Language Typology and Syntactic Description, Volume I: Clause Structure, Second edition
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Lgg Typology, Synt Description v. I - Clause structure
William A. Foley
(50) ‘o ŋə s-t-o ŋə ˜l=sx w ’ ə c ə k w ə n-t- ə x w give-trans-1pl[ −a]=2sg[+a] obliq det take-trans-2sg[+a]subord ‘You gave us (with what you caught)’ But such languages are decidedly rare and the question that needs to be answered is: why? (Chamorro (Cooreman (1988)) may be another language which illus- trates this pattern, but the facts are complex.) At the opposite extreme from languages like Tolai are those in which give and related verbs are necessarily ditransitive, with no possible transitive equivalents. Bantu languages around Lake Victoria in Africa are commonly like this, for example KiHaya of Tanzania (Hyman and Duranti (1982)) (phonological rules drop final vowels preceding words beginning in a vowel): (51) (a) a-ka-h’ ´omw´a´an’ ´ebitooke 3sg.subj-past-give child bananas ‘He gave the child bananas’ (b) a-ka-siig’ ´omw´a´an’ ´amajˆuta 3sg.subj-past-smear child oil ‘He smeared the child with oil’ Note that both postverbal nps appear as bare nps with neither indicated as oblique. This suggests that both are core nps and function as [ −a]. Further syntactic and morphological evidence confirms this: the two nps are equivalent in every grammatical respect; they can occur in either order following the verb (51a and 52); they can both be subjects of corresponding passive sentences (53a, b); and both can be replaced by [ −a] verbal pronominal agreement prefixes (54a, b, c). No grammatical property can be found which distinguishes between them, and they must both be identified as undergoers (52) a-ka-h’ ´ebitook’ ´omw´aana 3sg.subj-past-give bananas child ‘He gave the child bananas’ (53) (a) omw´a´an’ a-ka-h´a´a-bw’ ebitooke child 3sg.subj-past-give-pass bananas ‘The child was given bananas’ (b) ebitooke b´ı-ka-h´a´a-bw’ ´omw´aana bananas 3pl.subj-past-give-pass child ‘The bananas were given to the child’ A typology of information packaging 379 (54) (a) a-ka-m´u-h’ ebitooke 3sg.subj-past-3.sg[ −a]-give bananas ‘He gave him bananas’ (b) a-ka-b´ı-h’ ´omw´aana 3sg.subj-past-3pl[ −a]-give child ‘He gave them to the child’ (c) a-ka-bi-m´u-ha 3sg.subj-past-3pl[ −a]-3sg[−a]-give ‘He gave him them’ Many other languages with ditransitive verbs, perhaps most, fail to mark both [ −a] participants with pronominal agreement affixes. In such situations it is invariably the recipient which is marked by verbal agreement, while the gift remains core, i.e. does not have the morphology or syntax of obliques such as adpositions or oblique cases, even though it fails to register on the verb through agreement. Many Bantu languages are like this, in contrast to KiHaya: (55) Chi-Mwi ·ni (a) ni-m-pe˜le Ja ·ma kuj´a 1sg.subj-3sg.[ −a]-give pn food ‘I gave Jama food’ (b) *ni-’i-pe˜le Ja ·ma kuj´a 1sg.subj-3sg[ −a]-give pn food Kisseberth and Abasheikh (1977) Example (55a) in which verbal agreement is with Ja ·ma, the recipient, is gram- matical, but (55b) is not, because agreement is with the object transferred (the contrast in prefixes m- and ’i- represents a difference in gender for the two nouns). Note that kuj´a ‘food’, however, still remains core; attempting to mark it oblique results in ungrammaticality: (56) *ni-m-pe˜le Ja ·ma ka· kuj´a 1sg.subj-3sg[ −a]-give pn with food Many languages around the world exemplify this pattern, which we might term restricted ditransitivity. Just as we noted earlier that there seem to be very few languages with only transitive give that allow the recipient to be [ −a], i.e. John gave Mildred with the snake, there also seems to be a lacuna of languages with restricted ditran- sitivity in which the object transferred is cross-referenced as [ −a], but the recipient is not. There seems to be a converse, mirror image pattern here. In exclusively transitive languages, only the object transferred is eligible to be the 380 William A. Foley [ −a] participant; while in restricted ditransitive languages, only the recipient is eligible for verbal agreement as [ −a], although the object transferred other- wise remains a core [ −a] participant. Again, are there languages which have the equivalent of (57)? (57) man books child 3sg[ +a]-3pl[−a]-give ‘The man gave the child books’ And, again, if not, why not? One possible explanation is the higher animacy of the recipient compared to the object transferred, but what is the normal cross-linguistic pattern in restricted ditransitive languages for cases when both are equal in animacy: the man gave the orphan to the parents; I gave him to them? Clearly, there is a great deal we do not yet know about ditransitivity and perspective alternatives for [ −a]. 1.4 Intransitive verbs and the unaccusative/unergative split Intransitive verbs, those that subcategorize for a single core argument, can present especially interesting complexities when it comes to the choice of [ +a] or [ −a] perspective. Potentially, the choice of either [+a] or [−a] is avail- able, so how is the selection decided? Essentially, intransitive verbs divide into two broad classes: what are termed unergative verbs, which denote activ- ities or actions for which the single argument is the causer or initiator, i.e. X does something, such as swim, walk, run, ascend, cry, chat, and unaccusative verbs, which denote states or processes that the single argument of the verb is in or undergoes, i.e. something happens to Y, such as fall, melt, break, slip, be thirsty, be sleepy. The prototypical argument of an unergative verb is an agent or causer, so they take a [ +a] participant, while that of an unaccusative verb is affected by a state or change in state, so that they occur with a [ −a] Download 1.59 Mb. Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: |
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