agreement conflict? (fwd)

[Edith A Moravcsik]

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			 Edith A. Moravcsik
			 Department of Foreign Languages and Linguistics
			 University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
		         Milwaukee, WI 53201-0413
                         USA

			 E-mail: edith at uwm.edu
		         Telephone: (414) 229-6794 /office/
				    (414) 332-0141 /home/
		         Fax: (414) 229-2741     





					      	
      





      
     
    

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 18 Jan 1999 23:07:26 +0200
From: Hannu Tommola <trhato at uta.fi>
To: Edith A Moravcsik <edith at CSD.UWM.EDU>
Subject: Re: agreement conflict?

At 13:00 18.1.1999 -0600, you wrote:
>In Hungarian, there is no way to translate phrases like "my branch
>of the family" or "John's share of the estate" in a way that would
>be structurally analogous to English. The simplest way to express such
>meanings in Hung. would be by making the English _of_ phrase" into an
>adnominal modifier, such as "my family branch" or "John's estate share".
>
>This fact is striking all the more since either of the two
>genitives involved in the English phrase can be expressed as
>a genitive if only one of them occurs. Thus, one can
>say "my branch" and also "the family's branch"; but the two
>- "my" and "the family's" - cannot occur together.
>
>The reasons must be specific to a rule against two cooccurring genitives
>in particular. This is shown by the possibility of Hungarian
>constructions such as "this branch of the family". In this phrase,
>a determiner (a demonstrative) cooccurs with a genitive. Thus the
>problem is not that genitives cannot cooccur with other DETERMINERS: they
>can if the determiner is a demonstrative but not if it is another
>genitive.
>
>A possible reason why structural analogs of "my branch of the family"
>are ungrammatical in Hungarian is the following. In Hungarian,
>the possessum agrees with the possessor in person and number
>(literally: "my branch-my"). Thus, the problem may be that if phrases like
>"my branch of the family" were to be expressed with two genitives
>("my" and "of the family" both taking a genitival form), the
>possessum - "branch" - would have to take two agreement markers - in
>reference to "I" and to "the family". The two markers would then be
>competing for the (presumably) single agreement marker slot on the
>possessum ("my branch-my-its of the family").
>
>A fact that makes this account less than fully convincing is that
>the double genitive construction is ungrammatical in Hungarian even
>if the two genitives are of the same person and number - such as
>in "John's branch of the family", with both "John" and "the family"
>being third person singular. If the conflict between the different
>person-number specifications of the possessors were the problem, one
>might expect that phrases involving the SAME person-number for the two
>genitives would be grammatical, with one agreement marker doing
>for both ("John's branch-3S of the family").
>
>My questions are these:
>    a/ What might be the real reason for the ungrammaticality
>of the "my/his branch of the family"-type phrases in Hungarian?
>    b/ How do other languages which have possessor-possessum agreement,
>such as Turkish, express such phrases?
>
>Edith Moravcsik

I'll try to answer the second question (b/ How do other languages which
have possessor-possessum agreement, such as Turkish, express such phrases?)
first, presenting facts from Finnish:

I. Finnish
1) There is the possibility to use compounds, which is similar to your
construction with an adnominal modifier: 

a)
minu-n	suku+haara-ni
I-GEN	family+branch-POSS	(my family+branch-my)
'my branch of the family'	('my family branch')

b)
Jussi-n	perintö+osuus
John-GEN	estate+share		(John's estate+share)
'John's share of the estate'	('John's estate share')

2) Second, two genitives are not possible, in Finnish either; instead, an
Elative construction can be involved:

a)
minu-n	haara-ni	suvu-sta
I-GEN	branch-POSS	family-ELAT	(my branch-my of-family)
"my branch of the family"

b)
Jussi-n	osuus	perinnö-stä
John-GEN	share	estate-ELAT	(John's share estate-from/out-of)
'John's estate share'

II. a) What might be the real reason for the ungrammaticality of the
"my/his branch of the family"-type phrases in Hungarian?

I think that your assumptions about the "possible reason why structural
analogs of "my branch of the family" are ungrammatical in Hungarian" are
right.

The fact that "the double genitive construction is ungrammatical in
Hungarian even if the two genitives are of the same person and number" does
not, to my mind, make this assumption less convincing. The "conflict
between the different
person-number specifications of the possessors" _remain to be a problem_
even if the phrases involve the "same person-number for the two genitives"
because one agreement marker can not functionally differentiate the two
("John's branch-3S of the family" does not make cleat that -3S stands both
for John's and for family's).

Best wishes,

Hannu Tommola	Univ. of Tampere	Dept of Translation Studies
P.O.Box 607	FIN-33101 Tampere	Finland
Tel.: +358-(0)3-215 6102	Fax: +358-(0)3-215 7200