[Lingtyp] Questionnaire on weather verbs

[Peter Bakker]

Dear Carla,

I am not sure your point of departure is correct. You are right that the auxiliary suggests ergativity because it is transitive. But Basque has a range of expressions with the verb egin 'to do' which makes the expression grammatically transitive but they are intransitive, sometimes called unergative, like barre egin ' to laugh', lo egin 'to sleep'.

Beth Levin was the first who pointed this out for Basque in 1983.

https://scholarworks.umass.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/44897a9b-d727-491c-9b98-984dfc919527/content

Weather expressions in Basque, as you mention, tend to be intransitives, like euria da ' it is raining', hotz(a) da 'it is cold.

Viveka Velupillai in her typology textbook, section 9.2, discusses cross-linguistic expressions for weather, with a map. There are no ergative expressions for weather there, I think. I doubt whether there are; I have used this exercise of 'it is raining' with several generations of students, but no one ever found an ergative-type construction in any language.

Peter Bakker
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Fra: Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> på vegne af Kittilä, Seppo via Lingtyp <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
Sendt: 10. oktober 2024 10:47
Til: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
Emne: [Lingtyp] Questionnaire on weather verbs

Dear all,

(I tried to send this message to the list yesterday, but I think I failed, if I did not, I sincerely apologize for a multiple posting)

I am sending the message/questionnaire below on behalf of a student. I hope that some of you will find the topic interesting enough for helping her 🙂 If you have any questions, you should send them directly to Carla.

All the best,
Seppo

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Hello ergative language speakers/researchers!

I am making my Bachelor thesis about transitive weather expressions. I have studied Basque and noticed some transitive weather expressions using ergativity that raised my interest. No one, at least according to my knowledge, has ever done research on weather expressions in ergative languages so I decided to do it myself. I would be very thankful if you could find time to answer my short questionnaire about certain weather expressions. In order to keep the questionnaire short, the questions have been formulated from the basis of Basque weather expressions showing ergativity. There is probably no other language in which this would work exactly like in Basque and that is why it is important that you mention if there are any other weather expressions that would be transitive/show ergativity.

In short, in Basque these expressions have the respective weather phenomenon (e.g. rain or temperature) as an absolutive object and no explicit subject (it is shown only in the ergative agreement of the auxiliary). I would be especially interested in similar expressions in other ergative languages if there are any. However, if your language has other types of ergative weather expressions (e.g. rain as subject) or even if there were no ergative weather expressions at all (or if they would be somehow marked or used in specific situations), that would be valuable information for me as well and I hope that you could still answer the questionnaire. I am not really looking for expressions of the type “rain ruined the crop” but of course you can mention those as well.

Hotz      handia          egiten             du
cold  big.ABS.DET  make.IPFV  AUX (ERG3SG>ABS3SG)

'It is very cold' (lit. 'It makes big cold')

If your language shows split-ergativity that influences on the use of ergativity in weather expressions, please bring that up in the questionnaire.

Questionnaire:

1. The name of the language, where is it spoken, what is its classification?

Weather expressions:

2. “Sun is shining”

3. “It rains”

4. “Some other precipitation expression like “it snows” or “it hails”

5. “It is hot” / “it is cold”

If the language has means to encode temperature degrees, answer the following question. If it does not, mention that as well.
6. “Temperature is one degree” / “temperature is 20 degrees”

7. “It starts to rain” / you can mention some other expression related to the change of weather if you find it interesting

If there are interesting alternations e.g. in expressing tense, please mention those expressions in the respective question. For example, if the language uses ergativity to encode past but not present, mention the expression in the past tense in addition to the present tense.

8. If you come up with an expression that shows ergativity but is not included in this questionnaire, you can mention it here (e.g. expressions related to wind, storm...), especially if expressions above do not show ergativity but this does.

9. Shortly explain the nature of ergativity in your language, e.g. if it shows split-ergativity and how animate and non-animate subjects/objects are encoded.

Thank you for your contribution! Be prepared that I may want to contact you and get additional information about the language if it shows behaviour that is interesting from the viewpoint of my thesis. And finally, if you happen to know an article that studies ergative weather expressions in a language other than Basque, I would be happy to receive it.

Please send your response to my e-mail: carla.olander at helsinki.fi<mailto:carla.olander at helsinki.fi>

Thank you and have a great day!

Carla Olander
University of Helsinki

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