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
Another potential source of languages without a-subject is languages that have been argued to lack grammatical relations entirely. This claim has been made for a number of languages, including Manipuri and Kannada (Bhat (1991)), and Chinese, Archi, and Acehnese (Van Valin and LaPolla (1997)), on the basis that grammatical phenomena in these languages are controlled directly by semantic roles and pragmatic functions, rather than requiring an intermediate system of grammatical relations. While these claims are very interesting and worthy of being taken seriously, I don’t think they are fully established yet. We will here consider Manipuri, and then the phenomenon of ‘split intransitivity’, which raises similar questions about the role of grammatical relations. 4.3.1 Manipuri Manipuri, spoken in India, Myanmar and Bangladesh has np -markers which Bhat labels as ‘nominative’ and ‘accusative’ case, although their use departs somewhat from what is usual for cases with these names. Nominative can be found on transitive and intransitive putative subjects, and accusative on putative objects: (125) a. Ma-n ə ə y-bu kawwi he-nom me-acc kicked ‘He kicked me’ b. Ma-n ə k ə ppi he-nom cried ‘He cried’ However the nominative is omitted from presumed a/s when these are not expressing volitionally controlling participants: (126) a. Ma ə y-bu uy He me-acc saw ‘He saw me’ b. Ma sawwi He angry ‘He is angry’ Some verbs appear to require or forbid the use of n ə , while for others usage varies depending on whether the verb is expressing intentional activity or not (Bhat (1991:119–20)). The suffix has some additional uses which are interesting, but not relevant to this discussion. Bhat (1991:123) describes the use of the accusative marker as follows: (127) a. the referent of the marked noun phrase must be animate b. some effect must have been produced on it by an external agency c. it must be involved in an action or a process (and not a state) The major functions of the noun phrase 213 Example (128a) below is a clear case of an affected argument meeting this description: (128) a. ma-n ə huy-bu kawwi he-nom dog-acc kicked ‘He kicked the dog’ b. ma-n ə teb ə l kawwi he-nom table kicked ‘He kicked the table’ The (b) example lacks the marker because the affected object is inanimate. However, it is unexplained why ‘see’ (126a) classes its ‘seen’ argument gram- matically as if it was affected. With some verbs, the presence of the accusative marker bu seems to indicate a more active as opposed to less active version of the event: (129) a. ə y ma-bu sawwi I him-acc angry ‘I am angry with him [showing anger]’ b. ə y ma sawwi I him angry ‘I am angry with him’ But it is unexplained why ‘see’ classes with the overt display of anger rather than the mere existence of emotional state. In addition to marking what might be regarded as somewhat generalized patients, bu can under certain circumstances mark recipients of verbs of giv- ing, and what are sometimes called ‘causee agents’ of causative verbs, that is, Download 1.59 Mb. Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: |
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