[Lingtyp] Indexes fossilizing

Thu Nov 30 21:44:53 UTC 2023

In many Austronesian languages of Eastern Indonesia the verb 'take', which
reconstructs as *ala/*alap/*alaq, the innovative 3SG prefix *na- has
fossilised on, resulting in *nala. In Palu'e, from Flores, there is no
productive verb agreement, but the verb 'take' is consistently *nala*.
In Skou (north-central New Guinea) the verb *hung* 'drink' shows the 3SG
prefix (*k-hung > *kung*) as the base for the 1SG inflection as well, using
*kung*, rather than expected **hung*. There are complications with the
verbs 'eat' and 'refuse', as well, possibly involving the transfer of
inflection from another cell to the 1SG. These Skou forms don't show
inflectional prefixing being reanalysed as part of the verb root, but are
possibly a stepping stone towards that happening.

-Mark

On Fri, 1 Dec 2023 at 02:02, Eitan Grossman <eitan.grossman at mail.huji.ac.il>
wrote:

> 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
>>
>> Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus
>> Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260
>> Phone: (716) 645 0127
>> Fax: (716) 645 3825
>> Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu
>> Web: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/ [acsu.buffalo.edu]
>> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/*jb77/__;fg!!PDiH4ENfjr2_Jw!DKiECfDZZXe0JdsKh-v3yowq9bf-X9N1F6exXxdf5ixKYwtCSCwxtDYX9KDW-0oMplGBJ64y47nNNhm4lIDfP5ZNKf3MG0Lyzv6zB1c$>
>>
>>
>> Office hours Tu/Th 3:30-4:30pm in 642 Baldy or via Zoom (Meeting ID 585
>> 520 2411; Passcode Hoorheh)
>>
>> There’s A Crack In Everything - That’s How The Light Gets In
>> (Leonard Cohen)
>> --
>>
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