delocutive

[Marianne Mithun]

Dear Frans,

Sure. Central Alaskan Yup'ik has a derivational suffix -(a)r- which means
'say' or 'go ...'. (The a appears after a consonant.) It can follow
exclamations or other things, and fits in with the rest of the
derivational and inflectional morphology.

	aartuq
	aa-r-tu-q
	aa-say-INTRANSITIVE.INDICATIVE-3.SG
	'he is saying "aa"'

	camaiarpekenaku
	camai-ar-peke-na-ku
	hello-say-NEGATIVE-SUBORDINATIVE-R/3.SG
	'(they) didn't greet him'


(The word camai, actually cama=i is used as a greeting. It probably comes
from a demonstrative cama- 'down, towards the river, obscured', followed
by an enclitic =i used to form exclamations.)


Marianne Mithun


On Wed, 12 Jun 2002, Frans Plank wrote:

> Dear colleagues knowledgable about languages other than Germanic and Romance,
>
> do you know of instances of delocutive morphology in any language you are
> knowledgable about?  -- that is, of bound morphology of whatever kind being
> used to form verbs which mean, basically, 'to say "X" (to someone)', where
> "X" can be
> (a)  a pronoun of (formal/informal) address,
> (b)  a term of (possibly abusive) address,
> (c)  an interjection,
> (d)  something else (please specify).
>
> Examples from German (where -en is the infinitival suffix, -z the
> delocutive one):
> (a)  jemanden du-z-en  'to say "thou" to s.o.'
> (b)  jemanden verhunzen (< ver-hund-z-en)  'to say "dog" to s.o' (basic
> meaning)
> (c)  aech-z-en  'to say "ach!"'  (a deep sigh)
> (d)  ---
>
> If there is such delocutive morphology in "your" language, is it dedicated
> to just this one function, or does it have other, and perhaps primary,
> functions too (e.g., aspect/aktionsart ones such as iterative;
> intensification;  derivation of verbs of sound/noise production or of other
> semantic domains)?  Whether dedicated or shared, would you know anything
> about the historical source of such delocutive morphology?
>
> You may know the famous paper on delocutives by Benveniste.  But I wonder
> whether anything seriously crosslinguistic has been done since.  Any leads?
>
> Frans Plank
>
>
>
> Frans Plank
> Sprachwissenschaft
> Universitaet Konstanz
> D-78457 Konstanz
> Germany
> E-mail:  frans.plank at uni-konstanz.de
> Tel:   +49-(0)7531-88 2656, home +49-(0)7531-57450
> Fax:   +49-(0)7531-88 4190
>