Language Typology and Syntactic Description, Volume I: Clause Structure, Second edition
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Lgg Typology, Synt Description v. I - Clause structure
Avery D. Andrews
patients also pass the tests for being core arguments, whereas an antipassive patient is supposed to be oblique. So neither the passive nor the antipassive analysis is genuinely satisfactory, because neither of them accommodates the roughly equal status of the ap and op constructions as basic in the language, nor the core argument status of the non-pivot a and o. Therefore we need a new analysis. We will first examine the evidence more closely, and then present a solution. We begin by looking at the arguments originally advanced by Schachter to the effect that the actor should be regarded as a sort of subject. These arguments depend on the roles of the actor in the phenomena of reflexivization, imperative formation, and complement subject ellipsis. Although these are weaker than one would hope (especially the second one), it is worth spending some time on them because they illustrate the kinds of issues that must be dealt with when arguing for grammatical relations in a language. The first is the observation that actors in Tagalog can be antecedents of reflexive pronouns regardless of whether they are pivots or not: (115) a. Nag-alala ang lolo sa kaniya-ng sarili ap -worry piv grandfather dir his-link self ‘Grandfather worried about himself’ b. In-alala- ng lolo ang kaniya-ng sarili perf -worry-op act grandfather piv his-link self ‘Grandfather worried about himself’ Schachter (1977:292) Schachter also shows that non-actors cannot be the antecedents of reflexive actors, so that the actor, but not the pivot, is relevant to reflexivization possibil- ities. This is taken to be relevant to the subject status of the actor because the ability to antecede reflexive pronouns is one of the characteristic properties of subjects listed in Keenan (1976c). But the problem with this is that although it is usually possible for subjects to antecede reflexive pronouns, and sometimes (as in Malayalam) only possible for subjects to do so, there are also languages where non-subjects and indeed non- core arguments can antecede reflexive pronouns, such as for example English: (116) John talked to Mary about himself/herself And in Tagalog it is possible for arguments that are neither actors nor pivots to antecede reflexives: (117) a. In-i-abot niya sa bata ang kaniya-ng sarili-ng larawan perf-op -hand he(act) dir child piv his–link self-link picture ‘He i handed the child j a picture of himself i, j ’ The major functions of the noun phrase 207 b. T[um]anggap ang Rosa ng sulat para sa bata sa kaniya-ng sarili [ap]-receive piv Rosa obj letter ben child dir her-link self ‘Rosa i received a letter for the child j from herself i /him-herself j ’ Bell (1976:30, 157) notes essentially the same facts in the closely related lan- guage Cebuano. She suggests that Cebuano reflexivization is governed by a prin- ciple referring to semantic roles rather than grammatical relations, the Thematic Hierarchy Condition of Jackendoff (1972) (she also notes some constraints involving surface word order). The same kind of analysis seems indicated for Tagalog. Since Tagalog reflexivization, as opposed to that of Malayalam, seems to function in terms of semantic roles rather than grammatical relations, it does not provide evidence that actor is a grammatical relation independent of pivot. However, the argument does at least show that actors outrank some other nps on a grammatically relevant hierarchy, since actors can antecede reflexives with more semantic roles than other nps. Next we look at imperatives. Imperative sentences have the verb in a ‘base’ form with focus-marking, but no aspectual marker. Schachter observes that they can have the (second person) addressee as either pivot or non-pivot, as long as it is actor: (118) a. Mag-bigay ka sa kaniya ng kape ap -give you(piv) dir him obj coffee b. Bigy-an mo siya ng kape give-dp you(act) him(piv) obj coffee ‘Give him some coffee!’ In (a), the addressee-actor is pivot, in (b) it isn’t (note that the pronouns are morphologically fused with their function markers). Both are good as impera- tives. Schachter’s claim is that the only actors tolerated in imperative sentences are second person pronouns (1977:291). But there are two reasons why the evidence given doesn’t show that there really is an actor grammatical relation. One reason is that the semantics of imperatives are such that one would expect them to occur with second person agents, and no syntactic phenomena have been adduced to show that the relevant notion is a grammatical relation rather than a semantic role. In fact there is evidence that imperative addressees do have an agentivity condition on them: an imperative verb cannot be an ‘Involitive’ form (Schachter and Otanes (1972:402)), involitives being verb forms that express accidental or involuntary action. But there is also a deeper reason. The verb form used for imperatives is not restricted to imperative usage. It is rather used in a range of constructions expressing a desire that something happen, called ‘hortatives’ if the subject is first person plural, and ‘optative’ if the subject is first person singular: 208 Avery D. Andrews (119) a. Walis-an natin ang sahig Sweep-op us(du.act) piv floor ‘Let’s us two sweep the floor’ b. Walis-an nila ang sahig Sweep-op they(act) the floor ‘I want them to sweep the floor’ Schachter and Otanes (1972:407–9) There are various constraints on these constructions, and on the use of various Download 1.59 Mb. Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: |
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