[Lingtyp] Lingtyp Digest, Vol 104, Issue 16

[Jess Tauber]

In Japanese, bisyllabic ideophones often mark the relative degree of
actional control in the height of the vowel of the second syllable. This
parallels the spatiotemporal reading of vowels of the second syllable in
bisyllabic ideophones in the language. /a/ has the most
'play/tolerance/slop' (as mechanical engineer's call the topic of lack of
control over an action, motion, etc.). In Japanese bisyllabic ideophones,
the first syllable generally connotes the properties of the figure, while
the second generally connotes the larger spatiotemporal 'ground' that the
figure is part of. Prof. Shoko Hamano covers the spatiotemporal part in her
doctoral thesis from the University of Florida (the thesis can be found
online in its entirety at: https://ufdc.ufl.edu/AA00003806/00001/images

I don't believe that Prof. Hamano ever noticed the relation between
spatiotemporal extent and actional control, however. It was the first time
I'd ever noticed anything like that myself, even after decades of analyzing
ideophones from very many languages over decades of work. In any case, this
sort of system appears to be lacking in other languages I've examined so
far. When relative degrees of control are specified, it is generally the
CONSONANTS that mark the distinction rather than the vowels. And I don't
know (yet) whether monosyllable ideophones in Japanese can connote control.
It may be that they split between those detailing the figure and those
detailing the spatiotemporal context without saying anything about the
figure, and some of those may refer to control. But I've never checked.

Jess Tauber

On Sat, May 13, 2023 at 5:40 AM Frans Plank <frans.plank at ling-phil.ox.ac.uk>
wrote:

> If this construction that wants a name is all about CONTROL and nothing
> but CONTROL (but I suspect it isn’t), then there’d be lots of models for
> naming because control is a major factor in relational typology just about
> everywhere.  Especially in Bavarian (prefix dɐ-).  And where Nigel’s
> CONATIVE is in control.  And of course in Salish:
> Control in Salish grammar
> <https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783110848731.391/html> LAURENCE
> C. THOMPSON
> in Relational Typology, ed F. Plank. DeGM, 1985 (and often attended to
> elsewhere).
>
> Frans
>
> On 12. May 2023, at 11:13, mbardaj1 at uni-koeln.de wrote:
>
>
> Dear Tom, dear Voltaire,
>
> Sonja Riesberg, Nikolaus Himmelmann and myself recently wrote about
> limited-control predicates in western Austronesian languages (which include
> the "manage to" meaning that you mention) in the following paper:
>
> Bardají, M., Riesberg, S., & Himmelmann, N.P. (2022). Limited-Control
> Predicates in Western Austronesia: Stative, Dynamic, or None of the Above?
> Oceanic Linguistics 61(1), 118-165. (https://muse.jhu.edu/article/858601)
>
> Maybe what could be relevant to the constructions that you encountered is
> section 4.2., where we distinguish between internal abilities (inherent
> skills of the individual) and external abilities (possibilities determined
> by external factors such as luck, fate or other outer circumstances). We
> argue that only external abilities are expressed by limited-control
> morphology (i.e. potentive), whereas internal abilities are expressed in a
> different way.
>
> I hope this can be useful!
>
> Best,
> Maria Bardají
>
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