[Lingtyp] Verbs meaning 'and, with'

Mon Nov 25 04:58:42 UTC 2024

Dear Jose,

The Torricelli "and verbs" stand out as interesting and unusual. In my
worldwide survey of coordination in several hundred languages (Ross 2021) I
didn't find much else that closely resembles like this. Verbal etymologies
of conjunctions are somewhat rare (vs. adpositions and adverbs) but found
in a number of languages (see below on converbs specifically, although it
could also be from other verb forms), but this is not exactly like the
Torricelli case, since they generally do not retain agreement inflection.
Similarly, there are some agreeing adpositions which resemble verbs in that
way in some languages, such as Cahuilla and some related Uto-Aztecan
languages, although I don't recall seeing these translated as conjunctions,
just prepositions; they would also be more likely to be 'and, with'
functioning to combine nouns, rather than as verb/clause coordinators (as
is the tendency shown from my survey, although there can also sometimes be
overlap, but usually as a secondary extension from noun conjunction
function).

There are also some languages where a verb 'accompany, be together, go
with' serves a coordinating-like function with nouns (similar to comitative
prepositions), although I'm not sure that's what you're looking for (I have
notes about this not summarized in my dissertation, but too many to try to
list here: this isn't particularly rare, found in maybe around 10% of my
sample based on my notes, especially since if there is already a
well-established coordinator 'and' I might not have also noted this as a
secondary strategy). Another question is the etymology of the Torricelli
"and verbs", which might be 'take' or 'use' (Brown & Dryer 2008: 560-1): in
that case, this is similar to the extensive worldwide usage of TAKE (and
occasionally USE) in serial verb constructions (Ross 2021: §4.2.4),
although not grammaticalized in the same way as the Torricelli case.
Similarly, I imagine 'accompany' verbs might develop like that. So this
might just be the connection between the two common grammaticalization
pathways of verb > comitative (especially via SVCs), and then comitative >
noun coordinator, with the unusual property of retaining verbal agreement
in the coordination construction. This may also be relatively common in
analytic languages with no verb agreement, for example in Chinese languages
and various languages of Southeast Asia with "coverb" prepositions
grammaticalized from serial verb constructions, and then potentially
extended from comitative to noun coordinator, but in that case there is no
verb agreement so this could be analyzed more straightforwardly as just
category change (verb > preposition > conjunction).

In general, my survey confirms the specific Torricelli construction is
rare, but there are probably other some languages not included in my sample
that have relevant features. From what I have come across, both within my
sample and looking over other languages along the way, I can mention three
cases I've noticed (mostly periphral to my sample) with constructions most
similar to the Torricelli "and verbs":

1. Austronesian
As you mentioned, some Austronesian languages like Lamaholot (Nishiyama
2011) have agreeing conjunctions. I think other examples I've seen aren't
quite as similar to Torricelli, but still have this property of agreement.
For example, Lichtbenberk (2014) surveys conjunction-like sequential
markers that have different forms depending on the subject in Vitu and some
related languages.

2. West Africa
Duncan et al. (2019) report an Ibibio (Niger-Congo, Nigeria) construction
similar to Torricelli as in (1): note the 3SG prefix, similar to (although
they argue distinct from) serial verbs. Souag (2015) also discusses the
relatioship between comitatives, agreement and coordination in Songhay
(Nilo-Saharan?), including agreement in coordinative function but only with
pronouns in Kwarandzyey as in (2); if the first conjunct is a full NP, then
no agreement prefix is used. I have a vague memory of seeing something else
in other languages in West Africa, although I'm not finding specific
reference(s) at the moment (so it might have only been one of these papers
already cited), but this is a potentially relevant area to continue
searching in. It's interesting that distinct strategies of noun and verb
coordination with these agreeing forms are attested, which is something to
consider in the typology of these constructions.

(1) Ìmá á-kpón* á-nyʌ́ŋ* á-yáíyá.
Ima 3SG-become.big *3SG-CONJ* 3SG-be.beautiful
'Ima grew up and became beautiful.' (Duncan et al. 2019: 424)

(2) aɣəy *ʕ-indᶻa* ħəṃṃad y-a-nnən atˢəy
1SG *1SG-COM* Hammad 1PL-PRF-drink tea
'I and Hammad have drunk tea.' (Kwarandzyey: Souag 2015: 85)

3. Awa Pit (Barbacoan, Colombia):
Curnow (1997: 67-8, 308-9) describes verb coordination as in (3) with
phrasing reminiscent of the Torricelli "and verbs", but the similarity may
be somewhat superficial. While Curnow refers to the -t suffix as marking
"serial verbs" this is probably better classified as a converb suffix (as a
dependency marker: see Ross 2021, 2025 for that different issue), since
only the final verb in the sequence of "serial verbs" has finite inflection
and the previous ones are inflected with this "-t", although it was
described as having only this function (rather than as a typical i.e.
adverbial converb suffix). This is the same -t in *kit* 'and',
grammaticalized from the verb 'do'. While the description is very similar
to that of the Torricelli languages, it seems to me to be more like other
examples of converbs developing into conjunctions as in 'come having,
Marcos ate plantains'. For example, there is a similar conjunction
etymology in Mongol from a converb of 'do': *kiged* 'and' < *ki-ged* do-CVB
(Kara 2022; Ross 2025).

(3) Marcos=na a-t *kit* pala ku-ma-tɨ
Marcos come-SV *AND* plantain eat-COMP-TERM
'Marcos came and ate plantains.' (Curnow 1997: 309)

Brown, Lea & Matthew S. Dryer. 2008. The Verbs for “and” in Walman, a
Torricelli Language of Papua New Guinea. *Language* 84(3). 528–565.
https://doi.org/10.1353/lan.0.0044
Curnow, Timothy Jowan. 1997. A grammar of Awa Pit (Cuaiquer): An indigenous
language of south-western Colombia. Australian National University Ph.D.
dissertation.
Duncan, Philip T., Travis Major & Mfon Udoinyang. 2019. Verb and predicate
coordination in Ibibio. In Emily Clem, Peter Jenks & Hannah Sande
(eds.), *Theory
and description in African Linguistics: Selected papers from the 47th
Annual Conference on African Linguistics*, 423–439.
http://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3367170
Kara, György. 2022. Mongol *kiged*: A Verbal Adverb as Conjunction and
Verbal Noun. In Bayarma Khabtagaeva (ed.), *Historical Linguistics and
Philology of Central Asia: Essays in Turkic and Mongolic Studies*, 298–310.
Leiden: Brill. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004499966_019
Lichtenberk, Frantisek. 2014. Sequentiality-Futurity Links. *Oceanic
Linguistics* 53(1). 61–91. https://doi.org/10.1353/ol.2014.0000
Major, Travis. 2014. Serial Verbs in Ibibio. *Kansas Working Papers in
Linguistics* 35. 129–148. https://doi.org/10.17161/1808.16963
Nishiyama, Kunio. 2011. Conjunctive agreement in Lamaholot. *Journal of
Linguistics* 47. 381–405. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022226710000356
Ross, Daniel. 2021. Pseudocoordination, Serial Verb Constructions and
Multi-Verb Predicates: The relationship between form and structure.
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Ph.D. dissertation.
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5546425
Ross, Daniel. 2025 (in press). The life cycle of converbs: A diachronic
typology. In Paola Cotticelli-Kurras, Eystein Dahl & Jelena Živojinović
(eds.), *Diachronic, Typological, and Areal Aspects of Converbs*. Berlin:
De Gruyter Mouton.
Souag, Lameen. 2015. How to make a comitative preposition agree it-with its
external argument: Songhay and the typology of conjunction and agreement.
In Jürg Fleischer, Elisabeth Rieken & Paul Widmer (eds.), *Agreement from a
Diachronic Perspective*, 75–100. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110399967-005

I hope that's helpful, and I'd be interested in hearing about the results
of your research!

Daniel Ross
University of California, Riverside

On Sun, Nov 24, 2024 at 8:55 AM Zygmunt Frajzyngier via Lingtyp <
lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org> wrote:

> Dear Jose Anonio Jodar,
>
> You may find this paper useful for your research.
>
> In my Grammar of Gidar (2008) you fill find evidence of the verb ‘go’
> serving as clausal conjunction.
>
>
>
> Frajzyngier, Zygmunt. 2005. Grammaticalization of phrasal and clausal
> relators. *Afrika und Übersee*, 88, 79-102.
>
>
>
> All best,
>
> Zygmunt
>
>
>
> Zygmunt Frajzyngier
>
> Emeritus Professor of Linguistics
>
> University of Colorado
>
> www.colorado.edu>linguistics>Zygmunt_frajzyngier
>
>
>
>
>
> *From: *Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> on behalf of
> Jose Antonio Jodar Sanchez via Lingtyp <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
> *Date: *Sunday, November 24, 2024 at 6:53 AM
> *To: *LINGTYP at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
> >
> *Subject: *[Lingtyp] Verbs meaning 'and, with'
>
> [External email - use caution]
>
>
>
> Dear all,
>
> My colleague Andrey Drinfeld and I are looking at a group of verbs meaning
> 'and, with' in a family of Papuan languages, the Torricelli family. Instead
> of using linking devices such as conjunctions (e.g. English 'and') or
> affixes/clitics (e.g. Amharic -əm) to join two noun phrases, these
> languages use verbs which have pronominal affixes for either subject,
> object, or both. Examples from Walman and Yeri can be found in (1) and (2)
> respectively, with the 'and' verb in bold:
>
> (1) [Runon      *n-a-Ø*                                            chu]
>     y-an                       y-ayako-Ø
>  klay-poch ...
>       3SG.M     *3SG.M.SUBJ-and-3SG.F.OBJ*     wife       3PL.SUBJ-be.at
> <http://3pl.subj-be.at/>    3PL.SUBJ-make-3SG.F.OBJ   taro-porridge ...
>       ‘[He and his wife] were making taro porridge ...’ (Brown and Dryer,
> 2008: 529)
>
> (2) Hem      teipa      dore     m-nobia      [Sila    *w-od**ɨ-Ø*
>                Lagosi].
>      1sg        then       get.up  1sg-talk.R    Sila
> *3SG.F-and.R-SG.F*     Lagosi
>       ‘I got up and told [Sila and Lagosi].’ (Wilson, 2017: 333)
>
> We have been operating under the assumption that this phenomenon is not
> attested outside the Torricelli family and a few Austronesian languages
> (such as Lamaholot), but we do not have concrete evidence one way or the
> other, and are considering the possibility that there may be other
> attestations of such a phenomenon elsewhere that have not gotten into the
> literature on this topic. We are wondering if anyone is aware of such a
> phenomenon being attested in other language families and parts of the world.
>
> Best,
>
> Jose.
> _______________________________________________
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