Verbal agreement with NP-internal modifiers

Sun Aug 24 00:12:19 UTC 2014

Dear Denis,

That’s interesting – I hadn’t though about the Romance constructions that you mention in this context, but you are right to point them out as being related since the clause-level clitic (e.g. ‘en’) is clearly representing the PP [de cette voiture] embedded within the complement NP.  The difference with the Gurindji example, however, is that the cross-referenced element remains morphosyntactially encoded as as NP modifier while at the same time being agreed with by the clause-level clitic.

Thanks for the response!

Rachel

--
A/Prof Rachel Nordlinger
Associate Professor and Reader
Research Unit for Indigenous Language
School of Languages and Linguistics
University of Melbourne
VIC 3010
http://languages-linguistics.unimelb.edu.au/academic-staff/rachel-nordlinger

From: Denis Creissels <Denis.Creissels at univ-lyon2.fr<mailto:Denis.Creissels at univ-lyon2.fr>>
Date: Saturday, 23 August 2014 3:12 pm
To: Rachel Nordlinger <racheln at unimelb.edu.au<mailto:racheln at unimelb.edu.au>>
Cc: "LINGTYP at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG<mailto:LINGTYP at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG>" <LINGTYP at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG<mailto:LINGTYP at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG>>
Subject: RE: Verbal agreement with NP-internal modifiers

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
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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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