zompist bboard

3 - Polypersonal Agreement

"Polypersonal agreement" means that a verb marks multiple core arguments. To oversimplify for a moment, this basically means that both the subject and object of a clause are marked on the verb. Different languages will distinguish different characteristics that are marked--person, number, gender, and so on--but usually the 'case' (or the grammatical role) of each participant is made clear in some way, via verbal prefixes and/or suffixes.

Everyone here will already be familiar with a language that mark verbs for at least one core participant: even English does so marginally (e.g., the suffix -s in drink-s marks that the subject of the verb is third person singular). Romance languages, which will be familiar to most people here, provides a somewhat better example, with verbs marking the person and number of their subject by means of suffixes (which also mark tense, aspect, and mood (TAM)), as in Spanish habl-o, habl-as, habl-a, habl-amos, habl-ais, habl-an ("speak" with the present indicative suffixes marking the subject as, respectively, 1sg, 2sg, 3sg, 1pl, 2pl, 3pl).

Polysynthetic languages, then, simply extend this type of marking further, and verbs mark both the subject and object (again, this is oversimplifying, we'll get to complications later). For example, take the verb rikapani "he sees him/it". This breaks down as ri-kapa-ni, "he(subj)-see-him(obj)" (or, more accurately: 3sg.NONFEM.SUBJ-see-3sg.NONFEM.OBJ). As you can see, the verb marks the gender (non-feminine), number (singular), person (third), and grammatical role (subject or object) of each argument of the verb.

Not all polysynthetic languages have separate affixes for subjects and objects, however. In many cases the morphemes are partly or entirely fused together, such that a single affix marks the person, number, etc. of both subject and object. A good example is the Iroquoian languages. For instance, the verbal prefix she- marks both that the subject is second person and that the object is plural, as in ëshéo:wi’ (FUT-2SUBJ/pl.OBJ-tell-PUNCTUAL), "you will tell them." For another example, consider the Cariban language , where w- indicates a first person subject and third person object, while y- indicates a third person subject and first person object. Thus, contrast wedanta, "I meet him/her", with yedanta, "s/he meets me."

Finally, note that in many cases polysynthetic languages can mark more than just two participants on the verb. Some other roles that can be indicated include benefactives, indirect objects, and so on. Take, for example, : dbə̀ltart˚’ (d-bə̀-l-ta-rt˚’ = 3sg.MASC.OBJ-2sg.INDIRECT.OBJ-3sg.FEM.SUBJ-give-PURP), "she gives him to you."


A Big Caveat

As I've emphasized a few times, this is a very simplistic overview, and the description above glosses over some important stuff. Here's the main qualification: I've been talking about "subjects" and "objects," but not all languages divide up verb arguments that way. Very basically, languages like English treat the subject of intransitive sentences the same as the subject of transitive sentences, and different from the object of transitive sentences. Languages like English are called "accusative." But many languages treat the subject of intransitive sentences the same as the object of transitive sentences, and differently from the subject of transitive sentences; languages of this type are called "ergative." Some languages are ergative in some places (say, only with third person arguments, or only the perfective aspect) and accusative in others (this is called "split ergativity"). Some languages mark the subject of an intransitive sentence differently depending on whether it is viewed as controlling or instigating the action (in verbs like "jump") or not (in verbs like "sneeze" or "fall down" or "be tall"); languages of this type are called "active", among other names. And so on and so on. So although I've only mentioned "subjects" and "objects" in the above discussion, treating all the languages mentioned as though they were accusative like English, the truth is far more complicated, and you'll need to think about what alignment system you want your conlang to have (there's a quick overview of all this in the , though unfortunately Sander's diagrams seem to have disappeared with the passing of years...).

I haven't read through this yet, but you are an awesome person for doing this, Whim.

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"There was a particular car I soon came to think of as distinctly St. Louis-ish: a gigantic white S.U.V. with a W. bumper sticker on it for George W. Bush."

My conlang Squalipsh is mildly influenced by Wakashan languages, but currently, its form is not polysynthetic. I'm very interested in reading more, so I can learn how polysynthetic languages work, as I might make Squalipsh polysynthetic in some way.

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[bɹ̠ˤʷɪs.təɫ]
Nōn quālibet inīquā cupiditāte illectus hoc agō
Yo te pongo en tu lugar...
Taisc mach Daró

you
are
a
god.

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næn:älʉː

I am very much pleased to see this, and I look forward to seeing it completed. In particular the section on how polysynthesis arises, as I am currently actively working on just that in a conlang and there's a lot in that area that I'd like to be more certain of.

As you know I've also offered to write a section or two to help take some of the load off, and one of those is waiting in your inbox.

Excellent! I find the noun incorporation type section especially useful

Haven't read through all the case studies yet, but I will soon. Having the necessary information gathered together in one place like this makes trying to make a polysynth conlang much less intimidating!

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(PDF)

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It was about time I changed this.

Haven't read it yet, but great job. It seems really complete, useful and it must have taken a lot of work to do, so thanks. Definitely going to read this soon.

This is awesome.
I'm looking forward to seeing the next sections.

On noun incorporation:

Is it typically equally productive with all verbs, or is it usually restricted - or more common with - a subset of verbs? (the latter seems to be the case, sort of, with Yup'ik postbases.)

ROCK'N'ROLL!

This is just so ... awesome. Thank you, Whimemsz!

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...brought to you by the Weeping Elf
Tha cvastam émi cvastam santham amal phelsa. -- Friedrich Schiller
ESTAR-3SG:P human-OBJ only human-OBJ true-OBJ REL-LOC play-3SG:A

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It was about time I changed this.

Awesome!


What are some techniques for analyzing word boundaries? How do you tell the difference between a polysynthetic language and a less-synthetic language written without spaces?

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"There was a particular car I soon came to think of as distinctly St. Louis-ish: a gigantic white S.U.V. with a W. bumper sticker on it for George W. Bush."

Question: if a nominal participant is incorporated, how do polysynthetic languages tag a relative clause onto it? I mean, if "Mom gave me milk" is expressed something like "Mom milk-me-gave," what about "Mom gave me the milk that she bought at the supermarket"?

And kudos for the thread. Love it!