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Case and Markedness in Tlapanec

Case and Markedness in Tlapanec. Andreas Opitz Leipzig University. Tlapanec shows some unusual behavior regarding the case assignment to its arguments. (Wichmann, to app. ). The analysis provided here helps to explain this unusual behavior of case and case markers by:

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Case and Markedness in Tlapanec

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  1. Case and Markedness in Tlapanec Andreas Opitz Leipzig University

  2. Tlapanec shows some unusual behavior regarding the case assignment to its arguments. (Wichmann, to app.). • The analysis provided here helps to explain this unusual behavior of case and case markers by: • a competition of typologically motivated markedness constraints (OT) (Smolensky, 1995; Aissen, 1999) • a sub-analysis of case markers (DM) (Noyer, 1992; Trommer, 1999) Andreas Opitz: Case and Markedness in Tlapanec

  3. Case Assignment in Tlapanec • head-marking • case is assigned only to animate arguments (no distinctions between trans. vs. intrans., but A(I) vs. AA (and AAA, not mentioned here)) • four distinct classes of case markers (= 4 cases) • feature: highly vs. lowly affecting • portmanteau morphemes: case + person Andreas Opitz: Case and Markedness in Tlapanec

  4. mono-personal verbs (A): • (A) (intrans.): • Absolutive (high affectedness) ‘s/he is alone’ • Dative (low affectedness?): ‘s/he is nude’) • (A,I) (trans.): • (Absolutive (‘non-actor’, high affectedness) ) • Pegative (‘source’ ‘weak actor’, low affectedness) ‘x is seeing something’ • Dativ (‘non-actor’, low affectedness) ‘s/he wants something’ • Ergativ (‘actor’, high affectedness) ‘s/he is burning something’ • di-personal verbs (AA) • (A,A): • Dative (low affectedness) • Absolutive (high affectedness) • (A,A3sgl): • Absolutive (high affectedness) • (A,A3sgl): • Pegative (low affectedness) Andreas Opitz: Case and Markedness in Tlapanec

  5. Case Assignment in Tlapanec • general rules of case assignment in Tlapanec: • case is assigned only to animate arguments • maximally one argument is marked with case • if there is no (anim.) object, the subject is marked • otherwise the (anim.) object is marked • if the object is animate, 3rd singular and the verb is ‘lowly affecting’, the subject is marked If an animate and inanimate argument is involved, the animate must always rank higher on the hierarchy actor>undergoer>theme. “Thus, an expression like ‘the hammer killed the man’ is impossible.” Wichmann (to app.) Andreas Opitz: Case and Markedness in Tlapanec

  6. Wichmann, 2006: Andreas Opitz: Case and Markedness in Tlapanec

  7. Case Markers in Tlapanec • ‘unusual behavior’ of case markers: • zero-marked ergative • marked absolutive • pegative note: ‘/’ and ~ stand for phonologically driven alternations Andreas Opitz: Case and Markedness in Tlapanec

  8. [/a/ /b/ /c/] The idea behind the analysis • Syntax> Impov (OT) > morphol. Realization (DM) V V Cl [..Ob..] V Cl […] [..Su..] Andreas Opitz: Case and Markedness in Tlapanec

  9. Hypothesis: • There are only two functionally distinct cases, that split each into two different instances due to the factor of affectedness: • Pegative is - in fact - the same as ergative but with the feature “low” (or without the feature “high”) • Dative is absolutive with the feature “low” • The two cases mark external arguments (“subject”) on the one hand and internal arguments (“object”) on the other. • (From an A/AA-perspective Tlapanec shows active case alignment.) • The “missing” marker for the actor of highly affecting verbs (“zero-ergative marking”) can be explained by a competition of markedness constraints. (Smolensky, 1995; Aissen, 1999) • The morphonological more complex marker of the absolutive (the normally “unmarked” case) results from an additional coding of markedness, namely ‘animate object’ and ‘high affecting’. Andreas Opitz: Case and Markedness in Tlapanec

  10. 2. Impoverishment of the morpho-syntactical context • All constraints emerge from prominence scales and harmonic alignment. (Silverstein, 1976; Prince and Smolensky, 1993; Aissen, 1999, 2003) • scales involved in Tlapanec case marking: • gram. relation: su > ob • person: local > 3 • affectedness: high > low • animacy: animate > inanimate Andreas Opitz: Case and Markedness in Tlapanec

  11. Harmonic Alignment • These three scales interact all together simultaneously, thus it becomes necessary to extend the notion of harmonic alignment. • I suggest a hierarchy of scales: 1. gram. relation: su > ob 2. person: local > 3 3. affectedness: high > low 4. animacy: an. > inan. Andreas Opitz: Case and Markedness in Tlapanec

  12. Harmonic Alignment • In a first step, the highest ranking scales are harmonically aligned. • Alignment of gram. function and person: • scales: • Su > Ob • local > 3 • harmonic alignment: • Su/local ≻ Su/3 • Ob/3 ≻ Ob/local • constraint alignment: • *Su/3 ≫ *Su/Local • *Ob/Local ≫ *Ob/3 Andreas Opitz: Case and Markedness in Tlapanec

  13. Harmonic Alignment In a second step, the output of the first harmonic alignment is taken as a base for harmonic alignment with the next feature of the hierarchy: • Alignment of output1 and affectedness: • Scales (input): Su/Local ≻ Su/3 Ob/3 ≻ Ob/Local High > low High > low • Harmonic Alignment: Su/Local/high ≻ Su/Local/low Ob/3/High ≻ Ob/3/low Su/3/low ≻ Su/3/high Ob/Local/low ≻ Ob/Local/high Andreas Opitz: Case and Markedness in Tlapanec

  14. Harmonic Alignment • Alignment of output2 and animacy: • Scales (input): Su/Local/high ≻ Su/Local/low Su/3/low ≻ Su/3/high Ob/3/High ≻ Ob/3/low Ob/Local/low ≻ Ob/Local/high anim. > inanim. Andreas Opitz: Case and Markedness in Tlapanec

  15. Harmonic Alignments: Su/Local/high/an ≻ Su/Local/high/in Su/Local/low/in ≻ Su/Local/low/an Su/3/low/an ≻ Su/3/low/in Su/3/high/in ≻ Su/3/high/an Ob/3/High/an ≻ Ob/3/High/in Ob/3/low/in ≻ Ob/3/low/an Ob/Local/low/an ≻ Ob/Local/low/in Ob/Local/high/in ≻ Ob/Local/high/an Andreas Opitz: Case and Markedness in Tlapanec

  16. Constraint Alignments: *Su/Local/high/in≫*Su/Local/high/an *Su/Local/low/an ≫*Su/Local/low/in *Su/3/low/in ≫*Su/3/low/an *Su/3/high/an ≫*Su/3/high/in *Ob/3/High/in ≫*Ob/3/High/an *Ob/3/low/an ≫*Ob/3/low/in *Ob/Local/low/in ≫*Ob/Local/low/an *Ob/Local/high/an ≫*Ob/Local/high/in Andreas Opitz: Case and Markedness in Tlapanec

  17. Constraint Alignments: {*Su/3/high/an*Su/Local/high/an }  ‘*Su/high/’ {*Su/Local/low/an*Su/3/low/an }  ‘*Su/low/’ *Ob/3/High/an ‘*Ob/3/high’ *Ob/3/low/an  ‘*Ob/3/low’ • Note that these (here abbreviated) constraints, although derived via harmonic alignment, are not ordered. In contrast the ‘real’ *Su/high and *Su/low are: *Su/low >> *Su/high !(These constraint are also part of the constraint hierarchy, but they are supposed to be ordered low enough, thus they don’t interfere the derivation.) Andreas Opitz: Case and Markedness in Tlapanec

  18. decomposition of “subject” vs. “object”, and “high” vs. “low” into combinations of binary features (Jakobson, 1962; Bierwisch, 1965; Wunderlich, 1997): • subject: {+su -ob} (=external argument) • object: {-su +ob} (=internal argument) • high: {+ high} • low: {-high} • central assumption: • If one set of features (= one argument) violates a constraint, the whole set of features (argument) is deleted. (as it is supposed for instance by Wunderlich (2004); and in contrast to Aissen (1999)). Andreas Opitz: Case and Markedness in Tlapanec

  19. Su, Ob, high Andreas Opitz: Case and Markedness in Tlapanec

  20. Su, Ob, low Andreas Opitz: Case and Markedness in Tlapanec

  21. Su, Ob3, high Andreas Opitz: Case and Markedness in Tlapanec

  22. Su, Ob 3, low Andreas Opitz: Case and Markedness in Tlapanec

  23. Su, high Andreas Opitz: Case and Markedness in Tlapanec

  24. Su, low Andreas Opitz: Case and Markedness in Tlapanec

  25. output candidates for all possible inputs: Andreas Opitz: Case and Markedness in Tlapanec

  26. 3. Insertion of Markers (Distributed Morphology) • The optimization process introduced in the last chapter leads to an impoverished morpho-syntactical context. • In a next step, this context is the base for the concrete morphonological realization of the case markers. • This second step of the analysis is carried out within the framework of Distributed Morphology (Halle & Marantz, 1993). • Concept of Fission by Noyer (1992) Andreas Opitz: Case and Markedness in Tlapanec

  27. inventory of markers without phonologically driven alternations Andreas Opitz: Case and Markedness in Tlapanec

  28. inventory of markers labeled with binary featuresand output of case assignment and sub-analyzed markers Andreas Opitz: Case and Markedness in Tlapanec

  29. Vocabulary Items: • /ũ/ ↔ [cl, -subj, -high (/) -1,-2, +pl] • /ĩ/ ↔ [cl, -subj, +high (/) -1,-2, +pl] • /i/ ↔ [cl, -subj, +high (/) -1,-2, -pl] • /u/ ↔ [cl, -2, -pl] • /a/ ↔ [cl] • /Ø/ ↔ [+object] /(-1,-2) • /[nasal]/ ↔ [+high] • /-ʔ/ ↔ [+object] Trommer (1999) ordering is derived by the specificity condition and a feature hierarchy [cl] > [± ob] [± high] … Andreas Opitz: Case and Markedness in Tlapanec

  30. Vocabulary Items: • /ũ/ ↔ [cl, -su, -high -1,-2, +pl] • /ĩ/ ↔ [cl, -su, +high -1,-2, +pl] • /i/ ↔ [cl, -su +high -1,-2, -pl] • /u/ ↔ [cl, -2, -pl] • /a/ ↔ [cl] • /Ø/ ↔ [+ob] /(-1,-2) • /[nasal]/ ↔ [+high] • /-ʔ/ ↔ [+ob] (animate!)

  31. Conclusion • The complex forms of case markers in Tlapanec emerge by the marking of: • ‘bearing case’ (i.e. the vowel /a/ or /u/) and the additional marking of markedness • mark (animate!) objects by /-ʔ/ • mark high affectedness by nasalization • The zero-marked ergative and other general patterns of case alignment in Tlapanec emerge from: • markedness constraints derived by (multiple) harmonic alignment of prominence scales. Andreas Opitz: Case and Markedness in Tlapanec

  32. References • Aissen, Judith (1999). Markedness and Subject Choice in Optimality Theory. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 17:673-711. • Bierwisch, Manfred (1967): Syntactic Features in Morphology: General Problems of So-Called Pronominal Inection in German. In: To Honour Roman Jakobson. Mouton, The Hague/Paris, pp. 239-270. • Frampton, John (2002): Syncretism, Impoverishment, and the Structure of Person Features. In Papers from the Chicago Linguistics Society Meeting, vol. 38, eds M. Andronis, E. Debenport, A. Pycha & K. Yoshimura, 207- 222. • Halle, Morris & Alec Marantz (1993): Distributed Morphology and the Pieces of Infection. In: K. Hale & S. Keyser, eds., The View from Building 20. MIT Press, pp. 111{176. • Jakobson, Roman (1962): Beitrag zur allgemeinen Kasuslehre. Gesamtbedeutungen der russischen Kasus. In: Selected Writings. Vol. 2, Mouton, The Hague and Paris, pp. 23-71. • Noyer, Rolf (1992): Features, Positions, and Affixes in Autonomous Morphological Structure. PhD thesis, MIT, Cambridge, Mass. • Prince, Alan & Paul Smolensky (2004): Optimality Theory. Constraint Interaction in Generative Grammar. Blackwell. (Original version from 1993). • Smolensky, Paul. (1995): On the Internal Structure of Con, the Constraint Component of UG. Ms., Johns Hopkins University. • Silverstein, Michael (1976): Hierarchy of features and ergativity. In: R. M. W. Dixon, ed., Grammatical Categories in Australian Languages. Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, Canberra. • Stiebels, Barbara (2002): Typologie des Argumentlinkings. Ökonomie und Expressivität, Akademie-Verlag, Berlin. • Stump, Gregory (2001): Inectional Morphology. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. • Trommer, Jochen (1999): Morphology Consuming Syntax' Resources. In: Procceedings of the ESSLI Workshop on Resource Logics and Minimalist Grammars. University of Nijmegen. • Wichman, Søren (to app.): Case relations in a head-marking language: verb-marked cases in Tlapanec. In: Malchukov, Andrej and Andrew Spencer (eds.), The Handbook of Case. Oxford: Oxford University Press. • Wiese, Bernd (1994): Die Personal- und Numerusendungen der deutschen Verbformen. In: K.-M. Köpcke, ed., Funktionale Untersuchungen zur deutschen Nominal- und Verbalmorphologie. Niemeyer, Tübingen, pp. 161-191. • Wiese, Bernd (1999): Unterspezifzierte Paradigmen. Form und Funktion in der pronominalen Deklination, Linguistik Online4. (www.linguistikonline.de/ 3 99) • Wunderlich, Dieter (1996): Minimalist Morphology: The Role of Paradigms. In: G. Booij & J. van Marle, eds., Yearbook of Morphology 1995. Kluwer, Dordrecht, pp. 93-114. • Wunderlich, Dieter (1997): Cause and the Structure of Verbs. Linguistic Inquiry 27:27-68. • Wunderlich, Dieter (2004): Is There Any Need for the Concept of Directional Syncretism?. In: G. Müller, L. Gunkel & G. Zifonun, eds., Explorations in Nominal Inection. Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin, pp. 373-395. Andreas Opitz: Case and Markedness in Tlapanec

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