[Lingtyp] agent nominalization

[giorgio.arcodia at unimib.it]

Dear Eitan,

As to my native Italian, the first two 
agentive  morphemes that come to my mind are 
-tore (< Latin -tor) and -aio /  -aro (< Latin 
-arius). I wouldn't know where the Latin forms 
come  from, but it might be an easy question for 
a specialist.

As to Modern Standard Mandarin Chinese, there is a variety 
of means for agentive noun formation:

(1) the derivational suffixes -zhe (same as Jap. -sya / 
-sha), < from a pronoun 'one who...', and -jia '-ist' 
(same as Jap. -ka), < from 'school of thought > member of 
a school of tought > expert in'. However, the latter is 
mostly attached to nouns, and rarely to verbs, so I guess 
it does not fall within the scope of your survey

(2) a number of items which lie somewhere between 
derivation and compounding, as ren 'person' (same as Jap. 
-jin / -nin) and yuan 'personnel'

(3) conversion (e.g. lingdao 'lead' > 'leader')

(More in this open-access monograph: 
http://tjl.nccu.edu.tw/main/book_series/13)

As to Taiwanese (i.e. the more-or-less standardised form 
of Minnan Chinese spoken in Taiwan), you have items 
related to Mandarin as -ka / -ke, cognate to Mand. -jia 
but more clearly agentive, and items deriving from 
'person' (again).

(See LIEN C. (2004). Competing Morphological Changes in 
Taiwanese Southern Min. In : H. Chappell (ed), 
Chinese grammar. Synchronic and diachronic perspectives. 
Oxford : Oxford University Press, 309-339).

All the best,

Giorgio F. Arcodia

-- 
Dr. Giorgio Francesco Arcodia
Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca
Dipartimento di Scienze Umane per la Formazione
Edificio U6 - stanza 4101
Piazza dell'Ateneo Nuovo, 1
20126 Milano

Tel.: (+39) 02 6448 4946
Fax: (+39) 02 6448 4863
E-mail: giorgio.arcodia at unimib.it
On Wed, 6 Jan 2016 12:07:11 +0200
 Eitan Grossman <eitan.grossman at mail.huji.ac.il> 
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