Verbal agreement with NP-internal modifiers

[Denis Creissels]

Dear Rachel,

 

I am not sure whether this is exactly the kind of thing you are looking for,
since no obligatory agreement is involved, but several Romance languages
have a pronominal clitic (French en, Italian ne) that attaches to verbs and
is able to represent (among others) a genitival modifier included in a
complement NP (object or complement of the copula):

 

Qui est le propriétaire de cette voiture? ‘Who is the owner of this car?’

-> Qui   en-est   le propriétaire? ‘Who is its owner?

    who  of_it-is  the owner

 

(Italian: Chi ne-è proprietario?)

 

Best regards,

Denis

  _____  

De : Discussion List for ALT [mailto:LINGTYP at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG] De
la part de Rachel Nordlinger
Envoyé : vendredi 22 août 2014 07:53
À : LINGTYP at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG
Objet : Verbal agreement with NP-internal modifiers

 

Dear LINGTYP-ers,

 

I am looking for languages in which verbal and/or clause-level agreement
morphology (or bound pronoun system) is able to cross-reference an internal
NP modifier. In other words, constructions where the agreement morphology is
not cross-referencing the NP itself, but something inside the NP.  External
possession constructions may appear to be an instance of this, but there is
usually good evidence not to treat the possessor (which is cross-referenced)
as an internal NP modifier in these cases, but rather to treat it as the
argument of the verb itself (hence the traditional term ‘possessor
raising’).  So I am not after examples like this. 

 

Rather, what I am looking for are examples in which the cross-referenced
element can be clearly shown to still be internal to the NP, even though it
is cross-referenced.  Consider the following example from Gurindji
(Australia) (data courtesy of Dr. Felicity Meakins):

 

[Ngayinyb-ju       karu-ngku]a   ngu=yib=lua
tawirrjip      pa-ni           marluka-wu         kurrurij.

            1MIN.DAT-ERG     child-ERG       AUX=1MIN.O=3AUG.S      pelt
hit-PST       old.man-DAT        car

     My children pelted the old man's car (with rocks).

 

In this example there are two cross-referencing bound pronouns: -lu which
cross-references the (augmented number) subject ‘My children’, and –yi which
cross-references the possessor internal to the subject ‘my'.  That the
possessor remains a modifier within the subject NP is shown clearly by the
fact that it carries dative case, and agrees with the head noun ‘child-ERG’
in ergative case as well.  Thus, what we have here is a construction in
which an NP-internal modifier is cross-referenced with morphology otherwise
reserved for clausal arguments.

 

I am aware of an old paper by Stump and Yadav (1988) that discusses data
from Maithili very similar to the Gurindji case shown above, and the brief
discussion of ‘verb agreement with possessives’ in Corbett (2006: 61) which
mentions a couple of languages including Jarawara and Tabasaran.  However, I
am keen to find more examples, if possible.

 

If any of you are aware of other languages that do something like this, I
would appreciate it if you could point me in the right direction.  If there
is sufficient interest, I will post a summary.

 

Thanks,

 

Rachel

 

Corbett, Greville G. 2006. Agreement. Cambridge: CUP.

Stump, Gregory and Ramawatar Yadav. 1988. Maithili verb agreement and the
control agreement principle. Linguistics Faculty Publications, Paper 37.
http://uknowledge.uky.edu/lin_facpub/37.

 

-- 

Rachel Nordlinger

Associate Professor and Reader

School of Languages and Linguistics

University of Melbourne

VIC 3010

AUSTRALIA

+61-(0)3-8344-4227

http://languages-linguistics.unimelb.edu.au/academic-staff/rachel-nordlinger



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