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Word Order in Anishinaabemowin Ditransitive Constructions

Word Order in Anishinaabemowin Ditransitive Constructions. Stephanie Gamble Morse University of California, Santa Barbara. Overview. Ditransitives Word Order Sources Data Conclusions. Anishinaabemowin . Ditransitive verbs.

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Word Order in Anishinaabemowin Ditransitive Constructions

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  1. Word Order in Anishinaabemowin Ditransitive Constructions Stephanie Gamble Morse University of California, Santa Barbara

  2. Overview • Ditransitives • Word Order • Sources • Data • Conclusions

  3. Anishinaabemowin

  4. Ditransitive verbs • Verbs that take two arguments (whether overt or indexed on the verb) • English ‘give’ • Implies a giver, a recipient and a gift • “Kristy gave Joe sweetgrass.” • Agent (A) ‘Kristy’ • Recipient (R) ‘Joe’ • Theme (T) ‘sweetgrass’

  5. Indexing • Anishinaabemowin indexes two arguments on the verb Gigagiibishena? Gegoogiwii-miinin. “Are you deaf? I want to give you something.” (Ojibwemodaa-Giving)

  6. Word order • Bloomfield was vague: “[w]ord order is decidedly flexible” • Rhodes states that VOS and VSO are the most pragmatically unmarked word orders. • SVO and OVS are also acceptable

  7. What affects word order • Rhodes (1983 and 2010) • Animacy affecting word order in ditransitive sentences • Mithun (1992) definiteness, old vs. new information, and newsworthiness contribute to word order

  8. Research Question What can a textual examination reveal about the interaction of word order and animacy?

  9. Texts used in this study • Oshkaabewis Native Journal • Minnesota—present • The Dog’s Children • Michigan—1941 • Jones’ Ojibwa Texts • North Shore of Lake Superior—1903-1905 • 134 ditransitive clauses

  10. AnishinaabemowinDitransitives • 5 underived ditransitive verbs (Rhodes 2010) • miinaad ‘give it to him’ (root: miiN-) • shamaad ‘feed it to him’ (root: asham-) • mnihaad ‘give it to him to drink’ (root: minih-) • zgahaad ‘give it to him to smoke’ (root: zagah-) • niindaahaad ‘send it to him’ (root: niindaah-).

  11. AnishinaabemowinDitransitives • 5 underivedditransitive verbs (Rhodes 2010) • miinaad ‘give it to him’ (root: miiN-) ~74% • shamaad ‘feed it to him’ (root: asham-) ~26% • mnihaad ‘give it to him to drink’ (root: minih-) • zgahaad ‘give it to him to smoke’ (root: zagah-) • niindaahaad ‘send it to him’ (root: niindaah-).

  12. Overt Arguments A AR AT ART T TR R Miinaad 6 0 7 4 51 11 6 Shamaad 2 2 3 0 6 2 7 All 8 2 10 4 57 13 12

  13. Overt Arguments A AR AT ART T TR R Miinaad 6 0 7 4 51 11 6 Shamaad 2 2 3 0 6 2 7 All 8 2 10 4 57 13 12 Miinaadoccurs more often with T Shamaad occurs more frequently with R

  14. Animate Theme: mishiimin ‘apple’ Wgii-shamaan aw kweniwbinoojiinsanmshiiimnan. V A R T Wgii-shamaan aw kwemshiiimnanniwbinoojiinsan. V A T R ?Wgii-shamaanniwbinoojiinsan aw kwemshiiimnan. V R A T ?Wgii-shamaanniwbinoojiinsanmshiiimnan aw kwe. V R T A ?*Wgii-shamaanmshiiimnanniwbinoojiinsan aw kwe. V T R A *Wgii-shamaanmshiiimnan aw kweniwbinoojiinsan. V T A R ‘The woman fed the baby an apple.’

  15. Inanimate Theme: miinan‘blueberries’ Wgii-shamaanmiinan aw kweniwbinoojiinsan. V T A R Wgii-shamaan aw kwemiinanniwbinoojiinsan. V A T R ?Wgii-shamaanmiinanniwbinoojiinsan aw kwe. V T R A ?Wgii-shamaanniwbinoojiinsanmiinan aw kwe. V R T A ?*Wgii-shamaanniwbinoojiinsan aw kwemiinan. V R A T *Wgii-shamaan aw kweniwbinoojiinsanmiinan. V A R T ‘The woman fed the baby blueberries.’

  16. Preferred Word Order A: Aw kwe R: niwbinoojiinhs T: mshiimin/miinan

  17. Ordering of Arguments

  18. Ordering of Arguments

  19. Preferred Word Order A: Aw kwe R: niwbinoojiinhs T: mshiimin/miinan

  20. Thematic information is the key • Language prefers to have the most thematic information on the right edge (Rhodes and Tomlin 1992)

  21. Animacy/Thematic interaction • Inanimate nouns are dispreferred at the right edge • A > R • Agent prefers to be next to the verb • precedes it in 14/23 cases

  22. Summary • Dispreference for R to precede A • Inanimate themes (T) dispreferred at right edge of clause • Animate themes are preferred at right edge • Verbs have differences in which arguments are overtly expressed

  23. Further Research • Elicitation for inanimate agents/recipients (if allowed) • Widen the corpus to include other genres • Look at derived ditransitives as well

  24. Miigwech! Especially to Bernard Comrie for his advising on the paper Marianne Mithun for her support Participants at the 44th Algonquian Conference for their helpful feedback & All the speakers and linguists who took time to record the stories and write about the language

  25. References • Bemidji State University. American Indian Studies Center. (1990). Oshkaabewis native journal. Oshkaabewis native journal. • Bloomfield, L. (1957). Eastern Ojibwa; grammatical sketch, texts, and word list. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. • Dryer, M. S. (1986). Primary Objects, Secondary Objects, and Antidative. Language, 62(4), 808–845. • Dryer, M. S. (1995). Frequency and pragmatically unmarked word order. Word Order in Discourse, Typological Studies in Language (Vol. 30, pp. 105–136). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Pub. Co. • Fairbanks, B. G. (2009). Ojibwe discourse markers. • Grassroots Indigenous Multimedia. (2009). Ojibwemodaa. • Jones, W. (1917). Ojibwa texts. Leyden. • Lewis, M. P. (2009). Ethnologue (Sixteenth ed.). Dallas, Texas: SIL International. Retrieved from http://www.ethnologue.com/ • Malchukov, A., Haspelmath, M., & Comrie, B. (2010). Ditransitive constructions: a typological overview. Studies in Ditransitive Constructions (pp. 1–64). De Gruyter Mouton. • Mithun, M. (1992). Is basic word order universal? Pragmatics of Word Order Flexibility, Typological Studies in Language (Vol. 22, pp. 15–62). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Pub. Co. • Payne, D. L. (1992). Pragmatics of Word Order Flexibility. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Pub. Co. Retrieved from http://public.eblib.com/EBLPublic/PublicView.do?ptiID=680959 • Rhodes, R. A. (1989). Ottawa Word Order. Presented at the SSILA Summer Meeting. • Rhodes, R. A. (2010). Ditransitive Constructions in Ojibwe. Studies in Ditransitive Constructions (1st ed., pp. 626–650). De. • Tomlin, R. S. (1995). Focal attention, voice, and word order: an experimental, cross-linguistic study. Word Order in Discourse, Typological Studies in Language (Vol. 30, pp. 517–554). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Pub. Co. • Tomlin, R. S., & Rhodes, R. (1992). Information distribution in Ojibwa. Pragmatics of Word Order Flexibility, Typological Studies in Language (Vol. 22, pp. 117–166). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Pub. Co. • Valentine, R. J. (2001). Nishnaabemwin reference grammar. Toronto; Buffalo: University of Toronto Press. • Williams, A., Bloomfield, L., & Nichols, J. (1991). The dog’s children : Anishinaabe texts. Winnipeg, Man.: University of Manitoba Press.

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