[Lingtyp] agent nominalization

Wed Jan 6 19:43:40 UTC 2016

Dear Eitan,

In Atong, a Tibeto-Burman language spoken in Meghalaya State, Northeast
India, the phrasal enclitic <*=gaba ~ =ga*> can be used as agent
nominaliser, among various other things (van Breugel 2014: 297ff. and van
Breugel 2010). As Atong does not have verbs and nouns as separate word
classes, so it would be better to say that the enclitic <*=gaba ~ =ga*>
makes a phrase it attaches to referential. A phrase that denoted an event
without the enclitic refers to an individual or set of individuals with the
enclitic attached. In Atong, the predicate is a type of phrase within the
clause; any word that can function as its head belongs to the predicative
word class. Predicative words can denote things, persons, events, questions
etc. etc.

Here are two examples of how the phrasal enclitic <*=gaba ~ =ga*> functions
as "agent nominaliser".

(1) The word *soʔot* means 'kill'.
*soʔot**=gaba* (kill=NOMINALISER) can refer to  a 'killer', the agent
interpretation, or to a 'thing/person killed', the "undergoer"
interpretation.

(2) The word *rin* means 'keep as domestic animal'
*rin=gaba* (keep.as.domestic.animal=NOMINALISER) can mean 'a herd', like a
cow herd, the agent interpretation, or the animal herded or kept, the
undergoer interpretation.

I don't know the etymology of the morpheme <=gaba ~ =ga>. The closely
related language Garo (see Burling 2004) has the very similarly functioning
morpheme <*=gəpa*> (spelled gipa in Garo orthography).

In Lyngam [lŋam], an Austroasiatic language also spoken in Meghalaya State,
Northeast India, there is an agent nominaliser <*no**ŋ*>. Research is still
ongoing, but apparently the word can occur on its own meaning 'skilled
person/craftsman'. In its nominalising function, it occurs before the word
it nominalises. Here are some examples (in IPA, so [j] represents the
glide)

*no**ŋ**-hikaj* (NOMINALISER-teach) 'teacher'
*no*ŋ*-blla* (NOMINALISER-labor) 'laborer'
*no**ŋ-sda**ŋ* (NOMINALISER-begin) 'founder'

The closely related languages Pnar (see Ring 2015:71) and Khasi also have
this nominaliser.

References:
van Breugel, Seino. 2014. *A grammar of Atong*. Leiden, Boston: Brill.
van Breugel, Seino. 2010. No common argument, no extraction, no gap:
Attributive clauses in Atong and beyond. *Studies in Language* 34 (3),
493-531.

Burling, Robbins. 2004. *The Language of the Modhupur Mandi (Garo).* *Vol.
I: Grammar*. New Delhi: Bibliophile South Asian in association with
Promilla & Co., Publishers.

Ring, Hiram. 2015. A grammar of Pnar. PhD thesis. Singapore: Nanyang
Technological University.

Seino

https://independent.academia.edu/SeinovanBreugel

On Wed, Jan 6, 2016 at 11:47 PM, Mike Morgan <mwmbombay at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Lingtyp mailing list
>>> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
>>> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> 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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