Fwd: Re: Verbal agreement with NP-internal modifiers

Mon Aug 25 08:06:33 UTC 2014

Here's a couple of similar examples from Central Kurdish (North Iraq; 
West Iranian, Iranian, Indo-European), with some explanations below:

bačk-ak-ān=īa-xward-im

child-def-pl=3sg:Aprog-eat.pst-1sg

'It used to eat my children'

šēt-akadas=īgazī-m

madman-defhand=3sg.Abite.pst-1sg

'the madman bit my hand'

(both originally from MacKenzie, David. 1961. Kurdish dialect studies 
Vol. 1. OUP, p. 115, and discussed by me in Alignment change in Iranian 
languages. A construction grammar approach (2008) Berlin: Mouton, p. 
294; see also Ergin Öpengin's 2013 thesis on Mukri Kurdish for further 
discussion)

The paradigm of verbal suffixes on past-tense transitive verbs (here 
showing 1sg) regularly index benefactives, and other kinds of +human, 
but non-agentive, and generally indirectly affected, participants. That 
(rather messy) group happens to include possessors. There are also 
person effects here, though not fully understood.

However, the crucial syntactic point about the Central Kurdish system is 
that the participant thus cross-indexed cannot be represented 
clause-internally by another element, so somewhat different to 
Felicity's Gurindji exs.; if so inclined, you might want to consider 
these suffixes as pronominal, rather than agreement. Nevertheless, the 
similarities to the kinds of things that other people have been posting 
are sufficient to merit comparison,

cheers

Geoff

-------- Original-Nachricht --------
Betreff: 	Re: Verbal agreement with NP-internal modifiers
Datum: 	Sat, 23 Aug 2014 23:06:06 +0000
Von: 	Felicity Meakins <f.meakins at UQ.EDU.AU>
Antwort an: 	Felicity Meakins <f.meakins at UQ.EDU.AU>
An: 	<LINGTYP at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG>

Good point. In fact there is little distinction in Gurindji between 
these types of possessive constructions (which we’re calling ‘oblique 
possessives’) and benefactives, malefactives.

Ngu=yi=lu ma-ni ngayiny warlu
CAT=1MIN.O=3AUG.Sdo-PST1MIN.DATfire
“They made my fire.”
“They made a fire for me.”
“They made a fire on me.”

Nonetheless the oblique possessives are clearly distinct constructions 
because they can (1) occur embedded in a benefactive/malefactive, or (2) 
co-occur with a benefactive.

(1) [Karu-wu]_c ngu=*yi*_b =rla_c [*ngayiny**_b **-ku]*_c     jiya-wu

child-DAT  CAT=1MIN.O=3OBL 1MIN.DAT-DAT boil-POT

It will boil for the child of mine. (Gurindji: VD: FM07_a01_1e: 2:02min)

(2)*[Ngayiny**_b **-ju karu-ngku]**_a *ngu=*yi**_b **=lu**_a **=rla**_c 
*ka-nya

1MIN.DAT-DATchild-ERGCAT=1MIN.O=3AUG.S=3OBLtake-PST

      ngarin         [*marluka-wu]**_c *

**meatold.man-DAT

The children of mine took meat for the old man.

   (Gurindji: VW: FM13_a194: 1: 59min)

These examples make us think that the pronominal clitics are 
cross-referencing the possessors within a NP (as defined by case 
agreement) rather than coincidentally coreferential with the possessors.

Felicity

_________________________________________

FELICITY MEAKINS  | ARC Research Fellow (DECRA)

Linguistics | SLCCS | University of Queensland |

Brisbane QLD 4072 | AUSTRALIA

RM 517 | Gordon Greenwood Bldg (32) |

' +61 7 3365 2877 | '+61 411 404 546 | 7 +61 7 3365 6799 | 
*f.meakins at uq.edu.au <mailto:f.meakins at uq.edu.au> |

web www.slccs.uq.edu.au//index.html?page=127733&pid=124851

From: "Thomas E. Payne" <tpayne at UOREGON.EDU <mailto:tpayne at UOREGON.EDU>>
Reply-To: "Thomas E. Payne" <tpayne at UOREGON.EDU <mailto:tpayne at UOREGON.EDU>>
Date: Sunday, 24 August 2014 1:09 am
To: "LINGTYP at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG 
<mailto:LINGTYP at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG>" 
<LINGTYP at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG 
<mailto:LINGTYP at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG>>
Subject: Re: Verbal agreement with NP-internal modifiers

This is a (perhaps naïve) question I have about many of the examples 
cited in this discussion. How do you know the relevant verb marking is 
really “agreeing with”/“cross-referencing” an NP internal element, or 
whether it just happens to be coreferential with it?

I’m thinking of English adversative constructions like: “My car died on 
me,”  in which “me” just happens to be coreferential with the possessor 
of the subject. One can also say “My car died on her” if, e.g., someone 
else were driving the car. Or “Her car died on me,” etc. While the 
coreferential examples may be more common, the others are possible. This 
is similar to “ethical dative” or “dative of interest” constructions. If 
one were to propose a “verb agreement with NP-internal possessor of 
subject” construction, it would be important to show that it is /not/ 
this type.

Tom

*From:*Discussion List for ALT 
[mailto:LINGTYP at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG] *On Behalf Of *Randy John 
LaPolla (Prof)
*Sent:* Saturday, August 23, 2014 4:58 AM
*To:* LINGTYP at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG 
<mailto:LINGTYP at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG>
*Subject:* Re: Verbal agreement with NP-internal modifiers

Hi Rachel,

The key to the Tangut person marking, and many other Tibeto-Burman 
systems, like Rawang/Dulong and to some extent Qiang, is that the system 
is hierarchical or includes a hierarchical component. So the marking is 
not really of role, but of person. So, for example, in Rawang/Dulong, 
first person is marked in a clause regardless of the role the referent 
has, as direct argument, possessor, or whatever. In Qiang there is a set 
of non-actor person markings that can even mark a person not involved in 
the clause as an argument at all, as in example (453.a) in the attached 
page from my Qiang grammar (the second clause, where there is no second 
person argument, but as the second person will be affected by her 
leaving, it takes second person non-actor marking--I call it "non-actor" 
marking because there is also actor marking).

Hope this helps.

Randy

-----

*Prof. Randy J. LaPolla, PhD FAHA*（罗仁地）| Head, Division of 
Linguistics and Multilingual Studies | Nanyang Technological University
HSS-03-80, 14 Nanyang Drive, Singapore 637332 | Tel: (65) 6592-1825 
GMT+8h | Fax: (65) 6795-6525 | http://sino-tibetan.net/rjlapolla/

On 23 Aug, 2014, at 4:59 pm, Guillaume Jacques <rgyalrongskad at gmail.com 
<mailto:rgyalrongskad at gmail.com>> wrote:

Dear Rachel,

In the Sino-Tibetan/Trans-Himalayan family, several languages that have 
been described with possessor raising might be cases of what you are 
looking for.

In the extinct Tangut language, the verb can agree with a SAP possessor 
marked with the genitive (Jacques 2014:224)

xjow²tɕʰjwo¹  dʑjɨwji¹ [nji¹ jij¹ gji²bjij²] dja²-sja¹-wji¹-nja²-sji¹

Fengchang   ERG    [you GEN wife] DIR-kill-AUX-2SG-PFV

Fenchang killed your wife.

Another case is Jingpo, which has a special set of agreement markers 
(Dai et al. 1990:382) for possessors, which can be used with both 
stative and dynamic verbs, and which are distinct from the regular set 
of agreement markers:

[nyéʔ          pālọ̄ng]   grài hprò       lìʔāi

1SG:POSS clothes very be.white  POSS:1SG:IPFV

My clothes are (very) white.

[shi             ńnpyé]     grài tsòm           lùʔāi

3SG:POSS backsack very be.beautiful  POSS:3SG:IPFV

His backsack is very beautiful.

The agreement markers above differ from those for 1SG and 3SG S 
argument, which are n̄ngāi and āi respectively. Here again, the 
possessors are marked with a possessive form, and are part of the NP.

Bickel (2000) also discusses related phenomena in Hakha Lai.

Best wishes,

Guillaume

References

Bickel, Balthasar (2000). On the syntax of agreement in Tibeto-Burman. 
Studies in Language, 24:583-609

http://www.zora.uzh.ch/76615/1/Bickel2000Syntax.pdf

Jacques, Guillaume 2014 /Esquisse de phonologie et de morphologie 
historique du tangoute/. Global Oriental. Leiden: Brill.

Dai, Qingxia and Xu Xijian 1990. /Jingpoyu yufa/. Beijing: Zhongyang 
minzuxueyuan chubanshe.

2014-08-22 7:53 GMT+02:00 Rachel Nordlinger <racheln at unimelb.edu.au 
<mailto:racheln at unimelb.edu.au>>:

Dear LINGTYP-ers,

I am looking for languages in which verbal and/or clause-level agreement 
morphology (or bound pronoun system) is able to cross-reference an 
*internal* NP modifier. In other words, constructions where the 
agreement morphology is not cross-referencing the NP itself, but 
something *inside* the NP.  External possession constructions may appear 
to be an instance of this, but there is usually good evidence not to 
treat the possessor (which is cross-referenced) as an internal NP 
modifier in these cases, but rather to treat it as the argument of the 
verb itself (hence the traditional term ‘possessor raising’).  So I am 
not after examples like this.

Rather, what I am looking for are examples in which the cross-referenced 
element can be clearly shown to still be internal to the NP, even though 
it is cross-referenced.  Consider the following example from Gurindji 
(Australia) (data courtesy of Dr. Felicity Meakins):

(1)*/[Ngayiny/**/_b /**/-ju       karu-ngku]_a /*/   ngu=*yi_b =lu_a *   
                     tawirrjip 
  pa-ni           marluka-wu         kurrurij./

1MIN.DAT-ERG     child-ERG AUX=1MIN.O=3AUG.S      pelt 
   hit-PST       old.man-DAT        car

  My children pelted the old man's car (with rocks).

In this example there are two cross-referencing bound pronouns: -lu 
which cross-references the (augmented number) subject ‘My children’, and 
–yi which cross-references the possessor internal to the subject ‘my'. 
  That the possessor remains a modifier within the subject NP is shown 
clearly by the fact that it carries dative case, and agrees with the 
head noun ‘child-ERG’ in ergative case as well.  Thus, what we have here 
is a construction in which an NP-internal modifier is cross-referenced 
with morphology otherwise reserved for clausal arguments.

I am aware of an old paper by Stump and Yadav (1988) that discusses data 
from Maithili very similar to the Gurindji case shown above, and the 
brief discussion of ‘verb agreement with possessives’ in Corbett (2006: 
61) which mentions a couple of languages including Jarawara and 
Tabasaran.  However, I am keen to find more examples, if possible.

If any of you are aware of other languages that do something like this, 
I would appreciate it if you could point me in the right direction.  If 
there is sufficient interest, I will post a summary.

Thanks,

Rachel

Corbett, Greville G. 2006. /Agreement/. Cambridge: CUP.

Stump, Gregory and Ramawatar Yadav. 1988. Maithili verb agreement and 
the control agreement principle. /Linguistics Faculty Publications/, 
Paper 37. http://uknowledge.uky.edu/lin_facpub/37.

-- 

Rachel Nordlinger

Associate Professor and Reader

School of Languages and Linguistics

University of Melbourne

VIC 3010

AUSTRALIA

+61-(0)3-8344-4227 <tel:%2B61-%280%293-8344-4227>

http://languages-linguistics.unimelb.edu.au/academic-staff/rachel-nordlinger

-- 
Guillaume Jacques
CNRS (CRLAO) - INALCO
http://cnrs.academia.edu/GuillaumeJacques

http://himalco.hypotheses.org/

http://panchr.hypotheses.org/

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