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The Obviative Person Is Inanimate GENERALS PAPER Elimination of the obviative Nattaya Piriyawiboon Supervisor: Alana Johns Readers: Michela Ippolito and Elizabeth Cowper Department of Linguistics, University of Toronto April 9, 2007 1 Elimination of the obviative1 Nattaya Piriyawiboon University of Toronto Abstract This paper provides a new analysis of obviation in Algonquian. In Algonquian, animate third persons are commonly divided into the proximate and obviative types. Taking homophony between the inanimate plural suffix and the obviative suffix as a starting point, I argue that positing a separate obviative morpheme is unnecessary and that the obviative morpheme is the inanimate plural morpheme. Following Grafstein (1984) and Dechaine and Wiltschko (2002), obviation serves as a disjoint reference marker and reference tracking. Under a Feature Geometric approach (Harley and Ritter 2002 and Cowper and Hall 2004), I analyze obviation as a syntactic process of feature deletion. Assuming that the arguments in these languages are pronominal (Jelinek 1984, Baker 1996 and Reinholtz 1999), the overt nominals must link to the pronominal arguments by feature matching. Therefore, when two nominals can be linked to only one pronominal, the syntax deletes the person feature of the lower argument so as to eliminate the co- referencing ambiguity. In doing so, the c-commanded nominal loses its person feature and becomes morphologically inanimate. Evidence for this analysis comes from the fact that the obviative person is marked with the inanimate plural morpheme across Algonquian languages and the verb and demonstrative show inanimate person agreement with the obviative person. This study suggests that an inanimate marking on an animate nominal serves to eliminate ambiguous co-referencing between the pronominals and the adjunct nominals. 1 I would like to thank Alana Johns, my supervisor, for her faith in this work and for her countless invaluable advice. My interest in Algonquian stems from her Fields Methods class of 2005. I would also like to thank Elizabeth Cowper for many good ideas that appear in this work and Michela Ippolito, Tanya Slavin, Maria Kyriakaki, Julia Sue and Monica Irimia for their comments on earlier versions. I would also like to thank the audience at WSCLA12 for their feedback especially Elizabeth Ritter, Phil Branigan, Charlotte Reinholtz, Martina Wiltschko and Jeff Muehlbauer. Finally, I would like to thank Terry Spanish for his time and patience in being my language consultant. All errors are my own. 2 I. Introduction Algonquian languages2 exhibit a morphological distinction between two or more animate third persons participating in the same sentence. One animate third person is unmarked while the rest is marked with an ‘obviative’ suffix. This phenomenon, particular to Algonquian languages, is known as proximate/obviative distinction. Example (1) illustrates obviation in Nishnaabemwin. (1) John o-gii-waabam-aa-n mkwa-n John 3-past-see AN-dir-obv. bear-obv.3 ‘John saw a bear/bears’ (Grafstein, 1984, p.21) (2) John w-waabnd-aa-n jiimaan John 3-see IN-dir-IN boat ‘John sees a boat’ (Valentine, 2001, p. 311) In (1), mkwa (bear) bears an obviative suffix -(a)n because it co-occurs with another animate third person John, which is unmarked. The verb is also marked with the same suffix. Notice that when a noun is obviative, its number is neutralized. In (2), none of the referents is marked obviative because the sentence consists of only one animate noun (John) while the other referent ‘boat’ is inanimate. The obviative morpheme has been analyzed under several accounts, for example, it is a discourse marking of focus (Bloomfield, 1962, Hockett, 1966 and Wolfart, 1973), a disjoint reference marker (Grafstein, 1984 and Dechaine and Wiltchko, 2002), a third person span (Aissen, 1997, 2001), and an indirect evidential marking (Muehlbauer, 2006). In this study, I argue that positing a separate category for a third person is unnecessary since the obviative morpheme demonstrates the same characteristics and form as an inanimate plural marking. Under the Feature Geometry Theory (Harley and Ritter, 2002, Cowper and 2 A language family spoken in parts of Canada and the United States. Examples of languages belonging to this family are Cree, Blackfoot, Potawatomi, Menomini, Nishnaabemwin, Passamaquoddy, Innu-Aimun and Fox. 3 The abbreviations used in this paper are: AN = animate; IN = inanimate; sing. = singular; pl. = plural; obv. = obviative; prox. = proximate; ind = indicative; dir = direct Theme; inv = inverse Theme; DAT = dative Case; dem. = demonstrative; 1 = first person; 2 = second person; 3 = third person; incl. = inclusive and excl. = exclusive. 3 Hall, 2004), I analyze obviation as a syntactic process of feature deletion that prevents potential ambiguity in co-referencing between the pronominal arguments and the overt nouns from happening. The data are drawn from Nishnaabemwin, an Algonquian language spoken in Southern Ontario. The objectives of the study are: first, to demonstrate that the ‘obviative’ morpheme is actually the inanimate plural morpheme; second, to explain the process of obviation in Algonquian; and third, to determine the cause of obviative marking in Algonquian. The paper is organized into the following sections. Section 2 outlines the characteristics of Algonquian obviation. Section 3 discusses some previous analyses on this topic of study. Section 4 and 5 deal with the status of obviative as a morpheme and the grammatical gender in this language family. Section 6 presents a new analysis of obviation. The analysis is then applied to some constraints found in the language in Section 7. The results show that eliminating the obviative and analyzing obviation as a syntactic process of feature deletion provides the best account for various phenomena in Algonquian. The paper concludes in Section 8. II. Obviation in Algonquian Obviation refers to a process of marking one of the two animate third persons in the same sentence with an obviative suffix. If there are more than two animate third persons, then all are marked except one. In Algonquian, nominals are divided into two grammatical genders: animate and inanimate (see section 5 for more details on grammatical animacy). Only the animate noun is marked obviative4. The obviative person is marked with the suffix /–an/ in Nishnaabemwin. In a transitive clause, obviation is obligatory since there are at least two referents participating in the sentence. The obviative suffix appears on the nominal as well as the head verb. However, the nominals need not be overt. When the nominals are absent, obviation is still present in the verb complex. Example (3) illustrates obviation in a transitive clause consisting of two third persons. Example (4) illustrates a sentence consisting of more than two third persons and example (5) illustrates a sentence with only one overt noun. 4 Reinholtz (personal communication) suggests that both animate and inanimate nouns are marked obviative in Swampy Cree. I will not deal with such a special case in this study. However, I will address this issue in the future research. 4 (3) giw dash kwew-ag w-gii-gnawenm-aa-waa-n niw binoojiiny-an dem. then woman-AN pl 3-past- take care of AN-dir-3pl-obv. dem. child-obv. ‘Those women took care of the child(ren)’ (Valentine, 2001, p. 631) In (3), kwewag (women) is proximate and binoojinyan (child/children) is obviative. The obviative also marks on the head verb gnawenam (take care of ANIM). The number of an obviative person can be interpreted as singular or plural. The next example illustrates obviation when more than two animate persons participate in a clause. (4) mii dash gii-biidmawaad niw waabgan-pwaagn-an miinwaa semaa-n and then past-bring conj. 3>3’ dem. clay-pipe-obv. and tobacco-obv. ‘..then he (prox) brought him (obv) that/those clay pipe(s) and also tobacco’ (Valentine, 2001, p. 628) In (4), there are four animate third persons involved in the sentence. First, the Agent and the Goal are not overt because these two participants have already been introduced in the previous sentence. Only the subject of the sentence is proximate. The rest of the referents (both direct object and indirect object) is obviative. The next example illustrates obviation in a sentence with only one overt noun. (5) mii dash gii-bkonaad niw waawaashkeshw-an and then past-skin-conj. 3>3’ dem. deer-obv. ‘Then he skinned that/those deer’ (Valentine, 2001, p. 628) In (5), there is only one overt noun waawaashkesh (deer). However, it is obviative because the Agent is already proximate. This relationship is encoded in the conjunct verb form bkonaad (to skin AN), which indicates that a proximate person acts on an obviative person. From (3) to (5), it seems like the obviative is assigned to the object of the 5 sentence only. However, this is not the case since the obviative person can be the subject of the sentence as well, as illustrated in (6). (6) John w-gii-waabm-ig-oon w-gwis-an John 3-past-see AN-inv-obv. 3-son-obv. ‘John’s son saw him’5 (Valentine, 2001, p. 632) In (6), the subject (his son) is obviative and the object (John) is proximate. The verb is marked with the inverse Theme suffix –ig, instead of –aa (cf. (1)), to indicate that the obviative person is the subject of the sentence (or the Agent of the verb ‘see’). Obviation is not a Case marking since it is only relevant to the animates. It does not indicate any grammatical functions of the referents either due to its presence on both subject and object. Obviation also occurs in a possessive form. An animate noun possessed by another animate noun is obligatorily marked obviative and its number is also neutralized. The examples in (7) illustrate the possessive form of an animate noun. The examples in (8) illustrate the possessive form of an inanimate noun.
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