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Multiple exponence in Oto-Manguean
Enrique Palancar
To cite this version:
Enrique Palancar. Multiple exponence in Oto-Manguean. AnaMorphoSys, Analyzing Morphological Systems Conference, Jun 2016, Lyon, France. �hal-03333732�
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Multiple exponence in Oto-Manguean
Enrique L. Palancar February 2020
1. Introduction
I wrote this response to Harris’ article (‘Understanding multiple exponence: How can diachronic linguistics contribute to understanding morphology?’) in the spirit of an essay, with the idea of illustrating the common train of thought that a general linguist like me often has when confronted with papers addressing issues in linguistic diversity from a theoretical or larger typological stance. The label “linguist like me” is necessarily a broad one, and should be taken with caution (most likely the only linguist like me that exists is just myself, and the same could be said of everyone else...). The group I have in mind includes linguists who are interested in language description, who study and document endangered languages that are still poorly understood, who have a genuine and strong interest in language diversity and who contribute to building a body of typological knowledge about human languages. Daring to speak up for such a group, I would venture and say that for us the primary scientific interest of a theoretical proposal lies in whether it makes sense and is useful. To do this, the first thing we do is rely on the data that we are most familiar with to see if the proposal in question sheds new light on a particular phenomenon in the languages of our expertise so that we can gain a better understanding of them, because if we do, someone would eventually benefit from it. If it makes sense and is useful for that purpose, we accept it and will probably implement it in our own analyses; any other outcome invites us to reject it and forget about it.
One of my main interests in linguistics is the Mesoamerican languages of Mexico and Central America. Accordingly, in my case I find theoretical claims useful for morphological analysis only if I find they help us gain a better understanding of the morphological structure of Mesoamerican languages. Accordingly, I will try to apply here what I have learned from Harris’ article to what we already know and see if we can learn a little more about the structure of these languages. There is always room for learning; that is a good thing.
Most linguists operate with a very simple theory of how the core mechanism of inflectional morphology works. This theory involves an idealized model of the Saussurean sign in the form of a semiotic mapping linking lexical or grammatical meaning to form. In this ideal –a ʻcanonʼ in the sense of Corbett’s (2005, 2007) canonical typology– the mapping is bipolar:
one pole involves the realm of meaning; the other, the realm of form. In the canon, the mapping is also straightforward: one meaning to one form; one form to one meaning. But languages surprise us in the ways they deviate from this canon. In this connection, Alice C.
Harris’ article is about multiple exponence (henceforth ME), defined as ‟the marking of a feature, bundle of features, or derivational category more than once in a wordˮ, which means that ME is indeed one of the ways of deviating from the canonicity of the linguistic symbol.
All this makes ME interesting.
But linguistic analysis is all about exegesis based on interpretation of the data, and sometimes we see different things in the same data, because our mental vision is tainted by our theoretical assumptions, and our assumptions by our beliefs of what a theory of language should be like. My belief is that morphology constitutes an autonomous level of linguistic structure with its own rules. Many people do not share this belief; many other people do not know about it or even care. I have convinced myself that the concept of morphology as being an autonomous level makes sense and is useful because in the course of my career I have been
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intellectually challenged by phenomena involving naturalistic linguistic data of inflectional systems from Indo-European and Oto-Manguean languages that defy an explanation in other terms. This is why I think Aronoff’s 1994 book Morphology by itself is foundational in creating a different way of looking at the universe of word structure, which treats morphological phenomena in their own right, conceptually independent from other levels of grammar, such as the syntax or the phonology.
Going back to ME, and recalling that not everybody sees the world with the same eyes, it should come as no surprise that some linguists would not regard ME as an ontology worth serving as an object of study. For example, Harris’ article starts with an illustration of ME with an example from Batsbi, a Caucasian language. But in the related language Archi, the same phenomenon is explained by Polinsky & Radkevich (2012) as the result of a mere phonological concatenation of what they treat as two functional heads. In syntactically- oriented accounts of morphological phenomena such as this, an autonomous level of morphological structure is a phantom of the imagination. For example, a word-form such as bimmabaqːʼu in (1), which bears two identical gender agreement markers, is understood to be the phonological outcome of the requirements of the binary-branching syntactic structure in figure in (2).
(1) maħlo=wu b-imma<b>aqːʼu household(III)[SG.ABS]=and III.SG-leave<III.SG>PFV
ʻ... and left the household (to someone).ʼ
(2) AspP
2
Aspʼ 2 vP Asp
2 aqːʼu [PFV] [uCL] pro v’
2 VP v
| ø [uCL] Vʼ
2 DP V maħlo. imma ʻhousehold(III)ʼʻleaveʼ
[CL]
This is all to say that depending on what your theoretical beliefs are, you would perhaps not consider (1) as a case of ME. For what remains, I will therefore take it for granted that ME is not a mirage of the phonology-syntax interface and that it represents an interesting case for the inflectional morphology of a natural system. In her article, Harris presents us with two types of ME: ‘periodic’ and ‘by reinforcement’ (there are other types, but they are not treated there). The proposal is that (i) they have different characteristics and (ii) that these characteristics are accounted for if one understands them as different outcomes of different histories. Harris’ basic claim is that understanding the diachronic origins of constructions can
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contribute to understanding the morphology synchronically; the gist being that diachrony is useful for morphological analysis.
One may equally turn Harris’ claim around and say that for the synchronic analysis of lesser- documented languages, whose diachrony is commonly very poorly understood, if one has a bundle of properties x and y in ME, it is then likely that you may have a case of z type of ME in such a way that you can start building a diachronic story about x and y. I support Harris’
claim, but I also have to admit that one cannot get over-excited, because for some languages there is a very limited array of things that we can reconstruct with certitude, and the reconstruction may not prove that useful for understanding how linguistic structure works synchronically.
The Mesoamerican languages are all morphologically rich, but the challenging cases involving ME are, to my knowledge, basically only found in languages of the Oto-Manguean phylum. In what follows I raise a number of issues that have come to mind when trying to grasp the consequences of Harris’ claim. I concentrate on three phenomena that involve ME (in some way or another) from three very different Oto-Manguean languages. I first introduce clear classes of ME in §2, leaving the more challenging cases until §3. In §3, I first ponder the notion of ‘carrier’ in periodic ME; then I discuss some issues involving diachronic trajectories and synchronic patterns in ME; and I finish by proposing that extension is not the only possible way to end up with ME by reinforcement.
2. Clear cases of ME in Oto-Manguean
Before I discuss more problematic cases, it is perhaps convenient to see first the sorts of ME that are frequently observed in the Oto-Manguean languages. Given an inflected form of a verb, the exemplary instance of ME happens when the verb has a special stem that is used to realize a feature value (or a bundle of feature values) that is also realized by co-occurring affixes in the same word. To illustrate this, consider the partial paradigm of the verb énu ‘see’
in Table 1 from Chichimec, an Oto-Manguean language of the Oto-Pamean branch. The paradigm is the synchronic version of the one given in Angulo (1933), which is discussed in Harris (2017: 71ff). Here we see that an inflected form consists of a prefix and a stem. Crucial for our purposes is the fact that the verb has three stems, which following Palancar & Avelino (2019), I call Stem A –nu, Stem B –nhu (in dark shading), and Stem C -rṵ (light shading).
There are also two tonal patterns (i.e. HL and LH—also in light shading in Table 1—where H is for high tone and L for low tone). These tonal patterns are superimposed onto the segments, so that the same stem or prefix may surface with different tones.
1ST 2ND 3SG/DU 3PL 1ST 2ND 3SG/DU 3PL
PRS é-nu A kí-nu A é-nu A é-nhu B HL HL HL HL ANT.PST tu-nú A ki-rṵ ́ C u-rṵ ́ C u-nhú B LH LH LH LH IMM.PST u-rṵ ́ C i-rṵ ́ C sú-rṵ C sú-nhu B LH LH HL HL REC.PST kú-nu A ki-rṵ ́ C kú-rṵ C ku-nhú B HL LH HL LH FUT a-nú A ki-rṵ ́ C a-rṵ ́ C a-nhú B LH LH LH LH
POT nu-rṵ ́ C mi-rṵ ́ C mu-rṵ ́ C mi-nhú B LH LH LH LH SEQ ra-nú A i-rṵ ́ C ra-rṵ ́ C rá-nhu B LH LH LH HL NEG su-rṵ ́ C si-rṵ ́ C su-rṵ ́ C su-nhú B LH LH LH LH
Table 1. The verb énu ‘see’ in Chichimec
In Table 1, we can see that there is a high degree of syncretism between the prefixes, especially between the first and third persons, but elsewhere as well. Our concern is the
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function of the three stem alternants. Stems A and C do not seem to align in any clear way with a consistent bundle of feature values; for instance, Stem A –nu cannot be said to be a stem for the present, because it is also used for the first-person anterior and recent past, for the future end sequential. The only stem that is consistently aligned with a feature value is Stem B, which could be treated as an exponent of third person and plural number. In this connection, the third-person plural anterior past form u-nhú and the third-person plural immediate past form sú-nhu (together enclosed in the square in Table 1) could be said to be the clearest examples of ME in the paradigm of the Chichimec verb énu ‘see’, as both the stem –nhu and the prefixes u- and su- for the anterior and immediate past, respectively, unequivocally reflect third person.
But perhaps a better example of ME is found in some forms of the incompletive subparadigm of active verbs in the Amuzgo spoken in San Pedro Amuzgos (Feist et al. 2015), a language of the Amuzgan branch of Oto-Manguean. This is illustrated with the verb ʔ⁵ndʔue³ ‘search for’
in Table 2. Here the verb has two stems, one aligned with the singular and another with the plural. Note that all forms in the plural also receive the same prefix for incompletive, which is distinct from the prefixes used for the singular. The forms for the plural thus show ME of plural number.
INCPL 1SG ma³-nd’uɛ³¹ɛ³
2SG ma³-ndʔue’¹
3SG (HUM) ’⁵-nd’ue³(=hu⁵) 1PL.INCL ko³-hnd’uɛ⁵ɛ⁵ 1PL.EXCL ko³-hnd’uɛ³¹ɛ³ 2PL ko³-hnd’ue¹²=o’⁵ 3PL (HUM) ko³-hnd’ue¹²(=ho⁵)
Table 2. The verb NDʔUE³ ‘search for’ in San Pedro Amuzgos Amuzgo
Having seen clear instances of ME, in the following sections I discuss other more complex types of ME by relating them to the categories advanced in Harris’ article.
3. Other more challenging cases for ME from Oto-Manguean
3.1. The notion of ‘carrier’ in periodic ME
Let us start with periodic ME, ‟characterized by the fact that the presence of one (kind of) bound morpheme entails the presence of one of the exponents at issue”; that morpheme being treated as ʻcarrierʼ. Here one of the issues is the notion of carrier, for which I go to Chinantecan; a branch of Oto-Manguean.
In Chinantecan languages, there is a class of ʻbinomialʼ verbs which exhibit a complex stem consisting of two stems: Σ1+Σ2. In the dictionary of Tlatepuzco Chinantec by Merrifield &
Anderson (2007), such verbs amount to more than a hundred from a total of about 800 lemmas. The elements that can serve as Σ1 form a small closed class, and they have neither a lexical meaning nor a clear etymology. Likewise, a substantial subset of Σ2 in such binomial verbs cannot occur as independent stems, and some of them are equally obscure semantically.
The class of binomial verbs is in turn subdivided into those where only Σ1 is inflected (Σ1-
INFL+Σ2) and those that require both stems to be inflected (Σ1-INFL+Σ2-INFL). From the data in the dictionary, it is not entirely clear which verbs belong to which class. The inflection of Σ1 is exclusively tonal and follows a unique paradigm (very different from the paradigm of other
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verbs). Binomial verbs of the Σ1-INFL+Σ2-INFL class show a case of ME involving affixation. To see this, compare (3) with (4) (adapted and corrected from Merrifield and Anderson, 2007:
705).
(3) Σ1-INFL+Σ2 ca1-ŋii3-mi3+lei13=dsa
PRF-CISLOC-show/Σ1.CISLOC[3]+Σ2=3HUMPRO
ʻS/he went off and showed (and came back).ʼ
(4) Σ1-INFL+Σ2-INFL ca1-ŋii3-tsø3+ŋii3-jan13=dsa
PRF- CISLOC-scatter/Σ1.CISLOC [3]+Σ2.CISLOC [3]=3HUMPRO
ʻS/he went off and scattered (seeds) (and came back).ʼ
In (3) and (4) we have forms bearing the deictic prefix ŋii3-, which conveys motion of the round-trip type (‟go somewhere to V and come back to deictic centerˮ; here just glossed as ʻcislocativeʼ). While it is not apparent from the examples, Σ2 LEI in (3) is non-inflecting, whereas jan13 in (4) does inflect. This can be seen if one compares the third-person incompletive and completive forms of MI+LEI ʻshowʼ (mi2+lei13 and mi1+lei13, respectively, without tonal changes on LEI) with the corresponding forms of TSØ+JANʻscatterʼ (tsø2+jan12 and tsø2+jan1, respectively, with tonal changes on JAN). Such forms further show that both Σ1 MI and Σ1 TSØ receive tonal inflection, though as members of different tone classes. I should recall that elements serving as Σ1 (and most that serve as Σ2) are not semantically transparent.
In (4) we have a case of ME of the periodic type proposed by Harris. The ME properties of the construction are only observable when we have the deictic prefix. In its absence, the verbs are indistinguishable in their exponence properties. Now, Harris’s definition of periodic ME involves the notion of a carrier morpheme. In this connection, we could say that the element
TSØ as Σ1 is a carrier, while MI is not. But (there is always a but...), it seems that certain verbs of the type Σ1-INFL+Σ2 also have the element TSØ as Σ1. So the notion of carrier would not help us here, unless we think there are two TSØ’s as Σ1. Alternatively, one could perhaps posit that examples (3) and (4) instantiate different constructions and that TSØ as Σ1 only functions as a carrier morpheme in the construction in (4).i In any of these two conclusions, I fail to see what exactly we would gain appealing to the notion of carrier. I would agree with a Harris-like view of ME that from the different inflectional properties we observe in (3) and (4), we may conclude that the two subclasses of binomial verbs appear to have developed from different sources and thus they tell different stories, but we cannot be certain. In the end, membership in the classes of binomial verbs needs to be learned, and as the semantic compositionality of the constructions diminished, membership in the classes was likely to have changed much through time. This means that a given verb nowadays can only be taken to provide glimpses of a past that might have been, but is that possible history useful for explaining why the data behaves the way it does in synchrony? I am not sure, but in utter fairness, I also think that Harris would acknowledge that with the passage of time, historical changes may tend to obscure the insights that diachronic phenomena bring to synchronic analysis.
3.2. Diachronic trajectories and synchronic patterns in ME
I would like to discuss now the issue of the relation between diachronic trajectories and synchronic patterns for morphological analysis. For this, we move from Tlatepuzco Chinantec in the previous section back to the Amuzgo of San Pedro Amuzgos, but to give an idea of the degree of internal diversity of Oto-Manguean as a genus, we could say that the Amuzgan branch of Oto-Manguean is as close to Chinantecan as Tokharian would be to Germanic.
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In Amuzgo, as in Chinantec, a subset of verbs have bipartite stems consisting of Σ1-INFL+Σ2-INFL, but here the forms we have in Σ1 are the remnants of set of inflected forms of the verb BHA
‘go’. In the sample from San Pedro Amuzgo in Feist et al. (2015) compiled by native linguist Fermín Tapia, there are 20 such verbs; plus 12 more in the dictionary by Stewart & Stewart (2000). The case is illustrated in Table 3 with the verb BA+KUA ‘lay down’. As the morphological analysis behind the segmentation involves a good deal of morphophonological reconstruction, I also give the raw forms in italics for clarity and convenience.
‘lay down’ (tr) Σ1-INFL ‘go’
INCPL
1SG ba’¹kua¹/ hɔ¹kua¹ Ø- ba’¹/(hɔ¹)+kua¹ ba’¹/hɔ¹+Σ2-INFL hɔ¹ Ø h‹ɔ›¹ 2SG ba³kua’⁵³ Ø- ba³+kua⁵³-’ ba³+Σ2-INFL bha’⁵³ Ø bha⁵³-’
3SG ba⁵kua³⁵(hu⁵) Ø- ba⁵+kua³⁵(=hu⁵) ba⁵+Σ2-INFL bha⁵(hu⁵) Ø bha⁵(=hu⁵) 1PL.INCL ko³tsa⁵ki³m’a³⁴a⁵ ko³- tsa⁵+ki³m’a³⁴‹a›⁵ tsa⁵+Σ2-INFL ko³’ɔ⁵ɔ⁵ ko³- ’‹ɔ›⁵‹ɔ›⁵ 1PL.EXCL ko³tsa⁵ki³m’a³¹ ko³- tsa⁵+ki³m’a³¹ tsa⁵+Σ2-INFL ko³tsa³¹ ko³- tsa³¹ 2PL ko³tsa⁵ki³ma’¹o’³ ko³- tsa⁵+ki³ma’¹=o’³ tsa⁵+Σ2-INFL ko³’o⁵o’³ ko³- ’o⁵=o’³ 3PL ko³tsa⁵ki³ma’¹(ho⁵) ko³- tsa⁵+ki³ma’¹(=ho⁵) tsa⁵+Σ2-INFL ko³’o⁵(ho⁵) ko³- ’o⁵(=ho⁵)
IMPF
1SG to³ba’¹kua¹ to³- ba’¹+kua¹ ba’¹+Σ2-INFL to³hɔ¹ to³- h‹ɔ›¹
2SG to³ba³kua’⁵³ to³- ba³+kua⁵³-’ ba³+Σ2-INFL to³bha’⁵³ to³- bha⁵³-’
3SG to³ba⁵kua³⁵(hu⁵) to³- ba⁵+kua³⁵(=hu⁵) ba⁵+Σ2-INFL to³bha⁵(hu⁵) to³- bha⁵(=hu⁵) 1PL.INCL to³tsa⁵ki³m’a³⁴a⁵ to³- tsa⁵+ki³m’a³⁴‹a›⁵ tsa⁵+Σ2-INFL to³’ɔ⁵ɔ⁵ to³- ’‹ɔ›⁵‹ɔ›⁵ 1PL.EXCL to³tsa⁵ki³m’a³¹ to³- tsa⁵+ki³m’a³¹ tsa⁵+Σ2-INFL to³tsa³¹ to³- tsa³¹ 2PL to³tsa⁵ki³ma’¹o’³ to³- tsa⁵+ki³ma’¹=o’³ tsa⁵+Σ2-INFL to³’o⁵o’³ to³- ’o⁵=o’³ 3PL to³tsa⁵ki³ma’¹(ho⁵) to³- tsa⁵+ki³ma’¹(=ho⁵) tsa⁵+Σ2-INFL to³’o⁵(ho⁵) to³- ’o⁵(=ho⁵)
CPL
1SG tɛ¹kua¹ t- [b]ɛ¹+kua¹ [b]ɛ¹+Σ2-INFL tyhɛ¹ t- [b]h‹ɛ›¹ [tyhɛ¹]
2SG ta³kua’⁵³ t- [b]a³+kua⁵³-’ [b]a³+Σ2-INFL tha’⁵³ t- [b]ha⁵³-’
3SG ta⁵kua³⁵(hu⁵) t- [b]a⁵+kua³⁵(=hu⁵) [b]a⁵+Σ2-INFL tha⁵(hu⁵) t- [b]ha⁵(=hu⁵) 1PL.INCL tsa⁵ki³m’a³⁴‹a›⁵ [t-] tsa⁵+ki³m’a³⁴‹a›⁵ tsa⁵+Σ2-INFL t’ɛ⁵ɛ⁵ t- ’‹ɛ›⁵‹ɛ›⁵ 1PL.EXCL tsa⁵ki³m’a³¹ [t-] tsa⁵+ki³m’a³¹ tsa⁵+Σ2-INFL tsa³¹ [t-] tsa³¹ 2PL tsa⁵ki³ma’¹o’³ [t-] tsa⁵+ki³ma’¹=o’³ tsa⁵+Σ2-INFL t’e⁵o’³ t- ’e⁵=o’³ 3PL tsa⁵ki³ma’¹(ho⁵) [t-] [t]sa⁵+ki³ma’¹(=ho⁵) tsa⁵+Σ2-INFL t’e⁵(ho⁵) t- ’e⁵(=ho⁵)
SUBJV
1SG kɔ’¹kua¹ k- [b]ɔ’¹+kua¹ [b]ɔ’¹+Σ2-INFL khɔ¹ k- [b]h‹ɔ›¹
2SG ka³kua’⁵³ k- [b]a³+kua⁵³-’ [b]a³+Σ2-INFL kha’⁵³ k- [b]ha⁵³-’
3SG ka⁵kua³⁵(hu⁵) k- [b]a⁵+kua³⁵(=hu⁵) [b]a⁵+Σ2-INFL kha⁵(hu⁵) k- [b]ha⁵(=hu⁵) 1PL.INCL ki³tsa⁵ki³m’a³⁴a⁵ ki³- tsa⁵+ki³m’a³⁴‹a›⁵ tsa⁵+Σ2-INFL k’ɔ⁵ɔ⁵ k- ’‹ɔ›⁵‹ɔ›⁵ 1PL.EXCL ki³tsa⁵ki³m’a³¹ ki³- tsa⁵+ki³m’a³¹ tsa⁵+Σ2-INFL ki³tsa³¹ ki³- tsa³¹ 2PL ki³tsa⁵ki³ma’¹o’³ ki³- tsa⁵+ki³ma’¹=o’³ tsa⁵+Σ2-INFL k’o⁵o’³ k- ’o⁵=o’³ 3PL ki³tsa⁵ki³ma’¹(ho⁵) ki³- tsa⁵+ki³ma’¹(=ho⁵) tsa⁵+Σ2-INFL k’o⁵(ho⁵) k- ’o⁵(=ho⁵)
Table 3. Four subparadigms of the verbs BA+KUA ‘lay down’ and BHA ‘go’
Verbs with bipartite stems are morphologically very interesting regarding ME. Recall from Table 2 that Amuzgo active verbs have a basic paradigmatic split between singular and plural cells, which is reflected in selecting different stems (for more details, see Palancar & Feist, 2015). The verb BHA ʽgoʼ is peculiar in this respect, because it has an additional suppletive stem for the first-person plural exclusive(-tsa vs. -’o/ʼe).ii The basic singular/plural split can also be seen in verbs with bipartite stems, where both Σ1 and Σ2 manifest the split, but here the plural stem for Σ1 shows that speakers have generalized the original stem for first-person plural exclusiveto the entire plural slab of the paradigm.
Additionally, for the verb BA+KUA ‘lay down’ in Table 3, the number split for Σ2 is realized by the stems +kua³⁵ for singularand the stem +ki³ma’¹ for plural. In these stems, the elements k and ki³ could further be taken to be the reflexes of the subjunctive prefixes, which
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incidentally also show the number split. If that were so, we could further reconstruct the stems for Σ2 as -*ma³⁵ and -*ma’¹ for singular and plural, respectively, as in (5).
(5) a. +kua³⁵ ba⁵+kua³⁵ ba⁵+k-*ma³⁵
[3SG]CL5+SUBJ.SG-lie.SG
b. +ki³ma’¹ tsa⁵+ki³ma’¹ tsa⁵+ki³-*ma’¹
PL.CL5+SUBJ.PL-lie.PL
If we were to analyze the elements k and ki³ as true exponents of the subjunctive, the forms for the subjunctive subparadigm in Table 3 would then be taken as instances of ME. However, the situation in (5) happens in only a handful of the 32 verbs in my sample, suggesting that another possible analysis is that the elements k and ki³ associated with Σ2 are petrified morphs, making all the forms for verbs like BA+KUA ‘lay down’ instances of trapped exponence, in the sense in Harris & Faarlund (2006). Trapped morphology of this type is fundamental in revealing the history of a certain morphological construct; periodic ME is a case of trapped exponence which has accidentally passed overlooked by the sweeping of analogical change.
An example of a verb lacking the elements k and ki³ is BA+NCHHE ‘squash’ as shown in Table 4, which shows just the incompletive subparadigm.
‘lay down’ (tr)
INCPL
1SG baʔ¹nchhɛ⁵³ Ø- Ø-baʔ¹+nchh‹ɛ›⁵³
2SG ba³nchheʔ³ Ø- Ø-ba³+nchhe³-ʔ
3SG ba⁵nchhe³(hu⁵) Ø- Ø-ba⁵+nchhe³(=hu⁵) 1PL.INCL ko³tsa⁵nchhɛ³⁴ ko³- tsa⁵+nchh‹ɛ›³⁴ 1PL.EXCL ko³tsa⁵nchhe⁵¹ ko³- tsa⁵+nchhe⁵¹ 2PL ko³tsa⁵nchhe³oʔ³ ko³- tsa⁵+nchhe³=oʔ³ 3PL ko³tsa⁵nchhe³ (ho⁵) ko³- tsa⁵+nchhe³(=ho⁵)
Table 4. Incompletive of the verb BA+NCHHE ‘squash’
Most of the verbs with bipartite stems are intransitive, but there are also transitive.
Semantically, as shown in Table 5, because of their origin most of them include a motion component in their semantics, being verbs of motion (‘go up’, etc.), associated motion (‘go eat’, etc.), but for most cases the meaning is lexicalized, and includes verbs of manner of motion (‘walk’, ‘skirt’, ‘follow’, etc.), posture (‘lie down’, ‘lean’, ‘sit’, etc.) and a miscellanea of other meanings, such as ‘squash’, ‘mention’, etc. All this means that although most verbs with bipartite stems may have originally been semantic compositional, this compositionality is no longer evident to speakers. Similarly, despite their obvious formal similarity to the forms of the verb BHA ‘go’, the inflected forms of Σ1 are now sufficiently independent and sufficiently different in synchrony to justify discarding a treatment of such verbs as synchronic compounds. Besides, Σ1 displays inflectional properties for person and number which remind one of a case of ME, but not one of the types treated in Harris’ article in this special issue.
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Motion -ba³ ba⁵+ba³ intr go up
-*be⁵³ ba⁵+kwe⁵³ tr go down
-ke’⁵ ba⁵+ke’⁵ intr get in
~ba⁵+ke’⁵ bá’⁵nkho¹ intr imprison
~ba⁵+ke’⁵ na³si³ intr get vaccinated
~ba⁵+ke’⁵ ñ’ɛ³ intr go in fully
-ndyi’³⁴ ba⁵+ndyi’³⁴ intr walk towards the inside
-ñho³ ba⁵+ñho³ intr walk at an edge
-no³ ba⁵+no³ intr walk a little more
-ntyho³ ba⁵+ntyho³ intr walk on something -ki³ño³⁵ ba⁵+ki³ño³⁵ tr lean, crash
Associated motion -kan¹ ba⁵+kan¹ tr go ask for something
-*ba’³ ba⁵+kwa’³ tr go eat
-*ndyia’³⁵ ba⁵+ki³ndyia’³⁵ tr go see
-*ty’iu¹ ba⁵+ki³ty’iu¹ intr go for company to a funeral -te³hndi⁵ ba⁵+te³hndi⁵ intr go to participate, help Caused motion -chu⁵ ~ba⁵+chu⁵ tr take along
~ba⁵+ki³chu⁵ tr go bring
-y’on³⁵ ba⁵+y’on³⁵ tr carry
-ky’on³⁵ ba⁵+ky’on³⁵ tr fetch
Manner of motion -ka⁵ ba⁵+ka⁵ intr walk
~ba⁵+ka⁵ ngio³ intr crawl -*ntyho³ ba⁵+ki³ntyho³ intr climb
~ba⁵+ki³ntyho³ tz’on⁵ intr climb a tree (to hunt deer) -*ño¹ ba⁵+ki³ño¹ intr skirt (walk on the side of a hill) -*be’³ ba⁵+kwe’³ intr leave forever
-ba³⁵ ba⁵+ba³⁵ intr move up while lying down
Posture -kho⁵ ba⁵+kho⁵ intr sit down
~ba⁵+kho⁵ tz’ian⁵ intr receive a position of authority
-*ba³⁵ ba⁵+kwa³⁵ tr lay down
~ba⁵+kwa³ ngio³ intr lie on one’s belly
~ba⁵+kua³⁵ ndya’⁵³ intr lie down separately
~ba⁵+kua³⁵ t’eò¹ intr lie down across (in a bed) -ntha³⁵ ba⁵+ntha³⁵ intr change address
-ntyha³ ba⁵+ntyha³ tr follow
-ntyha’³⁵ ba⁵+ntyha’³⁵ intr approach a place
-*be³ ?
~ba⁵+kwe³ no³ intr move to a place
~ba⁵+kwe³ ntyhe’³⁵ intr stand up
Miscellanea -nchhe³ ba⁵+nchhe³ tr squash
-ba’¹² ba⁵+ba’¹² tr mention
-chu⁵³ ba⁵+chu⁵³ intr be accused guilty -*hndyu³ ba⁵+ki³hndyu³ intr be named
-*ñɔ³⁵ ~ba⁵+ki¹ñɔ³⁵ tzon⁵hn’a⁵ intr get crucified Table 5. Bipartite stem verbs in semantic domains
In Table 5, roots bearing an asterisk are reconstructed roots of the type of bipartite verbs that would exhibit traces of trapped exponence. The Amuzgo case could be interpreted as resulting from two possible histories: (i) all verbs of the type Σ1-INFL+Σ2-INFL originated from a syntactic construction of the type ‘I go to do something’ constructed as “I go I’d do something’; or (ii) some bipartite verbs originated from that syntactic construction while other emerged from serialization at stem level ending up in lexical compounding. As there is no apparent semantic motivation behind the split suggested by history (ii), one could claim that history (i) appears to be the more likely option. For that to work we further need to appeal to some analogically-
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driven change that would have done away with trapped exponence in a random way, much in the fashion of a tornado storm, with some areas left unscathed while other nearby ones get severely damaged. However, as members of both subsets of Σ1-INFL+Σ2-INFL verbs need to be learned, in the end which history lies behind them becomes of little relevance for their synchronic analysis, because we are very likely to never know for sure.
3.3. Alternative ways to end up with ME by reinforcement
Let us now pass onto Harris’ ME by reinforcement, whose definition and implementation I find more straightforward. The reinforcement is viewed as a marking notion, as an extension of a default marker without replacing the old morphology. Here I think that not all cases of ME by reinforcement should be seen as outcomes of extension. Accordingly I would like to contribute with some more data to expand the subtypes by presenting a case that involves reinforcement by bleached-out emphasis. To illustrate this, we may study object marking in Northern Otomi, which is a language of the Oto-Pamean branch of Oto-Manguean; the extent of its difference from Amuzgo is comparable to that of the difference of Anatolian from Italic.
In Northern Otomi, object is indexed in the verb by means of two types of suffixes. One type would correspond to a ʻprimary suffixʼ type working at level 1 in Kiparsky's (1982) lexical phonology. Primary suffixes for object are found with native words, and their implementation involves a great deal of morphophonological adjustment at both stem and affix level, as illustrated in (6). The other type of suffix is a ʻsecondary suffixʼ that would work at level 2:
i.e., it is more clitic-like; it does not trigger any adjustments; and it is used with complex stems and loanwords. Examples are given in (7).
(6) ho-g- {kill-1OBJ} > ho-g- ‘kill me’
tɘɁmi-g- {wait-1OBJ} > tɘɁb-g- ‘wait for ? me’
khɨt͡ s’i-g- {lift-1OBJ} > khɨʃ-k- ‘lift me’
Ɂbɛdi-g- {lose-1OBJ} > Ɂbɛh-k- ‘lose me’
(7) Ɂɘthe+gi {cure+1OBJ} Ɂɘthe+gi ‘cure me’
imbita+gi {invite+1OBJ} imbita+gi ‘invite me’ (Sp. invitar)
Crucially, there is a third way to realize object marking involving a combination of a primary and a secondary suffix in ME, as shown in (8). Here the element /a/ between the suffixes could be analyzed as a carrier morpheme, like the –a in the Avar adjectives in Harris’s article.
(8) ho-g-a+gi ‘kill me’
tɘɁb-g-a+gi ‘wait me’
khɨʃ-k-a+gi ‘lift me’
Ɂbɛh-k-a+gi ‘lose me’
An analysis of –a as a carrier would put us on a track towards periodic ME, and we could perhaps build up a story for that, but when one looks elsewhere in the system, one finds –a doing a different job: verbs in Northern Otomi occur in a phonologically bound shape when followed by an XP within their own clause, and the suffix –a is precisely used to build such bound shapes. A bound shape cliticizes to the next free word of the following XP, as shown in (9). If a stem’s bound shape has an object-marking suffix, like in (10a), this must be a primary suffix. This is shown if one compares (10b) with the ungrammaticality of (10c).
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(9) xi gɨʃ-a=[nó=r Ɂjɛ]
[3]PRF SS/lift.AS-BS=DEF.SG.3POSS hand
‘He’s lifted his hand.’ (Txt)
(10) a. xi dõh-k-a=[no ma Hwan]
[3]PRF SS/win.AS-1OBJ-BS=DEF.SG 1POSS John ‘(My son) John has beaten me (in a game).’
b. xi mbita+gi [no ma Hwan]
[3]PRF invite-1OBJ DEF.SG 1POSS John ‘(My son) John has invited me.’
c. *xi mbita-g-a=[no ma Hwan]
[3]PRF invite-1OBJ-BS=DEF.SG 1POSS John
Intended reading: ‘(My son) John has invited me.’
Actually, instances of multiple object-marking exponence never involve a pair of secondary suffixes, as shown by the ungrammaticality of (11). This supports the idea that –a is not a carrier and that the ME that we observe in (8) is not an instance of the periodic type, but just a bound shape of the verb which is ready to receive a secondary affix in ME. The evidence in (6), (7) and (9) further supports the conclusion that the sequence /gagi/ in (8) is a combination of three units (–g–a+gi) that are not fused or petrified. We have thus a case of ME proper.
(11) *Ɂɘthe-g-a+gi Intended reading: ‘cure me’
*imbita-g-a+gi Intended reading: ‘invite me’
Perhaps, the better analysis is to treat ME in Northern Otomi as a case of reinforcement.
While there is no difference in meaning between the simple and the ME construction (i.e., emphasis is marked independently by additional pronominal clitics, e.g. ho-g-a+gi=ga ‘kill
ME’), there is a remarkable gap in frequency and distribution in usage. In this connection, ME is the overall encoding default for object marking in this language; simple marking is practically only found in controlled elicitation. It seems sensible to think that ME in Northern Otomi first emerged from a construction that used to encode emphasis, possibly contrastive focus, but that it got overused, lost pragmatic force and the second exponent was retained as a reinforcement. This particular origin made it possible to preserve the two configurations as two independent constructions. The replacement has been total when involving beneficiary encoding. Here the simple construction cannot be used to encode the beneficiary role of the object. For that, only the default ME construction is used, which may have two ambiguous readings depending on the verb. This is shown in (12).
(12) a. gá Ɂbɛh-k=hé
[2]IRR lose.AS-1OBJ=PL.EXCL Patient reading (elicitation): ‘You lost us.’
*Beneficiary reading: ‘You lost it on us.’
b. gá Ɂbɛh-k-a+gi=hé
[2]IRR lose.AS-1OBJ-BS+1OBJ=PL.EXCL Patient reading: ‘You lost us.’
Beneficiary reading: ‘You lost it on us.’
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This further raises the question of how two competing constructions involving ME interact with each other in the actual making of grammar, but this is a question that runs way outside the scope of Harris’ article and should be perhaps left thus outside the scope of my own commentary.
4. Final remarks
I hope to have shown in this short paper how one may proceed from the field when one reads about theoretical proposals, and how one builds up knowledge accordingly of the lesser known languages. This exercise on Oto-Manguean was made possible thanks to the editors and to Alice C. Harris, but also and mostly to all those who have contributed, still contribute or will contribute to the gathering a body of linguistic data that makes morphological analysis both possible and worthwhile for all of us.
Acknowledgements
I acknowledge the editors of this special issue, Gregory Stump and Géraldine Walther, for inviting me to participate at the AnaMorphoSys conference in 2016 and for inviting me to be a commentator on Alice Harris’ article. I presented some of the material that I introduce in this paper in a talk titled “The complexities of exponence of Amuzgo verbs with bipartite stems” at the 2018 conference New Fields for Morphology organized by the Surrey Morphology Group of the University of Surrey, and I want to thank participants for their feedback. But among all people, I want to thank Alice Harris for her article and her work on multiple exponence. Her inspiring proposal has given me the opportunity to revise some data from the Oto-Manguean languages of Mexico in a new light. I am also indebted to Gregory Stump for his comments and help in improving the edition of this paper. Deficiencies and errors remain my own responsibility.
Abbreviations
ABS: absolutive; ANT: anterior; AS: adjusted stem; BS: bound shape; CISLOC: cislocative; CPL: completive; DEF: definite; DU: dual; EXCL: exclusive; HUM: human; FUT: future; III: gender III;
IMM: immediate; IMPF: imperfect; INCPL: incompletive; IRR: irrealis; OBJ: object; NEG: negative; PFV: perfective; PL: plural ; POSS: possessive; POT: potential; PRF: perfect; PRS: present; PRO: pronoun; PST: past; REC: recent; REG: regular; SEQ: sequential; SUBJ: subjunctive;
SG: singular; SS: secondary stem; SUBJV: subjunctive.
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i I thank Gregory Stump for making me aware of this other possibility and for helping me see some points in Harris’ paper which I had overlooked.
ii The remaining plural stem additionally shows a further split conditioned by aspect, where - ʼE is used in the completive.
