Forms and Functions , Vol. 2: Reciprocals

216 Pages·2000·2.92 MB·English

by  Zygmunt Frajzyngier (Ed.)

RECIPROCALS
TYPOLOGICAL STUDIES IN LANGUAGE (TSL)
A companion series to the journal “STUDIES IN LANGUAGE”
Honorary Editor: Joseph H. Greenberg
General Editor: Michael Noonan
Assistant Editors: Spike Gildea, Suzanne Kemmer
Editorial Board:
Wallace Chafe (Santa Barbara) Ronald Langacker (San Diego)
Bernard Comrie (Leipzig) Charles Li (Santa Barbara)
R.M.W. Dixon (Canberra) Andrew Pawley (Canberra)
Matthew Dryer (Buffalo) Doris Payne (Oregon)
John Haiman (St Paul) Frans Plank (Konstanz)
Kenneth Hale (Cambridge, Mass.) Jerrold Sadock (Chicago)
Bernd Heine (Köln) Dan Slobin (Berkeley)
Paul Hopper (Pittsburgh) Sandra Thompson (Santa Barbara)
Andrej Kibrik (Moscow)
Volumes in this series will be functionally and typologically oriented, covering specific topics in
language by collecting together data from a wide variety of languages and language typologies.
The orientation of the volumes will be substantive rather than formal, with the aim of investigat-
ing universals of human language via as broadly defined a data base as possible, leaning toward
cross-linguistic, diachronic, developmental and live-discourse data.
Volume 41
Zygmunt Frajzyngier and Traci S. Curl (eds)
Reciprocals
Forms and functions
RECIPROCALS
FORMS AND FUNCTIONS
Edited by
ZYGMUNT FRAJZYNGIER
TRACI S. CURL
University of Colorado
JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING COMPANY
AMSTERDAM/PHILADELPHIA
TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of Ameri-
8 can National Standard for Information Sciences — Permanence of Paper for
Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Reciprocals : forms and functions / edited by Zygmunt Frajzyngier, Traci S. Curl.
p. cm. -- (Typological studies in language, ISSN 0167-7373; v. 41)
Includes bibliographical references and indexes.
1. Grammar, Comparative and general--Reciprocals. 2. Grammar, Comparative and general-
-Reflexives. 3. Grammar, Comparative and general--Grammaticalization. I. Frajzyngier,
Zygmunt. II. Curl, Traci S. III. Series.
P299.R38R43 1999
415--dc21 99-29871
ISBN 90 272 2940 6 (Eur.) / 1 55619 654 7 (US) (Hb; alk. paper) CIP
© 2000 – John Benjamins B.V.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other
means, without written permission from the publisher.
John Benjamins Publishing Co. (cid:127) P.O.Box 75577 (cid:127) 1070 AN Amsterdam (cid:127) The Netherlands
John Benjamins North America (cid:127) P.O.Box 27519 (cid:127) Philadelphia PA 19118-0519 (cid:127) USA
Contents
Introduction vii
PolysemyinvolvingreflexiveandreciprocalmarkersinAfrican
languages 1
BerndHeine
Reciprocalswithoutreflexives 31
FrantisekLichtenberk
TypesofanaphoricExpressions:Reflexivesandreciprocals 63
MartinEveraert
ReflexiveandreciprocalconstructionsinNyulnyulanlanguages 85
WilliamMcGregor
Reciprocalmarkingwithdeicticverbs“come”and“go”inMandarin 123
MeichunLiu
CombinatoryrestrictionsonHalkomelemreflexivesandreciprocals 133
DonnaB.Gerdts
Reciprocalsandsetconstrual 161
ElenaMaslova
Codingofthereciprocalfunction:Twosolutions 179
ZygmuntFrajzyngier
Subjectindex 195
Authorindex 198
Languageindex 200

Introduction
Thescopeofthedomainofreciprocalfunctionhasnotbeencontroversialinlinguis-
ticliterature.Lichtenberk(1994)makesadistinctionbetweenreciprocalsituations
and reciprocal markers and constructions. A reciprocal situation involves two or
more participants playing the same role. The fundamental starting point for the
studyofreciprocalshasnotchangedinthelasthalfcentury(cf.Marouzeau1951).
Reciprocalmarkerscodeasituationasreciprocal.
Thefundamentalprerequisiteforareciprocalsituationisthepluralityofpartici-
pants.Thisprerequisiteaccountsforthesimplefactthatinsomanylanguagesrecip-
rocalconstructionshaveovertmarkersofplurality,whetherencodedinnominal,
pronominal,verbal,oradverbialexpressions.Butpluralityofparticipantsisaneces-
sarybutnotasufficientprerequisiteforthecodingofareciprocalsituation.Oneof
themostinterestingquestionsis,therefore,whatelsedoesittaketocodearecipro-
calsituation?
Thescopeofresearchundertheheadingofreciprocalfunctionhasbeenconsider-
ably extended in the last thirty years; it now involves collective, repetitive, and
associativefunctions.Thisextensionhasnotresultedfromfluiddefinitionsorlaxity
inanalyticalmethods,butratherhasbeendictatedbydata.Inmanylanguagesthe
markersthatcodereciprocalsalsocodethoseotherfunctions.Moreover,itisnot
always clearwhich function, ifany, isprimary. Theanalyses inLichtenberk and
McGregorinthepresentvolumestronglysuggesttheexistenceofamorphemewith
averyabstractfunction.
Thepapersinthepresentvolumemakeadoublecontributiontotheproblemsof
reciprocalconstructions:Theyprovideimportantdescriptivedataandtheyaddress
theoreticalissues.Thustheyprovideevidencethatthereisnoschismbetweenthe
descriptivistandthetheoreticalapproach.Therangeoflanguagesdiscussed,while
nottypologicallyrepresentative,isneverthelessquitewide:English;Dutch;Ger-
man;Greek(Everaert);Polish(Frajzyngier);Nyulnyulan(Australia[McGregor]),
African languages from all families (Heine); Amharic (Ethio-Semitic), Bilin
(Cushitic), and Chadic languages (Frajzyngier); Bantu (Maslova); Oceanic
(Lichtenberk); Halkomelem (Salishan [Gerdts]); Mandarin (Liu); and Yukaghir
(Maslova).Thetheoreticalissuesaddressedinthepapersarethesemanticandcog-
nitive properties of reciprocal events and the relationship of reciprocals to other
grammaticalcategories.Severalpapersdiscussatvariouslengthand,moreimpor-
viii introduction
tantwithdifferenttheoreticalapproachestheissueofgrammaticalizationofmarkers
usedinreciprocalconstructions(Heine,Lichtenberk,Liu,Gerdts,Frajzyngier).
Althougheverylanguagecanexpressareciprocalsituation,noteverylanguage
hasreciprocalmarkers.Instead,languagesexploitalreadyexistingmeanstocode
other functions, and the reciprocal meaning obtains as a result of a computation
involvingtheinherentmeaningofthepredicates,thenumberofparticipants,anda
marker that has already been grammaticalized for some other function (cf.
Frajzyngier’spaper).Atestofwhetheragivenmarkerisreciprocalornotiswith
singularsubjects.Ifsuchdeploymentispossible,thenthemarkerisnotreciprocal,
i.e., its inherent function is not to code the reciprocal. One can also deploy the
markerinquestionwithdifferentverbs.Iftheresultingmeaningisnotreciprocal,
thenthemarkerisnotreciprocaleither.Areciprocalmeaningwithsomeverbsand
withpluralsubjectsisjustaresultofcomputationofallfactorspresentinanutter-
ance. Among languages discussed in the present volume at least three, English
(Everaert), Halkomelem (Salishan, Gerdts) and Hausa (Heine), appear to have
grammaticalizedmarkerswhoseprimaryfunctionisthecodingofreciprocal.
Reciprocalmarkersareinterestingbecausetheyveryseldomrepresentthefirst
stageinthegrammaticalizationchain.Thatis,givenachainthatstartswithalexical
item, either a noun or a verb, the first grammaticalization product of this item is
veryseldomareciprocalmarker.Usuallythereciprocalfunctioniscodedbyforms
that have already become grammatical markers for other functions. Therefore,
within each language the reciprocal form (if any) is a late product of gram-
maticalizationincomparisontoothercategories,morespecificallytothecategories
thatmustbeusedtocodethereciprocal.Thisphenomenonexplainsthepeculiar
grammaticalstatusofreciprocals,whichledKemmer(1993)tolabelreciprocalsas
a‘‘minorcategory.’’
Theimportanceofreciprocalconstructionsforlinguisticsandcognitivestudies
isthatbeingrelativelylateproductsofgrammaticalization,theyprovidearelatively
transparent area to study cognitive processes at work in grammaticalization, and
also lexical, syntactic, morphological, and phonological effects of grammatical-
ization(cf.Liu’spaper).
Thepicturethatemergesfromthestudiesinthepresentvolumeshowsthatapart
from adverbs corresponding to ‘‘mutually’’ which may exist in many unrelated
languages,thereisaconsiderablevariationinthemeansdeployedforthecodingof
reciprocals. Some languages deploy reflexive, middle, or point-of-view markers
(Slavic[Frajzyngier],German);otherlanguagesdeploycollectivemarkers,associa-
tive(Bantulanguages[Schladt1998];Yukaghir,Maslova);otherlanguagesdeploy
markerscodingpluralityofrelations(Lichtenberk),stillothersdeployverbs(Liu).
Thevariationinthemeansdeployedforthecodingofreciprocalsobtainsevenin
closelyrelatedlanguages,e.g.GermanandEnglishandDutch(Everaert),various
introduction ix
Chadiclanguages(Frajzyngier).Thereareneverthelessinterestingcommonalities.
FormanylanguagesthegrammaticalizationchainpostulatedhereinbyHeinedoes
obtain.Andalso,itappearsthatthemeansofcodingthereciprocalsharequiteab-
stract semantic properties across languages, properties that have enabled those
markers to serve in reciprocal constructions (papers by Frajzyngier, Liu, Heine,
Maslova).Thesepropertiesinmostgeneralwaysinvolvetheobligatorypluralityof
participantsorpredicates.
Onemarkerofthereciprocal,theEnglish‘‘eachother’’formhasprovokedthe
interestofgenerativescholarsbecauseitappearedtobesubjecttobindingcondition
B.MartinEveraertdemonstratesthatlumpingtogetherreflexivesandreciprocalas
anaphorsobeyingprincipleBdoesnotexplaindifferentsyntacticpropertiesthatthe
two categories have. Everaert provides a review of the literature that shows that
reflexivesandreciprocalshavedifferentpropertiesandthendemonstratesonseveral
ofthemthesedifferences,viz.Tensed-S/Specified-Subjectviolations,possessive,
and impersonal passives, where the reciprocal markers can occur but reflexives
cannot. Consequently, Everaert calls for a replacement of binding conditions
byseveraldistinctmechanisms.Oneofthesemechanismswouldaccountforthe
specialpropertiesof‘‘eachother.’’
BerndHeineexaminesapolysemyinvolvingreflexivesandreciprocalmarkers
insixty-twolanguagesspokeninAfrica.Hestudiesthegrammaticalizationofthese
markers.Thisstudyallowshimtoestablishagrammaticalizationchain:nominal
sourcefiemphaticmarker/reflexivefireciprocalfimiddlefipassive,withthe
usualcaveatsthatsomestagescanbemissingandthatvariousformscancooccur
inalanguageatthesametime.Byfarthemostfrequentnominalsourceis‘‘body,’’
followed by ‘‘head.’’ The grammaticalization chain as postulated correlates with
morphosyntaxinthattheinitialelementisafulllexicalitemcharacterizedbynomi-
nalmorphology,andtherightmostelementisaverbalaffix.Thechainalsocorre-
lateswithphonologicalreductioninthattherightmostelementisthemostreduced.
FrankLichtenberk’sstudyexaminestherangeoffunctionsofapluralrelations
markerinOceaniclanguages.Thepropertiesofthismarkerincludecodingthere-
ciprocalfunction;chainingsituations;collectivesituations;thedistributionalsitua-
tion,whichincludesmultiplelocalitiesanddirectionalities;theconversesituation
(AactsonBandBundergoestheactionofA);andrepetitivefunctions.Thesame
markerisalsodeployedtocodepluralityofrelationalnouns.Thismarkercodesthe
middleandreflexivefunctioninonlyaveryfewlanguages.Althoughsuchcasesare
rare and are severely constrained to certain types of verbs, nevertheless they are
interestingbecause,asLichtenberkshows,theyarederivedfromrelationalplurality
markers.
McGregor’spaperonreflexive/reciprocalcodingintheNyulnyulanlanguagesof
Australiahasthreecomponents.Itisadescriptivestudy,formuchofthedatahas