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2003 Pronouns and Agreement.Pdf 101-2/05-rnitrrun3d- 18/5p- 15:22- disk/sr tq3 lcJ3drufrrpsfrps n Tronsactioi of lhe PhilologicatSociety \olnme l0l:2 (2003)235-278 PRONOUNS AND AGREEMENT: THE INFORMATION STATUSOF PRONOMINALAFFIXESI By Mlnur.rNe Mlrntnt (lniversity of California, Santa Barbara AssrRAcr Pronominal a.ffixesare often assumedto representan inter- mediatestage of diachronic developmentbetwqen independent pronouns like English ie and redundant inflectional markers like English -s. The path of developmentwould involve changesin distribution, form arrd function. Recently it has beenproposed that pronominal affxes are functionally closer to the redundant subject agteementmarkers of English and Germanthan to independentpronouns, because they cannot distinguish referentiality or definiteness.An examination of the use of pronominal affixes in connected speechin two unrelated polysynthetic languages,Central Alaskan Yup'ik Eskimo and Navajo, indicates that the affixes are actually essentiallyequivalent in referentiality and definitenessto the independentpronouns of English and German.Reference and definitenessare established in Yup'ik and Navajo in the same ways as in English and other languages,plus one more. Alternative constructionsare used for non-referentialmen- tions.In somecases, these systems actually show finer distinc- tions of referentiality and definitenessthan those of English and other Europeanlanguages. I I would like to thank Greville Corbett, Nick Evans,Bernard Comrie and other participants at the Agreement Workshop, held in conjuntio! with^ the the autumr i002 meeting of thJ Linguistics Associalion of Great Bdtain, for their helpful comments and discussion. I am especially grateful as well to the speakers who eenerouslv contributed thcir time and expertis€ in documenting their languag€s; -Eli*b"ttt Ali, et.nu Charles, George Charles and John Charlos for Central Alaskan Yup'ik and Ilro y Ida Soul6 for Nivajo. Consultation with the Surrey lVlorphology Grouo and partiiipation in the Agreement Workshop were made possible by funding f.o- ihe ESRC: fsnc (urt noooz38228-This support is gratefully acknowledged Publishedbv BlackwellPublishinq O The PhilologicalSociety 2003 - . - - - 9"600Galsingt; Road, O;ford OX4 2DQ and 350Main Str€€t,Malden' MA 02148,USA' 101-2/05-mithun.3d- 18/5/3 - 15:22- disk/sr lc:/3dpfrrpslrrps 236 rRANsAcrroNsoF TIiE pHrLoLocrcALsocrETy l0l. 2003 1. INTRoDUcrroN A frequently cited type of grammatical change is the evolution of independent anaphoric pronouns into pronominal clitics or affixes, and then into redundant verbal inflectional endings. These diachronic stages are reflected synchronically in the kinds of markers that occur cross-linguistically,as below. (1) Independent anaphoric pronouns: German and English Er beobachtet. Er beobachtetsie. He watches. He watches them. (2) Pronominal suffixes:Central Alaskan Yup'ik Nayurtu-q. Nayura-bi. watch-3.se watch-3.sr:13.pt 'He watches.' 'He watchesttem.' (3) Redundantverbal inflection: German and English Er beobacht-et. He watch-es, Such markers are sometimesdiscussed together as agreement,but they differ in sometimes subtle and interesting ways, many discussedby Corbett (2003, this volume). The diachronic path linking them would involve changesin distribution, form and function. Perhaps the easiestdifference to see among them is distribu- tional. Independent pronouns occur in complementary distribu- tion with lexical nominals(apart from appositiveconstructions). A nuclear clause in English or Gerrnan may contain a pronoun aloneor a lexicalnominal, but not both in the samegrammatical role. (4) Independentpronouns: German and English a. Er beobachtet. Mein Vater beobachtet. Er beobachtetdie Kinfls1. Not: *Mein Vater er beobachtet. xEr beobachtetsie die Kinder. 101-2/0emithun3d- 18/5/3* 15:22- disk/sr lcl3drufiAsfrrps MITHUAN - PRONOUNS AND AGREEMENT 237 (4) b. He watches. My father watches He watchesthe children- Not: *My fatherhe watches' *He watchesthem the chililren. Pronominal affixes,by contrast, are obligatory in everyclause' They may occur alonein the clausejust like independentpronouns' or they may be accompaniedby coreferential lexical nominals' They typicallyreprssent all core arguments. (5) Ptonominalsuffxes: Central Alaskan Yup'ik Nalurtu-q^ walc&-3.sc.ess 'He watches.' Aata-ka nayurtu-q' fat her-L,sclx; walcft-3.sc-,lrs 'My fatherwatches.' Nayura-i. watch-3.scl3.PL 'He watchesthem.' Cuignilnguu-tnaYura-i. botter-PL watch-3.sc/3.Pr 'He watchesthe otters.' Not: *Aataka nayurtu- +Cuignilnguutnayura- Redundantverbal inflectional affixesare obligatory in every clause, like pronominal affixes,but they never occur on their own' They are alwaysaccompanied by an independentlexical nominal or pronoun' (6) Redundantverbal inflection: German and English a. Er beobacht-et. Mein Vater beobacht-et. Not: *Beobacht-et. b. He watch-es. My father watch-es' Not: *Watch-es. 101-2/os-mithun.3d- 18/5/3 * 15:22- disk/st lc:FdruIrrpsrrrps 218 TRANsAcrroNsoF rlrE PHILoLoGICALsocrETY 101, 2003 As discussedby Siewierska(1999), markers at the first two stages, that is, independentpronouns and pronominal affixes,are the most cornmon crosslinguistically, but the diachronic transition from stageto stageis not necessarilyabrupt, and systemsat intermediate stagesdo occur. Siewierskanotes, for example,that Palauan pronominal prefixes are in complementary distribution with independentpronouns, but they co-occutwith lexicalNPs. The evolution from independentpronoun to redundantinflection involves changesin form and function as well. Formally, markers losetheir phonologicalindependence, and there is often a loss of phonologicalsubstance as well. On the functionalside' it has been observedthat the processultimately resultsin a lossof referentiality' As Siewierskaremarks, 'The endpointof the historicalevolution of agreementmarkers from anaphoric person pronouns is the loss of referentiality on the part of the person marker and the obligatory presenceof the nominal argumentwith which it agrees'(1999: 225)' This scenarioraises questions about the lelallvs fiming of the various shifts.Do they occur in sequenceor do they overlap?In particular, does the loss in referentiality occur before or after the markershave become formally dependentand obligatory?Viewed synchronically,are pronominal affixesreferential? In an intriguing paper, Evans (1999)proposes that argumentaffixes in polysyn- lh"ti" lu.rgoag"t, especiallythose representingdirect objects, lack important criterial features of pronouns: referentiality and defi- niteness.He attributesthe semanticdifference to the obligatoriness of the affixes. Being obligatory, they will no longer be able to encodesuch contrastsas referential vs non-referential,definite vs indefinite and so on. As a result,bound object afrxes in at leastsome polysynthetic languagespattern more like subject agreement morphologyin Europeanlanguages than like freeptonouns, in that they specifyperson and number information while remain- ing non-cornmittalabout referenceand discoursestatus. (Evans 1999:255) Evans's argumentsare basedon material lrom Bininj Gun-wok, a dialect chain of northern Australia, but he maintains that they extendto other polysyntheticlanguages as well, citing languages 101-2/oFmithun.3d- 1E/58 - 15:22- disrysr lcpdruIrrpsflrps MITHUAN _ PRONOUNS AND AGREEMBNT 239 from the Eskimo-Aleut, Iroquoian, Salishan, Uto-Aztecan and South Caucasianfamilies, among others. In what follows. the notions of referentiality and definiteness will first be examinedmore closely,then the functions of pro- nominal affixess/ill be investigatedin two unrelated polysynthetic languages:Central Alaskan Yup'ik, an Eskimo-Aleutlanguage of southwesternAlaska, and Navajo, an Athabaskan languageof the American Southwest.It will be seenthat the pronominal affixesin both of theselanguages are referential and definite in all but one of their uses,a usetypical of the independentpronouns of Germanand Englishas well. Non-referentialmentions are generallymade with alternativeconstructions. Termsused for the markersat various stagesalong the diachronic path vary considerably.As discussedby Siewierska(1999) and others, the hypothesiseddiachronic evolution results in a cline that doesnot lend itself to easysegmentation, so authorsdiffer in the number of types of marker they distinguish and the terms they usefor each.Some refer to al1markers along the clineas 'agreement markers'; others use that term only for pronominal affixes and redundantinflection; still othersuse it only for redundantinflection. The schema adopted here is the tripartite division proposed by Siewierskaand implicit in the work of Evans.Foliowing Siewierska and Evans, markers at the three stageswill be referred to as (i) independentpronouns, (ii) pronominal affxes and (iii) redundant grammaticalagreement markers. 2. RBTSRENTTAI-IrY AND DEFINTTENESS The notion of referenceis rarely given a succinct defiaition in the literature on semantics.The concepttends insteadto be introduced by example.Lyons (1977:174) states that'the term "reference"has to do with the relationshipwhich holdsbetween an expressionand what that expression stands for on particular occasions of its utterance'.He providesthe illustrationbelow. When a sentencelike 'Napoleonis a Corsican'is uttered to make a statement, we will say that the speaker refers to a certain individual (Napoleon) by means of the referring 101-2/os-mithun.3d- 1E/5/3 - 15:22 - disk/sr [:pdrurrnsrrrps 240 rRANsAcrIoNsoF THEPHILoLoGICAL socIErY 101, 2003 expression.If the referenceis successful,the
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