Verbal agreement with NP-internal modifiers

Sat Aug 23 08:59:00 UTC 2014

Dear Rachel,

In the Sino-Tibetan/Trans-Himalayan family, several languages that have
been described with possessor raising might be cases of what you are
looking for.

In the extinct Tangut language, the verb can agree with a SAP possessor
marked with the genitive (Jacques 2014:224)

xjow²tɕʰjwo¹  dʑjɨwji¹ [nji¹ jij¹ gji²bjij²] dja²-sja¹-wji¹-nja²-sji¹
Fengchang   ERG    [you GEN wife] DIR-kill-AUX-2SG-PFV
Fenchang killed your wife.

Another case is Jingpo, which has a special set of agreement markers (Dai
et al. 1990:382) for possessors, which can be used with both stative and
dynamic verbs, and which are distinct from the regular set of agreement
markers:

[nyéʔ          pālọ̄ng]   grài hprò       lìʔāi
1SG:POSS clothes very be.white  POSS:1SG:IPFV
My clothes are (very) white.

[shi             ńnpyé]       grài tsòm           lùʔāi
3SG:POSS backsack very be.beautiful  POSS:3SG:IPFV
His backsack is very beautiful.

The agreement markers above differ from those for 1SG and 3SG S argument,
which are n̄ngāi and āi respectively. Here again, the possessors are
marked with a possessive form, and are part of the NP.

Bickel (2000) also discusses related phenomena in Hakha Lai.

Best wishes,

Guillaume

References
Bickel, Balthasar (2000). On the syntax of agreement in Tibeto-Burman.
Studies in Language, 24:583-609
http://www.zora.uzh.ch/76615/1/Bickel2000Syntax.pdf
Jacques, Guillaume 2014 *Esquisse de phonologie et de morphologie
historique du tangoute*. Global Oriental. Leiden: Brill.
Dai, Qingxia and Xu Xijian 1990. *Jingpoyu yufa*. Beijing: Zhongyang
minzuxueyuan chubanshe.

2014-08-22 7:53 GMT+02:00 Rachel Nordlinger <racheln at unimelb.edu.au>:

>  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):
>
>  (1)           *[Ngayiny**b**-ju       karu-ngku]**a**   ngu=yi**b**=lu*
> *a**                        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
>

-- 
Guillaume Jacques
CNRS (CRLAO) - INALCO
http://cnrs.academia.edu/GuillaumeJacques
http://himalco.hypotheses.org/
http://panchr.hypotheses.org/
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