[Lingtyp] agent nominalization

[Volker Gast]

Hi Eitan,
I have a handout on (agentive) verb-noun compounds in (contemporary as 
well as ancient) European languages, e.g. Engl. 'cutthroat', Span. 
'matasanos' ('doctor/quack'), etc. (the talk was given in 2009 at the 
University of Erfurt):

http://www.personal.uni-jena.de/~mu65qev/hopdf/vn-erfurt.pdf

In Section 3 there's some speculation about historical developments. In 
Ancient Greek, the pattern may have resulted from the reanalysis of 
AN-compounds, e.g. ortho(A)-krair(N) '(cattle with) straight 
extremities/horns' --> ortho(V)-krair(N)- 'stretch-extremities/horns, 
horn-stretcher'.

Ancient Greek apparently allowed both orders, VN and NV: 
anthro:po-phag-os / phag-anthro:p-os 'man-eater, cannibal' (cf. also 
phil-o-soph-os etc. for the VN-pattern). Latin and Old English prefered 
NV-order: e.g. agr-i-col-a 'field-cultivate/farmer', arm-i-ger 
'weapon-carrier'; OE mere-far-a 'sea-traveller', loc-bor-e 'curl-bearer' 
(the status of the final vowel is disputed). VN-compounds were 
originally used with a negative connotation, which they still have today 
when used for human referents, even in Romance languages, as far as I 
can tell (cf. mata-sanos). Most English examples denote animals or 
plants, and many of them have dropped out of use, being replaced by 
synthetic compounds (e.g. break-bones --> bone-break-er [a bird 
species]). The first attested example from OE is clawe-cunte 
'grab-vulva', according to the literature. The VN-pattern seems to be 
widespread in Slavic languages as well.

All the best,
Volker

Am 06.01.2016 um 11:07 schrieb Eitan Grossman:
> 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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-- 
Prof. Volker Gast
English and American Studies
Ernst-Abbe-PLatz 8
D-07743 Jena

Fon: ++49 3641 9-44546
Fax: ++49 3641 9-44542

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