Abstract

Subject agreement in the North Omotic language Benchnon (Rapold 2006) lacks dedicated person marking, but indirectly indicates person distinctions through asymmetries in the distribution of gender markers. In one verbal paradigm, first and second person subjects are expressed by feminine morphology, and in the other paradigm they are expressed by masculine morphology. This is hard to reconcile with any known notion of how gender assignment works. I show that it can be explained as the particular instantiation of a rare but cross-linguistically recurrent pattern in which a (reduced) person marking system is generated by restrictions on gender agreement: only third person subjects control semantic gender agreement, while first and second person are assigned default gender. In Benchnon the default gender switched from feminine to masculine over the course of its history, yielding two contrasting verbal paradigms. The older one is morphologically frozen, the newer one is a reflection of still-active agreement conditions. Further developments show that the older paradigm can be adapted to conform to the newer conditions, showing that the division between morphosyntactically motivated and arbitrarily stipulated morphology is a fluid one.

Highlights

  • Verbs in the North Omotic language Benchnon, spoken in Ethiopia, make unusual use of gendermarking morphology, in which an alternation between feminine and masculine forms takes the place of person marking

  • I argue that the use of gender-marking morphology for first and second person subjects is originally due to person-based constraints on gender agreement, which results in their being assigned to the default gender

  • Final verbs are the more recent system, while the converb paradigm is a fossilized relict. §4 shows how the kind of reorganization of gender assignment rules posited for Benchnon may explain certain covert paradigm splits in Tucanoan language. §5 shows that the converb paradigm might not completely fossilized, and is liable to be reconfigured on analogy with the final verb paradigm. §6 concludes, stressing the dual nature of inflectional paradigms both as the expression of morphological features and as autonomous morphological objects

Read more

Summary

Introduction

Verbs in the North Omotic language Benchnon, spoken in Ethiopia, make unusual use of gendermarking morphology, in which an alternation between feminine and masculine forms takes the place of person marking. (1) Nominative forms of the distal demonstrative pronoun (Rapold 2006: 389, 480) èn-ā ‘that’ (feminine singular) ùɕ-ī ‘that’ (masculine singular) ènd-ī ‘those’ (plural). These same formatives, with slight modification, are used for subject marking in the verbal system. Has a third person subject, the pattern corresponds to the distal demonstrative: feminine singular -èn/-á (2), masculine singular -ù/-ı (3), and plural -ènd/-ı (4). Sōʔ kȉt-á tā ȕɕk’-ù-ē water draw.water-F.SG I drink-M.SG-MED ‘I drew water and drank.’ (male or female subject). (6) sōʔ kȉt-á nē ȕɕk’-ù-ē water draw.water-F.SG you.SG drink-M.SG-MED ‘You (SG) drew water and drank.’ (male or female subject). Note that converbs make a distinction between 1PL exclusive and inclusive, the former patterning with the 1SG, the latter patterning with the other plural forms. (The 1PL exclusive may alternatively take a dedicated suffix -o; see fn 10.) Final verbs have a dedicated plural form for second and third person subjects

M ȕɕk’-ù
Cross-linguistic parallels
Analysis of the Benchnon paradigms
M 3 F ȕɕk’-ù ȕɕk’-èn ȕɕk’-ènd
Final verbs
F wȕ s 3 M yıs ȉts-ȁyk’nhonorific
F -ȕ s
Converbs
F woller-á 3 M woller-é
A SG 1 2 3 F -a 3 M -i
C SG PL 1 2 3 F -a 3 M -i
F amér 3 M amír
Paradigm splits in Western Tucanoan
Realignment of converb inflection
Findings
Conclusion
Full Text
Published version (Free)

Talk to us

Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have

Schedule a call