Verbal agreement with NP-internal modifiers

[Ruth Singer]

Hi Rachel,

There's an interesting construction in Mawng that Bill McGregor wanted me
to analyse as external possession but I didn't think it was exactly the
same. Either possessor or possessee can be cross-referenced as subject or
object on the verb in different constructions in Mawng. In this one its the
possessor. Whether the oblique pronoun encoding the possessor plus the
nominal encoding the possessee form an NP is an interesting question though
- they must follow the verbal complex, the oblique pronoun must be initial,
and there is some phonological interaction between the end of the verbal
word and the start of the oblique pronoun.

See section 4.3.1 'oblique wholes' on p.117 of my thesis.

 (4-45) Both possessor and possessee are cross-referenced

Ap-ujpikpi-ø nuwu yurnu.

3.ED-swell.up-I1 2sg.OBL hand(ED)

Your hand might swell up.

AD Tape 1991:1B

 (4-44)

Ak-e-ny ngartu yurnu warlk.

3GEN/3ED-pierce-PP 1sg.OBL foot(ED) stick(VE)

A stick pierced my foot.

Articles5 023


 (4-47)

"Awuni-wa-ny ngarrurru arrarrkpi kapa."

3MA/3pl-eat-PP 1pl.in.OBL person over.there

"He must have eaten some of our people over there".

AD Text 16. 032

 (4-48)

"Kunyp-aya-n kirrk nuwu jita warramumpik."

2sg/3FE.F-see-NP COMPL 2sg.OBL FE woman

"Look after your woman (i.e. wife)."

Child 040

Cheers,

Ruth


On Fri, Aug 22, 2014 at 3:53 PM, Rachel Nordlinger <racheln at unimelb.edu.au>
wrote:

>  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
>



-- 
Dr Ruth Singer
DECRA Postdoctoral Fellow
Linguistics Program and Research Unit for Indigenous Language
School of Languages and Linguistics
Faculty of Arts
University of Melbourne 3010
Tel. +61 3 90353774
http://languages-linguistics.unimelb.edu.au/academic-staff/ruth-singer
http://indiglang.arts.unimelb.edu.au/
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