LINGUIST List 11.1012

Wed May 3 2000

Qs: "give", Morphosyntactic alternation, Taboo Lang

Editor for this issue: Scott Fults <scottlinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. Bernard Comrie, 'give' and Person Suppletion
2. Michael Hughes, Morphosyntactic Alternations
3. Fatima Hashim, Taboo Language and Euphemisms

I am aware of a number of languages in which the translation
equivalent of 'give' has different forms depending on the grammatical
person of the recipient. For instance, Malayalam has _koTukkuka_ 'give
(to third person recipient)' and _taruka/tarika_ 'give (to first or
second person recipient)'. A few more examples are noted below. I
would be grateful if readers of the List could let me know:

a) if there is any general literature on this topic;

b) if they are aware of any examples other than those cited below (or
of additional information regarding the examples cited below).

I will post a summary of responses if appropriate.

Examples known to me of person suppletion with 'give':

i) Malayalam distinguishes _koTukkuka_ 'give (to third person)' from
_taruka/tarika_ 'give (to first or second person)'--these seem just to
be distinct roots. (Data from R.E. Asher and T.C. Kumari, Malayalam;
London, 1997: Routledge, p.348.)

ii) Tsez (NE Caucasian) distinguishes _teL_ 'give (to third person)'
from _neL_ 'give (to first or second person)' (where _L_ represents a
voiceless lateral affricate). Etymologically at least, the initial
consonants seem to be deictic prefixes, but this is not a productive
pattern in Tsez. Simple and derived transitive verbs have different
imperative formations in Tsez, and different varieties of Tsez attest
both the expected simple-verb imperative _teL-o/neL-o_ and the
expected derived-verb imperative _teL/neL_.

iii) Saliba (Oceanic) distinguishes _le_ 'give (to first or second
person)' from _mose-i_ 'give (to third person)'. The roots are
distinct. Interestingly, there is a further difference (not found in
the Malayalam, Tsez, or Japanese cases), namely the two roots have
different argument structures: _le_ is syntactically a monotransitive
verb having giver and gift as arguments; _mose-i_, which includes an
applicative suffix, is a ditransitive verb, with three more specific
syntactic frame possibilities. For details, see Anna Margetts,
Valence and Transitivity in Saliba; Nijmegen, 1999: MPI Series in
Psycholinguistics, pp. 300-308.

iv) Japanese has a somewhat similar, but not identical, system, and I
remain open as to whether it should be subsumed under the same
head. The verbs _yaru/ageru_ are used when the gift moves away from
the speaker, the verbs _kureru/kudasaru_ when the gift moves towards
the speaker. (The difference between the two verbs in each pair
concerns the relative social status of giver and recipient.) For
instance, if someone gives something to me, I will always use
_kureru/kudasaru_. If the mayor of my town gives something to my
father, then I will use _kureru/kudasaru_, as the gift is coming
towards me. But if the mayor of my town gives something to the mayor
of another town, I will use _ageru/yaru_, since the gift is going away
from me.

- 
Prof. Dr. Bernard Comrie Director, Department of Linguistics

Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Inselstrasse 22 tel +49 341 99 52 301
D-04103 Leipzig NEW 01/00 tel secretary +49 341 99 52 315
Germany fax +49 341 99 52 119

E-mail: comrieeva.mpg.de
Home page: http://www.eva.mpg.de/~comrie2/


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Dear Linguistlist,

I would like to know if anybody is aware of any non-Germanic languages
which show a morphological alternation like the strong~weak adjective
alternation in several Germanic languages. In German, for instance,
the adjective suffix may be drawn from one of two paradigms, despite
identical Case/Gender/Number specifications, in slightly different
'syntactic' environments.

Thus, for nominative masculine singular we find the following
possibilities:

(1)	ein gut-er Wein.	(det unmarked, adj. strongly inflected)
	a good wine

(2) dies-er gut-e Wein. 	(det marked, adj. weakly inflected)
	this good wine

(3)	gut-er Wein		(adj. strongly inflected, no det)
	good wine.

More Generally, I am searching for examples in which some
morpho-syntactic distinction generally must show up on one or another
sub-constituent of a phrase, but not always on the same
sub-constituent (cf. 1-2 above).

Examples of such a phenomenon need not be drawn solely from NPs. I
will be glad to post a summary.

Many thanks, 

Michael Hughes

Department of Linguistics
UC San Diego
hughesling.ucsd.edu

Where can I find on-line materials about taboo and euphemism in languages 
and cultures?