[Lingtyp] the favorative clitic

Thu Sep 14 10:52:01 UTC 2023

Dear Christian,

(I put this message back to the original thread in order not to spoil your
concise concluding message).

I was a bit surprised when the discussion of the apprehensive came up as a
potential category counterpart of the approbative (approbative, welcome!).
I have a limited experience of working with apprehensives, and my
intuitions are limited to the extension of this empirical domain in East
Caucasian. It could be that the apprehensives in the data Ellison, Bastian
and Åshild alluded to are very different.

However, not only in the cross-linguistic study of apprehensives that
followed Lichtenberk (e.g. Dobrushina 2006, work by Eva Shultze-Berndt and
Marine Vuillermet), but I think also in Lichtenberk himself the category of
apprehesion is far from being equated with just negative evaluation, which
would be the counterpart to your definition of the approbative. In this
line of research, apprehensive is often considered as grammaticalization of
warning, sometimes if not often including an element of manipulative speech
act (causing the addressee to avoid an undesirable situation or an
undesirable consequence; hence the short-lived alternative term
preventive). This is how I've been reading it.

So, to me, the difference would be strong between the approbative with the
core meaning of positive evaluation (with possible pragmatic inference to,
and diachronic evolution towards contrastive uses or even, as Åshild
pointed out, indeed manipulative uses 'P is good [->so do it]', as
optatives may be leaning towards imperatives), on the one hand, and the
apprehensive with the core meaning of warning ('there is a risk of P').
Note that apprehensive always (?) relates to future and potential
situations, while the approbative does not have to belong to the irrealis
domain, as example 1 from your initial message shows.

Michael

ср, 13 сент. 2023 г. в 09:06, Åshild Næss <ashildn at gmail.com>:

> To continue on the apprehensive thread, it's interesting how they seem to
> overlap with Christian's 'favoratives' in the context of prohibition: 'Let
> it not be taken away (it is desirable that it is not taken away)', which is
> a classic context where Oceanic languages would use the apprehensive: 'Let
> it not be taken away (because its being taken away would be undesirable)'.
> For those interested, may I recommend Ellen Smith-Dennis' paper on
> apprehensives and prohibitives: "Don't feel obligated, lest it be
> undesirable: the relationship between apprehensives and prohibitives in
> Papapana and beyond", LingTyp 25:3 (2021).
> https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/lingty-2020-2070/html
>
> Best,
> Åshild
>
>
> On Tue, Sep 12, 2023 at 12:46 PM Bastian Persohn <
> persohn.linguistics at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Dear Christian,
>> Adding to what Ellison said (with apprehensionals sometimes being
>> analyzed as a combination of epistemic possibility and negative subjective
>> evaluation of the state-of-affairs in question), I’d suggest the slightly
>> more common label
>>
>> *desiderative*
>>
>> as the clitic seems to have a function (or one if its functions)
>> somewhere in the realm of bouletic (a.k.a. boulomaic) modality/attitude in
>> the sense of „indicates[ing]  the degree of the speaker’s (or someone
>> else’s) liking or disliking of the state of affairs” (Nuts 2005: 12).
>>
>> Nuyts, Jan. 2005. Modality: Overview and linguistic issues. In William
>> Frawley (ed.), *The expression of modality*. 1–26. Berlin: de Gruyter
>>
>> Hope this helps!
>>
>> Best,
>> Bastian
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Am 12.09.2023 um 12:03 schrieb Ellison Luk <ellisonluk at gmail.com>:
>>
>> Dear Christian,
>>
>> Functionally, this seems to be comparable to the 'apprehensional'
>> category (found in many Australian, Austronesian, and South American
>> languages). Instead of conveying something undesirable or regrettable, the
>> 'favorative' seems to convey desirability or satisfaction. Apprehensional
>> markers also often have epistemic modal functions too (uncertainty), which
>> might also be a function of your marker, if I interpret the interrogative
>> sentence example correctly.
>>
>> Best,
>> Ellison
>>
>> On Tue, 12 Sept 2023 at 11:04, Christian Lehmann <
>> christian.lehmann at uni-erfurt.de> wrote:
>>
>>> Here is a Cabecar clitic with which I have been struggling for years:
>>> The mobile enclitic *pa* attaches to almost any constituent in a clause
>>> S at almost any position and conveys something like 'S is/would be
>>> good/better/convenient/desirable'. The translation difference between 'is'
>>> and 'would be' depends on the mood of the verb of S.
>>>
>>> With the indicative:
>>>
>>>    1.
>>>
>>>    I ks-á=jka=pa.
>>>
>>> 3 sing-pfv=atp=fav
>>>
>>>             ‘Appropriately enough, he already sang.’
>>>
>>>    1.
>>>
>>>    Ká yís dä jawá kú̱na̱=pa=ba.
>>>
>>> neg 1.sg cop healer n.val=fav=acp
>>>
>>>             ‘I am not yet a healer (as would be desirable).’
>>>
>>> With the subjunctive:
>>>
>>>    1.
>>>
>>>    S’ kí̱s-ö́=pa bá kú̱ bë́rbë́na̱ !
>>>
>>> 1.sg wait-sbj=fav 2.sg erg for.a.while
>>>
>>>             ‘Please wait a moment for me !’
>>>
>>>    1.
>>>
>>>    Kë́ i bak-ó̱-n-ó̱=pa !
>>>
>>> neg 3 take.away-sbj-mid-sbj=fav
>>>
>>>             ‘Let it not be taken away !’
>>>
>>> In a subordinate clause:
>>>
>>>    1.
>>>
>>>    Ma̱ kú̱ jé w-ó̱=pa kí̱=ka, bá së́-r=mi̱ rä báá.
>>>
>>> [2.sg erg d.med do1-sbj=fav sup=lat] 2.sg feel:non-mid(ipfv)=pot tsa
>>> nice
>>>
>>>             ‘Once you would have conveniently done that, you might have
>>> felt good.’
>>>
>>> In an interrogative sentence:
>>>
>>>    1.
>>>
>>>    … i te i sh-á=ká̱  ijé wä́=na̠ i juë́-n-á̱=pa jé=ra ...
>>>
>>> 3 erg 3 say-pfv=asc [3.ps face=in 3 see2-mid=fav d.med=tmp]
>>>
>>>             ‘… they added: “Does he perhaps know?” ...’ (Historia p. 8)
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> The subjunctive sentences would be imperatives and jussives without *pa*
>>> and are attenuated by it. I have never seen such a thing before; and since
>>> it is so unfamiliar, I cannot even translate it well into English. I had at
>>> first called it 'optative'. There is, however, a different particle with
>>> illocutionary force which converts a subjunctive sentence into an optative
>>> sentence ('Would that S!'), where S may or may not contain *pa*.
>>>
>>> I don't expect anybody to come up with an analysis of *pa* on the basis
>>> of the above examples. My question is: Has anybody ever seen such a thing?
>>> And if so, how did you call it? I am not particularly happy with my (or
>>> rather, my coauthor Guillermo's) most recent neologism 'favorative'.
>>>
>>> --
>>>
>>> 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
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Lingtyp mailing list
>>> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
>>> https://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp
>>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Lingtyp mailing list
>> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
>> https://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Lingtyp mailing list
>> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
>> https://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp
>>
> _______________________________________________
> Lingtyp mailing list
> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
> https://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lingtyp/attachments/20230914/32a37684/attachment.htm>