Perfective marking conditioned by transitivity status in Western Mande

Constructional competition, specialization and merger

Datos Bibliográficos

ID20344753
AutoresDmitry Idiatov (0000-0002-9662-1340, Languages and Cultures of Africa (CNRS – USPC/INALCO), autor de correspondencia)
Año2020
Volumen37
Número1
Páginas43-82
Fecha de publicación2020-04-21
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaDiachronica (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0176-4225 • E-ISSN: 1569-9714
EditorialJohn Benjamins Publishing Company (PUBLISHER • NL)
DOI10.1075/dia.18050.idi
OpenAlexW3004650417
IdiomaEN
Referencias citadas16

This paper provides a diachronic construction-based explanation of the differential perfective marking conditioned by transitivity status in Western Mande languages, using the Greater Manding group as an exemplar case. This typologically unusual phenomenon has previously been erroneously cast in terms of case alignment, either synchronically (in terms of bidirectional case markers) or historically (in terms of an earlier split-ergative stage). The central insight of my explanation is that the Positive Perfective constructions of the Western Mande languages are multiple-source constructions. The in-depth reconstruction of these constructions presented in the paper provides a theoretically significant illustration of a pattern of repeated emergence of constructional competition in a particular semantic domain, which is subsequently resolved through constructional specialization and merger, resulting in multiple-source constructions and a typologically unusual pattern of differential TAM and polarity marking

Biology · Epistemology · Ergative case · Linguistics · Phenomenon · Transitive relation · History · Language, Linguistics, Cultural Analysis · Linguistic Variation and Morphology · Mathematics · Philosophy · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation