[Lingtyp] Indexes fossilizing

Thu Nov 30 15:01:52 UTC 2023

Hi all,

Isn't Watkin's Law relevant here?  --- "third person markers are reanalyzed
as part of the verbal stem, giving thus rise to zero marking in the third
person” (Bickel et al. 2015), a process that Watkins posited to account for
the reanalysis of the 3SG ending -t as part of the verbal stem in the course
of development from Proto-Iranian to Persian (Watkins 1962: 94). Eugen Hill
has also written about this recently and substantially.

Eitan

Bickel, Balthasar, Alena Witzlack-Makarevich, Taras Zakharko & Giorgio
Iemmolo. 2015.

Exploring diachronic universals of agreement: Alignment patterns and zero
marking across

person categories. In Jürg Fleischer, Elisabeth Rieken & Paul Widmer
(eds.), Agreement

from a diachronic perspective, 29–52. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.

Watkins, Calvert. 1962. Indo-European origins of the Celtic verb, Vol. 1: The
sigmatic aorist.

Dublin: Institute for Advanced Studies.

Eitan Grossman
Associate Professor, Department of Linguistics
Department of Linguistics
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Tel: +972 2 588 3809

On Thu, Nov 30, 2023 at 4:01 PM Nigel Vincent <
nigel.vincent at manchester.ac.uk> wrote:

> 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.
>
> [image: 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$>
> archive.org [archive.org]
> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://archive.org/details/beitrgezurgesc38halluoft/page/500/mode/2up?view=theater__;!!PDiH4ENfjr2_Jw!DKiECfDZZXe0JdsKh-v3yowq9bf-X9N1F6exXxdf5ixKYwtCSCwxtDYX9KDW-0oMplGBJ64y47nNNhm4lIDfP5ZNKf3MG0LyvD9lz5A$>
>
> <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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