[Lingtyp] agent nominalization

[Mike Morgan]

As for Sign Languages

- American Sign Language (ASL) uses an older form of the sign PERSON as
agentative suffix(this form no longer occurs independently)
- Indian Sign Language (ISL) and Nepali SIgn Language (NSL) both also use
their (still contemporary) signs PERSON as agentative "suffix" (note: these
signs, as indeed the overwhelming majority of signs, are completely
unrelated in the two sign languages)
- Japanese SIgn Language (JSL, also known as Nihon Shuwa NS) uses the sign
for MALE-PERSON (as the unmarked, or FEMALE-PERSON when gender is
considered important) as agentiative (suffix) (LESS commonly the sign
PERSON, which is in fact simply tracing the kanji *hito* 'person' in the
air with index finger, is used)

On Wed, Jan 6, 2016 at 9:32 PM, Guillaume Jacques <rgyalrongskad at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Dear Eitan,
>
> In the Sino-Tibetan family, some languages have prefixed agent participal
> markers, like Japhug (*kɯ*- participles) and other Gyalrong languages.
> These prefixes have no obvious source, and are likely to be very ancient
> (fossiled traces of them can be found elsewhere in the family).
>
> Most ST languages have recent (and suffixal) agent nominalizers that
> originate from nouns with various meanings:
>
> (a) In some varities of Tibetan, including Lhasa, the agent nominalizer
> suffix -mkhan [ɲɛ̃] comes from mkhan.po 'master, expert'
> (b) Many languages have agent nominalizer coming from a noun meaning 'man'
> (for instance Pumi -*mə *still synchronically transparent, cf *mə̂ *'man';
> other languages have agent nominalizer coming from a nom meaning 'man', but
> not synchronically transparent, as Khaling -*pɛ*).
>
> Guillaume
>
> 2016-01-06 11:07 GMT+01:00 Eitan Grossman <eitan.grossman at mail.huji.ac.il>
> :
>
>> 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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>>
>>
>
>
> --
> Guillaume Jacques
> CNRS (CRLAO) - INALCO
> http://cnrs.academia.edu/GuillaumeJacques
> http://himalco.hypotheses.org/
> http://panchr.hypotheses.org/
>
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>


-- 
mwm || *U*C> || mike || माईक || માઈક || মাঈক || மாஈக ||  مایک ||мика ||
戊流岸マイク
(aka Dr Michael W Morgan)
sign language instructor / sign language linguist / linguistic typologist
academic advisor,
BBV (Bhartiya Badhir Vidyalaya), Lucknow (INDIA)
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