Download A Morphological Sketch of Onondaga Elijah Deer

A Morphological Sketch of Onondaga
Elijah Deer
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1.
Introduction
The Onondaga language, which in the language itself is called onõda’gega’ ‘language from on
the hill’, is part of the Iroquoian language family, and specifically the Northern Iroquoian
branch. It is a polysenthetic language with a high degree of inflection and the ability to
incorporate noun roots into verb stems, and the morphology appears to be somewhere between
fusional and agglutinative. Today it is spoken mainly in two places: the Six Nations reserve in
Ontario, Canada, and at the Onondaga reserve, near Syracuse, NY. There are no numbers for the
American side, but on Six Nations there are roughly 13 or so speakers left at present (Amos
Keye, Jr. 2009, personal communication).
As noted by Woodbury (2003:1-2), there are dialectal differences between the two
Onondaga communities, which include differences in pronunciation and word choice. She notes
also, however, that the differences are in fact negligible, as they do not cause any
miscomprehension; this paper disregards them. The majority of the information and data
examples in this sketch have been taken from Woodbury (2003), and the reader is directed there
for a more complete analysis of the language. Data which are not referenced are my own.
2.
Word Classes and Structure
Onondaga words are grouped into three main categories: particles, nouns, and verbs. Particles are
the morphologically simplest word types in the language, and verbs the most complex. The term
“verb” also covers other types of predicating roots, including adjectives, which may function as
stative-type verbs or regular verbs depending on the adjective. Nouns, depending on whether or
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not they are deverbal, stand midway between the two in terms of their morphological
complexity. If a noun has been formed from a verb, it can actually turn out to be more complex
than some verb forms.
2.1
Particles
Particles are by definition generally invariable, serve grammatical or pragmatic purposes, and do
not belong to the main classes of words of a language (Loos et al. 2004), and in Onondaga they
are typically monomorphemic (Woodbury 2003). In Onondaga, the word class of particles
include many deictics, locationals, and two emphatic pronouns (the prounouns for ‘I/me’ and
‘you’), as exemplified in (1):
(1)
a.
nẽ:gẽh
this
‘this one’
b.
í?
I
‘I/me’
c.
tsha?
SUB
subordinator
(Woodbury 2003)
Woodbury also notes that some nouns may be analyzed as particles. She argues for this
classification for nouns that are onomatopoeic or imitative in origin, as well as noun forms which
are only ever seen in their noun form, and never take any kind of inflection nor incorporate into
nouns, for example:
(2)
a.
dahwisdahwís
snipe
‘snipe’ (kind of bird)
b.
o-nhé?d-a?
3SG.NUET.PAT-porcupine-NOUN
‘porcupine’
(Woodbury 2003:51)
It should be noted that certain nouns which Woodbury classifies as particles do appear to be
divisible by the normal conventions of morpheme divisibility, as has been done for the word for
‘porcupine’ in (2). Whether this morphological divisibility is valid is debatable, as Woodbury
notes, in that forms such as this are attested in these kinds of forms only, and having no
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comparison forms it is impossible to perform any kind of meaningful or informed segmentation
(Woodbury 2003:51).
2.2
Content Words
Onondaga content words, which includes the word classes of nouns and verbs, are composed of a
noun or verb root plus a number of slots into which morphemes are inserted:
Table 1: Structure of an Onondaga content word (Modified from Woodbury 2003:24)
affix
affix
root
affix
affix
This follows the general “Iroquoian template” of forming content words, as all of the other major
languages of the northern branch form words in this way. The number and kind of slot used
depends on whether the word is a noun or a verb.
3.
Inflection
Inflection is often a complicated process in Onondaga, due to the number of possible morphemes
in a verb form, and the fact that it is not a clear-cut process.
3.1
Inflection of particles
Particles, by definition, are generally not inflectible, however in Onondaga there are sporadic
cases, as in this demonstrative particle from (1) a.
(3)
nẽgẽh-áh
this-DIM
‘this specific one’
(Woodbury 2003:11)
3.2
Inflection of nouns
True nouns (i.e., not deverbal) are composed minimally of a noun root, a pronominal prefix and a
noun suffix. Enclitics, which tend to give prepositional information, are optional (modified from
Woodbury 2003:24):
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Table 2: Structure of an Onondaga noun
pronominal
noun root
noun suffix
(clitic)
For nouns, only the pronominal prefix position regularly inflects. Depending on the type of
pronoun used in this position, the word may be glossed as simply the noun meaning, or as
indicating possession:
(4)
a.
ganúhsa?
3SG.NEUT.ACT-house-NOUN
‘a house’
b.
ganuhsá?geh
3SG.NEUT.ACT-house-NOUN-CLIT
‘at/on the house’
c.
honúhsa?
3SG.MASC.PAT-house-NOUN
‘his house’
d.
gonúhsa?
3SG.FEM.PAT-house-NOUN
‘her house’
(Woodbury 2003)
3.3
Inflection of verbs
Verbs have eight morphological positions including the verb root, which in the literature are
referred to as “position classes”, and are numbered in Table 3 for convenience:
Table 3: Position classes in an Onondaga verb (Modified from Chafe 1996; Rudes 1999,
cited in Woodbury 2003:24, Table 8)
1
2
3
4
verb root
6
7
8
3.3.1 Position classes and discussion
Position class 1 inflects for “prepronominal” morphemes. These affixes inflect for various
meanings, including duality, negation, cislocation and translocation, as well as the so-called
modals (which indicate factuality, certainty, or possibility). Some of these affixes, such as
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negation, are undoubtedly derivational. As will be discussed, however, “inflection” is an unclear
term when referring to even regular morphological changes within some of the position classes,
including this one.
Position class 2, which is undoubtedly an inflectional position, is where pronominal
information is indicated with respect to a verb form. It is obligatory in every verb. Pronominals
inflect for a number of grammatical categories, including person and number, as well as for
syntactic information, including subjectivity and objectivity. Pronominals which indicate
syntactic information in this way can be morphologically opaque, in that there is no clear
morphological indication of agent or patient, as there is with pronouns which indicate only a
singular or plural subject. For example, in the word wa?há:ge? ‘he saw (it)’, the pronominal (in
bold) indicates a singular, masculine subject. However, in the pronominal (in bold) in the word
wa?huwá:ge? ‘he/she saw him’, there is no clear division between a possible ‘he’ or ‘she’
pronoun and a possible ‘him’ prounoun, based on the known forms for ‘he’, ‘she’, and ‘him’
(which in any case are completely different from each other); the entire meaning of ‘he/she to
him’ is included in the single morphological form -huwa-.
Position class 3, also arguably an inflectional position, inflects for reflexivity, as well as a
category referred to as “semireflexivity”. This position indicates the degree with which the
meaning of the verb root interacts with its subject.
Position class 4, arguably a derivational position, is where an incorporated noun root is
placed. Incorporated nouns are often the object of the verb form. See Woodbury (1975) for a
detailed discussion of noun incorporation in Onondaga, and Mithun (2009) for a general
description of the process in Mohawk, where she gives additional references.
Position class 5 is where the verb root itself is located.
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Position class 6 is where the “true” derivational morphemes are located. These morphemes
mark changes such as causation, dislocation, and reversion. They will be discussed on their own
in section 4.2 below.
Position class 7 inflects for aspectual information, and is the one other position class along
with pronominal information (position 2) which must obligatorily be present on every verb form.
Aspectual suffixes inflect for forms referred to as habitual, and stative.
Finally, position class 8 includes affixes referred to as “expanded aspect” suffixes, which
includes the progressive, as well as forms which allow the habitual and stative aspects of a verb
to be projected into the future or past. As mentioned, it is unclear whether some of the
morphemes in this class are purely inflectional or purely derivational, or a little of both.
Minimally, a verb must contain the root, plus a pronominal prefix and aspectual suffix,
(position classes 2 and 7). Not every position in a verb form must be filled in at once, but all
positions may be filled in some forms. Chafe (1970:21) suggests more than twenty different
“semantic inflections” for Onondaga verbs based on various combinations of the morphemes in
each position class. However, as mentioned, it is sometimes difficult to tease apart which affixes
and classes are purely inflectional or purely derivational based purely on their behaviour. It
might be more approporiate to say that certain affixes or classes are “mostly” inflectional, or
“mostly” derivational. For example, let us take another look at position class 1, the
prepronominal class.
Prepronominal morphemes may change to indicate various directional information. In this
case, we will look at the morpheme
TRANSLOCATION,
which indicates direction away from the
speaker or point of reference, and has various morphophonemic forms. The meaning of this
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morpheme is extremely regular within and across paradigms. For example, a paradigm can be
created with the verb form –atgatwahs ‘to be looking’:
(5)
a.
g-at-gátw-ahs
1SG.ACT-SEMIREF-look-HAB
‘I’m looking’
(Woodbury 2003)
b.
s-at-gátw-ahs
2SG.ACT-SEMIREF-look-HAB
‘you’re looking’
c.
h-at-gátw-ahs
3SG.MASC.ACT-SEMIREF-look-HAB
‘he is looking’
And so on. The prepronominal prefix
TRANSLOCATIVE
may be added to this paradigm, again,
with complete regularity in meaning:
(6)
a.
he-g-at-gátw-ahs
TRANS-1SG.ACT-SEMIREF-look-HAB
‘I’m looking that way/over there’
b.
he-s-at-gátw-ahs
TRANS-1SG.ACT-SEMIREF-look-HAB
‘you’re looking that way/over there’
(Woodbury 2003)
Additional verbs may be used to show the regularity in meaning change when applying this
morpheme:
(7)
ha?-d-e-ha-d-a?-nha?
TRANS-DU-FUT-3SG.MASC.ACT-stand-INCH-ASP
‘he will stand up over there’
However, this particular morpheme brings about a curious change when applied to the verb root
-adi- ‘to discard’.
(8)
a.
u-g-á:di-?
FACT-1SG.PAT-abandon/discard/throw-ASP
‘I threw it out (in the trash), I abandoned it, I discarded it’
b.
h-u-g-á:di-?
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TRANS-FACT-1SG.PAT-abandon/discard/throw-ASP
‘I threw it over there (e.g., a ball)’
(Woodbury 2003:1401)
The curious thing about the translocative morpheme in this case is that it does not bring about the
regular change in meaning that it did for the other verb forms. In this case it clearly changes the
meaning from ‘abandon or discard’ to ‘throw’. Etymologically, it is clear that the two verb forms
are related, and it is a (unfortunate?) fact that the English glosses for the two words both use the
word “throw”, as it further clouds the fact that these words, in spite of their superficial similarity,
appear to mean completely different things. This phenomenon is actually not unheard of in the
other Iroquoian languages, as I have gathered through informal discussions with Cayuga
speakers.
What, then, are we to make of this position class? At once it seems to inflect some verb
forms, and derive others. I have not come across a satisfactory answer to this process so far, and
perhaps more work is needed to precisely pin down the status of these morphemes.
4.
Derivation
Because nouns in Onondaga appear to be relatively morphologically “simple” relative to verbs in
the language, there is little to speak of in terms of noun derivation. The one place where nouns
do derive is when they are incorporated into verb roots, specifically adjectival roots. Verbal
derivation takes place within the position classes discussed.
4.1
Noun derivation and adjectives
It was difficult to find information regarding adjectival roots in Onondaga. This is thus my
attempt at piecing together what I could find.
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There is no way in Onondaga to derive from nouns in the way that English derives, say,
glorious from glory, as the dominant word type in the language is the verb, and verbal
derivations cover most of the parts of speech which in other languages would include adjectives,
adverbs, and verbs proper. However, there is one place where nouns can be modified. It’s
arguable whether this is nominal derivation or verbal derivation, but I place it here under
nominal derivation since the process seems to occur more often as a single process between noun
root and adjectival root, and does not often inflect or derive further.
Noun roots may often combine with roots which define an aspect of the noun, and which
could be called “adjective” roots. For example:
(9)
4.2
a.
ga-nuhs-es
3SG.NEUT.ACT-house-long
‘a longhouse’ or ‘the house is long’
b.
ga-nuhs-a-gæ:dah
3SG.NEUT.ACT-house-STEM.JOINER-light/white
‘a white house’ or ‘the house is white’
Verbal derivation
Derivation occurs undoubtedly in position classes 4 and 6 as described in Table 3, and as we
saw, it may also occur in other positions as well. Morphemes in position 6 indicate causation,
benefit, reversion, instrumentality, and dislocation, which modify the basic meaning of a verb
root, and can apply singly to the root itself, or in series to each other to derive further verb forms.
For example, in (10), the causative, benefactive and instrumental morphemes apply:
(10)
a.
u-de:-yes-t-a?
3SG.FEM.ACT-SEMIREF-study-CAUS-HAB
‘she learns’
b.
u-de:-yes-d-anik
3SG.FEM.ACT-SEMIREF-study-CAUS-BEN.HAB
‘she teaches’
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c.
u-de:-yes-d-akhw-a?
3SG.FEM.ACT-SEMIREF-study-CAUS-INSTR-HABITUAL
‘a school’ or ‘lessons’
4.2.1 Noun incorporation
A special case of derivation, specifically, noun incorporation, may also occur with verbs. Mithun
(2009) describes this process as compounding in her description of the same process in Mohawk.
Basically, incorporation is the process by which a noun root is brought into the verb complex.
The incorporated root is often the object of the verb incorporating it. The noun roots in (11) is
bolded.
(11)
a.
o-?geh-æ?
3SG.NEUT.PAT-dust-NOUN
‘dust’
b.
ha-?geh-e-t-a?
3SG.MASC.ACT-dust-fall-CAUS-HAB
‘he dusts’
(Woodbury 2003:998)
(Woodbury 2003:56)
5.
Cliticization
Clitics in Onondaga occur only at the end of a word. Verbs and nouns take identical clitics,
though they occur more frequently with nouns. Clitics apply directly to a noun or verb form,
without much regard to the morphology of the complex itself. This is in contrast to the rest of the
morphology, which has a strict positionality and order. Notice that of the two examples in (12),
the first one is morphologically a noun form, and the second is morphologically a verb form. The
first example is repeated here from (4) b.:
(12)
a.
ganuhsá?geh
3SG.NEUT.ACT-house-NOUN-CLIT
‘at/on the house’
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b.
u-de:-yes-d-akhw-a?-geh
3SG.FEM.ACT-SEMIREF-study-CAUS-INSTR-HAB-CLIT
‘to/at school’
References
Chafe, Wallace L. 1970. A semantically based sketch of Onondaga. Indiana University Publications in Anthropology and
Linguistics, Memoir 25. Bloomington.
Chafe, Wallace L. 1996. Sketch of Seneca, an Iroquoian language. In Handbook of North American Indians Volume 17:
Languages, ed. Ives Goddard, 551-579. Washington: Smithsonian Institution.
Loos, Eugene E., Susan Anderson, Dwight H. Day, Jr., Paul C. Jordan, and J. Douglas Wingate, eds. 2004. Glossary of linguistic
terms. http://www.sil.org/linguistics/GlossaryOfLinguisticTerms/
Mithun, Marianne. 2009. Iroquois: Mohawk. In The Oxford handbook of compounding, eds. Rochelle Lieber, and Pavol Stekauer.
New York: Oxford University Press.
Rudes, Blair A. 1999. Tuscarora-English, English-Tuscarora dictionary. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Woodbury, Hanni. 1973. Noun incorporation in Onondaga. Doctoral dissertation. Yale University.
Woodbury, Hanni. 2003. Onondaga-English English-Onondaga dictionary. London: University of Toronto Press.