agreement and pronouns

[Mark Donohue]

> Hi Mark,
>   Could you tell me which of the last three examples in this excerpt 
> illustrate the possessor raising?  Sorry that it's not obvious to me.
> 	Thanks,
> 	Doris Payne
>

That was less than totally clear of me. the relevant bit, with 
explanation, is repeated below. 

Remember the object prefix possibilities in Kanum (in today's past tense):
 
> > 1SG/3SG.FEM			w-
> > 2SG/1PL			n-
> > 3SG.NON-FEM, 2PL, 3PL	y-
> > 3SG.FEM			t-  (some conjugations)

Now, what I forgot to mention is that there are NOT grammatical gender 
classes in Kanum: there's a special object prefix for a singular female 
object (FEM = female, not feminine), but nowhere else in the langauge is 
it marked, and only biologically female entities are treated to the 
female object prefix.

Thus

(1)	y-erm-y			ngkay
	3NON-FEM-shoot-TENSE	I:ERG
	'I shot [3SG].'

is the 'default' case used, for definite males, indeterminate animals, 
and inanimates of all sorts. You'd only use the t- prefix if the sex of 
the entity was certain, as in

(2)	t-erm-y			ngkay	ma^
	3SG.FEM-shoot-TENSE	I:ERG	wallaby
	'I shot a female wallaby.'

If you didn't know the sex, then Yermy ngkay ma^' is fine. Only with 
sexed kinterms or human terms is one obligatory, as in

(3)	Sa^ra^	t-erm-y
	woman	3SG.FEM-shoot-TENSE
	'I shot a woman.'

(3)'  * Sa^ra^  yermy

Now, having cleared that up, ehre's the possessor ascension stuff again:

(4)	mpw-ne  swa   pyengkw  y-erm-y
	2SG-DAT	hand  3SG-ERG  3SG.NON-FEM.OBJ-shoot-SG.SUBJ.TODAYSPAST
	'He shot your hand.'
	(male/female addressee)

(4) is a neutral sentence (apart from the feelings of the shotee 
involved, of course): 'hand' has no sex, so the non-female prefix is 
used. If we want to do some feature spreading, we can mark person and 
number of the possessor on the verb, i.e. PERS = II, NUM = SG, as in (5):

(5)	mpw-ne  swa   pyengkw  n-erm-y
	2SG-DAT	hand  3SG-ERG  2SG..OBJ-shoot-SG.SUBJ.TODAYSPAST
	'He shot your hand.'
	(male/female addressee)

Still no gender marked on the verb, as it's not an option for second 
person. If we want to specifically indicate a female patient, we can 
spread the feature GENDER = fem, and use the 3SG.FEM object prefix, as in 
(6):

(6)	mpw-ne  swa   pyengkw  t-erm-y
	2SG-DAT	hand  3SG-ERG  3SG.FEM.OBJ-shoot-SG.SUBJ.TODAYSPAST
	'He shot your hand.'
	(female addressee)

What I find interesting is that nowhere in the DP 'mpwne swa' is the sex 
of the possessor overtly indicated; there are no forms, as I said, 
anywhere in the language, that distinguish male from female. SO the only 
place the femaleness of the possessor can come from is topical 
information: that is, not present at a grammatical f-structure, but bound 
in the pragmatic content of the speech act (call it p-structure).

OK. Hope that clears it up,

Mark Donohue