Detail #365: Quirky Case and Morphological Intrigues

Let us consider a language that, like Finnish or Russian, marks the agent-like argument of 'to have to' with a non-canonical case. It is arguable whether such a noun is a subject, and the claim is that in Russian at least they aren't, but they pass subjecthood tests in Finnish rather splendidly.

Now, both the Russian and Finnish constructions lack subject marking entirely on the VP. and in some sense maybe we could say this is a result of the nominative controlling congruence on verbs in these languages.

Now, let's keep that situation intact with regards to finite verbs, but introduce a conflicting notion for certain infinitives! In Finnish, there are several different constructions for obligation, some using specific verbs, and one using the 3rd person sg. copula in combination with the passive present participle. Thus, mine is eat-en-ing sort of expresses 'I have to eat'. 

Some languages have person marking on infinitives - examples include Portuguese. Now, we can imagine the semantics of the situation forcing an explicit subject marking on such infinitives even when the subject is not nominative (or maybe even when the agent is not a subject), even when the finite verb does have no subject marking.

Now we can start imagining somewhat weirder stuff. Where do these subject markers originate? Possibly with possessive markers (and further down the line with pronouns), right? Some languages have reflexive possessives distinct from regular possessives - Scandinavian sin, Slavic swój, etc. We can imagine such pronouns also to become part of a system of possessive affixes, thus not only giving us 'mine, yours, his/hers/its, ours,  yours, theirs" as affixes, but also a distinct 'his/hers/its own' as a suffix.

In Scandinavian, the reflexive possessive is only used with third person possessors, so

Stina sålde sitt hus
Stina sold her (own, not someone else's) house

consider, in English, conversely

Etta was angry after Stina had sold her house
Elna var arg efter att Stina sålde hennes hus

Thus, this lets us distinguish two potential possessors in Scandinavian, but English requires at least one extra word, and the presence of that extra word ('own') is sometimes ambiguous even at that. And even omitting 'own' does not exclude a reflexive parsing, and getting the non-reflexive parsing explicit can be awkward.

Anyways, in Slavic languages, swój and its cognates are used for all persons. So, if 'I sell my portfolio', it is я who sells свой portfolio.

Back to the infinitives: now we can imagine a situation where a quirky case construction with an infinitive verb has a reflexive subject. We can, for instance, consider a situation where 'has to' and 'needs' are the same verb, and an embedded participle, for instance, can take a different subject:

me-obl [has to, needs, must] hear-2sg this-acc
I need you to hear this

and possibly

she-obl [needs, ...] hearing-refl this-acc
she needs to hear this

she-obl [needs, ...] hearing-3sg this-acc
she₁ needs for him/her₂ to hear this

Another thing this could introduce is differential subject marking! First and second person embedded infinitives could go either way with regards to having 'canonical' pronominal agreement or reflexive agreement, and communicate, say, volition or somesuch in that way.

Dairwueh: Semi-genitive Adjectives

In Dairwueh, there is a set of adjectives whose congruence pattern is slightly off. Their behavior differs in one particular spot: for nominative nouns, their marking is masculine genitive. (The one exception is the word sabrin, "unusual, foreign, strange" which is in the feminine plural genitive with nominative nouns).

Not only do these behave slightly oddly within noun phrases (and fail to have comparative marking altogether), they also behave weirdly with copulas.

The main examples that are widespread through Dairwueh dialects include

koŋsat: last, final, complete
rəmgat: tired
lodat: correct, right, entitled
satpat: sturdy, firm
nestat: ancient
bartat: partial, incomplete, one among many, a few among many

Notice that the -at suffix in all of these is the genitive masculine morpheme, so the roots will consist of the adjective without that suffix.  Less widely distributed examples that are found in the capital area prestige dialect are

sxundat: wafer-thin
ropsat: bloody (from 'rapəs', blood, from *rrabx, bleed)
julkat: lazy
silgat: rank, rancid
xugat: brave
xsəlrat: avid, skilled, obsessed
tagrat: content
nalkat: sad
rusnat: smooth

With the copula, this type of adjective is marked by the preposition 'lo', when marking having that quality, and by the preposition 'əre' when marking acquiring that quality, and no congruence marking with regards to gender or number appears. The adjective then is in the masculine instrumental (-ŋa) with 'lo', and masculine accusative (-na) with 'əre'.

Adjectival Congruence in Sargaĺk

In Sargaĺk, there is a very limited case congruence: an NP-initial adjective or determiner takes a case-specific congruence marker. However, the congruence is not entirely trivial:

• The familiar comitative does not have congruence morphology of its own, but uses regular comitative morphology on adjectives.
• Both masculine and feminine singular nominatives have a zero congruence marker on adjectives. Demonstratives distinguish the two, however, as do a few other quantifiers and determiners.
• The ablative's adjectival congruence marker is identical to the regular oblique marker in the singular.
• For non-nominative NPs, any intervening adjective takes an oblique, gender-specific morpheme.

The cause for this system seems to be providing cues as early as possible for parsing. 

Now it's time for some example phrases:

p'ĺxo : pig, swine (m)
kor p'ĺxo : big swine
žaŋ-a p'ĺxo : that swine

kor-ta p'əlx-ta : big swine (pegative)
žaŋ-ta (kor-ə) p'əlxta : that big swine
goŋ-ta (kor-ə) p'əlxta : dumb (big) swine (pegative)
kor-sa p'ĺx-a : dumb swines
goŋ-sa kor-eg p'ĺx-a : dumb swines (pegative)
goŋ-eg p'əlx-tsa : from the dumb swine
kor-eg goŋ-eg p'əlx-tsa: from the big dumb swine
goŋ-əssa p'ĺx-əssa : from the dumb swines


č'onku : bottle
kor č'onku : big bottle
kor-air č'onk-air : big bottles
kor-sta č'onk-sta : big bottles (peg)
k'ilp č'onku : full bottle
k'il-tat č'on-tat : full bottle (pegative)
žaŋ-u k'ilp č'onku : this full bottle
žaŋ-tat k'ilp-i č'on-tat : this full bottle (pegative)
žaŋ-rut k'ilp-i č'onk-rut : in this full bottle
ža-rne k'ilp-i č'onk-ərne : into this full bottle
žaŋ-el k'ilp-el č'on-əssa : from these full bottles

As can be seen, the oblique masculine marker is -ə, the oblique feminine is -i. In the plural, they are -eg (masc) and -el (fem).

For complements of verbs, the oblique markers are used if the state expressed is fairly constant, i.e. 'he is tall' or the like, whereas if it is more temporary, no congruence marker is used.

Detail #85: Congruence blocking ... again!

In a language with some kind of noun classes and class congruence on verbs and adjectives, let the following circumstances block congruence on the verb:

• subject and object complements trigger omission of class (and number) marking on the verb. Basically, the congruence migrates to the complement - but if the complement cannot mark class, the congruence marker will be entirely lost.
• relative clauses where the relativized constituent is not the subject. However, complements still mark congruence.

As examples (with the prefixes te-, pa-, ku-, ri-, ne-), the following should illustrate a bit:

ne-solution is (a solution exists)

ku-man is ku-tall (the man is tall)

pa-boss pa-expressed his ri-opinion with te-clarity (the boss expressed his opinion with clarity)

ku-man REL ku-expressed ku-his ri-opinion is ku-educated (the man who expressed his opinion is educated)

ku-man is pa-boss (the man is a boss)

te-computer is from apple (the computer is ...)

ne-project REL pa-boss launched ne-it ne-will ne-reform pa-synergy

Forms with bold italic are main clause non-congruence verbs, due to complements. The two non-bold italic verbs are unexpected examples of non-congruence: existential is and is with non-congruent complement. ku-expressed is the normal form in subclauses, viz. when the relativized thing is also the subject of the subclause. Finally, the bold italic underlined verb lacks congruence due to the subject not being the relativized element.

Restricted gender distinction in first and second person verbs

I like when languages mark gender in a restricted part of their verb system - e.g. Russian in the past tense (due to the form basically being a past participle in predicative position), or the Swedish periphrastic passive ('became Xed'), where the participle has gender congruence.

Trying to come up with a similar restriction basically only gave me this idea: gender congruence in reflexive verbs. The way this would come about is - for some reason, third person reflexive object pronouns became tied closer to the verb than regular non-reflexive objects pronouns (despite essentially being the same lexemes!), and soon were grammaticalized as part of the verb. However, during the transition, the reflexive markers also became used for first and second person, while the case marking for the pronouns also developed separately in the object forms.

Maybe something like

noun verb him/her = reflexive

noun verb accusative particle him/her =  transitive

Possibly through a middle stage of

noun verb-him/her = reflexive

noun verb-transitive marker him/her = transitive 

Detail #36: Duals and transitives

In a language where subjects and objects originally weren't that strictly distinguished, could it be possible for a dual verb to express both the situation where two subjects perform an action together, or the situation where one noun acts on the other? Thus, you'd get "I see you" as "see.1 dual", possibly with some other marker indicating which is the genuine subject: "is.1sg see.1 dual" vs. "is.2sg see.1 dual", but on the other hand, plural subjects go by the usual route: I see them: "see.1sg them", you and I see them: "see.1du them"

Detail #14: Suppletive auxiliary-based agreement

This idea is kind of a snapshot-in-language-history kind of idea, as I find it very unlikely it would remain for long.

A constructed isolating language where certain auxiliaries suppletively are changed to other ones depending on the class of the noun. Noun class is otherwise only marked by pronouns. Other than that, the noun class system has been losing ground in the language. Certain semantic differences between the suppletive auxiliaries may be evolving, depending on the lines along which the noun classes are distinguished.

Some of the auxiliaries may have incomplete 'paradigms' of suppletive forms, and for the noun classes that lack some specific auxiliary, some manner of periphrasis is needed, or whatever the auxiliary marks is simply avoided.

Detail #4: Verb-congruence failure

A language where verb congruence fails in these cases:

In the following circumstances, the person congruence is conflated with a third person verb form:

• negative reflexive verbs
• any existential verbs (including verbs of motion or location, when used in an existential manner, such as "there are so-and-so running around on our back yard")
• presence of non-subject topics
• 
  

This specific third person form is also used with third person subjects - both singular and plural - for expressing:

• with verbs of physical actions it marks plural subjects not acting in a concerted manner
• most often with copulas for any subject person
• lack of volition for third person
• nonspecificity of singular subject

Verb congruence also fails when a noun is used to denote a full class of things, so that the plural verb is used even with singular subjects, e.g.

• caviar is fish eggs
• cars have engines
• the antelope is an African mammal

all would have plural congruence on the verb. When the upper set of rules and this set of rules conflict, which one is chosen is in free variation.