accusative and ergative languages

Miguel Carrasquer Vidal mcv at wxs.nl
Tue Jul 13 18:44:13 UTC 1999


Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen <jer at cphling.dk> wrote:

>>From the primitive and casual books at my disposal I do see that "zuen"
>and "zuten" mean 'he had him' and 'they had him' resp. I also believe I
>see that such auxiliaries are combined with a particularly short form of
>the participles, referred to by Schuchardt as the root of the participle;
>and "jo" is 'stick; beat' in its shortest form, says my little dictionary;
>and "mutil-a" is 'boy' with the article "-a", but without case or number
>marking. Therefore my persistent question: Why can't "mutila jo zuen" and
>"mutila jo zuten" reflect a construction that was earlier meant to express
>'the boy, he had him hit', 'the boy, they had him hit'? Schuchardt also
>gives "zen" to mean 'he was', so that if you gloss "mutila jo zen" as 'the
>boy was hit', it seems there is quite a bit of agreement that the verbal
>root is a participle by itself. I do not see in what way this makes the
>*diachronic* interpretation of "mutila jo zuen" any different from the
>Hindi preterites that are based on Sanskrit constructions of the type
>"A-Nominative + B-Genitive + PPP/nom." meaning earlier "A was (verb)-ed by
>B", but now simply "B (verb)-ed A." Where am I wrong?

Not necessarily wrong, but a complicating factor is the
simultaneous existence in Basque of a set of synthetic verb forms
(first and foremost of the auxiliary verbs "to be" and "to
have"), which, with one exception, are also absolutive/ergative
in nature.  A diachronic interpretation in terms of ancient
passives of the periphrastic forms alone does not explain all of
the ergative verbal morphology of Basque.

We need to demonstrate that the synthetic forms too can be
explained as old passives, and I'm not sure the evidence quite
points that way.  But I think it is possible to derive the Basque
synthetic forms from older periphrastic ones.

Although not quite on topic, let me explain.

If we look at the more or less regular verbs first, we have:

ETORRI "to come"
(present)  (past)
na-torr    nen-torr-en  "I come, came"
ha-torr    hen-torr-en
da-torr    ze-torr-en
ga-toz     gen-toz-en
za-toz     zen-toz-en
da-toz     ze-toz-en

EKARRI "to bring"
na-karr-ERG    ninde-karr-ERG-(e)n     "ERG bring<s>/brought me"
ha-karr-ERG    hinde-karr-ERG-(e)n
da-karr-ERG    --
ga-kartza-ERG  ginde-kartza-ERG-(e)n
za-kartza-ERG  zinde-kartza-ERG-(e)n
da-kartza-ERG  --

where the ergative endings are:
1sg.   -t -da-
2sg.m  -k -ga-
2sg.f. -n -na-
3sg.   -0 -0-
1pl.   -gu -gu-
2pl.   -zu -zu-
3pl.   -te -te-

With 3rd. person abolutive object, however, we have in the
transitive past tense:

ne-karr-en      ne-kartza-n  "I brought it/them"
he-karr-en      he-kartza-n
(z)e-karr-en    (z)e-kartza-n
gene-karr-en    gene-kartza-n
zene-karr-en    zene-kartza-n
(z)e-karr-te-n  (z)e-kartza-te-n

So we have the following pronominal affix sets:

PRES  PAST (itr) PAST (tr1)   PAST (tr2)  ERG      DAT     [PP]
na-   nen-       ninde-       ne-         -t -da-  -t -da-  ni
ha-   hen-       hinde-       he-         -k -ga-  -k -ga-  hi
,,    ,,         ,,           ,,          -n -na-  -n- na-  ,,
da-   ze-        --           e-          -0       -o       --
ga-   gen-       ginde-       gene-       -gu      -gu      gu
za-   zen-       zinde-       zene-       -zu      -zu      zu
da-   ze-        --           e-          -te      -ote/-e  --

My proposal is that the first three sets contain an auxiliary
element *DA (present) / *DE(N) (past), as follows:

na- < *na-da-   nen-/ninde- < *nen-de-
ha- < *ha-da-   hen-/hinde- < *hen-de-
da- < *# -da-   ze-         < *    de-
ga- < *ga-da-   gen-/ginde- < *gen-de-
za- < *za-da-   zen-/zinde- < *zen-de-

As proof, I offer the paradigm of IZAN "to be", which in the 1st
and 2nd pp. sg. is composed regularly out of prefix + root
IZA(N), but in the other persons is composed of the auxiliary
DA/DEN alone (reduplicated in the plural):

naiz (naz, niz)   < *na-a-iz(a) < *na-da-iza
haiz (haz, hiz)   < *ha-a-iz(a) < *ha-da-iza
---
da                              < *#-da
gara (gera, gira) < *ga-ira     < *ga-di.da
zara (zera, zira) < *za-ira     < *za-di.da
dira                            < *di.da

nintzen (nintzan)      < *nen-de-izan-en
hintzen (hintzan)      < *hen-de-izan-en
---
zen (zan)              < *dan-en
ginen (ginan, gindan)  < *gen-di.dan-en
zinen (zinan, zindan)  < *zen-di.dan-en
ziren (ziran)          < *di.dan-en

We see that *d has suffered various phonological developments,
tentatively:

z-  in absolute initial
-d- in sandhi after an absolutive (pro)noun
-r- between vowels, before stressed?
-0- between vowels, before unstressed?

The -ai- in <naiz>, <haiz> (vs. -e- or -a- in <gara>, <zara>)
points to an earlier long vowel (*naaiz < *na-da-iza), just as in
the case of <nau->, <hau-> ("have me, have you") vs. <du-> "have
it" from *na-da-du (> *naau-), *ha-da-du (> *haau-) vs. *da-du (>
*dau-).

Another case where the "auxiliary" -d- resurfaces in the
transitive past is the verb JOAN "to go", whose past tense goes:
ninDoan, hinDoan, zihoan, ginDoazen, zinDoazen, zihoazen.

Reduplication (instead of the usual suffixation of *-(t)z(a)) to
denote plurality of the absolutive might also underlie the forms
of the verb "to have", if we allow for metathesis of the -i-:

nau-   < *naau-    < *na-da-du-
hau-   < *haau-    < *ha-da-du-
du-    < *dau-     < *#- da-du-
gaitu- < *gaaiddu- < *ga-da-di.du-
zaitu- < *zaaiddu- < *za-da-di.du-
ditu-  < *daiddu-  < *#- da-di.du-


The transitive past with 3rd. person object apparently contains
no auxilary.  I would reanalyze the forms as following:

*n(e) e-karr-en
*h(e) e-karr-en
*     e-karr-en
*gen  e-karr-en
*zen  e-karr-en
*     e-karr-en

The e- is possibly the same prefix as in the participle (e.g.
e-karr-i).  Assuming a word break between pronoun and verb avoids
the necessity of reconstructing 1 & 2 pl. as *genne-, *zenne- in
Pre-Basque.  That leaves the interesting question of why the 1st
and 2nd sg. forms have -n (nen-, hen-) in one set of past tense
prefixes, but not in the other (although in Gipuzkoan at least,
variants like <netorren>, <hetorren> do exist).  The 2sg.fem. in
-n (which we see in the ergative) might explain it for the 2nd.
person (cf. a similar phenomenon in Hausa, where the 2nd. person
feminine behaves morphologically like a plural in some personal
prefixes).

Finally, I notice that in this reconstruction, the auxiliary *DA
would have been used in both transitive and intransitive forms
(except 3sg. and pl. of the verb "to be", and the acc/nom.
transitive past).  I further suspect that the same *DA is present
in the causative formant -ra- (e.g. e-ra-man "to carry" <
*e-da-oan "to cause to go", etc.).  Originally "to do, make" [cf.
English "to do" as an auxiliary]?

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl



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