[Lingtyp] Question about nominalized verbs

[Ellison Luk]

Hi Keren and everyone,

A number of Australian languages exhibit non-standard case marking in
'nominalised' clauses, as Peter Austin's 2017 paper "Argument coding and
clause linkage in Australian Aboriginal languages" illustrates. He
particularly singles out strategies with the dative and possessive
categories, which seem to parallel the Arabic example. See also Dench's
2006 AJL paper "Case Marking Strategies in Subordinate Clauses in Pilbara
Languages—Some Diachronic Speculations". However, some things to note about
the Australian languages:

- Elision of nominal arguments is very common in all Australian languages,
so dependent clauses with fully specified arguments are generally rare, and
generally unnaturalistic.
- Deviant case marking for dependent clauses often involves one case
marking pattern on all arguments, rather than one argument being singled
out for special treatment. There are probably a few exceptions though, like
Warlpiri (ex 1).
- In languages with 'complementising case marking' - where nominal case
markers take on clause linkage functions (Dench & Evans 1988, various
chapters in Austin 1988) - the arguments of a dependent clause may take on
the same case marker as the one marking the verb, in an apparent
'agreement' relationship. Djambarrpuyngu does this (ex 2), but subjects can
also be marked with a possessive oblique.
- Some languages also follow Juergen Boehnemeyer's observation, in that
dependent clauses must be detransitivised (usually with an antipassive
derivation), and so, transitive dependent clauses simply don't exist.

In all, I don't think there are many examples in Australian languages
directly akin to what you observe in Arabic (I've mostly seen cases where
all arguments get the same dependent clause-specific case marking, or none
of them do), but I hope this provides some context to your study.

(1) Warlpiri (Pama-Nyungan (Western) > Ngumpin-Yapa; Simpson 1983: 497)
*ngarrka-patu-rlu ka-lu-jana puluku turnu-ma-ni,*
man-PL-ERG PRES-3pl-3pl bullock-ABS muster-NPST
*karnta-patu-ku miyi purra-nja-puru.*
woman-PL-DAT food-ABS cook-INF-CIRC
‘The men are mustering cattle while the women are cooking the food.’

* dependent clause verb is marked with the 'infinitive-circumstantial' (an
adverbial clause marker)
* dependent clause subject takes dative case marking
* dependent clause object takes absolutive case marking, as in main clauses

(2) Djambarrpuyŋu (Pama-Nyungan (Western) > Yolŋu; Wilkinson 1991: 634)
*ngayi mirithi+na+n ngaramurr+yi+n nhanu+kal gaa+nhara+y mutika+y*
3sg INTENS+3rd+SEQ angry+INCH+3rd 3sg+OBL bear("drive")(tr)+4th+ERG car+ERG
‘S/he got very angry by his/her driving the car.’

* dependent clause is marked by the '4th+ERG' inflection; '4th' refers to a
non-past-irrealis category that is also specialised for clause linkage;
'ergative' is a complementising case marker that marks clauses of means,
causes, circumstances, and reasons.
* dependent clause subject takes possessive 'oblique'.
* dependent clause object takes instrumental 'ergative'.

References
Austin, P.K. 1988. *Complex sentence constructions in Australian languages.*
Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Austin, P.K. 2017. "Argument coding and clause linkage in Australian
Aboriginal languages." Manuscript.
http://www.peterkaustin.com/docs/Austin_2017_Argument.pdf
Dench, A. & Evans, N. 1988. "Multiple case‐marking in Australian
languages." *Australian Journal of Linguistics* 8(1): 1-47*.*
https://doi.org/10.1080/07268608808599390
Simpson, J. 1983. "Aspects of Warlpiri morphology and syntax." PhD
Dissertation. Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Wilkinson, M., 1991. "Djambarrpuyŋu: A Yolŋu variety of Northern
Australia." PhD Dissertation. University of Sydney.

On Wed, 16 Aug 2023 at 16:21, Åshild Næss <ashildn at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Keren,
>
> I expect Masha's publications will give you plenty of other examples, but
> Äiwoo (Austronesian, Oceanic, Solomon Islands) looks a lot like Arabic
> here, with the A argument of the nominalised verb marked by a possessive
> form and the O unmarked, as a verbal argument would be:
>
> nyi-wâ-nubo-na nogo-i sii
> NMLZ-CAUS-die-NMLZ POSS:TOOL-3AUG fish
> 'their killing fish'
>
> Best,
>
> Åshild
>
> Åshild Næss
>
> Professor of Linguistics, University of Oslo
>
> Telefon/Phone: (+47) 22844093
> Kontor/Office: HW531
>
> On Tue, Aug 15, 2023 at 5:48 PM Keren Ruditsky <krudit at uw.edu> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> * Dear everyone, I am working on a master's thesis and I was wondering
>> about any cases of languages which have nominalized verbs taking two
>> arguments where the argument syntactically closer to the nominalized verb
>> is marked like the argument of a noun, and the one syntactically further is
>> marked like the argument of a verb. One example of such a language might be
>> Standard Arabic where, as shown below, the subject of a nominalized verb
>> zayd-in ‘Zayd-GEN’ is marked with genitive case (which is the case used to
>> mark a nominal possessor) while the object  camr-an ‘Amr-ACC’ is marked
>> with accusative case (which is the case used for typical verbal objects).
>> ntiqaad-u                 zayd-in            camr-an criticizing-NOM
>> Zayd-GEN       Amr-ACC “Zayd’s criticizing Amr” (Fassi Fehri 1993: 223f)
>> Fassi Fehri, Abdelkader. 1993. Issues in the structure of Arabic clauses
>> and *
>> *words. Dordrecht: Kluwer*
>>
>> *Thank you,*
>> *Keren*
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