Date: Wed, 30 Oct 1996 18:44:30 -0500 (EST)
Message-Id: <199610302344.SAA24413@sarah.albany.edu>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SOL.3.95.961029172306.3220C-100000@suma3.reading.ac.uk>
To: Linguistics Conference <LINCONF@tamvm1.tamu.edu>
From: George Aaron Broadwell <g.broadwell@albany.edu>
Subject: Broadwell reply to Huang
Reply to Huang:
**Switch-reference and things other than subjects
There are a few languages that are described as having
switch-reference systems that track coreference between
NPs other than subject. I haven't seen enough data on such
languages to be sure of what the best analysis is. But here's
a first guess.
In Cashinahua, the SR markers show a system like the
following:
(Data from R. Montag. 1973. La estructura
sema'ntica de las relaciones entre frases verbales en
cashinahua. In *Estudios Panos, v. II* ed. by Loos, E. Serie
Linguistica Peruana, no. 11. Instituto Lingu"i'stica Peruana)
Assume two clauses, S1 and S2
S1 S2 SR marker
incompletive transitive
Subj = Subj /-kin/
incompletive transitive
Subj = Obj /-i/
incompletive intrans /-i/
Subj = Subj
incompletive
Subj not = Subj /-aya/
completive trans
trans
Subj = Obj /-ken/
completive trans
intrans
Subj not = Obj /-ken/
comp intrans
Subj not = Subj /-ken/
completive trans
Subj = Subj /-xun/
In general, we don't know nearly as much about this kind of
switch-reference system as we would like to.
Provisionally, I'd make the following suggestion:
Languages showing this sort of system seem to have
evidence for a functional head of the AgrO sort. If this node
bears the referential index of the object, then one can
see how objects might play a role in the binding of
SR markers via the heads that they are indexed with.
[Deciding whether this suggestion would work
would require more information about the
syntax that I have yet seen, so this should be
taken with a large grain of salt.]
It is also sometimes claimed that SR reflects switches in sentential
topic or some other discourse element. I don't discount the
possibility that some languages have devices that indicate a switch
in topic, but I don't think such systems should necessarily be treated
via binding theory. For a good example of such a language, see the Papuan
language Barai (discussed by Michael Olsen in a BLS paper from around 1978).
Barai has a set of SR markers that operate on a strict notion of syntactic
subject, but also has a distinct set of markers that indicate switch in topic.
This indicates to me that it is a mistake to assume that every morphological
system marking clause junctures as 'same' or 'different' is of the same sort.
Barai shows clearly that both switch-subject and switch-topic systems can
exist in the same language.
At 12:45 PM 10/29/96 -0500, you wrote:
>Date: Tue, 29 Oct 1996 17:25:48 +0000 (GMT)
>From: Yan Huang <llshuang@reading.ac.uk>
>Subject: Yan Huang commenting on Broadwell
>
>QUESTIONS FROM HUANG TO BROADWELL
>
>Can I ask one or two general questions relating to Broadwell's paper?
>How would your approach deal with
>(i) switch-reference marking that involves NPs in grammatical functions
>other than subject,
>(ii) switch-reference marking that involves constructions without subject
>or with referentially deficient subjects?
>
>--Yan Huang
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
--George Aaron Broadwell, g.broadwell@albany.edu
Anthropology; Linguistics and Cognitive Science,
University at Albany, SUNY, Albany, NY 12222 | 518-442-4711