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Pronouns in Kumyk Discourse: a Cognitive Perspective A

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Pronouns in Kumyk Discourse: a Cognitive Perspective A Pronouns in Kumyk Discourse: A Cognitive Perspective A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA BY Linda Anne Humnick IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Jeanette Gundel, Adviser March 2009 © Linda Anne Humnick, March 2009 Acknowledgements Just as this research began with my initial field work among the Kumyk people of Dagestan, Russia, I would like to begin by expressing my gratitude for the generous hospitality and linguistic contributions of my Kumyk friends and colleagues. First, I would like to thank several Kumyk scholars who contributed to my research. The late Zhangishi Khangishiev was my first patient tutor in the intricacies of Kumyk grammar and morphology. The late Farida Muratchaeva inspired me with her scholarship on the Kumyk language and encouraged me in my own research. Ruhaniyat Musaeva, a dear friend, began as my tutor in spoken Kumyk, assisted in the collection of data, and generously gave me many opportunities to share the beauty of her family and culture. Finally, Agaragim Sultanmuradov has been invaluable as a colleague in scholarship, language consultant, contributor to the text database, and as the administrator of the questionnaire on site in Dagestan. I value his friendship, the patience and insight with which he has answered all my questions over the past 5 years, and his model of scholarship in Kumyk language research. I am grateful to the members of my examining committee: Nancy Stenson, with whom I share a passion for field research, Hooi Ling Soh, who sets a wonderful example in striving for excellence in research, and Michael Kac, whose creative and analytical thinking have been an inspiration. I also appreciate the contribution of Bruce Downing, who served on my committee at an earlier stage and shares my enthusiasm for the Turkic world. I am deeply in debt to my adviser, Jeanette Gundel, who not only has shared her insight and expertise in research and taught me much about the process of writing, but has also opened her home and her friendship to me over these years, mentoring me in a number of areas of life and scholarship. I would not have been able to complete a work of this scope without the encouragement of friends. Though I cannot begin to name all the friends who have encouraged me with their prayers and acts of kindness in these busy years, I would at least like to mention two fellow graduate students who have supported me along the way. i In particular, I thank Michiko Buchanan, whose encouragement and friendship reminded me that the bulbs lying dormant in the winter will eventually sprout and bloom. A special privilege during my graduate study has been having my friend Amel Khalfaoui as a fellow researcher, and a secondary coder on some of my texts. More importantly, we have shared many areas of friendship beyond the Givenness Hierarchy—including dreams for our families and careers, and even an appreciation of good food. Finally, I acknowledge that this work has only been possible through the support and sacrifices of my family. I owe much appreciation to my loving grandparents, Iva Dean Winkler and the late Gordon Winkler for teaching me the value of education and for making provisions for my college and post-graduate education even before I was old enough to go to college. I especially want to thank my grandmother, for being one of my biggest fans while I was in graduate school. I want to acknowledge my deep appreciation for my parents, Bob and Barbara Dunnigan, for their love, prayers, words of encouragement, and unconditional support. They have always encouraged me to do my best, but have also reminded me to “take time to smell the roses.” I deeply appreciate the love and support of my husband, Paul, and my children, Abraham and Katy, and I thank them for their patience with me as I invested time and energy in this research. On the practical side, I benefitted greatly from Paul’s technical computer support and willingness to help with many aspects of our family life, and I am also grateful to have Paul as a colleague in field research. His travels during the last five years were an invaluable assistance in the process of gathering data, and his mutual interest and willingness to listen to my ideas have been a great encouragement to me. With Katy and Abraham, many hugs and moments of fun have kept me going during the long hours of research and writing. For the three of you who have walked most closely with me through this process, your love has made all the difference. Finally, I give my thanks and praise to my Heavenly Father, who created me with this interest in language, who provides for all my needs, and who has guided my foot along this path. ii Dedication To the glory of the Creator of language and the honor of the Kumyk people iii Abstract This dissertation investigates pronominal forms of referring expressions in Kumyk, a Turkic language spoken primarily in the Dagestan region of Russia. The Kumyk language has six third person pronominals, including null arguments, demonstratives, and reflexives. Morphologically, each of these forms is unmarked for gender or animacy. This work provides an explanatory account of the distribution and interpretation of different pronominal forms in Kumyk primarily in terms of what these forms communicate about the status of their referents in the minds of the speech participants, specifically claiming that different pronominal forms signal differences in the cognitive status of their referents, following the Givenness Hierarchy model of Gundel, Hedberg, and Zacharski (1993). The analysis is based primarily on data from a corpus of oral and written Kumyk texts with supporting evidence from grammaticality judgments of constructed examples in questionnaires. According to the analysis, null arguments and reflexives signal the status, ‘in focus’, while demonstratives signal the status, ‘activated’. Particular attention is given to the role of scalar implicatures which arise from the unidirectional entailment of statuses on the Givenness Hierarchy and the fact that the demonstrative sho , which signals activation, has a particular association with this implicature. A unique contribution of the analysis is the evidence for the fact that sho not only gives rise to a scalar implicature in contexts where two referents have different maximal cognitive status(e.g. one in focus versus one at most activated), but also in contexts where two referents have the same maximal cognitive status, a fact which leads to the conclusion that this form specializes in indicating the less salient of two or more entities. The study also provides evidence that the demonstrative bu specializes in indicating the more prominent of two or more entities that are at least activated. Finally, in addition to the role of pronominals in signaling cognitive status and communicating the relative prominence of multiple referents, the study explores contextual effects such as imposed salience, point of view, empathy, or contrastive focus that are associated with particular forms. iv Table of Contents Acknowledgements.......................................................................................... i Dedication…………………………………………………………………..iii Abstract……………………………………………………………………..iv Table of Contents.............................................................................................v List of Tables ................................................................................................. ix List of Figures..................................................................................................x Chapter 1: Introduction.................................................................................1 1.0. Kumyk language facts......................................................................................... 3 1.1. Kumyk pronouns................................................................................................. 5 1.2. Organization of the study.................................................................................... 8 Chapter 2: Theoretical Framework............................................................ 10 2.0. What is a cognitive model?............................................................................... 10 2.1. Givenness, topic continuity, centering and accessibility .................................. 12 2.2. The Givenness Hierarchy model...................................................................... 17 2.3. Coding procedure for the GH model ................................................................ 22 2.3.1. Some coding choices in this study............................................................ 24 2.3.2. Coding clausally-introduced and higher order entities ............................. 27 2.4. The GH model and other pragmatic factors in referential choice..................... 31 2.5. Methodology in this study ................................................................................ 34 2.5.1. Description of corpus................................................................................ 34 2.6. Description of questionnaire and grammaticality judgments ........................... 35 Chapter 3: Kumyk Pronouns and Their Properties.................................... 44 3.0. General comments ............................................................................................ 44 3.1. Personal pronouns or demonstratives ..............................................................
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