[Lingtyp] Plural markers on (already) plural pronouns

Sun Nov 17 00:29:14 UTC 2019

continuing with examples of languages where plural pronouns (optionally)
take plural noun) suffixes:
Nepali
hami "we" also hami-hʌru "we" (we+PL)
(note: 1st singular is mʌ "I"; *mʌ-hʌru is not possible)

compare use of the same suffix added to singular pronouns to form plural,
e.g.:
timi "you" (singular, informal) > timi-hʌru "you" (all) (plural,informal)
in these latter instances the suffix -hʌru is not optional

On Sat, Nov 16, 2019 at 2:56 PM Edith A Moravcsik <edith at uwm.edu> wrote:

> Thank you, Bernhard, for your very enlightening message rich both in data
> and in insight!
>
> Here are some facts about the accusative forms of Hungarian personal
> pronouns that pertain to the following three of Bernhard’s hypotheses:
>
> 2. Reinforced and reinforcing morphemes are not the same allomorph.
>
> 5. Short forms are reinforced more frequently than longer forms.
>
> 6. Transparently marked forms are less frequently reinforced than opaquely
> marked forms.
>
> Here is the paradigm of the accusatives of Hungarian personal pronouns:
>
> Sing 1 *engem, engem-et*
>         2 *téged, téged-et*
>         3 *ő**t, **ő-**t-et*
> Plu 1 *mink-et*
>        2 *titek-et*
>        3 *ő**k-et*
>
> *Regarding point 2* (The reinforced and the reinforcing morphemes are not
> the same allomorph): This does not hold for the singular third person
> accusative form. The nominal accusative suffix is -t (with a vowel
> preceding it) and it occurs twice in *ő-**t-et*.
>
> The same identical reinforcement occurs in demonstratives:
>
> *ez-t, ez-t-et* ‘this (accusative)’
> *az-t, az-t-at* ‘that (accusative)’
>
> The doubly-marked forms both for the third person singular pronoun and the
> demonstratives are highly colloquial; perhaps also dialectal. Jokingly,
> sometimes people also usu the triply-marked
>
>  *ez-t-et-et* and  *az-t-at-at* (but I have never heard *ő-**t-et-et*).
>
> *Regarding point 5* (Short forms are reinforced more frequently than
> longer forms): Both the third person singular pronoun and the
> demonstratives are short and thus they support this point.
>
>
>
> *Regarding point 6* (Transparently marked forms are less frequently
> reinforced than opaquely marked forms): The singular first and second
> person pronominal accusatives are non-transparent (they are monomorphemic: *engem,
> téged*) and thus the fact that they are reinforced is in line with this
> point.
>
>
>
> Another relevant fact is that loanwords are sometimes reinforced -
> presumably because they are non-transparent in the borrowing language. I
> cannot think of an inflectional example but non-inflectional ones are
> “pizza pie” and “gelato icecream”.
>
> Best,
>
> Edith Moravcsik
>
>
>
> *From:* Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> *On Behalf Of
> *Bernhard Wälchli
> *Sent:* Saturday, November 16, 2019 3:33 PM
> *To:* Ponrawee Prasertsom <ponrawee.pra at gmail.com>;
> lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
> *Subject:* Re: [Lingtyp] Plural markers on (already) plural pronouns
>
>
>
> Dear all,
>
>
>
> Bill Croft treats the phenomena in question in his seminal book
> “Explaining Language Change” (2000: 134) under the heading of
> “cryptanalysis” (§5.5): “In cryptanalysis, the listener analyses a covert
> semantic/functional property of a syntactic unit as not grammatically
> marked, and inserts {obviously it is meant when turning into a speaker
> again, BW} an overt marker expressing its semantic value.” Some of the
> examples discussed on this list are given in Bill’s subsection §5.5.3
> “Pleonastic double marking / reinforcement”.
>
> I am actually not certain whether this is the only possible
> interpretation. The overt marker could be inserted because the speaker
> considers the semantic property not *sufficiently* marked. I do not think
> all speakers using reinforcement are unable to analyze the non-reinforced
> expression (despite frequent claims by purists that using pleonasms is
> stupid). A more general mechanism that can account for reinforcement -
> although not the sublte differences in politeness in Turkish - is Lüdtke’s
> model of quantitative language change. (Croft 2000: 159 discusses it as the
> “periphrasis-fusion-erosion” cycle.) According to Lüdtke, speech has to be
> redundant since it occurs in a noisy environment, and this entails in the
> long run three types of changes for saying the same thing which trigger
> each other: fewer phonemes (Croft’s term “erosion”), more morphemes
> (Croft’s “periphrasis”) and fewer morpheme boundaries (Croft’s “fusion”)
> for conveying the same message. So, aren’t the phenomena under discussion
> here just instances of this? As in the well-known development of French
> demonstratives from Latin:
>
> ista N > (ecce)ista N > (c)este N > cette N > cette N(-ci)
>
> hoc > (ecce)hoc > (ç)o > ço > ce > ce(la) > cela > ça
>
> However, probably there is more to it if we take phonology into account.
> It seems to me that it happens very rarely that a structure Y-x (with -x
> being the marker) is reinforced pleonastically with a phonologically
> identical marker: Y-x-x. This seems to be due to avoidance of subsequent
> identical sequences (there is also a diachronic process doing away with
> them: haplology, funnily except in the term itself). Indeed, in no example
> mentioned so far, the new reinforced structure is Y-x-x (with x being the
> same allomorph).
>
> Against such phonological considerations one might argue that the
> reinforcing element is usually (has to be ??) more transparent than the
> earlier exponent of the semantic category (otherwise the reinforced marker
> is not “crypto-”). However, more transparent exponents also tend to be more
> productive, and it is more likely that reinforcement is done by a
> productive strategy than by a non-productive strategy. After all, if the
> point of reinforcement is more clarity for the listener, it might be
> strange to use non-transparent markers for that purpose. Another
> interesting question is: why is it just morphologically marked categories
> that tend to be reinforced? (This might be relevant for the issue of
> typological markedness.) Does anybody have an example where a singular
> personal pronoun is reinforced by a singular marker? (There are certainly
> many cases of dual pronouns being reinforced by ‘two’ and the like). Note
> also that reinforcement may entail more complexity as when gender is
> introduced in pronouns: Spanish nos-otros/nos-otras ‘we’, Lithuanian ju-du
> ‘you(dual)-two[M]’, ju-dvi ‘you(dual)-two[F]’.
>
>
>
> So here are some claims (I’d love to see counter-examples)
>
> 1. Reinforcing morphemes are more transparent and productive than
> reinforced morphemes.
>
> 2. Reinforced and reinforcing morphemes are not the same allomorph.
>
> 3. Reinforcing (except purely phonetic reinforcing e.g. by stress) occurs
> at the periphery (by affixes, adjacent words, not by infixes, ablaut etc.).
>
> 4. Typologically unmarked categories are not reinforced. (This does not
> hold. For instance, Indo-European present *-i* is a counter example, so
> no counter-examples for this, please)
>
> 4b. Much weaker: singular personal pronouns are not reinforced by singular.
>
> 4c. Typologically unmarked categories are reinforced less often than
> typologically marked categories [possibly a tautology when considered from
> a pan-chronic perspective]
>
> (Note that 4b can be accounted for by frequency, whereas 4 cannot.)
>
> Hence 4d: Typologically unmarked categories are not reinforced in uses
> where they are relatively more frequent than their marked counterpart.
>
> 5. Short forms are reinforced more frequently than longer forms.
>
> 6. Transparently marked forms are less frequently reinforced than opaquely
> marked forms.
>
> 7. Reinforcement is more likely to happen in phrases consisting of one
> word than in phrases consisting of several words (thus *we typologists*
> is less prone to be reinforced than *we*).
>
>
>
> Lüdtke, Helmut (1980). Kommunikationstheoretische Grundlagen des
> Sprachwandels. ‘Sprachwandel als universales Phänomen’, 1-19; ‘Auf dem
> Weg zu einer Theorie des Sprachwandels’, 182-252. Berlin: de Gruyter.
>
>
>
> Best,
>
> Bernhard W.
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> *From:* Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> on behalf of
> Ponrawee Prasertsom <ponrawee.pra at gmail.com>
> *Sent:* Friday, November 15, 2019 5:01 PM
> *To:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
> *Subject:* [Lingtyp] Plural markers on (already) plural pronouns
>
>
>
> Dear all,
>
>
>
> I have been looking at a number of Tai languages and found that in some of
> these languages, plural pronouns can optionally take a plural marker
> normally used on common nouns. For instance, in Shan (Southwestern Tai),
> the third person plural pronoun *khau* can optionally take the plural
> marker *cɯ(nai)*, viz. *khau cɯ(nai)--*at least according to Cushing 1871.
>
>
>
> Assuming this analysis is correct (if it's not please kindly inform me),
> I'm wondering how rare this is for pronouns? A quick lookup revealed that a
> similar phenomenon called "double plural marking" is found in some
> languages, but seems to be restricted to common nouns only. Does anyone
> know of any other instances like this for pronouns in other languages?
>
>
>
> Sources: Cushing, Josiah Nelson. Grammar of the Shan Language. Rangoon:
> American Mission Press, 1871.
>
>
>
> Best regards,
>
>
>
> --
>
> Ponrawee Prasertsom
>
>
>
> Graduate Student
>
> Department of Linguistics
>
> Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn University
>
> Bangkok, Thailand
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>

-- 
Dr Michael W Morgan
mwm || *U*C> || mike || माईक || માઈક || মাঈক || மாஈக ||  مایک ||мика ||
戊流岸マイク
sign language linguist / linguistic typologist / Deaf education consultant
"Have language, will travel"
=====================================
"People who are always looking down at the bottom line will always fail to
see the stars"
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