Detail #439: Quasi-parts of speech and quasi-constituents and the Locus of the Abessive

Different languages are analyzed with different sets of parts of speech and constituents/parts of sentences. To some extent these boil down to grammatical traditions, but to a great extent they also boil down to actual grammatical phenomena. However, if we were to compare, say, Swedish and English, the differences are largely superficial: both descriptive traditions work with barely any modifications to describe either language. A trivial example: Swedish grammar tradition has "subjunctions", which in the English tradition are subsumed under "conjunctions". Subjunctions are words that introduce subclauses, i.e. subordinating conjunctions. A description of English would be marginally different if this concept was introduced.

In some languages, however, distinguishing adjectives from nouns - or adjectives from verbs in some other languages - makes way less sense. Applying such a distinction would be looking at it through a decidedly foreign lens. Sometimes, which part of speech a word belongs to is hard to pinpoint: a word may be both a verb and an adverb, or a noun and an adverb, or a noun and an adjective, etc.

A thing that interests me, however, are a variety of ways in which constituents and parts of speech may behave in ways that justify considering them some kind of quasi-PoS or quasi-constituent, constituents that show some kind of uniformity, but cut across other constituents.

One such example I have been sketching over recent months is what I chose to call "the locus of the abessive". This locus is marked by a certain case (which however also is used for some other constituents), but can appear as subjects, objects, indirect objects, possessors, possessums and other constituents. The abessive itself could also be considered a type of quasi-constituent.

The syntax of this entity gets complicated. First of all, the locus can be any of the following:

• topic
  
• subject: I miss her
  
• object: he deprived them of shelter
  
• indirect object: they gave him no food
• location: there is no joy in Aylesbury
• possessor: the orphan's mom
• possessum: the man's widow
• infinitives of various functions: there's no reason to hate him

What if the locus of the abessive could be coordinated over gaps, even when it isn't the same role? 'They deprived him of shelter and gave no food' would then have 'him' as the indirect object of 'gave'. This could get really tricky once possessors and possessums and infinitives start getting involved.

 

About Bryatesle and its relatives

About Bryatesle and its relatives

Bryatesle is a dialect continuum encompassing about 30 million native speakers. It is the lingua franca of about 40 million additional speakers, has a rich literature - fictional, scientific, philosophic, religious and instructional, in both poetic and prose forms - liturgies in multiple religions, songs, humor, word games, and a variety of other linguistic devices. Dialectal differences are sufficient that several ends of the dialect continuum are not mutually intelligible, but the standard forms of the language provide common ground for scholars, businessmen, clergymen, government officials and regular people.

Short history

The pre-historic connections between Bryatesle and its kin languages indicate a rather sudden expansion from the Dairwueh-Bryatesle urheimat about 3800 years before the present year (bpy), after a previous split from Sargalk.

Bryatesle tribes started forming city states sometimes roughly 1800 bpy, at which time also writing systems were adopted from Tatediem cultures to the south. Maritime and fluvial trade networks led to about 40 city states forming around the sea of Sadgal and the sea of Gudnyt as well as the great lake Pajik over the next 800 years. Expansion both east- and northwards included assimilation of some Cwarminoid and Tatediem populations. Westwards, Dairwueh tribes partially resisted Bryatesle expansion, partially stood as equal partners in trade and industry, partially stood in political unity, partially expanded onto Bryatesle areas. Several westwards city states in fact were bilingual, and conflicts were not necessarily as much between Dairwueh and Bryatesle, but rather between distinct alliances of dairwobryatesle states.

About 1200 years ago, a stronger political unity over the dairwobryatesle world emerged, with  Ykred emerging as a capital of sorts. This unity lasted 300 years, but after 200 years of dissolution and strife, the last 700 years have seen a somewhat less centralized, but still united dairwobryatesle world, now under the domination of the city-state Sţesar. Although some consolidation of the various standard Bryatesle dialects has occurred due to improved communications, significant differences persist.

Geoculturopolitically, there are occasional confrontations with the Ćwarmin civilization to the east. In the far east, the Ŋʒädär have some trade relations with the Dairwuobryatesle. Southwards, we find the Tatediem engaging in trade, diplomacy, proselytization and sometimes war.

Related languages

The Sargalk-Bryatesle-Dairwueh family consists of the following languages and major dialects (italicized)

• The Hefnarač-Sargaĺk Branch
• The Sargaĺk branch
• Sargaĺk
• northern Sargaĺk
• Inraj Sargaĺk
• Geʔamik †
• Tudiluk †

• The Hefnarač branch
• Hefnarač
• Sindeʔʔet †
• Bidlahʔa †
• The Rilgouz branch
• Simiz †
• Rilgouz
• The Adrk languages
• Adrk
• Tarts †
• Vimil
• The Dairwueh-Bryatesle Branch
• The Dairwueh Branch
• Dairwueh
• Western
• Central
• Bundur
• Vist †
• Kappeuje †
• The Nerazg Branch †
• The Bryatesle Branch
• Northern
  
• Bryatesle
• Western Tarist
• Southern
• Tarist
• Kurelwai †
• Trinzlye †

The Hefnarač-Sargaĺk Branch

The Hefnarač-Sargaĺk branch consists of three extant languages, Hefnarač, Sargaĺk and Inraj Sargaĺk. , Inraj Sargaĺk is moribund, with about 500 speakers. Hefnarač and Sargaĺk each have about 20 000 speakers, but language change towards Dairwueh and Cwarmin are weakening them both. More extinct languages are hinted at from old sources. Geʔamik, Tudiluk, Sindeʔʔet and Bidlahʔa have all gone extinct during the last 100 years. Small word lists for about a dozen other languages that probably were also related have been compiled by scholars and missionaries. The time-depth of the relation between Hefnarač and Sargaĺk is probably on the order of 3500 years or more. The most recent common ancestor between Hefnarač-Sargaĺk and Dairwueh-Bryatesle is probably about 4500 years ago or more.

The Rilgouz Branch

The Rilgouz languages are spoken on islands west of the main Dairwueh lands. The total number of Rilgouz speakers probably is about two million, with Adrk and Vimil having about 3000 each. Whether these languages diverged earlier or later than the HS/BD split is unclear, and even then it is a bit unclear which branch they diverge from: there are isoglosses that pair any two of the three branches, exclude the third - both for sound changes, semantic changes and grammar changes. There even are lexemes that single-handedly occupy conflicting isoglosses.

The Dairwueh branch

An overwhelming amount of shared innovations indicate that the Dairwueh and Bryatesle branches are closely related, having diverged at most 3500 years ago. Dairwueh and Bundur separated about 1500 years ago, Vist and Kappeuje were arguably divergent dialects that have since merged into Dairwueh leaving substratal traces.

The Nerazg branch

A few moribund languages with clearly para-Dairwueh/para-Bryatesle features have been assigned into this family. Research is ongoing, but the evidence is unclear.

 

The Bryatesle branch

Bryatesle's nearest living relative is Western Tarist, which diverged under the last 1000 years or so. Trinzlye and the southern branch encompassing Tarist and Kurelwai diverged about 1500 years ago, only to see Kurelwai mostly assimilate back into Tarist (but also to some extent into Bryatesle).

Trinzlye was largely assimilated into Dairwueh, where it has left some traits as well.

Arguably, there is a dialect continuum between Bryatesle and Western Tarist.

Detail #438: Split Marked Nominative

Split Marked Nominative is a phrase that struck me out of the blue, and I felt like it needs a post. However, let's begin by looking at something slightly related.

We'll start, as usual, with Finnish. Because that's where some pretty crazy stuff can be found. Finnish, in some sense, has a "split marked accusative" system. But first, we need to disentangle the Finnish differential object and subject system:

Finnish marks existential subjects (but also objects) by the partitive. Existential verbs tend to be intransitive, so this doesn't affect the object marking much.

Finnish marks atelicity or negativity by having the object in the partitive case. Thus, only telic, positive verb phrases have the object in the accusative.

Now on to the "split marked accusative". First: plural accusatives and pronominal accusatives have no split: -t all the way (for nouns, -t is the nom/acc plural marker, for pronouns, -t is the accusative marker). For singulars, however, if the verb licenses a nominative subject, the noun is in the marked accusative (identical to the genitive). If the verb licenses no nominative subject, however, it is in the unmarked accusative. (Certain auxiliaries require a genitive subject, and e.g. the passive has no subject in Finnish - the object isn't raised to subject. Also, imperatives license no nominative subject.)

 

Now, on to the split marked nominative. In case the atypical constructions require the nominative marking, I think it would be better to describe it by some other term - e.g. quirky case. However, if the nominative marker is present in standard transitive and intransitive clauses, and only get dropped in some contexts, calling it "split marked nominative" makes more sense. If e.g. pronouns keep their nominative in all contexts, and maybe some other markers (optional quantifiers, demonstratives, etc) also signal nominative, this should be good.

So, now, where does the nominative go less marked or unmarked?

• subclauses
• with certain auxiliaries
• (negative) existential statements?
• with certain types of subjects? (E.g. proper nouns or mass nouns or something?)
• Certain TAMs?

How would a system like this come about? I guess a simple grammaticalization path would be "degenerate ergativity".

Regulations of Minor Dairwuo-Bryatesle Religions

The Dairwuo-Bryatesle communities are religiously dominated by a rather powerful "conglomerate" of religions, a dozen organized monotheisms forming a sort of religious "alliance". This alliance regulates and smooths the interaction of rather diverse religions under a single religious umbrella - imagine if all of the abrahamic religions had one pope, and lived in a weird denial about the fact that they're pretty different.

This might seem to be a peaceful and tolerant arrangement, but the system does maintain a variety of oppressive practices. Among these, we find the treatment of minor religions.

The minor religions of the Dairwuo-Bryatesle word are generally regional religions that predate the spread of the main flavours of DB religion. Some of them clearly are related to some of the modern religious communities, others less so. However, in order to maintain religious peace, we find a variety of regulations that various local rulers have instituted.

We find a variety of rather different types of rules as well as approaches to rules, which after codification often have remained in effect for more than five centuries. Some rules are clearly capricious, intended to circumscribe the lives of the minority religions. Some are based on misunderstandings - e.g. the legate of the empire has banned something under the impression that it's important for the community, yet it turns out it never was of any significance. Sometimes, sympathetic legates have ruled in ways that enforce the minority religion's rules, i.e. giving imperial sanction to the community's rules for itself. Sometimes, this too has been based on misunderstandings - but due to the nature of the negotiations, the minority religions' voices seldom were heard very well.

The leaders - oftentimes an inherited position - are afforded some of the respect of a major religion's middle-level clergy, but not all of it. Inherited leaders tend to be seen as comparable to noblemen, whereas leaders who are chosen by other means - meritocratically, democratically, randomly, or in some other way, are usually afforded less respect by surrounding communities.

Primarily, all of these movements are banned from proselytizing, and their practitioners may not ascend to any (higher) public office. Additionally, noblemen may not join them. Only a handful of noble families are members of minor religions.

As they often are ethnoreligions (or even 'subtribal religions'), not all of them even accept converts in the first place. Further restrictions on conversion may exist:

• In the south, it is common for members of the minor religions to be forbidden from converting to major religions. This does strengthen these religions' viability over time, but was for some reason understood as a punishment by the rulers instituting this rule.
• In the north, rules for conversion w.r.t. minor religions vary strongly:
• Kmusre ves is only permitted to accept female converts. This is an intentional legal irony, as kmusre ves only really is a religion practiced by men.
• Members of nybritmu ves may only convert to the major nukper movement; however, a convert's offspring is not considered nukper, and must thus personally convert as well. This continues for as many generations as anyone can remember that someone's of nybritmu origin.
  
• Telat ves may not convert, but they may convert an infant of theirs to the kenoper religion.
• Sadres ves can accept converts - but conversion must be for a span of five generations, i.e. the sixth generation reverts to the ancestral religion.
• Several minor religions may accept converts from other minor religions, but must never accept a member of a major religion.
• Tilib ves, a religion that does not really have a notion of conversion, must accept a freed slave if he wants to convert. This regulation seems to be inserted purely due to the great disdain which the tilib doctrine holds for slaves and non-tilib.
  

Ritual rules also may apply:

• The tagrum uis may not own horses, nor use them in either ritual or professional contexts, unless ordered to do so by a non-tagrum.
• This has led to the tagrum breeding donkeys into ever more horse-like breeds.
• During the horse plagues of the seventh and tenth centuries, donkeys seem to have been way more resistent to the plague. Donkeys derived from the tagrum donkey population became an important export.
• The kmusre ves and the nybritmu ves are both under restrictions on fasting; fasting is an important religious expression in many areas, and the restrictions are thus:
• Any spontaneous fasting must be at least nine days long.
  
• The calendarically fixed fasts may not be longer than one day.
  
• Since a nine-day fast is very strenuous, the kmusre ves and the nybritmu ves have both gone in for not having spontaneous fasts at all. 
• Since fasts are seen as a way to call upon God to reduce a calamity, they often are used in times of plagues, which of course weakens the immune system. After several plagues, religious leaders realized that the kmusre ves and nybritmu ves had better survival rates than other religious communities: the restriction was scrapped, and I am happy to tell you that the nybritmu ves and kmusre ves are now permitted to fast spontaneously during times of plague.
• The southern Daster uis may only perform ritual magic for pay for members of major religions;the northern Isam ves may only perform ritual magic for members of minor religions.
• Numbate uis may not change their religious narratives or their rituals: for this reason, local officials have paid scholars to document their beliefs and practices as carefully as possible, and enforce orthodoxy and orthopraxy from the outside of the religion.
• Tavan ves may not commit any of their religion to paper, except for the bits that are present in the accords with the empire.
• The kmusre ves and the nybritmu ves both have restrictions on them that permit their priests from offering certain sacrifices to certain gods at certain times. These restrictions are specific to the clergy of each religion. The workaround that tends to be used is that nybritmu clergy perform the kmusre ves sacrifices and vice versa.
• Members of Telat ves may not talk of their religious beliefs if asked by an outsider. The law requires that they answer "I am forbidden by decree from the empire to speak of such things." Songs that are sung in public may only allude to their beliefs and never say them outright.
  
• Several of the religions may be forced to attend a major religion's house of worship once a year
• The numbate uis are forced to attend a Kindaper temple, but at a special event where no kindaper laity are present. The kindaper clergyman will generally berate the numbate uis for a while. Liberal kindaper clergymen may just go "nice, you're here, so, uh, wanna leave now?". Some really steadfastly chauvinist kindaper clergymen may "forget" to attend, leaving the numbate uis in a sort of legal limbo: they have no witness to prove that they attended, and they are legally mandated to do so.
  
• The daster uis must send contingents that have a progression through a lirbexper temple during service, singing certain traditional songs (that contradict daster uis beliefs).
• The kmusre ves must be at the far back of the migdaper assembly halls, but are overseen by a  clergyman to sign off that they were present.
  

Rules on religious buildings may exist:

• Tavan ves may not repair their religious buildings (but they may build new ones)
• Kmusre ves may not build new religious buildings (but may repair them, and may reappropriate buildings that have had other uses)
• Daster uis may not have religious buildings at all.
• The rules on where the religious buildings may be built are rather strict, as well as generally demanding them to be small, inconspicuous and humble. 

Rules on interacting with the civil society, with  the army, and several other such concepts exist:

• Military:
  
• Some religions must form their own minor armies to fight for the empire.
• Some are entirely forbidden from organizing armed groups.
• Some have mandatory quotas for military service.
• Justice system:
• Some are permitted to have their own courts in minor matters.
• Some are required to
  
•  Civil society
• The minor religions are mandated to keep a constant "census" of their members, and these books generally are considered "holy" in all of these religions.
  

 

 

Conreligions Checklist III: Scripture, Language, Sex

•  Scripture
• What function does it have?
• Laws?
• Moral guidance?
• Ritual praxis?
  
• Just-so stories?
• Philosophical consideration?
• Philosophical speculation?
• Explaining "historical" causes?
  
• Devotional praxis?
• Beliefs?
• A record of agreements?
• Who are the parties?
• Supernatural beings?
• Tribes?
• Families, dynasties, states?
• Individuals?
• Religious parties?
  
• Local records of families and recent history?
• Scripture whose physical form has a ritual function
• The Torah scrolls in the synagogue service
• The small Torah verses in the mezuzah and tefillin
• Scripture whose physical form has a borderline magic function
  
• Swearing oaths "on the Bible"
• Carrying the Bible as some form of talisman
• Opening the Bible at random and parsing the first verse you see as providing the answer to your quandary
• The mezuzah, again, can be seen as borderline magic in some of its claimed effects among orthodox Jews
  
• Scripture as a sufficient "blueprint" to the religion vs. as only a part  of the blueprint
• In protestantism, sola scriptura has sometimes been an important principle, but it's also a principle that has always been curtailed in various ways. I think the standard now is "sola scriptura is sufficient for salvation, but church tradition is important for the actual day-to-day life of the church", even in churches that deny the existence of a church tradition.
  
• How is it read?
• Is it read in the vernacular, or in a specific language?
• Are there especially respected translations (e.g. Jewish targumim, periphrastic translations into aramaic)
  
• Read in public?
• ... in private?
• ... in study sessions?
• ... with a friend?
  
• ... carefully and deliberately while thinking deeply?
• ... meditatively?
• ... to ascertain its meaning?
• ... just to hear its words (as a form of music, almost)?
• ... is it read in a singing manner?
• ... as prayer?
  
• ... is its surface meaning held to be the only meaning? How much meaning can a creative reader insert?
• How uniform is it?
• ... as far as genre goes?
• ... linguistically?
• ... are the authors even adherents of a single religion, or do they vary strongly in beliefs?
• ... is it a compilation of books? Of even shorter texts? Of poems? Of sermons?
• Are the authors necessarily considered supernaturally inspired? All of them?
• Symbolic language
• Do the authors use symbolic language to encode meanings? E.g. numerology, etc.
• Is it canonized?
• Is there multiple levels of scripture of differing levels of sacredness/authoritativeness?

In Islam, the Quran is accepted in its entirety; however, it is permissible to question the authenticity of hadiths, and different schools (madhhab) accept different hadiths as authentic. The compilations of hadiths are so important for islam that they undoubtedly can be considered a type of scripture.

In Judaism, the Torah is clearly the crown of scripture. The Mishnah, the Gemara, the Tosefta, the Talmud, the siddurs, the various midrashes, the Zohar form a somewhat nebulous family of texts of some level of sacredness.

 

In some forms of Christianity, not only the Bible, but also the hymnal has been ascribed almost magical powers. Same goes for the catechismus.

• Are believers expected to read or at least be familiar with the content?
• Is some content only meant for some members?
• Is it even feasible for a member to read all the scripture? (In times before the printing press and industrial paper mills, this might not only be an issue due to lack of time.)
•  How is it produced?
• Printed? 
• Copied by hand?
• In monasteries?
• By a specialist caste?
• By professional scribes?
• Haphazardly, and in secret? (In case of a very persecuted religion)
• Here, scribal mistakes become a very real and interesting factor.
• The Jewish scribal tradition has a lot of interesting ways of mitigating scribal mistakes over time (imperfect ways, but nevertheless, ways). I have seen the claim that scribal traditions are among the most "esoteric" in all of Judaism.
  
• Language
• To what extent has the religion affected the language?
• Names! Especially when a religion is imported into a culture it easily can bring a lot of names along.
  
• In countries of Christian culture, several plants may have names from the religion, here are those I know of:
  
• parsley (Petersilie, Persilja, etc - named for Saint Peter)
• carob is known as "John's bread" in several languages, due to a story of John the Baptist living off carob.
• Saint John's wort
• Aron's rod, Jacob's ladder
  
•  holidays serve well as waypoints in time, which of course affects language. Not to mention that our names of months as well as weekdays originate in religions that either are extinct or are very small minorities today.
• Religious terminology may go through semantic shifts
  
• in my dialect of Swedish, "välsigna sig" (to bless oneself) has come to mean 'to relax a moment', mostly in idioms along the line of "didn't have time to bless himself".
• religious buildings may figure frequently in sayings ("så jä ä jir i världen millan tjörtjon å kvärnen" - thus it is here in the world between the church and the mill")
• religious functionaries, books, etc may figure in figures of speech as well
• Religions easily bring along a lot of terminology when a population changes language, or a religion is spread to a new language - c.f. how Germanic languages adopted a lot of religious, latin terminology in medieval times (here, the population converted), or how Yiddish conserves a lot of hebraisms and aramaisms (and there, the population changed language but kept the religion).
• Cussing often has a religious component, likewise greetings, insults and other formalized utterance types.
• Linguistic taboos may also be religiously informed.
• In a religion with scripture (or memorized narratives), the understanding of the meaning of the text may change as the language changes. I have encountered people whose understanding of the Bible is far from the understanding that the translators of it expressed in the language of their time, yet these people believe their understanding is the sole acceptable understanding - this due to the language having changed since their translations were made.
• The other way around, a religion may hold a certain language to be somehow "closer to reality" than other languages. I.e. the language has the true names of things (or whatever). In such a case, that language may be the main language used in ritual and in magic, even non-sanctioned such. The idea that language and reality have a much closer relationship than most modern people would hold was very common all the way to the 18th century.
• In such a world view, puns can be significant indicators of the nature of things.
• Sex
• Religion isn't only anti-sex, and it isn't only modern religions that are pro-sex. However, sex and religion does deserve some attention, and the various attitudes towards sex also deserve being considered in the light of historical health concerns.
  
• Restricting sex isn't all that dumb in a context where pregnancy very often leads to death.
• Control of sex is sensible in a context where resources are scant.
•  Restrictions on what types of sex, or even what kinds of positions are common.
• E.g. the Catholic church, orthodox churches, some protestants, most (all orthodox?) muslims ban anal sex. Bans on oral sex exist in several Christian movements.
  
• Some rabbis in the Talmud considered anal sex banned for non-Jews, but permissible for Jews.
•  Ethnoreligions need sex. Ethnicities go extinct if they don't have sex.
• The skoptsi considered the breasts and the testicles to be the forbidden fruit, which Adam and Eve had grafted onto their bodies. Devoted skoptsi would get castrated (or surgically remove the breasts and the labia). Various levels of extreme removal of genitals took place. The sect survived for over a century, potentially even 200 years. Somehow this says something about Russia, and I am not sure what.
  
• E.g. Jewish law mandates that the husband satisfy his wife's sexual needs, and some such demands are also expressed in the ketubah - the wedding contract.
• Rabbinic Judaism considers the sabbath especially good for sex; some movements of Christianity have considered children born on sunday to be proof that the parents were sinful (by having sex on sunday - the assumption being that a child always would be born on the same weekday as it was sired. Yes, people have believed that kind of thing). At least some karaite Jews forbid sex on the sabbath.
  
• Orthodox Judaism and Islam ban sex during (and for a while after) menstruation; a cleansing ritual is undergone after the time has passed. Some modern, liberal feminist Jewish thinkers have adopted this tradition for interesting reasons, e.g. the sexlessness for a couple of weeks (followed by two weeks with sex) can apparently be healthy for a relationship. Others, of course, see this as misogynistic and anti-female.
  
• I don't think there's much reason to write much about religious views on homosexuality here - there's variation there as well, although the pagan religions of antiquity probably didn't conceive of homosexuality as any kind of "romantic partnership" either. However, certainly a religion could have a modern view.
  
• I have seen the claim that in the Talmud, the rabbis are a bit unsure if a wife who is unfaithful with a woman actually has committed adultery. I have tried finding this discussion, but to no avail.
• Interestingly enough, even religions whose traditions and ethics basically leave the question open (or even can be construed with little to no effort to be decidedly pro-LGBTQ) seem to tend to have conservative groups who will be negative. Sikhism is one example. There's also a fair share of anti-LGBTQ Hindus, despite the fact that Hindu gods are pretty much omnisexual.
• In many shamanic religions, the shamans are somewhat intersex. Chukchi shamans use the female phonology. It is common for shamans throughout Siberia to dress femininely. I think I've seen similar claims re: American shamans as well.
  
• Celibacy, either temporary or permanent, for a variety of groups. Various possible causes!
• Fear that clergy would distribute church property among offspring / as inheritance.
• A way of avoiding priestly dynasties.
• This might reduce the risk of secular rulers finding the church a threat?
• This might reduce the risk for upper echelons in the church w.r.t. lower echelons.
• Various possible effects!
• People whose sexual identity is slightly unusual might find the celibate role attractive, and therefore pursue becoming a priest/monk/nun.
• There's also dark possibilities here, very much realized in the real world as well.
  
• The celibate priest also is somewhat "outside" of the gender norms, and thus in some sense also similar to the shamans mentioned above.
• Ritualized sex
• Ritualization also generally entails some kind of "sacredness" of whatever you ritualize, and sacred things generally have restrictions on them.
• Now, "ritual sex" might sound naughty and all, but might be something as simple as a married couple, when having sex, doing some minor boring ritual before or after (e.g. saying a blessing or lighting a candle - or blowing out a candle)
• It might also, however, be a ritual where sex is part of the ritual and done in order to achieve some supernatural effect.
  

Detail #438: Pronouns that behave differently

I didn't find a good heading for this, so an explanation is in order.

English actually provides a morphological example of this idea:

he | she | you
him | her | you
his | her | your
his | hers | yours

So, each of these three pronouns conflate some form that a different pronoun distinguishes. But what other fields besides morphology could we have different behaviors in the pronouns?

1. Purely word-order based differences

Maybe the masculine and feminine pronouns (or the plurals or whatever) behave differently in the vicinity of adpositions, verbs or other nouns, consider a language where these were the only way of expressing possession:

the car of his
her car

i.e. the car of hers / his car would not be on the table

This, I think, is a fairly probable difference that I would not be surprised to find even in some Indo-European language, and at the very least as a statistical piece of grammar (i.e. "SOV for masculine pronoun objects 80% of the time, SVO 20%, and for feminine pronoun objects it's 60% vs. 40%). In my dialect of Swedish, I am also fairly sure that NOUN POSS (where POSS is possessive pronoun) is more common for a few pronouns, and POSS NOUN is more common for a few others.

2. Referential scope

The anaphoric properties of pronouns can be an interesting aspect of grammar. One could consider a language where the properties of masculine and feminine pronouns (or neuter pronouns or whatever) are distinct. Here are some examples of possible differences:

2.1 Implicit references

In some sense, the Swedish, German, Russian and Ukrainian  'it' (det, es, это, це)  all seem to behave slightly different from the other third person pronouns, in that they sometimes clearly have non-neuter reference, and also are used to refer in somewhat implicit ways. I have no better way of phrasing what I mean by "implicit ways", but the example here should suffice:

Vem är det? Det är min bror. (Who is it? It is my brother. Not "he is my brother".)

I am pretty sure similar use of the neuter pronoun beyond a strict neuter reference is permissible in many other slavic and germanic languages as well. I would not be surprised if this also holds for modern Greek as well as any other IE languages that have not lost the neuter.

2.2 Syntactical binding

In Old High German, 'sein' could be reflexive as well as third person masculine in general; thus, 'he sees his car' could be either the car of the subject or of some other third person. 'she sees his car' could be either the car of the subject or of some other third person. 'she sees her car' could only be the car of some other female third person.

2.3 Use with underspecified reference

In several languages, masculine pronouns can be used when the gender of the referent is unclear. In some languages, neuter is used in some circumstances when the reference further is somewhat unclear.

3. Restrictions on usage / licensing / resumptive use

One could imagine a language where one particular pronoun can be used resumptively for any gender, or conversely, that one of the genders require resumptive use but the other doesn't.

Certain verbs could also have restrictions on which pronouns may stand as various arguments, such that a noun that would be referred to by a 'forbidden' pronoun must stand in full, e.g.

she [culturally specific verb that has a restriction on pronoun]-ed him

* he [culturally specific verb that has a restriction on pronoun]-ed her

John [culturally specific verb that has a restriction on pronoun]-ed her

Certain prepositions might not permit the use of one of the pronouns, or some distinctions may be conflated with one - or a three-way distinction might be two-way for any given pronoun (i.e. masculine conflates meanings 1 and 2, feminine conflates meanings 2 and 3). 

4. Pro-drop

Conditions on pro-drop might well apply differently.

Split Ergative details in Proto-Cwarmin

 Although Cwarmin itself has very little in ways of ergativity, most languages of the same branch keep some split ergative features of slightly unusual kinds.

Possessed subjects

In Cwarmin, the possessive suffixes are nearly fully lost, with a few lexicalized retentions - both adverbs and nouns - where they have no function, as well as the reflexively possessed object case. In Proto-Cwarmin, there were two sets of (partially overlapping) suffixes: nominative ones and oblique ones. The nominative ones were applied to the nominative stem, the oblique ones on to either the oblique stem or on to case desinences.

However, in Proto-Cwarmin, the nominative possessive suffixes were almost exclusively used with transitive subjects and complements of intransitive verbs. The accusative stem and the oblique suffixes - obscuring the accusative morpheme itself - together formed a sort of absolutive case.

This situation still is - at least partially - the case in Ræsm^jin^j, Ətimin and Atami. In Atami, the ergative patterning only holds with first or second person possessors. In Ræsm^jin^j there is now only one set of suffixes - stemming from the oblique ones - but for a handful of nouns and pronouns that stand with possessive suffixes, the ergative pattern holds and is visible due to morphophonemic traces of the accusative vs. nominative stem. Conservative dialects of Ətimin keep the proto-Cwarmin possession marking system intact, other dialects have either generalized the absolutive or the ergative form as subject.

Constructions that don't license subjects

- infinitive marking (poss suffixes), verb nouns and negative unmarked infinitives

Possessive suffixes on infinitives and verb nouns correlated with the object of transitive verbs or the subject of intransitives. An antipassive form whose possessive suffix correlated with the subject existed.

Negative infinitives had the transitive subject in the genitive, and the nominative served an absolutive role. Atami keeps this for the negative infinitives.

Verbs of perception and causatives

Even though the verb congruence was nom-acc-like, the transitive subject of verbs of perception tended to be marked with dative, and the object with nominative. This is kept in Ətimin and Atami.

- passive causatives - (nom v for intransitives, gen nom v for transitives)

Causatives and passive causatives are fairly commonly used in Cwarminoid languages. For active causatives, the causee was generally in the genitive, and the embedded object was in the aaccusative. The proto-Cwarmin system survives in Atami.

Verb-noun complements

Verbal complements of subjects of transitive verbs take a postposed short copula, all other complements take the nominative complement case. Ətimin has slightly rearranged this, but the ergative distribution of it still holds, now with the short copula replaced by an instrumental case marker.