(fwd) from VIctor Golla re. Agent/Patient

[Marianne Mithun]

Victor writes about the Proto-Athabaskan impersonal pronoun
developing into a discourse-salient third person pronominal prefix in
California Athabaskan.


> However, a much less expectable thing happens to the 4th person
> in the California subgroup (Hupa, Mattole, Kato and a few other
> dialects).  While Mattole preserves the marker in its general
> Athabaskan impersonal role, Hupa and Kato appear to have have
> reversed the evolutionary process and have re-coded the prefix
> to mark a discourse-salient 3rd person.  The inherited 3rd person
> marker, meanwhile, has assumed an obviative function.  Schematically:
>
> General Athabaskan:
>
>  SOMEONE sees you. (= 'you are seen'; 'we see you') [4th person]
>  HE/SHE sees me.  [3rd person]
>
> Hupa:
>
>  HE/SHE (whom we're talking about here) sees you.  [4th person]
>  HE/SHE/IT (who is not our focus) sees you.   [3rd person]
>
> (It was this pronominal opposition that P. E. Goddard notoriously--and
> mistakenly--described as distinguishing adult Hupa men from children,
> women, animals, and non-Hupas.)
>
> The formal history of this shift is pretty clear (at least to me),
> but the functional motivation is not.  Does anyone know of other
> instances of nonreferential "indefinite" agent markers evolving
> a salient referential function?

                                Victor Golla



Sure.  The very same thing happened in Iroquoian.  The indefinite/
impersonal pronominal prefix ye- (probably cognate with the Caddo, if the
Caddoan-Iroquoian connection turns out to be right, which is likely)
has evolved into a feminine pronominal prefix in most of the Northern
Iroquoian languages.  In all of the languages, the original indefinite
prefix retains its indefinite meaning `someone'.  The Northern languages
have innovated a masculine pronominal prefix (not present in Southern
Iroquoian).  In some of the languages (Tuscarora, Seneca, Cayuga) the
original indefinite (y)e- is now the only pronoun used for women and
girls.  In Huron, it is still only an indefinite, with women and girls
referred to with the same pronoun as neuters (ka-).  In Onondaga, Oneida,
and Mohawk, the descendants of the indefinite (ye-) and the neuter-zoic
(ka-) are both used for female persons.  Circumstances behind the choice
are interesting.


Marianne Mithun