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Logophoricity and Emphatic Determiners Basque

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Logophoricity and Emphatic Determiners Basque . Logophoricity and emphatic determiners In Basque JOSEBA ABAlTUA Abstract At least for some Basque dialects, the binding domain of emphatic determiners such as bera, berak, berari, bere, etc., may be explained in terms of the notion logophoricity, as in Sells 1987. This notion is connected to the discourse roles SOURCE, SELF and PIVOT which typify a certain class of verbs as markers of . a logophoric domain. In this domain, emphatic determiners may be bound to a desig­ nated role of the verb. Contrarily, within the same domain the corresponding neutral determiners hura, hark, hari, haren, etc., may be interpreted as obviative pronouns, that is, they may not corefer to an antecedent bearing any such discourse role.! 1. Introduction There is a class of pronominal elements in Basque that has attracted a great deal of attention in the specialized literature for the past decade. It concerns the paradigm of emphatic and non-emphatic determiners that function as third person pronouns-: Previous studies have focused on the determination of binding domains in the con­ text of sentence grammar; a topic central to some linguistic theories (eg. the Gover­ ment and Binding theory of Chomsky 1981 & 1982). Within the Ba~que literature this matter has been largely dealt with by Rebuschi 1985a, 1985b, 1986, 1987a & 1987b. Some attention to this topic has also been given by Ortiz de Urbina 1986 and Maracz 1986. The question of wether Basque is a configurational language (at some level of representation) has dominated the discussion. However, very little has been said about the central issue, that, is, central issue, that is, the nature of the contrast between both types of determiners. Moreover, the status of zero anaphora and its distribution with respect to overt anaphora has been ignored. (1) This raper is dedicated to the memory of Professor Koldo Mitxelena, whose · teachings at the University 0 the Basque Country in Vitoria-Gasteiz have been of an inmense value. ·The ·paper is based on a chapter of a Ph.D. thesis at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology. The author gives special thanks to Paul A. Bennett, for the very helpful comments on previous versions and advise throughout the past three years at Manchester. Thanks are extended to all other members of the Centre for Computational Linguistics at UMIST for their motivating support during his stage at the Centre. The author expresses his gratitude to George Rebuschi, who was source of data, comments, and ideas, and to Joseba A. Lakarra, who provided the opportunity of presenting this paper. Thanks also to Donald Woods for proofreading the/aper and to members of the · R&D Laboratory of Fujitsu at Barcelona. This research was supporte by a grant from the Department of Education, Universities and Research of the Basque Government. [ASJU Geh 14-2,1991,1013-1027] http://www.ehu.es/ojs/index.php/asju 1014 JOSEBA ABAlTUA The paper offers a novel interpretation, one that unfolds notions such as logo­ phoricity, obviation, Centre rules, clause nucleus, and the lexical properties of cer­ tain verbs. No formal account is given but a mere indication of the problems and the necessary notions to solve them. These may be incorporated into any existing theory. Abaitua 1988 provides one such formal account within the parameters of the Lexical Fuctional Grammar of Bresnan, Halvorsen and Maling 1983 and Kameyama 1985. Secti.on 2 introduces the system that Basque uses to encode pronominal information. Firstly, the correspondence between free and bound pronominals is investigat­ ed. The lack of overt morphemes to indicate third person is interpreted as involving a system of zero pronominals. Alternatively, in the absence of proper overt items, Basque uses determiners instead. More specifically, determiners of third degree proximity such as hera and hura, which correspond to the emphatic and neutral forms respectively. The last part of the section presents data taken from Rebuschi 1987b, showing the distributional properties between these two types of determiners. Section 3 presents the notion of logophoricity, following the discussion by Sells 1987. The discourse roles SOURCE, SELF and PIVOT are defined. These roles serve to mark logophoric arguments of verbs of communication and mental experience. Four tests are applied to the data from Basque that give substantial support to the hypothesis that while the emphatic determiner hera may be bound in a logophoric domain, the neutral determiner hura may not be bound within the same domain. Section 4 concludes the paper by attempting a correlation amongst the most important notions discussed: logophoricity and obviation, zero anaphora and Centring rules, and the notions command and precedence which sustain non-coreference rules. It is also shown how the lexical properties of the relevant verbs are determinant in marking the logophoric individuals and the environment of a clause nucleus. The discovery of such correlations reinforces the content of the proposal. 2. Background This section introduces the special system that Basque employs to encode pronomi­ nal· information.We .start by looking at the· relation between the system of free pronominals and the agreement inflection of finite verbs. Then we draw our attention to determiners, for these fill the gaps in the absence of [roper third person lexical pronouns. The section concludes with a presentation 0 the relevant data -largely borrowed from Rebus chi-that illustrates the distributional properties of the two types of determiners. 2.1. Free and Bound Pronominals Basque has two major ways of overtly encoding pronominal information. One is in terms of bound morphemes of finite verbs inflection. The second is in terms of free pronouns2• As we can see in the table below, there is a close correlation between these two types of pronominals. (2) The tenns free and bound indicate the degree of dependence the pronominal item has at the level of morphology; bound means that it belongs within the inflection of the verbs, while free means that it has its own lexical status as a separate unit. These two tenns should not be confused with the interpretation that they have within a theory of binding, where bound means that it is referentially dependant upon a given antecedent, and free means that it cannot be so. LOGOPHORICITY AND EMPHATIC DETERMINERS IN BASQUE 1015 Bound Morphemes of Verb Inflection Free Pronouns ABS DAT ERG sing. -- I nt n- -t -t 2 hi h- -n/-k -n/-k (sing. informal) 3 - - -0 - pI. 1 gu g- -gu -gu 2 zu z- -zu -zu (sing. formal) 2 zuek z- -zue -zue . ~. 3 - - -e -te Table 1. Types of overt pronominals. - The parentage between free and bound pronominals is sufficiently manifest look­ ing at table 1. This relationship is clearly exhibited by the absolutive pattern in allforrils, as well as by both dative and ergative patterns for plural forms. The correlation exhibited by overt forms of first and second person carries over to third person as well, though, in the latter case, the correspondence is marked in default terms as a z.ero pronominal. That is to say, the absence of proper lexical third person pronouns is reflected by an analogous vacancy on the verb inflectio.n. The approach adv.ocate~ he~e, whereby i:nissing agr~e­ ment elements may be consIdered zero pronommals, IS remforced by the otherwIse consistent pattern of person and number agreement characteristic of Basque finite verbs. The range of morphemes that appears in the position corresponding to the third person absolutive, i.e. b-, d-, 1- and Z-, (as in dator '(s)he comes', zetorren '(s)he came', letorke '(s )he could come' and betor 'that (s )he should come') may be better interpreted as tense and modality markers, as suggested by Trask 1981, rather than as third person markers. Consequently, with the lack of an overt absolutive bound morpheme on the verb, we can assume that third person referents are cross-marked by a zero morpheme. This zero morpheme may be otherwise deemed absent from the finite inflection whene­ ver there is no such referent with which to agree (compare (1) with (2) below). Yet, third person plural referents are cross-marked by a range of plurality morphe­ mes, depending on different tenses and modalities: -Z-, -it-, -izk-, -tza- and -(t)e (as in the pairs doa/ doaz 'he goes/they go', dutlditut 'I have it/them', diotl dizkiot 'I have .. it/them to him', daramatl daramatzat'I carry it/them', anddigu/digute 'he/they have .. it to us'). The same principles that apply to the absolutive paradigm also apply to third person ergatives. Datives, on the other hand, are cross-marked by an -io- (-ie- for plural) morpheme, though in Eastern dialects this may be restricted to definite dative ar­ guments. 1016 jOSEBA ABAITUA The above interpretation of the data contrasts with the approach advocated in Ortiz de Urbina (1986: 85), where it is claimed that 'all finite verbs obligatorily include an absolutive marker'. Impersonal utterances containing no trace of absolutive referent seem to provide evidence to the contrary. Observe the contra~t betw~en (1) and (2) below: (1) . Sarritan mintzatu zaio, ez bait du aditu nahi. Often talk aux3sgD neg because aux3sgE listen want 'He has been advised several times, because he does not want to listen' (2) Sarritan galdu zaio, ez bait du gorde nahi. lose aux3sgD3sgA aux3sgE3sgA keep want 'He has lost it several times, because he does not want to keep it' According to my interpretation, neither zaio nor du in (1) above contain an absolutive marker, nor need they contain any. Such a marker is correctly interpreted as being absent in both cases. The opposite postulation introdlJces an 4nnecessary element with no referring expression to mark.
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