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The Distribution of Differential Object Marking in Paraguayan Guaraní

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The Distribution of Differential Object Marking in Paraguayan Guaraní THE DISTRIBUTION OF DIFFERENTIAL OBJECT MARKING IN PARAGUAYAN GUARANÍ THESIS Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Masters of Arts in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Cory Adam Shain, B.A. ******** The Ohio State University 2009 Approved By: Master’s Examination Committee: Dr. Judith Tonhauser, Advisor Dr. Peter W. Culicover, Advisor Dr. Scott A. Schwenter Advisors Linguistics Graduate Program Copyright by Cory Adam Shain 2009 ABSTRACT Differential Object Marking (DOM), the marking of some but not all direct objects in a given language, is active in over 300 languages around the world. I examine the distribution of DOM in Paraguayan Guaraní by evaluating transitive clauses in a corpus of naturally-occurring Guaraní data with respect to several fac- tor groups. I find animacy and topicality to have the strongest relationship with object-marking frequency and show that human topical objects are frequently marked, while non-human and/or non-topical ob- jects are infrequently marked. I then examine a Guaraní corpus published in 1640, prior to substantial Spanish contact, and do not find any clear instances of DOM. This supports the hypothesis that DOM evolved in Guaraní as a result of Spanish influence, though I also show that DOM is not distributionally equivalent in Spanish and Guaraní today. The relevance of topicality to DOM in Guaraní is unaccounted for by the two main theories of DOM, what I call the "markedness approach" and the "transitivity ap- proach," which only appeal to animacy and definiteness. Thus the current study motivates incorporating topicality into these theories. ii To my wife iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I owe an enormous debt of gratitude for the completion of this thesis to a number of wonderful people, without whom this would have been a much more difficult or downright impossible task. Perhaps the largest portion of thanks goes to the unnamed Guaraní consultants who supplied Dr. Tonhauser with the data that I have had the privilege of analyzing. I’ve also been very lucky to have such dedicated, responsive, and knowledgeable advisors in Professors Judith Tonhauser and Peter Culicover. I’m thankful for their generosity and patience in sacrificing an hour a week for advisory meetings, responding in detail to what must have seemed like an endless stream of inquisitive emails, and meticulously reading and commenting on multiple evolutions of the material presented here. Without their invaluable instruction and feedback this project simply could not have gotten off the ground, and its contents have been refined immensely as a result of their investment. Thank you both very much. All remaining oversights, confusions, and outright mistakes are entirely my responsibility. Another very important individual in this process was Scott Schwenter, who essentially served as a third advisor and was kind enough to sit on my thesis committee. His dedication to the quantitative study of Differential Object Marking was a fundamental inspiration for the methodology employed here, and without his expertise regarding both Differential Object Marking and variationist research the quality of this work would have suffered tremendously. I’m grateful for his sacrifice in meeting with me on a num- ber of occasions, his commitment to read and comment on the the material I sent him, and his helpful direction in performing corpus-based research, which was novel to me prior to this investigation. A number of other groups and individuals made important contributions to this research. My thanks go out to all those who were involved in the former Computing Research Laboratory (CRL) at New Mex- ico State University, which compiled large bodies of text from a number of underdocumented languages, including Guaraní. I’m grateful for those who currently labor to maintain the CRL’s website, so that these resources remain available to myself and others, and for Jim Cowie of NMSU, who was the human face of the CRL for me and was kind enough to answer several of my questions and point me to useful re- iv sources. I must also thank Terrell Morgan, who offered his expertise and commentary on my B.A. thesis on the same subject and connected me with experts in the field, such as Scott Schwenter. Regarding the statistical methods I employ here, I’m indebted to Cynthia Clopper of OSU for her patient feedback and to Nancy Briggs of the University of Adelaide for her quick and helpful response to questions that must have been less than trivial for a professional statistician. I appreciate the expertise of Daniel Reff of Ohio State regarding some of the texts consulted in the historical portions of this work. Thanks to Julie Mc- Gory of OSU, who pointed me to and guided me through the potentially hazardous waters of the BA/MA program at Ohio State. In addition, I have appreciated the interest and feedback of a number of graduate students doing similar research, especially Ian Tippets of Ohio State and Scott Lamanna and Jason Killam of Indiana University. In addition to those directly involved in the academic components of this thesis, I owe thanks to a ter- rific social support network, including the communities of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship and Linworth Road Church, and the friendships of Sriram Sridharan, Marc Papai, the InterVarsity staff team, Terry and Mary Gustafson, my lively officemates from Oxley 24b — (in alphabetical order) Dahee Kim, Rachel Klip- penstein, Lia Mansfield, Vedrana Mihalicek, and Chris Worth — Scott Winzig, Evan Thomas, and Nasser Haddad. Last but far from least, I could not have done this without my wonderful family: my parents Dave and Kay and my siblings Amy and Eric, my in-laws Janice and Sheridan, and many others. And the joy of my life, my intelligent and beautiful wife Rachel, deserves a huge share of the credit here. Her guid- ance through the hazards of graduate study, which she navigated before me, was invaluable. Her feedback about my ideas was lucid and insightful. Her unflagging faith in me and my ability to finish carried me through times of overwhelmedness and discouragement. I deeply appreciate her patience with me in my more reclusive seasons of constant work. Without her companionship I would not have completed this endeavor. v VITA December, 2008 . .B.A. Linguistics, The Ohio State University April, 2009 . .Presented Differential Object Marking in Paraguayan Guaraní at the Ohio State University College on His- panic and Lusophone Linguistics May, 2009 . Presented Differential Object Marking in Paraguayan Guaraní at the Denman Undergraduate Research Forum May, 2009 . Received Ohio State’s Best Undergraduate Paper in Linguistics award for Differential Object Marking in Paraguayan Guaraní FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: Linguistics vi TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ..................................................... ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................. iv VITA ......................................................... vi LIST OF TABLES .................................................. viii ABBREVIATIONS ................................................. ix 1 INTRODUCTION ............................................... 1 2 DESCRIPTION AND THEORY IN THE LITERATURE ON DOM .................... 4 2.1 Definitions: What is Differential Object Marking? ......................... 4 2.2 DOM Cross-Linguistically: Some Descriptive Generalizations.................. 11 2.2.1 Animacy............................................. 12 2.2.2 Definiteness and Specificity ................................. 17 2.2.3 Relative Animacy and Definiteness ............................. 26 2.2.4 Ambiguity/Recoverability of Roles.............................. 28 2.2.5 Topicality ............................................ 30 2.2.6 Other Conditions........................................ 34 2.2.7 The Interaction of Multiple Conditions on DOM ..................... 38 2.3 Theories of Differential Object Marking ............................... 39 2.3.1 The Markedness Approach: Aissen (2003b)......................... 39 2.3.2 The Transitivity Approach: Hopper and Thompson (1980)................ 41 2.4 Synopsis.................................................. 42 3 METHODOLOGY ............................................... 44 3.1 Circumscribing the Variable Context................................. 44 3.1.1 The Verb Agreement System of Guaraní .......................... 45 3.1.2 The Distribution of the Morpheme -pe in Guaraní .................... 47 3.1.2.1 Spatiotemporal Postposition........................... 48 3.1.2.2 Indirect Object Marker .............................. 48 3.1.2.3 Direct Object Marker................................ 49 3.1.2.4 Is -pe a Case Marker or a Postposition?..................... 51 3.1.3 The Grammatical Status of (i)chupe ............................. 52 3.1.4 Circumscribing the Variable [ pe].............................. 53 § 3.2 Operationalizing Hypotheses ..................................... 60 3.2.1 Animacy............................................. 61 3.2.2 Definiteness/Specificity.................................... 62 vii 3.2.2.1 The Syntax of the Guaraní NP .......................... 62 3.2.2.2 Operationalizing Definiteness/Specificity ................... 64 3.2.3 Relative Animacy and Definiteness ............................. 67 3.2.4 GF-Ambiguity.......................................... 68 3.2.5 Thematic Fit........................................... 73 3.2.6 Topicality ............................................ 74 3.3 Statistical Methods ..........................................
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