Language Typology and Syntactic Description, Volume I: Clause Structure, Second edition
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Lgg Typology, Synt Description v. I - Clause structure
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I, we, you because they do not have the participant
of the immediate speech act as referents; rather, their referents are restricted to non-participants in the speech act. They may refer to any referent other than the presently speaking person or the person(s) being spoken to. Third person is in essence a non-person in the context of the speech event. All languages regard the speech act participants of first and second person as more salient than the non-person of the third. This is a fundamental principle that shows up in the grammatical structures of many languages (Silverstein (1976)). Beyond this, there is some variation as to the relative ranking of first and second person. In some languages they seem to have equal salience. In others, the speaker outranks the addressee, giving a hierarchy of speaker > addressee > third person. Many languages exhibit further elaborations of this person salience hierarchy, distinguishing different kinds of third persons, usually along the lines of humanness or animacy (Silverstein (1976)), so that this is perhaps better described as an animacy hierarchy. Tlahuitoltepec Mixe, a language of the Mixe-Zoque family of Mexico (Lyon (1967)), illustrates this well; its animacy hierarchy is speaker > addressee > human proper > human common > other animate > inanimate. 414 William A. Foley Mixe verbs have verbal pronominal affixes which reference the highest par- ticipant along this hierarchy, regardless of whether it is [ +a] or [−a]. The actual affixes used indicate whether the [ +a] participant is higher or the [−a] is: [ +a] higher [−a] higher speaker n- ˇs- addressee s- m- . . . - ə third person t- y- ∼ -y- . . . - ə (126) human > animate (a) t ə paat ha h ə yuhk t-wopy past Peter art animal 3.[ +a]higher-hit ‘Peter hit the animal’ (b) t ə paat ha h ə yuhk w[-y-]opy- ə past Peter art animal 3.[ −a]higher-hit-[−a]higher ‘The animal hit Peter’ Note that the word order of these two sentences is the same, but the meanings are exactly opposite. This is due to the pronominal affixation on the verb. We have two [ −oblique] arguments, a third person proper np paat ‘Peter’ and a third person animate np ha h ə yuhk. By the Mixe animacy hierarchy given above, paat ‘Peter’ outranks ha h ə yuhk ‘the animal’ and so precedes it in linear order in the clause. When paat, the higher-ranked participant, functions as [ +a], as in (126a), the verb carries the prefix t-, but when it is [−a], the verb takes the circumfix-infix -y- . . . - ə , as in (126b). Similar considerations apply to (127a, b): (127) proper humans > common humans (a) t ə paat ha h ɔɔ ʔ y t-wopy past Peter art person 3.[ +a]higher ‘Peter hit the person’ (b) t ə paat ha h ɔɔ ʔ y w[-y-]opy- ə past Peter art person 3.[ −a]higher-hit-[−a]higher ‘The person hit Peter’ In (127) we again find the proper human np paat ‘Peter’, but this time with the common human np ha h ɔɔ ʔ y ‘the person’. In the Mixe animacy hierarchy, paat ‘Peter’ still outranks ha h ɔɔ ʔ y ‘the person’ because it is proper as opposed to common, and so must precede the latter in linear order. When paat ‘Peter’ is [ +a], the third person [+a] higher prefix t- occurs in the verb, but when it is [ −a], we find the circumfix-infix -y- . . . - ə (‘3.[ −a]higher’). The other rankings in the Mixe animacy hierarchy are supported by the following examples; note that, in every case, the higher-ranked participant A typology of information packaging 415 occurs first in linear order and is referenced by pronominal affixation to the verb: (128) second > third (a) t ə mehc ha h ɔɔ ʔ y s-wopy past 2sg art person 2.[ +a]higher-hit ‘You hit the person’ (b) t ə mehc ha h ɔɔ ʔ y m-wopy- ə past 2sg art person 2.[ −a]higher-hit-[−a]higher ‘The person hit you’ (129) first > third (a) t ə ə hc ha h ɔɔ ʔ y n-wopy past 1sg art person 1.[ +a]higher-hit ‘I hit the person’ (b) t ə ə hc ha h ɔɔ ʔ y ˇs-wopy past 1sg art person 1.[ −a]higher-hit ‘The person hit me’ (130) first > second (a) t ə ə hc mehc n-coky past 1sg 2sg 1.[ +a]higher-want ‘I wanted you’ (b) t ə ə hc mehc ˇs-coky past 1sg 2sg 1.[ −a]higher-want ‘You wanted me’ This Mixe pattern, in which the inherent salience of nps along an animacy or person hierarchy of relative salience affects the information structure pack- aging of the [ −oblique] nps in the clause, is common among the languages of the world and is usually called a ‘direct–inverse system’ (see articles in Giv´on (1994)), ‘direct’ being the construction which marks the [ +a] as being higher on the animacy hierarchy, and ‘inverse’, the forms indicating the [ −a] to be higher. Direct–inverse systems are extremely common in Amerindian languages. Besides Mixe-Zoque, language families which exhibit it include Algonkian (Wolfart (1973); Dahlstrom (1986)), Kiowa-Tanoan (Kroskrity (1985); Klaiman (1991)), Athabaskan (Witherspoon (1980)), Cariban (Gildea (1994)), Tupi- Guarani (Payne (1994)), Araucanian (J. Grimes (1985)) and, more controver- sially, Wakashan (Whistler (1985); Emanatian 1988)) and Salishan (Jelinek and Demers (1983)). They are, however, not restricted to Amerindian languages, also being distinctive of Tibeto-Burman languages (DeLancey (1981)), like Chepang (C. Thompson (1990)). |
