Loss of gender was accompanied in Cappadocian Greek by a (simultaneous?) process of morphological reclassificason of nouns into animate and inanimate:.
Animacy as a factor constraining morphological complexity
Iván Igartua & Ekaitz Santazilia (University of the Basque Country & Public University of Navarre) SLE 50, Zürich, 12/09/2017 FFI2014-57260-P
Outline
1. Animacy 2. Morphological complexity 3. The role of animacy in the reducZon of morphological complexity 4. Effects of animacy in processes of gender decline 5. Animacy in replicated gender systems 6. Summary 7. Conclusions
2
Animacy •
Animacy in a broad sense (extended hierarchy of animacy):
1/2 person > 3 person > personal names > kin terms > human > animate non-human > inanimate (Silverstein 1976, Dixon 1994)
•
Animacy in a narrow sense: human > animate non-human > inanimate
3
Morphological complexity •
Different definiZons (but not incompaZble: Baerman, Brown & Corbe` 2010, 2015, Ackerman & Malouf 2013, Stump & Finkel 2013).
•
Morphological complexity as the extent to which formal differences in inflecZonal paradigms are semanZcally or phonologically unmoZvated and therefore largely unpredictable on extra-morphological grounds (Baerman, Brown & Corbe` 2010, 2015).
•
Focus on allomorphy (different inflecZonal classes) as an exponent of morphological complexity.
4
The role of animacy in the reducZon of allomorphy (1)
Table 1. Late-Proto Slavic inflecZonal classes (singular only)
NOM ACC GEN DAT INS LOC
Vocalic stems *o- *u *i -ъ, -o -ъ -ь -ъ -ъ -ь -a -u -i -u -ovi -i -omь -ъmь -ьmь -ě -u -i
*ā -a -õ -y -ě -ojõ -ě
*ū -y -ъv-ь -ъv-e -ъv-i -ъv-ьjõ -ъv-e
Consonant stems -y, -o, -i, -ę -ь, -o, -ę -e -i -ьmь, -ьjõ -e
Igartua (2005: 365-374), Olander (2015: 69-75)
5
The role of animacy in the reducZon of allomorphy (2)
Table 2. Russian inflecZonal classes (singular only)
I
NOM ACC GEN DAT INS LOC
zakon škol-a zakon škol-u zakon-a škol-y zakon-u škol-e zakon-om škol-oj zakon-e škol-e
‘law’ ‘school’ ‘bone’
II
III
IV
kost´ kost´ kost-i kost-i kost-ju kost-i
pis´m-o pis´m-o pis´m-a pis´m-u pis´m-om pis´m-e ‘le`er’
Corbe` (1982) 6
The role of animacy in the reducZon of allomorphy (3) Table 3. Fusion of *o- and *u-stems in Late Proto-Slavic and earlier stages of the development of Slavic languages
NOM ACC GEN DAT INS LOC
New unified paradigm with allomorphs SG PL -ъ -i, -ove -ъ, -a -y -a, -u -ъ, ovъ -u, -ovi -omъ, -ъmъ -omь, -ъmь -y, -ъmi -ě, -u -ěxъ, -ъxъ
7
The role of animacy in the reducZon of allomorphy (2)
Table 4. Masculine paradigms in Czech and Slovak (singular only) NOM ACC GEN DAT. LOC INS
Czech ANIM. INANIM.
chlap hrad chlap-a hrad chlap-a hrad-u chlap-ovi, -u hrad-u chlap-ovi, -u hrad-ě chlap-em hrad-em ‘fellow’ ‘castle’
Slovak ANIM. INANIM.
chlap chlap-a chlap-a chlap-ovi chlap-ovi chlap-om ‘fellow’
dub dub dub-a dub-u dub-e dub-om ‘oak’
8
Effects of animacy in processes of gender decline (1) •
The case of Cappadocian Greek, a set of dialects formerly spoken in Asia Minor (with some remnants in Greece).
•
Declining gender (Hawkins 1916, Janse 2004) as a source of morphological complexity.
•
Loss of gender was accompanied in Cappadocian Greek by a (simultaneous?) process of morphological reclassificaZon of nouns into animate and inanimate:
“Ancient masculine nouns in -os are characterized by what could be called an animacy split: nouns referring to animates are treated as masculine nouns, whereas nouns referring to inanimates are treated as neuter nouns” (Janse 2004: 7).
9
Effects of animacy in processes of gender decline (2) Table 5. Animate declension in Northeast Cappadocian (‘man’)
NOM ACC INDEF DEF GEN
SG PL áθrop-os aθróp áθrop-os aθróp-us áθrop-o aθróp / aθrop-jú
Table 6. Inanimate declension in North Cappadocian (‘mill’) SG PL NOM míl-os mil-ús ACC INDEF míl-os mil-ús DEF míl-o GEN míl / mil-jú Janse (2004: 7-9)
10
Animacy in replicated gender systems (1) •
The case of the Austronesian language Chamorro, spoken by about 47,000 people on Guam and in the Northern Mariana Islands.
•
A rare example of a genderless language that, under the influence of other languages, has copied gender markers and developed what Stolz (2012) terms a ‘marginal gender’ system, which is mainly characterized by a limited impact on the agreement system.
•
Other examples of marginal gender: Ilocano (Austronesian, Rubino 1997: 138−139), Ayacucho Quechua (cf. Aikhenvald 2000:48), Indonesian (Tadmor 2007: 311−314), Tagalog (Stolz 2012: 98−100), and Basque (Hurch 1989: 24−25, Trask 2003: 137).
11
Animacy in replicated gender systems (2) Examples from Chamorro (Stolz 2012: 124-125): (1) Guaha dos na dichos-a-n palum-a EXI two LINK faithful-F-LINK dove-F ‘There were two loyal doves’ (referring to two women) (2) Banidos-u gi tutuhon si Masåla‘ proud-M in beginning DEF.PN Masåla ‘In the beginning, Masåla [i.e. the father] was proud’
Model: Spanish -o (masculine) vs. -a (feminine)
12
Animacy in replicated gender systems (3) (3) Desde anWWtes na Wempo esta gof bunit-u na siuda
since RED:before LINK Zme already very nice-M LINK town i ya Hagåtña DEF TOP Hagåtña ‘A very long Zme ago, Hagåtña was a very pre`y town already’ i) The adjecZve bunitu (not bunita) agrees with siuda (a loan from Spanish ciudad ‘city’, which is feminine). ii) Chamorro has reorganized the original agreement system in accordance with a semanZcally rather transparent criterion that separates nouns into two big classes, namely an animate (almost always human or sex-differenZable) feminine class and a large residue, in which human masculine and the rest of nouns are included. 13
Summary (1) •
In the Slavic languages (especially in Czech and Slovak), the overabundant formal disZncZons in noun declension, at least some of which seem to have been at some point funcZonally unmoZvated, have been given grammaZcal sense when animacy emerged as a morphologically-expressed semanZc category.
•
In Cappadocian Greek, the decay of grammaZcal gender paved the way for a reinterpretaZon of residual formal opposiZons on the basis of animacy, the main building block (Dahl 2000: 579ff.) of natural gender.
•
Borrowed gender markers in Chamorro, which introduced into its grammaZcal system a degree of morphological complexity unknown unZl then, have been subject to a reassignment process in which animacy is again the key factor.
14
Summary (2)
Table 7. Animacy-induced manifestaZons of complexity decrease
Phenomenon 1. ReducZon of inflecZonal allomorphy 2. ReorganizaZon of residual formal disZncZons 3. ReinterpretaZon of gender assignment rules
Example Slavic languages (esp. Czech, Slovak) Cappadocian Greek Chamorro
15
Conclusions (1) •
In some linguisZc systems, inflecZonal markers have lost the grammaZcal (or whatever) moZvaZon they previously had. This process, further complicated by phonological and morphological developments, led to an increase in the ‘gratuitous’ morphological complexity of inflecZonal systems (Baerman, Brown & Corbe` 2010).
•
Under these circumstances, animacy introduces a criterion that substanZates certain morphological disZncZons, making them predictable on a fairly semanZc basis and thereby reducing the morphological complexity of the system (even in the case of a vanishing category like that of gender in Cappadocian Greek, some of the sZll remaining formal disZncZons receive a funcZonal moZvaZon on the basis of animacy).
16
Conclusions (2) •
In newly acquired –via borrowing– gender systems, however marginal they may be, the formal criteria for gender assignment that characterized at least partly the system of the donor language tend to be historically replaced in the recipient language by a semanZc criterion dependent on animacy (Chamorro).
•
Diachronic evidence points to animacy as a determinant factor in language change.
17
References • • •
• • •
•
•
Ackerman, Farrell & Robert Malouf. 2013. Morphological organizaZon: The low condiZonal entropy conjecture. Language 89(3). 429−464. Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y. 2000. Classifiers. A typology of noun categorizaWon devices. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Baerman, Ma`hew, Dunstan Brown & Greville G. Corbe`. 2010. Morphological complexity: A typological perspecZve. Manuscript. Surrey: University of Surrey. Online: h`p://webilc.ilc.cnr.it/ ~pirrelli/ESF_workshop/materiali/corbe`/Pisa%20paper-15a.pdf. Baerman, Ma`hew, Dunstan Brown & Greville G. Corbe` (eds.). 2015. Understanding and measuring morphological complexity. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Corbe`, Greville G. 1982. Gender in Russian: An account of gender specificaZon and its relaZonship to declension. Russian LinguisWcs 6. 197−232. Dahl, Östen. 2000. Elementary gender disZncZons. In Barbara Unterbeck, Ma~ Rissanen, Ter`u Nevalainen & Mirja Saari (eds.), Gender in grammar and cogniWon. II: ManifestaWons of gender (Trends in LinguisZcs 124), 577−593. Berlin & New York: Walter de Gruyter. Dawkins, Richard M. 1916. Modern Greek in Asia Minor: A study of the dialects of Sílli, Cappadocia and Phárasa with grammars, texts, translaWons, and glossary. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dixon, R. M. W. 1994. ErgaWvity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
18
References •
• • • • • • • •
Hurch, Bernhard. 1989. Hispanisierung im Baskischen. In Norbert Boretzky, Werner Enninger & Thomas Stolz (eds.), Vielfalt der Kontakte. Beiträge zum 5. Essener Kolloquium über 'GrammaWkalisierung: Natürlichkeit und Systemökonomie' vom 6-8.10.1988 an der Universität Essen, 11−35. Band I. Bochum: Brockmeyer. Igartua, Iván. 2005. Origen y evolución de la flexión nominal eslava. Bilbao: UPV/EHU. Janse, Mark. 2004. Animacy, definiteness, and case in Cappadocian and other Asia Minor Greek dialects. Journal of Greek LinguisWcs 5. 3−26. Olander, Thomas. 2015. Proto-Slavic inflecWonal morphology. A comparaWve handbook. Leiden & Boston: Brill. Rubino, Carl. 1997. A reference grammar of Ilocano. PhD thesis. University of California, Santa Barbara. Silverstein, Michael. 1976. Hierarchy of features and ergaZvity. In R. M. W. Dixon (ed.), GrammaWcal categories in Australian languages, 112−171. Canberra: Australian NaZonal University. Stolz, Thomas. 2012. Survival in a niche. On gender-copy in Chamorro (and sundry languages). In MarZne Vanhove, Thomas Stolz, Aina Urdze & Hitomi Otsuka (eds.), Morphologies in contact, 93−140. Berlin: Akademie Verlag. Tadmor, Uri. 2007. GrammaZcal borrowing in Indonesian. In Yaron Matras & Jeane`e Sakel (eds.), GrammaWcal borrowing in cross-linguisWc perspecWve, 301−328. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Trask, Robert L. 2003. The noun phrase: Nouns, determiners and modifiers; pronouns and names. In José Ignacio Hualde & Jon OrZz de Urbina (eds.), A grammar of Basque (Mouton Grammar Library 26), 113−170. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
19
Animacy as a factor constraining morphological complexity
Iván Igartua & Ekaitz Santazilia (University of the Basque Country & Public University of Navarre) SLE 50, Zürich, 12/09/2017 FFI2014-57260-P
