Polypersonal Agreement
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In
linguistics Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...
, polypersonal agreement or polypersonalism is the agreement of a
verb A verb is a word that generally conveys an action (''bring'', ''read'', ''walk'', ''run'', ''learn''), an occurrence (''happen'', ''become''), or a state of being (''be'', ''exist'', ''stand''). In the usual description of English, the basic f ...
with more than one of its
argument An argument is a series of sentences, statements, or propositions some of which are called premises and one is the conclusion. The purpose of an argument is to give reasons for one's conclusion via justification, explanation, and/or persu ...
s (usually up to four). Polypersonalism is a morphological feature of a language, and languages that display it are called polypersonal languages. In non-polypersonal languages, the verb either shows no agreement at all or agrees with the primary argument (in English, the subject). In a language with polypersonal agreement, the verb has agreement
morpheme A morpheme is any of the smallest meaningful constituents within a linguistic expression and particularly within a word. Many words are themselves standalone morphemes, while other words contain multiple morphemes; in linguistic terminology, this ...
s that may indicate (as applicable) the subject, the direct object, the indirect or secondary object, the beneficiary of the verb action, etc. This polypersonal marking may be compulsory or optional (the latter meaning that some agreement morphemes can be elided if the full argument is expressed). Polysynthesis often includes polypersonalism, which in turn is a form of head-marking. Polypersonalism has also been correlated with ergativity. Examples of languages with polypersonal agreement are the
Bantu languages The Bantu languages (English: , Proto-Bantu language, Proto-Bantu: *bantʊ̀), or Ntu languages are a language family of about 600 languages of Central Africa, Central, Southern Africa, Southern, East Africa, Eastern and Southeast Africa, South ...
,
Basque Basque may refer to: * Basques, an ethnic group of Spain and France * Basque language, their language Places * Basque Country (greater region), the homeland of the Basque people with parts in both Spain and France * Basque Country (autonomous co ...
, Georgian, Hadza,
Magahi Magahi (), also known as Magadhi (), is an Indo-Aryan language spoken in Bihar, Jharkhand and West Bengal states of eastern India, and in the Terai region of Nepal. Magadhi Prakrit was the ancestor of Magahi, from which the latter's name de ...
, to a lesser extent Hungarian (see definite conjugation), as well as most polysynthetic languages, like Mohawk,
Inuktitut Inuktitut ( ; , Inuktitut syllabics, syllabics ), also known as Eastern Canadian Inuktitut, is one of the principal Inuit languages of Canada. It is spoken in all areas north of the North American tree line, including parts of the provinces of ...
and many other Native American and Australian languages.


Examples


Georgian

In Georgian, the verb consists of a root and several optional affixes. The subject and object markers might appear as suffixes or prefixes, according to the verb class, the person and number, the tense and aspect of the verb, etc.; they also interact with each other phonologically. The polypersonal verbal system of Georgian allows the verb compound to convey the meanings of subject, direct object, indirect object, genitive, locative and causative meanings. As examples of the extremely complicated Georgian verb morphology, these are some simple polypersonal verbs (hyphens indicate morpheme boundaries): : 'I see him' : 'they hide you (sing. or pl.)' : 'they hide it ''from'' you (sing. or pl.)' : 'he is doing it ''for'' us' : 'he will give it to him (as a gift)' : 'he will congratulate him on it' : 'They are making him run' : 'you would make us make him jump (towards us)' An example of a polypersonal verb that has the genitive meaning incorporated can be: : 'My hands got cold' Here, () means 'hands'. The second morpheme in the verb () conveys the meaning 'my'. In Georgian this construction is very common with intransitive verbs; the possessive adjective (''my'', ''your'', etc.) is omitted before the subject, and the verb takes up the genitive meaning.


Basque

Basque Basque may refer to: * Basques, an ethnic group of Spain and France * Basque language, their language Places * Basque Country (greater region), the homeland of the Basque people with parts in both Spain and France * Basque Country (autonomous co ...
is a
language isolate A language isolate is a language that has no demonstrable genetic relationship with any other languages. Basque in Europe, Ainu and Burushaski in Asia, Sandawe in Africa, Haida and Zuni in North America, Kanoê in South America, and Tiwi ...
with a polypersonal verbal system comprising two sub-types of verbs, synthetic and analytical. The following three cases are cross-referenced on the verb: the absolutive (the case for the subject of intransitive verbs and the direct objects of transitive verbs), the ergative (the case for the subject of transitive verbs), and the dative (the case for the indirect object of a transitive verb). A dative (along with the absolutive) can also be cross-referenced on an intransitive verb without a direct object in a "dative of interest" type of construction (cf. English "My car broke down on me"), as well as in constructions involving intransitive verbs of perception or feeling. Synthetic verbs take affixes directly onto their stems, while analytical verbs use a non-finite form that carries the lexical meaning of the verb, along with a conjugated auxiliary which is either strictly transitive or intransitive. Some common auxiliaries used to conjugate analytical verbs are ''izan'' ‘be’, ''ukan'' ‘have’, and ''egin'' ‘do’. Unlike Georgian, Basque has only two really synthetic tenses able to take these affixes: present simple and past simple. Here are a few examples: Synthetic forms: : ''z-erama-zki-gu-te-n'' ‘They took them to us’ from ''eraman'' ‘take’ Analytical or semi-synthetic forms: : ''Ekarriko d-i-o-gu'' ‘We'll bring it to him/her’ : ''Eraman d-ieza-zki-gu-ke-te'' ‘They can take them to us’ (‘d…zki’ standing for ‘them’, ‘ieza’ being a form of the auxiliary ‘izan’, ‘gu’ standing for ‘to us’, ‘te’ for ‘they’, and ‘ke’ being a potential marker) : ''Iristen z-a-izki-zue'' ‘They get to you (pl)’ from ''iritsi'' ‘get, arrive’


Semitic languages

In
Biblical Hebrew Biblical Hebrew ( or ), also called Classical Hebrew, is an archaic form of the Hebrew language, a language in the Canaanite languages, Canaanitic branch of the Semitic languages spoken by the Israelites in the area known as the Land of Isra ...
, or in poetic forms of Hebrew, a pronominal direct object can be incorporated into a verb's conjugation rather than included as a separate word. For example, ''ahavtikha'', with the suffix ''-kha'' indicating a masculine, singular, second-person direct object, is a poetic way to say ''ahavti otkha'' ("I loved you"). This also changes the position of the stress; while ''ahavti'' puts the stress on ''hav'' (), ''ahavtikha'' puts it on ''ti'' (). The same is true also of
Arabic Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...
and Akkadian. A number of modern Arabic dialects incorporate both direct and indirect object pronouns, e.g.
Egyptian Arabic Egyptian Arabic, locally known as Colloquial Egyptian, or simply as Masri, is the most widely spoken vernacular Arabic variety in Egypt. It is part of the Afro-Asiatic language family, and originated in the Nile Delta in Lower Egypt. The esti ...
"he didn't write them to me". (In
Classical Arabic Classical Arabic or Quranic Arabic () is the standardized literary form of Arabic used from the 7th century and throughout the Middle Ages, most notably in Umayyad Caliphate, Umayyad and Abbasid Caliphate, Abbasid literary texts such as poetry, e ...
the equivalent would be three words: , incorporating the direct object but not the indirect object.)


Ganda

In Ganda, direct and indirect pronominal objects may be incorporated into the verb as object infixes. For example: In the second example, the applicative suffix ''-ira'' converts the (usually monotransitive) verb ''gamba'' to a ditransitive. While agreement with a verbal subject is compulsory, agreement with an object is required only when the object is omitted. Many other
Bantu languages The Bantu languages (English: , Proto-Bantu language, Proto-Bantu: *bantʊ̀), or Ntu languages are a language family of about 600 languages of Central Africa, Central, Southern Africa, Southern, East Africa, Eastern and Southeast Africa, South ...
exhibit this feature.


Hungarian

In Hungarian the suffix or indicates a first person singular subject and a second person (either singular or plural) object. The most prominent example is "I love you". The second person singular object may be omitted but the plural requires the pronoun ().


Clitic pronouns

Polypersonalism involves
bound morpheme In linguistics, a bound morpheme is a morpheme (the elementary unit of morphosyntax) that can appear only as part of a larger expression, while a free morpheme (or unbound morpheme) is one that can stand alone. A bound morpheme is a type of bound f ...
s that are part of the verbal morphology and therefore cannot be found separated from the verb. These morphemes are not to be confused with pronominal
clitic In morphology and syntax, a clitic ( , backformed from Greek "leaning" or "enclitic"Crystal, David. ''A First Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics''. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1980. Print.) is a morpheme that has syntactic characteristics of a ...
s. Some have observed that the French pronominal clitics (common to all
Romance language The Romance languages, also known as the Latin or Neo-Latin languages, are the languages that are Language family, directly descended from Vulgar Latin. They are the only extant subgroup of the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-E ...
s) have evolved into inseparable parts of the verb in the colloquial use, and so, suggested that French could be analyzed as polypersonal.


See also

*
Morphological typology Morphological typology is a linguistic typology, way of classifying the languages of the world that groups languages according to their common Morphology (linguistics), morphological structures. The field organizes languages on the basis of how ...
* Clitic doubling * Incorporation *
Pro-drop language A pro-drop language (from "pronoun-dropping") is a language in which certain classes of pronouns may be omitted when they can be pragmatically or grammatically inferable. The precise conditions vary from language to language, and can be quite ...


References

{{Reflist, colwidth=30em Grammar