21.4889, Qs: Agreement with Animate Direct Objects in Dani

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LINGUIST List: Vol-21-4889. Sat Dec 04 2010. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 21.4889, Qs: Agreement with Animate Direct Objects in Dani

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1)
Date: 03-Dec-2010
From: Giorgio Iemmolo [giorgio.iemmolo at unipv.it]
Subject: Agreement with Animate Direct Objects in Dani
 

	
-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Sat, 04 Dec 2010 12:59:17
From: Giorgio Iemmolo [giorgio.iemmolo at unipv.it]
Subject: Agreement with Animate Direct Objects in Dani

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Dear all,

I'm working on my dissertation on Differential Object Marking and 
Differential Object Agreement, and I found a quite peculiar case of DOA 
in a Trans New Guinea language, Dani. 

Dani has a DOA system based on animacy: animate direct objects (as 
well as indirect objects and beneficiaries) are signalled on the verb via 
an affix. The intriguing fact about Dani is that, as many other Trans 
New Guinea languages, it does allow the object prefixes to be directly 
attached to the main verb only with a restricted subset of verbs, namely 
(w)at- "hit, kill", hei- "put", and ha- "perceive". With other verb roots, 
direct object affixes must be attached to post-cliticised 'auxiliaries', 
such as hei- "put", -ha- "see", -et- "give" or -ap- "do for" (the last two 
are used to introduce recipients and beneficiaries) that are usually 
compounded with the main verb stem, forming thus a sort of serial verb 
construction (cf. Bromley 1981: 157 ff. in his Dani Grammar). 

To my knowledge, this feature seems to be unique to Papuan 
languages: while it seems to be likely that verb serialisation is the 
source of these constructions (see Foley 1986), I don't know of any 
other language in which the animate direct object is indexed on an 
'auxiliary', nor do I know of  any studies dealing with this rare pattern 
from either a synchronic or a diachronic point of view. For instance, I 
find it quite interesting that only the verbs  "kill, perceive, put", which 
are quite heterogeneous from a semantic point of view, can freely host 
the object affix. 

I would be very grateful for any relevant suggestions or bibliographical 
hints on this matter.

Thank you very much in advance,

Giorgio Iemmolo 

Linguistic Field(s): Historical Linguistics
                     Syntax
                     Typology

Subject Language(s): Dani, Western (dnw)




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