[Lingtyp] Summary numeral in the world languages

Mon Sep 11 13:19:14 UTC 2023

Dear Pun Ho Lui, dear colleagues.

I wanted to come back to what David wrote in one of the first answers.

In this thread, there were mentions of constructions that are usually
considered separately - *summarizing* constructions (as the example
from Mongsen
Ao, probably also Japhug and Adamawa) and *inclusory* constructions (as the
explicative Mwotlap construction), to which Alexandre François added what
looks to me as an unmistakably *associative plural* construction (his
recognitional construction in Mwotlap). I have no knowledge about
summarizing constructions, but both inclusory constructions and associative
plurals are of course very common cross-linguistically. To the reference to
Linchtenber on inclusory constructions in Austronesian, I would add at
least Ruth Singer's 2001 survey of them in Australia or discussions of
*dedicated
*inclusory pronouns in Mande languages - but of course many other languages
also have these.

***

Now, on the one hand, we see, e.g. from Alexandre's examples, that the
three types of constructions can be morphosyntactically similar, at least
to some extent. Language-internally, the boundaries between them may be
fuzzy, and certainly not all typologists would agree to draw them in the
same way (if they would want to draw them, in the first place). So -
probably unlike David? - I think that it may make sense to survey them
together, as has in fact been going on in this thread, to my view. On the
other hand, they may also be completely unrelated, or only some of them may
be present in an individual language.

In other words - now very much following David (I think) - I believe that,
while being prepared to see the three constructions to be formally related
in some or many languages, or even considering them as one empirical domain
of investigation, one would want to remain very sensitive to the potential
differences between these constructions, based on signature properties
proposed in earlier of each of these constructions separately.

To give just one example, as David pointed out, a very special property of
inclusory construction, something that is often considered to be
definitional for them, is that there is an unexpected referential property
of "strict inclusion" - the reference of the inclusory element includes,
*and* is wider, than the reference of the "added" phrase ("we with you.sg"
meaning 'you.sg and I'). Another special property, not mentioned by David
(probably because it is too obvious), is that in the vast majority of
cases, the inclusory element is either a plural pronoun or plural index on
the verb. Associative plurals have their own signature properties (some of
which are briefly referred to in Alexandre François' detailed reply), and
probably summarizing constructions also have some of their own, which I am
unaware of because of my limited knowledge of them. Fuzzy as the boundaries
may be in individual languages, to me, these properties are not just part
of arbitrary "etic" categories but reflect a certain internal logic of the
functional domain in question. If one does not try to keep an eye on these
properties, one runs a risk of confusion.

As an example of what seems to me to be a confusion, your own initial
examples would not, to me, constitute exemplary cases of summarizing
constructions - none of them contains a lexical numeral; moreover,
arguably, they all can be interpreted as extension of inclusory
constructions. I am aware of the fact that they contradict one or both of
the properties that I considered signature for inclusory pronouns; but I
think many would agree they are not prototypical summarizing constructions,
either. As a result, some people, based on your examples, provided examples
of inclusory constructions; while David, based on your definition,
discarded contributions as not directly related to your query.

(Personally, I think this is a result of your equating number marking with
numerals, and I do not know whether the studies you refer to for
"summarizing" numerals explicitly license this. Again, I do agree that it
might be a meaningful enterprise to consider all ways of expressing
cardinal numerosity ('two' and dual, 'three' and trial) in your study, but
one should be prepared to face a very heterogeneous range of
morphosyntactic constructions.)

Michael

вс, 10 сент. 2023 г. в 22:14, Lora Litvinova <loravlitvinova at gmail.com>:

> Dear all,
>
> Kugama, an Adamawa language of Nigeria (ISO 639-3: kow; Glottocode:
> kuga1239), has noun phrases that also summarize the number of elements
> involved in nominal coordination, see examples below. Structurally, these
> phrases are possessive constructions with a numeral as a head and a
> possessive pronominal as a modifier. More information about these
> constructions can be found in my PhD dissertation (Litvinova 2023) that
> will be available online after the defense in December 2023.
>
> (1)   Ɔ̀zūrúwā   ɗéè      Lúkpɛ̂wà    à        Bɛ̀nā     tì
> sɛ́ɛ́=kī
>
>        Ozuruwa  CONJ  Luikpewa   COM   Bena    PROG   fight=NMLZ
>
>        níLsá̰ā̰=L=rī=L=rē
>
>        three=GEN=POSS=GEN=3PL.HUM.POSS.ALIEN
>
>       ‘Ozuruwa, Luikpewa and Bena are fighting. All three of them.’
>
>
>
> (2)  ā       kā=tí         dìŋ=L           kísā          ɗéè
> dìŋ=L           zɛ᷇m
>
>       1SG  see=PFV   tree=GEN baobab     CONJ    tree=GEN  tamarind
>
>       à        dìŋ=L             nɔ̄rī        à           dìŋ=L
> gbɛ̀lɛ́L                   tì          gɛ̀pí=ɛ̄
>
>       COM   tree=GEN  shea      COM      tree=GEN  gbele_tree        PROG
> grow=NMLZ
>
>       ɓáā=L        háákī      níLhɛ̰̄=L=rɛ̂
>
>       in=GEN   farm        four=GEN=3PL.NHUM.POSS.ALIEN
>
>      ‘I saw a baobab tree, a tamarind tree, a shea tree and a *gbele*
> tree (the species of this tree is unknown) growing in the farm. All four of
> them.’
>
>
>
> Reference: Litvinova, Lora. 2023. A grammatical analysis and documentation
> of Kugama (Wam), an Adamawa language of Nigeria. Paris: INALCO PhD thesis
>
>
>
> Best wishes,
>
> Lora
>
> On Wed, Sep 6, 2023 at 8:50 AM Pun Ho Lui <luiph001 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Dear All,
>>
>> Haspelmath (2007) and Croft (2022) discussed a coordinating construction
>> in which a numeral “summarizes” the number of referents in a list. There
>> are different strategies in which the numeral behaves this way, e.g., a
>> free numeral (1); a dual affix on a coordinand (2); a dual pronoun in
>> apposition with the list+verb with dual marker (3). These numeral may be
>> mono-syndetic or bi-syndatic.
>>
>>
>> (1) Zaozou
>>
>> ŋu55-mu55 na53 phiɛ33
>>
>> 1-PL[EXCL] two father_and_child
>>
>> “we two (exclusive), my daughter and I.”  (Li, 2020)
>>
>> (2) Kham
>>
>> syar sono:h pusum-ni
>>
>> louse and flea-DL
>>
>> ‘the louse and the flea’ (Watters, 2004)
>>
>>
>> (3)  Mapudungu
>> (iñché) eymi    inchiu   i-y-u
>>
>>  I          you:SG we:DU eat-IND-1NONSG-DU
>>
>>   ‘You and I ate.’
>>
>> Languages with this construction I know are Zaozou, Kham, Mapudungu, Alto
>> Perené*, *Bangla*, *Cantonese*, *Mandarin*, *Papuan Malay*, *Yakut*, *
>>
>> Inari Saami, Mongolian, Classical Tibetan, Huallaga Quechua, Wardaman,
>> Khanty, Vedic Sanskrit, Mparntwe Arrernte, Daga, Mapudungu, Enets, Kham
>> and Hualapai
>>
>> I am wondering if there are other languages sharing similar constructions.
>>
>> Thank you.
>>
>> Warmest,
>> Joe Pun Ho Lui
>>
>>
>>
>>
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