Part II Morphology (I) Nominal morphology
2.23.3 Puma kinship terms and their Tibeto-Burman cognates
In this section we compare and contrast the Puma kinship terms with a number of cognates in Tibeto-Burman languages spoken in Nepal. We deal with the terms in Puma which have clear Tibeto-Burman cognates and subsequently a number of kinship terms that are related to Tibeto-Burman etyma. The Puma terms ma ‘mother’ and pa ‘father’
are identical to the Tibeto-Burman roots reconstructed by Benedict *ma ‘mother’ (1972:
148), *pa ‘father’(1972: 19). The Puma term cha ‘child’ corresponds to the Tibeto- Burman reconstruction *tsa~*za ‘child (offspring)’ (1972: 27) as well as in other Tibeto-Burman languages such as Thakali, Tamang and Gurung (cf. Sharma 2000: 16;
Turin 2012: 147).
Puma nana ‘father’s elder sister’ corresponds to Tibeto-Burman *ni(y) ‘father’s sister’ or ‘mother-in-law’ (Benedict 1972: 69), and also to Bantawa nana ‘father’s elder sister’, Newar nini ‘the husband’s sister, father’s sister’, Thangmi nini ‘father’s sister,
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mother’s brother’s wife’ (Turin 2012: 147); Limbu nyaʔ ‘cross aunt’ (van Driem 1987:
483); Dumi nini ‘paternal aunt’ (van Driem 1993: 402); Yamphu niŋi ‘mother’s brother’s wife’ (Rutgers 1998: 560) and Kulung ni ‘paternal aunt’ (Tolsma 1999: 223).
Puma bʌŋŋa ‘uncle’ appears to be cognate to Tibetan a-baṅ = baṅ-po ‘father’s sister’s husband, mother’s sister’s husband’, Cepang pang ‘uncle’, Vayu pong-pong
‘father’s brother’ and archaic Chinese xiwaŋ/xiwaŋs < *phwaŋ (Davids & van Driem 1985: 136), corresponding to which Benedict (1972) posits the reconstructed Tibeto- Burman root *bwaŋ ~ *pwaŋ ‘father’s brother’.
In Puma, kinship terms are employed to address and to consanguineal and affinal relatives. Kinship terms in practice often replace an individual’s given name, both as a term of address and of reference. Kinship terms are also used metaphorically as terms of address and reference for non-kin in which a person’s age and social position with respect to speaker determines the choice of kinship term used. For example, an elderly woman may be addressed by a younger person as dimo
‘grandmother (VOC)’ or nano ‘elder sister (VOC)’, depending on how great she imagines the age difference to be. Such metaphorical usage of kinship terms for non-kin is widely observed in many other cultures and is certainly prominent among the peoples of Nepal (Davids & van Driem 1985: 139; Turin 2012: 148). The ordinal terms also are used by non-kin familiar with the family of the addressed. For example, the ninth-born son of family is called ʌntʌreo ‘ninth-born male’ (MAS, VOC) by the parents and the neighbours.
2.24 Case marking
Case markers constitute a closed class of bound morphemes. All case markers in Puma are suffixes which are used to distinguish grammatical roles (see Sections 6.2 and 3.10).
When a noun is marked for non-singular, the case-marking suffix follows the number markers. In accordance with cross-linguistic patterns of the agentivity hierarchy (Payne 2008: 150–151), humans are more likely to appear for marking than animals, and animals are more likely to appear for marking than things. We assume that the subject may be absolutive, ergative, dative, possessive, genitive, or locative (see Section 7.13).
In di-transitive constructions, a recipient (primary object) may be either dative or absolutive or sometimes optionally marked. A detailed analysis of object marking is described in Chapter 3.
Different affixes are added to an NP to indicate the grammatical relation of that NP, these are referred to as case markers. These types of case markers are sometimes referred to as grammatical case markers, to distinguish them from semantic case markers, which are determined on the basis of semantic roles (cf. Kroeger 2007).
In terms of case marking, the Puma language can be classified as morphologically split ergative because the case-marking on intransitive subjects is the same as that on some transitive objects, but different from that on transitive subjects, which take a unique marker. The case marker used for transitive subjects (typically the agent or experiencer) is called ERGATIVE case, while the case marker used for transitive objects and intransitive subjects is called ABSOLUTIVE case. Note that some objects in Puma are in the DATIVE case:
(36) (a) ŋa-a marchacha-lai khaŋ-u-ŋ 1SG-ERG girl-DAT see-3P-1SG.A
‘I saw the girl.’
khaŋma ‘see’ < Experiencer, Theme >
| |
Case: ERG DAT
(b) ŋa-a khim khaŋ-u-ŋ 1SG-ERG house.ABS see-3P-1SG.A
‘I saw a house.’
khaŋma ‘see’ < Experiencer, Theme >
| |
Case: ERG ABS
(c) marchacha khap-a girl.ABS cry-PST
‘The girl cried.’
khapma ‘weep’ < Theme >
| Case: ABS
As these examples illustrate that in Puma most patients (object) of transitive clauses get the same case as subjects of intransitive clauses, namely the absolutive case, whereas agents of transitive clause take a distinct case marker -a. This kind of pattern is cross- linguistically the most common among case-marking languages (Kroeger 2007).
A case-marking pattern in ditransitive constructions is distinct from monotransitive constructions. A case form that is used for transitive subjects is normally
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called the ergative case in (37), and a case form that is used for intransitive subjects and transitive objects is normally called the absolutive case; thus it can be said that the absolutive case as in (36b) is unmarked, whereas in (37) the secondary object (T argument) is in absolutive case as it is unmarked because a theme argument can never take case-marking.
(37) khʌnna-a ŋa-lai ʌk-ta chap-ma=pa tʌ-itd-oŋ
2SG-ERG 1SG-DAT one-CLF write-INF=INSTR.NMLZ 2-give-1SG.S/P.PST
‘You gave me a pen.’
itma ‘give’ < Agent , Recipient, Theme >
| | |
Case: ERG DAT ABS
This example shows that Puma is a split object language in which theme takes absolutive case marker, whereas recipient takes dative case marker (-lai) (cf. Bickel et al. 2007).
2.25 Grammatical case vs. semantic case
Puma has grammatical and semantic case markers, which are normally used for arguments S, A and P, and oblique arguments and some adjuncts, respectively. In Puma, whereas some noun phrases are obligatorily marked for case, other noun phrases remain unmarked. Cases contrast with adpositions as they are bound formatives and do not govern case but rather affix to nouns that are governed (Bickel & Nichols 2007: 94).
Much of the case terminology employed here is discussed in Bickel and Nichols’s work on inflection (2007: 92). The Puma case suffixes are summarised in Table 49.
Table 49: Case markers
Case Gloss Suffix Function
GRAMMATICAL CASES ERG -a ergative, required on the overt agent in transitive clauses and an instrumental marker introducing oblique instruments (AGT)
DAT -lai dative, required on the primary object, and optional on the direct object
POSS/GEN -bo possessive, case marker on the modifier of possessive constructions
SEMANTIC CASES PRIMARY CASES
GEN.LOC -do locative, required to show neutral locations
UP.LOC -di locative, required to point up or high level
DOWN.LOC -i locative, required to point down or low level
LEVEL.LOC -ya locative, required to point level or across
COM1 -oŋ comitative: association ‘with’ animate
COM17 2 GEN pʌ-do
comitative: ‘with’ inanimate
UP pʌ-di
DOWN pʌ-i
LEVEL pʌ-ya
SECONDARY CASES ABL -ʌkʌŋ ablative, suffixed to locatives: ‘away from’
ALL -tni allative, suffixed to locatives: ‘to’ or ‘towards’
2.26 Grammatical cases