nominal-internal person agreement

[Francoise Rose]

Dear Steve, dear Pattie, dear list members,

 

Mojeño Trinitario (Arawak, Bolivia) shows agreement on modifiers like “all,
also”. 

These can appear next within an NP in object position (actually sentence
initial also in the following example):

a-mutu      eti     n-echji-ko-'e

2pl-all    Pro.2pl 1sg-speak/to-ACT-2pl

To all of you I am speaking.

 

“all” and “also” are often used as modifiers, however they can also stand
alone with their person index. They should probably be analyzed as nouns or
verbs in the language, but the data do not make that very clear. For this
reason, I am not sure I would treat that as “agreement”. They are inflected
quantifiers for sure.

 

Very best,

 

 

 

 

 

De : Discussion List for ALT [mailto:LINGTYP at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG] De
la part de Pattie Epps
Envoyé : samedi 29 septembre 2012 06:10
À : LINGTYP at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG
Objet : nominal-internal person agreement

 

Hello all,

This query is on behalf of Steve Wechsler:

It has been noted that (at least some) Bantu languages have person
agreement inside certain Quantified Noun Phrases:

Thina s-onke   si-fik-ile            (Zulu; Doke 1963:94, cited in
Baker 2008:115)
we     1pl-all    1pl-arrive-perf
'We have all arrived.'

The quantifier onke 'all' agrees with thina 'we' in person (and
number).  This is said to be typologically rare since adnominals such
as quantifiers do not normally agree in person.  I would be interested
in any examples of such apparently nominal-internal person agreement
in Bantu or other languages.  In particular, I wonder if phrases like
[we 1pl-all] can occur in all nominal positions in the sentence (such
as object position), or rather tend to be sentence-initial.

Thanks,
Steve Wechsler
wechsler at mail.utexas.edu

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