[Lingtyp] Questions on 'expanded' functions of person marking and pronouns

[Sebastian Nordhoff]

Dear Luis,
regarding question one, there seem to be pretty straightforward terms
for the morphosyntactic categories involved:
construction A: "first inclusive (1+2)"
construction B: "third person plural"

The fact that these constructions have additional functions beyond their
prototypical ones is not particularly remarkable.

In English, we have:
- academic we: "We argue that 1+1=2", even if only one author
- baker's we: "We now add butter and flour ..." even if the people
watching the YouTube video do not have any butter at hand.

I recall that someone, maybe Emily Bender, once made a distinction
between "academic we", "mathematician's we" and "engineer's we", but I
cannot find the source. Basically, "engineer's we" is instructional and
invites the hearer to be part of the action. This seems to be similar in
use to your construction A.

Would you know whether construction A is typically used to relate what
"people" do to achieve a particular objective, such as getting to
campus? If so, how about "instructional impersonal" as a term?

I remember that Gunter Senft? once was puzzled about the 1+2 person
marking when an islander told him to how to build a boat, since Gunther
had absolutely no idea about the craft and was not part of the action at
all. He then discovered that 1+2 was used for generic actions. This
seems to match quite closely what you describe.

Can you use construction A in the past, eg "In the stone age, you and I
used to live in caves" or "during the war, you and I died in huge numbers"?

HTH
Sebastian





On 9/25/24 21:07, Luis Ulloa via Lingtyp wrote:
> Hello everyone,
>
> I have two terminological questions, in relation to Shawi (Kawapanan,
> Peru), regarding (1) non-standard? functions of person marking, and (2)
> a construction used in lieu of NP coordination. Please feel free to
> recommend papers that deal with these issues. Thanks in advance.
>
> Question 1: How to differentiate two types of impersonal, and what terms
> should be used for them?
>
> The first impersonal is used for something people, or 'one' generally
> does, cf. Spanish reflexive/middle, and 'uno'.
>
> ENG: To get to campus, one takes the highway.
> SPA: Para ir a la uni, se/uno va por la carretera.
>
> Shawi uses first inclusive (1+2) person marking. This is not a plural.
> It is its own person category.
>
> Context: An instructional text on making masato (aka manioc beer)
> Wenu ya-ni'-patera, pa'-ne ta'shirechin ki'sha wa'te-re.
> masato DES-make-SEQ.1+2 go-IND.1+2 morning cassava uproot-IND.1+2
> `When one (lit. you and I) wants to make masato, one goes in the morning
> and pulls cassava (from the ground).'
>
> The second impersonal is used when someone, we don't know or even care
> who, did something. It seems comparable with passives in this regard.
>
> ENG: Did you hear? They shot Kennedy. / Kennedy was shot.
> SPA: Me contaron que asesinaron al presidente / que el presidente fue
> asesinado.
>
> Shawi uses third person plural marking.
>
> Context: End of a text
> Napuatun tuwayu pi'pamutuun-in tu-pi.
> therefore sp.bird have.crushed.head-IND.3SG say-IND.3PL
> `This is why the tuwayu has a crushed head, they say.'
>
> There is no passive in Shawi. Curiously though, the third person plural
> Indicative suffix (last suffix in the example above) is formally
> identical to a resultative nominalizer, whose cognate is used in the
> passive of a related language. Additionally, third plural Indicative -pi
> is formally unrelated to other Indicative suffixes (all of which start
> with -rV). So while there is no passive, there is a connection.
>
> I've seen both types being called 'impersonal passives', but this
> doesn't apply to Shawi (since it has no passive or middle) and it
> doesn't differentiate them.
>
> Question 2: There is no NP coordination in Shawi. To refer to multiple
> participants, one lists them out, and then uses the third person plural
> pronoun to refer back to them.
>
> Context: A boat is caught in a whirlpool and the young men do nothing
> Irui, Kanitu, Santu, inapita=wachi naranka iru-ria-rin.
> Eloy Calixto Santos 3PL=ASP? orange suck-ASP-IND.3SG
> Eloy, Calixto, Santos--they went on sucking oranges.
>
> The list of participants seems to be extra-clausal, and usually precedes
> all clausal elements. At the same time, it appears to be in apposition
> to the pronoun, since the list always directly precedes it (not too
> dissimilar from the apposition between non-restrictive relative clauses
> and their heads). The following example has OSV order, even though
> pragmatically-unmarked order is SOV. (OSV clauses do occur elsewhere
> when O is pragmatically-marked.)
>
> No context given:
> Ite katu-pi, ichi a'na-sa' inapita papa inan-in.
> agouti two-CLS.animal sp.monkey one-? 3PL father shoot-IND.3SG
> Father shot them--two agoutis, one monkey.
>
> The list of participants is not linked to a specific semantic nor
> grammatical role. In the previous examples, it was linked S and O
> respectively, so one might wonder if it is absolutive. In the following
> example, however, it is linked to A.
>
> Context: On why peach palms now bear fruits high up
> [I]pi', ite, shu'mi' inapita=ri ka'-pi.
> paca agouti rat 3PL=ERG eat-IND.3PL
> [P]acas, agoutis, rats--they would eat them (so the peach palm was made
> to be taller).
>
> Adverbials can occur before the list of participants.
>
> Context: Kunpanama (a hero/deity) is ordering birds to help him fight a
> giant snake
> Inakeran=wachi peni-sha, ku'pirashi' inapita sha'wite-rin.
> then=ASP? sp.bird-DIM sp.bird 3PL tell.ditr-IND.3SG
> Then, he told them--the little peni, ku'pirashi (birds)--the same thing.
>
> However, adverbials can also precede constituents that host
> second-position clitics. Constituents that host second-position clitics
> are pragmatically-marked and usually clause-initial. This to say that
> while the list is left-displaced, it is not in the most
> left-displaced... slot (let's say), exactly like other
> pragmatically-marked constituents in the language. I would present
> examples with second-position clitics, but at this point I might be
> burying the lede.
>
> In any case, the list of participants is likely extra-clausal and in
> apposition to the pronoun, which is treated as a pragmatically-marked
> constituent. Has anyone else come across this kind of construction? What
> would one call it? What would one call this use of the third plural pronoun?
>
> Thanks for reading.
>
> Best,
> Luis
> --
> Luis Ulloa (he/him)
> PhD Candidate
> Department of Linguistics
> University at Buffalo
>
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