Abstract
This paper shows that inverse marking and portmanteau agreement are in complementary distribution in Algonquin: inverse marking is possible only in contexts where portmanteau agreement is not. This correlation holds despite intralanguage variation in both phenomena. The paper proposes that the two phenomena pattern together because both are determined by the outcome of the Agree operation on Infl. When Infl enters a Multiple Agree relation with both arguments, the realization of portmanteau agreement morphology is possible. When Infl agrees only with the object, it duplicates the result of an earlier object agreement operation on Voice. The presence of identical features on Infl and Voice triggers an impoverishment operation that deletes the features of Voice, resulting in its spellout as an underspecified elsewhere form—which is the exponent that we know descriptively as the inverse marker. This analysis explains why inverse marking and portmanteau agreement never co-occur in Algonquin: the two phenomena are determined by alternative outcomes of the Agree operation on Infl. The analysis also enables a simple account of the intralanguage variation in the patterning of the two phenomena, which is shown to follow from variation in the specification of the probe on Infl.
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Notes
Interlinear glosses employ the Leipzig glossing conventions, with the following additions: 1pl = exclusive first-person plural, 21pl = inclusive first-person plural, 3 = proximate third person, 3′ = obviative third person, dir = direct, inv = inverse, t.s. = theme sign, X→Y = X acts on Y. Other abbreviations that occur in the paper are: PA = Proto-Algonquian, SUBJ = logical subject, OBJ = logical object, [Pers, Prox, Part, Addr] = [Person, Proximate, Participant, Addressee]. For compactness, feminine is used as a default in English translations of Algonquin 3sg forms, which show no masculine-feminine contrast.
Kitigan Zibi has also been known as River Desert or Maniwaki (as in Jones 1977).
The use of [Addressee] to distinguish 1st and 2nd persons follows Béjar and Rezac (2009), but either [Addressee] or [Speaker] would be equally sufficient for the purposes of my analysis. The representation of inclusive 1st-person plurals may involve both [Addressee] and [Speaker] (Harley and Ritter 2002).
Although I follow Béjar and Rezac’s approach to person features, I do not adopt their Cyclic Agree model of agreement. The Cyclic Agree analysis of Ojibwe theme signs in Béjar and Rezac (2009) is grounded in the premise that all theme signs are direct/inverse markers, but I argued in Sect. 3.1 that most theme signs are better understood as object agreement. Under this interpretation of the data, standard downward-probing Agree gives the simplest account.
The equidistance proposed in (13) is consistent with Richards’ (2001:102) suggestion that multiple specifiers created by A-movement are equidistant while those created by A-bar movement are not.
This definition of portmanteau agreement could be taken to apply not only to agreement suffixes like -agogw (Infl) but also to the inverse theme sign -igw (Voice), which is sensitive to the relative rank of the two arguments on the person hierarchy 1/2 > 3 > 3′ (Sect. 3.1). Because of their sensitivity to both arguments, inverse (and direct) theme signs have been characterized as portmanteaux by Trommer (2003) and Fry (2015). One important difference, however, is that the inverse theme sign expresses only a relation (“object outranks subject”) whereas a true portmanteau agreement marker such as -agogw indexes particular person and number features (1sg→2pl). In Sect. 5 the apparent portmanteau nature of the inverse theme sign will be attributed to an impoverishment operation that involves both Voice and Infl.
The 1pl suffix has two allomorphs, -inaːn (in (22)) and -imin (in (24)), which go back to Proto-Algonquian (PA) *-wenaːn and *-ehmenaːn respectively. PA *-wenaːn (> -inaːn) occurred in non-final position (i.e. when followed by a peripheral suffix) and *-ehmenaːn (> -imin) occurred in final position (i.e. when not followed by a peripheral suffix) (Goddard 2007). In Algonquin, the loss of final vowels has made the conditioning of the two allomorphs more opaque, as both can now be found in final position.
When an Algonquin clause contains two referential third persons, only one can be proximate; the other must be obviative (see e.g. Rhodes 1990). This restriction applies to referential third persons only. First, second, and impersonal third persons do not participate in or trigger obviation.
Similarly, Bruening (2005:22) suggests that in local forms in the Eastern Algonquian language Passamaquoddy, both arguments move to the specifier of InflP.
This generalization appears to hold in all Algonquian languages (Oxford 2017b), although space limitations prevent the presentation of supporting data here.
I assume that the agreement of Voice with the object does not prevent Infl from also agreeing with the object. That is, Chomsky’s (2000, 2001) Activity Condition does not constrain the outcome of the Agree operation in Algonquin. Baker (2008) has shown that this is the case for many languages; see Oxford (2017a) for discussion specific to Algonquian languages.
The formulation of the constraint as applying to “two adjacent heads” may in fact be too strong, as Neg can intervene between Voice and Infl without disrupting the inverse-marking pattern. Some notion of locality is required, however, as the constraint applies to Voice and Infl but does not apply to Voice and C: regardless of which argument C agrees with, C-agreement never affects the appearance of inverse marking. Alternatives to strict adjacency include “two heads within the same phase” (cf. Richards 2010) or “two adjacent phi-bearing heads,” with intervening heads that do not bear phi-features (such as Neg) being transparent (cf. the transparency of underspecified segments in phonological dissimilation, e.g. Steriade 1987). I leave the precise formulation of the constraint to future work.
I thank Bethany Lochbihler (p.c.) for expressing to me the insight that the inverse is “elsewhere-like.”
I thank an anonymous reviewer for bringing the Kadiwéu parallel to my attention.
Or, alternatively, if we assumed “tucking in” of the object in multiple-specifier configurations such as (45) (Richards 2001), we would predict the unmarked order to be uniformly Subject-Object.
Bruening (2001) suggests that the same effect may hold in Passamaquoddy as well: “the object of the Inverse should pattern with the subject of the Direct in word order” (65). However, in his textual data “there are simply not enough examples of Inverse clauses with overt NPs to draw any definitive conclusions” (68).
The insight that A-movement of inverse objects can derive the unmarked word order is from Bruening (2001:65). I differ from Bruening, however, on the triggering of this movement, which I attribute to an articulated probe on Infl° but Bruening (2005) attributes to an [EPP] feature that is optionally added to Voice in precisely those forms in which inverse marking appears: “If the feature is present, the clause ends up being inverse; if it is absent, direct” (20). The optional [EPP] approach misses the fact that the appearance of inverse marking is not, in fact, optional, but rather fully predictable from the person features of the arguments. For example, inverse marking is obligatory in an Independent 3→1 form and impossible in a 1→3 form. If the addition of the [EPP] feature is optional, what ensures that this option is always exercised in 3→1 forms and never exercised in 1→3 forms?
The abbreviations in the glosses are those of Bruening (2005), except his obv is replaced by 3′.
Direct forms are normally characterized as 3→3′, but the direct form in (49a) is actually 3′→3′, with both arguments obviative. However, the subject otayihshan ‘his dog’ is marked as obviative only because it is possessed by a third person. Rhodes (1990:102,111–12) shows that such instances of DP-internal “possessor obviation” often do not affect the external morphosyntax of the DP, which can behave as though it were proximate for the purposes of apposition, agreement, and inverse marking. This is the case in the 3′→3′ direct form in (49a), which has the same morphosyntax as a regular 3→3′ direct form.
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Acknowledgements
The material in this paper has benefited from the helpful comments of Jonathan Bobaljik, Phil Branigan, Brandon Fry, Michael Hamilton, Bethany Lochbihler, and four anonymous reviewers, as well as audiences at WCCFL 32 (USC), WSCLA 19 (Memorial), the 47th Algonquian Conference (Manitoba), WCCFL 34 (Utah), NELS 47 (UMass Amherst), and the University of Ottawa. The research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (Insight Development Grant 430-2016-00680).
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Appendix: Algonquin agreement paradigms
Appendix: Algonquin agreement paradigms
Tables 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 display the agreement paradigms for Kitigan Zibi Algonquin AI (Animate Intransitive) and TA (Transitive Animate) verbs as provided in Jones (1977). The orthography follows that of Jones, with two exceptions: the phoneme /dƷ/ is written as <j> instead of <dj> (cf. Valentine 2001) and long vowels are marked by a colon instead of an acute accent.
The paradigms show the underlying morphemic forms. Surface forms are derived by applying the following rules: (1) /w/ deletes word-finally; (2) /i/ deletes word-finally; (3) /i/ deletes after a vowel; (4) /a/ deletes after a vowel; (5) /w-i/ coalesces to /o/; (6) /-igw-waː/ becomes /-igowaː/; (7) /-igw-j/ becomes /-igoj/; (8) /-igw-an/ becomes /-igoːn/; (9) /-ih-g/ becomes /-ik/.
The following abbreviations are used in the table headers: Pfx = person prefix (Infl); Agr = agreement; T.S. = theme sign (Voice); Centr = central agreement (Infl); Periph = peripheral agreement (C). All instances of inverse marking and portmanteau agreement (or multiple Infl-agreement) are shown in bold.
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Oxford, W. Inverse marking and Multiple Agree in Algonquin. Nat Lang Linguist Theory 37, 955–996 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11049-018-9428-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11049-018-9428-x