A Survey of Menominee Word Order
MEREDITH JOHNSON, MONICA MACAULAY, BRYAN ROSEN, AND RACHEL WANG University of Wisconsin–Madison
INTRODUCTION1
There has been considerable work done on word order in various Algonquian languages,2 but relatively little on word order in Menominee. The purpose of this paper is to expand on the work that has been done (primarily Bloom¿eld 1962 and Shields 2004), and to provide an explanation for the different word orders found in Menominee. Our research shows that there tends to be more variation preverbally than postverbally, and we conclude that preverbal arguments are associated with either a topic or focus interpretation, while postverbal arguments are in a pragmatically neutral position. Bloom¿eld (1962) includes two chapters on syntax, but the categories and analysis of his era are sometimes dif¿cult to translate into more current notions. Bloom¿eld’s grammar does provide us with the word order generalizations given in (1) below.
(1) Menominee word order generalizations (Bloom¿eld 1962:442–443) • An actor mostly comes after the verb. • An obviative actor usually precedes a TA verb.
1. We are grateful to our Algonquian syntax reading group (especially Becky Shields), Joe Salmons, Rand Valentine, and two anonymous reviewers for their comments on this paper; all errors are, of course, our own. Thanks also to Menominee elders Marie Floring and Lawrence Tomow, for helping us with Menominee language examples, as well as to the Menominee Language and Culture Commission for their guidance. This paper is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 0235873 and 0553958, and several grants from the University of Wisconsin–Madison Graduate School. 2. E.g., Bloom¿eld (1962), Tomlin and Rhodes (1977), Dahlstrom (1993, 1995, 2003, 2004), Mühlbauer (2003), Junker (2004), Wolvengrey (2011), among many others.
154 A SURVEY OF MENOMINEE WORD ORDER 155
• If an obviative actor precedes the verb, the object usually follows the verb. • A predicator as actor precedes [the verb].3 • Objects usually precede the verb, but often follow it.
At the same time, Bloom¿eld also hinted at a pragmatic component to Menominee word order, saying: “The constituents of a phrase often appear in other than the usual order, or separated by other words, or with pause intonation between them, or with two or all three of these. Forms of this kind imply special emphasis, especially on a constituent that is spoken ¿rst” (1962:440). Shields (2004:374) summarizes Bloom¿eld’s claims as follows: “the most neutral orders are OVS (TA direct, TI), SVO (TA inverse), and VS (AI, II).” Shields herself makes the observations in (2), based on a study of four texts collected by Bloom¿eld in the 1920s.
(2) Menominee word order generalizations (Shields 2004:380–384) • Overt arguments appear postverbally more often than preverbally. • Overt arguments are more likely to appear preverbally when the verb is in independent order than when it is in conjunct order. • Obviative subjects are more likely to appear preverbally, while obviative objects are more likely to appear postverbally. • New discourse referents, pronominals, quanti¿ers, and relative clause heads tend to appear preverbally.
Shields also conducted an elicitation experiment with two native speakers, in which she tracked the position of overt arguments in a brief narrative. The results corroborated the ¿ndings of her text study: new discourse referents were preverbal, while de¿nite arguments were postverbal. She concludes from her two studies that new discourse referents and quanti¿ed phrases appear in focus position, and explains this by noting that this kind of element is neither de¿nite nor presupposed, which is compatible with focus. Our ¿ndings support the observations of Bloom¿eld and Shields, but show more explicitly the discourse basis of preverbal word order.
3. “Predicator” is de¿ned below. 156 JOHNSON, MACAULAY, ROSEN, AND WANG
Discrepancies between what they describe and what we ¿nd are explained by appealing to the function (topic or focus) of preverbal NPs. In what follows, we ¿rst provide quantitative data showing the word order tendencies that we found in the 48 texts that we examined. The section after that discusses the role that the discourse notions of topic and focus play in determining word order, and the subsequent section brieÀy addresses the theoretical implications of our ¿ndings. The last section concludes the paper.
QUANTITATIVE DATA
In order to get an overview of word order tendencies in Menominee, we coded all of the clauses in a corpus of 48 texts, according to verb type.4 Menominee verbs fall into four orders: independent, negative, conjunct, and imperative; however, for the purposes of this study, only the ¿rst three were considered. The only other clauses excluded from the study were those in which it was debatable what the arguments of the verb were, such as those with passive verbs. Arguments in the clauses were classi¿ed based on several criteria: grammatical relation (subject or object), position (preverbal or postverbal), and category (pronoun, proper noun, or noun phrase). In each table below, the columns for the categories pronoun (PRO), proper noun (PN), and noun phrase (NP) are followed by columns for three subcategories of NP: NA (animate noun), NI (inanimate noun), and OBV (obviative). Thus, the total for each row is the sum of the contents of the ¿rst three columns only, while the total of the NP column is the sum of the NA and NI columns, and the OBV column is a subset of the NA column. The results from the analysis of clauses containing independent order verbs are presented in Tables 1 and 2. Table 1 includes verbs with one overt argument, and Table 2 includes verbs with both an overt subject and object.
4. Most of the texts come from Bloom¿eld 1928; see Appendix A for a list of sources cited. We found no noticeable differences in word order tendencies between Bloom¿eld’s texts and the contemporary texts we considered. TABLE 1: Independent with one argument
PRO PN NP NA NI OBV TOTAL SV 17 12 75 66 9 7 104 VS 3 23 91 78 13 8 117 OV 7 1 49 34 15 11 57 VO 2 3 58 46 12 26 63
TABLE 2: Independent with two arguments
SUBJECT OBJECT TOTAL PRO PN NP NA NI OBV PRO PN NP NA NI OBV SVO 1 1 8 8 0 0 1 0 9 7 2 7 10 OVS 1 1 3 2 1 0 1 1 3 2 1 0 5 VSO 0 2 1 1 0 0 0 0 3 3 0 3 3 VOS 0 3 2 2 0 0 0 0 5 5 0 5 5 SOV 1 1 3 3 0 0 2 0 3 2 1 2 5 OSV 0 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 158 JOHNSON, MACAULAY, ROSEN, AND WANG
As the tables show, postverbal subjects and objects are slightly more common than preverbal ones. However, pronominal subjects and objects are much more likely to be preverbal. Inanimate subjects are more likely to be postverbal, but inanimate objects are more likely to be preverbal. Obvia- tive subjects are equally likely to be preverbal or postverbal, but obviative objects are more than twice as likely to be postverbal than preverbal. The small sample size of verbs with both an overt subject and object makes it dif¿cult to say much about the relative ordering of subjects and objects; note, however, that the most common order is SVO, and the least common is OSV. Tables 3 and 4 (p. 159) show the results from verbs in negative order. In contrast to independent order clauses, subjects and objects of nega- tive order clauses, regardless of category, are more likely to be preverbal than postverbal. Just as in independent order, however, there is a strong tendency for pronominal subjects and objects to be preverbal. There is only one example of a negative order verb with an overt subject and object, and the relative order of the arguments is SOV. However, negative order in general is relatively rare in our corpus of texts, and thus any generalizations we draw here are extremely tentative. Tables 5 and 6 (p. 160) show the distribution of arguments of conjunct order verbs. Overall, preverbal subjects are more common in conjunct order than postverbal ones, and postverbal objects are more common than preverbal ones. This holds for pronominals, inanimates, and obviative subjects and objects. The most common order in clauses with two overt arguments is SOV, while the least common orders are verb-initial: VSO and VOS. Tables 7 and 8 (p. 161) show the distribution of verbs in conjunct order that include what we call the “eneq construction.” We take this construction up in detail in the following section, but suf¿ce it to say for now that eneq is an inÀected pronoun (or “predicative,” in Bloom¿eld’s terms) that is used to mark a focused element, and requires a following verb in conjunct order. Tables 7 and 8 show the distribution of subjects and objects with respect to both the verb and eneq. As we can see, it is again more common to have preverbal subjects and postverbal objects. Eneq is most often found initially, although subjects and objects can occasionally precede it. Note, however, that the verb never precedes eneq. TABLE 3: Negative with one argument
PRO PN NP NA NI OBV TOTAL SV 4 0 5 4 1 1 9 VS 0 1 1 1 0 0 2 OV 9 0 0 0 0 0 9 VO 1 0 4 2 2 0 5
TABLE 4: Negative with two arguments
SUBJECT OBJECT TOTAL PRO PN NP NA NI OBV PRO PN NP NA NI OBV SVO 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 OVS 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 VSO 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 VOS 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 SOV 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 OSV 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 TABLE 5: Conjunct with one argument
PRO PN NP NA NI OBV TOTAL SV 50 7 71 57 14 15 128 VS 8 5 82 74 8 12 95 OV 9 0 46 28 18 18 55 VO 16 1 54 32 22 24 71
TABLE 6: Conjunct with two arguments
SUBJECT OBJECT TOTAL PRO PN NP NA NI OBV PRO PN NP NA NI OBV SVO 1 1 2 2 0 0 0 0 4 3 1 3 4 OVS 0 1 2 1 1 1 0 0 3 2 1 1 3 VSO 0 0 1 0 1 0 0 0 1 1 0 1 1 VOS 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 SOV 4 0 2 2 0 0 4 0 2 1 1 1 6 OSV 0 0 2 2 0 1 1 0 1 1 0 1 2 TABLE 7: Conjunct + eneq with one argument
PRO PN NP NA NI OBV TOTAL eneqSV 15 2 22 20 2 3 39 eneqVS 10 3 44 40 4 3 57 SeneqV 2 0 14 10 4 0 16 eneqOV 2 0 4 3 1 3 6 eneqVO 9 2 38 29 9 21 49 OeneqV 0 0 5 4 1 3 5
TABLE 8: Conjunct + eneq with two arguments
SUBJECT OBJECT TOTAL PRO PN NP NA NI OBV PRO PN NP NA NI OBV eneqSVO 1 1 2 2 0 0 0 0 4 2 2 2 4 SeneqVO 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 eneqOVS 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 1 1 OeneqVS 0 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 2 2 0 1 2 eneqVSO 0 0 2 2 0 0 0 0 2 1 1 1 2 eneqVOS 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 eneqSOV 0 0 3 3 0 1 1 0 2 2 0 2 3 SeneqOV 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 eneqOSV 0 0 1 1 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 OeneqSV 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 162 JOHNSON, MACAULAY, ROSEN, AND WANG
Tables 1 through 8 have illustrated a number of tendencies found in the ordering of various types of arguments with respect to the verb. Our goal in undertaking these counts was to establish hypotheses that could guide our subsequent analysis of Menominee word order. The fact that we did not ¿nd strong enough tendencies to draw any ¿rm conclusions is in itself a result, one which leads us to consider in the next section the discourse function of the arguments (and other elements) involved.
TOPIC AND FOCUS IN MENOMINEE
At this point we turn to topic and focus in Menominee, and show that it, like so many other Algonquian languages, makes use of a set of preverbal positions to make discourse-pragmatic distinctions. Speci¿cally, Menominee shows evidence of the preverbal positions shown in (3), at this point presented purely in terms of linear order.
(3) [External topic] [Focus] [Internal topic]
We follow Dahlstrom (2004; see also Aissen 1992) in positing a focus position plus two topic positions: an external topic and an internal topic. Menominee differs, however, from the languages Dahlstrom and Aissen consider in the relative order of these three elements. An external topic is generated in situ, and may or may not correspond to an argument of the verb. As Aissen puts it, “The connection to the following clause is pragmatic, not syntactic: the clause must be ‘about’ the topic” (1992:44). An internal topic, however, does correspond to an argument of the verb, and “bind[s] a coindexed trace” (Aissen 1992:47). In what follows, we discuss and present examples of both types of topic. We begin, however, with focus.
Focus
In de¿ning focus, we follow de¿nitions such as those used in Dik et al. (1981), Aissen (1992), Dahlstrom (1993, 1995), and Lambrecht (2001), who de¿ne focus in relation to the proposition expressed. Aissen says, for example, “The semantics of the focus construction has two essential parts, a presupposition and an assertion . . . What the focus construction asserts A SURVEY OF MENOMINEE WORD ORDER 163 is that the focused constituent denotes an entity which satis¿es the variable of the presupposition” (1992:50).5 Different authors provide different typologies of focus, leading to a proliferation of terminology for types of focus in the literature (e.g., completive, contrastive, identi¿cational, and so on). In the literature on Algonquian languages, some authors have claimed that certain semantically de¿ned categories of NPs may serve such functions, e.g., Dahlstrom (1995) claims that in Meskwaki, wh-words, NPs modi¿ed by restrictive particles like ‘even’ or ‘only’, inde¿nites, and NPs representing surprising information can be focused. Shields (2004) ¿nds that in Menominee, similar types of NPs— overt pronominals, inde¿nites, quanti¿er phrases, new discourse referents, and emphatics—tend to be focused. We provide below a set of examples in which preverbal elements ¿t the descriptions of some of these types of focused elements. (4a–b) ¿rst provide examples of what Dik et al. (1981:60) call “completive focus,” where the focused item “¿ll[s] in a gap in the pragmatic information of the addressee.”6
(4) Completive focus NPs a. wenah ap sekƝmaeh ’s kae--- qc-nƯmit. he too diver.duck AOR much-he.dance ‘Diver Duck, for his part, danced a lot.’ (BM 044)
5. In this preliminary examination of pragmatic factors affecting word order in Menominee, we consider only argument focus; that is, cases where focus falls on a single argument of the verb. We set aside for now other types of focus such as predicate and sentence focus (cf. Lambrecht 1994; Lambrecht and Polinsky 1997; and many other sources). 6. Abbreviations used in this paper: AN = animate; AOR = aorist; CNTRFACT = contrafactual; CP = completive; CTR = contrast; DUB = dubitative; EPIS = epistemic; EXCL = exclamation; HAB = habitual; IC = initial change; INAN = inanimate; INV = inverse; IRR = irrealis; LOC = locative; NEG = negative; OBV = obviative; PL = plural; PRED = predicative; PRES = present; QUOT = quotative; RED = reduplication. We use the Menominee practical orthography in all examples; it has fairly standard ݦ]. The macron is used for vowel] = ۄqۃ ts] or [þ], and] = ۄcۃ interpretations except that length. 164 JOHNSON, MACAULAY, ROSEN, AND WANG
b. Ohpae--- nyak mesek nepǀnƗwak ahkae--- hkoh; potatoes also I.put.them.in.the.pot kettle.LOC ‘I also put potatoes in the kettle.’ (NTM 106)
In (4a), the narrator has been talking about some girls dancing; here the subject ‘Diver Duck’ is added to the set of people who are dancing, using ap ‘too’ to signal this addition. In (4b), the object ‘potatoes’ occurs with the particle mesek, meaning ‘also.’ In this story, the narrator has previously listed all of the items she had cut up to put in the kettle, and then subsequently says that she also put potatoes in the kettle. Thus, the proposition ‘put x in the kettle’ is presupposed, and ‘potatoes’ are the new, focused information. (5) provides examples of inde¿nite NPs in focus position. Inde¿nites by de¿nition introduce new discourse referents; thus they exemplify informational focus, which “generally mark[s] the non-given parts of an utterance . . . without necessarily establishing a contrast to a particular alternative” (Büring 2011:13).
(5) ,QGH¿QLWH13V a. sƝh, kae--- kǀh cew-kƝs-naeqtaw Maeqnapos EXCL something EPIS-CP-he.kill.it Maeqnapos ‘Hmm, Me’napus must have killed something.’ (ONS 020)
b. weyak cew-kƝs-awƗtǀk! someone EPIS-CP-he.take.it.away.with ‘Someone must have carried it off.’ (ONS 038)
(5a) and (b) come from the same text. Maeqnapos has found a dead elk and, after butchering it, has hidden the elk meat until he and his family can come back to get it. But Fisher notices his tracks and starts to follow them. He utters (5a) when he ¿gures out that there might be food in the area. He ¿nds it and hides it somewhere else. (5b) expresses the point of view of Maeqnapos, when he returns to the site with his family and discovers that the meat is gone. Focused restrictive NPs are exempli¿ed in (6).
(6) Restrictive NPs a. mǀsah ahkae--- hkok apƝwak. only kettles they.sit ‘Only the empty kettles were there.’ (NTM 207) A SURVEY OF MENOMINEE WORD ORDER 165
b. mƗwaw new weyan kew-enae--- nƯhae--- wen. all CTR they.OBV HAB-he.cure.them ‘He cured them all.’ (SR2 387)
c. Nekot nesek new kan onae--- qnanowƗwan, one only CTR NEG they.kill.him ‘Only one they didn’t kill,’ (TD1 026)
The focused subject in (6a) includes the restrictive particle PǀVDK This example also involves an element of surprise: the narrator is shocked to see that the kettles are empty, as that means his companion drank all of the broth that they contained. In (6b), the fact that the subject cured ALL of the people is focused, as evidenced by the appearance of the contrastive particle new. The focused object in (6c) is marked by both the particle nesek ‘only’ and the particle new. (7) provides examples of focused NPs which express surprising information. We follow Dahlstrom (1995) here, who regards surprising information as exemplifying contrastive focus.
(7) Surprising content a. NemƗq, maehkƯh sƝkepotae--- wen! heavens blood it.pours.forth ‘Oh, how the blood streamed out!’ (MGV 174)
b. kasapetok enae--- niw ketƗwenan! NEG.DUB man you.be.NEG ‘It seems like you are not really a man!’ (PHK 143)
(7a) begins with the exclamation QHPƗT ‘heavens!,’ and while it is not so surprising to us that blood pours out when Maeqnapos stabs himself, he is surprised because he had expected wild rice to come out. In the lines before (7b), the addressee had convinced a group to go into battle, and then ordered a retreat. The speaker is surprised by this change in direction, and exclaims that he does not believe the addressee to (really) be a man. In Menominee, inÀected pronouns also function contrastively, and occur in focus position (as is discussed more thoroughly below). Contrastive focus “juxtaposes two, perhaps always exclusive, alternatives” (Büring 2011:13). (8a) and the second clause of (8b) illustrate. 166 JOHNSON, MACAULAY, ROSEN, AND WANG
(8) Pronominal NPs a. kenuasaq sǀh pae--- hkataeyae--- k. you.PL.PRES entirely you.be.hungry ‘After all, it is you folks who really go hungry!’ (MGV 042)
b. Sekas new enekoh nekƝs-eskǀnamowƗwak ahkƝw wenuaq for.a.while CTR so.much I.CP-set.apart.for land they.PRED
nap ’s pas mǀnahahkuaq. too AOR might they.farm ‘After a while I set aside some land so that they too might farm.’ (PE 013)
In (8a), Maeqnapos is talking to some woodpeckers. They had just made dinner for Maeqnapos, and he offers to return the favor because they are the ones who need the food. In (8b), the narrator decides to give some land to the old people who taught him how to farm. The particle nap ‘too’ serves as a further indication of contrastive focus. We turn now to a focusing construction which can provide us with a diagnostic for the type of preverbal NP that appears in a sentence: the “eneq construction.”
Focus with Eneq
When there is a single preverbal NP it can be dif¿cult to decide which kind of preverbal constituent it represents. However, Menominee has a construction which explicitly marks focus, and can be used as a diagnostic for the position of any other preverbal NP(s) included in the sentence. We call this the “eneq construction,” and note in passing its similarities to the “mii construction” of Ojibwe (Rhodes 1998; Valentine 2001; Fairbanks 2008). (9) and (10) provide examples of the eneq construction.
(9) eneq ’s kƝs-wƯhtahkuaq, Ɲh. that.INAN.PRED AOR CP-they.call.them yes ‘That’s what they call them, yes.’ (JD 008)
(10) eneq ’s aw-wƝkeyah there.PRED AOR IRR-we.dwell ‘That is where we shall pitch camp.’ (PHK 035) A SURVEY OF MENOMINEE WORD ORDER 167
Eneq actually represents the homonymous predicative forms of two pronouns, eneh (and its variant enem) ‘that (inan.)’ and enes ‘there,’ accounting for the different glosses in the two sentences. The latter can also be used as a discourse sequencer meaning, roughly, ‘and then’ (also like Ojibwe mii). For the purposes of this paper we assume that the two types of predicative pronoun occur in the same place in the sentence; more detail on any distinctions between the uses will have to await further research. Here, we focus on the use that is shown in (9) and (10), which not coincidentally is often translated with an English cleft construction, indicating that the pronominal content is focused (cf. Lambrecht 2001). Eneq is, in fact, a member of a large class of inÀected pronouns that Bloom¿eld (1962, Chapter 12) considers predicative (terming them “predicators”), which are always followed by a verb in conjunct order. Any predicative pronoun may actually appear in this construction, but since the vast majority contain eneq, we use that as a cover term for the predicative element involved. (The table in Appendix B provides a list of Menominee pronouns in both their non-predicative and one of their predicative forms.) (11) and (12) give examples with predicative pronouns other than eneq.
(11) NahƗw, kenaeq taeh mae--- hkawaenemenan well.then you.PRED and IC.I.think.of.you ‘I thought of you.’ (RS 136)
(12) Enoh mah-mƗwaw oqnae--- hsemaw, enowen nae--- qtam kew-piat; that.AN RED-all older.brother that.AN.PRED.QUOT ¿rst HAB-he.comes ‘The oldest of all the brothers was always the ¿rst to return from the hunt.’ (RS 008–009)
(11) contains kenaeq ‘you (predicative)’ and (12) contains enowen ‘that (animate, predicative, quotative).’ (13) exempli¿es both a predicative (focus) and non-predicative (topic) use of the second-person pronoun.
(13) The Story of Pehkutsian kenaeq taeh kayƝs-eyƗn ayom mamƗceqtaw mƗwaw new ’s you.PRED and CP.IC-you.say this people all CTR AOR 168 JOHNSON, MACAULAY, ROSEN, AND WANG
aw-naeqnakeh, IRR-we.kill.them ‘You are the one who said that we should kill all of those people;
kayƝs-eyƗn. CP.IC-you.say so you said.
kakƗyƯq taeh kenah otƯh kayae--- netoh ketǀhcekapowem. as.it.turns.out and you back different.one.LOC you.stand.at.that.side But really you stand back, away from the fray.’ (PHK 140–142)
In this section of the story, the speaker is addressing the leader of a war party (this passage, in fact, comes directly before (7b), above). In the ¿rst line, the predicative form of the pronoun functions contrastively, indicating that it was the leader (as opposed to anyone else) who suggested that the men go into battle. Then in the last line of the excerpt, the second-person pronoun is in non-predicative form because the referent has already been introduced into the discourse. Here it functions as a topic, and is not used contrastively. Another indication that eneq marks focus in this construction is that it is quite common for the contrastive particle new to follow the predicative pronoun, as in (14).7
(14) enewen new kew-enem-ehpǀtae--- k eneh wƝp that.INAN.PRED.QUOT CTR HAB-on.the.way-it.glide.that.way that.INAN arrow ‘That arrow always just Àew by that place.’ (ONS 054)
Finally, also note that Bloom¿eld considered wh-words in Menominee to be predicative too, and that wh-questions are formed in exactly the same fashion as the eneq construction. While this is not probative for the position of eneq, of course, wh-words are generally considered to be in focus position (Horvath 1986; Rizzi 1997). This is exempli¿ed in (15) and (16) below.
7. Enewen in example (14) is the predicative quotative version of eneh ‘that (inan.)’. A SURVEY OF MENOMINEE WORD ORDER 169
(15) Ɨq taeh pas katae--- w-esƝqtayan? what.PRED and CNTRFACT going.to-I.do ‘And what would I do?’ (BLS 037)
(16) Hǀh, awae--- ninoq taeh aw-nae--- wƗcen? oh who.OBV.PRED and IRR-he.see.him ‘Oh, who was the one he would see?’ (RS 386)
We turn now to sentences in which the eneq construction can be used to identify the function of other preverbal NPs.
Topic
When an NP and eneq co-occur before the verb, eneq can be used as a diagnostic for the type of NP that is present. Preverbal NPs can appear on either side of eneq: external topics precede eneq and internal topics follow it. Consider (17) and (18), where eneq is in italics, and the boldfaced word represents the topicalized NP.
(17) hƗw, eneq .ƯTQDHK as wae--- penah enes Ɨsepae--- hkoh. Now then.PRED KƯqnaeh AOR he.Àing.them.by.hand there cliff.LOC ‘Now, it was then that KƯqnaeh Àung them there on the cliff.’ (KQ 018)
(18) RKNƗQDQ eneq new ’s aqtaeken. bone.PL then.PRED CTR AOR they.be.there ‘until only the bones were left’ (NTM 172)
Example (17) shows an NP (the personal name .ƯTQDHK) following eneq, in the internal topic position, and example (18) shows the NP RKNƗQDQ ‘bones’ preceding eneq, in the external topic position. We examine each type in turn.
Internal Topic
NPs in a variety of grammatical functions can appear as internal topics. The last line of (19) provides an example of a subject as an internal topic, and the last line of (20) provides an example of an object in this function. 170 JOHNSON, MACAULAY, ROSEN, AND WANG
(19) Ahkae--- hkoh nepǀnƗn. kettle.LOC I.put.it.in.pot ‘I put it (meat) in the kettle to boil.
Ohpae--- nyak mesek nepǀnƗwak ahkae--- hkoh; potato.PL also I.put.them.in.pot kettle.LOC I also put potatoes in the kettle.
maskƯhkiwapoh mesek netǀsehton. tea and I.make.it And I made tea.
HƗw, eneq-peh QƝPDW payiat now then.PRED-time my.male.friend IC.he.come Then my friend came.’ (NTM 105–108)
(20) SƗkae--- w taeh kenaw-pec-wƯcƯwƗwak apae--- hnƯhsaehsak nine and you.IRR-coming-go.along.with.them young.man.PL
payƝnesetuaq, IC.they.be.clean ‘With you will come nine pure young men,
kan nekǀtoh kƯqsƝhsan wayƯcƯwƗtuaq; NEG ever girl.OBV IC.they.go.along.with.them who have never been with girls;
eneq HVƝNHZDN aw-pƯnƗtuaq Ɲh-yǀs nƝkeh. then.PRED that.kind.of.person.PL IRR-you.bring.them right-here my.house.LOC that’s the kind [of young men] you will bring here to my house.’ (SR2 010–012)
The last line of (19) shows a subject NP after eneq, in the internal topic position. The story is about two friends who go hunting. The narrator comes back to camp with a deer he had shot, and begins to cook. In the last line shown, his friend arrives at camp. 1ƝPDW ‘my friend’ is topicalized, to bring the story back to the actions of that character. The ¿nal line of (20) shows an object NP after eneq, also in the internal topic position. In this story, Maeqnapos is speaking to a young man in a dream. In the ¿rst line, Maeqnapos introduces the ‘young men.’ In the last line, an object NP meaning ‘that kind of person’ follows eneq, indicating that the topic has shifted to the type of men that Maeqnapos A SURVEY OF MENOMINEE WORD ORDER 171 instructs the young man to bring to his house.
External Topic
NPs in a variety of grammatical functions can also appear as external topics, as in (21) and (22).
(21) “HƗw!” ewƗken akekoh apae--- hnƯhsak. all.right they.say.so these young.man.PL ‘“All right!” the young men said.
(QDH--- QLZ enewen-peh payƗsetahah man then.PRED.QUOT-time IC.he.jump.over.it Then one man leapt across.’ (SR2 125–128)
(22) Enewen taeh ae--- htaseh-mƯcehsit cƝkƗhtek; there.PRED.QUOT and IC.there-he.eat close.to.tree ‘That was where he was eating, under a tree; [...]
Eneq-peh ce-piat weyak esƝh-mamƗceqtaw, ’s then.PRED-time EPIS-he.come someone that.kind-Indian AOR Then came a man of some tribe
katae--- w-naeqnekot; intend.to-he.kill.him.INV to slay him;
kan taeh okae--- hkenawƗnan NEG and he.not.know.something.about.him he did not know of the man’s coming.
3HPƝK HQHK eneq ’s katae--- w-mamƗhah enoh enae--- niw, fat that.INAN then.PRED AOR going.to-he.skim.it that.AN man
katae--- w-mƝcek going.to-he.eat.it That man was going to skim some fat, he was going to eat it.’ (TAT 078–082)
The second line of (21) shows an NP, ‘man,’ preceding eneq (actually, enewen-peh, the quotative form), in the external topic position. Previous lines were about a group of young men on a journey to Maeqnapos’ house. 172 JOHNSON, MACAULAY, ROSEN, AND WANG
Here, the narrative moves to just one of the men, and the positioning of enae--- niw before eneq signals a shift in topic to that particular man. In (22) the story up to this point has been about a man going off to hunt, setting up camp, and preparing some food, although it is left vague what he is eating. We get a preview of what is going to happen in the second line, where another man and his intentions are introduced. But then the narrative switches back to the food preparation, and in fact speci¿cally to the fat the ¿rst man plans on eating. The next several lines are about what he did to prepare the fat in the dark. Menominee, unfortunately, does not provide us with many clues about the status of preverbal NPs, and since we are working primarily with written texts, we do not have much indication of prosody. But occasionally we do ¿nd a comma after an initial NP, as in (23).
(23) HQRK D\ƗSDH--- Z, enewen enem-pƗsecepesit; that.AN stag then.PRED.QUOT on.the.way-he.speeds.passing.over.something ‘The stag quickly leapt over;’ (LNX 072)
We take the comma to represent a pause, indicating that the NP is at a phrasal boundary, separate from the remaining predicate. Finally, one of the de¿ning characteristics of external topics is that they can be an argument of the verb, but do not have to be. Consider (24) and (25), where the topics do not correspond to any argument of the verb.
(24) MetƗtah mƝqsemenak, nianan awae--- tokƝhsewak. ten apple.PL ¿ve they.are.wormy ‘Of the ten apples, ¿ve are wormy.’ (MF/LT 10/13/11)
(25) Nepae--- hkwan newƝqsakaesem. my.back I.am.in.pain ‘My back hurts.’ (MF/LT 10/13/11)
Badan and del Gobbo (2010:78) point out that an “aboutness topic” (which we take to be equivalent to our external topic) can bear a whole- part or a possessive relationship to an element in the rest of the sentence. In (24) we see a whole-part relationship between the external topic (‘ten apples’) and the rest of the proposition, while in (25) we see a possessive relationship between the ¿rst person subject of the sentence and their back. A SURVEY OF MENOMINEE WORD ORDER 173
Implications for Quantitative Data
At this point, we return to the quantitative data presented in the second section. We saw there that while we were able to identify some patterns, the results were simply not robust enough to draw ¿rm conclusions on basic word order in Menominee. Instead, as we have shown, Menominee word order is sensitive to the discourse status of the arguments of the verb: both topics and focused NPs appear preverbally. Thus, we can conclude that the types of NPs that occur most often preverbally are also most likely to be prominent in the discourse. For example, we found that pronominal subjects and objects occur most often in a preverbal position. This fact is now readily explained: overt pronouns are associated with a focus interpretation, and focused elements occupy a preverbal position. We also found that obviative objects are more likely to be postverbal, which indicates that obviative objects are rarely topic or focus. Lastly, recall that we found that subjects are more likely to be preverbal, while objects are more likely to be postverbal. This suggests that subjects are more likely to be prominent in the discourse than objects, which is certainly not a surprising ¿nding, given standard de¿nitions of subject.
Structure of the Menominee Clause
We have argued for the presence of three preverbal positions in Menominee: external topic, focus, and internal topic. This is consistent with syntactic approaches which incorporate an articulated left periphery (e.g., Rizzi 1997), as shown in the tree in (26).
(26) 174 JOHNSON, MACAULAY, ROSEN, AND WANG
This analysis of preverbal elements is similar to structures posited for other Algonquian languages, as in Russell and Reinholtz 1996 for Swampy Cree, Mühlbauer 2003 for Plains Cree, Bliss 2005 and Denzer-King 2013 for Blackfoot, and Tourigny 2008 for Ojibwe, who argue that topicalized and focused elements are situated in the CP-layer. In the structure in (26), topicalized and focused noun phrases sit in the speci¿er positions of ExtTopP, FocP and IntTopP. Because eneq and the other inÀected pronouns mark focus, they sit in the Foc head. Whether they are base-generated there or move into that position we leave for future research; either way, we hypothesize that the presence of inÀection on eneq is due to its association with Foc. The majority of this paper has dealt with the position of preverbal elements in Menominee, without considering postverbal arguments. When there are two postverbal arguments, both subject-object and object-subject orders are possible. We suggest that the postverbal position is the default, or pragmatically neutral position, for such arguments, and that they are fronted to the left periphery when they are associated with topic or focus. It is possible that postverbal arguments are organized in a Àat structure, explaining the free ordering of subjects and objects in that position. Alternatively, the subject and object could be base-generated in a hierarchical con¿guration, with the subject higher than the object. In that case, either right-dislocation of the subject or predicate fronting could be responsible for object-subject word order. However, due to the small number of examples with both overt subjects and objects, we set this issue aside for now.
CONCLUSION
To conclude, we have looked at the various possible word orders in Menominee, ¿nding that the unmarked location for nominals is to the right of the verb. We have also shown that nominals which appear to the left of the verb are positioned that way for discourse-pragmatic reasons: they serve either a topic (internal or external) or focus function. These preverbal functional categories appear in the linear order EXTERNAL TOPIC – FOCUS – INTERNAL TOPIC. Our ¿ndings are similar to those found for other Algonquian languages (e.g., Meskwaki, Dahlstrom 1993, 1995; Ojibwe, Valentine 2001; Plains Cree, Mühlbauer 2003; East Cree, Junker 2004, to name just a few), reÀecting a cross-family tendency to make use of an articulated left periphery A SURVEY OF MENOMINEE WORD ORDER 175 for purposes of expressing the discourse function of particular arguments. This paper thus contributes to the growing body of work on word order in Algonquian languages.
APPENDIX A: SOURCE CODES
The following codes represent the stories which we used from Bloom¿eld’s materials. The abbreviations which appear with text numbers are from Bloom¿eld (1928). The ones without a text number represent unpublished stories found in Bloom¿eld’s ¿eld notes, located in the National Anthropological Archives at the Smithsonian Institution, and analyzed and translated by Monica Macaulay and Marianne Milligan. In all examples used in the paper, the codes are followed by the appropriate line number.
TABLE 9: Texts from Bloom¿eld (1928)
CODE # TITLE CODE # TITLE BM Bead Man PE Personal Experiences KQ KƯqnaeh PHK 57 Pehkutsian LNX 97 Lynx Tries to Kill a Stag RS 103 Red Swan MGV 74 Maeqnapos Goes A SR2 88 The Origin of the Visiting Spirit Rock, Second Version NTM 31 Nehtsiwihtuk as a TAT 51 Tales of Ancient Times Trencherman ONS 86 Origin of the North Star TD1 55 Talking Dog
Two codes represent contemporary personal narratives (also followed by a line number):
BLS Bill’s Life Story (Bill Penass) JD Jingle Dance (Sarah Skubitz and Tillie Zhucckahosee)
Finally, a few elicited sentences have speaker codes and dates after them:
MF Marie Floring LT Lawrence Tomow 176 JOHNSON, MACAULAY, ROSEN, AND WANG
APPENDIX B8
TABLE 10: Menominee Pronouns (Bloom¿eld 1962:193–195)
PREDICATIVE NON-PREDICATIVE MEANING (INDICATIVE) MEANING nenah I nenaeq it is I kenah you (sg.) kenaeq it is you (sg.) wenah he, she, it wenaeq it is he, she, it nenaq we (excl.) nenaq it is we (excl.) kenaq we (incl.) kenaq it is we (incl.) kenuaq you (pl.) kenuaq it is you (pl.) wenuaq they wenuaq it is they ayom / ayow this (an.) ayoq it is this one (an.) yǀm / yǀw this (inan.) yǀq it is this (inan.) enoh / enom that (an.) enoq it is that one (an.) eneh / enem that (inan.) eneq it is that (inan.) akoh / akom / akekoh these (an.) akoq / akowak it is these (an.) anoh / anom / anenoh these (inan.) anoq / anowan it is these (inan.) anoh / anom / anenoh this/these (obv.) anoq / anowan it is this one/these (obv.) akeh / akem those (an.) akeq, akewak it is those (an.) aneh / anem those (inan.) aneq / anewan it is those (inan.) aneh / anem that/those (obv.) aneq / anewan it is that one/those (obv.) yǀs here yǀq it is here enes there eneq it is/was there, then omas over here omaeq it is over here emes over yonder emeq it is over there
8. For some reason, \ǀT ‘it is here’ and eneq ‘it is/was there, then’ are omitted from the list given in Bloom¿eld (1962:195). They are, however, listed in Bloom¿eld (1975). A SURVEY OF MENOMINEE WORD ORDER 177
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