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Dik Bakker and Martin Haspelmath (Eds.)
Languages Across Boundaries
Languages
Across Boundaries
Edited by
Dik Bakker and Martin Haspelmath
ISBN 978-3-11-033103-5
e-ISBN 978-3-11-033112-7
www.degruyter.com
Preface
later regularly invited Anna over to the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig. Marianne
Mithun was Anna’s predecessor as president of the ALT and Johanna Nichols her
successor, while Christian Lehmann took over from Anna as president of the
SLE. Balthasar Bickel, Martin Haspelmath and Volker Gast organized Syntax of
the World’s Languages conferences in 2004 and 2008, while Anna organized the
2006 conference in Lancaster. Grev Corbett and (during his Manchester years)
Bill Croft were her closest typological colleagues in England. Through Bill, Anna
met Sonia Cristofaro, with whom she shared many a conference, many a lin-
guistic discussion and many a chat over the years, both on professional occa-
sions and privately. Andrej Malchukov she met several times at the Max Planck
Institute in Leipzig; with him she co-organized an SLE workshop and co-edited
a book on impersonal constructions. Andrej Kibrik was encouraged by Anna to
write a book proposal for the Oxford typology series, which resulted in his mono-
graph Reference in Discourse. Giorgo Iemmolo was invited by Anna for a stay
at Lancaster University. Alena Witzlack-Makarevich worked with Anna, Giorgio
and Balthasar on the Referential Hierarchies in Morphosyntax project (RHIM,
2009–2012). Denis Creissels invited Anna to Lyon.
Together, these colleagues and friends have written the chapters of this
book, which discuss some of Anna’s favourite topics in linguistics: typologi-
cal hierarchies, ditransitives and above all, since her seminal 2004 book on
the subject, person forms and person marking. I am extremely grateful to these
colleagues, who constitute, in my view, the cream of linguistic typologists, and
whose names will probably never be found together again as contributors to a
single volume. The book also contains the article that Anna and I finished before
we left on that fateful journey, as well as a comprehensive bibliography of her
work. So she is also very much present here herself.
I am also very grateful to De Gruyter Mouton, and above all to our friends
in their linguistics section in Berlin. It was they who suggested the idea for the
book and took care of its production, generously contributing to the expenses
involved. I would also like to express my gratitude to the boards of both the SLE
and the ALT, who immediately agreed to cover the remaining costs, thus making
it possible to distribute the book among the linguistic community on an unparal-
leled scale.
Finally, I am greatly indebted to my co-editor Martin Haspelmath, without
whom the book would not have been what I hope it is now. I first met Martin in
1987 when he was still an MA student. This was at the 14th International Congress
of Linguists, in what was then East Berlin. It was at the same conference that I
first met Anna.
Borders meant little to Anna. She was born in Poland, in Gdynia, but for long
periods, she lived and worked in other countries: Australia, the Netherlands and
viii Preface
England. Her real world was that of languages, which cannot be stopped by
borders. May this volume find its way to bookshelves and libraries all over the
planet, to linguists of all lands, and so help to perpetuate her memory, her work
and her dreams.
Dik Bakker
Contents
Preface v
Contributors xi
Bibliography of Anna Siewierska xii
Bernard Comrie
Human themes in Spanish ditransitive constructions 37
Denis Creissels
The generic use of the second person singular pronoun in Mandinka 53
Sonia Cristofaro
The referential hierarchy: reviewing the evidence in diachronic
perspective 69
William Croft
Agreement as anaphora, anaphora as coreference 95
Martin Haspelmath
Argument indexing: a conceptual framework for the syntactic status
of bound person forms 197
Andrej A. Kibrik
Peculiarities and origins of the Russian referential system 227
x Contents
Andrej L. Malchukov
Alignment preferences in basic and derived ditransitives 263
Marianne Mithun
Prosody and independence: free and bound person marking 291
Johanna Nichols
The origin and evolution of case-suppletive pronouns:
Eurasian evidence 313
Index 397
Contributors
Martin Haspelmath
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary
Anthropology
[email protected]
Bibliography of Anna Siewierska
Monographs
Siewierska, Anna. 1980. The passive: a comparative study. M.A. Thesis, Monash University.
Siewierska, Anna. 1985. Word order and word order rules. Ph.D. dissertation, Monash
University.
Siewierska, Anna. 1984. The passive: a comparative linguistic analysis. London: Croom Helm.
Siewierska, Anna. 1988. Word Order Rules. London: Croom Helm.
Siewierska, Anna. 1991. Functional Grammar. London: Routledge.
Siewierska, Anna. 2004. Person. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Siewierska, Anna. 2008. Ren cheng fan chou = Person. Di 1 ban. (Yu Yan Xue Fan Chou Yan Jiu
Cong Shu). Beijing Shi: Beijing da xue chu ban she.
Edited volumes
Lehmann, Christian & Dik Bakker, Östen Dahl & Anna Siewierska (eds.). 1992. EUROTYP
Guidelines of the Committee on Computation and Standardization. Working Papers of the
European Science Foundation’s EUROTYP Project.
Siewierska, Anna (ed.). 1997. Constituent order in the Languages of Europe (Empirical
Approaches to Language Typology/EUROTYP 20-1). Berlin & New York: De Gruyter Mouton.
Siewierska, Anna & Jae Jung Song (eds.). 1998. Case, grammar and typology: in honor of Barry
J. Blake. (Typological Studies in Language 38) Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Baker, Paul, Andrew Hardie, Tony McEnery & Anna Siewierska (eds.). 2000. Proceedings of the
Third Discourse Anaphora and Reference Resolution Colloquium (2000). UCREL Technical
Papers Volume 12 Special Issue. Department of Linguistics, Lancaster University.
Siewierska, Anna & Hawkins, John A. (eds.). 2003. Performance principles of word order.
(Working Paper (ESF Eurotype) 2).
Siewierska, Anna & Willem B. Hollmann (eds.). 2007. Ditransitivity. Special issue of Functions of
Language.
Siewierska, Anna (ed.). 2008. Impersonal constructions in grammatical theory. Special Issue of
Transactions of the Philological Society.
Malchukov, Andrej & Anna Siewierska (eds.). 2011. Impersonal constructions: a cross-linguistic
Perspective. (Studies in Language Companion Series, 124). Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Articles
1983
Siewierska, Anna. 1983. Another theory of the passive that doesn’t work. Linguistics 21(4).
557–571.
1984
Siewierska, Anna. 1984. Phrasal discontinuity in Polish. Australian Journal of Linguistics 4(1).
57–71.
Siewierska, Anna. 1984. Relational Grammar and exceptions to the passive. Zeszyty Naukowe
Wydzialu Humanistycznego Uniwersytetu Gdanskiego 4. 27–39.
Bibliography of Anna Siewierska xiii
1987
Siewierska, Anna. 1987. Postverbal subject pronouns in Polish in the light of topic continuity
and the topic/focus distinction. In Jan Nuyts & Gerard de Schutter (eds.), Getting the Word
into Line: on word order and functional grammar, 147–161. (Functional Grammar Series 5).
Dordrecht: Foris Publications.
1988
Siewierska, Anna. 1988. Postposed subject pronouns in Polish. Kwartalnik Neofilogiczny 35(3).
315–330.
Siewierska, Anna. 1988. The passive in Slavic. In Mat Shibatani (ed.), Passive and Voice,
243–289. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Siewierska, Anna. 1988. Automatyczne rozumienie jezyka naturalnego w oparciu o analizy
skladniowe (Syntacitic based parsing strategies). Archiwum Computer Studio Kajkowski 2.
3–23.
1990
Siewierska, Anna. 1990. Fronting strategies in English. Zeszyty Naukowe Wydziału Humanistycz
nego Uniwersytetu Gdańskiego 9. 9–29.
Siewierska, Anna. 1990. The source of the dative perspective in Polish pseudo-reflexives. In
Mike Hannay & Elseline Vesters (eds.), Working with Functional Grammar: Descriptive and
Computational Applications, 1–14. Dordrecht: Foris Publications.
1991
Bakker, Dik & Anna Siewierska. 1991. A data base system for language typology. Working
Papers of the European Science Foundation’s EUROTYP Project 2(2). 1–42.
Siewierska, A. 1991. An overview of word order in Slavic languages. Working Papers of the
European Science Foundation’s EUROTYP Project 2(1). 66–99.
1992
Siewierska, Anna. 1992. Layers in FG and GB. Layered Structure and Reference in a Functional
Perspective, 409–432. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Siewierska, Anna. 1992 (1993). Pragmatic functions and the pragmatics of word order in FG: the
case of Polish. Proceedings of the international congress of linguists 15(1). 280–282.
Siewierska, Anna. 1992. Niet-subject-argumenten in Bantu talen: een FG analyse (Non-subject
arguments in Bantu: an FG analysis). Taal en Tekstwetenschap 10(1). 23–42.
Lehmann, Christian, Dik Bakker, Osten Dahl & Anna Siewierska. 1992. EUROTYP Guidelines.
Committee on Computations and Standardization. Working Papers of the European
Science Foundation’s EUROTYP Project.
1993
Bakker, Dik & Anna Siewierska. 1993. A contribution to constituent order explanations. Working
Papers of the European Science Foundation’s EUROTYP Project 2(5). 126–144.
Bakker, Dik & Anna Siewierska. 1993. Computerprogramma’s voor taaltypologie [Computer
programs for language typology]. Gramma/Taal en Tekstwetenschap 2. 235–255.
Siewierska, Anna. 1993. On the interplay of factors in the determination of word order. In Joachim
Jacobs, Arnim von Stechow, Wolfgang Sternefeld & Theo Vennemann (eds.), Syntax: An Inter
national Handbook of Contemporary Research, Vol. 1, 826–846. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
xiv Bibliography of Anna Siewierska
Siewierska, Anna. 1993. On the ordering of subject agreement and tense affixes. Working
Papers of the European Science Foundation’s EUROTYP Project 2(5). 101–126.
Siewierska, Anna. 1993. Semantic functions and theta-roles: convergences and divergences.
Working Papers in Functional Grammar 55. Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam.
Siewierska, Anna. 1993. Syntactic weight vs information structure and word order variation in
Polish. Journal of Linguistics 29(2). 233–265.
Siewierska, Anna. 1993. Subject and object order in written Polish: some statistical data. Folia
Linguistica 27(1–2). 147–170.
1994
Siewierska, Anna. 1994. The relationship between affix and main clause constituent order.
In Brigitta Haftka (ed.), Was determiniert Vorstellungsvariation? Studien zu einem
Interaktionsfeld von Grammatik, Pragmatik und Sprachtypologie, 63–76. Opladen: West-
deutscher Verlag.
Siewierska, Anna. 1994. Word order and linearization. In R. E. Asher & J. M. Y. Simpson (eds.),
The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, 4993–4999. Oxford: Pergamon.
1995
Siewierska, Anna. 1995. On the coding of grammatical relations. In P. H. Franses, A. de Klein, J.
van Kuppevelt, V. Mamahdou en J. van der Zee (eds.), Van frictie tot wetenschap: Jaarboek
Vereniging van Akademie-onderzoekers, 107–116. KNAW.
1996
Siewierska, Anna & Dik Bakker. 1996. The distribution of subject and object agreement and
word order type. Studies in Language 20(1). 115–161.
Siewierska, Anna. 1996. Word order type and alignment type. Sprachtypologie und Universa-
lienforschung 49(2). 149–176.
1997
Siewierska, Anna. 1997. The formal realization of case and agreement marking: a functional
perspective. In Anne-Marie Simon-Vandenbergen, Kristin Davidse & Dirk Noël (eds.),
Reconnecting language: morphology and syntax in functional perspectives (Current Issues
in Linguistic Theory 154), 181–210. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Siewierska, Anna. 1997. Introduction. In Anna Siewierska (ed.), Constituent order in the
Languages of Europe, 1–18. Berlin & New York: De Gruyter Mouton.
Siewierska, Anna. 1997. Variation in major constituent order: a global and a European
perspective. In Anna Siewierska (ed.), Constituent order in the Languages of Europe,
475–551. Berlin & New York: De Gruyter Mouton.
Siewierska, Anna & Ludmila Uhlířová. 1997. An overview of word order in Slavic languages. In
Anna Siewierska (ed.), Constituent order in the Languages of Europe, 105–149. Berlin &
New York: De Gruyter Mouton.
Siewierska, Anna, Jan Rijkhoff & Dik Bakker. 1997. Appendix – 12 word order variables in the
languages of Europe. In Anna Siewierska (ed.), Constituent order in the Languages of
Europe, 783–812. Berlin & New York: De Gruyter Mouton.
1998
Siewierska, Anna. 1998. From passive to inverse. In Anna Siewierska & Jae Jung Song (eds.),
Case, grammar and typology: in honor of Barry J. Blake, 229–246. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Bibliography of Anna Siewierska xv
Siewierska, Anna. 1998. Languages with and without objects: the Functional Grammar
approach. Languages in Contrast 1(2). 173–190.
Siewierska, Anna. 1998. Polish main clause constituent order and FG pragmatic functions. In
Mike Hannay & A. Machtelt Bolkestein (eds.), Functional Grammar and verbal interaction,
243–266. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Siewierska, Anna. 1998. Nominal and verbal person marking. Linguistic Typology 2(1). 1–53.
1999
Siewierska, Anna. 1999. From anaphoric pronoun to grammatical agreement marker: Why objects
don’t make it. Folia Linguistica 33(1–2). 225–251.
Siewierska, Anna. 1999. Reduced pronominals and argument prominence. In Miriam Butt & Tracy
Holloway (eds.), Proceedings of the LFG 99 Conference, 119–150. Stanford: CSLI Publications.
2000
Siewierska, Anna. 2000. On the origins of the order of agreement and tense markers. Historical
Linguistics 1995: selected papers from the 12th International Conference on Historical
Linguistics, Manchester, August 1995, vol. General Issues and Non-Germanic Languages,
377–392. (Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 161). Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Siewierska, Anna. 2000. Annotated bibliography of typology. In Annotated Bibliography of
English Studies. Vol 108. Theoretical Linguistics. Amsterdam: Swets and Zeitlinger.
2001
Siewierska, Anna. 2001. Order correlations between free and bound possessors: perspectives
from diachronic change. In Walter Bisang (ed.), Aspects of typology and universals, 133–152.
(Studia Typologica 1). Berlin: Akademie Verlag.
Siewierska, Anna. 2001. On the argument status of cross-referencing forms. In Maria Jesus Pérez
Quintero (ed.), Challenges and developments in functional grammar (Revisita Canaria de
Estudios Ingleses 4). 215–236.
2002
Bakker, Dik & Anna Siewierska. 2002. Adpositions, the lexicon and expression rules. In Ricardo
Mairal Usón & María Jesús Pérez Quintero (eds.), New perspectives on argument structure
in Functional Grammar, 125–178. Berlin & New York: De Gruyter Mouton.
Siewierska, Anna. 2002. Word order. In Neil J. Smelser & Paul B. Baltes (eds.), International
Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences: Amsterdam/Lausanne/New York/
Oxford/Shannon/Singapore/Tokyo: Elsevier. 16552–16555.
2003
Siewierska, Anna. 2003. Reduced pronominals and argument prominence. In Miriam Butt & Tracy
Holloway (eds.), Nominals: Inside and Out, 119–150. Stanford: CSLI Publications..
Siewierska, Anna. 2003. Person agreement and the determination of alignment. Transactions
of the Philological Society 101(2). 339–370.
2004
Bakker, Dik & Anna Siewierska. 2004. Towards a Speaker model of Functional Grammar.
In J. Lachlan Mackenzie & Maria de los Angeles (eds.), A New Architecture for Functional
Grammar, 325–364. Berlin & New York: De Gruyter Mouton.
xvi Bibliography of Anna Siewierska
Hengeveld, Kees & Jan Rijkhoff & Anna Siewierska. 2004. Parts-of-speech systems and word
order. Journal of Linguistics 40(3). 527–570.
Siewierska, Anna. 2004. On the discourse basis of person agreement. In Tuija Virtanen (ed.),
Approaches to Cognition through Text and Discourse, 31–46. (Trends in Linguistic Studies
and Monographs 147). Berlin & New York: De Gruyter Mouton.
2005
Siewierska, Anna & Dik Bakker. 2005. The agreement cross-reference continuum: Person marking
in Functional Grammar. In Casper de Groot & Kees Hengeveld (eds.), Morphosyntactic
expression in Functional Grammar, 203–248. (Functional Grammar Series 27). Berlin &
New York: De Gruyter Mouton.
Siewierska, Anna. 2005. Gender in personal pronouns. In Martin Haspelmath, Matthew S. Dryer,
David Gil, & Bernard Comrie (eds.), World Atlas of Language Structure, 182–185. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Siewierska, Anna. 2005. Alignment of verbal person marking. In Martin Haspelmath, Matthew
S. Dryer, David Gil, & Bernard Comrie (eds.), World Atlas of Language Structure, 406–409.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Siewierska, Anna. 2005. Verbal person marking. In Martin Haspelmath, Matthew S. Dryer, David
Gil, & Bernard Comrie (eds.), World Atlas of Language Structure, 414–417. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Siewierska, Anna. 2005. Third-person zero of verbal person marking. In Martin Haspelmath,
Matthew S. Dryer, David Gil, & Bernard Comrie (eds.), World Atlas of Language Structure,
418–421. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Siewierska, Anna. 2005. Order of person agreement markers. In Martin Haspelmath, Matthew
S. Dryer, David Gil, & Bernard Comrie (eds.), World Atlas of Language Structure, 422–425.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Siewierska, Anna. 2005. Passive constructions. In Martin Haspelmath, Matthew S. Dryer, David
Gil, & Bernard Comrie (eds.), World Atlas of Language Structure, 434–437. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
2006
Hollmann, Willem B. & Anna Siewierska. 2006. Corpora and other methods in the study of
Lancashire dialect. Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik 54(1). 21–34.
Siewierska, Anna & Dik Bakker. 2006. Inclusive and exclusive in free and bound person forms.
In Filimonova, Elena (ed.), Clusivity: Typology and case studies of the inclusive-exclusive
distinction, 149–176. (Typological Studies in Language 63). Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Siewierska, Anna & Dik Bakker. 2006. Bi-directional vs. uni-directional asymmetries in the
encoding of semantic distinctions in free and bound person forms. In Terttu Nevalainen,
Juhani Klemola & Mikko Laitinen (eds.), Types of variation: diachronic, dialectal and
typological interfaces, 21–52. (Studies in Language Companion Series,76) Amsterdam:
Benjamins.
Siewierska, Anna. 2006. Word order and linearization. In Keith Brown (ed.), Encyclopedia of
Language and Linguistics, 13(2). 642–649. Oxford: Elsevier.
Siewierska, Anna. 2006. Linguistic typology: where functionalism and formalism almost meet.
In Anna Duszak & Urszula Okulska (eds.), Bridges and barriers in metalinguistic discourse,
57–76. Berlin: Peter Lang.
Bibliography of Anna Siewierska xvii
2007
Bakker, Dik & Anna Siewierska. 2007. Another take on the notion Subject. In Mike Hannay & Gerard
J. Steen (eds.), Structural-functional studies in English grammar: in honour of Lachlan
Mackenzie, 141–158. (Studies in Language Companion Series 83). Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Bakker, Dik & Anna Siewierska. 2007. The implementation of grammatical functions in Functional
Discourse Grammar. Alfa – Revista de Linguistica 52. 269–292.
Hollmann, Willem B. & Anna Siewierska. 2007. A construction grammar account of possessive
constructions in Lancashire dialect: some advantages and challenges. English Language
and Linguistics 11(2). 407–424.
Siewierska, Anna & Dik Bakker. 2007. Bound person forms in ditransitive clauses revisited.
Functions of Language 14(1). 103–125.
Siewierska, Anna & Willem B. Hollmann. 2007. Introduction. Functions of Language 14(1). 1–7.
Siewierska, Anna & Willem B. Hollmann. 2007. Ditransitive clauses in English with special
reference to Lancashire dialect. In Mike Hannay & Gerard J. Steen (eds.), Structural-functional
studies in English grammar: in honour of Lachlan Mackenzie, 85–104. (Studies in Language
Companion Series 83). Amsterdam: Benjamins.
2008
Siewierska, Anna. 2008. Ways of impersonalizing: pronominal vs. verbal strategies. In María
Ángeles Gómez-González, J. Lachlan Mackenzie & Elsa González Álvarez (eds.), Current
Trends in Contrastive Linguistics, 27–61. (Studies in Funtional and Structural Linguistics
60). Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Siewierska, Anna. 2008. Introduction: Impersonalization from a subject‐centred vs. agent‐centred
perspective. Transactions of the Philological Society 106(2). 1–23.
2009
Siewierska, Anna & Dik Bakker. 2009. Case and alternative strategies: word order and agreement
marking. In Andrej Malchukov & Andrew Spencer (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Case,
290–303. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Bakker, Dik & Anna Siewierska. 2009. Weighing semantic distinctions in person forms. In
Johannes Helmbrecht, Yoko Nishina, Yong-Min Shin, Stavros Skopeteas & Elisabeth
Verhoeven (eds.), Form and function in language research: papers in honour of Christian
Lehmann, 25–56. (Trends in Linguistics 210). Berlin & New York: De Gruyter Mouton.
Siewierska, Anna. 2009. Semantics. In Jonathan Culpeper, Francis Katamba, Paul Kerswill, Ruth
Wodak, and Tony McEnery (eds.), English language: description, variation and context,
186–201. London: Palgrave.
Siewierska, Anna. 2009. Person asymmetries in zero expression and grammatical function. In
Franck Floricic (ed.), Essais de linguistique générale et de typologie linguistique offerts au
Professeur Denis Creissels à l’occasion de ses 65 ans, 425–438. Paris: Presses de L’École
Normale Superieure.
2010
Siewierska, Anna, Jiajin Xu & Richard Xiao. 2010. Bang-le yi ge da mang (offered a big helping
hand): a corpus study of the splittable compounds in spoken and written Chinese.
Language Sciences 32(4). 464–487.
Siewierska, Anna. 2010. From third plural to passive: Incipient, emergent and established passives.
Diachronica 27(1). 73–109.
xviii Bibliography of Anna Siewierska
Siewierska, Anna. 2010. Person forms. In Jae Jung Song (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Linguistic
Typology, 322–343. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Siewierska, Anna. 2011. Implicational universals. In Patrick Colm Hogan (ed.), The Cambridge
Encyclopedia of the Language Sciences, 279–281 . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
2011
Hollmann, Willem B. & Anna Siewierska. 2011. The status of frequency, schemas, and identity in
Cognitive Sociolinguistics: A case study on definite article reduction. Cognitive Linguistics
22(1). 25–54.
Siewierska, Anna & Maria Papastathi. 2011. Third person plurals in the languages of Europe:
typological and methodological issues. Linguistics 43(2). 575–610.
Siewierska, Anna. 2011. Overlap and complementarity in reference impersonals: Man-construc-
tions vs. third person plural-impersonals in the languages of Europe. In Andrej Malchukov
& Anna Siewierska (eds.), Impersonal Constructions: A Cross-Linguistic Perspective,
57–90. (Studies in Language Companion Series 124). Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Yan, Yi & Anna Siewierska. 2011. Referential impersonal constructions in Mandarin. In Andrej
Malchukov & Anna Siewierska (eds.), Impersonal Constructions: A Cross-Linguistic Perspec
tive, 547–580. (Studies in Language Companion Series 124). Amsterdam: Benjamins.
2012
Siewierska, Anna & Dik Bakker. 2012. Three takes on grammatical relations: a view from the
languages of Europe and North and Central Asia. In Pirkko Suihkonen & Bernard Comrie
(eds.), Argument structure and grammatical relations: a crosslinguistic typology, 295–323.
(Studies in Language Companion Series 126). Amsterdam: Benjamins.
2013
Siewierska, Anna. 2013. Functional and Cognitive Grammars. In Keith Allan (ed.), The Oxford
Handbook of The History of Linguistics, 485–502. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Siewierska, Anna & Dik Bakker. 2013. Passive agents: prototypical vs. canonical passives. In
Greville Corbett et al. (eds.), Canonical morphology and syntax, 151–189. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Ponsford, Dan, Willem Hollmann & Anna Siewierska. 2013. Sources of BET. Functions of Language
20(1). 90–124.
Siewierska, Anna & Dik Bakker. 2013. Suppletion in person forms: the role of iconicity and
frequency. This volume.
É. Kiss, Katalin (ed.). 1998. Discourse Configurational Languages. Journal of Linguistics 34(1).
257–261.
McGregor, William B. 2000. Semiotic Grammar. Functions of Language 7(1). 168–172.
Haspelmath, Martin, Ekkehard König, Wulf Oesterreicher & Wolfgang Raible (eds.). 2004.
Language typology and language universals: an international handbook. Journal of
Linguistics 40(3). 683–687.
Butler, C. S. 2005. Structure and Function – A Guide to three Major Structural-Functional
Theories. 1&2.
Falk, Yehuda N. 2008. Subjects and Universal Grammar. Journal of Linguistics 44(1). 530–534.
Obituaries
Cornillie, Bert, Ruth Wodak & Johan van der Auwera. 2011. In memoriam Anna Siewierska
(25 December 1955 – 6 August 2011). Folia Linguistica 45(2). 549–554.
Abraham, Werner, Balthasar Bickel, Bernard Comrie & Ekkehard König. 2011. Anna Siewierska
(1955–2011). Studies in Language 4. 737–738.
Blake, Barry J, Willem Hollmann, Nigel Vincent & Anne Wichmann. 2012. Obituary for Anna
Siewierska (1955–2011). Functions of Language 19(1). 2–3.
Forthcoming
Siewierska, Anna. (to appear). Passive agents: Canonical vs. Prototypical Passives. In Greville
Corbett et al. (eds.), Towards a Canonical Typology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Siewierska, Anna. (to appear). Semantics. In J. Culpeper, F. Katamba, P. Kerswill, T. McEnery &
R. Wodak (eds.). London: Palgrave.
Siewierska, Anna. (to appear). The syntagmatic iconicity of person forms: a comparison across
Languages. In W. Kubinski & D. Stachowiak (eds.), Beyond Philology.
Siewierska, Anna. (to appear). Historical and universal-typological linguistics. In Linda R.
Waugh, John E. Joseph and Monique Monville-Burston (eds.), Cambridge History of
Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Matthew Baerman and Greville G. Corbett
Person by other means1
Person by other means
1 Introduction
As Anna Siewierska notes (2004: 8) ‘the universality of person as a grammatical
category is sometimes called into question.’ And indeed, in some languages, an
interesting minority, it is not obvious whether there is a person feature as part
of the morphosyntactic system or not. We find conflicting analyses of individual
languages, and there are instances of intriguingly similar systems being anal-
ysed differently, because of distinct traditions. Cross-linguistically there is a rela-
tively short list of features which are genuinely morphosyntactic; that is, they are
referred to by rules of syntax and by rules of inflectional morphology. Person is
often such a feature, being referred to by rules of agreement, and being relevant
to verbal inflection. Such morphosyntactic features are to be distinguished from
purely morphological features, such as inflectional class, which allow general-
izations across lexemes but which are not accessible to rules of syntax. While
languages in which person is straightforwardly a morphosyntactic feature are
numerous and well-known, we are concerned here with languages where its
expression is bound up with that of another feature, namely gender, so that its
status is far from certain. We consider several such instances, from different lin-
guistic and geographical areas.
Consider first this paradigm, traditionally laid out, of verb agreement forms
from Archi, a Daghestanian language of the Lezgic group.
(1) Gender-number markers for the verb ‘be’ in the present tense in Archi
(Kibrik et al. 1977a: 55, 63)
number
gender singular plural
There are four gender values, glossed with the Roman numerals i-iv, with the
semantic assignments indicated. For some agreement targets the markers may be
prefixal, as in 1), for others infixal, and there are interesting syncretisms. Agree-
ment is always with the absolutive argument but not all verbs show agreement.
Here are examples with a verb which has infixal agreement:2
Bošor ‘man’ in (2) above belongs to gender i, and it has a suppletive plural, kɬele.
Comparable examples can be given for the other gender values. By and large
gender agreement is simply a matter of matching the gender of the controller.
The traditional paradigm has no mention of person, and in the singular part of
the paradigm, it indeed plays no role, since personal pronouns take the expected
gender-number agreement:
In (4) we may label the pronoun as first person singular, but there is no evidence
for person on the verb, which is gender ii singular. That is, the verb agrees, in
gender and number, but shows no evidence of person. The same is found with the
second person singular pronoun:
2 For examples (2), (3), (6) and (7) we thank Marina Chumakina and our Archi consultants, espe-
cially Bulbul Musaeva, Zumzum Magomedova and Dzhalil Samedov.
Person by other means 3
The third person pronouns, singular and plural, have the expected gender and
number agreements (four genders, two numbers). Now consider the first and
second person pronouns in the plural:
The agreement form is that of the genders iii and iv in the plural. Yet the first and
second person pronouns are used practically always of humans.3 This is indeed
a curious relation between gender and person. One analysis, that of Kibrik et al.
(1977a), treats the pronouns as irregular lexical items; their irregularity is seen in
terms of gender. If this were an isolated pattern it might indeed be best to treat it
as a lexical peculiarity. But rare though it is, it does turn up in other languages in
the world, which suggests that something more systematic is going on. To make
comparison clearer, consider the table in (8a) below, in which the paradigm in
(1) is reconfigured with person agreement information factored in. Recall that in
Archi genders i and ii are for nouns with human referents, genders iii and iv are
for non-humans. In the singular there is only gender agreement (with no indica-
tion of person). In the plural, however, first and second person take the same
form as the non-human genders. Now compare the Archi paradigm (8a) with one
from Ingush (8b). (Archi is from the Daghestanian branch of Nakh-Daghestanian
and Ingush from the Nakh branch.) Though the forms and inventory of genders
are somewhat different, the pattern is essentially the same, with first and second
person plural taking the same agreement form as (one set of) inanimates. (Note
that the names that Nichols uses for the non-human genders are simply based on
their typical agreement forms in the singular and the plural.)
3 Pronouns may be omitted in Archi, and to date we have no evidence that the pronouns of inter-
est, as in (6) and (7), behave any differently from the others in this respect.
4 Matthew Baerman and Greville G. Corbett
Now consider the paradigms in (9) below, from much further afield: (9a) is from
Tucano (Tucanoan, Columbia), and (9b) is from Krongo (Kadugli, Sudan).4 Again we
find first and second person taking the same agreement form as inanimates, though
in these cases it is not restricted to the plural: in Tucano number is not distin-
guished at all for these values, and in Krongo the plural is not sensitive to gender.
(9) a. Tucano ‘do’ (West & Welch 2004: 37) b. Krongo ‘saw’ (Reh 1985: 186)
1 1
2 wee-Ɂe 2 n-àasàlà
4 Another possible representative of this sort of system is Andoke, a language isolate of Colum-
bia. Witte (1977: 55) gives the paradigm for the word (or part of speech) he terms the copulative, in
which third person arguments show six gender distinctions. First and second person arguments
take the same agreement forms as the third person neuter. However, Landaburu (1979: 112f, 159),
who calls this the assertif, gives a fuller but at the same time rather different picture. The forms
which correspond to those given by Witte are morphologically analyzed as a lexical base plus
suffixed demonstrative pronoun, but in addition he gives forms with the first and second person
(singular and plural) suffixed too, yielding full person agreement. Unfortunately, none of the ex-
amples in Witte’s text would involve first or second person agreement anyway, so it is impossible
to know what to make of this discrepancy.
Person by other means 5
It seems clear that both gender and person are involved in the paradigms in (8)
and (9), but how can we account for the unusual configuration that they share?
If we take the Nakh-Daghestanian examples as a point of departure, this sug-
gests a fundamental asymmetry between gender and person in these paradigms.
The inflectional markers are primarily gender markers; indeed, in most of the
languages of this family they are exclusively gender markers. From that per-
spective these paradigms are made up of gender markers whose distribution has
been perturbed by values of person. We therefore suggest the following possible
interpretation of the interaction of gender and person in the Nakh-Daghestanian,
Tucano and Krongo paradigms:
–– In each paradigm there are only gender-number forms, but no person forms
as such.
–– In each paradigm there is a default form, which serves for the neuter (or one
of the non-human genders).
–– Gender agreement is restricted to third person arguments in part of the system
(the plural in Archi) or all of the system.
–– First and second person, since they lack gender agreement, take the default
form.
–– Person marking is thus a by-product of this restriction on the distribution of
gender agreement.
–– On this interpretation, the patterns in (8) and (9) are a result of gender agree-
ment being restricted to third person arguments. This mirrors the familiar
restriction of pronominal gender distinctions to third person (Siewierska
2004: 104–105), which is found in these languages as well, so it appears
that this pattern is not entirely arbitrary. On the other hand, it is very rare,
so that the mere fact that we may have a ready explanation at hand is not
enough to show that the pattern itself is more than an accident. A useful next
step, therefore, will be to look at comparative evidence, particularly from
the Tucanoan family. This evidence suggests that the proposal, based on the
restriction of gender agreement, may be on the right track.
2 Tucanoan evidence
The basic elements of the system described above are found through the whole
Tucanoan family, but with numerous subtle and not-so-subtle variants. In some
cases these provide further support for the analysis proposal above. In other
cases, they caution against an overly facile interpretation of the data. Two key
elements of our proposal find support in the Tucanoan languages. First, that a
6 Matthew Baerman and Greville G. Corbett
Note, however, that the nature of these restrictions is not entirely clear. It is temp-
ting to see them as morphosyntactic, in the way that the restriction on plural
agreement to animate arguments, also a characteristic of the Tucanoan langua-
ges, surely is. In at least some languages, however, we cannot treat the restriction
as morphosyntactic. Consider Tucano again. Many verbal constructions involve a
nominal form, termed gerundive in the description. The nominal form marks gen-
der-number using suffixes identical to those found on nouns, as in (11) below.5
This gerundive forms a periphrastic construction together with an auxiliary verb
(the verb ‘do’ shown above in (9a)). But while the auxiliary displays the appar-
ent person-based restrictions on gender agreement, the gerundive does not. The
result is a periphrastic construction, such as that shown in (12) below, whose
individual members display different gender agreement patterns. If we treat this
as a single agreement domain, then clearly the gender restriction is morphologi-
cal and not morphosyntactic.
(11) Tucano nominal forms (West & Welch 2004: 37, 81, 85)
singular plural
1 masc
coe-gʉ wee-Ɂe
2 masc
3 masc coe-gʉ wee-mí
1 fem coe-rã wee-má
coe-go wee-Ɂe
2 fem
3 fem coe-go wee-mó
3 neut coe-ro wee-Ɂe
5 The noun system includes a large number of different singular and plural suffixes, but ge-
rundive inflection is limited to this set of four. Note that inanimate count nouns typically have a
distinct plural form (e.g. acá-ri ‘boxes’), but always take singular agreement.
8 Matthew Baerman and Greville G. Corbett
singular plural
1 masc
paa-ʉ
2 masc
3 masc paa-ʉ-mi
1 fem paa-rã
paa-o
2 fem
3 fem paa-o-mo
3 neut paa-ro
The second key element of our proposal is that the non-gender-agreeing form
should be treated as a default form. This of course is an easy way to explain away
forms with an eclectic paradigmatic distribution, but there are some positive indi-
cations. First, if there is any zero exponence in the paradigm, it realizes the non-
gender-agreeing cells. This was already apparent in (13), and can be more clearly
seen in Macuna in (14), also from the Eastern Tucanoan branch, where the first
person/second person/third person neuter form has no suffix.
(14) Macuna present ‘fall’ (Frank, Smothermon & Smothermon 1995: 48)
singular plural
2 kedia
3 neut
3 masc kedia-bĩ
kedia-bã
3 fem kedia-bõ
the middle paradigm (15b), illustrating the so-called class I unmarked evidential
forms. Class I and class II refer to tense-aspect distinctions whose actual inter-
pretation depends on the lexical class (stative/dynamic) of the verb. The shape
of the paradigm is exactly that of the Tucano paradigm shown above in (9a). In
Cubeo, there is a suffix -wɨ found in the first and second person, and the third
person neuter. The other two paradigms (15a) and (15c) have a form ‑awı̃, which
is similar to -wɨ, and which we speculate is related, though the evidence is uncer-
tain.6 On the assumption that -wɨ and ‑awɨ̃ can be equated, the differences in their
distribution are interesting to consider. In the class II paradigm in (15a), the range
of this affix is restricted by dedicated suffixes for first person singular and first
person plural (exclusive), while in the assumed remote past (15c), this suffix is
used throughout. This pattern can be understood if we think of -wɨ/‑awɨ̃ as being
unspecified both for person and gender, and so being used as an ‘elsewhere’ form
just in case no more specific suffix has been assigned.
1 masc -ka-kɨ
-ka-rã
1 fem -ka-ko
-wɨ
2
-awɨ̃ -kẽbã-awɨ̃
3 neut
6 Chacon (2012) equates the forms in (15a) and (15c), while Maxwell & Morse (1999: 43f) in their
description give the form of the assumed remote past as -kebã-wɨ, and explicitly relate its termi-
nal -wɨ with that found in (15c), thus equating (15b) and (15c). Combining these views suggests
that the idea that there is a diachronic relationship between all three is not implausible.
10 Matthew Baerman and Greville G. Corbett
fact distinct from the gender markers found in the third person. The extension of
gender marking to the first person thus seems to depend on the 1st person suffix
-ka, and is not an independent phenomenon.
Thus, not all variant gender-person configurations in the Tucanoan lan-
guages can be attributed to the same factors. A particularly striking deviation is
found in the Wanano (Eastern Tucanoan, northern branch) paradigm shown in
(16a) below, which is practically the mirror image of the Tucano paradigm in (9a):
it has gender agreement only in the first and second person. But judging by the
suffixes, this paradigm has a different origin. The Wanano suffixes correspond
not to the verbal suffixes of Tucano, but to the nominal gerundive suffixes in (11a)
(shown again in 16b)7, which distinguish gender only, not person. The major dif-
ferences in Wanano with respect to Tucano are that (i) the suffix -ro, which is
neuter in many of the other Eastern Tucanonan languages, has been generalized
as a gender-neutral third person singular suffix (paralleling the gender-neutral
use of -ro in the noun system; see Stenzel 2004: 128), and (ii) the plural has a
parallel first/second versus third person split, mirroring the contrast in the noun
system between the plural suffix for higher animates (-na) versus general animate
‑a; see Stenzel (2004: 138).
1 masc
ta-cʉ-hca masc coe-gʉ
2 masc
ta-na-hca coe-rã
1 fem
ta-co-hca fem coe-go
2 fem
Both the singular and plural forms of Wanano are of particular interest because
they manifest person marking through morphology which originally was uncon-
nected with person distinctions, and they do so through means distinct from that
seen in the other examples in this article.
7 The resemblance between Wanano -co, -cʉ and -ro and Tucano -go, -gʉ and -ro is clear. Wa-
nano -na and Tucano -rã are also likely to be related (Tucano /r/ is actually realized as a nasalized
flap in this environment; Welch & West 1967: 16, 20).
Person by other means 11
(17) Akusha Dargi (Daghestanian; van den Berg 1999: 154, 157)8
neut
3 masc
b-
3 fem
If we look just at (17a), the situation is comparable to that in Archi, except that
Akusha Dargi has three genders rather than four. We might hesitate to propose a
person feature perhaps. On the other hand, the inflections given in (17b) clearly
justify a person feature. When the two are found together, as in (17c), it would
surely be perverse to have a person feature to account for the distribution of the
suffixes but not for that of the prefixes. These data in turn may make us rethink
our view of Archi.
There are indeed difficult issues here. If for Archi we accept a morphosyn-
tactic person feature, we have done so in the absence of any unique form. Now
non-autonomous values of features are well-known. For instance, Zaliznjak (1973:
69–74) discusses values of the case feature which have no unique form, but where
excluding a given value would create odd rules of government (verbs would have
to govern different cases in the singular and plural). Non-autonomous features
are a bigger step; and yet the syntax of Archi does appear to require a morphosyn-
tactic feature person, for which the morphology has no unique form.
8 For simplicity we give paradigms for agreement with a single argument. For the complexity
of the transitive paradigm, where the two markers behave differently, see van den Berg (1999).
Person by other means 13
4 Conclusion
An obvious but no less important conclusion is that all of these systems need
careful analysis. We should not assume that a person feature comes for free,
merely because it is widespread; we should justify its use for each language.
Equally the lack of a unique person form should not make us immediately jump
to the opposite conclusion.
We have seen instances of a strange pattern, where a default form in the gender
system also serves within the person system. The fact that a similar pattern recurs
in languages very distant both geographically and genealogically suggests that it
is a significant one. There is even a possible explanation for it, based on common
patterns found in personal pronouns. And yet when we compare carefully within
each family the apparently simple pattern becomes less simple, and the analyses
without a person feature become less attractive. The issues are genuinely diffi-
cult, since proposing a non-autonomous feature is normally something we would
wish to avoid. Thus even on the fringe of the person system there remain some
intriguing issues.
Abbreviations
1 first person, 2 second person, 3 third person, abs absolutive, excl exclusive, fem feminine,
ipfv imperfective, masc masculine, neut neuter, pfv perfective, pl plural, prs present, sg
singular.
References
Chacon, Thiago Costa. 2012. The phonology and morphology of Kubeo: The documentation,
theory, and description of an Amazonian language. Ph.D. Thesis, University of Hawai‘i at
Mānoa. (http://www.etnolinguistica.org/tese:chacon-2012)
Chumakina, Marina, Anna Kibort & Greville G. Corbett. 2007. Determining a language’s feature
inventory: Person In Archi. In Peter K. Austin & Andrew Simpson (eds.), Endangered
Languages (special issue of Linguistische Berichte, number 14), 143–172. Hamburg:
Helmut Buske.
Corbett, Greville G. 1991. Gender. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Corbett, Greville G. 2012. Features. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Frank, Paul S., Jeffrey Smothermon & Josephine Smothermon. 1995. Bosquejo del macuna:
Aspectos de la cultura material de los macunas, fonología, gramática. Bogotá: Associación
Instituto Lingüístico de Verano.
(http://www.sil.org/americas/colombia/pubs/abstract.asp?id=928474518998)
14 Matthew Baerman and Greville G. Corbett
1 Siewierska’s Problem
A highly productive inquiry in typology concerns the alignment of argument roles,
especially the identical vs. different treatment of the three core roles S, A, and P by
the rules of case assignment and agreement marking. With regard to case marking,
determining alignment is straightforward: one can simply check which argumen-
tal NPs are assigned the same case markers. With regard to agreement, the issue
is more complex. Whereas argumental NPs exist independently of case marking,
agreement consist of two components: (i) whether or not it exists (i.e. whether
certain argument features like person, number of gender, show up at all in the verb
morphology), and (ii) if agreement exists, how its markers align roles. In many
cases, the answers to these question are still straightforward and one can easily
observe that the agreement markers of, e.g., Latin show accusative alignment.
However, when expanding the typological scope, one often runs into what
we call here “Siewierska’s Problem”: argument marking in agreement is often
complex and does not allow simple answers. As a matter of fact, the analysis of
an agreement system as being primarily ergative, accusative or neutral heavily
depends on which criteria one employs. As Siewierska (2003) notes in her
seminal article on the determination of the alignment of agreement in ditransi-
tive constructions, in some instances the consideration of different criteria gives
rise to conflicting classifications, i.e. the criteria may not converge in identifying
a unique alignment type. Siewierska (2003: 342) considers the following four cri-
teria that apply to the determination the alignment of agreement:2
1 Earlier versions of this article were presented at the Anna Siewierska Memorial Workshop
in Leipzig, April 27, 2012, and at the conference “Syntax of the World’s Languages IV” in Du-
brovnik, October 1–4, 2012. We thank the audiences for helpful comments and questions. We are
also grateful for very useful comments and suggestions on a first drft by Dik Bakker and Martin
Haspelmath. Author contributions: B.B., G.I. and A.W.-M. conceived and designed the study and
all contributed to the writing. B.B. conducted the statistical analysis. All authors were involved
in discussion and interpretation of the results. G.I. and A.W.-M. contributed to data analysis and
coded agreement data. T.Z. did most of the data extraction and aggregation work. We thank
Lennart Bierkandt and Kevin Bätscher for help in data collection and encoding
2 A further criterion, not considered by Siewierska (2003), concerns the host(s) of agreement
marker(s), i.e. auxiliaries, lexical verbs, etc. We will not consider this criterion here either.
16 Balthasar Bickel, Giorgio Iemmolo, Taras Zakharko & Alena Witzlack-Makarevich
(1) German
a. Ich schlaf-e.
1sg.nom sleep-1sg.s/a
‘I sleep.’
b. Du schläf-st.
2sg.nom sleep-2sg.s/a
‘You sleep.’
c. Er schläf-t.
3sg.m.nom sleep-3sg.s/a
‘He sleeps.
3 Here and in the remainder of the paper, we simplify. We only consider default lexical classes
and do not discuss deviating valency classes such as experiencer verbs. Also see below on this
point.
Patterns of alignment in verb agreement 17
e. Du sieh-st mich.
2sg.nom see-2sg.s/a 1sg.acc
‘You see me.’
f. Er sieh-t dich.
3sg.m.nom see-3sg.s/a 2sg.acc
‘He sees you.’
However, in many other languages these criteria diverge in defining the align-
ment of agreement, thus giving rise to discrepancies. The situation can be illus-
trated with English: most English verbs in the present indicative are marked with
the suffix -s when the subject is third person singular and are unmarked other-
wise, as in (2):
With respect to the Trigger Potential criterion, the English present indicative
agreement system can be characterized as exhibiting accusative alignment.
However, when the distribution of zero versus overt agreement markers is taken
into account (i.e. the Form criterion), S/A is marked differently from P only in the
third person singular, whereas the alignment is neutral (S=A=P) in the rest of the
paradigm, as none of the argument roles triggers an overt agreement marker.
More complex discrepancies arise in systems with multiple markers per argu-
ment. An illustration of such a system comes from the imperfective agreement
paradigm found in Tirmaga (Surmic; Bryant 1999), which has three slots of agree-
ment marking: one prefix and two suffix slots. Table 1 shows the paradigms sepa-
rately for each of the three roles S, A, and P.
1s k- — -i k- — -i — -aɲ —
1pi k- — — k- — — — -ey —
1pe k- — -(G)o k- — -(G)o — -ey —
2s — — -i — — -i — -aɲ —
2p — — -(G)o — — -(G)o — -oŋ —
3s — — — — — — — — —
3p — — -(G)ɛ — — -(G)ɛ — — —
S A P
18 Balthasar Bickel, Giorgio Iemmolo, Taras Zakharko & Alena Witzlack-Makarevich
With the exception of Siewierska (2003), discrepancies like these have received
little attention in the typological literature or in the description of individual lan-
guages. This article intends to explore the distribution and influence of such dis-
crepancies in the determination of the alignment in agreement systems, focusing
specifically on discrepancies between alignments in terms of Trigger Potentials
and alignments in terms of Form. We explore two research questions:
We begin by describing the database used for this study and then address these
questions in turn.
Patterns of alignment in verb agreement 19
The two criteria basically equate the Trigger Potential with syntax and Mor-
phological Marking with morphology, allowing us to frame the question in terms
of possible discrepancies between how argument roles are aligned in agreement
syntax as opposed to agreement morphology. Agreement syntax in this sense
refers to whether or not the verb – or more generally, any predicate complex that
heads a clause – registers features contained in S, A or P and therefore system-
atically interacts with these arguments. If a specific argument does not trigger
agreement at all (e.g., P arguments in German), this means that the verb does not
interact with this argument at all in the syntax. Such questions of verb-argument
interaction are fundamental for the organization of syntax, typically requiring
specific modeling in formal theories.
This conceptualization of Trigger Potentials and Morphological Marking as
two dimensions of agreement does not match traditional grammar, where they
are not kept separate. For data like those from Tirmaga in Table 1, one would
traditionally focus on the form and position of markers and argue that the par-
adigms show (mostly) accusative alignment. The fact that all three arguments
behave alike in triggering agreement would not be considered an interesting fact.
For other languages, however, traditional grammar would focus precisely on
triggering behavior and not consider form and position criteria. For German for
example, one would traditionally say that only S and A arguments trigger agree-
ment; one would not say that German is accusatively aligned because S and A
have overt agreement markers whereas P shows zero markers. Applying different
criteria in Tirmaga and in German is typologically inconsistent, as Siewierska has
noted.
Furthermore, it is essential to keep apart cases (i) where an argument has a
Trigger Potential but the morphology happens to be zero in a specific category
(such as third person singular in Tirmaga) and (ii) where an argument never trig-
gers agreement (like German P arguments). In type (i), the grammar of the verb
has to check for the presence of specific features in all arguments, and as a result,
the verb enters a specific morphosyntactic relationship with all arguments.
The same morphosyntactic relationship does not exist between the verb
morphology and arguments that never trigger verb agreement, i.e. in type (ii). In
other words, there is a fundamental difference between accusative alignment in a
language like Tirmaga and accusative alignment in a language like German, and
this difference can only be captured by following Siewierska’s innovation and
consider Trigger Potentials independently of Morphological Marking.
Trigger Potential is a notion that is uniquely tied to agreement: it is only for
agreement that it makes sense to ask whether there exists a specific syntactic
relationship between the verb and features of a specific set of arguments. There is
no equivalent of this in case assignment: the syntactic relationship that is marked
Patterns of alignment in verb agreement 21
a. ni-panu
1sg.s/a-pass
‘I pass’
b. ni-mits-ita-k
1sg.s/a-2sg.p-see-pst
‘I saw you’
c. ti-nech-ita-k
2sg.s/a-1sg.p-see-pst
‘You saw me’
d. panu
[3s/a-]pass
‘he passes’
e. ki-neki
[3s/a-]3sg.p-want
‘he wants it’
f. ni-k-neki
1sg.s/a-3sg.p-want
‘I want it’
‘1sS/A’ for S in (4a) and for A in (4b), but zero exponence for the first person sin-
gular P role in this slot, as (4c) shows; first person singular P is instead marked
in the second slot (-ne in (4c)). The situation is identical for the first person
plural and for the second person. However, when we consider the morphological
marking of the third person within the first prefix slot, we observe that three roles
behave alike (S=A=P), in that none of them shows up with an overt morphological
trace in this slot (be it a dedicated marker or a portemanteau affix, cf. (4d–f)). The
markers in the first prefix slot here only register first person (4f)). This is different
for the second prefix position, filled by mits- in (4b), and ki- in (4e) and (4f). Here
one obtains S=A≠P alignment, since the markers that appear in this slot encode
the P argument, as opposed to S and A, which leave no overt morphological trace
in this slot.
The situation is again different in the suffix position. Here we have neutral
alignment for singular arguments, since this category never results in overt mor-
phology across all persons. For plural arguments, however, there is an opposition
between overt marking of S and A (cf. -t in (5a) and (5b)) vs. no marking for P (5c),
again across all persons:
The example of Pipil also shows that alignment can differ across referential
categories. In the first prefix we get S=A=P for the third person and S=A≠P else-
where; in the suffix slot, we get S=A=P in the singular and S=A≠P in the plural.
The second prefix slot, by contrast, shows consistent S=A≠P alignment for all
referential categories.
In case a language has multiple allomorphs of agreement markers (e.g. con-
ditioned by inflectional classes), we proceeded as follows: morphologically overt
allomorphs were encoded as the same marker for the present purposes. If one
of the allomorphs has zero exponence, we considered the size and productivity
of individual inflectional classes. Only the major pattern of marking – either in
Patterns of alignment in verb agreement 23
terms of the number of inflectional classes or, where the information is available,
in terms of the class size – was considered. For instance, for Latvian three con-
jugation classes with several subclasses are differentiated. Class II (also referred
to as “long”) and the overwhelming majority of verbs in Class I (called “short”)
have zero exponence for the second person singular present, whereas the verbs
of Class III (“mixed”) use the suffix -i in this context. As the most productive and
numerous class is Class II, the exemplar paradigm selected for Latvian has no
overt marker in the second person singular present (cf. Holst 2001, Mathiassen
1997, Nau 1998).
For easy data entry, we only coded overt markers. The distribution and
semantics of zero exponents was then automatically inferred with the help of an
ancillary database that tracks all referential features that an agreement system is
sensitive to. Thus, in the case of the Pipil first prefix slot, zero exponence of S/A
agreement for third person forms is not explicitly coded in the database, but it
can be inferred from the list of the referential types of Pipil which includes three
persons and two numbers. The same holds for the singular arguments in the
suffix slot.6 Since agreement systems sometimes undergo splits conditioned by
temporal-aspectual properties of the clause (e.g. past vs. non-past, perfective vs.
imperfective) we tracked the effects of these conditions in the database and con-
sidered the affected alignment patterns as individual datapoints. We refer to
these patterns as constituting agreement ‘systems’ within a language in the fol-
lowing. The database thus contains a total of 289 systems from 260 languages.
6 All data processing, analysis and visualization was done in R (R Development Core Team
2012), with the added packages lattice (Sarkar 2010) and vcd (Meyer et al. 2009).
24 Balthasar Bickel, Giorgio Iemmolo, Taras Zakharko & Alena Witzlack-Makarevich
120
100
80
60
40
Number of systems
20
0
0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0
In total, almost two thirds (N = 178) of the 289 systems in our database show at
least some kind of discrepancy between alignments in terms of Trigger Potentials
and alignments in terms of Morphological Marking. The histogram furthermore
shows that discrepancies tend to be severe: 43 % (N = 125) show an identical align-
ment value below (or equal to) .5. These findings suggest that Siewierska’s
Problem is a serious one. It is imperative that typologies of alignment in agree-
ment be clear on whether they refer to trigger potential or to agreement morphol-
ogy and apply criteria consistently across languages. The two ways of looking at
alignment differ substantially. While this is an important insight with many prac-
tical consequences for typology’s day-to-day business, the theoretically more
pressing question concerns the source and consequences of such discrepancies
between syntax and morphology. We take up this issue in the following.
Patterns of alignment in verb agreement 25
In the incompletive aspect there are two dedicated markers for the second person
singular S (6a) and A arguments (6b). The P argument is not marked with a prefix,
but with a suffix instead (6c). Thus, although the individual markers are different
for the three argument roles S, A, and P, in terms of Trigger Potential the align-
ment is neutral, since all three argument roles equally trigger agreement.
Excluding all instances of zero exponence and of tripartite alignment in mor-
phology brings down the proportion of systems with at least one discrepancy to
122 (42%) out of 289 systems (from 178 or 62%, cf. above). These remaining dis-
crepancies are empirical observations, and not logically derivable from how align-
ment is defined. In other words, it could well be the case that languages would
tend to favor similar alignments in the morphology as in the syntax, perhaps in
response to iconicity principles. In that case, we would expect, for example, that
neutral alignment in the syntax would tend to go together with neutral alignment
in the morphology, so that we would find neutral markers in most morphological
26 Balthasar Bickel, Giorgio Iemmolo, Taras Zakharko & Alena Witzlack-Makarevich
slots. Systems like this are apparently rare. What comes closest corresponds to
what is sometimes called hierarchical agreement. A case in point is agreement
prefixes in Plains Cree. Here, categories like second person trigger agreement in
all three roles, and these roles receive exactly the same morphological marking
(the prefix ki-):
But this seems to be very strongly disfavored worldwide and markers tend to dif-
ferentiate roles, leading thus to discrepancies.
Discrepancies can arise independently in every slot of the agreement mor-
phology and in every referential category: while in Cree, the alignment of the
prefix slot is identical to the alignment of the Trigger Potential for the first and
second person, the suffixes show various discrepancies. Consider, for example,
the distribution of the second person plural suffix -nāwāw in one of the suffix
slots (suffix slot 5):
(8) a. ki-pimipahtā-nāwāw.
2-run-2pl
‘you (pl) run (s)’
b. ki-wāpam-i-nān.
2-hear-2>1-1pl
‘you (pl) see us (a)’
c. ki-wāpam-iti-nāwāw.
2-hear-1>2-2pl
‘I see you (pl) (p)’
Whereas the S and P arguments of this referential type are marked with -nāwāw,
as in (8a) and (8c), the A argument of the same referential type is not marked in
Patterns of alignment in verb agreement 27
this slot; instead we find a first person suffix -nān (8b). This results in ergative
alignment.7
In general, each agreement category in each slot allows for maximally four
types of how overt morphology can align roles (S=A=P, S=A≠P, S≠A=P, S=P≠A) if
we exclude tripartite alignment (following the reasoning above). Therefore, the
range of logically possible opportunities for discrepancies rises with the number
of agreement categories and agreement slots. For instance, Jero (Opgenort 2005)
has 11 referential categories for the S argument (three person categories, three
number categories and an inclusive vs. exclusive distinction in the first person of
both dual and plural). Each of the marking of the A argument of these 11 types can
be conditioned by the P arguments which again are of these 11 types (e.g. A of the
first person singular when acting on the second person singular P, A of the first
person singular when acting on the second person plural P, etc.). In the same
fashion, the marking of the P argument across all 11 referential types varies with
respect to the A argument and its referential types. To calculate alignment we take
an S argument of a particular referential type and compare it with the A argument
of the same referential type under one of the 11 conditions and with the P argument
of the same referential type under one of the 11 conditions (Witzlack-Makarevich
2011, Witzlack-Makarevich et al. 2011). This results in 113 alignment statements per
agreement slot. Jero has 3 slots relevant for agreement and the number of align-
ment statements for each of them is theoretically 113, that is, 113 × 3 = 3993 align-
ment statements in total. The actual number of alignment statements is, however,
somewhat lower than this amount of combinatorial possibilities, as particular ref-
erential categories or referential category combinations are non-existent or belong
to a different (e.g. reflexive) paradigm. Nevertheless, there is still a very large
space of opportunity for discrepancies, easily extending into several thousands
when there are many categories and a complex system of morphological slots.
Interestingly, languages seem to exploit these possibilities to a substantial
extent: Figure 2 plots the proportion of discrepancies, i.e. alignment statements
that differ between Morphological Marking and Trigger Potential, per system
against the number of category/slot combinations that are distinguished by that
system. The data are limited to nontrivial cases of non-identical alignments,
i.e. following the reasoning above, we consider here only overt morphology
and exclude tripartite alignment.8 The plot suggests that the opportunity space
7 See Witzlack-Makarevich et al. (2011) on deriving basic alignment types from systems with
hierarchical and coargument conditioned systems of alignment.
8 Note that a language like English counts as having 1 agreement category in the non-past (third
person singular), i.e. we counted the number of overtly marked categories, not the number of
feature values in oppositions.
28 Balthasar Bickel, Giorgio Iemmolo, Taras Zakharko & Alena Witzlack-Makarevich
for discrepancies becomes heavily, and often fully, exploited with systems that
contain more than 6 categories (67% discrepancies with 7 categories in 6 systems,
34% with 8 categories in 17 systems, 88% with 9 categories in 8 systems etc.).
Systems with fewer categories tend to show alignments that match the alignment
of agreement trigger potentials either completely (displayed in the graph as thin
horizontal lines at 0% with systems of 1, 2, 4 or 5 categories) or to a large extent
(12.5% discrepancies with 3 categories in 8 systems, 14% with 6 categories in 14
systems).
1.0
0.8
0.6
Proportion discrepancies
0.4
0.2
0.0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 102 103 104
It is not immediately clear why languages exploit the opportunity space for dis-
crepancies so strongly. One possibility is that complex morphological systems
may have developed through repeated accretion of freshly grammaticalized
markers, each giving rise to new alignment patterns somewhere in the system.
For example, if a language develops P agreement based on accusatively-marked
pronouns, one expects the morphology to keep the emerging agreement markers
separate and in a different position from older agreement markers. The result
would be neutral alignment in terms of trigger potentials, but S=A≠P alignment
in the morphological structure for this position. This is a plausible scenario and
can be observed, for example, throughout Romance. The question whether this
is a universally valid scenario, however, must be left for detailed research on the
extent to which agreement systems reflect layered grammaticalization of case-
marked pronouns. For now, we conclude that richer paradigms lead to more dis-
crepancies and that 7 categories represent the critical threshold for this.
Patterns of alignment in verb agreement 29
The flip side of this is a heavily increased proportion of ergative and S≠A=P align-
ments in Morphological Marking (together 49% vs. 4% in Trigger Potentials). This
could potentially challenge the relatively well-established principle that verb
agreement is strongly biased against S≠A alignment patterns (e.g. Siewierska
2004). Given the discrepancies we noted above, it is possible that such an anti-
ergative bias only holds for relatively simple agreement systems where discrepan-
cies are more limited (cf. Figure 2).
Figure 3 appears to confirm this suspicion since more complex systems (to
the right on the graph) indeed tend to have a lower proportion of S=A(=P) align-
ments, i.e. more S≠A patterns. Decreased S=A(=P) proportions are less common
among simpler systems (to the left of the graph), where the only notable exception
consists of a few radically ergative systems with one single agreement category
(e.g. gender agreement in Nakh-Daghestanian, represented here by 5 systems9).
9 The only other cases in our database are ergative agreement in Nias (Austronesian) and in
Hurrian, and S-only agreement in Tuvaluan (Austronesian), which results in S≠A=P alignment.
30 Balthasar Bickel, Giorgio Iemmolo, Taras Zakharko & Alena Witzlack-Makarevich
1.0
0.8
Proportion of S=A(=P) alignments
0.6
0.4
However, as shown by the thin bar widths on the righthand side of Figure 3,
more complex systems are much rarer than simpler systems (at least in our data-
base, but we believe this to be fairly representative of worldwide distributions).
Also, they tend to be concentrated only in a few families: in our database of 289
systems, there are only 4 families (Algonquian, Nilotic, Tacanan and the Kiranti
group of Sino-Tibetan) and the family-level isolate Ainu which contain at least
one system that is complex in the sense that it contains at least 60 category/slot
combinations.10 When one surveys the proportions of S=A(=P) alignments in
these systems (see the Appendix for a complete list), one notices that they hardly
ever fall below 50%. This reflects a general trend, also found in families with
members showing moderate complexity: Table 3 lists the mean proportions of
S=A(=P) (and if applicable, standard deviations) for all families where this mean
is below 1. There are only seven further families that have mean proportions of
S=A(=P) below or equal 0.5, i.e. families that show a possible trend favoring erga-
tive alignments. Nakh-Daghestanian and Algonquian are the only families in
the table where this trend is relatively compact and suggestive of a family-wide
feature. The other families in Table 3with mean proportions below or equal 0.5
either show large standard deviations (Mayan, Macro-Ge) or are represented only
by single members (Hurrian, Zuni, Muskogean).
10 60 is a reasonable threshold for calling a system ‘complex’ because there is a natural gap in
Figure 3 between systems up to 30 and systems with more than 60 categories/slot combinations.
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structures:—
Adult. Larva.
Name. Host. Name. Host.
Tænia saginata Man Cysticercus bovis Cattle.
Tænia solium Man Cysticercus cellulosæ Swine and man.
Cattle, sheep, and
Tænia marginata Dogs Cysticercus tenuicollis
swine.
Tænia cœnurus Dogs Cœnurus cerebralis Cattle and sheep.
Tænia Echinococcus Cattle, sheep, swine,
Dogs
echinococcus polymorphus man, etc.
holding it in this position by placing his left knee on its neck. He then
passes a thick stick between the jaws and behind the tusks, opens the
mouth obliquely, raising the upper jaw by manipulating the stick.
Finally he fixes one end of this last by placing his foot upon it, and
holds the other extremity by slipping it under his left arm. In this
position he is able to grasp the free end of the tongue and by digital
palpation to examine the tongue itself, the gums, the free portions of
the frænum linguæ, etc.
Fig. 35.—Gravid segment of pork-measle tapeworm (Tænia solium),
showing the lateral branches of the uterus enlarged. (Stiles, Report U.S.A.
Bureau of Agriculture, 1901.)
BEEF MEASLES.
When the life of the nomad shall have been entirely replaced by
that of the highly-civilised European and private hygienic
precautions have rendered it impossible for animals to obtain access
to segments or eggs of the Tænia saginata, beef measles will
disappear.
At present, in the countries where the disease is common, one
experiences a feeling of astonishment that it is not far more frequent;
for experiment has shown that a person infected with one unarmed
tapeworm expels with the fæces an average of four hundred
proglottides per month, each proglottis or segment of the worm
containing about 30,000 eggs, each of which is capable of developing
into a tapeworm.
Beef measles is rather common in Germany, but rare in France,
Switzerland, and Italy.
TRICHINIASIS—TRICHINOSIS.
ARTICULAR RHEUMATISM.
MUSCULAR RHEUMATISM.