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
Coordinate structures provide another possibility. In many languages, when clauses are conjoined, it is possible to omit an np in one conjunct if it is coref- erential with one in another conjunct, and if the nps have the same grammatical relation in their respective conjuncts. Icelandic is one of those languages. In (62a), we find that an oblique subject of a coordinated clause may be omit- ted under coreference with the subject of a preceding conjunct (R¨ognvaldsson (1982)), while in (62b) we see that this is not possible for an object: (62) a. ´Eg s´a st´ulkuna og l´ıka ð i vel vi ð henni I(nom) saw the girl(acc) and [I] liked well with her(dat) ‘I saw the girl and liked her’ b. * ´Eg s´a st´ulkuna og h´un heyr ð i I(nom) saw the.girl(acc) and she(nom) heard [me] ‘I saw the girl and she heard me’ (Objects can however be omitted upon coreference to preceding objects, see Thr´ainsson (1979:471).) Likewise, only a subject, including oblique subjects, may control the ellipsis of the subject of a coordinate clause: (63) a. eim l´ıkar maturinn og bor ð a miki ð them(dat) likes the food(nom) and [they] eat a.lot ‘They like the food and eat a lot’ b. * eir sj´a st´ulkuna og heyrir þ ´a they(nom) see the.girl(acc) and [she] hears them ‘They (masc.) see the girl and she hears them’ As with the other kinds of instances of subject ellipsis, it is necessary to ascer- tain that there isn’t any free and general process of np ellipsis that might be responsible for the ‘missing subjects’ in order for there to be evidence of a sub- ject grammatical relation, and that its conditions can’t be described in purely semantic terms. 3.1.4 Coding features in non-main clauses It frequently happens that the coding features of subjects are different in subordinate clauses from those in main clauses. One of the commonest instances of this is when subjects of subordinate clauses acquire special case marking. In English, for example, the subject of a gerund can be accusative or genitive, but not nominative, which is the normal case for subjects: (64) a. Him/*he running Ewing Oil is difficult to imagine b. His/*he running Ewing Oil would upset a lot of people Another is the Ancient Greek ‘circumstantial participle’ construction discussed in 1.2.3, with examples (16) and (17). If the subject of the participle is not The major functions of the noun phrase 175 coreferential with any np in the matrix, it is expressed in the genitive instead of the nominative, which is the normal case for subjects: (65) Ape:nte:sa Philippo:i Klearchou apiontos I.met Philip(dat) Klearchus(gen) leaving(gen) ‘I met Philip while Klearchus was leaving’ Cross-referencing is also affected: finite verbs in Greek agree with their subjects in person and number, while participles agree in gender, number and case (but infinitives, which take accusative subjects, don’t agree at all). Special np-marking in subordinate clauses is usually restricted to subjects, although it sometimes involves other core grammatical relations such as object, as for example in the Saibai dialect of Kala Lagaw Ya (Comrie (1981)). Some- times subordinate-clause coding features provide useful arguments for subject- hood. This happens in Warlpiri. For older speakers, instead of requiring subject ellipsis, some nonfinite clause constructions permit the subject to be expressed, and some of these permit or require a special case-marker on that subject (Nash (1980:233–4)). One of these complementizers is -rlarni, whose meaning speci- fies that the action of the complement is contemporaneous with that of the matrix. Below are some examples with this complementizer: (66) Ngarrka-ngku-ka karli jarnti-rni . . . man-erg-pres boomerang(abs) carve-nonpast ‘The man is carving the boomerang, . . .’ a. . . . kurdu-ku/- purla-nyja-rlarni child-dat/(abs) shout-inf-while ‘while the child is shouting’ b. . . . kurdu-ku/-ngku maliki wajilipi-nyja-rlarni child-dat/erg dog(abs) chase-inf-while ‘while the child is chasing the dog’ c. . . . karnta-ku/-ngku kurdu-ku miyi yi-nyja-rlarni woman-dat/-erg child-dat food(abs) give-inf-while ‘while the woman is giving food to the child’ The subject takes either its normal case marking or the dative. Furthermore the subject, if it is there, must be initial in the -rlarni complement, regardless of its case marking. If, for example, kurdu-ku were placed after maliki in (66b) above, it would have to be interpreted as a Beneficiary, so the meaning would be ‘The man is carving the boomerang, while somebody is chasing the dog for the child’ (Laughren (p.c.)). The -rlarni construction, in sharp contrast to main clause constructions, expresses the subject grammatical relation directly in terms of both case- marking and linear ordering: the subject may be marked dative instead of its |
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