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Typological variation in grammatical relations Dissertation zur Erlangung des akademischen Grades doctor philosophiae (Dr. phil.) Eingereicht an der Philologischen Fakultät der Universität Leipzig von Alena Witzlack-Makarevich Leipzig, im Juni 2010 ii Contents Acknowledgements .......................... viii Abbreviations ............................. ix 1 Introduction 1 1.1 Grammatical relations ..................... 1 1.2 Goals and overview ....................... 7 2 Major developments in the study of grammatical rela- tions 11 2.1 Introduction ........................... 11 2.2 Anderson (1976) ........................ 11 2.3 Keenan (1976) .......................... 13 2.4 Dixon (1994, 2009) ....................... 14 2.5 Role and Reference Grammar ................ 19 2.6 Radical Construction Grammar ............... 26 2.7 Bickel (in press) and the present approach ........ 28 2.8 Conclusion ............................ 33 3 Methodological background 35 3.1 Introduction ........................... 35 3.2 The goals of modern linguistic typology .......... 35 3.3 Multivariate approach ..................... 36 3.4 Summary and outlook ..................... 39 4 Argument structure and semantic roles 41 4.1 Introduction ........................... 41 4.2 Valence and argument structure ............... 41 4.3 Semantic roles .......................... 48 4.3.1 Role-list approaches to semantic roles ....... 48 4.3.2 Decompositional approaches to semantic roles .. 49 4.3.2.1 Dowty (1991) .................. 50 4.3.2.2 Primus (1999) ................. 55 iv CONTENTS 4.3.3 Argument roles: wrapping up and looking forward 56 4.4 Conclusion ............................ 59 5 Argument selection 61 5.1 Introduction ........................... 61 5.2 Argument selection and alignment ............. 61 5.3 Argument selection and alignment splits .......... 65 5.4 Conclusion ............................ 70 6 Dependent marking and referential properties 73 6.1 Introduction ........................... 73 6.2 Role and reference aspects of argument .......... 74 6.3 Referential properties ..................... 75 6.3.1 Animacy and humanness ................ 78 6.3.2 Definiteness and specificity .............. 81 6.3.3 Lexical class ....................... 82 6.3.4 Person ........................... 85 6.3.5 Other referential features ............... 87 6.4 Referential hierarchy ...................... 88 6.5 Interaction of features ..................... 90 6.6 Inflectional classes ....................... 93 6.7 Conclusion ............................ 94 7 Dependent marking and predicates 99 7.1 Introduction ........................... 99 7.2 Generalized predicate classes and the default class ... 100 7.3 A note on argument realization ................ 114 7.4 Split and fluid intransitivity .................. 118 7.4.1 Split intransitivity .................... 119 7.4.2 Fluid intransitivity ................... 131 7.5 Conclusion ............................ 136 8 Dependent marking and clausal conditions 139 8.1 Introduction ........................... 139 8.2 Tense, aspect and mood .................... 140 8.3 Morphological form of the predicate ............ 144 8.4 Clause type (main vs. subordinate clause) ......... 147 8.5 Polarity .............................. 149 8.6 Scenario ............................. 150 8.7 Conclusion ............................ 157 CONTENTS v 9 Head marking 159 9.1 Introduction ........................... 159 9.2 On the nature of agreement .................. 160 9.2.1 Introduction ....................... 160 9.2.2 Feature matching vs. feature unification ...... 162 9.2.3 On marking and its locus ............... 165 9.2.4 Grammatical versus pronominal agreement .... 169 9.3 Argument selection and head marking ........... 172 9.4 Head marking and argument referential properties ... 175 9.5 Head marking and predicate class .............. 177 9.6 Head marking and conditions ................ 179 9.7 Head marking and hierarchical alignment ......... 181 9.8 Conclusion ............................ 194 10Diathesis alternations 195 10.1Introduction ........................... 195 10.2Voice and diathesis ....................... 195 10.3Passive and antipassive as argument selectors ...... 198 10.3.1Argument promotion and argument demotion ... 201 10.3.2Splits of argument promotion and demotion .... 205 10.4Diathesis as a condition on argument selection ...... 206 10.5On syntactic transitivity of derived clauses ........ 214 10.6Conclusion ............................ 216 11Variables of argument selectors 217 11.1Introduction ........................... 217 11.2Coding vs. behavior ...................... 218 11.3Locus of marking ........................ 220 11.4Mono-clausal vs. cross-clausal ................ 221 11.5Clause-linkage type ....................... 223 11.6Controller vs. controllee .................... 231 11.7Matrix predicate ........................ 233 11.8Argument treatment ...................... 237 11.9Conclusion ............................ 239 12Discussion and conclusion 241 12.1Introduction ........................... 241 12.2Overview of the system of variables and their values .. 242 12.3Deriving traditional alignment ................ 248 12.4On the interaction of argument selectors ......... 256 12.5Database realization ...................... 263 vi CONTENTS 12.6Conclusions and prospects for further research ..... 271 A Language sample 275 B Examples of database coding 281 B.1 Ritharngu ............................ 281 B.2 Itzaj Maya ............................ 283 B.3 Puma ............................... 284 B.4 Udihe ............................... 284 B.5 Imbabura Quechua ....................... 286 References 289 Acknowledgements The research reported here was supported by grants BOBO 2471/3-1 and BI 799/3-1 (“Typological variation in the processing of grammatical rela- tions”) from the German Research Foundation as part of the research group “Grammar and processing of verbal arguments” (FOR 742). First and foremost, I wish to express my gratitude to Balthasar Bickel, who is responsible for arousing my interest in linguistic typology. Through- out the entire process of writing this thesis, I have benefited immensely from his ideas, professional enthusiasm, and inspiration. And thanks a lot for in- volving me in all the exciting research projects before, during, and after writing this thesis. I would like to express my deepest gratitude to Johanna Nichols, who spent a lot of time and energy in carefully reading the draft of this thesis and providing precious advice and encouragement. I would further like to thank my “third” supervisor Bernard Comrie for the discussion and prompt reading of the pre-final draft of this thesis. Many other people have accompanied me during writing this thesis and provided me with their support. Martin Haspelmath always made time for me when I needed an advice and it was a great pleasure to discuss with him issues related and unrelated to this thesis. For valuable theoretical dis- cussions thanks to Fabian Heck, Jeff Good, and Andrej Malchukov. I also profited from comments by audiences of several conferences and seminars, such as ALT7 (Paris), ALT8 (Berkeley), the Work in Progress series at the MPI-EVA, and the Typological Colloquium series at the University of Leipzig. This thesis also benefitted from the input I received at all the formal and in- formal meetings of the RHIM-EuroBABEL research project and the Syntactic Typology Reading Group at the MPI-EVA. Language-specific thanks to Peter Cole, Spike Gildea, Antoine Guillaume, Alice Harris, Iren Hartmann, Gabriella Hermon, Silvia Kutscher, Zarina Molochieva, Irina Nikolaeva, Simon Overall, Donald Stilo, and Thomas Wier. Needless to say, none of them is to blame for any errors in the interpretation of the data. viii CONTENTS Many thanks to my fellow PhD students Falko Berthold, Birgit Jänen, Robert Schikowski, and Matthias Urban, who read the drafts of this thesis at various stages. Another round of thanks to Robert Schikowski for exten- sive discussions and argumentations at an early stage of writing-up. Thanks to Diana Forker and Diana Schackow for valuable comments on individual chapters. Thanks to Martina Ernszt for translating the theses into German and to Kai and again Robert for polishing them. Database and LaTeX thanks to Lennart Bierkandt, Sven Siegmund, and particularly to Taras Zakharko. Social thanks to my friends and former and present University of Leipzig and MPI EVA colleagues: Birgit, Christfried, David, Dejan, Diana, Eva, Jenny, Falko, Fabian, Lennart, Matthias, Martina, Robert, Dr. Schiering, Taras, Zaira, Zarina, and many others. Even more special thanks to Tanya for all the practical support, Kai for his emotional support, and C. for her intellectual support. Abbreviations 1,2,3 person A (unless specified otherwise) most agent-like argument of transitive (and ditransitive) predicate ABL ablative ACT.PTCP active participle ADD additive focus ADJ adjective ADV adverb(ial) AGR agreement ALL allative anim anim ANTIP antipassive ASP aspect marker ATT attenuative Aktionsart AUX auxiliary BEN benefactive BM boundary marker CLF classifier CLM clause-linkage marker COM comitative COMP complementizer COMPL completive COND conditional CONT continuous COMPL completive status COP copula CVB converb d dual DAT dative DECL declarative DEF definite DEM demonstrative DIR direct x CONTENTS DIST discourse particle DIST distal DS different subject DUR durative DYN dynamic EMPH emphatic EPEN epenthetic ERG ergative e exclusive EXCL exclusive
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