[Lingtyp] base valency classes of verb roots
Christian Lehmann
christian.lehmann at uni-erfurt.de
Thu Dec 28 13:52:35 UTC 2023
Thanks, Randy, for the correction. Diachronically, many conjugated forms
stem from nominalized forms, whether or not this is synchronically yet
verifiable/relevant. Maybe one should say that (this concept of)
orientation presupposes the nominal categorization of a verbal base. For
some Austronesian languages, this, of course, concerns the dispute over
the categorization of major word classes, which I am unprepared to join.
Best, Christian
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Am 28.12.2023 um 14:44 schrieb Randy J. LaPolla:
> Wow, Thanks very much, Christian! What goes around comes around!
>
> For the record, in the 2004 article (sorry I forgot to give the
> reference last time), p. 1481, Himmelmann says
> " … Note, however, that Tagalog voice affixes are not nominalising in
> a morphosyntactic sense, since they do not change the syntactic
> category of the base . . .”
>
> It is tricky to talk about nominal vs. verbal in Tagalog. It is true,
> though, that the unmarked clause is an equative clause, with the two
> parts of the equation having the same reference, but whether you use
> the affixes or not, it is the same. That is, the bare root (action or
> object) is “nominal” in this sense, and so adding the orientation
> affixes adds an orientation, but does not change the syntactic category.
>
> Himmelmann, Nikolaus P. 2004. Tagalog (Austronesian). In Geert Booij,
> Christian Lehmann, Joachim Mugdan & Stavros Skopeteas (eds.),
> /Morphology. An International Handbook on Inflection and Word
> Formation/, 1473-1490. Berlin: de Gruyter.
>
>
> All the best,
> Randy
> ——
> Professor Randy J. LaPolla（罗仁地), PhD FAHA
> Center for Language Sciences
> Institute for Advanced Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences
> Beijing Normal University at Zhuhai
> A302, Muduo Building, #18 Jinfeng Road, Zhuhai City, Guangdong, China
>
> https://randylapolla.info
> ORCID ID:https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6100-6196
>
> 邮编：519087
> 广东省珠海市唐家湾镇金凤路18号木铎楼A302
> 北京师范大学珠海校区
> 人文和社会科学高等研究院
> 语言科学研究中心
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>> On 28 Dec 2023, at 9:29 PM, Christian Lehmann
>> <christian.lehmann at uni-erfurt.de> wrote:
>>
>> Dear Randy, dear Alex (and whoever may be interested in this topical
>> area),
>>
>> the following may seem (justifiably) an attempt at safeguarding
>> original authorship and grinding my axe. However, more importantly, I
>> would like to use the occasion to lend additional weight to a
>> linguistic concept which I have found very useful and generally
>> applicable and which I think deserves to be known widely.
>>
>> The concept of orientation was defined, under its German term
>> 'Ausrichtung', in:
>>
>> Lehmann, Christian 1984, /Der Relativsatz. Typologie seiner
>> Strukturen - Theorie seiner Funktionen - Kompendium seiner
>> Grammatik./ Tübingen: G. Narr (Language Universals Series, 2); pp.
>> 151-153.
>>
>> It was taken up in:
>>
>> Himmelmann, Nikolaus 1987, /Morphosyntax und Morphologie - Die
>> Ausrichtungsaffixe im Tagalog./ München: Fink (Studien zur
>> Theoretischen Linguistik, 8).
>>
>> And either Himmelmann or myself soon translated the German term into
>> 'orientation'. It seems quite possible that Lemaréchal got it from
>> Himmelmann.
>>
>> Adding to the definition from Lemaréchal, it may be worthwhile to
>> clarify that the term applies to nominalized verbal constructions.
>> These are either non-oriented or oriented. The non-oriented ones have
>> the same meaning as the verb stem itself, viz. the situation core
>> (some call it event type) in question, like /(Y's) employment/ or
>> /that X employs Y/. The oriented ones designate a participant in that
>> situation type, like /employer/who employs/ or /employee/whom X
>> employs/. On the one hand, it is profitable to analyze nominalized
>> constructions with respect to how their orientation is coded or left
>> to inference. On the other hand, one may ask whether orientation does
>> presuppose nominalization (in the widest, syntactic and morphological
>> sense). Himmelmann at least argues that the Tagalog verb forms are
>> actually nominalized; they are comparable to participles like
>> /employing/ and /employed/.
>>
>> Apologies, (and please don't forget my initial question!),
>>
>> Christian
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> Am 28.12.2023 um 13:59 schrieb Alex Francois:
>>> dear Randy, dear Christian,
>>>
>>> The term "orientation", in the context of Tagalog, was first
>>> proposed by Alain Lemaréchal:
>>>
>>> * Lemaréchal, Alain. 1989. /Les parties du discours: Sémantique et
>>> syntaxe/.
>>> Linguistique Nouvelle. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
>>> * Lemaréchal, Alain. 1991. Dérivation et orientation dans les
>>> langues de Philippines (exemples tagalog).
>>> /Bulletin de la Société de Linguistique de Paris/ 86-1, 317-358.
>>>
>>> (Unfortunately, the 1989 monograph is only partially reproduced
>>> digitally
>>> <https://books.google.fr/books?id=xsGzDwAAQBAJ&lpg=PT195&ots=lyEVZZ_jBQ&dq=tesni%C3%A8re%20orientation%20des%20verbes&lr&pg=PT120#v=onepage&q=orientation&f=false>;
>>> nor can I find a Pdf of the 1991 paper.)
>>>
>>>
>>> Let me copy this passage from my hardcopy of Lemaréchal (1989), p.102:
>>>
>>> “L'orientation d'un verbe est cette caractéristique qui associe
>>> aux différents participants en rapport avec lui à la fois un
>>> rang dans la hiérarchie et un rôle dans la situation, sachant
>>> que cette association est caractéristique de la sous-classe et
>>> de la voix de la forme verbale. [...]
>>> Ainsi l'orientation primaire du verbe transitif actif est une
>>> orientation vers un premier actant sujet agent, son orientation
>>> secondaire une orientation vers un second actant objet patient.
>>> [...]
>>> L'orientation étant une caractéristique qui relève de la valence
>>> des formes concernées, elle est soit stockée dans le lexique,
>>> soit marquée par des dérivations régulières — c'est le cas des
>>> phénomènes de diathèse.”
>>>
>>>
>>> The syntax of "orientation" is a major topic of Lemaréchal's
>>> research, in various languages (mostly Tagalog, Palauan, Malagasy,
>>> Kinyarwanda, etc.). He applies the concept to various parts of
>>> speech: orientation of verbs, of nouns, of clauses... (see the
>>> “Deuxième partie
>>> <https://www.google.com/books/edition/Les_parties_du_discours/xsGzDwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=orientation%20tagalog&pg=PT6>”
>>> section of his 1989 monograph).
>>>
>>> best
>>> Alex
>>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>
>>> Alex François
>>>
>>> LaTTiCe <http://www.lattice.cnrs.fr/en/alexandre-francois/> — CNRS–
>>> <http://www.cnrs.fr/index.html>ENS
>>> <https://www.ens.fr/laboratoire/lattice-langues-textes-traitements-informatiques-et-cognition-umr-8094>–PSL
>>> <https://www.psl.eu/en>–Sorbonne nouvelle
>>> <http://www.univ-paris3.fr/lattice-langues-textes-traitements-informatiques-cognition-umr-8094-3458.kjsp>
>>> Australian National University
>>> <https://researchprofiles.anu.edu.au/en/persons/alex-francois>
>>> Personal homepage <http://alex.francois.online.fr/>
>>> _________________________________________
>>>
>>>
>>> ---------- Forwarded message ---------
>>> From: *Randy J. LaPolla* <randy.lapolla at gmail.com>
>>> Date: Thu, 28 Dec 2023 at 02:47
>>> Subject: Re: [Lingtyp] base valency classes of verb roots
>>> To: Johanna Nichols <johanna at berkeley.edu>
>>> Cc: <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
>>>
>>>
>>> Hi Christian,
>>> In talking about what are sometimes discussed as voice or
>>> transitivity-marking affixes in Tagalog, Himmelman (2004: 1481)
>>> argues that the affixes “change the orientation of a given base in
>>> such a way that it may be used to refer to one of the participants
>>> involved in the state of affairs denoted by the base … In this view,
>>> -/um-/ is an actor orienting infix which derives from a base such as
>>> /tango/ ‘nod, nodding in assent’ a word /tumango/ which could be
>>> glossed as ‘one who nods, nodder’. This expression no longer
>>> directly denotes the action of nodding, but rather the participant
>>> who nods. That is, in the Tagalog clause …/tumango ang unggo /‘The
>>> monkey nodded in assent’, both /tumango/ and /unggo/ refer to the
>>> same entity. Imitating the equational structure of this clause it
>>> could be rendered as ‘nodd-er in assent (was) the monkey’ … Note,
>>> however, that Tagalog voice affixes are not nominalising in a
>>> morphosyntactic sense, since they do not change the syntactic
>>> category of the base . . .”. He considers them derivational, not
>>> inflectional affixes, as they apply equally well to action words and
>>> object words: “… there are no productive inflectional paradigms for
>>> voice, as suggested by the commonly used ‘paradigmatic’ examples in
>>> the literature. Instead, derivations from all kinds of bases are
>>> only partially predictable on the basis of their semantics and
>>> exhibit a large number of idiosyncrasies, which again suggests
>>> derivation rather than inflection.”
>>>
>>> So he has used orientation in this way. Not sure if you can see any
>>> parallels in the structure and use of the affixes.
>>>
>>> All the best,
>>> Randy
>>> ——
>>> Professor Randy J. LaPolla（罗仁地), PhD FAHA
>>> Center for Language Sciences
>>> Institute for Advanced Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences
>>> Beijing Normal University at Zhuhai
>>> A302, Muduo Building, #18 Jinfeng Road, Zhuhai City, Guangdong, China
>>>
>>> https://randylapolla.info
>>> ORCID ID:https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6100-6196
>>>
>>> 邮编：519087
>>> 广东省珠海市唐家湾镇金凤路18号木铎楼A302
>>> 北京师范大学珠海校区
>>> 人文和社会科学高等研究院
>>> 语言科学研究中心
>>>
>>>> On 28 Dec 2023, at 1:52 AM, Johanna B Nichols
>>>> <johanna at berkeley.edu> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> I use "ambitransitive" instead of "ambivalent" -- it's unambiguous.
>>>> "Flexible" is also used in this sense, but already has too wide a
>>>> range of meanings.
>>>>
>>>> I agree, ±oriented and ±directed aren't great. A few years ago,
>>>> searching through a thesaurus for possibilities, I tried out
>>>> "bearing(s)", which is a good replacement for "direction" or
>>>> "orientation" but not for directed/undirected, etc. (Well, we have
>>>> "rudderless", but that's too heavy on the connotations, and anyway
>>>> no related antonym.) I think the same problem comes up with
>>>> anything based on "Janus". Maybe "steered/unsteered" and "steering"?
>>>>
>>>> Alternatively, we could probably turn to an Oceanic language for a
>>>> precise, well-elaborated set of relevant nautical terms.
>>>>
>>>> Johanna
>>>>
>>>> On Wed, Dec 27, 2023 at 4:05 AM Christian Lehmann
>>>> <christian.lehmann at uni-erfurt.de> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Dear colleagues,
>>>>
>>>> sorry for my exaggerated preoccupation with adequate
>>>> terminology. I have to name the Cabecar (Chibchan) verb root
>>>> classes, but am short of linguistic terms. Verbs form voice
>>>> stems for conjugation in active and middle voice. Middle voice
>>>> involves a suffix for all verbs; active voice involves a suffix
>>>> in one root class.
>>>>
>>>> The criteria of the classification are:
>>>> - Does the root have an active voice? If not, it is a medial
>>>> root (a Classicist would call it /deponens/).
>>>> - Does the active voice stem involve a suffix (viz. the
>>>> causativizer)? If not, I call the root preliminarily 'directed'.
>>>> - Is the root transitive or intransitive in active voice?
>>>>
>>>> These are the classes:
>>>> 1. Directed roots: these directly conjugate in active voice:
>>>> a. intransitive roots: in active voice, the verb is
>>>> intransitive (e.g. 'laugh');
>>>> b. transitive roots: in active voice, the verb is
>>>> transitive (e.g. 'bend').
>>>> 2. Undirected roots: these do not directly conjugate in
>>>> active voice:
>>>> a. medial roots: these only conjugate in the middle
>>>> voice, and the valency of this voice stem is intransitive (e.g.
>>>> 'stay');
>>>> b. ambivalent roots: these alternatively take on the
>>>> middle voice suffix and then are intransitive, or they take on
>>>> the causativizer and then are transitive (e.g. 'melt').
>>>>
>>>> These four classes work satisfactorily. What I am unhappy with
>>>> is the names 'directed', 'undirected' and 'ambivalent'. The
>>>> idea underlying 'directed - undirected' is that undirected verb
>>>> roots have no base valency; this is, instead, conferred to them
>>>> by the voice suffix. The idea behind 'ambivalent' is that these
>>>> roots have either valency depending on the voice suffix that
>>>> they are provided with.
>>>>
>>>> I would prefer 'oriented - non-oriented' to 'directed -
>>>> nondirected'; but this term pair is taken by the contrast
>>>> between verbal constructions of the sort (English examples:)
>>>> /actor/who acts/ vs. /action/that he acts/. And 'ambivalent' is
>>>> a very ambivalent term; a more specific one (like
>>>> 'Janus-headed') may be more mnemonic.
>>>>
>>>> Have you seen appropriate term (pair)s in grammars? Or can you
>>>> think of terms that would fit?
>>>>
>>>> Many thanks in advance,
>>>> 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
>>>>
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>> --
>>
>> 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
>>
>
--
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
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