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Commentary on Crowley
Chapter 7
Grammatical, Semantic and
Lexical Change
PART II
Morphosyntactic Alignment
The system used to distinguish between the arguments of
transitive verbs and those of intransitive verbs, which can be
made morphologically (through grammatical case or verbal
agreement), syntactically (through word order), or both, is
called Morphosyntactic Alignment.
(From Wikipedia article approved by Instructor)
Bernard Comrie’s system
Categories: S, A, O
S = subject of intransitive
A = agent of transitive
O = logical object of transitive
Accusative and Ergative Case
Marking Systems
S
A
O
Accusative and Ergative Case
Marking Systems
S
Accusative
A
O
Accusative and Ergative Case
Marking Systems
S
Ergative
A
O
English as Accusative Language
He wept.
He threw the ball.
Somebody loves him.
He is S.
He is A.
Him is O.
S and A are the same:
O is a different:
He
Him
Nomenclature: Accusative languages mark the O (accusative
case) differently than S and A.
Hypothetical ŋinlish as Ergative Language
He wept.
Him threw the ball.
Somebody loves he.
He is S.
Him is A.
He is O.
S and O are the same:
A is a different:
He
Him
Nomenclature: Ergative languages mark the A (ergative case)
differently than S and O (called absolutive case).
Many ergative languages mark the A
(ergative) case with nominal affixes, cf.
Crowley p. 137.
Mali-ju majgal-u mala ȡ:mȡam buma-ni. A, O
the
man the child hit-past
‘The man hit the child.’
Mala bajgal gaware-:la.
the man
run-present
S
‘The man runs.’
Mali-ju ȡ:mȡam-bu mala bajgal ɲa:-ni
the
child the man see-past
‘The child saw the man.’
A, O
How English could become ŋinlish
English: I saw him; I was seen by him ; I ran.
A O ; S<O Obl.A<A ; S
(A and S are marked the same; O is different; passive is stylistic option.)
 loss of active voice; loss of preposition by marking A case. (Crowley, p. 140)
ŋinlish: I see-n him;
O
I ran. (Transl: ‘He saw me; I ran.’)
A ; S
(O and S are marked the same; A is different; no stylistic option is available.)
How ŋinlish changed to ŋishnil by evolving an
antipassive construction
Antipassive as stylistic option in ŋishnil
ŋinlish: I see-n him; I ran. (Transl: ‘He saw me; I ran.’)
O
A ; S
(O and S are marked the same; A is different; no stylistic option)
ŋishnil: I see-n him; I see-n at him; I ran. (Transl: ‘He saw me;
O
A ; S<O Obl<A; S
I saw (looked) at him; I ran.’)
(O and S are marked the same; A is different; no stylistic option is available.)
Antipassive
Many ergative languages develop a stylistic transformation called
antipassive.
ŋinlish would change to ŋishnil when it started employing intransitive
sentence structures with semantically transitive verbs, e.g. I love to him
(S__PP). This structure provides a stylistic alternative to the basic
ergative structure He love-n me (O__A) meaning ‘I love him’, but with a
different nuance.
Back to the future: Ergative to
Accusative Shift
Ergative languages with an antipassive construction can change
into accusative languages. (The majority of the world’s
languages are accusative, by the way.)
The change can be triggered in many ways sociolinguistically
speaking, e.g. marriage exchanges occur among speakers of
the two language types.
All it takes is for children to start dropping the preposition in
the antipassive construction: I love to you  I love you...
S
PP
S
O
Ergative to accusative shift
... and then when the children reanalyze the new I love you
construction as the ‘basic’ transitive structure: AVO
This co-ops the erstwhile ergative structure, forcing it to
disappear, or undergo re-analysis as a mere stylistic option,
i.e. as a passive.
Before the reanalysis: I love-n him = ‘He loves me.’
After the reanalysis: I love-n him = ‘I am loved (by) him.’
And so, after perhaps 10,000 years
of morpho-syntactic change, the
language may end up, typologically,
right back where it started.
7.1 Typology and Grammatical
Change
 Morphological types (4)
 Accusative and ergative languages
 Basic constituent order
 Verb chains
Word Order variety in an inflecting
language (Latin example re-visited)
Marcellus amat Sophiam.
Sophiam Marcellus amat.
Amat Marcellus Sopham.
Sophiam amat Marcellus.
‘Marcus loves Sophia.’
Totally free Word Order w/o noun
inflections is not found.
SVO
~SOV
~OSV
~OVS
~VSO
~VOS
I like fish.
I fish like.
Fish I like.
Fish, like, I.
Like, I, fish.
Like fish I.
John loves Mary.
John, Mary loves.
Mary, John loves.
Mary, loves, John
Loves, John, Mary
Loves Mary, John
No language has this kind of free word order.
Instead, languages that can settle on a basic order,
can reduce nominal case marking.
Lg A: SVO
Lg B: SOV
Lg C: OSV
Lg D: OVS
Lg E: VSO
Lg F: VOS
GLOSS
I like fish.
I fish like.
Fish I like.
Fish like I.
Like I fish.
Like fish I.
‘I like fish.’
John loves Mary.
John, Mary loves.
Mary John loves.
Mary loves John
Loves John Mary
Loves Mary John
‘John loves Mary.’
So where did all the variety come
from?
I thought Chomsky said all
languages were at bottom the
same?!
Word Order Change
SOV  SVO  VSOVOS  OVSOSV  SOV
very rare, once thought to be non-existent
PIE > English
SOV > SVO
How did this change come about?
In modern German, main clauses are SVO but embedded
clauses are SOV.
The explanation: German retains the PIE pattern in
embedded clauses, but has changed to SVO in main clauses,
whereas English has changed all sentences to SVO.
English and German word order
Ich liebe dich. ‘I love you.’
Wo ist das Mädchen das ich liebe? ‘Where is the girl that I love?’
Wo is das Mädchen das ich lieben soll? ‘Where is the girl that I should
love?’ (that I love should)
Wo is das Mädchen das ich auf die Strasse gesehen haben soll? ‘Where is
the girl that I supposedly saw on the street?’ (that I on the street seen
have should)
7.1 Typology and Grammatical
Change
 Morphological types (4)
 Accusative and ergative languages
 Basic constituent order
Verb chains
Verb Chains (also called Serial
Verbs)
The closest English has to these is perhaps found in a series of modals and
auxiliaries:
He might have been being chased by a lion.
English also allows limited verb serializing with begin and infinitives.
The children began crying to see the injured animals.
Melanau pariphrastic passive
As seen earlier, Melanau dialects employ the adversative verb ‘touch’ as
auxiliary followed by a verb root in a passive construction.
Belawi: Talak idun kənah rusuk ŋan abaw puyan.
touch wash
‘The dishes were washed with kitchen ashes.’
Some languages take this farther.
They allow several lexical verbs in a construction, perhaps because
conjunctions can be freely deleted syntactically.
Crowley (p. 144) says that most languages exploiting this possibility
are SOV.
Verb serialization allows sentences to be constructed SOV(V)n
Na-bu-wul-cay-pra-kiak.
him-they-frighten-try-come-passing
‘They tried to scare him (when he) came passing.’
End of Section 7.1 – Typology and
Grammatical Change
 Morphological types (4)
 Accusative and ergative languages
 Basic constituent order
 Verb chains
TO BE CONTINUED