[Lingtyp] demotion

[Martin Haspelmath]

You may have a look at Katarzyna Janic's project on P-demotion in 
typological perspective (see 
https://wn.amu.edu.pl/sprawy-naukowe/projekty/katarzyna-janic,-towards-grammatical-iconicity-of-language-a-crosslinguistic-study-of-p-demotion-constructions), 
e.g. this paper 
<https://czasopisma.uph.edu.pl/index.php/contemporary/article/view/1846>. 
She discusses incorporation in connection with P-demotion.

It depends of course on the definition of "demotion". In my 2022 paper 
on valency and voice constructions, I limit the term to situations where 
a core argument becomes an oblique argument (see the glossary here: 
https://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/005941). This is probably all we need, as 
there is no "subject-to-object demotion", or "argument-to-adjunct 
demotion" (passive agents are oblique arguments, not adjuncts).

And it depends on the definition of "incorporation". For a long time, I 
was pessimistic about defining this term (as in this older blogpost 
<https://dlc.hypotheses.org/135>), but more recently, I proposed that it 
is defined as a type of compounding (see 
https://zenodo.org/record/8137251), and I would agree with Guillaume 
Jacques that there can be both saturating and non-staturating 
incorporation. The term "incorporation" is used in different ways in the 
literature, but if you adopt my definition of "compounding", then there 
can be different effects on the valency.

Best,

Martin

On 09.10.23 20:41, Guillaume Jacques wrote:
> Dear Christian,
>
> I think that it would depend on the type of incorporation -- 
> non-saturating incorporation is not, but when the incorporated noun 
> corresponds to the object of the base verb, resulting in an 
> intransitive incorporating verb, I think that we can argue that object 
> incorporation is a antipassivization strategy (this is what I proposed 
> in the following chapter: Chapter 13. Antipassive derivations in 
> Sino-Tibetan/Trans-Himalayan and their sources (benjamins.com) 
> <https://benjamins.com/catalog/tsl.130.13jac>; I can provide a PDF 
> upon request). From a diachronic point of view, Southern Kiranti 
> languages such as Puma and Bantawa offer interesting examples of 
> antipassive prefixes originating from an incorporated generic noun kʰa-.
>
> Best wishes,
>
> Guillaume
>
> Le lun. 9 oct. 2023 à 18:12, Christian Lehmann 
> <christian.lehmann at uni-erfurt.de> a écrit :
>
>     I have a partly conceptual, partly terminological question: Do you
>     know of any substantive arguments to decide the question whether
>     incorporation may be considered a form of demotion? To explain:
>
>     A hierarchy of syntactic functions along the lines of 'subject -
>     direct object - indirect object - other complement - adjunct' is
>     assumed. Demotion is by definition the shift of an actant (some
>     people prefer 'argument') from its (relatively high) position to a
>     lower position on this hierarchy.The shift is generally
>     accompanied by occupying the freed position by something else, so
>     the demoted actant is "ousted".
>
>     Since the incorporated position of a nominal expression is not a
>     syntactic function (but rather a morphological one), the
>     straightforward answer to the introductory question would be 'no'.
>     However:
>
>       * There is no sharp boundary between syntax and morphology, so a
>         gradience that starts in the syntax might end in the morphology.
>       * Something occupying a relatively low hierarchical position
>         generally becomes optional. If it is omitted, it somehow
>         disappears from the syntactic structure. This could also be
>         said of an incorporated nominal.
>       * An incorporated nominal often frees its syntactic position -
>         generally, the direct-object or absolutive position -, so this
>         may be occupied by something else. Thus, in ergative syntax,
>         if the undergoer is incorporated, the actor does not remain in
>         the ergative, but becomes the absolutive actant.
>
>     So there would at least seem to be some similarity between
>     demotion (of a direct object or absolutive actant) and its
>     incorporation. If demotion is not the appropriate cover term,
>     should I subsume both phenomena under something else?
>     -- 
>
>     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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>
>
> -- 
> Guillaume Jacques
>
> Directeur de recherches
> CNRS (CRLAO) - EPHE- INALCO
> https://scholar.google.fr/citations?user=1XCp2-oAAAAJ&hl=fr 
> <https://scholar.google.fr/citations?user=1XCp2-oAAAAJ&hl=fr>
> https://langsci-press.org/catalog/book/295 
> <http://cnrs.academia.edu/GuillaumeJacques>
> http://panchr.hypotheses.org/
>
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-- 
Martin Haspelmath
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Deutscher Platz 6
D-04103 Leipzig
https://www.eva.mpg.de/linguistic-and-cultural-evolution/staff/martin-haspelmath/
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