Transcript Slide 1
Reciprocal constructions in Meeteilon ATANU SAHA Center for Linguistics Jawaharlal Nehru University, India 7/7/2015 1 Overview of the language • Spoken in four states of India namely Manipur, Assam, Tripura and Nagaland and also in Bangladesh and Myanmar. • Estimated population is 1,370,000 in India (2000-1). • Alternative names are Kathe, Kathi, Manipuri, meeteilon, meeteiron, Meithe, Meithei, Menipuri, Mitei, Mithe, Ponna. • Dialects meetei, Loi (Chakpa), Pangal (Panal, Panan, Manipuri Muslim) • Bengali script and Meetei Mayek script. 7/7/2015 2 Contd.. Meiteilon Sino-Tibetan Tibeto-Burman Kamarupan Meeteilon 7/7/2015 3 • • • This research is motivated at a detail description of the reciprocal constructions found in Meeteiron/ Meeteilon . Unlike English, Meetei shows reciprocity by a different verbal morphology in which an affix is attached to the base. According to Chelliah 1997 since Meetei does not have similar clause structure like English therefore the binding principle cannot make appropriate predictions for Meetei Anaphora. 7/7/2015 4 4 Important works • • • • • Thoudam 1980 Chelliah 1997 Bhat and Ningombam 1997 Subbarao and Sajudevi 2002 Subbarao and Everaert 2007 7/7/2015 5 Reciprocals in general 1. məkʰoi məʃən pʰu-nə-ri they among hit-RCP-ASP ‘They hit each other’. 2. jɔn-gə meri-ge nuŋsi-nə-í John Mary love-RCP- ASP ‘John and Mary love each other.’ 7/7/2015 6 Reciprocals in general 3. məkʰoi amana amagi kʰhuŋup seŋdok-nə-i they one another shoes clean rcp-asp ‘they cleaned shoes for each other.’ 4. jɔnge meri-ge amana amabu nuŋsi haiba tʰajei john marry one another love believe ‘ john and marry believe they love each other.’ 7/7/2015 7 Expanding the Picture : Meetei • Coordinate noun phrase 5. tombə-gə cawba-gə ann-gə pʰu-nə-y Tomba –CONJ Chaoba –CONJ Ann-CONJ beat –RCP-ASP ‘Tomba Chaoba and Ann beat each other.’ • With a plural subject 6. məkʰoy əmə-nə -mə-d̪ə sel ləw-nə-y they one-NOM-one –LOC money take-RCP-ASP ‘They took money from one another.’ 7/7/2015 8 Meetei : Thoudam P.C. 1980 ROOT 1 cà eat 2 3 nə RCP kʰi 5 6 DEF kʰi de DEF NEG nə together RCP bi lu nu POL GFA min bi lu PROHB TV kʰi nu POL GFA DEF nə RCP min nə together RCP 7/7/2015 4 PROH BTV 9 • It is known that if the verb is not inherently reciprocal then a language must have other strategies such as lexical reciprocity. • For Manipuri (Subbarao, T.Sarjudevi 2002) 7. məkʰoi na ama-na amabu thagat-*(nə)-rammi they nom one-nom one-acc praise-RCP- PST ‘They each praised the other.’ 7/7/2015 10 10 • There are many constructions in this language where lexical reciprocal and verbal encoding co occur. In this case what kind of syntactic structure it possesses? • 8. məkʰoi amana amagi kʰhuŋup seŋdok-nə-i they one another shoes clean-RCP-ASP ‘they cleaned shoes for each other.’ 7/7/2015 11 11 Some interesting constructions • Verb ‘meet’ məbəni amana amabu u-nə-i they one-nom one-BNF meet-RCP-ASP ‘they are meeting each other.’ • ‘see’ • aŋam ani ədu lepiŋəidə amana amabu u-i child 2 DET stand-Process of standing one another see ‘the two children saw each other as they are standing.’ 7/7/2015 12 Some interesting constructions • Verb ‘to talk’ 14. nupa adu-na ma-ga wari sa-ri girl two-NOM she-GEN story-tell-ASP ‘two girls are talking’ 15. nupa adu-ga wari sa-na-ri girl two-NOM she-GEN story tell-RCP-ASP ‘two girls are talking to each other.’ 7/7/2015 13 Some interesting constructions • Verb ‘play’ 12. məkʰoi məʃən sanə-ri they among play-ASP ‘they played with each other.’ 13. məkʰoi məʃən sanə-*nə-ri 7/7/2015 14 Reciprocal suffix is not reflexive, comitative, causative 16. məkʰoi moigi anderwər su-min-nə-kʰi they their underwear wash-COM-RCP-ASP lit. they washed their underwear with each other.’ 17. əy-nə məkʰoy-bu cak ca-nə-həl-li I-NOM they-ACCfood eat-RCP-CAUS-ASP ‘I made them eat food with one another.’ 7/7/2015 15 Reciprocal suffix is not reflexive, comitative, causative 18. məkʰoy cak ca-nə-jə-y They food eat-RCP-RFL-NFu ‘They ate food with one another by themselves’. • It is neither a passive marker because it is very hard to even get a simple passive construction. • Passive construction is infrequent. 7/7/2015 16 Other functions • Reciprocal suffix in Meetei can be marked for other informations such as Collective action or a group denoting activity. • cá –eat • cə́t- go customary 7/7/2015 cánə- feast cə́tnə-culturally 17 Scope ː Narrow vs. Broad • ‘John and Mary believe that they love each other.’ • This sentence has the ‘I, we and they’ readings in English. (Heim, Lasnik & May 1991). • ɟɔngə merigə tʰ̪ aɟei məkʰoy əmana əmabu nuŋsinəi John mary believe they one-NOM one-BNF love-RCP-ASP ‘John and Mary believe that they love each other.’ • However, in Meetei it’s not easy to get these three readings. The ‘they’ reading is the strongest possibility and hence has the ‘broad’ scope. 7/7/2015 18 Strong vs. Weak • Meetei allows to drop RCP suffix in some cases and we can get the strong and weak effect accordingly. • That means the strongness effects comes from the fact whether the verb is overtly reciprocal marked or not. • The nominal reciprocal (object) might give other information such as direction, affectedness etc. 7/7/2015 19 typology • Blake’s generalizations of CASE 2004 • Case pattern nom- acc- gen- dat- loc- abl- inst- com- purp • At some point a language has a choice of lexicalizing the reciprocal. • Else the reciprocity will be marked by affixation. 7/7/2015 20 what syntax to take up • Kayne’s antisymmetry : the unmarked word order is SOV in Meetei. • Kayne (1994) suggested for any pair of non- terminal nodes < X; Y >, if X asymmetrically c-commands Y then each terminal node dominated by X preceded each terminal node dominated by Y. • Therefore for Kayne the LCA schema for Metei reciprocal predicates would be • Root>COM>RCP> CAUS>ASP and this is derivable by the operation pied piping. 7/7/2015 21 Contd.. • Cinque’s hierarchy • Cinque’s (1999) assumption that the basis of categorizing the adverbs is primarily based on their interaction with other elements in a sentence and adverbs are specifiers of their own projection, I want to propose that even within the verbal paradigm in this language there is a clear arrangement of the suffixes in this language. 7/7/2015 22 Syntax • hierarchy of suffixes » ASP » Caus » RCP » COM » 7/7/2015 ROOT 23 Syntax IP [following Bruening 2004] ti ɟəngə merigə I’ eu I RecipVP ri -i ru VP RecipV - nə- NP V amana amabu nuŋsi- ‘John and Mary love each other.’ 7/7/2015 24 observation • I propose that when the Nominal reciprocal and the RCP suffix co occur then it does not behave like a reciprocal marker but they perform those actions which are stated above. 7/7/2015 25 observations • The proposal is that RCP/RecipV is an else where case. It’s a kind of default set up for languages. • Reciprocal suffix in Meitei can be marked for other informations such as Collective action or a group denoting activity and in these cases the constrcutions are not reciprocal. 7/7/2015 26 References • http://www.ethnologue.org/show_language.asp?code=mni • Thoudam, P.C. 1980. A grammatical sketch of Meteiron. PhD Thesis submitted to Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. • Chelliah, S. 1997. A grammar of Meithei. Berlin: Mouton. • Bhat and Ningombam. 1997. Manipuri grammar. Mysore: CIIL, India. • Subbarao,K.V. and Sarju Devi 2002. Reduplication and case copying: the case of lexical anaphors in Manipuri and Telegu. In Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area, 25.2. Pages: 47-72. • Everaert ,M. and Karumuri V. Subbarao. 2007. Verbal and Nominal Reciprocals in South Asian Languages: A Syntactic Typology. Reciprocals Cross-Linguistically, Berlin, Nov 29-Dec 7/7/2015 27 2, 2007. Thank you 7/7/2015 28 28