What's in a Verb?

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What's in a Verb? What’s in a verb? Published by LOT phone: +31 30 253 6006 Trans 10 fax: +31 30 253 6000 3512 JK Utrecht e-mail: [email protected] The Netherlands http://wwwlot.let.uu.nl/ Cover illustration: contour map of the Americas ISBN-10: 90-76864-94-2 ISBN-13: 978-90-76864-94-5 NUR 632 Copyright © 2006 by the individual authors. All rights reserved. What’s in a verb? Studies in the verbal morphology of the languages of the Americas Grażyna J. Rowicka & Eithne B. Carlin (eds.) LOT Utrecht 2006 Contents Preface Part I. North and Central America Peter Bakker Algonquian verb structure: Plains Cree .................................................. 3 Jan P. van Eijk Typological aspects of Lillooet transitive verb inflection .................... 29 Hank Nater Athabascan verb stem structure: Tahltan ............................................. 53 Grażyna J. Rowicka Transitive linker in Upper Chehalis (Salish)......................................... 73 Annette Veerman-Leichsenring Valency-changing devices in Metzontla Popoloc ................................ 93 Part II. South America Willem F.H. Adelaar The vicissitudes of directional affixes in Tarma (Northern Junín) Quechua ....................................................... 121 Eithne B. Carlin The verbalizers in Trio (Cariban): a semantic description ........................................................................ 143 Mily Crevels Verbal number in Itonama .................................................................. 159 Simon van de Kerke Object cross-reference in Leko ........................................................... 171 Sérgio Meira Stative verbs vs. nouns in Sateré-Mawé and the Tupian family ........................................................................ 189 Pieter Muysken & Katja Hannss Verbal morphology in Uchumataqu ................................................... 215 Stella Telles & Leo Wetzels The system of evidentiality in Lakondê (Nambikwára) ..................... 235 Preface Grażyna J. Rowicka & Eithne B. Carlin Leiden University The purpose of this volume is threefold. First, it recognises the unparalleled impact that the study of indigenous languages of the Americas has had on progress in linguistics, in particular in the area of morphosyntax, since the early 20th century. This book is devoted to verbal morphology, which tends to be the most complex grammatical component in the languages of the Americas and often constitutes the first challenge that a researcher of an undescribed or poorly studied language encounters. It would be difficult, if not impossible, to provide a fully representative picture of the diversity of structural complexity that verbal forms exhibit in the indigenous American languages in one volume. However, the present book offers a synopsis of the morphological categories that play an important role in verbal morphology and that have attracted the attention of linguists active on the American continent. Second, the rich linguistic variety in the Americas has given rise to a number of regionally specialised groups of experts. The present volume overrides regional boundaries and provides an overview of interesting verbal phenomena across North, Central, and South America, hoping to contribute to more interaction in the field of Americanist studies. Last but not least, we wish to take stock of the long-standing tradition of Dutch and the Netherlands-based linguists working in the Americas and give an overview of current Dutch involvement in the study of these languages. The contributors to this volume are therefore either Dutch themselves or have been affiliated with a Dutch research institute while carrying out their research. In recent years the Dutch involvement in the study of indigenous languages of the Americas has been growing rapidly, in particular in South America. We therefore hope this volume will soon be followed by others that will report on the results of current and future Dutch research in the Americas. This volume is a collection of articles presenting original fieldwork results and/or innovative comparative research, often on little known lan- guages and phenomena, and illustrated with unique data. Each contribution provides a brief outline of the verbal morphology of the language under con- sideration and an in-depth analysis of a selected topic. Several of the papers focus on issues related to transitivity, which high- lights the significance of this morphological category in indigenous Ameri- ii Grażyna Rowicka & Eithne Carlin can languages. Van Eijk considers transitive verb inflection in Lillooet Sal- ish from a typological perspective. Van de Kerke discusses the distribution of object marking in Leko and its interaction with case, animacy, and saliency. Rowicka examines the function and the origin of the transitive linker in Upper Chehalis. Veerman-Leichsenring analyses the valency-changing ef- fects of inflection and derivation in Metzontla Popoloc. The remaining con- tributions address a wide range of other verbal phenomena. Adelaar consid- ers the development of derivational affixes expressing direction into aspec- tual and related affixes in Tarma Quechua. Bakker presents a new detailed model of affix ordering in Plains Cree. Carlin gives a semantic analysis of the verbalizers in Trio, showing how linguistic distinctions can be directly correlated with cultural distinctions. Crevels discusses verbal number, i.e. number relating to events rather than to entities, in Itonama from a typologi- cal perspective. Meira concentrates on the morphosyntactic properties of stative verbs in Mawé and the Tupian family, and compares their analyses as verbs and as nouns. Muysken & Hannss reconstruct the structure of the verb in Uchumataqu and compare it to that in related Chipaya. Nater adopts a dia- chronic perspective in his account of complex morpho-phonological alterna- tions in Tahltan verb stems. Telles & Wetzels describe the complex system of evidentiality in Lakondê. The diversity of the Americanist research in the Netherlands is reflected in the variety of approaches that the authors adopt in their papers. Many studies represent the descriptive tradition (van de Kerke, Telles & Wetzels, Veerman-Leichsenring, Bakker, and van Eijk). Several adopt a typological and/or comparative perspective (Adelaar, Bakker, Crevels, Meira, van Eijk, and Rowicka). A few include an analysis of language internal development (Adelaar, Muysken & Hannss, and Nater). One represents the anthropolo- gical linguistic tradition (Carlin). We would like to express our gratitude to a number of people who helped us to make this volume reality. We thank our colleagues who acted as anonymous reviewers and whose commentaries helped to assure the quality and clarity of the papers. Thanks to our partners, Jeroen van de Weijer and Maarten Mous, for their help during various stages of this project and for their full support until its completion. We owe special thanks to the Leiden University Centre of Linguistics (LUCL), whose financial assistance made the publication of this volume possible. Finally, we express our appreciation to all the authors who contributed their papers to this collection and contin- ued their support for this project despite the fact that it took longer than originally planned. Part I North and Central America Algonquian verb structure: Plains Cree1 Peter Bakker Aarhus University, Denmark & RCLT, La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia 1 Introduction In this paper I discuss some aspects of verbs in Plains Cree, an Algonquian language of Canada. I will focus on the structure of stems, and on the order of affixes in the Cree verb. First, I will try and construct a descriptively adequate morpheme template for Cree, and then investigate a number of theoretical models to account for that. Most literature on Cree verbal morphology discusses inflection and paradigmatic relations. My attention will go to stem formation (primary and secondary derivation) and the linear combinability of elements in the verb. I will provide a descriptively adequate morpheme template for Cree, and point out some implications for cross-linguistic models of affix ordering. First, I will sketch briefly the place of Plains Cree within the Algonquian family (§2). Then I will discuss Cree word classes (§3) after which I will focus on verbal semantic distinctions in §4 and stem structure in §5. In §6, I survey approaches to Algonquian/Cree affix order, ultimately presenting a description of verbal affixation. In §7 I will discuss these facts in the light of cross- linguistic approaches to affix order, and some implications of this are discussed in §8 and conclusions drawn in the final section. 2 Family relations Cree is a member of the Algonquian language family. The Algonquian lan- guages are the geographically most widespread of North America, with speakers in British Columbia (Cree, Ojibwe) in the west to the coastal area of Labrador and Newfoundland in the east. The Algonquian languages and two languages of California, Yurok and Wiyot (the Ritwan languages) form the Algic phylum. The Plains Cree language is part of a cluster of dialects that form part of the Cree-Montagnais dialect or language continuum. The Algonquian family consists of some 40 languages that have been 1 The transcription used for Plains Cree is the standard orthography where vowel length is indicated by macrons or circumflexes. For clarity, length is indicated by double vowels for the other Algonquian languages, and when quoting directly from an author who uses vowel doubling.
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