transitivity, locative prefixes & the pronomin. argument hypothesis.

[ROOD DAVID S]

On Fri, 27 Sep 2002, R. Rankin wrote:

> I'm currently working with Carolyn Quintero and her
> Osage lexical materials and we have a question or two.
>
> 1.  What is your judgment of the transitivity of a
> sentence like "John is standing on the floor" in a
> typical Siouan language?  Something like "John
> floor-the anazhiN."
>
> Does the fact that the locative a- is a part of the
> verb nazhiN 'stand' render the word 'floor' the direct
> object of the verb?  In English we would take 'on the
> floor' to be something quite different from the direct
> object, but what about anazhiN?  Is 'the floor' the DO
> in Siouan or not?


I can tell you what happens in Lakhota, if that helps.  Verbs with
locative prefixes take direct object personal pronouns (recall from the
kazoo conference my example of amachage 'ice formed on me').  But if the
object is third person, it must be marked by a postposition in addition to
the locative prefix (Phez^i akaN achage 'ice formed on the grass').  My
immediate reaction is to treat the locative prefix as an adposition and
treat the object as oblique -- i.e. it's not the direct object of the verb,
but an argument of the affix.  The alternative would be to treat the prefix
as an applicative and argue that it has "promoted" an oblique object to
argument status.  In either case, the adposition has to be some kind of
duplication -- either the affix or the adposition is a copy/agreement of
the other -- and I am not aware of any kind of syntax that allows
different case markers depending on the person of the arguments (enlighten
me, please, if such things exist -- that would be fascinating).

>
> 2.  Likewise the reciprocal prefix *hki(k)-.  Is it the
> direct object of the verb in, for example,
> a-hkih-toMpe 'they look after each other, where atoMpe
> is 'look after'.  Even if you believe in the pronominal
> argument hypothesis, is -hkih- the pronominal here or
> is it a voice marker?


Again, from the Lakhota perspective, see the Legendre and Rood paper in
BLS 18 (1992).  Geraldine used the difference between reflexives and
reciprocals to argue that the reflexive was NOT an object, but rather a
de-transitivizing operator that required a stative subject, whereas the
reciprocal behaved like the object of transitive verbs.

David


> Bob
>