[Lingtyp] WG: Agentive vs. unagentive transitive subjects: summary

[Haig, Geoffrey]

Dear All,

Just summarizing what I received regarding my recent query on the list. To recapitulate:

I was requesting examples of languages that mark an agentivity / volitionality (see below on this) distinction on subjects of transitive verbs (A), through flagging the A-constituent itself, without accompanying changes in the verb (so basically, a kind of DAM).

This has been claimed to be cross-linguistically rare (Faucconier 2012), which I found surprising at the time, but my non-systematic search for such examples has to date in fact remained pretty much in vain.

Anyway, I received two responses, one from Joshua Birchall, who pointed me to data from Aikanã, a language isolate spoken in Brazil, where something akin to inention/volitionality can be signalled through different sets of argument indexing on (a sub-set of) verbs. The data come from van der Voort & Birchall 2023.

Fascinating though this is, it doesn’t match what I am looking for, because the relevant morphology is solely verbal, and seems to affect both transitive and intransitive verbs.

The second was from Ricardo Giomi, who shared this data from Mongsen Ao, from Coupe 2007:

[cid:image001.png at 01DB2BBD.093CBB70]


Structurally, this one ticks all the boxes for what I was looking for.

The only fly in the ointment concerns the concept of “agentivity” that is invoked here. I am not an expert in animal behaviour, nor in philosophy, but the implication here that the chickens in (5.23) are engaging in planned and purposive action, while in (5.22) they are more or less mechanically consuming food that is put in front of them, and are thus less “agentive”, seems like it might be stretching the concept of agency as used by many linguists; I’m not sure if there is a consensus re agency with regard to animals (outside of mythical contexts); who knows what goes on in a chicken’s brain, and in the literature there seems to be very different conceptualizations of “Agency” around.  But anyway, I need to read the grammar and look at all the relevant data to find out what’s going on here.

Many thanks to Joshua and Ricardo for sharing this.

I am left with the tentative conclusion that indisputable examples of what I was looking for are indeed quite hard to come by.

Best
Geoff

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References
Coupe, A. R. 2007. A Grammar of Mongsen Ao  [Mouton Grammar Series MGL, 39]. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Hein van der Voort & Joshua Birchall. 2023. Aikanã. In: Amazonian Languages: Language Isolates I: Aikanã to Kandozi-Chapra. An International Handbook, Edited by Patience Epps and Lev Michael. Mouton de Gruyter.






**************************************
Geoffrey Haig
Professor of Linguistics
Institut fuer Orientalistik
Universität Bamberg
96047 Bamberg

https://www.uni-bamberg.de/aspra/team/aktuelles-team/prof-dr-geoffrey-haig/

Tel. +49 951 8632490 / Dept. admin: +49 951 863 2491

Von: Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> Im Auftrag von Haig, Geoffrey via Lingtyp
Gesendet: Dienstag, 29. Oktober 2024 18:56
An: Kittilä, Seppo <seppo.kittila at helsinki.fi>
Cc: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
Betreff: Re: [Lingtyp] Agentive vs. unagentive causees?

Dear Seppo,

I can’t help you with examples of distinct causative markers according to volitionality/agentivity of the causee, but I was curious about your remark re the related alternation on causers (I broke X accidentally/on purpose), and the reference to Faucconier (2012). I assume you mean her 2012 thesis?

As I read Faucconiier, a key take-away point of her work was in fact the typological paucity of strategies for flagging volitionality vs. non-volitionality of a transitive subject (A), on the A itself. It can be done by a shift in the verb (often involving a voice alternation), but apparently not often via flagging alone.

I found the claim surprising at the time, but I have to admit I have not actually since found a language that exhibits what (I think) she means, which would be a language that had a marker, –X, to differentiate a volitional breaker from non-volitional breaker, without accompanying changes to the verb (Jane broke the vase (i.e. accidentally) vs. Jane-x broke the vase (intentionally)).

I am aware of such examples with intransitive verbs of course (the famous Batsbi/Tsova-Tush examples, and so on). But not of clear cases of transitives.

Anyway, I’d be happy to hear of clear examples of volitionality-based differential-A marking (ruling out those accompanied by a change of lexical verb (common with light verbs), or a voice shift on the verb).

Not sure if we need to open a sub-thread on the list for this, could be just directly relayed to me. I’d be happy to post a general summary of whatever comes in,

Best wishes
Geoff





**************************************
Geoffrey Haig
Professor of Linguistics
Institut fuer Orientalistik
Universität Bamberg
96047 Bamberg

https://www.uni-bamberg.de/aspra/team/aktuelles-team/prof-dr-geoffrey-haig/

Tel. +49 951 8632490 / Dept. admin: +49 951 863 2491

Von: Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> Im Auftrag von Kittilä, Seppo via Lingtyp
Gesendet: Dienstag, 29. Oktober 2024 15:52
An: LINGTYP at listserv.linguistlist.org
Betreff: [Lingtyp] Agentive vs. unagentive causees?

Dear all,

Does anyone here happen to know whether there are languages that would code what I have labelled here as agentive and unagentive causees differently. I refer here to cases like 'John made me build a house' (agentive causee) and 'great, now you made me break this' (unagentive causee). In both cases, the causee is responsible for what happens, but there are clear differences in whether the causee acts volitionally, purposefully and is in control. There are many languages where the agentivity/volitionality of the causer is formally manifest in cases like 'I broke something on purpose/accidentally' (for example the case marking of the Causer varies accordingly, see, e.g., Fauconnier 2012), but are there similar cases for Causees. And I am not looking for cases where the degree of volitionality of the Causee is different as in 'I made/let him do something', but cases where the coding of a Causee that accidentally causes something to happen is different from a Causee whose action is volitional and controlled.

All the best,
Seppo
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