Summary Details
| Query: |
Person Marking
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| Author: | mike_maxwell mike_maxwell | |
| Submitter Email: | click here to access email | |
| Linguistic LingField(s): |
Morphology
Semantics Syntax |
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| Summary: |
In LINGUIST List 10-776, I posted a query concerning a person marking system which (to me) seemed very odd. In Cubeo (a so-called "middle" Tucanoan language of Colombia), in one of the two past tenses the first and second person marking switches between declaratives and interrogatives. Specifically, first person suffixes in declaratives are used as second person suffixes in interrogatives, and vice versa. I asked if anyone had run into this in other languages. To my surprise, such a person marking system is attested (although it is of course far from common). Thanks for their responses to Doris Payne (dlpayne@OREGON.UOREGON.EDU), Claire Hiscock (claireh@tinh.it), Adrian Clynes (aclynes@ubd.edu.bn), Jackson T.-S. Sun (hstssun@ccvax.sinica.edu.tw), Richard (= Dick) Hudson (dick@linguistics.ucl.ac.uk), Connie Dickinson (condi@darkwing.uoregon.edu), Ernest McCarus (enm@umich.edu), James L. Fidelholtz (jfidel@siu.buap.mx), Stefan Georg (Georg@home.ivm.de), Norvin Richards (norvin@kanda.kuis.ac.jp), Arthur Holmer (arthur.holmer@ling.lu.se), Michael Cysouw (m.cysouw@let.kun.nl), Wolfgang Schulze (W.Schulze@mail.lrz-muenchen.de), Timothy Jowan Curnow (Timothy.Curnow@anu.edu.au), John Peterson (John.Peterson@germanistik.uni-muenchen.de). A variety of terms have been used to refer to this person marking system, including "conjunct-disjunct" (Hale), "self-person vs.other-person", and "mirativity." (The latter term covers a broader range of things as well, roughly having to do with old vs. new information.) Note: the 'Hale' in the above paragraph was mentioned by several respondents, some of whom referred to Ken Hale (MIT) and others of whom referred to Austin Hale (SIL). Based on a web search, I believe it is the latter, although I have not actually seen any of the papers in question. Some specific comments (slightly edited): [This marking system has been found in] Lhasa Tibetan, Kathmandu Newari, some Loloish languages, and probably some further Tibeto-Burman languages of the Himalayan region. It is also found in a few Mongolic languages bordering on Tibetan (Monguor and Baoan), where it was recently discovered by Keith Slater in his 1998 dissertation (Minhe Mangghuer: a Mixed Language of the Inner Asian Frontier) and, ahem, by myself in a forthcoming paper on Tibeto-Mongolic language contacts. ... [It] has been dubbed the "conjunct/discunct" system by Hale (for Newari) and its chief explorer, Scott DeLancey. Of his numerous papers on the matter, one may mention "The Historical Status of the Conjunct/Disjunct Pattern in Tibeto-Burman", Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 25/1992, 39-62, and "Mirativity: New vs. Assimilated Knowledge as a Semantic and Grammatical Category", Linguistic Typology 1,1/1997. --Stefan Georg - -------------- [The suffix marking 1st person in declarative and 2nd person in interrogative might mean] 'source of information/authority', which is the speaker in declaratives and the addressee in interrogatives. --Dick Hudson - -------------- I recall having seen reports of similar data in the Tibeto-Burman language Akha spoken in northern Thailand... As I recall, sentence-final particles have one form if the subject is 1st person in declaratives and 2nd person in interrogatives, and another form if the subject is 2nd person in declaratives and 1st person in interrogatives. These particles also serve to mark evidentiality. --Arthur Holmer - -------------- ...there was an interesting article by Scott Delancey in Linguistic Typology, 1:33-52 on Mirativity, which deals with issues like this...as I recall it, there is a general distinction between 1st person declaratives and 2nd person questions on the one hand, and everything else on the other, which many people trace back to agentivity, expected information, etc. For example, if I do something, then I am aware of it (generally), whereas when you do something, you (but not me) will be aware of your having done it (i.e., conciously having done it). Thus, when I ask you, I use the same form which I use for myself when making a statement. This has just become grammaticalized in some languages. --John Peterson - -------------- [There is] a good parallel from a Darwga diaclect (Central East Cauacsian) called Meheb, cf. nu quli-w le-w-ra I:ABS house-LOC be:PRES-CL:I-1:Sg "I am at home" nu quli-w le-w-u I:ABS house-LOC be:PRES-CL:I-Q "Am I at home?" h/u quli-w le-w you:SG:ABS house-LOC be:PRES-CL:I "you (sg.) are at home." h/u quli-w le-w-ra(-u) you:SG:ABS house-LOC be:PRES-CL:I-2Sg(-Q) "Are you at home?" Here, the morpheme -ra indicates 1Sg in declaratives, but 2Sg in interrogates. --Wolfgang Schulze - -------------- Ika (Chibchan, Colombia), [described] by an SIL grammarian, Paul Frank. I do not have his works right here, so I only can give an account from my own (scanty) notes.... There are auxiliaries used for Past marking, and one of them has the following paradigm (this is only part of the complete paradigm): immediate past past 1 uwin ukuin 2 ukuin uzin 3 vwin uzin (The orthography is not correct, due to ASCII limitation! The data come from Frank['s dissertation] 1985, page 89.) [There was more data in the msg, but I've edited out of this summary for reasons of space--MM] --Michael Cysouw - -------------- The situation reminds me of something I read about British English back in the 50's: a question uses the form of "shall" or "will" expected in the response. Thus: Shall you attend the meeting? Yes, I shall. --Ernest N. McCarus - -------------- In addition to the languages mentioned above, Adrian Clynes reports a similar system in Balinese (Austronesian), described in his 1995 PhD thesis. Claire Hiscock has been told that for Brazilian Portuguese "in informal sitiations, the suffixes marking first and second person were the same in exchanges like 'Are you coming?' 'Yes, I'm coming.' Connie Dickinson is writing a paper for CLS on this kind of 1/2 person declarative/ interrogative split in Tsafiki (= Colorado, a Barbacoan language of Ecuador). Timothy Jowan Curnow describes such a person marking system in an unpublished paper (originally a chapter of his dissertation) for Awa Pit (= Cuaiquer), another Barbacoan language of Ecuador and Colombia. Connie Dickinson reports that Cha'paalachi (= Cayapa of Ecuador, the third living language of the Barbacoan family) and Guambiano (sometimes called Barbacoan, but of doubtful affinity, IMHO) have similar systems. I have inquiries out to some of the field linguists I know who work in these languages for data, but haven't heard back yet. The Barbacoan languages are not known to be related to Cubeo, but there might have been an areal influence. (Cubeo is atypical of the other languages in the Tucanoan family in several respects. Also, the area is well-known for intermarriage between people of different language groups.) Several diachronic sources for such a marking system were suggested, among them re-analysis of mirativity marking or of evidentiality systems, and folk etymology (resulting more or less from the same sort of mistake we linguists sometimes make when trying to elicit 1st and 2nd person forms). In the case of Cubeo, there is a robust system of evidentials, so I suspect that is the source. (And the evidentials behave oddly in interrogatives of the recent past tense, perhaps evidence--sorry about the pun--for this hypothesis.) Mike Maxwell Mike_Maxwell@sil.org Summer Institute of Linguistics |
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| LL Issue: | 10.856 | |
| Date Posted: | 07-Jun-1999 | |
| Original Query: | Read original query | |
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