Query Details
| Query Subject: |
Origin of Agreement Systems
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| Author: | Greville Corbett | |
| Submitter Email: | click here to access email | |
| Linguistic LingField(s): |
Historical Linguistics
Syntax |
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| Query: |
In an influential paper, Givón (1976) argued that verb agreement arises
from anaphoric pronouns (schematically, the man, he arrived > the man he-arrived). The idea was not completely new, but it was Givón who presented a developed and convincing case. We might have expected this paper to stimulate the publication of a lot of supporting evidence, but my impression is that this has not happened. There are examples, such as Harris (2002), who argues for a pronominal origin for person markers in Udi, but such studies are not plentiful. Givón suggested that head-modifier agreement develops from verb agreement, but gives less space to this. A different source was suggested by Greenberg (1978), offering evidence from Daly languages that general classifiers are a possible source. This is made more plausible by Reid's (1997) account of Ngan’gityemmeri (Daly family). So my QUESTION: are there further detailed accounts of the rise of agreement? That is, are there descriptions of a language without agreement at an earlier stage and the subsequent development of agreement? I am NOT asking about extensions of agreement systems (e.g. a system with a number feature with values singular and plural which then develops dual markers). I am asking about languages lacking agreement at one stage which develop it at a later stage. I will of course post a summary if I am overwhelmed by examples. References Givón, Talmy. 1976. Topic, pronoun and grammatical agreement. In: Charles N. Li (ed.) Subject and Topic, 149-88. New York: Academic Press. Greenberg, Joseph H. 1978. How does a language acquire gender markers? In: Joseph H. Greenberg, Charles A. Ferguson & Edith A. Moravcsik (eds) Universals of Human Language: III: Word Structure, 47-82. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Harris, Alice C. 2002. Endoclitics and the Origins of Udi Morphosyntax. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Reid, Nicholas. 1997. Class and classifier in Ngan’gityemmeri. In: Mark Harvey & Nicholas Reid (eds) Nominal Classification in Aboriginal Australia (Studies in language companion series 37), 165-228. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. |
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| LL Issue: | 16.645 | |
| Date posted: | 04-Mar-2005 | |
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