accusative + analytical DO markers

Tue May 28 17:55:36 UTC 2013

Dear Giorgio,
thanks a lot!
I will check both Tropper's Grammar and Brockelmann's GvG. If in the "core" Geʻez la- is indeed incompatible with the Acc. ending -a, would the examples of la-Noun-a  be grammatical errors? Geʻez was not necessarily the native tongue of the writers.
   And we are now left with Old Armenian only. Do you think the Old Armenian situation was a kind of transitory (the accusative is not yet quite gone, the DOM z- is already there), instable?
  All best,
  Sergey

Вторник, 28 мая 2013, 19:36 +02:00 от Giorgio Iemmolo <giorgio.iemmolo at uzh.ch>:
>Dear Sergey,
>
>you do actually find sporadic instances of la- or l- in both Ge'ez and Classical Arabic together with the accusative ending. As I said before, this co-occurrence seems to be very uncommon and fluid. You can find some examples in Tropper's grammar "Altäthiopisch: Grammatik des Geʻez mit Übungstexten und Glossar" and in Brockelmann's "Grundriss der vergleichenden Grammatik der semitischen Sprachen". 
>Best regards,
>
>Giorgio
>
>Il giorno 28-mag-2013, alle ore 18:38, Sergey Lyosov ha scritto:
>
>> Dear Giorgio,
>> no, I believe the mention of Ge'ez is misplaced in your post. Ge'ez does show the preposition "la-" as a differential object marker (like numerous Aramaic and Arabic varieties), but in Ge'ez it is incompatible with the 
>> accusative ending -a (the only overt case ending in the singular). This is because "la-" is still felt to be a preposition, and prepositions are not compatible with the accusative in those Semitic languages that have case endings.
>>   With all best wishes,
>>   Sergey 
>> 
>> 
>> Вторник, 28 мая 2013, 12:29 +02:00 от Giorgio Iemmolo < giorgio.iemmolo at UZH.CH >:
>> Dear all,
>> 
>> as far as I know, the co-occurrence of two accusative markers seems to be extremely rare cross-linguistically. If we exclude cases in which an accusative marker, like "a" is Romance, occurs in conjunction with accusative pronominal forms, the only cases I am aware of are the following ones:
>> 
>> 1. Huangshui Chinese, where the older differential object marker pa (cognate with the well-known Mandarin Chinese ba) is being gradually supplanted by another marker "xa", which most of the time seems to co-occur with pa. Interestingly, xa is the general topic marker in Huangshui Chinese (Dede 2007).
>> 
>> 2. Classical Armenian, where the differential object marker z- occurs with accusative plural marking (even though the situation seems to be rather fluid, see Meillet 1903: 90-91);
>> 
>> 3. Ge'ez (Classical Ethiopian), which shows both the preposition "la-" as a differential object marker, plus an accusative ending -a which survives from the old Semitic system. 
>> 
>> If you're looking for cases where the two markers do not have to co-occur, then it is probably easier to find more examples like Biloxi (cf. Matthew Dryer's Daniel Hieber's emails), which might indeed be a case of DOM where a topic marker was reanalysed as a differential object marker with direct objects, a fact that doesn't seem to be as uncommon as one might think. 
>> 
>> As for the co-occurrence of accusative case-marking with indexation, such as clitic doubling in Romance. I would be very cautious to compare the two and consider them alike: when historical data is available, we often see that the two constructions, albeit closely related in terms of governing parameters, do not develop at the same time. Also from a pure synchronic perspective, the overlap between the two is not complete even in languages which are usually taken as chief examples of such a co-occurrence, e.g. different Spanish varieties. 
>> All the very best,
>> 
>> Giorgio
>> 
>> Il giorno 27-mag-2013, alle ore 19:23, Daniel W. Hieber ha scritto:
>> 
>> > Sergej, Matthew,
>> > 
>> > I just wanted to pass along this note from David Kaufmann, PhD candidate at the University of Kansas, regarding the postpositions in Biloxi, a language he's done some work with. Something to consider when looking at the Biloxi data.
>> > 
>> > best,
>> > 
>> > Danny
>> > 
>> > Omnis habet sua dona dies. ~ Martial
>> > 
>> > Begin forwarded message:
>> > 
>> >> From: David Kaufman < dvkanth2010 at gmail.com >
>> >> Date: May 27, 2013, 1:05:35 PM EDT
>> >> To: "Daniel W. Hieber" < dwhieb at gmail.com >
>> >> Subject: Re: accusative + analytical DO markers
>> >> 
>> >> Thanks, Danny! Here is my response:
>> >> 
>> >> Dear Sergej and Matthew:
>> >> 
>> >> I'm not convinced that yaNka(N) is a postposition in Biloxi. It may simply be the -yaN topic marker (definite article) + kaN switch reference (different subject/topic) marker. Einaudi hadn't done a great job figuring out all of the supposed suffixes in Biloxi. The only sure way I know of marking "accusative" or direct object "case" in Biloxi is via the -kaN or -k suffix. But even this is seldom used in Biloxi texts, so I'm always hesitant to call it a "case," since it appears to be subject to speaker preference (perhaps stylistic) and not required as are cases in, for instance, Russian or Latin.
>> >> 
>> >> David Kaufman
>> >> University of Kansas
>> >>  dvkanth2010 at gmail.com
>> 
>> 
>> --
>> Giorgio Iemmolo
>> Seminar für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft
>> Universität Zürich
>> Plattenstrasse 54
>> CH-8032 Zürich, Switzerland
>> Tel: +41 44 63 40228
>> e-mail:  giorgio.iemmolo at uzh.ch
>> Homepage:  http://www.spw.uzh.ch/iemmolo_en.html
>> 
>
>
>--
>Giorgio Iemmolo
>Seminar für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft
>Universität Zürich
>Plattenstrasse 54
>CH-8032 Zürich, Switzerland
>Tel: +41 44 63 40228
>e-mail:  giorgio.iemmolo at uzh.ch
>Homepage:  http://www.spw.uzh.ch/iemmolo_en.html
>
>
>

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