Pragmatic accommodation as a catalyst for the development of (non-)finiteness

Abstract

AbstractA morphological asymmetry is shared by certain Dravidian (and Finnic) languages. The phonological shape of a negation element is dependent on the finiteness of the verb it negates. Pragmatic factors are identified that could motivate the development of this shared asymmetry, using evidence from the grammar of a Dravidian-influenced contact language. I will show that contrastive finiteness marking (finite and non-finite morphology) can facilitate the development of pragmatically-motivated linear reordering of affirmative clauses and negated clauses in order to accommodate new information structure conventions, extending the contrast to negated verbs by expanding the functional range of a negative imperative marker.Radical contact languages resulting from collective adult second language acquisition in naturalistic social contexts are typically presumed to feature reduced functional morphology, in which only highly salient contrasts, such as temporal contrasts, are formally instantiated. If a formal finiteness contrast and other relatively marked properties (“complexity”) could develop in a highly analytic contact language that did not previously have them, this suggests that such a sequence of changes is in fact as plausible among genetically-unrelated languages in a sprachbund as it is over longer periods of time in genetically-related languages. We can observe this by examining grammatical change in a language that previously lacked both a finiteness contrast and a corresponding negation asymmetry, but which developed both the contrast and the asymmetry as a result of contact with a genetically-unrelated language that has analogous properties.Sri Lankan Malay (SLM) has undergone grammatical change due to contact with Dravidian (primarily Sri Lankan Muslim Tamil). Several of these changes involve verb morphology and syntax, and are plausibly motivated by discourse-pragmatic triggers. Consideration of tense and (non-)finiteness phenomena, as well as their reflexes in SLM negation, suggests a discourse-pragmatic motivation for these changes. Two discourse processes could conspire to motivate the development of the new morphology in SLM. The first is a clausal asymmetry, in which the predicate representing the most recent event is ordinarily in focus, indicated by tense morphology and position of the clause relative to clauses referring to subsequent events. The second is the communicative need to reassign focus in certain contexts to a temporally non-primary clause, one referring to an event that did not take place first. In spite of a constraint in Dravidian languages blocking the marking of functional contrasts under negation (so that only a negation morpheme can be prefixed to the verb), negation morphology encodes an obligatory finiteness contrast, optimally supporting these information-structuring processes. The clause describing the most recent event in a sentence remains visibly finite under negation, when a temporally secondary clause is focused.