[Lingtyp] non-agentive transitives

Fri Jan 31 02:36:40 UTC 2020

Hi Ference,

Building on Marianne's response, this exact issue is why Donohue & Wichmann (2008), in the introductory chapters to their edited volume, adopt the term semantic alignment for these kinds of systems. What motivates the differential marking in these kinds of systems is a distinction between the semantic roles of agent and patient, regardless of their syntactic status or the transitivity of the clause. So as you suggest, the term "split intransitivity" is not really a good description of the phenomenon.

Even among researchers that frame these systems in terms of semantic alignment, you're quite right that the overwhelming focus is on intransitive clauses. As Hiroto pointed out, Mithun (1991) also discusses transitive cases, but this aspect of semantic alignment systems is still not often discussed. In light of this, I try to provide a more balanced description of the semantic alignment system of Chitimacha (isolate, Louisiana) in a recent IJAL article (Hieber 2019), which includes discussions of intransitive, transitive, ditransitive, and copula clauses, not just intransitives.

Regarding your question concerning what types of transitive verbs can exhibit patient marking, your prediction is right for Chitimacha in that most of them are verbs of emotion ('regret'), cognition ('know'), and experience ('taste'). However, patient forms also appear with what are typically agentive transitive verbs like 'call' or 'plant' in instances where the discourse context motivates their use. While surprising at first, the appearance of patient forms on these otherwise agentive verbs makes sense if the differential marking is understood as a type of semantic alignment.

best,

Danny

References

  *   Donohue, Mark & Søren Wichmann (eds.). 2008. The typology of semantic alignment. Oxford University Press.
  *   Hieber, Daniel W. 2019. Semantic alignment in Chitimacha. International Journal of American Linguistics 85(3). 313–363. doi:10.1086/703239<https://doi.org/10.1086/703239>.
  *   Mithun, Marianne. 1991. Active/agentive case marking and its motivations. Language 67(3). 510–546. doi:10.2307/415036<https://doi.org/10.2307/415036>.

________________________________
From: Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> on behalf of Marianne Mithun <mithun at linguistics.ucsb.edu>
Sent: Thursday, January 30, 2020 12:48 PM
To: Havas Ferenc <hfz at iif.hu>
Cc: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
Subject: Re: [Lingtyp] non-agentive transitives

Dear Ference et al.

That's exactly the point in these systems. The grammatical agent is formally the same in transitive and intransitive sentences, and the grammatical patient is formally the same in transitive and intransitive sentences. So calling them 'split intransitive' has always been Eurocentric.

Of course not all languages are exactly the same. Marking patterns may be a bit different, and what is categorized as an agent or a patient in a particular language varies in interesting ways. (A nice one in Central Pomo is that if I win in gambling, I'm a grammatical agent, but if I lose in gambling, I'm a grammatical patient.) And patterns have histories. So Mohawk 'throw' occurs with a grammatical patient, because it is the verb 'lose' with a directional prefix.

Marianne

On Thu, Jan 30, 2020 at 1:38 AM Havas Ferenc <hfz at iif.hu<mailto:hfz at iif.hu>> wrote:

Dear Colleagues,

My question is about the differential marking of agentive and non-agentive subjects in transitive sentences. It is well known that in some languages, called active or agentive, the marking of the subject of intransitive verbs (whether by a case or by agreement) differs depending on whether the subject is agentive or patient-like. As Marianne Mithun puts it: “ln all of these languages one case is used for semantic agents of most transitive verbs and the single argument of some intransitives while a different case is used for the semantic patients of most transitive verbs and the single argument of other intransitives. The sets of verbs occurring with each case are largely the same from one language to the next. Most verbs in the first set denote events performed, effected, instigated and controlled by their participants (’jump', 'go', 'catch'). Most verbs in the second set denote state significantly affecting their participants ('be sick', 'be tired', 'be caught’)”. (Language 1991, 67/3, 523)

So much about subjects of intransitive predicates. Less light seems to have been cast on transitive subjects in the dedicated languages, though the pattern exists. Consider e.g. these Kaddoan sentences (selected from the same paper, 525–528):

  1.  ci-hahyúnčah  'I'm going to go home.’
  2.  ku-táyʡayah 'I'm tired, disgusted, fed up.'

(3)  ci-kíʡčah 'I'm going to kill him.'

  1.  kú-ʡnutah ’I like it.’

(1) and (2) show that agentive and non-agentive subjects of intransitive sentences have distinct verbal prefixes: ci- versus ku-.  (3) and (4) in turn illustrate the differential marking of agentive and non-agentive subjects in transitive sentences with the very same prefixes as in intransitive sentences.

So my questions are

a) WHICH SUBJECTS?
Which subjects are non-agentively marked in transitive sentences? I would expect them to be passive experiencers (of verbs like ’see’, ’hear’ as opposed to ‘look at’, ‘listen to’), recipients (’get’, ’inherit’), possessors (’have’), undergoers of unintentional mental processes (’remember’, ’forget’), emotions (’like’, ’dislike’, ’hate’).

b) UNIFORM MARKING?
If a language has splits in both transitive and intransitive sentences, are the agentive and non-agentive markers of the same form in the two types of sentences?

At the end of the day, the central issue is whether the agentive – non-agentive split does or does not work the same way in intransitive and transitive sentences. If it did, the mere “split intransivity” concept of agentive languages would be worth reconsidering.

Thank you for your assistance.

Ferenc Havas

Professor Emeritus of Linguistics

ELTE University, Budapest

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