Showing posts with label reflexives. Show all posts
Showing posts with label reflexives. Show all posts

Thursday, May 30, 2019

Detail #380: A New Spot For Alignment

I recently came across this, a post whose content I am not really going to comment (due to the feeling that I don't know enough about this particular topic.) However, it sparked an idea in my mind:

Why not make an alignment-like system with regards to symmetrical vs. reciprocal actions? Some verbs could imaginably only take one or the other type, and here we could get an interesting set of situations:
  • verbs that are exclusively symmetrical
  • verbs that are exclusively reciprocal
  • verbs that can be either one or the other
Let's use s and r for arguments of exclusively s/r verbs, and S and R for verbs that can take one or the other. The way any particular marking works may differ from the way others are marked: reciprocal pronouns with differential object marking distinguishing different meanings, verbal affixes, particles, auxiliaries, adverbs, etc.
Potential solutions:

Trivial bipartite:
s = S
r = R

Asymmetrical bipartite:
s = S = r
R

or

S
s = R = r

Unhelpful bipartite (unlikely)
s = r
S = R

Tripartite I
s = r
S
R

Tripartite II
s = S
r
R

or

r = R
s
S

Diagonal Tripartite (unlikely)
s = R
r
S

or

S = r
R
s

Unhelpful Tripartite (unlikely)
s
r
S = R

Quadripartite (unlikely)
s S
r R
One thing that feels realistic, though, is that for some verbs, you may also have occasional exceptions like so:
Exceptional Marking I
S' = R
R' = other way that coincides with some other thing in the language?
The ' there marks that these are exceptionally marked ones, and that the "R" on the right hand of the equals mark stands for the marking, not the meaning.

Tuesday, December 12, 2017

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.

Wednesday, February 17, 2016

Reflexives in Ŋʒädär

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

sgpl
absolutiveŋulŋulɤr
dativeŋulumŋulɤt'
locativeŋulŋaŋuŋa
lativeŋulusŋuvus
ablativeŋulukŋuvuk
gen-comŋurukŋuruk
complementŋulȝuvŋuvȝuv
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'.