IIGHI   05432
INSTITUTO DE INVESTIGACIONES GEOHISTORICAS
Unidad Ejecutora - UE
congresos y reuniones científicas
Título:
Competing morphemes in Toba beneficiary marking
Autor/es:
CENSABELLA, MARISA
Lugar:
Zurich, Suiza
Reunión:
Workshop; Workshop on the Typology of Benefactives and Malefactives; 2007
Institución organizadora:
Universidad de Zurich
Resumen:
This paper will examine the syntactic and semantic characteristics of the applicative morphemes -em, -i, -ot, -?a, and -lek and their distribution around the semantic notions of beneficiary, recipient, and human goal in Toba. In this preliminary sketch we have observed that: Toba does not have ditransitive verbs, that is non-derivated verbs that require the presence of three arguments (agent, theme and recipient) in a clause. To incorporate more than two arguments, it is necessary to use applicatives. The verb ‘to give’ is a derivated one. The alignment system of ditansitive clauses is the ‘secundative’ type; the recipient of the bitranstive behaves as the pacient of the transitive, taking the same functional slot, showing the same criteria for indexing plural arguments, and allowing the non-promotional passive to take place. Applicativazation via locative and directional notions is the main strategy to introduce non-subject arguments in ditransitive clauses: there is scale of degree of affectedness that triggers the selection of one of the four morphemes related to human locative goals and recipients (from more affected to less affected): -lek, -?a, -i / -e?, -ot. Many verbs allow, at least, two of these morphemes. The benefactive marker -em is usually used to express both the notions of reception and benefaction; it is also used to express the notion of solely benefaction with antipassivized transitive verbs. Thus, following Kittilä’s (2005: 277) classification Toba is a beneficiary prominent language. The benefactive morpheme -em ressembles one of the recipient morphemes -?e, the alienable possessive marker –m and the topicalization marker -m with demostratives. Regarding the marking of recipients and when the semantics of verb allows it, this language has a split based on an affectedness scale to select the recipient marker. In this preliminary sketch we have observed that: Toba does not have ditransitive verbs, that is non-derivated verbs that require the presence of three arguments (agent, theme and recipient) in a clause. To incorporate more than two arguments, it is necessary to use applicatives. The verb ‘to give’ is a derivated one. The alignment system of ditansitive clauses is the ‘secundative’ type; the recipient of the bitranstive behaves as the pacient of the transitive, taking the same functional slot, showing the same criteria for indexing plural arguments, and allowing the non-promotional passive to take place. Applicativazation via locative and directional notions is the main strategy to introduce non-subject arguments in ditransitive clauses: there is scale of degree of affectedness that triggers the selection of one of the four morphemes related to human locative goals and recipients (from more affected to less affected): -lek, -?a, -i / -e?, -ot. Many verbs allow, at least, two of these morphemes. The benefactive marker -em is usually used to express both the notions of reception and benefaction; it is also used to express the notion of solely benefaction with antipassivized transitive verbs. Thus, following Kittilä’s (2005: 277) classification Toba is a beneficiary prominent language. The benefactive morpheme -em ressembles one of the recipient morphemes -?e, the alienable possessive marker –m and the topicalization marker -m with demostratives. Regarding the marking of recipients and when the semantics of verb allows it, this language has a split based on an affectedness scale to select the recipient marker. In this preliminary sketch we have observed that: Toba does not have ditransitive verbs, that is non-derivated verbs that require the presence of three arguments (agent, theme and recipient) in a clause. To incorporate more than two arguments, it is necessary to use applicatives. The verb ‘to give’ is a derivated one. The alignment system of ditansitive clauses is the ‘secundative’ type; the recipient of the bitranstive behaves as the pacient of the transitive, taking the same functional slot, showing the same criteria for indexing plural arguments, and allowing the non-promotional passive to take place. Applicativazation via locative and directional notions is the main strategy to introduce non-subject arguments in ditransitive clauses: there is scale of degree of affectedness that triggers the selection of one of the four morphemes related to human locative goals and recipients (from more affected to less affected): -lek, -?a, -i / -e?, -ot. Many verbs allow, at least, two of these morphemes. The benefactive marker -em is usually used to express both the notions of reception and benefaction; it is also used to express the notion of solely benefaction with antipassivized transitive verbs. Thus, following Kittilä’s (2005: 277) classification Toba is a beneficiary prominent language. The benefactive morpheme -em ressembles one of the recipient morphemes -?e, the alienable possessive marker –m and the topicalization marker -m with demostratives. Regarding the marking of recipients and when the semantics of verb allows it, this language has a split based on an affectedness scale to select the recipient marker.