[Lingtyp] agent nominalization

[Gardani, Francesco]

Hi Eitan,

This is not exactly the answer to your question, but a source of information could be the wonderful 5-vol. Word-Formation. An International Handbook of the Languages of Europe, ed. by Müller, Peter O. / Ohnheiser, Ingeborg / Olsen, Susan / Rainer, Franz (http://www.degruyter.com/view/serial/129039). It focuses on the languages of Europe, which, of course, goes far beyond Indo-European.

Francesco

Dr. Francesco Gardani
WU Vienna
Welthandelsplatz 1
1020 Vienna
Austria

http://wwwap.wu.ac.at/usr//ma/fgardani

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

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