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<font size="+1"><font face="Book Antiqua">Dear all,<br>
<br>
Just an incidental answer to Grev's note:<br>
</font></font><font size="+1"><font face="Book Antiqua">Mwotlap
(Oceanic, north Vanuatu) not only has </font></font><font size="+1"><font
face="Book Antiqua">Associative plurals, but also Associative duals
and trials. Precisely because the "associative" construction is
orthogonal to number, I once chose to call it “<i>Associative
non-singular</i>” in my grammar</font></font><font size="+1"><font
face="Book Antiqua"> of Mwotlap <small>(François 2001: 384–392;
477–481)</small></font></font><font size="+1"><font face="Book Antiqua">.
I admit it sounds awkward, but this choice was used for the purpose of
accuracy. <br>
<br>
Incidentally, Daniel & Moravcsik (2008) made another choice,
saying: “</font></font><span class="T5">we use the term </span> <span
class="T7">plural</span> <span class="T5">
in a broad sense covering not only plurals but also duals and
potentially also trials, paucals etc., although for associatives we
only have examples of plurals and duals</span><font size="+1"><font
face="Book Antiqua">.” <br>
Imprecise as it is, their terminological choice has the advantage that
someone looking for the now well-known term "associative plural" (in a
search engine, in indexes...) would come up with their references,
whereas they would not find my “<i>associative non-singular</i>”
coinage. I guess sometimes one has to sacrifice some accuracy in their
terminology...<br>
<br>
Finally, Lichtenberk (2000) used the term “inclusory pronominals” for
constructions similar to that of Mwotlap, so in my case I might have
used his term as well, which has the advantage of not specifying any
number. But then this choice cannot be extended to all “associative”
constructions, which encompass a wider syntactic spectrum than just the
inclusory -pronoun strategy. For example, the constructions referred
to by David yesterday would not fit in the "inclusory pronoun"
category, and I guess we would have to go on with the term
"associative" (whether "plural" or "non-singular"...).<br>
<br>
</font></font><font size="+1"><font face="Book Antiqua">cheers,<br>
Alex.<br>
<br>
</font></font><font size="+1"><font face="Book Antiqua">References:</font></font><font
size="+1"><font face="Book Antiqua"><br>
</font></font>
<blockquote><font face="Book Antiqua">François, Alexandre. 2001.
Contraintes de structures et
liberté dans l'organisation du discours. Une description du mwotlap,
langue océanienne du Vanuatu. Doctoral thesis in Linguistics,
Université Paris-IV
Sorbonne. 3 volumes. </font><i><small><font face="Book Antiqua"
size="+1"><small> ==> downloadable from <a
href="http://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/view_by_stamp.php?&halsid=8vt89d35kmfigc8cs3burbpbo4&label=SHS&langue=fr&action_todo=view&id=tel-00136463&version=1">here</a>
or <a href="http://alex.francois.free.fr/AFpub_books_e.htm">here</a>.</small></font></small></i>
</blockquote>
<blockquote><font face="Book Antiqua">Daniel, Michael & Moravcsik,
Edith. 2008. The Associative Plural. In: Haspelmath, Martin &
Dryer, Matthew S. & Gil, David & Comrie, Bernard (eds.) <i>The
World Atlas of Language Structures Online</i>. Munich: Max Planck
Digital Library, chapter 36. Available online at
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://wals.info/feature/36">http://wals.info/feature/36</a>. Accessed on 2008-11-14.<br>
<br>
Lichtenberk, Frantisek. 2000. Inclusory pronominals. <i>Oceanic
Linguistics</i> 39.1, 1-32.</font><small><br>
</small></blockquote>
<font size="+1"><font face="Book Antiqua"><br>
<br>
</font></font>
<hr size="2" width="100%"><font size="+1"><font face="Book Antiqua"><br>
</font></font><br>
Greville Corbett a écrit :
<blockquote cite="mid:C542E67D.9A905%25g.corbett@surrey.ac.uk"
type="cite">
<pre wrap="">Dear All
David's posting shows again that calling the whole phenomenon 'associative
plural' is inaccurate and misleading. In (2) the 'Associative Plural via
Disagreement' isn't a plural, it's a dual. The associative is orthogonal to
number: you can have associative dual and and associative plural (as in
Central Alaskan Yup'ik - Corbett/Mithun in JL 1996). Till David's posting we
had associative plural by disagreement, and he neatly fills in a gap showing
that you can have associative dual by disagreement too. Thus associative is
orthogonal to number: we have associative dual and associative plural, and
both of these directly or by disagreement. Maybe someone out there has an
associative trial, of either flavour. (We don't get associative singulars
for similar reasons to the lack of inclusive singulars.)
By the way, even English can get the effect, but only at the top end of the
Agreement Hierarchy, with pronouns not predicates. For some speakers - well
at least one - this is OK:
- Aunty Rosie rang.
- Oh, how are they? (Aunty R and her family).
Very best
Grev
On 13/11/2008 15:53, "David Gil" <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:gil@EVA.MPG.DE"><gil@EVA.MPG.DE></a> wrote:
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre wrap="">Dear all,
I am interested in the cross-linguistic distribution of a construction
type in which an associative plural meaning, eg. 'John and his
associates', results from a singular noun triggering plural number
agreement on the verb, as illustrated in the following examples from
Roon (an Austronesian language spoken in the Cenderawasih bay of New
Guinea):
(1) Amos-i i-berif
Amos-PERS 3SG:ANIM-laugh
'Amos is laughing'
(2) Amos-i su-berif
Amos-PERS 3DU:ANIM-laugh
'Amos and his friend are laughing'
(3) Amos-i si-berif
Amos-PERS 3PL:ANIM-laugh
'Amos and his friends are laughing'
Example (1) shows ordinary agreement, with a singular subject triggering
singular verb agreement. However, examples (2) and (3) illustrate how
an associative plural interpretation is derived via disagreement, with
the still-singular subject occurring in construction with dual- and
plural-subject marked verbs respectively. We might therefore call the
construction in (2) and (3) an Associative Plural via Disagreement, or ASPD.
My question is: how common is this ASPD construction in the languages of
the world? I would be very grateful for examples of other languages
that have ASPDs I would also appreciate any pointers to discussion of
this construction in the literature. The only mention that I am
familiar with is that of Daniel and Moravcsik in their WALS chapter on
associative plurals, where they cite Plains Cree as having a similar
construction; but their chapter does not provide a clear picture of how
widespread this construction is cross-linguistically.
A major challenge in typology is to collect negative data, ie. reliable
reports that a certain language lacks a particular construction (as
opposed to it simply not being mentioned in a couple of grammar books).
Thus, I would also greatly appreciate definitive reports that
such-and-such a language does *not* have ASPDs. (Whereas for languages
with no verbal number agreement, the absence of ASPDs is a logical
necessity, for languages with verbal number agreement, the absence of
ASPDs becomes a substantive and interesting fact about the language.)
For starters, English, even though it has verbal number agreement, lacks
an ASPD: you can't say *'John are laughing' to mean 'John and his
friends are laughing', as in (3) above. Hebrew and Russian are also like
English in this respect. So if the language(s) you are familiar with
have verbal number agreement but lack an ASPD, please let me know too!
While the above Roon example involves subject-verb agreement, one could
also imagine ASPDs arising out of other kinds of agreement, eg.
object-verb. Have any examples of such other kinds of ASPDs ever been
encountered?
Thanks and best wishes,
David
</pre>
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">-- <small>
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