Polypersonalism
- Chengjiang
- Avisaru
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Polypersonalism
I realized that polypersonalism features in more than one of the planned conlangs I have and that I don't actually know much about languages that feature it. What are common features of polypersonal languages? What also tends to be true about a language with this feature? I mean, I can surmise some things (e.g. it is likely to be pro-drop), but I want to be sure I know what I'm doing here. All I currently know on the subject is a smattering of information on Basque, Georgian, and Bantu languages.
[ʈʂʰɤŋtɕjɑŋ], or whatever you can comfortably pronounce that's close to that
Formerly known as Primordial Soup
Supporter of use of [ȶ ȡ ȵ ȴ] in transcription
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a 青.
Formerly known as Primordial Soup
Supporter of use of [ȶ ȡ ȵ ȴ] in transcription
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a 青.
- roninbodhisattva
- Avisaru
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- Location: California
Re: Polypersonalism
By "polypersonalism" are you referring to languages where multiple arguments in a clause trigger agreement on the predicate?
- Chengjiang
- Avisaru
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Re: Polypersonalism
Yes. I thought that was the standard definition of the term.roninbodhisattva wrote:By "polypersonalism" are you referring to languages where multiple arguments in a clause trigger agreement on the predicate?
[ʈʂʰɤŋtɕjɑŋ], or whatever you can comfortably pronounce that's close to that
Formerly known as Primordial Soup
Supporter of use of [ȶ ȡ ȵ ȴ] in transcription
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a 青.
Formerly known as Primordial Soup
Supporter of use of [ȶ ȡ ȵ ȴ] in transcription
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a 青.
- roninbodhisattva
- Avisaru
- Posts: 568
- Joined: Sun Mar 05, 2006 11:50 pm
- Location: California
Re: Polypersonalism
Well, I'm more used to the term "polypersonal agreement" than "polypersonalism", actually I've never seen the later used in the literature I read.Chengjiang wrote:Yes. I thought that was the standard definition of the term.roninbodhisattva wrote:By "polypersonalism" are you referring to languages where multiple arguments in a clause trigger agreement on the predicate?
Anyway, back to the original question. I think one has to be very careful about generalizations that one makes over languages that cross-reference multiple arguments on the verb. Part of this has to do with the variety of ways that morphemes that look very similar on verbs can actually differ significantly. So for example in Bantu, many languages are able to cross-reference both subject and object morphologically on the verb, but only sometimes does object morphology behave like "agreement" (in many languages object markers have the distribution of pronouns, for example), while subject morphology always does. And this varies within Bantu.
*shrugs* I don't know, that makes it tough.
- Chengjiang
- Avisaru
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- Joined: Sun Feb 26, 2006 4:41 am
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Re: Polypersonalism
By this do you mean that they are used, like pronouns, only if an explicit object constituent is not present? Rather like French cliticized object pronouns, for instance?roninbodhisattva wrote:in many languages object markers have the distribution of pronouns, for example
[ʈʂʰɤŋtɕjɑŋ], or whatever you can comfortably pronounce that's close to that
Formerly known as Primordial Soup
Supporter of use of [ȶ ȡ ȵ ȴ] in transcription
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a 青.
Formerly known as Primordial Soup
Supporter of use of [ȶ ȡ ȵ ȴ] in transcription
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a 青.
- roninbodhisattva
- Avisaru
- Posts: 568
- Joined: Sun Mar 05, 2006 11:50 pm
- Location: California
Re: Polypersonalism
Yes, so they can't occur when there is an explicit NP object and leaving them out removes reference to an object, so kind of like French object clitics, yes. But note that there are Romance languages where those clitics can double explicit object NPs so it gets murkier.Chengjiang wrote:By this do you mean that they are used, like pronouns, only if an explicit object constituent is not present? Rather like French cliticized object pronouns, for instance?roninbodhisattva wrote:in many languages object markers have the distribution of pronouns, for example
Re: Polypersonalism
Aren't there also varieties of Bantu where the inclusion of object markers expresses a definiteness distinction?
I'm most familiar with Osage, which seems a fairly typical polypersonal language with the possible caveat that it shows a marked tendency toward redundant inflection. For instance, the predicate ðahkišpižǫi "you learned it for yourself" is triple-inflected for a 2S agent. (ða, š, and ž are all allomorphs of the same agent marker. Cf. ahkihpimǫi "I learned if for myself".)
I'm most familiar with Osage, which seems a fairly typical polypersonal language with the possible caveat that it shows a marked tendency toward redundant inflection. For instance, the predicate ðahkišpižǫi "you learned it for yourself" is triple-inflected for a 2S agent. (ða, š, and ž are all allomorphs of the same agent marker. Cf. ahkihpimǫi "I learned if for myself".)
Re: Polypersonalism
I'm not sure there are many common features. You could take a look at the sketch of Quechua on my site; also spoken French.Chengjiang wrote:What are common features of polypersonal languages? What also tends to be true about a language with this feature? I mean, I can surmise some things (e.g. it is likely to be pro-drop), but I want to be sure I know what I'm doing here.
Polysynthetic languages usually have polypersonal agreement, but you can have polypersonal agreement and still be agglutinative (Quechua, Bantu) or fusional (French).
Re: Polypersonalism
There really isn't anything useful to say without looking at specific languages. How could Neo-Aramaic and Lakota (for example) be reasonably considered as having anything in common apart from agreement with multiple persons?
Re: Polypersonalism
Well, there could be some universals governing these type of constructions, without the languages themselves being related.Astraios wrote:How could Neo-Aramaic and Lakota (for example) be reasonably considered as having anything in common apart from agreement with multiple persons?
JAL
- Chengjiang
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Re: Polypersonalism
More or less what I was thinking of. I was wondering if there were any tendencies found in unrelated languages, similar to how, say, VSO languages tend to also be noun-adjective.jal wrote:Well, there could be some universals governing these type of constructions, without the languages themselves being related.Astraios wrote:How could Neo-Aramaic and Lakota (for example) be reasonably considered as having anything in common apart from agreement with multiple persons?
JAL
[ʈʂʰɤŋtɕjɑŋ], or whatever you can comfortably pronounce that's close to that
Formerly known as Primordial Soup
Supporter of use of [ȶ ȡ ȵ ȴ] in transcription
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a 青.
Formerly known as Primordial Soup
Supporter of use of [ȶ ȡ ȵ ȴ] in transcription
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a 青.