Re 'and'

[Edith A Moravcsik]

Edith,

There are two ways to do this in Basaa, having to do with how noun
phrases are conjoined, e.g.

1) John ni Mary      'John and Mary'

2) John BO-na Mary   (literally, John they-with Mary)

I haven't explicitly looked into the question you asked, but have the
impression that 1) is ambiguous. 2), on the other hand, must mean
they went together. There is in fact a whole set of "compound
pronouns", e.g.

Bes-na nyE  (lit. we-with him) : 'he and I'
Bes-na BO   (lit. we-with them): 'we and they, I and they'  etc.

There also is a word loN (N = velar nasal) meaning 'together' to
which one can add ni or na.

The Grassfields Bantu languages are also rich in these compounded forms.

Larry


>In the beginning of December, I posted a query regarding the grammatical
>means that languages use to differentiate between the following two
>sentences:
>
>    (a) John and Mary went to the party together.
>    (b) John and Mary went to the party separately.
>
>I was interested in ways of expressing these two meanings other than by
>the use of different adverbs - as in English - and other than the use of
>the comitative case on "Mary" in (a). More particulary, I was wondering if
>there were languages with alternative forms for 'and' that express the two
>meanings while keeping the equal status of the conjuncts.
>
>The eight responses all came directly to my e-mail address. I would like,
>once again, to thank to the respondents. Here is a summary. On request, I
>can reproduce more detail from the responses.
>
>LUIS OQUENDO noted that in the Wayuunaiki language, the word -_jeh_ 'and'
>has different additional meanings.
>
>ELENA MASLOVA referred me to a paper by Suzanne Kemmer.
>The reference is this: "Collective and distributive meaning, or: where
>unity meets multiplicity." 23rd LACUS Forum 1996, edited by Alan K. Melby,
>Chapel Hill, NC: Linguistic Association of Canada and the US, 231-249.
>It is indeed an interesting study focussing on the expressions of verbal
>collectivity and distributivity and showing, among others, that either can
>be expressed with a reciprocity marker.
>
>MARK DONOHUE reports that in Tukang Besi there are three ways of
>expressing these two meanings, one ambiguous between 'together' and
>'separately' and two specific to these meanings. The three expressions
>differ in verb form, in particles, and in whether the two conjuncts are
>adjacent or not. See Mark Donohue: _A grammar of Tukang Besi_. Berlin:
>Mouton de Gruyter. Grammar Library Series, #20. 1999.
>
>ANVITA ABBI reports in Hindi, a redpulicated comitative form is used for
>the 'together' meaning. An alternative is a construction that is ambiguous
>between the two meaning:
>it consists of an unreduced coordination of the two sentences 'John went
>to the party.' and 'Mary went to the party' conjoined with the word _aur_
>and the inclusive emphatic particle added to 'Mary'.
>
>JOHN OLE ASKEDAL provided Norwegian data. The contrast is made with the
>use of the adverb for 'together' versus the use of a reflexive form for
>the 'separately' meaning.
>
>URSULA DOLESCHAL noted the Slavic "my s toboj" construction
>("we with you", where "we" is in reference to 'I' and 'you'
>only). She suggested, however, that native speakers of Russian and Slovene
>would need to be consulted to make sure these constructions did indeed
>unambiguously convey the meaning of 'together' in these two languages.
>
>ALEXANDRA Y. AIKHENVALD provided information on a similar construction in
>Tariana (Arawak) - a language for which she has just completed a
>voluminous grammar. For the expression of the 'together' meaning, the
>second conjunct is in the comitative case and the verb is in the third
>person plural.
>For the 'separately' meaning, a coordinating enclitic is used on the
>second conjunct instead of the comitative, with the verb, again, in third
>person plural.
>
>ANDREJ MALCHUKOV reported on Even (Tungusic). Both meanings are expressed
>the same basic way, which involves the comitative on the second conjunct
>and the verb in the third person plural; the only difference is that for
>the 'separately' meaning, the verb carries a distributive affix. For
>further information, see Melchukov's article
>entitled "Verbal distributivity and valency in Even",
>_Languages of the world_ (LINCOM), 1992. #3. (I have not yet been able to
>get hold of it.)
>
>
>
>
>
>    ************************************************************************
>			Edith A. Moravcsik
>			Department of Foreign Languages and Linguistics
>			University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
>		         Milwaukee, WI 53201-0413
>                          USA
>
>			E-mail: edith at uwm.edu
>		         Telephone: (414) 229-6794 /office/
>				    (414) 332-0141 /home/
>		         Fax: (414) 229-2741
>
>
>
>
>
>					

--


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