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The Syntax of the Malagasy Reciprocal Construction: an Lfg Account

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The Syntax of the Malagasy Reciprocal Construction: an Lfg Account THE SYNTAX OF THE MALAGASY RECIPROCAL CONSTRUCTION: AN LFG ACCOUNT Peter Hurst University of Melbourne Proceedings of the LFG06 Conference Universität Konstanz Miriam Butt and Tracy Holloway King (Editors) 2006 CSLI Publications http://csli-publications.stanford.edu/ ABSTRACT The verbal reciprocal construction in Malagasy is formed by a reciprocal morpheme prefixing on the main verb with a corresponding loss of an overt argument in c-structure. Analyses of similar constructions in Chichewa and Catalan both treat the reciprocalized verb's argument structure as undergoing an alteration whereby one of its thematic roles is either suppressed or two thematic arguments are mapped to one grammatical function. In this paper I propose that the reciprocal morpheme in Malagasy creates a reciprocal pronoun in f-structure - thus maintaining its valency and leaving the argument structure of the verb unchanged, while at the same time losing an argument at the level of c-structure. 1. INTRODUCTION Malagasy is an Austronesian language and is the dominant language of Madagascar. The Malagasy sentences used in the analysis below are from the literature - in particular from a paper by Keenan and Razafimamonjy (2001) titled “Reciprocals in Malagasy” whose examples are based on the official dialect of Malagasy as spoken in and around the capital city Antananarivo. The Malagasy reciprocal construction is formed by the addition of a prefix -if- or -ifamp- to the stem of the verb accompanied by the loss of an overt argument in object position. Compare sentence (1a) below with its reciprocated equivalent (1b): (1) Malagasy a. N-an-daka an-dRabe Rakoto pst-act-kick acc.Rabe Rakoto V O S 'Rakoto kicked Rabe' b. N-if-an-daka Rabe sy Rakoto pst-rec-act-kick Rabe and Rakoto V S 'Rabe and Rakoto kicked each other' (Keenan & Razafimamonjy 2001:47) Like Malagasy, the verbal reciprocal constructions in Chichewa and Catalan are similarly formed by a reciprocal morpheme attaching to the verb with a corresponding loss of an overt argument in c- structure. Furthermore, all the participants involved in the reciprocal relation are grouped into a plural NP: (2) Chichewa (for same gender nouns) a. Galimoto inagunda njinga car it-past-hit-fv bicycle (where car and bicycle have the same gender) 'The car hit a bicycle' b. Njinga inagunda galimoto bicycle it-past-hit-fv car 'A bicycle hit a car' c. Galimoto ndi njinga zinagundana car and bicycle it-past-hit-rec-fv 'A car and a bicycle hit each other' (Mchombo & Ngalande 1980) (3) Catalan Les ballarines s'han vist the ballerinas rec/refl'have seen 'The ballerinas have seen each other/themselves' (Alsina 1996:95) The analyses of the verbal reciprocal constructions in Chichewa (Mchombo & Ngalande 1980, Mchombo 1991 and Dalrymple et al. 1994) and Catalan (Alsina 1996) both treat the reciprocalized verb's argument structure as undergoing an alteration whereby one of its thematic roles is either suppressed or two thematic arguments are mapped to one grammatical function. This is illustrated in figure 1 below: Figure 1. Analysis of the Formation of Reciprocal Analysis of the Formation of Reciprocal Expressions in Chichewa Expressions in Catalan (see Mchombo 1991:16) (see Alsina 1996:260-263) A-structure: respect<Agent, Patient> A-structure: respect<Agent, Patient> ø F-structure: respect_each_other<SUBJ> F-structure: respect_each_other<SUBJ> In Mchombo's analysis of the reciprocal construction in Chichewa, he uses LMT (Lexical Mapping Theory) to suppress the patient argument of the verb in a manner very similar to the analysis of the passive construction in LFG. This results in the verb at the level of f-structure having only one argument. Alsina's analysis of Catalan is similar insofar as he maps both the agent and patient thematic roles to the subject of the verb at the level of f-structure. I call either of these analyses “valency reducing” because the number of arguments that the verb selects at the level of f-structure is reduced when the verb is reciprocated. Under this valency reducing analysis, the f- and c-structures for sentence (1b) are represented by figure 2 below: Figure 2. The Valency Reducing Analysis of 'Rabe and Rakoto kicked each other' IP SUBJ [ "Rabe and Rakoto"] PRED 'kick_each_other<(SUBJ)>' ↑ = ↓ (↑ SUBJ) = ↓ VOICE ACTIVE VP NP TENSE PAST ↑ = ↓ V Rabe and Rakoto Nifandaka (↑ PRED) = 'kick_each_other<(↑ SUBJ)>' (↑ TENSE) = PAST (↑ VOICE) = ACTIVE However, the architecture of LFG allows for another way of representing reciprocal constructions. Under this representation, the a- and f-structures of the verb remain unchanged when it is reciprocated and instead, a reciprocal pronoun sits in the object position of the f-structure of the clause. Under this analysis, sentence (1b) has the f- and c-structures given in figure 3: Figure 3. The Valency Preserving Analysis of 'Rabe and Rakoto respect each other' C-structure F-structure IP SUBJ [ "Rabe and Rakoto"] [ ] OBJ PRED 'PROrecip ' ↑ = ↓ (↑ SUBJ) = ↓ PRED 'kick<(SUBJ)(OBJ)>' VP NP VOICE ACTIVE ↑ = ↓ TENSE PAST V Rabe and Rakoto N-if-an-daka (↑ PRED) = 'kick<(↑ SUBJ)(↑ OBJ)>' (↑ TENSE) = PAST (↑ VOICE) = ACTIVE (↑ OBJ PRED) = 'PROrecip' I call this analysis the “valency preserving analysis” because the verb's valency at the level of f- structure doesn't change when it's reciprocated. This is because the object position in the f-structure is filled by a reciprocal pronoun. This reciprocal pronoun is created by the reciprocal morpheme which has the definition given in (4): (4) -if- / -ifamp- (↑ OBJ PRED) = 'PROrecip' The definition for this reciprocal morpheme can be found in the lexical entries associated with the verb in which it appears (for example, see the lexical entries for the verb Nifandaka in figure 3 above.) The reciprocal pronoun is a place-holder for reciprocal semantics. The mechanics of how it's linked to reciprocal semantics are beyond the scope of this paper - however, this idea of a reciprocal pronoun is compatible with the work by Dalrymple, Kanazawa, Kim, Mchombo and Peters (1998) where they treat reciprocal expressions as quantifiers. For example, sentence (1b) expresses a proposition like (5) below which has a quantifier RECIP, a domain of Rabe and Rakoto, and a scope, or expression to which the quantifier is applied: (5) RECIP({Rabe,Rakoto}, λxy.kick(x,y)) To conclude, the valency preserving analysis of reciprocal constructions exploits the parallel structures in LFG, allowing an object to be missing at the level of c-structure, yet present at the level of f-structure. This creates a mismatch in the valency of the verb - and in the following sections I explain how this mismatch can account for the behaviour of the Malagasy reciprocal construction. 2. THE MALAGASY RECIPROCAL CONSTRUCTION In this section I examine the Malagasy reciprocal construction in more detail - in particular, the more complex syntactic environments which will prove instrumental in demonstrating the efficacy of the valency preserving analysis of the Malagasy reciprocal construction. Sentence (6a) below shows a typical transitive sentence with VOS word order. The object, when it is a pronoun or a proper noun, receives an ACC case marker. The verb has two prefixes, a tense marker N, and a voice marker -an-. In general, verbal morphology can also indicate aspect, reciprocity and causality. Sentence (6b) shows the corresponding reciprocal construction and sentence (6c) shows a typical intransitive sentence: (6) Transitive Verb a. N-an-daka an-dRabe Rakoto pst-act-kick acc.Rabe Rakoto V O S 'Rakoto kicked Rabe' b. N-if-an-daka Rabe sy Rakoto pst-rec-act-kick Rabe and Rakoto V S 'Rabe and Rakoto kicked each other' Intransitive Verb c. M-i-jaly Rabe pres-act-suffer Rabe V S 'Rabe suffers' (Keenan & Razafimamonjy 2001:47,70) As can be seen, the reciprocal construction is formed by: • Prefixing the -if- morpheme to the verb. • Gathering the participants into a plural (usually subject) NP. • The loss of an overt, non-subject argument. It is clear when examining these simple sentences that the reciprocal construction resembles an intransitive construction. It should be noted that treating Rabe and Rakoto in (6b) as the subject of the sentence is uncontroversial and can be demonstrated by a variety of tests. For example, Keenan and Razafimamonjy (2001) demonstrate that the subject NP in (6b) can be relativized - an operation only available to subject NPs in Malagasy: (7) Ny olona (izay) n-if-an-daka the people rel pst-rec-act-kick The people (that) were kicking each other (Keenan & Razafimamonjy 2001:22) Keenan & Razafimamonjy (2001:22) provide further evidence demonstrating that the remaining argument is in fact the subject of the clause. For example, Rabe and Rakoto can be substituted with the nominative pronoun izy, but not its accusative equivalent azy. Keenan & Razafimamonjy (2001:22) state that comparable claims regarding the subjecthood of the NP hold for the other reciprocal sentences they studied (and which appear below) such as those formed from ditransitive or semi-transitive verbs. The reciprocal construction in Malagasy is very productive, appearing with verbs with a variety of arities and in a variety of constructions. The examples below are by no means exhaustive. In (8) below, the ditransitive verb manome 'give' is missing its indirect object rather than its direct object when reciprocated: (8) Ditransitive Verb a. M-an-ome vola an-dRabe Rakoto pres-act-give money acc.Rabe Rakoto V DO IDO S 'Rakoto gives money to Rabe' b. M-if-an-ome vola Rabe sy Rakoto pres-rec-act-give money Rabe and Rakoto V DO S 'Rabe and Rakoto give money to each other' (Keenan & Razafimamonjy 2001:49) In (9a) below the semi-transitive verb mipetraka 'sit' takes the prepositional phrase “near Ranaivo” as a complement. The reciprocal equivalent to (9a) retains the preposition, but the NP it selected is now missing: (9) Semi-transitive Verb a.
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