Marianne Mithun

The Acquisition of Polysynthesis.

Polysynthetic languages can present special extraction puzzles to children, due to the length of their words. A number of hypotheses concerning childrens strategies for acquiring morphology, originally proposed on the basis of their approaches to somewhat simpler systems, are confirmed by observations of five children acquiring Mohawk. Among the Mohawk children, the earliest segmentation of words was phonological rather than morphological: stressed syllables, usually penultimate or antepenultimate, were extracted first. Ultimate syllables were then added, confirming the salience of the ends of words. During this time, distinctions expressed by adults in affixes were either omitted or expressed analytically. Acquisition then moved leftward by syllables. When most utterances were long enough to include pronominal prefixes as well as roots, morphological structure was apparently discovered. It is not surprising that the pronouns should trigger this awareness, since they are frequent, appearing with every verb and most nouns, they are functional, and they are semantically transparent. From this point on, the children acquired affixes primarily according to their utility and semantic transparency rather than their phonological shape or position.

Grammar, Contact and Time

A continuing issue in work on language contact has been determining the relative borrowability of various structural features. It is easy to imagine, for example, how a tendency to use particular word order patterns in one language might be replicated by bilinguals in another, but difficult to understand how abstract morphological structures could be transferred. When we look at linguistic areas, however, we often find grammatical features shared by genetically unrelated languages that seem unborrowable. Here we consider the importance of adding the dimension of time to investigations into the potential effects of contact. As a point of departure we examine a relatively straightforward example from western North America, a striking parallelism in verbal structure among large numbers of languages indigenous to California. The example illustrates the fact that parallel grammatical structures in neighboring languages need not have been borrowed in their current form. They might instead be the result of an earlier transfer of patterns of expression that set the stage for subsequent parallel developments.

Third-Person Reference and the Function of Pronouns in Central Pomo Natural Speech

l. Introduction. The function of pronouns might be assumed to be universal among languages. The use and interpretation of particular forms within a language, however, depend significantly on the full repertoire of referential devices with which they contrast. In English, thirdperson pronouns alternate with full lexical noun phrases and reflexives. In many other languages, free pronouns appear only for contrast or emphasis, while bound pronouns appear obligatorily in every clause, whether additional nominals are present or not. Many languages lack regular third-person pronouns altogether; reference is indicated by means of full noun phrases, by demonstratives, or not at all. The general third-person pronouns of Central Pomo contrast not only with full noun phrases, but also with a set of empathetic pronouns and with the absence of any referential device whatsoeyer. When these alternatives are compared in natural speech, it becomes clear that their selection and interpretation are highly systematic, governed by factors of cognition and interaction. Work by Wallace Chafe is useful in understanding cognitive aspects of referential choice. He relates three components of thinking: consciousness, information, and the self (Chafe 1980:12):

Stalking the Susquehannocks

0. Introduction 1. Neighboring nations 2. The method of subgrouping 3. Evidence from lexical innovations 3.1. Tuscarora-Nottoway 3.2. Huron 3.3. The Five Nations languages 3.3.1. The Western languages 3.3.2. Onondaga 3.3.3. The Eastern languages 3.4. Conclusions from lexical evidence 4. Evidence from phonological innovations 4.1. Tuscarora-Nottoway 4.2. Huron 4.3. The Western languages 4.3.1. Seneca 4.3.2. Cayuga 4.4. Onondaga 4.5. The Eastern languages 4.5.1. Oneida 4.5.2. Mohawk 5. Conclusions 6. Appendix (vocabularies)

Northern Iroquoian texts

This volume includes 18 texts in a variety of genres from Northern Iorquoian languages with word-by-word glosses, making explicit the richness of Iroquoian grammar as it is used in context. This collection will be of interest to anthropologists, linguists, typologists, and aficionados of oral narrative, as well as to speakers and learners of Iroquoian languages.

Exuberant Complexity: The Interplay of Morphology, Syntax, and Prosody in Central Alaskan Yup'ik

Written varieties of many languages show greater syntactic complexity than their spoken counterparts. The difference is not surprising: writers have more time to create elaborate structures than speakers, who must produce speech in a steady stream. As documentation grows of the effects of language contact in the Americas, it is becoming ever clearer that exposure to European languages with strong literary traditions has often had a significant impact on syntactic structure. Here it is shown that though contact can indeed result in copied markers or replicated categories, it is not a precondition for the development of complexity. 1. Spoken and written language A number of works have documented the fact that overall, written language tends to show greater syntactic complexity than spoken language, such as CHAFE 1985, BIBER 1988, ROMAINE 1992, NEWMEYER 2002, KARLSSON 2007, and LAURY & ONO 2010. (Syntactic complexity is understood here in a specific sense: the combination of multiple clauses within a single sentence.) Of course within each medium, different genres can show different degrees and types of elaboration, so the two are not discrete. Though academic prose is likely to show greater complexity than a bus stop conversation, for example, an informal email message might show less complexity than formal oratory. Overall, however, written styles tend to be characterized by greater syntactic elaboration: writers have the luxury of time to compose their messages, while speakers are under certain pressures to produce a steady stream of speech in order to hold their audience. It appears that the existence of a well-developed literary tradition can in turn affect the complexity of the spoken language. At least some of the elaborated constructions developed by writers can be routinized over time: recurring patterns of expression can become conventionalized in syntactic constructions. Some of these eventually find their way into speech. At the same time, there is growing documentation of the effects of European languages with literary traditions on unwritten languages of the Americas. Contact effects appear not only in the lexicon, but also in grammar, particularly syntax (KARTUNNEN 1976, CAMPBELL 1987, MITHUN 1992, In press, AIKHENVALD 2002, HEINE & KUTEVA 2005, 2006, GUTIERREZ-MORALES 2008, and others). In some instances, European syntactic markers and structures have replaced native ones, but in others, they have resulted in new constructions where none existed before. Such innovations do not of course indicate that complex ideas were not expressed before contact. Spoken language contains powerful resources for indicating relationships among ideas that written language lacks, such as pitch, volume, and rhythm. These innovations have simply added specificity to the grammar. Such contact effects raise interesting questions concerning the extent to which the development of elaborate syntactic complexity is triggered by literacy or contact with a language that has literary traditions. The languages of the Americas provide a fruitful area for the investigation of such questions since, with certain notable exceptions, most did not have written traditions of their own before their speakers came into contact with European colonizers. As awareness is growing of the potentially powerful role of language contact in shaping grammar, more is being discovered about the ways in which European languages are affecting languages of the New World. Here it will be shown that though contact can indeed result in copied markers and replicated categories, it is not a precondition for the development of complexity. 2. Replicated markers A large number of American languages, particularly those indigenous to Middle and South America, have copied syntactic markers directly from Spanish or Portuguese. Examples can be seen in Sierra Popoluca, a Mixe-Zoquean language indigenous to Mexico. (1) Sierra Popoluca: Salome Gutierrez, speaker p.c. a. „She said, „I have to go to the river‟, pero i’x je’m ichɨɨxi’ moongpa’ ixɨ’ ikaajtsayhoom. but she saw her baby sleeping in his hammock. Nɨmpa, “Siga anakyuspa yɨ’p chɨɨxi’ She said, “If I wake this baby up, ejtee puej mojpa weeje’ . . . and then he starts crying, . . .‟ b. „Then the woman filled her pail poorke seetto’oba’m ichɨɨ’ imaanɨk. because she wanted to get back to her baby, her son.‟ These markers of complex syntactic constructions obviously have roots in Spanish: Sierra Popoluca pwej [pweh] „then‟ from Spanish pwes, pero „but‟ from Spanish pero, si-ga „if‟ from Spanish si, and poorke „because‟ from Spanish porque. Speaker Salome Gutierrez-Morales reports (p.c.) that 50 years ago, no one in his community knew any Spanish. At present, the entire younger generation speaks Spanish, most of them exclusively. It is astonishing to imagine that such transfers of syntactic markers, and perhaps syntactic complexity, could occur so quickly. As Gutierrez-Morales points out, however (2008), the story is more interesting. The conditional siga „if‟ seen in (1), a reduction of the longer form si’iga, contains an element si, presumably from Spanish. But like many of the other copied markers, this one actually entered the language via earlier bilingualism with neighboring Nahuatl dialects, whose speakers had been the ones in contact with Spanish speakers. The element iga is a general complementizer in the neighboring Mecayapan Nahuatl, where it continues a form related to Classical Nahuatl iica. Modern Mecayapan also contains a conditional marker si’iga, similarly often reduced to siga. Sierra Popoluca apparently took its Spanish-based conditional marker, and other complex syntactic constructions, from its neighbour. There is no indication that the Spanish markers replaced existing markers with the same functions in Sierra Popoluca. Still today the constructions signalled by them compete with unmarked sequences of clauses. It could be said, then, that at least some of the syntactic complexity in modern Sierra Popoluca was initially triggered by contact with Spanish, though the transfer was not direct. 3. Replicated categories Language contact may have other effects which can be more difficult to identify, particularly in the absence of a lengthy written record. Bilingual speakers may seek to replicate a pattern from one of their languages in the other, using material native to that second language. Such a situation can be seen in languages of the Iroquoian family indigenous to eastern North America (MITHUN 1992). The languages in this family from which we have documentation of connected speech all contain coordinating conjunctions. Most of the forms are not cognate, however. (2) Iroquoian coordinating conjunctions: „and‟ Mohawk tanon’ Oneida okhaleʔ Onondaga ohni’ Cayuga hni’ Seneca kho Wyandot tu:di’ Tuscarora tisne’ Cherokee aleʔ, =hno The positions of the conjunctions vary across the languages as well: they occur between the conjuncts, after all conjuncts, or after the first word of the second conjunct. There is thus no basis for reconstructing a coordinate construction for their common ancestor, Proto-Iroquoian, from which the modern constructions could have developed. The coordinate constructions in the modern languages also differ in their degrees of grammatical development and integration into the grammar, as well as in their frequency and obligatoriness. In Onondaga, for example, coordinate constituents are usually linked by intonation alone, while in Mohawk, they may be linked just by intonation but are more often linked overtly. In Cherokee, conjunctions are common in writing but rare in speech. In fact the etymological sources of most of the coordinating conjunctions can still be seen: they are descended from various kinds of discourse adverbials. (3) Sources in discourse adverbials Mohawk tah non:we’ „moreover‟, „so now‟ „now then‟ Oneida ok+aleʔ „just + again‟ Onondaga ohni’ „also‟ Cayuga hni’ „also‟ Seneca khoh „too‟ Wyandot thu + diʔ „there + also‟ Cherokee aleʔ „again‟ Comparison of the modern languages with 19 th century records reveals that the syntactic constructions have begun to solidify relatively recently, coinciding with the bilingualism of Iroquoian speakers in English and French . 4. Central Alaskan Yup’ik In contrast with Sierra Popoluca and the Iroquoian languages, languages of the Eskimo-Aleut family seem surprisingly devoid of coordinating and subordinating conjunctions. Examples here are drawn from Central Alaskan Yup‟ik, spoken in southwestern Alaska. The sentence in (4) was uttered by someone recounting a dream. It was later translated by the speaker as „When I saw them take you away because you had died, I ate our duck.‟ Despite the syntactic complexity of the English translation, the Yup‟ik original contained no obvious conjunctions or complementizers. (Punctuation reflects intonation.) (4) Yup‟ik complex sentence without conjunctions: George Charles, speaker p.c. Tangerrluten, I saw you ayaulluten, pillragni, took you away they did tuqullruavet, you died yaqulegpuk wiinga, nerellruaqa. our duck I myself I ate it The relations among these clauses are actually marked morphologically. Yup‟ik verbs consist of a base plus an inflectional ending. The base consists of a root optionally followed by various suffixes. The ending consists of a mood suffix plus pronominal suffix which identifies the core participants of the clause, one for intransitives and two for transitives. (5) Basic Yup‟ik verb morphology Nere-llru-a-qa eat-PAST-INTRANSITIVE.INDICATIVE-1SG/3SG „I ate it.‟ ROOT (SUFFIXES) MOOD PRONOMINAL SUFFIX

The status of tense within inflection

One of the most frequently cited examples of a prototypical inflectional category is tense. Yet the motivation for classifying tense as inflectional varies according to the criteria proposed to delineate inflection from derivation. Inflection has often been taken as a cluster concept composed of characteristics such as those detailed in Bauer (1983), Scalise (1988) and Plank (1994). Categories may thus be inflectional to varying degrees, depending on the number of pertinent characteristics they exhibit. Sometimes a single characteristic has been seen as criterial, such as obligatoriness or relevance to the syntax. The definition of syntactic relevance depends in turn on the particular view of syntax assumed.

Beyond the Core: Typological Variation in the Identification of Participants

Languages vary not only in their argument categories but also in the relative burden borne by core arguments, on the one hand, and obliques or adjuncts, on the other, in conveying information. Here it is shown that the kinds of participants identified in many languages with oblique nominals or adjuncts, such as companions, recipients, beneficiaries, instruments, sources, and goals, are usually identified by alternative structures in Mohawk. The only referents introduced by nominal adjuncts are places and times, entities that can characterize whole situations. The roles of all participants are specified in or inferable from the verb: in pronominal prefixes, applicative suffixes, incorporated nouns, directional prefixes, and the semantics of the verb stem. It will be seen that such head‐marking structure is more than a simple formal variable. It can have important implications for the lexicon and for issues in language documentation.

Affixation and Morphological Longevity

Often some of the oldest morphemes in a language are affixes, in part because they represent a later stage in natural processes of grammaticization; over time, lexical items may become grammatical markers and ultimately lose some of their formal substance. But what of the diachronic process of affixation itself? Does a transition from the status of free word to bound affix have any effect on the lifespan of an individual morpheme? The histories of certain grammatical systems indicate that the process of affixation can indeed affect longevity significantly, but in radically different directions. The direction of the effect depends on the function of the morpheme in question.

Prosody and independence: free and bound person marking

Anna Siewierska drew a primary distinction in her work on Person between morphologically free and bound forms. As she noted, languages with bound forms always also contain free forms, though the reverse is not necessarily true. The co-existence of two sets of forms within a language raises questions about differences in their status and function. Here such differences are examined in Mohawk, an Iroquoian language of North America. Comparison of the free and bound forms in unplanned speech reveals that an assumption of the free forms as basic cannot yield a coherent account. It is the bound forms that constitute a unified system, explicable in terms of general mechanisms by which person markers evolve over time. Fundamental to their development are their positions in the constructions they participate in, and the prosody of these constructions. The free forms simply constitute the residue of forms not subject to these developments.