LINGUIST List 6.574

Sun 16 Apr 1995

Qs: Hong Kong Eng, NP/Agreement complementarity, Homophones

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1. , Hong Kong English
2. Jose R. Alvarez (LUZ, NP/Agreement Complementarity
3. David Gil, "SAME", "AND", "WITH" as homophones or the same word

I have a graduate student who is interested in the origins and
characteristics of the English of Hong Kong. References seem
hard to come by. Can anyone recommend suitable sources?
Please reply directly; if there is sufficient interest I will
summarize.

Thanks for your help.

Edward Callary
TB0EXC1mvs.cso.niu.edu (TBZero)

 Dear linguists,

 In Anderson's _A-Morphous Morphology_ we read that in some languages the
 occurrence of an overt agreement marker on a predicate is in
 complementary distribution with the appearance of a phonologically full
 NP in the agreeing position. He cites four languages and the literature
 that deals with the phenomenon in those languages: Breton (Anderson),
 Irish (McCloskey & Hale), Chamorro (Chung), and Hebrew (Doron). His idea
 is that in those cases agreement enters into some sort of relationship
 of co-reference with the position it agrees with. Unfortunately, those
 references are not available to me here. I am working on a language
 (Pemon, Cariban) that, pending further fieldwork, seems to show this
 type of complementarity (of course, tense is marked on the verb stem).
 Pemon transitive verbs agree with both subject and object, having the
 ergative marker -ya/-da attached to the subject NP or to the subject
 affix. Subjects of intransitive clauses exhibit the same
 complementarity. Could anyone out there be kind enough as to furnish me
 with some data on those languages, or any other language showing a
 similar pattern, equivalent to the examples that I give below? Note that
 spelling has been simplified. Word order in transitives is OVS (with SVO
 as variant only when there is a full NP as subject), while in
 intransitives it is always SV. Thank you in advance.

 (1) Transitive clause with both object and subject as a full NPs:

 kamicha ke Antonio-da mure ponte-'po
 clothes with Antonio-ERG child dress-PAST
 Antonio dressed up the child with clothes

 (2) Transitive clause with object as full NP and subject as a suffix:

 kamicha ke mure ponte-'po-i-ya
 clothes with child dress-PAST-3-ERG
 He dressed up the child with clothes

 (3) Transitive clause with object as a prefix and subject as a full NP:

 kamicha ke i-ponte-'po Antonio-da
 clothes with 3-dress-PAST Antonio-ERG
 Antonio dressed him up with clothes

 (4) Transitive with both object and subject as affixes:

 kamicha ke i-ponte-'po-i-ya
 clothes with 3-dress-PAST-3-ERG
 He dressed him up with clothes

 (5) Intransitive clause with the subject as a full NP:

 kamicha ke Antonio e-ponte-'po
 clothes with Antonio DETRANS-dress-PAST
 Antonio dressed with clothes

 (6) Intransitive with the subject as an affix:

 kamicha ke iy-e-ponte-'po
 clothes with 3-DETRANS-dress-PAST
 He dressed with clothes

 Disallowed forms, with co-reference signalled with (1) and (2):

 *kamicha ke mure(1) i(1)-ponte-'po-i(2) Antonio(2)-da
 *kamicha ke i-ponte-'po-i(1) Antonio(1)-da
 *kamicha ke mute(1) i(1)-ponte-'po-i-ya
 *kamicha ke Antonio(1) iy(1)-e-ponte-'po

 Jose Alvarez "Pipo" (jalvarconicit.ve)
 Departamento de Ciencias Humanas
 Facultad Experimental de Ciencias
 Universidad del Zulia
 Maracaibo, Venezuela
 Fax: +58 (061) 515390, 524310, 78246

I'm looking for languages in which the word for "same" /
"identical" is [excuse the pun] identical (or otherwise formally
related) to the conjunction "and" and/or a comitative or more
general oblique expression, eg. "with", "accompany", "at", "by" etc.

My reason for asking is as follows: in some dialects of
Malay/Indonesian, the same form [sama] has both of the above
usages, and I am wondering whether this should be analyzed
as chance homophony, or in terms of a single more general
meaning. Accordingly, if there turn out to be other, unrelated
languages in which "same" is formally related to "and" / "with" /
"accompany", then this would support the latter, single-meaning
analysis.

(Of course, there are numerous instances of "and" is formally
related to "with" / "accompany"; I am *not* asking for examples of
these.)

Thanks,

David Gil
National University of Singapore
ellgildnusvm.bitnet