[Lingtyp] Query: 'Deceased referent' markers

Thu Sep 26 16:33:51 UTC 2024

Dear Pattie,

This also occurs in the Australian language Bininj Kunwok (aka Bininj Gun-wok).

Here's the relevant bit of my grammar (Evans 2003) which discusses this:

[cid:d7406d00-84fe-40a6-b786-29c44a5732c2]

It has the peculiarity of being the only prefix that can be interposed betwen the noun class prefix (here na- 'class I, masculine class') and the root (here Badmardi, a clan name).

Reference:

Evans, Nicholas. 2003.  Bininj Gun-wok: a pan-dialectal grammar of Mayali, Kunwinjku and Kune. (2 volumes). Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.

Best Nick

Director, CoEDL (ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language)

Coombs Building, Fellows Road
CHL, CAP, Australian National University

nicholas.evans at anu.edu.au

I acknowledge the Ngunnawal people as custodians of the land on which I work, and pay my respects to their elders, past and present. Their custodianship has never been ceded.

________________________________
From: Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> on behalf of Josh Holden via Lingtyp <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
Sent: Friday, September 27, 2024 2:13 AM
To: Paolo Ramat <paoram at unipv.it>
Cc: Epps, Patience L <pattieepps at austin.utexas.edu>; lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
Subject: Re: [Lingtyp] Query: 'Deceased referent' markers

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<mailto: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<mailto: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<mailto: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<mailto: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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