[Lingtyp] Alignment Typology and problems with Ainu

Fri May 26 06:52:12 UTC 2023

Hi James,

if I understand your question, what worries you is that the top position of
your hierarchy is shared by 1PL and 4P which are expected to be maximally
separated on the hierarchy of persons. But there is indeed a link between
these two positions, at least in diachronic terms. Think of the French *on*
(<homine) which seem to have developed from indefinite (or non-soecific)
human reference to the first person; or of the Portuguese *a gente* (lit.
the people, the persons) which also evolved towards first person plural
reference; and a similar development is mentioned by Velupillai 2012: 394
for a Mande language). Motivation for this shift may lie in the domain of
negative politeness, in the sense that this way of referring to 'us' may be
viewed as a way to avoid direct reference to the speaker.

(Incidentally, if other colleagues are reading this, I would be happy to
have more references to such a process of shift from third to first person
references for my own study.)

What would worry me more is that the fact that the exponence of person is
distributed between the suffix and prefix position may be indicative of two
different systems of indexation, that could be analysed each on their own
terms.

In any case, I do not clearly see how you go from the sets of markers you
show to the hierarchy you propose. (Or is it Anna who suggests the
hierarchy?)

Michael

пт, 26 мая 2023 г., 07:28 Christian Lehmann <christian.lehmann at uni-erfurt.de
>:

> One might add that since these cross-reference indexes are affixes, they
> are strongly grammaticalized, which implies, on a scale from motivated to
> arbitrary, close to the arbitrary pole.
>
> Christian
>
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Am 26.05.2023 um 07:20 schrieb Randy J. LaPolla:
>
> Dear James,
> That there are different patterns found in different constructions is not
> a problem, and not rare. Even English does not have a consistent alignment
> pattern in all constructions. This has been known since the work of Van
> Valin and Foley going back to the late 1970’s. This is a major argument for
> treating grammatical categories as construction-based rather than global
> categories in the language. Of course grammaticalization of the morphemes
> is also construction based (event based), and so that is another factor.
> Just analyse the language inductively, without assuming any necessary
> uniformity across constructions. Language is not a single tight logical
> system, it is human behaviour, and as diverse and messy as the rest of our
> behaviour. Enjoy the messiness!
>
> 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
>
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> 人文和社会科学高等研究院
> 语言科学研究中心
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On 26 May 2023, at 8:16 AM, James Wheate <jwhe6921 at uni.sydney.edu.au>
> <jwhe6921 at uni.sydney.edu.au> wrote:
>
> Hello everyone!
>
> My name is James Wheate and I am currently an undergraduate student at the
> University of Sydney.
>
> I write to you all today as I am facing major problems with a language
> (Ainu) that I am looking at for one of my classes on Linguistic typology.
>
> The problem in question is, Ainu is attested to having 3 separate
> alignment systems  (Bugaeva, 2015) that are determined by pronouns.
> Alignment in Ainu is shown through verbal affixing alone, with the
> following distribution:
>
> 1PL, 4SG/’Indefinite person’ are marked using tripartite alignment:
>
> *1PL:*
> S                  ci-
> A                 -as
> O                 un-
>
> *4SG:*
> S                  a-
> A                 -an
> O                  i-
>
> 1SG is marked with nom/acc alignment:
>
> S/A            ku-
> O               -en
>
> Lastly,  2SG, 2PL, and 3SG have ‘neutral’ alignment (so none at all, more
> so just indexing) in the following way:
>
> *2SG:*
> S/A/O         e-
>
> *2PL:*
> S/A/O         eci-
>
> *3SG:*
> S/A/O         ∅-
>
>
>
> As far as my understanding goes, not only is the distribution in Ainu very
> uncommon, but the motivations for these groups and systems to arise seem
> unclear.
>
> With these systems it allows me to assume there is a hierarchy as follows:
>
> 1PL/4SG -> 1SG -> 2SG/2PL/3SG
>
> As far as I am aware this would be extremely rare and hard to explain.
>
> Has anyone else encountered anything similar in other languages? Is there
> perhaps a diachronic explanation that leads to this morphological
> complexity?
>
> As an undergraduate I am at my wits end!
>
> Thank you all very much and as the years progress, I hope I can become
> more active and knowledgeable on this thread!
>
> Regards,
>
> James Wheate.
>
>
>
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> --
>
> Prof. em. Dr. Christian Lehmann
> Rudolfstr. 4
> 99092 Erfurt
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