[Lingtyp] query: possessives and animacy
Alan Rumsey
Alan.Rumsey at anu.edu.au
Thu Feb 2 17:19:17 UTC 2017
In some languages ergative case marking is found only on inanimate nouns. Examples include Hittite (Laroche 1962) and the Australian language Mangarrayi (Merlan (1982: 56-57)).
Refs.
Laroche, E., 1962. Un 'ergatif' en ie. d'Asie Mineure. Bulletin de la société de linguistique de Paris
57, 23-43.
Merlan, F., 1982. Mangarayi. (Lingua Descriptive Series, 5.) Amsterdam: North-Holland
Alan
On 2/02/2017 9:52 pm, "Lingtyp on behalf of David Gil" <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org on behalf of gil at shh.mpg.de> wrote:
Dear all,
Is anybody familiar with languages in which:
(1) NPs exhibit different properties (coding, syntactic behaviour, or
whatever) depending on whether they're animate or inanimate; and
(2) If an NPs consists of possessor and possessed nouns, where the
possessor is animate and the possessed is inanimate, such NPs are
treated as animate, even though the inanimate possessed noun is
otherwise the head of the NP. (For example, in such a language, "John's
book" would be considered animate.)
I am currently working on such a case, and am wondering how commonplace
this is, and whether analyses have already been proposed for similar
patterns in other languages. (I have a vague recollection of having
encountered something similar in the past, but can't quite place it.)
In principle one could imagine analogous mismatches for features other
than animacy.
Thanks,
David
--
David Gil
Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution
Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History
Kahlaische Strasse 10, 07745 Jena, Germany
Email: gil at shh.mpg.de
Office Phone (Germany): +49-3641686834
Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81281162816
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