Detail #383: A Tiny Idea about Mixed Alignments

All the low-hanging fruit regarding mixed alignments and alignment in general probably already has been picked (and even cooked into marmalade) by now, but this one has eluded that grasp.

So, consider a system of split alignment whereby the split is conditioned on something like TAM; the usual is of course that present, imperfect, realis, ... are nom-acc, and perfective, past, etc... are absolutive-ergative.

Now, there's an obvious twist to add here: lexical exceptions. A few verbs may have nom-acc in all TAMs, alternatively a few may have erg-abs in all TAMs; possibly, you may have both these in parallel.

Of course, there could also be a separate set of systems that enforce splits anyway: e.g. subclauses might still always have erg-abs, or maybe first person always enforces nom-acc, despite the lexical exceptions.

And finally, of course, over the life-span of a language or the territory over which it is spoken, verbs may migrate from type to type, giving dialectal and historical variation!

Detail #364: Inverse Case Marking

Something that looks sort of vaguely like this if you squint really hard is attested in real languages, but let's make a more distilled form of it. Consider the most core case distinction in many languages - nominative vs. everything else. Some nouns are more likely to be subjects whenever both a subject and some other NP is present, some are more likely to be objects. We basically get a subjecthood hierarchy, which quite probably is not very unlike an animacy hierarchy.

I imagine that this language has but two cases, and the case of the direct object is also used with adpositions and for any oblique uses. Possession could go any which way, maybe with the subject case being the genitive case as well.

For nouns high up in the hierarchy, the nominative is unmarked, and the accusative is marked. Lower down in the hierarchy, the situation is reversed.

Let us use the same case marker for both and call this the 'INV' case.

I see you.INV
man sees stone
knight fought windmill
windmill.INV killed knight.INV

In intransitive clauses, this offers several options. First a nominative-like approach and an ergative-like approach exist. The nominative approach would have subjects marked the same as in transitive clauses, thus

windmill.INV burns
man falls

 The ergative approach would instead produce this outcome:

windmill burns
man.INV falls

We now need to provide an analysis of what's going on under the hood of this system. The nouns will be given two 'classes' – ones high up in the hierarchy are 'I', and lower ones 'II'.

		I	II
nominative		direct	inverse
accusative		inverse	direct

The ergative situation is similarly

		I	II
ergative		direct	inverse
absolutive		inverse	direct

The final situation we can consider is an underlyingly tripartite system

		I	II
transitive subject		direct	inverse
intransitive subject		?	?
transitive object		inverse	direct

This provides us with many options! We can now introduce a split-S type of thing, and we can even do that in multiple ways. We can let 'inverse' signal lack of volition (or whatever, but that's a good go-to example), or we can let the opposite of the transitive subject marking signal lack of volition. Thus, we may have a situation where:

I.INV fall
signals lack of volition, but
fish jump
signals volition, OR

I.INV fall
signals lack of volition BUT
fish.INV jump
signals volition

Fluid-S is afaict typologically less common than a lexically-conditioned split-S,  but fluid-S is easier to make a toy system out of in just a couple of words. For a lexically-conditioned system, way more options exist, of course: some verbs maybe require direct from all nouns, some require inverse, and some require object marking (thus direct from type II nouns and inverse from type I nouns). Basically, the types of language you can imagine form the following set:

Take as possible verb types the set V, consisting of :
D = verbs requiring direct subjects
I = verbs requiring inverse subjects
O = verbs requiring object-forms out of their subjects
S = verbs requiring subject-forms out of their subjects

The languages we can imagine then forms the set P(V), i.e. the power set of {D,I,O,S}. This is {{}, {D}, {I}, {O}, {S}, {DI}, {DO}, {DS}, {IO}, {IS}, {OS}, {DIO}, {DIS}, {DOS}, {IOS}, {DIOS}}.

A language described by the set {IOS} would then be one that has verbs requiring inverse case subjects, verbs requiring object forms and verbs requiring subject forms.

We can also have a situation where all subjects of intransitive verbs just are direct - i.e. no marking whatsoever.

		I	II
transitive subject		direct	inverse
intransitive subject		direct	direct
transitive object		inverse	direct

A situation where both I and II are inverse for the intransitive subject is conceivable, but unlikely and not significantly different from this situation - it would merely be a 'cosmetic' difference.

We can also have a situation where the cut-off between I and II is different for the intransitive subject than for the other two (heck, one could experiment with having that cut-off  in different spots for subjects and objects too!) 

And of course, we can always add in complications with regards to topics - maybe all topics are unmarked regardless of syntactical role?

Detail #363: A (Double-)Quartet of Impossible Cases

These cases probably do not exist in any language

The cases form a two by two system as far as their features go. Consider the result of subject gaps over coordination in languages with syntactic ergativity:

she hit him and ___ ran
run takes an absolutive argument, him is the absolutive of hit, thus it is implicitly him doing the running.

We could overrule this by a case marking either on the "normally ergative" or "normally absolutive" noun - a form of differential case marking. Thus we get two sorts: the puissant ergative  or the compliant absolutive. "Puissant" because it overpowers the absolutive, "compliant" because it cedes to the ergative. Either one should by its existence make the other one superfluous. However, what other uses could they have?

The puissant ergative could maybe appear with causatives? The compliant absolutive could appear with non-volitional intransitives?

I actually see a potentially possible grammaticalization path for the compliant absolutive: a merger with an absolutive pronoun referring to the ergative subject. If the language has a really weird word order, a similar solution for the puissant ergative could be imaginable. The reason I suspect these to be impossible is that they are nouns telling us information about the next clause's verb, and even more so the compliant absolutive is telling us a non-thing: it's telling us which noun isn't the subject, and isn't even necessarily involved.

The next pair of cases would be the analogous forms for nominative-accusative languages: the compliant nominative and the puissant accusative.

These could have similar origins as those in the ergative scenario. However, one might expect these too to have additional uses, such as the compliant nominative maybe always being the subject of passives.

Another thing that often is influenced by alignment is pronoun binding, esp. wrt reflexives and such. We can imagine puissant ergatives and accusatives to control the reflexive pronouns (out of which possessive reflexive pronouns might be the most interesting), or compliant absolutives and nominatives to cede their control of the reflexive pronouns.

Further thoughts in imaginary typology: would there be a (vague) correlation between puissantness and definiteness? How about compliantness and indefiniteness?

EDIT: four additional cases appear if you consider the situation of erg/abs languages with nom/acc syntax (giving compliant ergatives or puissant absolutives), or the case of nom/acc languages with erg/abs syntax (WHICH PROBABLY DON'T EXIST SO DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME FOLKS) (giving  compliant accusatives or puissant nominatives).

A final, late EDIT:
Obviously, these should probably rather be seen as functions of some certain cases than as cases unto themselves, i.e. you'd expect some other  cases to fill these roles. That of course is also sort of up to how they came about - I imagine a compliant nominative could morphologically be the same as the accusative, for instance.

Detail #362: Differential Case and Inverse Systems

While thinking about the sound changes leading up to Ćwarmin and Ŋʒädär, an uninvited idea entered my mind and turned into this post: what can we do to combine differential subject/object marking and inverse alignment?

The idea might seem somewhat preposterous. Differential subject marking obviously acts on the subject, differential object marking on the object, and inverse alignment doesn't formally distinguish the two in any case-like way.

However, maybe there are ways out, and maybe these can have interesting restrictions on them.

Since I have not mentioned differential case in quite a while, differential case is where subjects (or objects) can take different cases depending on some syntactical or semantic factors.

A few options:

1. mutual marking

Both nouns take the same marker (or allomorphs thereof). This could fit for some Finnish-style differential object marking, i.e. conveying aspectual and/or polarity-related information, but is not suitable for Turkish-style differential marking (where the accusative marks the definiteness of a direct object, whereas the nominative implies indefiniteness).

Jazzing it up: cancel the use of the inverse (or maybe the direct) whenever the Differential Subject&Object Marking is in place. Only let a certain assignment of roles to the two nouns be permissible whenever the marking is there. Here, we can get verb-specific things going: maybe one verb forces inverseness whenever differential marking is in place, maybe another forces directness.

2. marking determined by the hierarchy

One could imagine that the marker goes on whichever noun is lower (or higher) on the hierarchy. Maybe several markers can coexist, and two different ones are permissible, as long as they do not try to go on the same noun. Maybe some markers can go on either noun, and some are restricted to the higher or the lower one. An additional complication could be markers that only exist on some level of the hierarchy - i.e. markers only present with first and second person pronouns, or markers only present for inanimate nouns.

Jazzing it up: have some markers go on 'actual subject' or 'actual object' and some markers follow the above rule. Have a hierarchy among the markers as to which beats which.

3. marking determined by topicality or focus

Whichever element is topic, or potentially focus, could be differentially marked, while the other one goes unmarked.

Jazzing it up: again, change how the verb interacts with things. Make the verb intransitive, and the 'subject' an oblique agent or the object and oblique patient, depending on which one is the topic. This would functionally make the intransitive be both a passive and an antipassive at once. Heck, for double topics, you could have a simultaneous passive-antipassive interpretation.

 

Detail #357: A Syntactically Split Alignment

Most split alignment systems only have split alignment in the case marking, and not really in the underlying syntax.  The split often also either correlates to the TAM of the verb, or to certain grammatical persons. I don't recall seeing any other actual cause of an alignment split, and I would really be interested in hearing about any other triggers for it.

However, that's not what I am writing this post about. This post is about a split in syntactical alignment based on a semantic distinction among verbs. I further find this particular split rather likely to occur.

The particular thing I'd think would cause an intransitive subject to align with an object syntactically is existentialness. Verbs such as 'exist', 'be' (when used existentially), be found, be seen (maybe), be attested, etc all seem to lend themselves well to prefer an ergative syntax.

The most obvious phenomenon to investigate would be gaps, and we can easily imagine a language where

berries exist and I eat

would parse as

berries exist and I eat [them]

however, we can then expect that coordination over many VPs should also yield ergative patterns:

berries existed and I saw and ate and tasted sweetberries existed, and I saw and ate [them] and [they] tasted sweet

This should not be permitted when all verbs are just 'plain vanilla intransitives'

*the berries were tasty and I saw and ate and tasted sweet
*the berries were tasty and *I saw and *ate and *I tasted sweet

Of course, when multiple VPs are chained like this, the later the existential verb appears, the harder parsing correctly will be. For this reason, the language might either forbid existential verbs to be on the right hand of coordinations, especially after more than two or so,  or have some kind of 'de-existential' form that is semantically, but not syntactically existential. (This could be achieved by reusing some other thing from the language - maybe force quirky case existential subjects? maybe use usually non-finite verb forms? maybe have the usual existential verbs lack congruence, but forcing congruence on them turns them into 'regular' verbs?

Detail #346: Another Alignment

This alignment is a special case of inverse alignment. However, it does not have a hierarchy, it has a pairwise association between noun classes and verb classes. The association can be subject or object.

Sew belongs to a class of verbs consisting of actions demanding fine motor skill. A patch belongs to a class of nouns, basically 'small, inanimate, artificial things'. These two sets together default to object.

The argument which is relevant for verb marking is the leftmost noun-phrase that is not marked by any adposition. Thus, any pro-dropped pronoun is ignored - except if the VP only has pro-dropped pronouns, in which a person-hierarchy and an animacy-hierarchy is used. 

Thus, if the clause were

I sew-1sg-3sg a patch onto my jacket

the marking would be direct. However, if it were

a patch sew-1sg-3sg I onto my jacket

the verb would be inverse. If the construction were

sew-1sg-3sg a patch onto my jacket

you'd get the inverse. 

Detail #345: Alignment-Thing with Locative Cases

Let's consider (and extend) the notion of cases for nouns located somewhere, and nouns heading somewhere. I.e. this wouldn't be "the man is at the lake", this would be "the man who ats is (at, with regards to) the lake" or some other silly way of expressing it. Let's consider how this interacts with

• subjects vs. objects and alignment more generally
• more metaphorical uses (e.g. becoming, being, being averb, going to verb)
• indirect objects and such
• more general effects throughout the language

Ok, so we come up with two cases, the stationary case and the motionary case. The stationary case is used when we state that the subject (or object) is located somewhere, or that the object is located somewhere as a result of a static VP: e.g.

A holds B.stat (in place)
A encloses B.stat
A contains B.stat

The motionary case is used whenever motion is involved, obviously:

A.mot approaches B
A.mot runs
A.mot leaves B

but also when A sets B in motion:

A scared B.mot (away)
A threw B.mot
A pushed B.mot

Verbs like 'leave' and 'come' may not be distinguished, and are not strictly speaking morphologically distinguished either: both involve a motionary subject, and both involve motion (obviously). Adverbs may serve to indicate the direction, but also context. As far as cases go, this seems to behave entirely unlikely both subject and object marking, and one would expect there to be some kind of object marking (or ergative marking) to balance this system up, so that the non-motionary non-stationary argument's role can be unambiguously parsed. However, it's not entirely unconceivable that each verb's semantics is clear enough that no subject/object distinction is needed: the motionary/stationary and the unmarked noun may well have easily parsed roles.

As for more metaphorical uses, we can consider the way many languages use locative expressions with infinitives, similar to how the 'to' in 'to VERB' became part of the infinitive construction in English. At this point we can consider the regular locative as 'being averbing', and the lative as 'going averbing'. In this case, a subject that is averbing would be stationary, and one that is going averbing would be motionary. However, in causative utterances (or utterances of, say, seeing someone verbing) the causee (or the object) could easily be in the stationary, or motionary, depending on the aspect and tense and whatnot of the situation.

Detail #320: Alignment, Essives and Translatives

I assume everyone knows what essives and translatives as far as the case nomenclature of Finnish goes are. If not, ask and I'll make a post explaining it for you.

Anyways, one could imagine a different alignment with regards to these as well! One could have the quality that is being been, or the quality that is being acquired, or the noun that is being been, or the noun that is being become marked in nominative or accusative depending on whether we're dealing with a situation like

I am a singer (nominative)
I fell ill (nominative)

I made it durable (accusative)
I painted it red (accusative)

and we could mark the subject or object in cases that mark being and becoming, much as the Finnish essive and translative - but marked on the bee-er or becomer, rather than on the quality (or noun) that is being been or become.

This must be one of the few times a passive of be and become ever has been called for in English.

Detail #274: Negation and Alignment

Imagine a language with verbs having slots for both subject and object markers, thus:

verb-subj-obj-other.stuff

Oh, this language is ergative, btw, so 

verb-erg-abs-other.stuff

is maybe more accurate.

Let's further imagine that certain other things go on the verb, e.g. negation. Let's further imagine that negation (and maybe something else) occupies the object slot, and intransitive congruence moves to the ergative slot, whereas objects of transitive verbs just don't get congruence at all. (Consider how, for instance, subjects don't get congruence on the main verb at all in negative clauses in certain Finnic languages – having this for objects seems even less weird, really.) 

Now we've created a situation where the ergative is the nominative in negative clauses, which iirc is typologically uncommon. In fact, the ergative serving a nominative role in splits is generally speaking uncommon.

Other things than the negative might occupy the same slot.

Detail #265: Inverse with Fluid-S

Let's consider a language where the direct/inverse markers appear also in intransitive verbs. In these, however, the congruence marker for the subject makes it clear that the verb is intransitive. Here's the basic template slots, without any order information:

{verb stem, person₁, person₂, inv/dir, other stuff}

For an intransitive verb, we prototypically would have

{verb stem, person₁, other stuff}

but what if we went for

{verb stem, person₁, inv/dir, other stuff}

and had inv/dir encode different things in the intransitive, much like how erg/abs encode different things in split-S languages?

Consider then verbs that are single lexemes but mean things like 'to leave for a hunting trek'; the inverse could then signify 'return from the woods'. Here, direct/inverse could easily become a direction marker, which seems to reflect the name of the markers a bit too aptly. For verbs like 'sleep', the obvious thing would be 'fall/be asleep'/'wake up'. The 'fall/be asleep' pair might be conflated, or maybe other stuff contains aspect markers or the like that provide distinctions. 

Here, having pretty few systematic rules and a lot of impressionistic or possibly just lexical stuff going on could be the most interesting approach, and give the most 'lived-in' feeling to the language.

Detail #263: A DIfferent Type of Active-Stative

Most Active-Stative languages have the case of the subject of intransitives lexically fixed for each verb. A simple way of varying this would be to have the case of the subject of intransitives lexically fixed for each noun.

Of course, further complications could be introduced, with some form of interplay between nominal lexical preferences and verbal lexical preferences. Maybe some simple structure like these:

	nounerg	nounabs
verberg	erg	abs
verbabs	abs	abs

or like this:

	nounerg	nounabs
verberg	erg	erg
verbabs	erg	abs

or finally like this:

	nounerg	nounabs
verberg	erg	abs/erg
verbabs	abs/erg	abs

In the last table, the conflicting preferences are not resolved, but open up for those combinations to have some kind of differential marking on the subject. However, one could also decide to just let one of the combinations remain unresolved. Somehow, it seems natural that the differential marking for the noun_abs/verb_erg combination not to distinguish quite the same meaning as the noun_erg/verb_abs combination.

Verbs that prefer ergative marking may be verbs that clearly have agents although not necessarily patients, whereas verbs that prefer absolutives may be verbs that more clearly have undergoers, experiencer, perceivers, etc. Nouns that prefer the ergative may, conversely, be nouns with low animacy - nouns that normally would not be parsed as agents otherwise.

Thus, in the conflicting combinations, low-ranked nouns may preferentially receive ergative marking when it would be suppressed by the verb, but high-ranked nouns may go by without any problems. However, with verbs that prefer the ergative, high-ranking nouns may shed the ergative marking if their preference is absolutive, since there is no need to clarify that they indeed are the subject.

Having the resolutions be perfectly vertical or horizontal would make the nominal or the verbal preference entirely suppress the other preference, in which case it makes no sense even to talk of the other word class having such a preference at all.

Reflexives in Ŋʒädär

Ŋʒädär has a reflexive pronoun, 'ŋul'. Its inflection is as follows:

	sg	pl
absolutive	ŋul	ŋulɤr
dative	ŋulum	ŋulɤt'
locative	ŋulŋa	ŋuŋa
lative	ŋulus	ŋuvus
ablative	ŋuluk	ŋuvuk
gen-com	ŋuruk	ŋuruk
complement	ŋulȝuv	ŋuvȝuv

The direct-inverse system of Ŋʒädär of course involves itself in the whole affair. Now, it should be fairly natural that ŋul can never be a subject - much like you cannot say 'myself saw me' for 'I saw myself' in English. Ŋul occupies a spot in the hierarchy, and thus nouns that are lower than ŋul need to have their verbs marked for inverse, whereas nouns that reside higher than ŋul have their verbs marked with the direct marker.

1st singular >
1st plural >
2nd singular >
2nd plural >
1st, 2nd, and 3rd person animate dative subjects >
3rd animate proximate >
dative objects and ŋul >
3rd animate obviative >
3rd inanimate prox >
other non-nominatives subjects and objects >
3rd inanimate obv

A complication arises in the plural, however. It turns out ŋulɤr appears in two places. You get things like

sint ŋulɤr p'arab-z
sint ŋulɤr p'arab-jut
they selves protect-[direct/inverse]

It turns out these two reside at opposite ends of the whole hierarchy.  When it's at the top of the hierarchy, the verb has to have inverse marking, and of course vice versa when it's at the bottom of the hierarchy. (Thus, we can know which of them it is by looking at the marking on the verb.) There is a difference in meaning:

sint ŋulɤr p'arab-z: they protect themselves
sint ŋulɤr p'arab-jut: they protect each other

Thus, ŋulɤr signifies reciprocality with the inverse, and reflexivity with the direct. Thus:

ŋulɤr (reciprocal)
1st singular >
1st plural >
2nd singular >
2nd plural >
1st, 2nd, and 3rd person animate dative subjects >
3rd animate proximate >
dative objects and ŋul >
3rd animate obviative >
3rd inanimate prox >
other non-nominative subjects and objects >
3rd inanimate obv
ŋulɤr (reflexive)

 As for the case forms, ŋulɤt' and other obliques rank as other obliques, and do not distinguish reciprocal from reflexive. The plural genitive, however, moves its whole noun-phrase to the top or bottom of the hierarchy, and makes the NP behave analogously to ŋulɤr - just rephrasing the possessive structure either as 'each other's Xs' or 'their(refl, shared) Xs'.

Detail #253: Mixing Alignments - Split-Ergative/Inverse

I remember back when ergativity was sort of new and unfamiliar to most conlangers – today, split ergativity is almost old hat, and people are getting into alignments like inverse, secundative and so on.

Let's however consider split-alignment again for a moment. How do we resolve subjects when we coordinate a transitive and an intransitive verb?

man wolf see-DIRECT and run-INTRANS
[assuming man > wolf in the animacy hierarchy)

Is it the man or the wolf who runs? If the language underlyingly is accusative, it would be the man. If the language underlyingly is ergative, it's the wolf who is running. Now, the split-inverse/ergative option sort of appeals to me - and in this case, we'd have the man running if we did

man wolf see-INVERSE and run-INTRANS.

Now, how about some other options? We could have direct and inverse apply to intransitives in a way similar to switch-reference (but limited to intransitives after transitives), thus giving us:

man wolf see-DIRECT and run-DIRECT
man sees wolf and runs

man wolf see-DIRECT and run-INVERSE
man sees wolf and it runs

Another option could be that a subject of a previous verb automatically is temporarily shifted upwards in the hierarchy. Depending on where in the hierarchy it lands, different results obtain, e.g. if 1 p > 2 p > previous subject > 3p, then

I wolf see-DIRECT and run-DIRECT
I see the wolf and I run

I wolf see-INVERSE and run-DIRECT
the wolf sees me and I run

I wolf see-INVERSE and run-INVERSE
the wolf sees me and runs

I wolf see-DIRECT and run-INVERSE
I see the wolf and it runs

he wolf see-INVERSE and run-DIRECT
the wolf sees him and runs

he wolf see-INVERSE and run-INVERSE
the wolf sees him and he runs

Detail #252: Having (Optional) Morphemes follow Alignment-like Distributions

A thing that could be fun is having (optional) markers for some modal information (or some other thing pertaining to the whole verb phrase), whose distribution follows alignment-like patterns (these markers affix to nouns). A language with several different patterns like those could be pretty cool, e.g. some markers are ergative-like in distribution, some accusative-like, some nominative-like, some absolutive, some maybe secundative, etc.

Ŋʒädär: Inverse Alignment with Instances of Quirky Case

Ŋʒädär has a typical direct-inverse alignment with some small twists. We shall first look at the basic situation, however. The hierarchy is as follows.

1st singular > 1st plural > 2nd singular > 2nd plural > 3rd animate proximative > 3rd animate obviative > 3rd inanimate obv > 3rd inan prox

Thus, a second person subject with a first person object needs an inverse marker. 

vär ehi luq'u-nta-z | ehi var luq'u-nta-z
you (s)he trick-future-direct
you will trick him/her

vär ehi luq'u-nta-jut
you (s)he trick-future-inverse
(s)he will trick you

However, for non-absolutive* subjects and objects, which occur with a number of verbs, interesting stuff happens. The hierarchy gets some quirks

1st singular > 1st plural > 2nd singular > 2nd plural > 1st, 2nd, and 3rd person animate dative subjects > 3rd animate proximate > dative objects > 3rd animate obviative > 3rd inanimate prox > other non-nominatives subjects and objects > 3rd inanimate obv

Thus, for instance, "I have it"

saɤ-ŋa is ot'u-t
me-at it is-(short inverse marker)

A tuplet where we can see the peculiarity of the dative subject location is one of the verbs for "like", jÿŋärä:

saɤ-m is jÿŋärä-z
I-dat it like-direct
I like it

saɤ-m ehi jÿŋärä-jyt
I-dat he/she like-inverse
I like him/her

Similar things happen with quirky objects, c.f. the verb sadɤk'a 'feed', which takes a dative object:

saɤ is-im sadɤk'a-z
I it-dat feed-direct
I feed it

saɤ-m ehi sadɤk'a-z
I-dat he/she feed-direct
he/she feeds me

saɤ-m ehi-qi sadɤk'a-jut
me-dat he/she-obv feed-indirect
he/she feeds me

Thus, for quirky case verbs, the direct/inverse operates as though the obliquely marked nouns were regular subjects or objects that just happen to be in quite different spots in the hierarchy than normally expected.

* I've opted to call the unmarked noun form by the term absolutive in Ŋʒädär.

Detail #246: A Subtle Spot for Sneaking Ergative Alignment In

Let's consider nouns with verbal complements, i.e.

a bit to eat
some way to go

Now, let's imagine that the language has intransitive subjects and objects of the embedded verb marked the same way:

a bit to eat
a man to sing

whether these mean 'singing man/eaten bit' or 'a man with the potential of singing' etc is neither here nor there - heck, these need not even really be part of the noun phrase, they could be part of a structure such as:

we need a man to sing
we need a bit to eat

even with a verb where 'to sing|eat' more clearly is an argument of the main verb rather than a part of the noun phrase than in this case. However, let's construct the transitive subject (even with implicit object) differently:

we need a man so he can hunt?
we need a man that hunts?
we need a man for his hunting?
we need a man he to hunt?

This would be a rather restricted place for ergativity to pop up, but it seems fairly realistic to me at least.

Sargaĺk Alignment Syntax

The pegative case system has some implications for the syntax and morphosyntax in situations that are not just ditransitive finite verb clauses.

Pegatives can be transitive or intransitive subjects in coordinated structures; nominatives cannot be pegative subjects in coordinated structures. This is one of the most prominent uses of the anti-passive. (However, first person and second person nominatives can overcome such gaps without the anti-passive in at least one of the dialects.)

Thus we get situations like the following:

Ərgesi

simiii

tuxa-

-ju-

-sus

ke

[__]i

isii

ecdak-

-mai

sirvac-

-ərn-

u

fatheri

sonii

teach

3sg. masc. perf

indeed

and

(he)i

heii

inheritance

-with

ensure

-antipass-

3sg

"A father surely teaches (his) son, and thus ensures him (of an) inheritance".

If the verb had been sirvac-ju instead, it would have been the son who had ensured [something], and since sirvac- is mandatorily at least transitive, the verb phrase would have been malformed.

Further, relativization shows a restriction: the pegative argument is not relativizable. Thus

*miv kŕderiman pangĺk-an-di-st gukla - village tax-exemption grant-past.active_participle-masc.REL king,
miv kŕderimazvi pangeĺk-ne-st gukla - village tax-exemption-with grant-past.antipassive_participle-masc.REL king
'the king who granted the village tax exemption'

Given that Sargaĺk primarily uses participle-like constructions for relativization, this might as well be described as a property of the participles. Sargaĺk does not really permit relativization of anything 'lower' on the relativization hierarchy, although it's hierarchy is slightly twisted, with the top tiers being intransitive subject > recipient > direct object.

Details regarding how the alignment interacts with control will be given later.

Detail #230: Anti-Pegative Alignment

I posted, a good while ago, a post that described the "anti-ergative" subsystem of Finnish. The post also contains an extension of this into ditransitive verbs. However, the pegative alignment that I've previously described did not enter into that post.

What would an analogous anti-pegative alignment look like, especially in a language that in the "normal" case is pegative?

Let us consider the situation when the subject is omitted:

[omitted subject] gives thing.acc person.nom

This seems like a fairly natural way of dealing with the situation - there is no case problems whatsoever. We may want to make the situation worse before we come up with something interesting. So, first we reduce the case marking a bit:

Subjects, objects and recipients are all marked by nominative, except ditransitive subjects, which are marked with the pegative.

Given the nature of, say, dechticaetiative languages, this seems like the most probable situation for a pegative alignment in a real language.

The situations we're interested in are, schematically, something like these:

1. [omitted subject] gives thing.nom person.nom
2. person.[nom? peg?] gives [omitted thing.nom] person.nom
3. person.[nom? peg?] gives thing.nom [omitted recipient]

If we extend this to a Finnic-like thing, this also would include situations where the subject is not canonically marked, although not strictly speaking omitted. We can extend this even further: non-canonical objects and non-canonical recipients.

1. Omitted or non-canonical subject
It seems this situation shouldn't call for any specific thing to happen in an anti-pegative system. Maybe, just maybe, we could have the pegative marker ascend to either the direct or the indirect object. Both possibilities seem reasonable, depending on what the speakers see as the semantics of the case marker: does it a) mark the argument with the most agency or b) the argument that provides for the recipient. To put it in very clunky English rephrasings:

a) Erin gave, and Wendy received candy.
Wendy has some agency, Erin has more agency, candy has none, thus omitting Erin, Wendy is now at the top of the agency scale.

b) From Erin, Wendy was given candy.
Wendy has agency, Erin is marked as origin. Let's use an even less natural preposition here:
Of Erin, Wendy was given candy.
Wendy was given of candy.

Both of these seem somewhat compelling (albeit probably typologically speaking very improbable). Let's present some graphs:

The standard bit of the pegative system:

SUBJ	DO	IO
nom	-------	-------
nom	nom	-------
nom	-------	nom
peg	nom	nom

Possibility 1 extends the table with these rows:

SUBJ	DO	IO
-------	nom	-------
-------	-------	nom
-------	peg	nom

 Possibility 2 does this instead:

SUBJ	DO	IO
-------	nom	-------
-------	-------	nom
-------	nom	peg

We also have possibilities 1b and 2b, where we get the following tables:

Possibility 1b:

SUBJ	DO	IO
-------	peg	-------
-------	-------	nom
-------	peg	nom

 Possibility 2b:

SUBJ	DO	IO
-------	nom	-------
-------	-------	peg
-------	nom	peg

Both of these seem pretty unlikely. If we want to see some really twisted stuff we could come up with worse varieties still, though:

SUBJ	DO	IO
nom	-------	-------
nom	nom	-------
nom	-------	nom
peg	nom	nom
-------	peg	nom
-------	-------	peg
-------	nom	-------

Or alternatively

SUBJ	DO	IO
nom	-------	-------
nom	nom	-------
nom	-------	nom
peg	nom	nom
-------	nom	peg
-------	-------	nom
-------	peg	-------

Both of these should be pretty bad options - especially due to the three last rows probably making it impossible for someone learning their first language to draw a reasonable conclusion about the distribution of the case marker, along the way that the anti-accusative system given last in my post on anti-ergative systems.

We could of course develop the details for an anti-pegative appearing in an otherwise decthicaetiative or "normal" alignment also. Such a follow-up post will probably appear in a few days.

Sargaĺk Non-Canonical Subjects and Objects

This post originally started out as a post describing an "anti-pegative" sub-system in a language (not necessarily a pegative language). That part of the post has been excised now, and will return in a more focused form.

In many languages, some set of verbs or some constructions cause exceptional patterns of marking. Sargalk has a handful of such verbs as well as constructions. The exceptional verbs are valjan, represent, kotjan, permit, feldar, suggest, surrender, harias, promise, pledge, grant marriage to one's daughter, merenar, replace obj1 with obj2, durenar, offer obj1 as a trade for obj2, rigmar, to lack, suldin, to assert the truth of what one's previously said, švudar, to stink, smiral, to stretch something.

In the following discussion, note that only pronouns distinguish the accusative from the nominative.

These follow a few different patterns - valjan and harian have subject = pegative, recipient = nominative, object= pegative. In constructions where any argument is omitted, the cases remain unchanged with these two verbs.

Kotjan and feldar have the direct object in the locative case, and the other two arguments are nominative. Merenar has the direct object in the pegative, and the other in the instrumental. These cases are not impervious to changes.

Harias takes the direct object in the pegative, and the other two arguments in the accusative.

Merenar has its subject in the nominative, the replaced object in the pegative, and the replacement in the lative. The subject can be omitted, and the replaced object will have verb congruence, but pegative marking. Durenar follows the same pattern, with the exception that the replacement can be in the nominative or accusative as well.

Rigmar has its subject in the pegative, and the object in the accusative. Suldin has its subject in the pegative, and no direct or indirect object appears. An eventual recipient of the assertion is in the lative, and any semantic object is really either in another VP or embedded as a subclause.

Švudar can have either the emitter of the stench or the emitted stench in the pegative, and the other NP in the accusative. Smiral has a nominative subject, pegative direct object, and nominative indirect object (generally the location to which something stretches). The (causative) subject can be omitted, turning the direct object into a new subject, which is then still marked with pegative and triggers subject congruence.

The next post will include the constructions that trigger non-canonical subject and object markings.

Detail #224: Inverse Things with Possession

Possession is a thing where inverse markings could make much sense - consider, for instance, a hierarchy of nouns where apposition is the way to mark possession:

cow farmer

It's even likely that there are languages where both orders mark the same possessive relationship:

cow farmer = farmer cow → a|the farmer's cow

Imagine now a particle or affix that goes somewhere, and inverses the possession:

cow e farmer | cow-e farmer | cow farmer-e | farmer-e cow | farmer cow-e | farmer e cow| e cow farmer| e farmer cow

The rule for locating this particle might be anything along the lines of "before the two nouns", "after the first noun", "on the higher-ranking noun", "on the lower-ranking noun", "after the two nouns" or whatever you prefer, really - heck, anywhere in the vicinity of the two nouns could make good sense as well.

However, let's go on with some other possibilities. Let's introduce inverse number on possessive pronouns! This language has distinct singular and plural personal pronouns, i.e. "I" vs. "we", but the possessive pronoun is distinct from both. Let's give it as "oune". Depending on the noun that is possessed, this is either parsed as "our X" or "my X". The number of the noun may influence the parsing, so "oune books" means "our books", but "oune book" means "my book". However, this does not happen with all nouns: "oune shoes" and "oune shoe" both are parsed as having "oune" refer to the first person. Here I would go for an affix that fuses with the number marking of the noun in order to mark inverse number on the possessive pronoun:

-ev is plural, inverse possessor number, -in is singular, inverse possessor number:

oune bookev: my books
oune bookin: our book

oune mother : our mother (c.f. oune mom : my mother)
oune mothers: our mothers
oune methrev: my mothers (including previous generations of mothers)
oune methrin: my mother

We could do other weird things, though: maybe inverse marking for reflexive possession. This would only go for third person possessors.

he sees his sister: sister is assumed reflexive, so "he sees his own sister" is how it is parsed.
he sees hin sister: hin is inverse, so this is parsed as another referent's sister

he sees his face: face is assumed non-reflexive, so "he sees his (the other guy's) face" is the required parsing
he sees hin face: he sees his own face