[Lingtyp] instant resumption

Mon Sep 20 13:56:36 UTC 2021

Dear Christian and all,

Akan relative clauses also end in a demonstrative (sometimes analyzed as a terminal particle). An example is:

asɛ́ḿ     áa     wó-ká-e         yi
matter REL   2SG-say-PST DEM
'This issue you said..." (lit. 'the matter you said this')

It's been discussed by Kofi Saah. The reference is:
Saah, Kofi K. "Relative clauses in Akan." In Topics in Kwa syntax, pp. 91-107. Springer, Dordrecht, 2010.

Best,
-------------
James Essegbey
Professor of African Languages and Linguistics
Languages, Literatures and Cultures
342 Pugh Hall
Gainesville, FL 32611-5565
Tel: 1-352-846-2431

University of Florida Research Foundation Professor 2020-2023
University Term Professor 2019-2022

Editor, Studies in African Linguistics
https://journals.flvc.org/sal
________________________________
From: Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> on behalf of Edoardo Nardi <e.nardi at unimarconi.it>
Sent: Sunday, September 19, 2021 1:19 PM
To: Marianne Mithun <mithun at linguistics.ucsb.edu>
Cc: LINGTYP LINGTYP <LINGTYP at listserv.linguistlist.org>
Subject: Re: [Lingtyp] instant resumption

[External Email]
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<mailto: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<mailto: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<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__1.PL&d=DwMFaQ&c=sJ6xIWYx-zLMB3EPkvcnVg&r=B8YQJ5hovM0II4RKXzpjOg&m=3dYDXLkuoqWtrugxnsaeoROFqs3n6pV1UxEUugPtbcs&s=Uy6oWyIXkp9hdWsHYthni6hJstyxaCPwR47HFXXRdHY&e=>    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
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