[Lingtyp] agent nominalization

[David Gil]

Eitan,

In Malay/Indonesian there's a content word "tukang" which dictionaries 
gloss as 'craftsman'.  However, depending on the dialect, it seems to be 
taking first steps towards grammaticalization as an agent nominalizer.  
In my original description of Riau Indonesian, I characterized it as 
almost the only disyllabic function word in the language, as I had never 
heard it on its own, only in construction with a following word, and 
with an "agent nominalizer"-like meaning.  (Scare quotes are in 
acknowledgement of my analysis of Riau Indonesian as not having an N/V 
distinction, and hence, strictly speaking, not having nominalizers.)  
But I now suspect that it still retains its original meaning as 
'craftsman' in Riau Indonesian.  In eastern dialects of 
Malay/Indonesian, however, the bleaching of "tukang" seems to have 
proceeded further, and you get common expressions such as Papuan Malay 
"tukang tipu" ('craftsman lie') for 'liar'.  Also, in Papuan Malay, the 
original agent nominalizer "peng-" that you mention in your query has 
been almost completely lost, and survives in just a very few words where 
it has lost its original meaning, eg. "pancuri" for 'steal' (in other 
varieties of Malay/Indonesian, "pencuri" means 'thief'.  So in Papuan 
Malay, 'thief' is "tukang pancuri".

David



On 06/01/2016 19:07, Eitan Grossman wrote:
> Dear all,
>
> I am writing to ask a question about 'agent'* nominalizations across 
> languages. I am interested in agent nominalizers that do or don't have 
> known diachronic sources, in the attempt to understand which 
> diachronic pathways are attested (and hopefully, their relative 
> frequency/rarity). For example, some languages have:
>
> (a) bound morphemes whose diachronic source is clearly identifiable, 
> whether lexical (Japanese -nin or -sya 'person; Khwe and Meskwaki are 
> similar, or Japanese -te 'hand') or grammatical (Serbo-Croatian -l(o) 
> from an original instrumental meaning, perhaps similarly for 
> Afroasiatic m-).
> (b) bound morphemes whose diachronic source may be mysterious or 
> reconstructible as such to the proto-language (Quechuan -q?, 
> Malay-Indonesian peng-/pe-?).
> (c) free morphemes whose diachronic source is clearly identifiable 
> (Ponoapean olen ''man of')
> (d) more complex constructions involving the reduction of modifier 
> clauses of some sort (Coptic ref- < ultimately from 'person who verbs')
> (e) rarer morphosyntactic alternations, like reduplication of the 
> initial syllable (Hadze, Serer), vowel length (Akan), vowel raising 
> (+breathiness) (Nuer)
> (f) no such nominalizer mentioned, or explicitly mentioned that there 
> is no dedicated agent noun construction. In some languages, ad hoc 
> formation via relatives is the only (Tlapanec), main, or a 
> supplementary strategy (e.g., Indonesian relativizer yang).
> (g) zero conversion
>
> There is nice paper by Luschuetzky & Rainer in STUF 2011, but it deals 
> almost exclusively with affixes and only rarely mentions diachronic 
> information.
>
> From a _very_ preliminary survey of grammars, it looks like the origin 
> of agent nominalizers is often pretty obscure, and the shortest and 
> most bound morphemes look to be very old, quite expectedly. 
> Identifiable lexical sources seem to converge around 'person, thing' 
> or body parts. Reduction of complex constructions to an affix seems to 
> be rare but attested.
>
> *So, here's the question: in your languages, is the diachronic source 
> of agent nominalizers identifiable? * I'd be grateful for any 
> information you might be willing to share!
>
> Best,
> Eitan
>
> *Disclaimer: even though this is a common term, most languages I've 
> seen don't single out the semantic role of agent, and this is often 
> noted in theoretical discussions. Also, such nominalizations don't 
> have to be derivational or even 'morphological.'
>
>
>
> Eitan Grossman
> Lecturer, Department of Linguistics/School of Language Sciences
> Hebrew University of Jerusalem
> Tel: +972 2 588 3809
> Fax: +972 2 588 1224
>
>
> _______________________________________________
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-- 
David Gil

Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution
Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History
Kahlaische Strasse 10, 07745 Jena, Germany

Email: gil at shh.mpg.de
Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-812-73567992

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