[Lingtyp] "become"
David Gil
gil at eva.mpg.de
Tue Jul 7 03:16:46 UTC 2015
Mark,
I agree with your comment. When I wrote that "the form in question,
"be", expresses 'give', 'make'/'do', 'become' and causation", I was
using the kind of loose language that we adopt in our everyday discourse
as linguists in order to communicate effectively with each other, and in
this particular case, in order to fish for prima facie similar examples
in other languages that LINGTYP readers might be familiar with. Whether
such a form "really" means things like 'give', 'make'/'do', 'become',
etc., can only be resolved though deeper linguistic analysis, and my own
leanings are definitely towards the kind of negative answer that you
suggest, ie. towards a unified analysis in terms of a single perhaps
underspecified function.
Really nice Skou examples; I'll have some followup questions on the data
in a separate message soon.
David
On 07/07/2015 10:13, Mark Donohue wrote:
> Following from Eva's point:
> one problem is, I think, assuming that "the verb that means 'do' ",
> and "the verb that means 'become' " are part of this system.
> We know that verbs can be underspecified semantically (a point Eva
> raises); we know that many auxiliary constructions employ semantically
> empty inflectional entities, 'light verbs'.
>
> The following Skou examples show the verb li, and its inflectional
> variants, being used with a generic 'do' sense, as the inflectional
> member of a N+V complex predicate. Any attempt to associate semantic
> content with the verb li beyond 'verb' will fail; it simply inflects,
> and has no inherently specified valency, semantics, or restrictions.
> One way to characterise 'polysemies' is to think not of the extension
> of a meaning, but the accretion of constructions to a semantically
> 'light' inflecting element.
>
> Skou examples:
>
> Ya mè=pi?
> thing 2SG=2SG."do"
> 'What are you doing?'
>
> 'Auxiliary':
> Pí nì=li mè.
> speech 1SG=do 2SG
> 'I spoke to you.'
>
> Naké boeboe ke=li
> dog growl 3SG.NF <http://3SG.NF>="do"
> 'The dog growled.'
>
> Inchoative:
> Ke kurù ke=li.
> 3SG.NF <http://3SG.NF> teacher 3SG.NF <http://3SG.NF>="do"
> 'He became a teacher.'
>
> Nì pá-nì=ne fèng li.
> 1SG house-1SG.GEN=1SG.DAT bad "do"
> 'My house became bad.'
>
> Mè=angku-mè=me bápáli pe=li.
> 2SG=child-2SG.GEN=2SG.DAT big 3SG.F="do"
> 'Your daughter has grown up.'
>
> Causative:
> Ke=li=ko pe=fu.
> 3SG.NF-"do"=OBJ 3SG.F=scared
> 'He frightened her.'
>
> Pe nì=li pe pá hápa pe=tue-tue
> 3SG.F 1SG="do" 3SG.F house small 3SG.F=RED-3SG.F."do"
> 'I made her build a small house.'
>
> Desiderative/Irrealis:
> Ne móe ne=yú ne ti-ti.
> 1PL fish 1PL=search.for 1PL RED-1PL."do"
> 'We're going to look for fish.'
>
> Kóe=ing a te=rá-r-á ti.
> sago=the 3PL-RED-3PL-roast 3PL."do"
> 'They want to roast the sago.'
>
> í bápáli nì=fue=ko nì=li-li ka.
> snake big 1SG=see=OBJ 1SG-RED-do NEG
> 'I don't like seeing large snakes.' (= 'When I see large snakes, I
> don't want (it).'
>
> -Mark
>
>
>
> On 6 July 2015 at 23:43, David Gil <gil at eva.mpg.de
> <mailto:gil at eva.mpg.de>> wrote:
>
> Dear Eva,
>
> Thanks for this valuable contribution.
>
> I suspect that languages of the small Biakic subgroup of
> Austronesian (Biak, Roon and Dusner) might provide a
> counterexample to your proposed generalization, but I'm not
> entirely sure of this. What is clear is that the form in
> question, "be", expresses 'give', 'make'/'do', 'become' and
> causation, without any valency-changing marking. (One
> qualification: in Biak but not Roon or Dusner, the 'make'/'do'
> function of "be" has been largely but apparently not entirely
> replaced by another lexical item, "frur".) What I am not yet
> clear about is whether the causative function of "be" in these
> languages is limited to what you refer to internal causation. I
> suspect that it is not, but will need to double-check this; I'm
> grateful to you for driving home the importance of this distinction.
>
> For some more information on the causative function of "be" in
> Biak, I would recommend a look at pp. 392-396 of:
>
> Heuvel, Wilco van den (2006) Biak, Description of an Austronesian
> Language of Papua, LOT, Utrecht.
>
> Best,
>
> David
>
>
>
>
> On 06/07/2015 04:46, Eva Schultze-Berndt wrote:
>>
>> Dear David and all,
>>
>>
>> A do/become polysemy (even without detransitivisation operations
>> of any sort) is attested in various languages – I have described
>> it for the Australian (W. Mirndi) language Jaminjung
>> (Schultze-Berndt 2000: Ch 5) and more generally in
>> (Schultze-Berndt 2008), where I also mention Samoan (Mosel &
>> Hovdhaugen 1992: 113) and Yimas (Foley 1991: 293-300).
>>
>>
>> In the 2008 paper I argue that the notion of ‘internal
>> causation’, as per Levin & Rappaport Hovav (1994, 1995), can
>> account for these diverse uses of ‘do’ verbs as well as
>> additional uses attested cross-linguistically, e.g. with
>> translation equivalents of ‘happen’, ‘feel’, and ‘exhibit
>> property’. That is, verbs like these do not have the semantic
>> component of agentivity and control associated with ‘do’ verbs in
>> an SAE perspective (and consequently with a primitive predicate
>> ‘DO’ in various decompositional semantic frameworks!) but rather
>> encode that a participant manifests an event, a state change, a
>> quality or a condition which corresponds to an inherent property
>> of this participant. (Cf. Levin & Rappaport Hovav’s (1995: 91)
>> definition of internally caused eventualities as “conceptualised
>> as arising from inherent properties of their arguments”, applied
>> by them to English verbs like /tremble/ or /glitter/).
>>
>>
>> In Jaminjung, the inchoative use of the verb is indeed restricted
>> to internally caused state changes, e.g. ‘become big’ = ‘grow’,
>> ‘become night’, or ‘turn into a devil’ (see ex. below). State
>> changes like ‘break’ or ‘open’ – corresponding to what Levin &
>> Rappaport Hovav (1995) term ‘externally caused state changes’ –
>> are encoded in Jaminjung by complex verbs which are formed with a
>> different verb, ‑/ijga/ ‘go’. This is the pattern I would predict
>> for other languages with a ‘do’ / ‘become’ “polysemy” (without
>> valency change), but I would be interested to learn otherwise.
>>
>>
>> Examples from Jaminjung are below. The same verb functions as a
>> generalised action verb and a speech framing verb with quotations
>> (a polysemy widespread in Australian languages), an inchoative
>> verb which encodes the transition into a state or class, as well
>> as a light verb with predicates of internal motion, light/sound
>> emission, and physical or emotional condition. (It does not
>> function as a verb of creation (‘make’) though):
>>
>> 1. //
>> 2. /yurru-wu-/*/yu/*
>>
>> do.what=now? 1PL.INCL>3SG-POT-do
>>
>> ‘what are we going to do?’
>>
>>
>> /wurrgurunganthu-wu-/*/yu/*
>>
>> devil 2SG>3SG-POT-do
>>
>> ‘you will turn into a devil’
>>
>>
>> 1. /nga/*/-yunggu/*/-m/
>>
>> itchy / sad1SG>3SG-do-PRS
>>
>> ‘I am/feel itchy/sad’ (lit.: ‘I do itchy / sad’)
>>
>>
>>
>> Jaminjung also uses the ‘give’ verb to form the
>> reflexive/reciprocal of ‘say’ since the ‘say/do’ verb is
>> defective in this respect (details also in Schultze-Berndt 2000).
>>
>>
>>
>> Foley, William A. (1991). /The Yimas language of New Guinea/.
>> Stanford: Stanford University Press.
>>
>> Levin, Beth, and Malka Rappaport Hovav (1994). 'A preliminary
>> analysis of causative verbs in English'. /Lingua, 92/, 35-77.
>>
>> Levin, Beth and Malka Rappaport Hovav (1995). /Unaccusativity: at
>> the syntax-lexical semantics interface/. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
>>
>> Mosel, Ulrike & Even Hovdhaugen (1992). /Samoan Reference
>> Grammar. /Oslo: Scandinavian University Press.
>>
>> Schultze-Berndt, Eva (2000). /Simple and complex verbs in
>> Jaminjung: A study of event categorisation in an Australian
>> language./ (PhD), University of Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
>>
>> Schultze-Berndt, Eva (2008). 'What do “do” verbs do? The semantic
>> diversity of generalised action verbs', in Elisabeth Verhoeven,
>> Stavros Skopeteas, Yong-Min Shin, Yoko Nishina and Johannes
>> Helmbrecht (eds.), /Studies on Grammaticalization/. Berlin:
>> Mouton de Gruyter, 185-208.
>>
>>
>> Best,
>>
>>
>> Eva
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> -------------------------------------------------------
>> Eva Schultze-Berndt
>> Professor of Linguistics
>> Linguistics and English Language
>> School of Arts, Languages and Cultures
>> The University of Manchester
>> Oxford Road
>> M13 9PL
>> Manchester, UK
>> E-mail: eva.schultze-berndt at manchester.ac.uk
>> <mailto:eva.schultze-berndt at manchester.ac.uk>
>> Office (summer 2015): S1.09b, Samuel Alexander Building
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> *From:* Lingtyp [lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org
>> <mailto:lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org>] on behalf of
>> Lewis Lawyer [lclawyer at ucdavis.edu <mailto:lclawyer at ucdavis.edu>]
>> *Sent:* 04 July 2015 00:37
>> *To:* LingTyp
>> *Subject:* Re: [Lingtyp] "become"
>>
>> Dear David,
>> Another example for you---not a historical source so much as a
>> synchronic derivation:
>> In Patwin (Wintuan family, Penutian "superfamily", of California)
>> the verb /lelu/ 'make' can be reflexivized to express the meaning
>> 'become'. Similar to Dr. Dryer's Walman example, but with 'make'
>> rather than 'do' (/lelu/ never means 'do' in Patwin). Also
>> perhaps more agentive than prototypical 'become', though
>> sometimes translated that way.
>>
>> (1) ču pi depi no:p lelu-nana-t'i.
>> I DECL also deer make-REFL-FUT
>> 'I'm going to turn into a deer too.' (Whistler 1977:169)
>>
>> (2) k'učiʔa-ro p'o:rma-ro bo: win
>> lelu-nan-mu [...]
>> small-PTCP bad-PTCP be person make-REFL-SBJV
>> (He) made himself a small and ugly person. (Radin MS:103)
>>
>>
>> Whistler, Kenneth W. 1977. Deer and Bear Children. Speakers:
>> Nora Lowell and Harry Lorenzo. In Northern California Texts,
>> edited by Victor Golla and Shirley Silver, 158-179. International
>> Journal of American Linguistics Native American Texts Series
>> 2(2). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
>>
>> Radin, Paul. MS. Patwin Texts. Collected 1932, from speaker
>> Anderson Lowell. In the American Council of Learned Societies
>> Committee on Native American Languages, American Philosophical
>> Society. Call number: 497.3 B63c P4b6-7.
>>
>> Cheers,
>> -Lewis
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>>
>> Lewis C. Lawyer
>> PhD Candidate in Linguistics
>> University of California, Davis
>> lclawyer at ucdavis.edu <mailto:lclawyer at ucdavis.edu>
>
> --
> David Gil
>
> Department of Linguistics
> Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
> Deutscher Platz 6, D-04103 Leipzig, Germany
>
> Telephone: 49-341-3550321 Fax: 49-341-3550333
> Email:gil at eva.mpg.de <mailto:gil at eva.mpg.de>
> Webpage:http://www.eva.mpg.de/~gil/ <http://www.eva.mpg.de/%7Egil/>
>
>
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>
--
David Gil
Department of Linguistics
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Deutscher Platz 6, D-04103 Leipzig, Germany
Telephone: 49-341-3550321 Fax: 49-341-3550333
Email: gil at eva.mpg.de
Webpage: http://www.eva.mpg.de/~gil/
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