[Lingtyp] Grammaticalization of 1SG verb forms

Sat Nov 13 07:54:02 UTC 2021

Hi David and Aigul,

I'd consider the 1sg use for the protagonist of a story a feature of
what Wolfson
(1978) calls “performed narratives”. For Papuan Malay, Kluge (2014) also
describes a related use of 2nd person pronouns where they function to mark
“a sudden emotional impetus”. This is an example of what Longacre (1983)
describes as person shift a narrative peak. Saliba-Logea (Oceanic, PNG)
shows the same phenomenon: a shift to 2nd person pronouns when referring to
a 3rd person character in a narrative, e.g. when introducing climactic
events. I am not aware of other languages of New Guinea doing this, but I
have seen similar examples with 1st or 2nd person, e.g. in Goemai (Chadic
<http://www.ethnologue.com/show_lang_family.asp?code=ank>), Kɔnni (Gur),
and Dogrib (Athabaskan). This is also related to the narrative imperatives
(the “abruptness” use Agul mentioned) found in Slavic, some other Balkan
languages, North-Eastern Neo-Aramaic and Arabic among others (references in
Margetts 2015).

In most cases these pronominal uses are basically stylistic, rhetorical
devices but in some languages these uses constitute grammatically distinct
constructions. E.g. in Saliba-Logea the 2nd person is co-referential with a
lexical NP which can take a determiner and this combo of markers is not
grammatically sanctioned in contexts other than narrative peak.

Regards,
Anna

Kluge, Angela. 2015. A grammar of Papuan Malay. *Wacana: Journal of the
Humanities of Indonesia* 16(1). 211–232.

Longacre, Robert E. 1983. *The grammar of discourse*. New York: Plenum.

Margetts, Anna. 2015. Person shift at narrative peak. *Language* 91(4).
755–805.

Wolfson, Nessa. 1978. A feature of performed narrative: The conversational
historical present. *Language in society* 7(02). 215–237.

On Fri, 12 Nov 2021 at 22:13, David Gil <gil at shh.mpg.de> wrote:

> Dear all,
>
> In Papuan Malay, there is a curious use of 1SG pronouns to denote the
> protagonist of a narrative which is actually (as I understand it, at least)
> about a fictitious 3rd person protagonist.  So for example, a story about
> the monkey-men who live in the mountains might go something like "So one
> day, I started climbing the mountain ... and then, suddenly, I saw a group
> of men with tails ... and then they shouted at me and chased me away ..."
> etc.  My interpretation of this usage of the 1SG pronoun (though I could be
> wrong) is that it's "merely" some kind of stylistic convention to denote a
> prototypical unknown protagonist.
>
> Unlike the other examples discussed so far in this thread, there is
> nothing grammatically unusual about this kind of "dummy discourse 1SG
> pronoun usage"; what's odd about the construction is purely semantic —
> presumably, nobody is meant to believe that the narrator literally did all
> of the things reported on themselves.  Still, the construction shares with
> the other examples discussed the property of making use of a 1SG pronoun to
> denote a referent other than the speaker.
>
> A comparative comment:  Has anybody observed a similar "dummy discourse"
> usage of the 1SG pronoun in other languages of New Guinea?  Papuan Malay
> differs from other Malay/Indonesian dialects in that it does not exhibit
> pronoun avoidance; in other Malay/Indonesian dialects, the same story would
> be more likely to be told making use of a conventionalized character name,
> such as, for example, "Yong Dolah" in parts of Riau province in Sumatra.
>
> David
>
>
> On 12/11/2021 03:19, Aigul Zakirova wrote:
>
> Dear colleagues,
> I am wondering whether you know of any languages in which a finite 1SG
> verb form (e.g. non-past) is also used in modal contexts (e.g. optative or
> deontic) with subjects which are not 1SG. I am asking because I came across
> such a use in languages I work on, Meadow Mari and Hill Mari (Uralic).
>
> In the examples below a non-past 1SG form is combined with *əl’e*, a form
> of the verb 'to be', to yield an optative reading. In other types of
> optative utterances əl’e is also used, so  əl’e is not very interesting;
> what interests me is the use of the non-past 1SG form.
>
> Meadow Mari
> erla jür lij-am əl’-e!
> tomorrow rain become-NPST.1SG be-AOR.3SG
> ‘If only it rained tomorrow!’
>
> Meadow Mari
> maksim erla tol-am əl’-e
> Maksim tomorrow arrive-NPST.1SG be-AOR.3SG
> ‘If only Maksim (person's name) arrived tomorrow!’
>
> To put it more broadly, if you have encountered cases where a certain
> "petrified" person-number verb form is used in atypical contexts which are
> distant from the original form's meaning, I am also interested in such
> cases. What comes to my mind is
> -formal coincidence or resemblance between indicative and imperative 2PL
> forms
> -use of imperatives in Russian to convey abruptness (А он как побеги!) or
> in conditional / concessive clauses (Сделай он это, все было бы по-другому)
> But maybe there is something else on the matter?
>
> Best,
> Aigul Zakirova
>
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> --
> David Gil
>
> Senior Scientist (Associate)
> Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution
> Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
> Deutscher Platz 6, Leipzig, 04103, Germany
>
> Email: gil at shh.mpg.de
> Mobile Phone (Israel): +972-526117713
> Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81344082091
>
>
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