Chapter 7

Grammatical, Semantic and Lexical Change

PART II

Commentary on Crowley

Morphosyntactic Alignment

The system used to distinguish between the arguments of transitive verbs and those of intransitive verbs, which can be made morphologically (through grammatical case or verbal agreement), syntactically (through word order), or both, is called Morphosyntactic Alignment.

(From Wikipedia article approved by Instructor)

Bernard Comrie’s systemCategories: S, A, O

S = subject of intransitiveA = agent of transitiveO = logical object of transitive

Accusative and Ergative Case Marking Systems

S

A O

Accusative and Ergative Case Marking Systems

SAccusative

A O

Accusative and Ergative Case Marking Systems

S

Ergative

A O

English as Accusative LanguageHe wept. He is S.He threw the ball. He is A.Somebody loves him. Him is O.

S and A are the same: HeO is a different: Him

Nomenclature: Accusative languages mark the O (accusative case) differently than S and A.

Hypothetical ŋinlish as Ergative Language

He wept. He is S.Him threw the ball. Him is A.Somebody loves he. He is O.

S and O are the same: HeA is a different: Him

Nomenclature: Ergative languages mark the A (ergative case) differently than S and O (called absolutive case).

Many ergative languages mark the A (ergative) case with nominal affixes, cf. Crowley p. 137.

Mali-ju majgal-u mala ȡ:mȡam buma-ni.A, O

the man the child hit-past‘The man hit the child.’

Mala bajgal gaware-:la. Sthe man run-present

‘The man runs.’

Mali-ju ȡ:mȡam-bu mala bajgal ɲa:-ni A, Othe child the man see-past

‘The child saw the man.’

How English could become ŋinlishEnglish: I saw him; I was seen by him ; I ran.

A O ; S<O Obl.A<A ; S(A and S are marked the same; O is different; passive is

stylistic option.)

loss of active voice; loss of preposition by marking A case. (Crowley, p. 140)

ŋinlish: I see-n him; I ran. (Transl: ‘He saw me; I ran.’)

O A ; S(O and S are marked the same; A is different; no stylistic

option is available.)

How ŋinlish changed to ŋishnil by evolving an antipassive construction

Antipassive as stylistic option in ŋishnil

ŋinlish: I see-n him; I ran. (Transl: ‘He saw me; I ran.’)

O A ; S

(O and S are marked the same; A is different; no stylistic option)

ŋishnil: I see-n him; I see-n at him; I ran. (Transl: ‘He saw me;

O A ; S<O Obl<A; S I saw (looked) at him; I ran.’)

(O and S are marked the same; A is different; no stylistic option is available.)

AntipassiveMany ergative languages develop a stylistic

transformation called antipassive.

ŋinlish would change to ŋishnil when it started employing intransitive sentence structures with semantically transitive verbs, e.g. I love to him (S__PP). This structure provides a stylistic alternative to the basic ergative structure He love-n me (O__A) meaning ‘I love him’, but with a different nuance.

Back to the future: Ergative to Accusative ShiftErgative languages with an antipassive

construction can change into accusative languages. (The majority of the world’s languages are accusative, by the way.)

The change can be triggered in many ways sociolinguistically speaking, e.g. marriage exchanges occur among speakers of the two language types.

All it takes is for children to start dropping the preposition in the antipassive construction: I love to you I love you...

S PP S O

Ergative to accusative shift... and then when the children reanalyze the new I

love you construction as the ‘basic’ transitive structure: AVO

This co-ops the erstwhile ergative structure, forcing it to disappear, or undergo re-analysis as a mere stylistic option, i.e. as a passive.

Before the reanalysis: I love-n him = ‘He loves me.’

After the reanalysis: I love-n him = ‘I am loved (by) him.’

And so, after perhaps 10,000 years of morpho-syntactic change, the language may end up, typologically, right back where it started.

7.1 Typology and Grammatical ChangeMorphological types (4)Accusative and ergative languages

Basic constituent orderVerb chains

Word Order variety in an inflecting language (Latin example re-visited)

Marcellus amat Sophiam.Sophiam Marcellus amat.Amat Marcellus Sopham.Sophiam amat Marcellus.

‘Marcus loves Sophia.’

Totally free Word Order w/o noun inflections is not found.

SVO I like fish. John loves Mary.~SOV I fish like. John, Mary loves.~OSV Fish I like. Mary, John loves.~OVS Fish, like, I. Mary, loves, John~VSO Like, I, fish. Loves, John, Mary~VOS Like fish I. Loves Mary, John

No language has this kind of free word order.

Instead, languages that can settle on a basic order, can reduce nominal case

marking.

Lg A: SVO I like fish. John loves Mary.Lg B: SOV I fish like. John, Mary

loves.Lg C: OSV Fish I like. Mary John loves.Lg D: OVS Fish like I. Mary loves JohnLg E: VSO Like I fish. Loves John MaryLg F: VOS Like fish I. Loves Mary John

GLOSS ‘I like fish.’ ‘John loves Mary.’

So where did all the variety come from?

I thought Chomsky said all languages were at bottom the same?!

Word Order Change

SOV SVO VSOVOS OVSOSV SOV

very rare, once thought to be non-existent

PIE > EnglishSOV > SVO

How did this change come about?

In modern German, main clauses are SVO but embedded clauses are SOV.

The explanation: German retains the PIE pattern in embedded clauses, but has changed to SVO in main clauses, whereas English has changed all sentences to SVO.

English and German word order

Ich liebe dich. ‘I love you.’Wo ist das Mädchen das ich liebe? ‘Where

is the girl that I love?’Wo is das Mädchen das ich lieben soll?

‘Where is the girl that I should love?’ (that I love should)

Wo is das Mädchen das ich auf die Strasse gesehen haben soll? ‘Where is the girl that I supposedly saw on the street?’ (that I on the street seen have should)

7.1 Typology and Grammatical ChangeMorphological types (4)Accusative and ergative languagesBasic constituent order

Verb chains

Verb Chains (also called Serial Verbs)The closest English has to these is perhaps

found in a series of modals and auxiliaries:He might have been being chased by a lion.

English also allows limited verb serializing with begin and infinitives.

The children began crying to see the injured animals.

Melanau pariphrastic passive

As seen earlier, Melanau dialects employ the adversative verb ‘touch’ as auxiliary followed by a verb root in a passive construction.

Belawi: Talak idun kənah rusuk ŋan abaw puyan.

touch wash‘The dishes were washed with kitchen ashes.’

Some languages take this farther.

They allow several lexical verbs in a construction, perhaps because conjunctions can be freely deleted syntactically.

Crowley (p. 144) says that most languages exploiting this possibility are SOV.

Verb serialization allows sentences to be constructed SOV(V)n

Na-bu-wul-cay-pra-kiak.him-they-frighten-try-come-passing

‘They tried to scare him (when he) came passing.’

End of Section 7.1 – Typology and Grammatical Change

Morphological types (4)Accusative and ergative languagesBasic constituent orderVerb chains

TO BE CONTINUED