Double Case: Agreement by Suffixaufnahme

517 Pages·1995·25.54 MB·English

by  Frans Plank

Double Case
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Double Case
Agreement by
Suffixaufnahme
EDITED BY
Frans Plank
New York Oxford
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
1995
Oxford University Press
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Copyright © 1995 by Oxford University Press, Inc.
Published by Oxford University Press, Inc.
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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Double case : agreement by Suffixaufnahme / edited by Frans Plank.
p. cm.
Rev. papers of the Franz Nikolaus Finck Memorial Symposium,
held Sept. 21-23, 1991, in Konstanz.
Includes bibliographical references and indexes.
ISBN 0-19-508775-5
1. Grammar, Comparative and general—Case—Congresses.
2. Grammar, Comparative and general—Agreement—Congresses.
3. Grammar, Comparative and general—Noun phrase—Congresses.
4. Typology (Linguistics)—Congresses. I. Plank, Frans. II. Franz
Nikolaus Finck Memorial Symposium (1991 : Konstanz, Germany)
P240.6.D68 1995
415—dc20 94-9485
246897531
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
PREFACE
Cases come in paradigms but are, as it were, lone wolves when on syntactic
duty. For a noun phrase, "having two cases is as bad as having none at all,"
and, since languages are generally well-behaved (aren't they?), "there is no
evidence that this situation [in which a given noun phrase is assigned more
than one case] arises in natural languages: i.e. it is typically the case that noun
phrases in natural language are morphologically marked for only one case."
This is textbook teaching, quoted respectively from Peter Sells's Lectures on
Contemporary Syntactic Theories (Stanford: CSLI, 1985, p. 53) and Andrew
Radford's Transformational Syntax (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1981, p. 318); but more advanced reading is likelier to confirm than to
disconfirm that this is the received wisdom in this matter.
In actual fact, however, cases are not quite as unsociable. Ask a case
aficionado and (s)he will oblige you with a handful or two of examples such
as Evenki amut-tu-la '(in)to the lake', where a dative-locative suffix is fol-
lowed by an allative-illative one, or Limbu a-nduzum-l -n-ille 'with that of
my friend', my-friend-Genitive-Absolutive-Instrumental. Typically, or atypi-
cally, local cases are the ones most fond of teaming up with each other, and
genitives are especially willing to host the whole lot of their paradigmatic
companions.
The focus of this volume is on another kind of double, or indeed triple or
further case marking, though one bearing a certain resemblance to the case
inflection of genitives as just illustrated from Limbu: the use of case (plus
perhaps further inflectional categories, in particular number) for purposes of
agreement, linking a noun already carrying a case (plus perhaps number),
typically a genitive, to another nominal to which it is syntagmatically related,
typically (or so it often seems) as an attribute; an example is Hurrian Tessop-pe-
ai tev-ai 'by the word of Tessob', where Tessop, the weather god, is in the
genitive (-pe) and agrees with tev 'word' by copying its instrumental suffix (-ai).
Known traditionally, if not widely nor entirely accurately, as Suffixaufnahme,
such case (plus perhaps number) agreement of case-marked nouns is not wide-
spread but is distributed in intriguing areal patterns across the Old World and
southerly parts of the New, crying out for typological and/or genealogical expla-
nation. Our collective ambition in this volume is to offer a comprehensive
account of such double case marking due to agreement. We do not expect to be
superseded in the near future.
Ostensibly marginal, Suffixaufnahme in fact ramifies widely and deeply,
involving several major theoretical issues in morphology and syntax. First and
second, Suffixaufnahme is a challenge to theories of case and of agreement,
representing an apparent oddity in either respect. Third and fourth, the differ-
vi Preface
entiation of parts of speech and of inflection and derivation are high on the
Suffixaufnahme agenda: the anomaly of this pattern depends on the case-
agreeing words being nouns (or at any rate palpably nouny) rather than adjec-
tives, and on the genitive (or other relevant case) in such case-agreeing words
being inflectional rather than derivational; case-agreeing derived adjectives
would hardly arouse much excitement. Fifth, grammatical relations are impli-
cated insofar as case agreement has variously been supposed to encode attribu-
tion (whether of an ordinarily tight kind or of a loose or even extraposed
kind), apposition, or (secondary or co-)predication—not exactly the best-
understood subset of relations to begin with. Sixth, the key question here is
indeed a larger one, concerning noun phrase constituency and the "depth" or
"flatness" of syntax, long deemed to be a core parameter of typological varia-
tion. Conspicuous among the possible correlates of this parameter is that of
agglutinative versus flective morphology, and the contribution of morphologi-
cal typology itself to the milieus that are conducive or hostile to Suffix-
aufnahme is a seventh issue.
It must have been in the mid-1970s that I was first attracted to the present topic,
if perhaps subconsciously. Ergativity was the subject of a collection then in the
making, and curiously, the group of languages qualifying for consideration
more or less included those practicing Suffixaufnahme; however, at the time
that trait seemed too inconspicuous for anybody to notice much. The Hurrian
and Old Georgian classes that I had the almost exclusive privilege to sit in on at
Konstanz in the mid-1980s did made me notice at last. Two things were gradu-
ally dawning on me then: Suffixaufnahme had a considerable history behind it,
and one prone to repeat itself; and, if more time were to be spent on it profit-
ably, this was best done in concert, such were its real dimensions.
Planning on the collaboration whose results are now documented in this
volume began in earnest in late 1989, when I suggested Suffixaufnahme as the
possible topic of a conference to a few friends and acquaintances whose
expertise in relevant languages surpassed mine (despite all my educational
efforts). In the spring of 1990 preparatory materials were circulated more
widely, and the response was encouraging, even if some addressees first
needed convincing that there really was something to confer on.
Generously funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, the Euro-
pean Science Foundation (through its EUROTYP program, in which some of
us are participating), the Land Baden-Wurttemberg, and the Universitat Kon-
stanz, the Franz Nikolaus Finck Memorial Symposium could then be con-
vened at Konstanz on 21-23 September 1991. It was so called in honor of the
man primarily responsible for introducing Suffixaufnahme into the typological
discourse. Strange though it may seem to the uninitiated, such was the fascina-
tion of Suffixaufnahme over those assembled, minded like the weather, most
unquietly, that the daily proceedings could only with difficulty be interrupted
as the wee hours were approaching. "Things that love night love not such
nights as these" (Lear, III, iii).
All contributions included in the present volume underwent revision in the
Prefacee vvii
wake of this conference. (Robert Hetzron's was only commissioned after-
wards.) Some chapters were completed commendably early, while others took
a little more time to mature, with the irrevocably final deadline period expir-
ing sometime in the summer of 1993.
My thanks are due to all contributors for the efforts they put into this joint
venture, and especially to Edith Moravcsik for summing up the proceedings
on location at Konstanz and for acting as co-commentator ever after. Thanks
too to Katefina Hladka and Wolfgang Schellinger for much-appreciated orga-
nizational assistance, and for sharing the blame for the occasional unspotted
typo (and for a few that had, perhaps, better gone unspotted—such as
abnominal, admonimal, or abdominal).
We all owe a great debt of gratitude, especially heartfelt on the part of the
editor, to our publisher; the cooperation with Oxford University Press (New
York), at every stage of the production of this book, could not have been
smoother.
F. P.
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CONTENTS
Contributors, xi
Abbreviations, xiii
I PROLOGUE
1. (Re-)Introducing Suffixaufnahme, 3
Frans Plank
II THE ANCIENT NEAR EAST
2. Suffixaufnahme in Hurrian and Urartian, 113
Gernot Wilhelm
3. Suffixaufnahme in Hurrian: Normal Cases and Special Cases, 136
Ilse Wegner
III THE CAUCASUS
4. Suffixaufnahme in Kartvelian, 151
Winfried Boeder
5. Direct-Oblique Agreement of Attributes in Daghestanian, 216
Aleksandr E. Kibrik
6. Genitives and Adjectives as Attributes in Daghestanian, 230
Ol'ga Ju. Boguslavskaja
IV INDO-EUROPEAN
7. Indo-European o-Stems and Feminine Stems in -I, 243
Francisco Villar
8. Slavonic's Closest Approach to Suffixaufnahme: The
Possessive Adjective, 265
Greville G. Corbett
9. Inflecting Postpositions in Indie and Kashmiri, 283
John R. Payne
V CHUKCHI-KAMCHATKAN
10. Possessive and Relational Forms in Chukchi, 301
Maria Koptjevskaja-Tamm