[Lingtyp] 'Take' as diachronic source for causative? 'Stand' for ingressive?

Isabelle BRIL isabelle.bril at cnrs.fr
Wed Aug 26 09:59:20 UTC 2020


Hi Claudia,

you can have a look at Françoise Rivierre's paper The evolution of the 
verb "take" in New Caledonian languages/,/

in Isabelle Bril & Françoise Ozanne-Rivierre Editors. 2004./Complex 
Predicates in Oceanic Languages./Berlin New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 
Empirical Approaches to Language Typology 29, 398 p. ISBN 3-11-018188-6.

Best

Isabelle

Le 20/08/2020 à 14:21, Claudia Wegener a écrit :
>
> Hi Daniel,
>
> thanks, yes, I am aware of those functions of 'take' SVCs (also 
> discussed in Lee (2019), which I'm sure you will know) and Lefebvre's 
> work. 'Take' to Inceptive was not so much my interest, but thanks for 
> the interesting slides!
>
> The language I'm working on (Savosavo, Non-Austronesian) does use 
> transitive 'take' in SVCs as the general marker for causation. The 
> subject of 'take' is the causer, and object of 'take' is subject of 
> the (necessarily intransitive) verb that follows. It is never used in 
> any intransitive form or in any way altered in morphology or phonetic 
> form. I agree that the development has to have followed a path from 
> what you said below ("The more common pattern seems to me to be 'Take 
> NP (and) V (it)', so not causative in terms of alignment but similar 
> in function. I'm not sure about whether or how often that pattern 
> might shift alignment to 'Make NP V'."), i.e. in symmetrical, 
> sequential serial verb constructions first, and then extended to 
> asymmetrical SVCs, with the shifted alignment pattern. I do find it a 
> bit puzzling that it seems to have happened so rarely in other 
> languages, even though it seems a perfectly intuitive development to 
> me :)
>
> Also in light of the other answers I received so far, I guess it is 
> quite safe to say then that this development is rather rare...
>
> As for my question about 'stand' -> inchoative/inceptive/ingressive, I 
> did mean 'stand' in the sense of 'be standing'; Savosavo does have a 
> separate (though related) word for 'stand/get up', which is not used 
> for this grammatical function.
>
> Thanks again, best wishes,
>
> Claudia
>
> References
>
> Lee, Taegyeong. 2019. A cross-linguistic typology of ‘take’ serial 
> verb constructions. Albuquerque, New Mexico: University of New Mexico 
> MA thesis. https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/ling_etds/69.
>
>
> On 20-Aug-20 01:38, Daniel Ross wrote:
>> Hi Claudia,
>>
>> TAKE is extremely common in transitive functions in serial verb 
>> constructions, with a range of meanings including instrumental, 
>> comitative and sometimes just accusative. There's no shortage of 
>> literature on the topic (including several more papers by Lefebvre), 
>> but for a preliminary large-scale survey, see:
>> https://swl8.sciencesconf.org/data/pages/Ross_Lovestrand_SWL8.pdf
>>
>> However, TAKE is rarer as an intransitive auxiliary with inceptive 
>> (or similar) semantics. One specific regional exception is "TAKE AND 
>> V" pseudocoordination as found in dozens of European languages. The 
>> meaning is similar to "GO AND V", in the sense of surprise, 
>> unexpectedness, defiance, self-initiative, etc. This has been written 
>> about by a number of authors, but I am working on a more 
>> comprehensive survey in Eurasia, where I've so far identified this 
>> usage in about 60 languages:
>> http://publish.illinois.edu/djross3/files/2013/11/Ross-tomar-y.pdf
>> (Slides in Spanish, but should be easy enough to follow with the maps.)
>>
>> Aside from pseudocoordination (or rare asyndetic variants) within 
>> that geographic area, SVCs (etc.) with "take" are quite rare in that 
>> intransitive sense. Something like that is found in Haitian Creole, 
>> and there's an auxiliary in Arabic that is similar, but in general 
>> this particular semantic configuration seems anomalously common in 
>> Europe (suggesting contact effects, but with unclear and possibly 
>> many pathways, as discussed in the slides). Another related usage is 
>> auto-benefactive "take" (as opposed to "give"), as described by 
>> Creissels 2010 for example (cited in the slides).
>>
>> The meanings I've described above are not causative exactly, but I 
>> think somewhat semantically related to that might give you more 
>> information to consider. Further grammaticalization into marking a 
>> causative seems plausible from TAKE SVCs, for example. The more 
>> common pattern seems to me to be "Take NP (and) V (it)", so not 
>> causative in terms of alignment but similar in function. I'm not sure 
>> about whether or how often that pattern might shift alignment to 
>> "Make NP V".
>>
>> STAND/GET UP is used similarly to the TAKE (AND) construction above, 
>> in Arabic and some other languages of the Middle East (presumably 
>> also due to contact), sort of blending into the edges of the TAKE AND 
>> distribution. For Arabic, search for research on "qam" (and cognates 
>> in different varieties), often grammaticalized as an ingressive 
>> particle in colloquial varieties.
>>
>> I'd be happy to discuss this topic more, but that addresses at least 
>> the specific questions asked. I'd be interested to hear more about 
>> your research on these topics. I can supply additional references if 
>> you'd like. (Feel free to write off-list if you prefer.)
>>
>> Daniel
>>
>> On Wed, Aug 19, 2020 at 4:03 PM Claudia Wegener 
>> <claudia.wegener at uni-koeln.de <mailto:claudia.wegener at uni-koeln.de>> 
>> wrote:
>>
>>     Dear all,
>>
>>     It was suggested to me that grammaticalization of the verb 'take'
>>     to a causative marker is typologically unusual, and indeed, apart
>>     from the mention of Twi and Nupe (in Kuteva et al. 2019 and
>>     sources cited therein) and Fon (Lefebvre 1991) I have found
>>     little to no information on languages where this has happened...
>>     Would any of you know any other languages and could point me
>>     towards publications I could cite?
>>
>>     And related to this, I have been even less successful at finding
>>     languages where the verb for 'to stand' (as posture verb) has
>>     been grammaticalized to function as a marker for ingressive - if
>>     you know of any, would you be so kind to point me to any
>>     publications?
>>
>>     Many thanks in advance,
>>
>>     Claudia
>>
>>     References:
>>
>>     Lefebvre, Claire. 1991. /Take/ serial verb constructions in Fon.
>>     In Claire Lefebvre (ed.), /Serial Verbs: Grammatical,
>>     Comparative/ /and Cognitive Approaches/, 37-78. Amsterdam,
>>     Philadelphia: Benjamins.
>>
>>     Kuteva, Tania, Bernd Heine, Bo Hong, Haiping Long, Heiko Narrog &
>>     Seongha Rhee (eds.). 2019. /World Lexicon of Grammaticalization/,
>>     2nd edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
>>
>>     -- 
>>     Claudia Wegener
>>     Abteilung Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft
>>     Institut für Linguistik
>>     Universität zu Köln
>>     Albertus-Magnus-Platz
>>     50923 Köln
>>
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> -- 
> Claudia Wegener
> Abteilung Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft
> Institut für Linguistik
> Universität zu Köln
> Albertus-Magnus-Platz
> 50923 Köln
>
> _______________________________________________
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-- 
Isabelle Bril
Directeur de recherches (LACITO-CNRS)
Directeur d'Etudes à l'EPHE (Typologie et Typologie des langues austronésiennes)

Ecole de typologie ESSLT 2016
https://typoling2016.sciencesconf.org/
http://www.typologie.cnrs.fr/

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