query: associative plurals via noun-verb disagreement

[Paz B. Naylor]

Hello David and Fellow Austronesianists!

For all it's worth, here is something in Tagalog (and Cebuano and 
Hiligaynon) that appears to parallel your examples:

(1) Amos-i i-berif
    Amos-PERS 3SG:ANIM-laugh
    'Amos is laughing'

 TAG:    Tumatawa si                   Juan / Si Juan, Tumatawa.
                              SING NOM
                         'Juan is laughing.'

(2) Amos-i su-berif
     Amos-PERS 3DU:ANIM-laugh
     'Amos and his friend are laughing'

 TAG:    Tumatawa si Juan  AT ang kaibigan niya / Si Juan AT and kaibigan 
niya, tumatawa.
               (no 'dual' marker) and
                   'Juan and his friend are laughing.'

 (3) Amos-i si-berif
       Amos-PERS 3PL:ANIM-laugh
       'Amos and his friends are laughing'

TAG: Tumatawa sina                     Juan / Sina Juan, tumatawa.
                          PLURAL NOM
         'Juan and his friends are laughing'.

However, although the 'number-neutral' form TUMATAWA 'laughing' is most 
often used, Tagalog does have an optional PLURAL form: NAGSISITAWA or 
NANGAGSISITAWA 'are laughing'.

Warmest regards, Paz



Paz Buenaventura Naylor, Ph.D.
(emeritus) Associate Professor, Asian Languages and Cultures
                Program Associate, Linguistics
                Faculty Associate, Center for SSEAsian Studies

 (formerly) Assistant Professor, Linguistics
                Lecturer, Teaching Fellow, Romance Languages
The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor MI 48109
Home Address: 2032 Winsted Blvd., Ann Arbor MI 48103
Tel/Fax:   734-995-2371

  


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "David Gil" <gil at eva.mpg.de>
To: <an-lang at anu.edu.au>
Sent: Thursday, November 13, 2008 1:22 PM
Subject: [An-lang] query: associative plurals via noun-verb disagreement


> Dear fellow Austronesianists,
>
> 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 (a SHWNG 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,
> Austronesian or otherwise, that have ASPDs.  I would also appreciate any
> pointers to discussion of this construction in the literature.  At
> present I am familiar with just two:  Grev Corbett's 2000 book on
> Number, where he cites similar examples from Haruai (Papuan), Maltese,
> and the Talitsk dialect of Russian, and Daniel and Moravcsik's chapter
> on associative plurals in the World Atlas of Language Structures, where
> they cite Plains Cree as having a similar construction.
>
> 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. The same is true also for
> Tagalog, with its optional plural number marking on the verb in the
> actor-topic voice.  So if the language(s) you are familiar with have
> verbal number agreement but lack an ASPD, please let me know too!
>
> Thanks and best wishes,
>
> David
>
> -- 
> David Gil
>
> Department of Linguistics
> Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
> Deutscher Platz 6, D-04103 Leipzig, Germany
>
> Telephone: 49-341-3550321 Fax: 49-341-3550119
> Email: gil at eva.mpg.de
> Webpage:  http://www.eva.mpg.de/~gil/
>
>
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>
>
> 

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