Polypersonal agreement
Encyclopedia
In linguistics
, polypersonal agreement or polypersonalism is the agreement
of a verb
with more than one of its argument
s (usually up to four). Polypersonalism is a morphological
feature of a language, and languages that display it are called polypersonal languages.
In non-polypersonal languages, the verb either shows no agreement at all or agrees with the primary argument (in English
, the subject
). In a language with polypersonal agreement, the verb has agreement morpheme
s that may indicate (as applicable) the subject, the direct object, the indirect or secondary object, the beneficiary of the verb action, etc. This polypersonal marking may be compulsory or optional (the latter meaning that some agreement morphemes can be elided if the full argument is expressed).
Polysynthesis
often includes polypersonalism, which in turn is a form of head-marking
. Polypersonalism has also been correlated with ergativity.
Examples of languages with polypersonal agreement are Basque
and Georgian
, as well as most polysynthetic languages, like Mohawk
, Inuktitut and many other Native American languages.
allows the verb compound to convey the meanings of subject, direct object, indirect object, genitive, locative and causative meanings. As examples of the extremely complicated Georgian verb morphology, these are some simple polypersonal verbs (hyphens indicate morpheme boundaries):
An example of a polypersonal verb that has the genitive meaning incorporated can be:
Here, xelebi means "hands." The second morpheme in the verb (-m-) conveys the meaning "my." In Georgian this construction is very common with intransitive verbs; the possessive adjective (my, your, etc.) is omitted before the subject, and the verb takes up the genitive meaning.
, a language isolate
with a polysynthetic verbal system, comprising two sub-types of verbs, synthetic and analytical, three out of Basque's fifteen case, that is absolutive (the case for intransitive verbs), ergative (the case for transitive verbs), and dative, can be conveyed by several affixes incorporated to verb stems. Unlike Georgian, Basque has got only two really synthetic tenses able to take these affixes: present simple and past simple. The so-called analytical verbs are verbs built with the aid of the synthetic verbs izan ‘be’, ukan ‘have’, egin ‘do’, which play the role of auxiliary verbs. Here are a few examples:
Synthetic forms:
Anaytical or semi-synthetic forms:
; while ahavti puts the stress on hav (/a 'hav ti/), ahavtikha puts it on ti (/a hav 'ti xa/).
The same is true also of Classical Arabic
and Akkadian
, while some Egyptian Arabic
dialects are polysynthetic.
In the second example, the applicative
suffix -ira converts the (usually monotransitive
) verb gamba to a ditransitive
.
While agreement with a verbal subject is compulsory, agreement with an object is required only when the object is omitted. Many other Bantu languages
exhibit this feature.
s that are part of the verbal morphology and therefore cannot be found separated from the verb. These morphemes are not to be confused with pronominal clitic
s, like English 'em or the Spanish
object clitics lo, le, etc. While in Spanish it is quite possible to express meanings like "giving it to him/her" or "show them to me" in one word (dándoselo, muéstramelos), the pronominal morphemes indicating the direct and indirect objects (se, lo, me, los) are not part of the verb.
Some have observed that the French
pronominal clitics (common to all Romance languages) have evolved into inseparable parts of the verb in the colloquial use, and so, suggested that French could be analyzed as polypersonal. But these morphemes could simply be seen as inseparable clitic nouns.
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
, polypersonal agreement or polypersonalism is the agreement
Agreement (linguistics)
In languages, agreement or concord is a form of cross-reference between different parts of a sentence or phrase. Agreement happens when a word changes form depending on the other words to which it relates....
of a verb
Verb
A verb, from the Latin verbum meaning word, is a word that in syntax conveys an action , or a state of being . In the usual description of English, the basic form, with or without the particle to, is the infinitive...
with more than one of its argument
Verb argument
In linguistics, a verb argument is a phrase that appears in a syntactic relationship with the verb in a clause. In English, for example, the two most important arguments are the subject and the direct object....
s (usually up to four). Polypersonalism is a morphological
Morphology (linguistics)
In linguistics, morphology is the identification, analysis and description, in a language, of the structure of morphemes and other linguistic units, such as words, affixes, parts of speech, intonation/stress, or implied context...
feature of a language, and languages that display it are called polypersonal languages.
In non-polypersonal languages, the verb either shows no agreement at all or agrees with the primary argument (in English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
, the subject
Subject (grammar)
The subject is one of the two main constituents of a clause, according to a tradition that can be tracked back to Aristotle and that is associated with phrase structure grammars; the other constituent is the predicate. According to another tradition, i.e...
). In a language with polypersonal agreement, the verb has agreement morpheme
Morpheme
In linguistics, a morpheme is the smallest semantically meaningful unit in a language. The field of study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology. A morpheme is not identical to a word, and the principal difference between the two is that a morpheme may or may not stand alone, whereas a word,...
s that may indicate (as applicable) the subject, the direct object, the indirect or secondary object, the beneficiary of the verb action, etc. This polypersonal marking may be compulsory or optional (the latter meaning that some agreement morphemes can be elided if the full argument is expressed).
Polysynthesis
Polysynthetic language
In linguistic typology, polysynthetic languages are highly synthetic languages, i.e., languages in which words are composed of many morphemes. Whereas isolating languages have a low morpheme-to-word ratio, polysynthetic languages have extremely high morpheme-to-word ratios.Not all languages can be...
often includes polypersonalism, which in turn is a form of head-marking
Head-marking language
A head-marking language is one where the grammatical marks showing relations between different constituents of a phrase tend to be placed on the heads of the phrase in question, rather than the modifiers or dependents. In a noun phrase, the head is the main noun and the dependents are the...
. Polypersonalism has also been correlated with ergativity.
Examples of languages with polypersonal agreement are Basque
Basque language
Basque is the ancestral language of the Basque people, who inhabit the Basque Country, a region spanning an area in northeastern Spain and southwestern France. It is spoken by 25.7% of Basques in all territories...
and Georgian
Georgian language
Georgian is the native language of the Georgians and the official language of Georgia, a country in the Caucasus.Georgian is the primary language of about 4 million people in Georgia itself, and of another 500,000 abroad...
, as well as most polysynthetic languages, like Mohawk
Mohawk language
Mohawk is an Iroquoian language spoken by around 2,000 people of the Mohawk nation in the United States and Canada . Mohawk has the largest number of speakers of the Northern Iroquoian languages; today it is the only one with greater than a thousand remaining...
, Inuktitut and many other Native American languages.
Georgian
In Georgian, the verb consists of a root and several optional affixes. The subject and object markers might appear as suffixes or prefixes, according to the verb class, the person and number, the tense and aspect of the verb, etc.; they also interact with each other phonologically. The polypersonal verbal system of Georgianallows the verb compound to convey the meanings of subject, direct object, indirect object, genitive, locative and causative meanings. As examples of the extremely complicated Georgian verb morphology, these are some simple polypersonal verbs (hyphens indicate morpheme boundaries):
- v-khed-av "I see him"
- g-mal-av-en "they hide you (sing. or pl.)"
- g-i-mal-av-en "they hide it from you (sing. or pl.)"
- gv-i-ket-eb-s "he is doing it for us"
- a-chuk-eb-s "he will give it to him (as a gift)"
- mi-u-lots-av-s "he will congratulate him on it"
An example of a polypersonal verb that has the genitive meaning incorporated can be:
- xelebi ga-m-i-tsiv-d-a "My hands got cold"
Here, xelebi means "hands." The second morpheme in the verb (-m-) conveys the meaning "my." In Georgian this construction is very common with intransitive verbs; the possessive adjective (my, your, etc.) is omitted before the subject, and the verb takes up the genitive meaning.
Basque
In BasqueBasque language
Basque is the ancestral language of the Basque people, who inhabit the Basque Country, a region spanning an area in northeastern Spain and southwestern France. It is spoken by 25.7% of Basques in all territories...
, a language isolate
Language isolate
A language isolate, in the absolute sense, is a natural language with no demonstrable genealogical relationship with other languages; that is, one that has not been demonstrated to descend from an ancestor common with any other language. They are in effect language families consisting of a single...
with a polysynthetic verbal system, comprising two sub-types of verbs, synthetic and analytical, three out of Basque's fifteen case, that is absolutive (the case for intransitive verbs), ergative (the case for transitive verbs), and dative, can be conveyed by several affixes incorporated to verb stems. Unlike Georgian, Basque has got only two really synthetic tenses able to take these affixes: present simple and past simple. The so-called analytical verbs are verbs built with the aid of the synthetic verbs izan ‘be’, ukan ‘have’, egin ‘do’, which play the role of auxiliary verbs. Here are a few examples:
Synthetic forms:
- d-akar-ki-o-gu ‘We bring it to him/her’, from ekarri ‘bring’ (‘d’ standing for ‘it’, ‘o’ for ‘to him’ and ‘gu’ for ‘we’)
- z-erama-zki-gu-te-n ‘They took them to us’ from eraman ‘take’
Anaytical or semi-synthetic forms:
- Ekarriko d-i-o-gu ‘We'll bring it to him/her’
- Eraman d-ieza-zki-gu-ke-te ‘They can take them to us’ (‘d…zki’ standing for ‘them’, ‘gu’ for ‘to us’, ‘te’ for ‘they’, and ‘ke’ being a potential marker)
- Iritsiren z-a-izki-zue ‘They'll get to you (pl)’ from iritsi ‘get, arrive’
Biblical Hebrew
In Biblical Hebrew, or in poetic forms of Hebrew, a pronominal direct object can be incorporated into a verb's conjugation rather than included as a separate word. For example, ahavtikha, with the suffix -kha indicating a masculine, singular, second-person direct object, is a poetic way to say ahavti otkha ("I love you"). This also changes the position of the stressStress (linguistics)
In linguistics, stress is the relative emphasis that may be given to certain syllables in a word, or to certain words in a phrase or sentence. The term is also used for similar patterns of phonetic prominence inside syllables. The word accent is sometimes also used with this sense.The stress placed...
; while ahavti puts the stress on hav (/a 'hav ti/), ahavtikha puts it on ti (/a hav 'ti xa/).
The same is true also of Classical Arabic
Classical Arabic
Classical Arabic , also known as Qur'anic or Koranic Arabic, is the form of the Arabic language used in literary texts from Umayyad and Abbasid times . It is based on the Medieval dialects of Arab tribes...
and Akkadian
Akkadian language
Akkadian is an extinct Semitic language that was spoken in ancient Mesopotamia. The earliest attested Semitic language, it used the cuneiform writing system derived ultimately from ancient Sumerian, an unrelated language isolate...
, while some Egyptian Arabic
Egyptian Arabic
Egyptian Arabic is the language spoken by contemporary Egyptians.It is more commonly known locally as the Egyptian colloquial language or Egyptian dialect ....
dialects are polysynthetic.
Ganda
In Ganda, direct and indirect pronominal objects may be incorporated into the verb as object infixes. For example:- nkikuwa 'I give it to you'
- n-ki-ku-wa
- I.-it.-you.-give
- yakiŋŋambira 'he told it to me'
- y-a-ki-ŋ-ŋamb-ira < y-a-ki-n-gamb-ira
- he.--it.-me.-tell-
In the second example, the applicative
Applicative voice
The applicative voice is a grammatical voice which promotes an oblique argument of a verb to the object argument, and indicates the oblique role within the meaning of the verb. When the applicative voice is applied to a verb, its valency may be increased by one...
suffix -ira converts the (usually monotransitive
Monotransitive verb
A monotransitive verb is a verb that takes two arguments: a subject and a single direct object. For example, the verbs buy, bite, break, and eat are monotransitive in English.Verbs are categorized in terms of transitivity A monotransitive verb is a verb that takes two arguments: a subject and a...
) verb gamba to a ditransitive
Ditransitive verb
In grammar, a ditransitive verb is a verb which takes a subject and two objects which refer to a recipient and a theme. According to certain linguistics considerations, these objects may be called direct and indirect, or primary and secondary...
.
While agreement with a verbal subject is compulsory, agreement with an object is required only when the object is omitted. Many other Bantu languages
Bantu languages
The Bantu languages constitute a traditional sub-branch of the Niger–Congo languages. There are about 250 Bantu languages by the criterion of mutual intelligibility, though the distinction between language and dialect is often unclear, and Ethnologue counts 535 languages...
exhibit this feature.
Clitic pronouns
Polypersonalism involves bound morphemeBound morpheme
In morphology, a bound morpheme is a morpheme that only appears as part of a larger word; a free morpheme is one that can stand alone.Affixes are always bound. English language affixes are either prefixes or suffixes. E.g., -ment in "shipment" and pre- in "prefix"...
s that are part of the verbal morphology and therefore cannot be found separated from the verb. These morphemes are not to be confused with pronominal clitic
Clitic
In morphology and syntax, a clitic is a morpheme that is grammatically independent, but phonologically dependent on another word or phrase. It is pronounced like an affix, but works at the phrase level...
s, like English 'em or the Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
object clitics lo, le, etc. While in Spanish it is quite possible to express meanings like "giving it to him/her" or "show them to me" in one word (dándoselo, muéstramelos), the pronominal morphemes indicating the direct and indirect objects (se, lo, me, los) are not part of the verb.
Some have observed that the French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
pronominal clitics (common to all Romance languages) have evolved into inseparable parts of the verb in the colloquial use, and so, suggested that French could be analyzed as polypersonal. But these morphemes could simply be seen as inseparable clitic nouns.
See also
- Morphological typologyMorphological typologyMorphological typology is a way of classifying the languages of the world that groups languages according to their common morphological structures. First developed by brothers Friedrich von Schlegel and August von Schlegel, the field organizes languages on the basis of how those languages form...
- Clitic doublingClitic doublingIn linguistics, clitic doubling, or pronominal reduplication is a phenomenon by which clitic pronouns appear in verb phrases together with the full noun phrases that they refer to .Clitic doubling is found in many languages, including Albanian, Arumanian, Macedonian, Bulgarian,...
- IncorporationIncorporation (linguistics)Incorporation is a phenomenon by which a word, usually a verb, forms a kind of compound with, for instance, its direct object or adverbial modifier, while retaining its original syntactic function....