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A Relational Grammar Approach to Verb Agreement in Lakota Gray Plunkett SIL-UND

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A Relational Grammar Approach to Verb Agreement in Lakota Gray Plunkett SIL-UND Work Papers of the Summer Institute of Linguistics, University of North Dakota Session Volume 30 Article 6 1986 A relational grammar approach to verb agreement in Lakota Gray Plunkett SIL-UND Michael McKeever SIL-UND Follow this and additional works at: https://commons.und.edu/sil-work-papers Recommended Citation Plunkett, Gray and McKeever, Michael (1986) "A relational grammar approach to verb agreement in Lakota," Work Papers of the Summer Institute of Linguistics, University of North Dakota Session: Vol. 30 , Article 6. DOI: 10.31356/silwp.vol30.06 Available at: https://commons.und.edu/sil-work-papers/vol30/iss1/6 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by UND Scholarly Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Work Papers of the Summer Institute of Linguistics, University of North Dakota Session by an authorized editor of UND Scholarly Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. A RELATIORAL GRANNAR APPROACH TO VERB AGREDIDT IR LAltOTA Gray Plunkett and Michael McKeever 1 Introduction 2 Relational Grammar 3 Basic verb agreement in Lakota 4 Simple monostratal transitive clauses in Lakota 5 Agreement in intransitive clauses 6 Reflexive clauses 7 Double patient verbs 8 3-2 and Obl-2 advancements 9 The notion of working 2 10 Conclusion Notes References 1 Introduction This paper examines verb agreement1 rules and their application in Lakota, a Siouan language. In particular, it explores how to best account for verb agreement in Lakota in a Relational Grammar framework. We will argue that certain concepts of Relational Grammar (RG), especially the notions of level and working 2, provide the necessary theoretical apparatus for formulating concise rules of verb agreement in Lakota. These rules account for all major transitive, ditransitive, and intransitive clause types. It also lends support to Perlmutter's claim that the notion of working term-xis needed to state rules in the grammars of natural language (Perlmutter 1982). We will also show the importance of disjunctive ordering in the grammars of natural languages. In Sect. 2 of this paper we will give a brief introduction to Relational Grammar. In Sect. 3 we will show the two sets of verbal agreement markings and how they register on the verb. In Sect. 4 we consider simple monostratal transitive clauses in Lakota and present an initial hypothesis concerning their agreement. In Sect. 5 we present intransitive clauses and their effect on our initial hypothesis. Sect. 6 deals with reflexive clauses. In Sect. 7 we discuss 'double patient' verbs in Lakota and in Sect. 8 3-2 and Obl-2 Advancements. Sect. 9 introduces the notion of working 2 and its importance in formulating SIL-UND Workpapers 1986 90 the final verb agreement rule for Lakota. Conclusions and implications are discussed in Sect. 10. 2 Relational Gramaar One of the primary goals of Relational Grammar is to construct adequate and insightful grammars for individual languages. A basic contention of Relational Grammar is that semantic roles such as Agent, Experiencer, Patient etc. are insufficient for this purpose. Instead, Relational Grammar claims that to do this primitive grammatical relations, such as 'subject of,' 'object of,' 'indirect object of,' etc. are needed. Although these are strictly primitives, the Universal Alignment Hypothesis does state that there is a loose connection between grammatical relations at an initial level (discussed below) and semantic roles (Perlmutter and Postal 1984:97). (It is at this point that semantics and syntax are related in RG.) The following is a partial list of grammatical relations used in RG. TERMS ABBREVIATIONS subject 1 direct object 2 indirect object 3 NONTERMS OBLIQUE Benefactive ("for") Ben Directional ("to") Dir Locative ("at", "in") Loe RETIREMENT Chomeur Cho The oblique relations closely correspond to the semantic roles of the same name. The Chomeur is the relation that a nominal bears when another nominal assumes its relation. Rosen (1984:40) in discussing semantic roles and grammatical relations quotes a form of Perlmutter and Postal's Universal Alignment Hypothesis which states: There exists some set of universal principles on the basis of which, given the semantic representation of a clause, one can predict which initial GR each nominal bears. SIL-UND Workpapers 1986 91 Although Rosen argues against the above hypothesis as a universal in its present form, for the purpose of illustration let us show what some tentative predictions from this hypothesis might be. (1) Agents, experiencers, and cognizers are (initial) ls Patients and stimuli are (initial) 2s. Recipients and addressees are (initial) 3s. Beneficiaries are (initial) Benefactives. Instruments are (initial) Instrumentals. In a sentence such as: (2) The boy hit the ball. The agent 'the boy' is the subject (or 1), the patient 'the ball' is a direct object (or a 2). These facts are correctly predicted by the principles in (1), yet in a sentence such as: (3) The ball was hit by the boy. the agent is not the subject and the patient is not the direct object. This sentence seems to counter the principles in (1). Yet this is not the case once a second important concept of Relational Grammar, the notion of levels, is taken into consideration. In RG a passive sentence such as (3) is analyzed as having two levels of syntactic structure, an initial level and a final level. In a stratal diagram sentence (3) would look like: ( 4 ) the ball hit the boy The diagram above says that 'the boy' heads a 1-arc in the initial level but in the final level it heads a chomeur (Cho). 'The ball' heads a 2-arc initially but a 1-arc finally. The verb 'hit' heads a P or predicate arc. (The order of constituents in a stratal diagram is inconsequential.) Note that this analysis does not violate the principles stated in (1). The stratal diagram in (4) represents a static relationship as opposed to the movements SIL-UND Workpapers 1986 92 posited for a passive transformation in a Transformational framework. By referring to grammatical relations at different levels, one can easily capture language particular generalizations about word order, pronominal case, verb agreement, etc. Thus, Relational Grammar employing grammatical relations and multiple syntactic levels has been shown to formulate insightful and adequate grammars in many diverse languages. 3 Basic verb agreement in Lakota Verbs in Lakota indicate person agreement by prefixes and infixes. (There are also emphatic free standing pronouns. These forms will be used only for convenience to represent the nominals in diagrams.) We see two verbal agreement sets occurring on the verb plus a suffix -b to show plural. The subject agreement set is observed in the paradigm in (5) (of the verb man.i 'walk'). (5) Subject Agreement Set ma-wa-ni I walk ma-ya-ni you walk ma-,-ni he/she/it walks ma-v-ni we (inc. ) walk ma-v-ni-b we ( exc . ) walk ma-ya-ni-b you (pl.) walk ma-,-ni-b they walk Object agreement is observed in the paradigm in (6) (on the verb a-,S 'hit ' ) : ( 6) a-,-ma-JSa he hit me. a-,-ni-Jla he hit you. a-•-•-Jla he hit him. 3 a-111--.-Jla-b he hit us (inc. & exc.). a-,-ni-Jta-b he hit you ( pl. ) . a-,-wida-jla he hit them. We can now list the two agreement sets. SIL-UND Workpapers 1986 93 ( 7) Set I Set II Subject Object 1S wa- ma- 2S ya- ni- 3S fl lP v- v- 2P ya-' ni- 3P fl wida- Several points should be made concerning the preceding paradigms. First, some verbs infix the agreement markers, while other verbs prefix agreement markers (ex. wa-l~ 'I sing'). However, many cases of apparent infixing could be due to the presence of locative or verbal prefixes which precede agreement markers. Lakota has an extensive inventory of verbal prefixes requiring further study. These prefixes often trigger morphophonemic processes which can alter the agreement4affixes. Such processes are beyond the scope of this paper. Second, (5) shows that Lakota has an inclusive-exclusive distinction in the 1st person plural subject marked by the absence or presence of the plural morpheme -b. Third, the 3rd person plural marker wida- only appears with transitive verbs and only marks animate 3rd plural objects. Its use is slightly different from the rest of the Set II affixes. 4 Siaple aonostratal transitive clauses in Lakota A look at simple transitive clauses reveals that Set I and II are used for subject and direct object agreement respectively. Example (8) shows this agreement. (8) a-ma-ya-,e hit-1S:II-2S:I-hit 'You hit me . ' When wa- and ni- would be expected together, a portmanteau morpheme di- is used instead as in (9). (9) a-di-Jile hit-1:2-hit /a+wa+ni+Jile/ 'I hit you.' The plural marker -b appears with all plural subjects (except for l plural inclusive) as well as with plural objects of 1st and 2nd person. SIL-UND Workpapers 1986 94 (10) he a-ya-,a-b PR0:3S hit-2S:I-hit-PL 'You(pl.) hit him.' (11) he a-ni-]lla-b PR0:3S hit-2P:II-hit-PL 'He hit you (pl.).' wida- appears with all animate 3rd person plural objects. (12) hena a-wida-wa-,e PR0:3P hit-3P:II-1S:I-hit 'I hit them.' (13) hena a-wida-ya-,a-b PR0:3P hit-3P:II-1S:I-hit-PL 'You(pl.) hit them.' The order of the morphemes is significant and has the following relative order: v-, :ma-, wida-, ya-, wa-, ni-. Examples of the application of this ordering are in (8), (12), (13) and the following examples.
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