[Lingtyp] Indexes fossilizing

Thu Nov 30 14:00:54 UTC 2023

A case that would seem to fit the bill is the distinction between aver(e) 'have as auxiliary' and gaver(e) 'have, possess' in some northern Italian dialects, where the initial g of the main verb is a fossilized locative clitic. Compare colloquial northern Italian where the same element still behaves as a clitic - hence ce l'ho 'I have it' and c'ho una macchina 'I have a car'. There's an excellent study of this by Sandra Paoli (in Italian)  -https://benjamins.com/catalog/rro.19004.pao
Best
Nigel

Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE
Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics
The University of Manchester

Linguistics & English Language
School of Arts, Languages and Cultures
The University of Manchester

https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html
________________________________
From: Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> on behalf of Uni KN <frans.plank at uni-konstanz.de>
Sent: 30 November 2023 2:19 PM
To: Siva Kalyan <sivakalyan.princeton at GMAIL.COM>
Cc: LINGTYP at listserv.linguistlist.org <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
Subject: Re: [Lingtyp] Indexes fossilizing

Possibly German verb schwan-en 'to have a sense of foreboding’ is like Nahuatl:
e.g., mir schwant etwas/Unheil ‘to me (DAT) looms something/a disaster (NOM)’

It’s not related to Schwan ’swan’, but arguably to verb wahn-en/wähn-en 'to imagine (wrongly)’:
e.g., ich wähnte ihn glücklich/zuhause 'I (wrongly) imagined him happy/at home').

The initial s- of schwanen is (well, could be) the 3rd person singular neuter personal pronoun es fossilised,  and phonologically adapted to a consonantal onset, of the original verb, frequently used “impersonally” with a non-specific, vague indication of the stimulus of the sensation, as in:
(e)s wānet mir ... 'it seems to me (as if)’.

Or so the story goes, and it seems to me a more plausible story than one relating schwanen to myths about prophetic swans or to Humanist joking about having forebodings and smelling, with Latin olēre ’smell’ sound-related to olor ’swan’.  Nonetheless, Otto Behaghel (Zur Etymologie von SCHWANEN, 1913) didn't like it either, because he doubted that wähnen ever was an "impersonal" verb, with the stimulus rather than the experiencer as subject.

<https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://archive.org/details/beitrgezurgesc38halluoft/page/500/mode/2up?view=theater__;!!PDiH4ENfjr2_Jw!DKiECfDZZXe0JdsKh-v3yowq9bf-X9N1F6exXxdf5ixKYwtCSCwxtDYX9KDW-0oMplGBJ64y47nNNhm4lIDfP5ZNKf3MG0LyvD9lz5A$>
[beitrgezurgesc38halluoft.jpeg]
[archive.org]Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive [archive.org]<https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://archive.org/details/beitrgezurgesc38halluoft/page/500/mode/2up?view=theater__;!!PDiH4ENfjr2_Jw!DKiECfDZZXe0JdsKh-v3yowq9bf-X9N1F6exXxdf5ixKYwtCSCwxtDYX9KDW-0oMplGBJ64y47nNNhm4lIDfP5ZNKf3MG0LyvD9lz5A$>
archive.org [archive.org]<https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://archive.org/details/beitrgezurgesc38halluoft/page/500/mode/2up?view=theater__;!!PDiH4ENfjr2_Jw!DKiECfDZZXe0JdsKh-v3yowq9bf-X9N1F6exXxdf5ixKYwtCSCwxtDYX9KDW-0oMplGBJ64y47nNNhm4lIDfP5ZNKf3MG0LyvD9lz5A$>

Let’s stick with Nahuatl, then, to be on the safe side.  It’s a hard life, the typologist’s who craves diachronic wisdom.  Mir schwant Unheil.

Frans

On 30. Nov 2023, at 13:11, Siva Kalyan <sivakalyan.princeton at GMAIL.COM> wrote:

If this phenomenon does exist, I suspect the most likely source construction would be “impersonal” argument indexes, such as Classical Nāhuatl tla- (e.g. ihtoa ‘say’ > tlahtoa ‘speak’); see https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/tla [nahuatl.wired-humanities.org]<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/tla__;!!PDiH4ENfjr2_Jw!DKiECfDZZXe0JdsKh-v3yowq9bf-X9N1F6exXxdf5ixKYwtCSCwxtDYX9KDW-0oMplGBJ64y47nNNhm4lIDfP5ZNKf3MG0LykkuGoSg$> for examples and references.

Siva

On 30 Nov 2023, at 9:29 pm, Juergen Bohnemeyer <jb77 at buffalo.edu> wrote:

Dear all – I’m passing along the following query from one of my advisees, Jose Antonio Jodar Sánchez:

“I have been looking for references which talk about pronominal affixes on verbs which have become fossilized and are now part of the verb root. I checked Anna Siewierska’s book on person but I could not find anything. Do you know of any?”

Presumably, what Jose Antonio’s is looking for is above all citable treatments. However, if the phenomenon hasn’t been dealt with exhaustively (which it may not), I’m sure examples will be helpful as well.

Thanks! – Juergen

Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him)
Professor, Department of Linguistics
University at Buffalo

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