Menominee Preverbs As Functional Categories*

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Menominee Preverbs As Functional Categories* Menominee Preverbs as Functional Categories* REBECCA SHIELDS University of Wisconsin-Madison [email protected] This paper is one piece of a larger work exploring the proposal that Menominee preverbs occupy head positions in a functional hierarchy like that proposed in Cinque (1999). The behavior of several preverbs is considered in light of cross-linguistic properties of similar morphemes, in order to establish their categorial identity among the set of functional heads presumably supplied by UG. PREVERBS AND ADVERBS Menominee has a number of morphemes, called “preverbs” in Algonquianist literature, which encode various meanings including modal, temporal, spatial, and aspectual. A given clause can have several such morphemes, which are often thought of as verbal prefixes because they occur between an agreement morpheme and the verbal stem.1 The position of preverbs in the Menominee verbal complex is shown in (1) below (numerous details about agreement omitted). Arguments and other expressions appear both to the left and right of this complex. (2) provides an example of a preverb in the preverb space. * I am sincerely grateful to elders Marie Floring, Lillian Nelson, Bill Penass, Lavina Shawano, Sarah Skubitz, and Tillie Zhuckkahosee for sharing their time and knowledge of Menominee. Thanks also to the Language and Culture Commission of the Menominee Nation for facilitating research and language preservation, and to the participants of the 36th Algonquian Conference for helpful comments. I am much indebted to Monica Macaulay and Marianne Milligan for their extensive support and encouragement. Examples in this paper are cited with the source in brackets. Data from published sources have the citation along with a page or line number. All other data are taken from elicitations conducted by the University of Wisconsin Menominee Language Project (UWMLP). Unpublished data from elicitation sessions I conducted are marked with elicitation number plus sentence number, e.g. [4.02] – the second elicited sentence from the fourth session. Unpublished data elicited by other linguists are cited by title of text and line or page number (if available). Examples are given in modern tribal orthography, meaning that data from published sources may have the original spelling modified. 1 However, there is evidence that preverbs do not form a phonological word with the verb stem in Algonquian languages: see for example Bloomfield (1962) for Menominee, Leavitt (1985) for Passamaquoddy-Malicite, and Russell (1999) for Cree. 2 (1) AGR-PREVERB1-PREVERB2-. .-PREVERBn-V-AGR preverb “space” (2) [11.101] ne-kēs-anohkīm. n- kēs- anohkī -m 1- PAST- work.AI -1/2 I was working. As is well known, preverbs obligatorily occupy this space. For example, they cannot appear to the left of the preverbal agreement morpheme, as shown in (3). (3) [11.102] *kēs-netānohkīm. kēs- n- anohkī -m PAST 1- work.AI -1/2 However, certain elements other than preverbs can also occur in the preverb space: some adverbial expressions, and, according to Bloomfield (1962) and Guile 2 Abbreviations used: 1/2 – first or second (local) person agreement, AGR – agreement, AI – animate intransitive, AN – animate, AOR – aorist, CONJ – conjunct order (i.e. embedded clause morphology), CPL – completive aspect, CTR – contrast marker, DNA – dependent (i.e. obligatorily possessed) noun animate, DNI – dependent noun inanimate, EPIS – epistemic, HAB – habitual, IC – initial change (morphological ablaut morpheme), II – inanimate intransitive, IMP – imperative, INCEP – inceptive aspect, INF – infinitive, INV – inverse theme sign, NEG – negation, NONREF – nonreferential subject, PL – plural, PRED – predicative, PROX – proximate, QUOT – quotative, SG – singular, SIMUL – simultaneous, TA – transitive animate, TH – theme sign, TI – transitive inanimate. Menominee parses and glosses created with the aid of a Toolbox parsing database created by Monica Macaulay and Marianne Milligan, based primarily on the morphological analysis of Bloomfield (1962). Glosses of some preverbs have been changed to fit the analysis proposed in this paper. 2 (2001), pronouns and certain locative expressions. These other expressions have a much freer distribution than preverbs. For example, adverbials may appear between the agreement prefix and the verb stem, to the left of the agreement prefix, to the left or right of a preverbal NP argument, or postverbally, as shown for ahpnenew ‘always’ below. (4) [10.81] nekēs-ahpnenew-anohkīm. n- kēs- ahpnenew anohkī -m 1- PAST- always work.AI -1/2 I was always working. (5) [10.86] ahpnenew nekēs-anohkīm. ahpnenew n- kēs- anohkī -m always 1- PAST- work.AI -1/2 I was always working. (6) [1.08] ahpnenew, nōhnq kēs-anohkīw. ahpnenew n- ōhn kēs- anohkī -w always 1- father.DNA PAST- work.AI -3 My father was always working. (7) [1.10] nōhnq kēs-anohkīw ahpnenew. n- ōhn kēs- anohkī -w ahpnenew 1- father.DNA PAST- work.AI -3 always 3 In this work I therefore use syntactic distribution criteria to distinguish two distinct lexical categories: preverbs and adverbs. Preverbs obligatorily appear in the “preverb space,” between the preverbal agreement morpheme and the verb stem. Adverbs may appear in the preverb space, but may also precede or follow the verbal complex.3 The focus of this paper is limited to preverbs as defined in this way. Preverbs generally appear in a fixed position and relative order in the clause, they constitute a closed class, and their meanings are those typically identified as “functional” or grammatical as opposed to lexical. This paper begins an exploration of the hypothesis that Menominee preverbs are functional categories. SEMANTICS OF SELECTED PREVERBS An extensive hierarchy of functional categories is argued to be universal in Cinque (1999). Cinque claims that Universal Grammar (UG) determines both the inventory of functional categories from which a language selects a subset to instantiate and the order of the projection of these categories in the clause. Before we can investigate the extent to which Menominee preverbs conform to this hierarchy, we first need to establish exactly what the preverbs mean. I consider only a small subset of preverbs in this paper, and argumentation is presented only for those cases where I believe the description in Bloomfield (1962) 3 This usage differs from that in Bloomfield (1962). Bloomfield assumes a single lexical category “particle,” which he further divides into various subcategories including “preverb particle” and “independent particle.” Any particle is considered an independent particle when it occurs outside the preverb space. A particle occurring inside the preverb space is analyzed as a preverb particle if it bears Initial Change or is immediately preceded by the agreement morpheme; otherwise a particle in this space is either a preverb particle or an “incorporated” independent particle. Bloomfield further subcategorizes preverb particles into preverbs of the first class and preverbs of the second class, primarily by morphophonological criteria. He also states that most preverbs of the first class do not have corresponding independent particles, while most preverbs of the second class do. Bloomfield’s view requires massive homophony in the Lexicon, with a very large number of preverb particles having homophonous entries as independent particles. My use of the term preverb as functional head corresponds roughly, but not exactly, to Bloomfield’s preverb of the first class. 4 must be changed or refined. To simplify the task, the discussion is limited almost exclusively to the interpretation of preverbs in matrix clauses. The case of embedded clauses is more complex, because interaction with preverbs in dominating clauses must be taken into account. In trying to identify the semantics of preverbs I draw on observations about the behavior of functional categories cross-linguistically. An important assumption underlies this method: that while variation in lexical morphemes is limited only by the human experience that makes such morphemes useful, yielding an essentially infinite number of possible lexical denotations, the inventory of possible functional morphemes is provided by UG, and is therefore small and highly constrained. It is thus fruitful to compare unrelated languages and to consider the question of whether two functional items are “the same thing.” If this assumption turns out to be false, an entirely different approach is required. Interpretation of verbs with no preverb For the purposes of comparison, we should first consider how verbs are interpreted in the absence of aspectual or temporal preverbs. Such verbs can receive a variety of interpretations, including habitual/generic, present, and past. A future interpretation does not seem to be possible. The following sentences show examples of each of the possible interpretations. habitual/generic (8) [8.15] ahpnenew mēkāhtowak. ahpn new mēkāhti -w -ak always fight.with.each.other.AI -3 -PROX.PL They are always fighting. 5 (9) [2.44] māwaw new anmok nōcpenhwak opōswwanan. māwaw new anmw -ak all dog -PROX.PL nōcpenh - -w -ak follow.TA -TA.DIR -3 -PROX.PL o- posww -an -an 3- boss -OBV -PL All dogs follow their (own) boss. present (10) [8.21] mēkāhtowak. mēkāhti -w -ak fight.with.each.other.AI -3 -PROX.PL They're fighting (right now). (11) [9.47] Q: If you look out the window, and you see someone picking berries, what would you say to describe the situation? A: nawēnw. nawen -w gather.berries.AI -3 He's picking berries. 6 past (12) [2.05] Mesn netkwah, kan 's nēwahkont. Mesn n- N -Eko -w -ah kan Michael 1- say.so.to.TA -TA.INV -3 -3.SG NEG as nēwahkon -t AOR be.very.hungry.AI -3.CONJ Michael told me that he’s not hungry. (13) [Bloomfield 1920-1949, The Bead Man, line 7] nīs kīqsēhsan meyāhkiwwen. nīsw kīqsēhs -an myāhkiw - -w -en two girl -OBV meet.TA -TA.DIR -3 -QUOT He met two girls. kēs: Past Tense Bloomfield (1962) describes the meaning of kēs as “completed, past.” Cook (2003) concludes based on textual data that this morpheme denotes completive aspect. In fact, as I show here kēs does not have any of the properties of completive or perfective aspect.
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