[Lingtyp] Applicative and preposition

Wed Oct 17 13:36:12 UTC 2018

Dear Simon,

Thanks for your query, it’s very interesting.

I just gave a talk at SWL8 on an applicative construction of Mojeño that is correlated with the presence of verbal classifiers that refer to a location. When such a verbal classifier is present, the “coreferential” NP can be expressed as an object rather than an oblique (i.e. it loses its preposition, as in the second example below). Interestingly, there is some variation. The preposition can be maintained in the locative phrase, even when the verbal classifier is present, but there is then no valency change (so the construction does not count as an applicative). Intransitive verbs take a 3rd person subject t-prefix, while transitive verbs take some semantically more specific prefixes for 3rd person when the object is third person also (as in the second example). So this case is not exactly what you were looking for, but the presence of three alternates here is interesting: the construction of example 3 could well be an intermediate step in the development of the applicative effect of classifiers.

t-junopo=po

te

to

smeno

3-run=pfv

prep

art.nh

woods

'S/he ran to/in/from the woods.'

ñi-jumpo-je-cho

to

smeno

3m-run-clf:interior-act

art.nh

woods

S/he runs inside the woods.

t-jumpo-je-cho

te

to

smeno

3-run-clf:interior-act

prep

art.nh

woods

S/he ran inside the woods.

The slides from my presentation can be downloaded from SWL8 website.
Very best,

Françoise ROSE
Directrice de Recherches 2ème classe, CNRS
Laboratoire Dynamique Du Langage (CNRS/Université Lyon2)
16 avenue Berthelot
69007 Lyon
FRANCE
(33)4 72 72 64 63
www.ddl.cnrs.fr/ROSE

De : Lingtyp [mailto:lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org] De la part de Simon Musgrave
Envoyé : mercredi 17 octobre 2018 07:16
À : LINGTYP at listserv.linguistlist.org
Objet : [Lingtyp] Applicative and preposition

Dear Lingtyp members,

I am posting this query on behalf of one of my PhD students. We will post a summary of responses in due course.

From existing studies of applicatives, only two Austronesian languages, Taba and Indonesian, have been documented to unexpectedly retain a preposition when an applicative affix is used to promote a previously non-core object to core.
Bowden, in his grammatical description of Taba (2001), states that it is possible for the same idea to be expressed using three possibilities. Firstly, that the third entity is introduced by a preposition, secondly that the applied object is marked by an applicative morpheme and thirdly that the applied object can be marked by an applicative morpheme and preposition, as the following examples show.

(1)a.    Ahmad    npun    kolay
    Ahmad    3SG=kill    snake
    ‘Ahmad killed a snake.’

b.    Ahmad    npun    kolay    ada    peda    PREPOSITION
    Ahmad    3SG=kill    snake    with    machete
    ‘Ahmad killed a snake with a machete.’

c.    Ahmad    npunak    kolay    peda    APPLICATIVE
    Ahmad    3SG=kill-APPL    snake    machete
    ‘Ahmad killed a snake with a machete.’

    d.    Ahmad    npunak    kolay    ada    peda    BOTH
    Ahmad    3SG=kill-APPL    snake    with    machete
    ‘Ahmad killed a snake with a machete.’    (2001:204)

Sometimes Indonesian clauses with applicative verbs suffixed with –kan retain the preposition directly following the verb when it is expected to have been lost according to conventional grammar rules, as shown in 2.

(2)a.    Yang    penting    saya    sangat    men-cinta-i    Sandy
    REL    important    1SG    very    meN.love.APPL    Sandy
    dan     meny-enang-kan    atas    semua    ke-jadi-an    itu
        meN-senang-kan
    and    meN-pity-APPL    on    all    event    that
    ‘What is important is that I love Sandy and regret everything that happened.’     (Musgrave 2001:156)

    b.    Kami    juga    sudah    mem-bicara-kan    dengan     pem-erintah     pusat
    2PL    also    already    meN-talk-APPL    with    government    central
    di     Jakarta    soal    rencana    men-ambah    beasiswa    Jerman
    in    Jakarta    matter    plan    meN-increase    scholarship    German
    untuk    Indonesia…
    for    Indonesia
    ‘We have also spoken with the central government in Jakarta about the plan to increase German scholarships to Indonesia.’      (Quasthoff & Gottwald 2012: indmix_565272)

Previous studies of Indonesian have noted the co-occurrence of applicatives and prepositions and have usually made passing comments often speculating that this feature is prevalent in non-standard Indonesian.

Our query is whether any list subscribers know of other languages which show this phenomenon and has anyone written about it?

Thanks in advance for any information which you can share!

Best, Simon

References
Bowden, John. 2001. Taba: Description of a South Halmahera language. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.
Musgrave, Simon. 2001. Non-subject arguments in Indonesian. The University of Melbourne. (PhD thesis).
Quasthoff, Uwe & Sebastian Gottwald. 2012. Leipzig corpus collection. (Ed.) Uwe Quasthoff & Gerhard Heyer. University of Leipzig. http://corpora2.informatik.uni-leipzig.de/.

--

--
Simon Musgrave
Lecturer
School of Languages, Literatures, Cultures and Linguistics
Monash University
VIC 3800
Australia

T: +61 3 9905 8234
E: simon.musgrave at monash.edu<mailto:name.surname at monash.edu>
monash.edu<http://monash.edu/>

Secretary, Australasian Association for the Digital Humanities (aaDH<http://aa-dh.org/>)

Official page<http://profiles.arts.monash.edu.au/simon-musgrave/>

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