[Lingtyp] Query: 'Deceased referent' markers

[Edith A Moravcsik]

Dear Pattie,

Many thanks for sending around your highly informative and clear summary of the findings that have accrued about markers of deceased referents. These attributes seem to form a broad class with examples of Homeric epitheton ornans, such as "swift-footed Achilles," and contemporary occurrences like "the honorary prime minister". I think they all tend to make a single unit with the proper names, kjn terms, or titles that they occur with and cannot be used predicatively.

Best,

Edith Moravcsik



________________________________
From: Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> on behalf of Epps, Patience L via Lingtyp <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
Sent: Wednesday, October 2, 2024 6:36 AM
To: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
Subject: Re: [Lingtyp] Query: 'Deceased referent' markers


Dear all,



Many thanks to everyone who responded to my query about markers of deceased referents (DRM). There were some really fascinating observations, both on and off list. Here is a general summary for those who are interested. Further observations are of course very welcome.



I had previously observed that the DRM category (as per our working definition) seems to be quite robust in South America, with the phenomenon attested in approximately 90 out of 150 South American languages surveyed so far for which the data seem adequate to make a call. Interestingly, the most robust region for DRM-type phenomena other than S. America seems to be Europe. The attested expressions seem to be quite stylistically marked in most contemporary cases, but not necessarily so in all relevant varieties/languages/time periods; they also tend to be closer to the lexical and phrasal end of the spectrum than the grammatical end. Elsewhere in the Americas, there are some related phenomena in North America (with about a half-dozen examples mentioned in response to my post, and a couple more we’ve turned up in grammars). In most of these cases, the DRM uses of these markers appear to overlap with (nominal) past tense marking more generally. There are also a few cases in Australia (Gurindji, Garrwa, Bininj Kunwok), but it seems noteworthy to me that there appear to be so few (we’ve also surveyed a lot of grammars), given that Australia presents various other sorts of linguistic resources for referring to the deceased. Only a handful of examples (several of which are quite marginal with respect to the S-America-based DRM definition) are evident in other world regions, both from responses to the LingTyp post and from our surveys of grammars to date.



The discussions on LingTyp brought up a number of interesting considerations:



With respect to synchronic patterns:

  *   Other functions that may be exhibited by an etymon that is also used systematically for DRM (e.g. nominal/verbal past tense - which of course brings up challenges for defining DRM as a comparative category more generally);
  *   Degree of obligatoriness / frequency of use in relevant contexts;
  *   The range of referents/nouns the marker can occur with (kin terms, non-humans, etc.);
  *   The degree to which the usage is stylistically marked and/or restricted to particular registers/genres;
  *   Pragmatic considerations; for example, as posts by Alex François and others brought up, whether the referent is recently deceased or not - whether too far in the past, or alternatively too recently and/or where there is informational foregrounding (e.g. when reporting a death that has just occurred); also the possibility of highlighting a personal association with the deceased referent;
  *   The role of individual, stylistic, and dialectal variation;
  *   Questions of identifying a given DRM-like etymon as more lexical or grammatical, e.g. with respect to morphosyntactic behavior that is unusual for most members of a relevant lexical class (more on this below).
  *   Languages exhibit various other related phenomena (that do not fit our working definition of DRM but are comparatively very interesting); e.g. suffix to indicate ‘last surviving kinsperson of a particular category’ (Tübatulabal); special demonstrative forms for deceased referents (e.g. Car Nicobarese, Baniwa); use of present perfect in English restricted to living referents (as pointed out by Dan Slobin).



With respect to diachronic trajectories:

  *   Many DRM-type etyma (especially perhaps in Europe) seem to show evidence of grammaticalization from or at least heavy routinization of lexical or even phrasal sources; this may involve unusual syntactic behavior (e.g. Komnzo kwark, Bavarian German selig) or loss of other indications of adjectival status within the NP, such as person/number agreement (e.g. French feu). Other resources may be best analyzed as fully lexical (often adjectival) or even phrasal, but are used systematically or even obligatorily in conventionalized DRM-type expressions; e.g. Occitan pawre (lit. ‘poor/unfortunate’), Italian buonanima (lit. 'good soul’), Arabic ‘may Allah be merciful with him’, Yiddish ‘‘upon him/her peace’;
  *   Possibility of extension of DRM-like etyma from adnominal > predicative uses (Ugandan English, as pointed out by Jenneke van der Wal);
  *   Possibility of direct borrowing vs. internal development of etyma (cf. Italian fu from French).



Thanks again for the very useful input, and all best,

Pattie Epps







From: Epps, Patience L <pattieepps at austin.utexas.edu>
Date: Thursday, September 26, 2024 at 12:14 PM
To: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
Subject: Query: 'Deceased referent' markers

Dear all,



I'm writing regarding a phenomenon that appears to be widely attested in Amazonian languages, which my project collaborators and I have been calling a 'deceased referent marker'. We are wondering about the extent to which a comparable phenomenon exists in other languages of the world - from a preliminary survey, it appears to have very few close correlates elsewhere.



The Amazonian-type DRM construction involves using a particular linguistic marker (which can usually be identified as more grammatical than lexical, though it's not always an easy distinction to make) within the noun phrase when making direct reference to a deceased referent. This is reminiscent of what occurs in some European languages (e.g. English the late John, Portuguese o finado João), but tends to be less lexical and is ubiquitous in discourse, rather than being highly optional and/or limited to more formal registers. In some languages, the DRM is a distinct etymon with no other functions; in others, it overlaps with other functions (most frequently that of a nominal past marker). It is always used with humans (primarily proper names and kin terms), while some languages also allow use with non-human referents. In spite of these variations, there seem to be close parallels in how the construction is formulated and how it is used discursively across many Amazonian languages.



An example from Nadëb (Naduhup family, NW Brazil):

ee           makũuh              ỹ              haw'ëëh              doo                        paah

father  DRM                       1sg         raise                      NMLZ                    PST

'It was my late father who raised me (there).'



In defining the Amazonian 'type' of DRM, we are focusing on resources that a) consist of a morphological element (affix or clitic hosted by the noun); or b) if arguably more lexical, have a ‘deceased referent’ function that is relatively distinct from other meanings/morphosyntactic expressions and/or appears ubiquitously in DRM contexts. We are excluding other kinds of linguistic strategies for referring to the deceased, including naming prohibitions, necronyms (passing on the deceased's name to a child), more pragmatically optional periphrastic strategies (e.g. 'my dead relative', 'my relative who died recently', etc.). We are also excluding (though we're interested, for comparative purposes) other types of nominal morphology relating to the deceased, e.g. a marker that occurs with a kin term X to mean ‘one whose X has recently died’ in Kayardild (Australia): kangku-kurirr (father’s.father-DEAD) ‘one whose father’s father has recently died’ (Evans 1995: 197).



We'd be very grateful for information about comparable phenomena in languages outside South America.



All best,

Pattie Epps




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