Person and number agreement in Dumi

Dados Bibliográficos

ID3987537
AutoresJochen Trommer (0000-0001-6381-2418, autor correspondente)
Ano2006
Volume44
Fascículo5
Data de publicação2006-01-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoLinguistics (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0024-3949 • E-ISSN: 1613-396X
EditoraWalter de Gruyter GmbH (PUBLISHER • DE)
DOI10.1515/ling.2006.033
OpenAlexW1990359169
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas5
Referências citadas10

Aissen (1999, 2003) argues that prominence hierarchy effects in morphosyntax are governed by fixed rankings of markedness constraints related to the hierarchies themselves by harmonic alignment (Prince and Smolensky 1993). In this article, I analyze the effects of prominence hierarchies on agreement in Dumi, an endangered Kiranti language spoken in Eastern Nepal (van Driem 1993), and argue that the empirical facts can be captured best if hierarchy effects follow from freely rankable binary preference and markedness constraints, not from the fixed ranking of markedness constraints. The analysis further reveals the relevance of number hierarchies for agreement, which are largely neglected in the literature. Thus Dumi resorts to the hierarchy plural > dual > singular that competes with the parallel effects of the more standard person hierarchy (1st > 2nd > 3rd person) on agreement control and also triggers an as yet undocumented number inverse marking, which indicates if one argument of a verb is more prominent for number than the other, but less prominent for person

Argument (complex analysis) · Hierarchy · Linguistics · Markedness · Plural · Political science · Ranking (information retrieval) · Sociology · Syntax · Verb · Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies · Law · Linguistic Variation and Morphology · Mathematics · Philosophy · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation