[Lingtyp] Query: 'Deceased referent' markers

Thu Sep 26 16:13:28 UTC 2024

Hello Pattie,

Denesųłiné (Athabaskan) has such a marker nį for deceased referents,
similar to "late" but used much more often. It is not obligatory but is
commonly used.

It occurs directly after a kinship term, i.e. "my late cousin“, not so much
after proper names or general nouns. After a verb, the same particle nį is
a past tense marker (optional, disambiguating, not inflectional). In the
following examples you can see both freely used together. Note nį’s use as
a tense marker toward the end of the clauses.

(1)   setá          nį    ęne        nį    ú   sedézé                   ú
 sechelé                      ú    horelyų́   ejéretué        ts’én
xait’ázį   ts’į   yé   kozį́

        my.father *late* Mother *late* and my.younger.sister and
my.younger.brother and  all          Dillon.Łake to        autumn   boat in
  there

       náhídel     łí           nį     sį.

        we.go      habitual *past* emphasis

       "My father, mother, sister and brother [and I] would all make a trip
to Dillon Lake by boat in the fall"

(2)   nįj́a             ú          enę        nį     eya   thetį         k’é
            nį
       he-arrived   when    mother *late*   sick   she-lay   mirative
*past*

      ‘When he reached their house, my [late] mother was sick in bed’

Hope this helps,

Josh Holden

On Thu, Sep 26, 2024 at 10:00 AM Paolo Ramat via Lingtyp <
lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org> wrote:

> Dear Pattie,
>  the title of a novel by the Nobel Prize winner 1934 Luigi Pirandello * is
> Il fu Mattia Pascal ,*whereby* fu (*< Lat. *fuit *3rd sg of the perfect),
> preceded by the ART* il, *has exactly the same adjectival function as Engl*.
> late *or Port.* finado, *both preceded by ART.
> An NP such as* *I fu Mattia e Giovanni *would be ungrammatical, since *fu
> *wouldn't agree with the plural *Mattia + Giovanni *(though     *I* *furono
> (*< Lat. *fuerunt *3rd plur. of the perfect) *Mattia e Giov. * would
> sound very strange: *Fu, *still used in NPs such as *Il fu Mattia Pascal* ,
> is a stereotyped formula, just as the corresponding Engl. and Port.
> expressions.
>
> Best wishes,
> P.Rt.
>
> Prof. Dr. Paolo Ramat
> Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, Socio corrispondente
> 'Academia Europaea'
> 'Societas Linguistica Europaea', Honorary Member
> Università di Pavia (retired)
> Istituto Universitario di Studi Superiori (IUSS Pavia) (retired)
>
> piazzetta Arduino 11 - I 27100 Pavia
> ##39 0382 27027
> 347 044 98 44
>
>
> Il giorno gio 26 set 2024 alle ore 13:08 양재영 via Lingtyp <
> lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org> ha scritto:
>
>> Dear Pattie Epps,
>>
>> Tübatulabal (Uto-Aztecan, California) uses a nominal ‘past tense’ suffix
>> -pï- to mark the death of a person (including kins).
>>
>> The language also has a suffix -bai’i- that is used with a kinship term
>> to indicate the kin being referred to is the last surviving one, and a few
>> other interesting phenomena of expressing the death of the ‘connecting
>> relative’.
>>
>> Reference:
>> Voegelin, Charles F. 1935. Tübatulabal Grammar. University of California
>> Press.
>>
>> Best regards,
>> Jaeyeong Yang
>>
>> 2024년 9월 26일 (목) 오후 7:30, Pun Ho Lui via Lingtyp <
>> lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>님이 작성:
>>
>>> Dear Pattie Epps,
>>>
>>> Narragansett (Algic) is claimed to have a suffix called “absentative”
>>> which can encode a deceased person or lost possessions, e.g. nókac-i ‘my
>>> late deceased mother’ (mother-ABSENTATIVE).
>>>
>>> Reference:
>>>
>>> O’Brien, Frank Waabu. 2009. Grammatical Studies in the Narragansett
>>> Language (Second Edition). Aquidneck Indian Council.
>>>
>>>
>>> Warmest,
>>>
>>> *Pun Ho Lui Joe*
>>>
>>> Epps, Patience L via Lingtyp <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org> 於
>>> 2024年9月26日 下午6:14 寫道：
>>>
>>> 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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