nominal-internal person agreement

Andrej Malchukov andrej_malchukov at EVA.MPG.DE
Fri Oct 12 16:40:12 UTC 2012


I discussed some related patterns with attributes (including 
quantifiers) in

  * */Dependency reversal in noun-attribute constructions:towards a
    typology/*. München: LINCOM EUROPA.*. 2000*.

best,

Andrej



Pattie Epps wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> This query is on behalf of Steve Wechsler:
>
> It has been noted that (at least some) Bantu languages have person
> agreement inside certain Quantified Noun Phrases:
>
> Thina s-onke   si-fik-ile            (Zulu; Doke 1963:94, cited in
> Baker 2008:115)
> we     1pl-all    1pl-arrive-perf
> 'We have all arrived.'
>
> The quantifier onke 'all' agrees with thina 'we' in person (and
> number).  This is said to be typologically rare since adnominals such
> as quantifiers do not normally agree in person.  I would be interested
> in any examples of such apparently nominal-internal person agreement
> in Bantu or other languages.  In particular, I wonder if phrases like
> [we 1pl-all] can occur in all nominal positions in the sentence (such
> as object position), or rather tend to be sentence-initial.
>
> Thanks,
> Steve Wechsler
> _wechsler at mail.utexas.edu_



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