double-marking in Beja

[Eva Katie Diana Fenwick]

Hi,

I’m looking at aspects of Beja (Cushitic) nominal
morphology in terms of a discussion about
double-marking.  Regarding possessive phrases, Beja
seems to have head, dependent and double-marking
strategies available, via independent possessive
pronouns, suffixed possessive pronouns or both, the
latter of which is shown below:

hinin		o:r-on
POSS.PRO.1PL	son-POSSR.1PL.POSSD.SG.ACC

ti-katy-ek
2SG-be-SUBJ
If you are our son

Does anyone know of any other languages where all
three strategies are possible?

Also, in some nominal affixes, there is inflectional
agreement such as gender and number with two NP
constituents, the host noun and another NP in the
clause.  In the example above, the single morph -on
encodes both features of the possessor (1pl) and
features of the possessed entity (singular number and
accusative case).  In the following examples we can
see that such 'double-indexing' within a single morph
also occurs with genitive case marking.  In (1) below,
for example, the first t refers to the possessor or
host’s gender and the second t to the possessed noun.

(1)
‘o(r)-ti:t					de
girl-POSSR.F.GEN(POSSR.SG/POSSD.F).POSSD.F	mother
a girl’s mother

With example (2) as well, it seems that the ‘genitive’
part of the suffix (the vowel) itself also encodes
inflectional information about the two noun
constituents, i.e. number of the possessor and gender
of the possessed.

(2)
yi-‘ar-e:t
DEF-boy.PL-POSSR.M.GEN(POSSR.PL/POSSD.F).POSSD.F

mak
donkey.F.PL
the boys’ donkeys(f)

Does anyone know any other languages that allow
inflectional agreement of two NP constituents in one
affix form, or any articles written about this
phenomenon?

Apart from references to double-case marking (i.e.
Dench & Evans 1988 and Plank’s 1995 Suffixaufnahme),
I’m not having much luck turning anything up.

Thanks,

Eva Fenwick