[Lingtyp] instant resumption

Edoardo Nardi e.nardi at unimarconi.it
Sun Sep 19 17:19:56 UTC 2021


Dear Christian,

The Biblical Hebrew relative clause exhibits a similar construction, often calqued in the Greek LXX: briefly, it is a demonstrative pronoun in the same case, number and gender as the relative pronoun (a kind of “twin” pronoun) which occurs in the relative clause; e.g. (Greek) hois eipe aytois ‘to whom he said’ (literally, ‘to whom he said to them’).
This pattern is quite common in the LXX and known among Biblical Greek scholars, maybe you already heard of it.
I hope this can be useful!

Best regards,
Edoardo

Edoardo Nardi
PhD student
G. Marconi University, Rome (Italy)

> Il giorno 19 set 2021, alle ore 19:15, Marianne Mithun <mithun at linguistics.ucsb.edu> ha scritto:
> 
> 
> Christian, have you looked at the prosody of the two constructions? I suspect that when the nominal then the demonstrative are initial it is doing different discourse work than when it comes late.
> 
> Marianne
> 
>> On Sun, Sep 19, 2021 at 9:48 AM Randy LaPolla <randy.lapolla at gmail.com> wrote:
>> PS: the resumptive pronoun in the examples I just sent was later reanalyzed as a copula, and is now the copula in Mandarin. 
>> 
>> Randy
>> 
>> Sent from my phone
>> 
>>>> On 19 Sep 2021, at 10:59 PM, Christian Lehmann <christian.lehmann at uni-erfurt.de> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>  Dear colleagues,
>>> 
>>> while working on Cabecar grammar, I have been struggling with a phenomenon which I do not recall having seen treated in the literature and which I have dubbed instant resumption. It is a kind of intraclausal anaphora involving an NP as antecedent and a demonstrative pronoun as anaphor. A variant of this has been well-known as left-dislocation. In Cabecar, however, the construction has these properties:
>>> It does not necessarily involve left-dislocation. The antecedent NP may be anywhere inside the clause, even at its end.
>>> The resumptive pronoun (the medial demonstrative, glossed D.MED below) may, in principle, come later in the clause. However, in 96% of the cases, it follows the antecedent immediately. It does this even at the end of the clause. I therefore assume that, at the structural level, this is (putting it in grammaticalizational terms) no longer anaphora, but apposition.
>>> The phenomenon is completely independent of the internal constituency of the antecedent; this may be a nominalized clause, a determined NP or even a pronoun. And it is independent of the syntactic function of the resumptive - or the entire appositional NP - in its clause; it may be just any function available to an NP.
>>> Instant resumption is always optional, although preferred in many cases.
>>> Here are two examples; the antecedent is bracketed:
>>> 
>>> E1.    Rogelio    jé            m-á̱=ká̱=ju̱                    bulía.
>>>          [Rogelio]   D.MED    go-PROG=ASC=AM    tomorrow
>>>          ‘Rogelio(, he) will climb tomorrow.’
>>> E2.  jé            rä        sä        yu-ä           kië́        Pedro   jé= i̠a̠.
>>>         D.MED   COP   [1.PL    form-NR   name   Peter]   D.MED=DAT
>>>         ‘that is for the professor named Peter.’
>>> 
>>> Unless you have seen this kind of construction before, you may think that my analysis is mistaken and the demonstrative is simply a postnominal determiner. Be assured that it is not. The language has prenominal determiners. And as said before, there are 4% of distant resumption which would not be possible if the thing were a determiner.
>>> 
>>> Certain phenomena I have seen in other languages come to mind:
>>> In Dagbani, the relative clause (described by Wilson 1963 and 1975) is followed by a particle la which Wilson does not categorize but which looks like a demonstrative.
>>> In Wappo, the relative clause (described by Li & Thompson 1978) is followed by a demonstrative ce, which at that time I thought was a postnominal determiner.
>>> In some Australian language which I do not recall, the case suffixes on nouns look like pronouns provided with the same case suffixes. Compare with this E2 above.
>>> Here are my questions to you:
>>> Have you seen instant resumption in other languages?
>>> Is there an established concept and term for the phenomenon which I have overlooked?
>>> Is it a grammaticalized form of left-dislocation, as it appears to me, or is there some other base for it?
>>> How should we conceive its function at the grammaticalized stage? To me, it seems that it no longer has any cognitive or communicative function, but a mere structural function (if I may say so), viz. identifying a nominal expression as such by summing it up, and thus demarcating it against the rest of the clause at least in configurations as E1.
>>> I would be grateful for any help.
>>> Best, Christian
>>> -- 
>>> Prof. em. Dr. Christian Lehmann
>>> Rudolfstr. 4
>>> 99092 Erfurt
>>> Deutschland
>>> 
>>> Tel.:	+49/361/2113417
>>> E-Post:	christianw_lehmann at arcor.de
>>> Web:	https://www.christianlehmann.eu
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Lingtyp mailing list
>>> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
>>> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp
>> _______________________________________________
>> Lingtyp mailing list
>> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
>> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp
> _______________________________________________
> Lingtyp mailing list
> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp

-- 
_ <https://www.unimarconi.it/it/il-tuo-5x1000-per-sostenere-unimarconi>
_
_
_
__ <https://www.unimarconi.it>
_
_
_
 
<https://www.facebook.com/unimarconi/>  
<https://www.instagram.com/unimarconi/>  
<https://it.linkedin.com/school/universit%C3%A0-degli-studi-guglielmo-marconi/> 
 <https://twitter.com/Uni_Marconi>________________________________________
_*Le informazioni contenute nel
presente messaggio di posta elettronica e 
negli eventuali allegati possono
avere carattere confidenziale e/o 
riservato. E', pertanto, vietato ai soggetti
diversi dal destinatario del 
messaggio, utilizzare, modificare, copiare,
trasmettere o diffondere tali 
informazioni. Qualora abbiate ricevuto il
presente messaggio per errore, 
siete pregati di darne immediata notizia al
mittente e di procedere alla 
distruzione del messaggio stesso, cancellandolo
dai Vostri sistemi 
informativi.

La diffusione, la distribuzione e/o la copiatura
del 
messaggio trasmesso da parte di qualsiasi soggetto diverso dal destinatario
è proibita sia ai sensi dell'art. 616 c.p. sia ai sensi del D.Lgs. n. 
196/2003
e del Regolamento (UE) 2016/679.


The information
contained in 
this e-mail message and in any attachments may be confidential and
/ or 
privileged. It is therefore forbidden for persons or entities other than
the recipient of the message, to use, modify, copy, transmit or disseminate
this information. If you have received this message in error, please inform 
the
sender immediately and proceed with the destruction of the message, 
deleting it
from your information systems.

The dissemination, distribution 
and / or copying
of the message transmitted by any person other than the 
recipient is prohibited
both pursuant to art. 616 of the italian penal code 
both pursuant to
Legislative Decree no. 196/2003 and (EU) Regulation 
2016/679.*
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lingtyp/attachments/20210919/33ece163/attachment.htm>


More information about the Lingtyp mailing list