Clause structures
3.2.4 Predicative possession
In Puma we can also consider predicate possessives to be a subtype of existential clauses, as they occur with the copula verb yuŋ. Possession can be indicated in a number of different ways, but the only one that is considered here is the existential one.
Languages differ considerably in the ways they express predicate possession. In some languages such as English, the possessive relationship between possessor and possessed item is expressed with a transitive construction (Dryer 2007).
(125) Mary has a car.
This is an instance of the Have-possessive (Stassen 2001) in which the possessor NP
occurs as the subject and possessed NP occurs as the complement of a ‘have’-verb.
Opposed to the Have-possessive, many languages employ predicate locatives or existential clauses to express such a meaning. Cross-linguistically, an existential possessive construction has the basic form of an existential clause, employing a one- place predicate with a locational or existential meaning. They have frequently grammaticalised from verbs with more specific meanings, like ‘to be at’, ‘to be there’, and ‘to exist’ (Dryer 2007). The difference between these types lies in the encoding of the possessor NP and the possessed NP.
Dryer (2007) notes that in many languages, predicate possession clauses are similar to existential clauses to some extent but the possessor expression is treated somewhat differently. Consider example (126) from Puma where we have a comitative construction (predicate) to express the meaning of possession.
(126) (a) ŋa-oŋ uŋ-khimhoŋma yuŋ-yaŋ 1SG-COM1 1SG.POSS-wife.ABS be-IPFV
‘I have a wife.’ (Literary: ‘Wife is with me.’) (b) ŋa-pʌ-do kar yuŋ-yaŋ
1SG-COM2-GEN.LOC car.ABS be-IPFV
‘I have a car.’ (Literary: ‘Car is with me.’)
Example (126) shows that the predicate possession clause, with a possessed item in the absolutive case and the possessor in the comitative case, as in (126a) and (126b).
In the oblique possessive, the possessed NP occurs as the grammatical subject of an ‘exist’-predicate, while the possessor NP occurs in some oblique form (Stassen 2001). The oblique marking on the possessor NP has its basic meaning for the specification of a locational relation. Depending on the particular type of locational relation selected in many languages, it would be possible to further subcategorise this type into the following:
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(127) (a) Locative possessive (with the possessor NP being marked by some elements meaning ‘at’, ‘on’ or ‘in’), as in Mongolic (Poppe 1954: 147), a language group spoken in China, Russia, Afghanistan and Kyrgyzstan.
(b) Dative possessive (with a marker ‘to’ or ‘for’ on the possessor NP), as in Kannada (Sridhar 1990), a Dravidian language spoken in southern India.
(c) Comitative possessive (with a marker ‘with’), as illustrated in (126a) from Puma, and also found in Finnish (Sulkala & Karjalainen 1992).
Puma presents a somewhat more complicated case, as two ways of expressing existential possession are possible. Example (128a) is a full version of genitive possessive which is synonymous to example (128b), a contracted version of genitive possessive. Note that (128c) is an ungrammatical (see cf. Section 2.26.3 for details).
The predicate only indicates existential meaning but not identificational meaning, in the case of identificational meaning, the copula is not used.
(128) (a) uŋ-bo uŋ-khimhoŋma yuŋ-yaŋ
1SG.POSS-GEN 1SG.POSS-wife.ABS be-IPFV
‘I have a wife.’ (Literally: ‘My wife exists.’) (b) uŋ khimhoŋma yuŋ-yaŋ
1SG.POSS wife.ABS be-IPFV
‘I have a wife.’ (Literally: ‘My wife exists.’) (c) *uŋ-bo khimhoŋma yuŋ-yaŋ
1SG.POSS-GEN wife.ABS be-IPFV
‘I have a wife.’ (Intended: ‘My wife exists.’) 3.3 Verbal predicates
While clauses with non-verbal predicates are exceptional and less frequent in most languages, clauses with verbal predicates can be found with high frequency in all languages (cf. Dryer 2007). There are different types of clauses with verbal predicates whose properties vary considerably across languages. An analysis of verbal predicates is described in Section 3.4.
3.4 Predicate types
Puma verbs can be classified according to the number and types of arguments they take.
We assume that each predicate in every language is correlated with a set of arguments, the number and type of which are not systematically predictable from the meaning of the verb. Examples of the basic predicates types of verbs are presented in (129) in
which predicates such as run and sleep are one place predicates, love and finish are two place predicates, and give is a three place predicate.
(129)(a) run <1> Mary1 ran.
(b) sleep <1> Mira1 sleeps.
(c) love <1, 2> Ram1 loves Sita2. (d) finish <1, 2> Jen1 finished the work2. (e) give <1, 2, 3> Martin1 gave Nubia2 a book3.
Intransitive clauses are normally characterised by a single argument while transitive clauses involve two arguments. There are many languages in which predicates denoting states of weather require no arguments. In Puma weather predicates can be expressed by a single word, a bare predicate with no arguments. It does not require dummy pronoun like it in English.
(130) <namchoyaŋ> nam-cho-yaŋ0
sun-be.surplus-IPFV
‘It is hot.’
Example (130) shows that nam ‘sun’ is verbal which we can contrast with the verb here.
The verb cho- ‘be.surplus’ which is homophonous to cho ‘plough’ is not productive and it only occurs in these zero-argument clauses. It is not simply nam cho-yaŋ, with sun being a nominal with zero-marked abslutive because it only occurs with nam ‘sun’.
These clauses are grammatically intransitive and semantically non-argument clauses (cf.
Dryer 2007). Puma is actually not unusual cross-linguistically in using non-argument verbs, as lots of languages like Latin (Peter Austin, p.c.), Tahitian (Tryon 1970), Mandarian Chinese, and Spanish have zero-argument verbs. For some weather notions, Puma employs a regular intransitive verb construction.
(131) (a) wa ta-yaŋ water.ABS come-IPFV
‘It is raining.’ (Literally: ‘Water is coming.’) Compare this with:
(b) khokku ta-yaŋ 3SG.ABS come-IPFV
‘S/he is coming.’
The corresponding Puma examples of the English examples given in (129) are as follows:
185 (132)(a) run <1> mary onh-a
Mary.ABS run-PST
‘Mary1 ran.’
(b) sleep <1> mary ips-a Mary.ABS sleep-PST Mary1 slept.
(c) love <1, 2> ram-a sita-lai som-tukd-i Ram-ERG Sita-DAT love-love-3P
Ram1 loves Sita2.
(d) finish <1, 2> jen-a kām-a cil-i Jen-ERG work-N.NATIV finish-3P
Jen1 finished the work2.
(e) give <1, 2, 3> martin-a nubia-lai kitāp itd-i Martin-ERG Nubia-DAT book.ABS give-3P
Martin1 gave Nubia2 a book3. 3.5 Argument types
The arguments of a predicate are realised syntactically as NPs bearing a grammatical function, such as S(ubject), and O(bject), and semantic roles, such as A(gent), P(atient), G(oal), and T(heme). Grammatical functions and semantic roles are terms that are frequently used in grammars for describing languages. The abbreviations for grammatical functions S (intransitive subject), A (transitive subject), P (transitive object), and T (theme-like argument of a ditransitive) and G (goal-like argument of a ditransitive) have been used in the literature since the 1970s to describe morphosyntax and to characterise the differences between major alignment patterns such as ergative- absolutive vs. nominative-accusative that relate to the coding and behaviour of arguments in different languages (Haspelmath 2011).
Verb arguments are classified into semantic categories according to the kind of role they play in relation to their predicates. Semantic roles involve information that is also relevant for meaning. We use the term argument structure to refer to syntactically relevant lexical information that specifies the arguments of a predicate and their semantic and syntactic properties, following Bresnan (2001), Babby (2011) and Van Valin (2005), among others.
Not all conceptions of argument structure are the same. Some scholars like Bresnan and Zaenen (1990) and Bresnan (2001) claim that argument structure is a
distinct syntactic representation, while Alsina (Alsina 1993: 85) suggests that a- structure is a purely semantic representation. Several different notions of a-structure are presented in different linguistic theories.
Babby (2011) proposes that argument structure of verbs is subject to a universal hierarchy which determines cases and grammatical relations of NPs within clauses.
Other works on argument structures exist which use different models, such as Role and Reference Grammar (Pavey 2010; Van Valin 2005; Van Valin & LaPolla 1997), argument realization (Hovav & Levin 2007), Lexical Functional Grammar (Alsina 1993; Mohanan 1994; Butt 1995; Bresnan 2001) and Government Binding Theory (Grimshaw 1990).
Most languages have some way of distinguishing A, transitive subject which is prototypically an agent, from P, transitive object which is prototypically a patient, although it should be noted that the A need not be an agent, nor need the P be a patient;
they can bear other thematic roles, such as experiencer for A and stimulus for P. Thus, semantic roles such as Agent and Patient vary according to different types of predicates.
Predicates determine the semantic role(s) of the arguments associated with them in clauses, and can be grouped into classes (see Chapter 4) according to this association.
Consider verbs of impact in English, followed by the Puma counterparts where A is typically an Agent, while P is typically a Patient:
(133) ENGLISH
(a) John beats Fred.
(b) John slaps Fred.
(c) John punches Fred.
(134) PUMA
(a) john-a fred-lai ɖher-i John-ERG Fred-DAT beat-3P
‘John beats Fred.’
(b) john-a fred-lai cetdh-i John-ERG Fred-DAT hit-3P
‘John hits Fred.’
Note that semantically English distinguishes between beat and hit. The Puma counterpart of hit is cetdh which does not show any prepositional alternations as in hit in English. Thus, the A argument of hit in English may not be the same as the A
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argument of beat. However, in Puma the A argument of both ɖher and cetdh are the same. For verbs of perception, however, A is typically an experiencer and P as the perceived entity has the semantic role of Stimulus.
(135) (a) piṭʌr-a fred-lai khaŋŋ-i Peter-ERG Fred-DAT see-3P
‘Peter sees Fred.’
(b) piṭʌr-a fred-lai en-i Peter-ERG Fred-DAT hear-3P
‘Peter heard Fred.’
The argument structure of the two different predicate classes can be represented:
(136) (a) ɖher ‘beat’ <Agent, Patient> for verbs of impact (b) khaŋ ‘see’ <Experiencer, Stimulus> for verbs of perception
For grammatical relations I follow the cross-linguistic typological literature (Dixon 1972; Comrie 1978; Van Valin 1981) and use ‘S’ for the subject of an intransitive verb,
‘P’ for the patient-like argument of a prototypical transitive verb, and ‘A’ for the agent- like argument of a prototypical transitive verb:
(137) S The subject-like arguments of intransitive clauses A The more agent-like arguments of transitive clauses P The more patient-like arguments of transitive clauses 3.6 Basic clause types
The grammatical unit that expresses a predicate, its argument(s) and TAM (tense, aspect and mood) is called a clause or simple sentence. Following Dryer (2007), clause types can be distinguished in four ways in a language. They are:
(138) (a) a distinction between declarative, interrogative, and imperative clauses;
(b) a distinction between main clause and dependent clause;
(c) a distinction in terms of information structure, and grammatical consequences such as voice, topic and focus; and
(d) the basic distinction between verbal and non-verbal predicates which we already discussed above in Sections 3.2 and 3.3.
Among clauses with verbal predicates, we can make further distinctions based on the argument structure of the verb, including a distinction between one-argument verbs, two-argument verbs and three-argument verbs. Intransitive, monotransitive and
ditransitive clauses employ one-place predicate, two-place predicate and three-place predicate, respectively. I begin my discussion with intransitive clauses.
Kiranti languages are typically characterised by complex verbal agreement. Puma also is a polysynthetic and complex pronominalised language where words can consists of a series of morphemes, most typically a root and one or more suffixes. The system of verbal agreement, where verbs agree with subjects and objects, is very complex. It is interesting to note that the complex verbal morphology of Thangmi, a Tibeto Burman language spoken in Nepal, provides a fascinating link between the canonical Kiranti verbal agreement patterns and their wider Tibeto-Burman verb agreement, which is reminiscent of the Kiranti model. However, it should be noticed that in Thangmi a transitive verb agrees with A or P arguments, and often both, and unlike Kiranti languages, Thangmi does not distinguish dual from plural number, not does it exhibit an inclusive-exclusive distinction (Turin 1998: 477). Turin (1998: 488) notes that Thangmi is a living example of the Proto-Kiranti model of verbal agreement patterns and more canonically Kiranti in morphological structure than some extrant Kiranti languages (see Section 2.31), while the verbal morphology of Thangmi is clearly related to Dolkha Newar verbal agreement pattern.
3.7 Intransitive clauses
While an intransitive predicate takes a single argument, the distinction can be further described in terms of objects in many languages. Intransitive clauses do not have objects, while transitive clauses do. The grammatical criteria for distinguishing transitive and intransitive clauses may vary considerably from language to language (cf.
Dryer 2007).
It is interesting to note that Puma possesses two types of intransitive clauses:
unergative intransitive clauses and unaccusative intransitive clauses. This contrast is also described as ‘split-S’ by Dixon (1994) who argues for a division of intransitive clauses where the single argument (S) reveals grammatical properties similar to those of the more agent-like argument in a transitive clause (labeled SA) or to those of the more patient-like argument in a transitive clause (labeled SP).
Split-S or the unergative/unaccusative distinction surfaces in different ways in the world’s languages (Dryer 2007). There are languages like Bukiyip (cf. Dryer 2007), a Torricelli language spoken in Papua New Guinea, (and Puma, as we will see below) in
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which some intransitive verbs have an S cross-referenced on the verb in the same way as the A in a transitive clause, and other intransitive verbs whose S is cross-referenced on the verb like the P in a transitive clause.