Verbal agreement with NP-internal modifiers

Mon Aug 25 10:40:28 UTC 2014

Dear Randy,

While I certainly do not mean to dispute your analysis of the Qiang data,
having a hierarchical system does not entail allowing marking of the person
of a possessor on the verb in general (and vice-versa). Qiang and Rawang
only represent a particular (or rather two particular) subtype(s) of
hierarchical agreement.
Many, if not most, languages with hierarchical person marking systems do
not allow indexation of non-arguments on the verb (be it possessor of an
argument, beneficiary etc). In the Sino-Tibetan family, in particular,
Japhug (and other Rgyalrong languages), while it presents a near-canonical
direct-inverse (and thus hierarchical) agreement system, has a very strict
syntactically-based person marking system (for instance, in the case of
indirective ditransitive verbs the recipient cannot be marked on the verb
even if it is a SAP etc).
In fact, there is probably a gradient of possibilities intermediate between
the Qiang type and the Japhug type, such as Khroskyabs (Lavrung), where we
do find limited evidence of possessor raising for some specific verbs (see
a forthcoming article by Lai Yunfan in TPhS).

In any case, Jingpo differs from Qiang in interesting ways. First, unless I
misunderstand something (and correct me if I am wrong), in Qiang non-actor
(including possessor) person marking is attested only on transitive verbs,
while possessor agreement is found on intransitive (inclduing stative)
verbs in Jingpo.
Second, in the case of Jingpo we also have special marking for *third
person* possessor, which would not be possible if person hierarchy were the
only factor at play (since both possessor and possessed are third person).
It is unclear from the data in Dai 1990 whether in Jingpo any
animacy/empathy hierarchy determines the use of 3rd person possessor
agreement (for instance, whether we would still have possessor agreement in
the case of an inanimate possessor, in a sentence like 'its owner is not
here'), but this is something that would be worth testing with native
speakers.

Guillaume

2014-08-23 13:57 GMT+02:00 Randy John LaPolla (Prof) <
RandyLaPolla at ntu.edu.sg>:

>  Hi Rachel,
> The key to the Tangut person marking, and many other Tibeto-Burman
> systems, like Rawang/Dulong and to some extent Qiang, is that the system is
> hierarchical or includes a hierarchical component. So the marking is not
> really of role, but of person. So, for example, in Rawang/Dulong, first
> person is marked in a clause regardless of the role the referent has, as
> direct argument, possessor, or whatever. In Qiang there is a set of
> non-actor person markings that can even mark a person not involved in the
> clause as an argument at all, as in example (453.a) in the attached page
> from my Qiang grammar (the second clause, where there is no second person
> argument, but as the second person will be affected by her leaving, it
> takes second person non-actor marking--I call it "non-actor" marking
> because there is also actor marking).
>
>  Hope this helps.
>
>  Randy
>    -----
>  *Prof. Randy J. LaPolla, PhD FAHA* （罗仁地）| Head, Division of Linguistics
> and Multilingual Studies | Nanyang Technological University
> HSS-03-80, 14 Nanyang Drive, Singapore 637332 | Tel: (65) 6592-1825
> GMT+8h | Fax: (65) 6795-6525 | http://sino-tibetan.net/rjlapolla/
>
>
>  On 23 Aug, 2014, at 4:59 pm, Guillaume Jacques <rgyalrongskad at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>  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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-- 
Guillaume Jacques
CNRS (CRLAO) - INALCO
http://cnrs.academia.edu/GuillaumeJacques
http://himalco.hypotheses.org/
http://panchr.hypotheses.org/
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