Title: GEN.SG = NOM.PL: A mystery solved?
Variant title:
- GEN.SG = NOM.PL: Záhada vyřešena?
Source document: Linguistica Brunensia. 2016, vol. 64, iss. 1, pp. 25-40
Extent
25-40
-
ISSN1803-7410 (print)2336-4440 (online)
Stable URL (handle): https://hdl.handle.net/11222.digilib/135448
Type: Article
Language
License: Not specified license
Notice: These citations are automatically created and might not follow citation rules properly.
Abstract(s)
This paper proposes an explanation for the identity of form between GEN.SG and NOM.PL. The paper first shows that the homonymy is attested in Czech as well as a number of other languages. Because of the nature of the categories involved, the homonymy is interesting for theories of syncretism. Specifically, the two terms of syncretism do not form a natural class on any dimension (SG vs. PL and NOM vs. GEN). The main question that arises in this context is whether syncretism can target any two arbitrary cases, or whether there is some deeper explanation as to why exactly these two cases are expressed the same. Working in the framework of Nanosyntax, I explain the syncretism by proposing that the formation of plural involves a silent noun (GROUP), which requires a genitive case on its complement. I argue that the complement of the noun GROUP agrees with the head and represents thus a special case of an agreeing genitive construction. The plural morpheme itself then corresponds to a portmanteau spell out of the genitive plus the agreement. Additional evidence for bi-nominal plurals is provided from unrelated phenomena in unrelated languages, such as plural marking in the Cushitic language Bayso and in Mauritian Creole, where, as I argue, the plural marker itself is an overt incarnation of the noun that is silent in Czech.
References
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[31] Wunderlich, Dieter. 2004. Is there any need for the concept of directional syncretism? In: Müller, Gereon – Gunkel, Lutz – Zifonun, Gisela, eds. Explorations in Nominal Inflection. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 373–395.
[32] Wunderlich, Dieter. 2012. Polarity and constraints on paradigmatic distinctness. In: Trommer, Jochen, ed. The morphology and phonology of exponence. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 160–194.
[2] Béjar, Susana – Currue Hall, Daniel. 1999. Marking markedness: The underlying order of diagonal syncretisms. In: Proceedings of the 1999 Eastern States Conference on Linguistics. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, pp. 1–12.
[3] Bobaljik, Jonathan. 2012. Universals in Comparative Morphology: Suppletion, superlatives, and the structure of words. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.
[4] Caha, Pavel. 2009. The Nanosyntax of Case Ph.D. thesis. CASTL, University of Tromsø.
[5] Caha, Pavel. 2013. Explaining the structure of case paradigms through the mechanisms of Nanosyntax. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory. 31(4), pp. 1015–1066. | DOI 10.1007/s11049-013-9206-8
[6] Cinque, Guglielmo. 1999. Adverbs and Functional Heads: A Cross-Linguistic Perspective. New York: Oxford University Press.
[7] Cojocaru, Dana. 2003. Romanian grammar [online]. SEELRC [29.10.2015]. Available at: http://www.seelrc.org/projects/grammars.ptml.
[8] Corbett, Greville. 2000. Number. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
[9] Corbett, Greville – Hayward, Richard. 1987. Gender and number in Bayso. Lingua. 73, pp. 1–28. | DOI 10.1016/0024-3841(87)90012-X
[10] Feist, Timothy. 2010. A grammar of Skolt Saami. Ph.D. thesis. University of Manchester.
[11] Guillemin, Diana. 2011. The syntax and semantics of a determiner system: a case study of Mauritian creole. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
[12] Johnston, Jason Clift. 1996. Systematic Homonymy and the Structure of Morphological Categories. Some Lessons from Paradigm Geometry. Ph.D. thesis. University of Sydney.
[13] Lahne, Antje. 2007. On deriving polarity effects. In: Opitz, Andreas – Trommer, Jochen, eds. 1-2-many. One-to-many relations in grammar. Leipzig: University of Leipzig, pp.1–22.
[14] Manzini, Rita M. – Savoia, Leonardo M. 2011. Reducing 'case' to denotational primitives. Nominal inflections in Albanian. Linguistic Variation. 11(1), pp. 76–120.
[15] McCreight, Katherine – Chvany, Catherine V. 1991. Geometric representation of paradigms in a modular theory of grammar. In: Plank, Frans, ed. Paradigms: The Economy of Inflection. Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 91–112.
[16] Nickel, Klaus Peter. 1990. Samisk grammatikk. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget.
[17] Pantcheva, Marina. 2010. The syntactic structure of locations, goals, and sources. Linguitics. 48, pp. 1043–1081.
[18] Pantcheva, Marina. 2011. Decomposing Path. The nanosyntax of directional expressions. Ph.D. thesis. CASTL, University of Tromsø.
[19] Plank, Frans. 1991. Rasmus Rask's dilemma. In: Paradigms: The Economy of Inflection. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 161–196.
[20] Plank, Frans. 1995. (Re-)introducing suffixaufnahme. In: Plank, Frans, ed. Double Case: Agreement by Suffixaufnahme. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 3–112.
[21] Starke, Michal. 2004. On the inexistence of specifiers and the nature of heads. In: Belletti, Adriana, ed. Structures and Beyond: The Cartography of Syntactic Structures. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 252–268.
[22] Starke, Michal. 2009. Nanosyntax. A short primer to a new approach to language. Nordlyd. 36, pp. 1–6.
[23] Starke, Michal. 2011. Towards elegant parameters: Language variation reduces to the size of lexically stored trees. Ms., University of Tromsø.
[24] Stolz, Thomas – Stroh, Cornelia – Urdze, Aina. 2006. On Comitatives and Related Categories: A Typological Study with Special Focus on the Languages of Europe. Berlin – New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
[25] Stolz, Thomas – Stroh, Cornelia – Urdze, Aina. 2009. Varieties of comitative. In: Malchukov, Andrej – Spencer, Andrew, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Case. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 601–608.
[26] Stump, Gregory. 2001. Inflectional Morphology: A Theory of Paradigm Structure. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
[27] Taraldsen, Tarald. 2010. The nanosyntax of Nguni noun class prefixes and concords. Lingua. 120(6), pp. 1522–1548. | DOI 10.1016/j.lingua.2009.10.004
[28] Trosterud, Trond. 2004. Homonymy in the Uralic Two-Argument Agreement Paradigms. Ph.D. thesis. University of Tromsø.
[29] Vangsnes, Øystein A. 2013. Syncretism and functional expansion in Germanic whexpressions. Language Sciences. 34, pp. 47–65. | DOI 10.1016/j.langsci.2012.03.019
[30] Wiese, Bernd. 2003. Zur lateinischen Nominalflexion: Die Form-Funktions-Beziehung. Ms., IDS Mannheim.
[31] Wunderlich, Dieter. 2004. Is there any need for the concept of directional syncretism? In: Müller, Gereon – Gunkel, Lutz – Zifonun, Gisela, eds. Explorations in Nominal Inflection. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 373–395.
[32] Wunderlich, Dieter. 2012. Polarity and constraints on paradigmatic distinctness. In: Trommer, Jochen, ed. The morphology and phonology of exponence. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 160–194.