheatley (eds.): Functionalism and Formalism in Linguistics. Volume I: General papers. 1999. vi, 486 pp. 40 Birner, Betty J. and Gregory Ward: Information Status and Noncanonical Word Order in English. 1998. xiv, 314 pp. 39 Wanner, Leo (ed.): Recent Trends in Meaning–Text Theory. 1997. xx, 202 pp. 38 Hacking, Jane F.: Coding the Hypothetical. A comparative typology of Russian and Macedonian conditionals. 1998. vi, 156 pp. 37 Harvey, Mark and Nicholas Reid (eds.): Nominal Classification in Aboriginal Australia. 1997. x, 296 pp. 36 Kamio, Akio (ed.): Directions in Functional Linguistics. 1997. xiii, 259 pp. 35 Matsumoto, Yoshiko: Noun-Modifying Constructions in Japanese. A frame semantic approach. 1997. viii, 204 pp. 34 Hatav, Galia: The Semantics of Aspect and Modality. Evidence from English and Biblical Hebrew. 1997. x, 224 pp. 33 Velázquez-Castillo, Maura: The Grammar of Possession. Inalienability, incorporation and possessor ascension in Guaraní. 1996. xvi, 274 pp. 32 Frajzyngier, Zygmunt: Grammaticalization of the Complex Sentence. A case study in Chadic. 1996. xviii, 501 pp. 31 Wanner, Leo (ed.): Lexical Functions in Lexicography and Natural Language Processing. 1996. xx, 355 pp. 30 Huffman, Alan: The Categories of Grammar. French lui and le. 1997. xiv, 379 pp. 29 Engberg-Pedersen, Elisabeth, Michael Fortescue, Peter Harder, Lars Heltoft and Lisbeth Falster Jakobsen (eds.): Content, Expression and Structure. Studies in Danish functional grammar. 1996. xvi, 510 pp. 28 Herman, József (ed.): Linguistic Studies on Latin. Selected papers from the 6th International Colloquium on Latin Linguistics (Budapest, 23–27 March 1991). 1994. ix, 421 pp. 27 Abraham, Werner, T. Givón and Sandra A. Thompson (eds.): Discourse, Grammar and Typology. Papers in honor of John W.M. Verhaar. 1995. xx, 352 pp. 26 Lima, Susan D., Roberta L. Corrigan and Gregory K. Iverson: The Reality of Linguistic Rules. 1994. xxiii, 480 pp. 25 Goddard, Cliff and Anna Wierzbicka (eds.): Semantic and Lexical Universals. Theory and empirical findings. 1994. viii, 510 pp. 24 Bhat, D.N.S.: The Adjectival Category. Criteria for differentiation and identification. 1994. xii, 295 pp.
23 Comrie, Bernard and Maria Polinsky (eds.): Causatives and Transitivity. 1993. x, 399 pp. 22 McGregor, William B.: A Functional Grammar of Gooniyandi. 1990. xx, 618 pp. 21 Coleman, Robert (ed.): New Studies in Latin Linguistics. Proceedings of the 4th International Colloquium on Latin Linguistics, Cambridge, April 1987. 1990. x, 480 pp. 20 Verhaar, John W.M. S.J. (ed.): Melanesian Pidgin and Tok Pisin. Proceedings of the First International Conference on Pidgins and Creoles in Melanesia. 1990. xiv, 409 pp. 19 Blust, Robert A.: Austronesian Root Theory. An essay on the limits of morphology. 1988. xi, 190 pp. 18 Wierzbicka, Anna: The Semantics of Grammar. 1988. vii, 581 pp. 17 Calboli, Gualtiero (ed.): Subordination and Other Topics in Latin. Proceedings of the Third Colloquium on Latin Linguistics, Bologna, 1–5 April 1985. 1989. xxix, 691 pp. 16 Conte, Maria-Elisabeth, János Sánder Petöfi and Emel Sözer (eds.): Text and Discourse Connectedness. Proceedings of the Conference on Connexity and Coherence, Urbino, July 16–21, 1984. 1989. xxiv, 584 pp. 15 Justice, David: The Semantics of Form in Arabic. In the mirror of European languages. 1987. iv, 417 pp. 14 Benson, Morton, Evelyn Benson and Robert F. Ilson: Lexicographic Description of English. 1986. xiii, 275 pp. 13 Reesink, Ger P.: Structures and their Functions in Usan. 1987. xviii, 369 pp. 12 Pinkster, Harm (ed.): Latin Linguistics and Linguistic Theory. Proceedings of the 1st International Colloquium on Latin Linguistics, Amsterdam, April 1981. 1983. xviii, 307 pp. 11 Panhuis, Dirk G.J.: The Communicative Perspective in the Sentence. A study of Latin word order. 1982. viii, 172 pp. 10 Dressler, Wolfgang U., Willi Mayerthaler, Oswald Panagl and Wolfgang Ullrich Wurzel: Leitmotifs in Natural Morphology. 1988. ix, 168 pp. 9 Lang, Ewald and John Pheby: The Semantics of Coordination. (English transl. by John Pheby from the German orig. ed. 'Semantik der koordinativen Verknüpfung', Berlin, 1977). 1984. 300 pp. 8 Barth, E.M. and J.L. Martens (eds.): Argumentation: Approaches to Theory Formation. Containing the Contributions to the Groningen Conference on the Theory of Argumentation, October 1978. 1982. xviii, 333 pp. 7 Parret, Herman, Marina Sbisà and Jef Verschueren (eds.): Possibilities and Limitations of Pragmatics. Proceedings of the Conference on Pragmatics, Urbino, July 8–14, 1979. 1981. x, 854 pp. 6 Vago, Robert M. (ed.): Issues in Vowel Harmony. Proceedings of the CUNY Linguistics Conference on Vowel Harmony, May 14, 1977. 1980. xx, 340 pp. 5 Haiman, John: Hua: A Papuan Language of the Eastern Highlands of New Guinea. 1980. iv, 550 pp. 4 Lloyd, Albert L.: Anatomy of the Verb. The Gothic Verb as a Model for a Unified Theory of Aspect, Actional Types, and Verbal Velocity. (Part I: Theory; Part II: Application). 1979. x, 351 pp. 3 Malkiel, Yakov: From Particular to General Linguistics. Selected Essays 1965–1978. With an introduction by the author, an index rerum and an index nominum. 1983. xxii, 659 pp. 2 Anwar, Mohamed Sami: BE and Equational Sentences in Egyptian Colloquial Arabic. 1979. vi, 128 pp. 1 Abraham, Werner (ed.): Valence, Semantic Case, and Grammatical Relations. Workshop studies prepared for the 12th International Congress of Linguists, Vienna, August 29th to September 3rd, 1977. xiv, 729 pp. Expected Out of print
