[Lingtyp] Alignment Typology and problems with Ainu
David Gil
gil at shh.mpg.de
Fri May 26 07:10:14 UTC 2023
Dear all,
Following up on Misha's point about 3rd/4th-to-1st person shifts:
there's a common pattern in contact languages across the western Pacific
for words originally meaning 'person' to be used to form pronominal
paradigms in some or all persons (including 1st person), typically
adding the maning of plurality or clusivity. Examples are Tok Pisin
/-pela/ (<English 'fellow'), Malay/Indonesian /orang/ ('person') and, if
memory serves me correctly, various Southern Min forms such as /lang/
('person'). These all seem to be areally related, though the specific
details regarding the contact that might have brought this about remain
puzzling (to me at least).
For some details on the Malay/Indonesian, see
Gil, David (2022) "Number in Indonesian", in P. Acquaviva and M. Daniel
eds., Number in the World's Languages, De Gruyter, Berlin, 457-503.
David
On 25/05/2023 20:52, Michael Daniel wrote:
> 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
>>
>> 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 26 May 2023, at 8:16 AM, James Wheate
>>> <jwhe6921 at uni.sydney.edu.au> <mailto: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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>>
>>
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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
>
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--
David Gil
Senior Scientist (Associate)
Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Deutscher Platz 6, Leipzig, 04103, Germany
Email:gil at shh.mpg.de
Mobile Phone (Israel): +972-526117713
Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-082113720302
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