Volume 13 Issue 2 (2015) DOI:10.1349/PS1.1537-0852.A.466 Note: Linguistic Discovery uses Unicode characters to represent phonetic symbols. Please see Optimizing Display for requirements to accurately reproduce this page. Morphological
Complexity and Language Contact in Languages Indigenous to North America Marianne Mithun University of
California, Santa Barbara It
has long been noticed that morphological complexity is not distributed evenly
across the world. There are also well-known geographical pockets of
morphological elaboration in areas of Northern Australia, Papua New Guinea,
Siberia, and the Caucasus. During the 19th century, Duponceau (1819), Brinton (1886), and Hewitt (1893) pointed
to the special complexity of languages of the Americas. But the idea that
complex morphological structure should show areal distributions seems counterintuitive:
traditional scales of borrowability have typically
begun with vocabulary, then moved through phonetics and phonology, and on to
syntax, with morphology at the end or not mentioned at all. Such scales would
seem to be in line with what we know about domains of structure: morphological
structure is distinguished from syntax by its routinization:
most of it is below the level of consciousness. Bilinguals should be less
likely to transfer individual morphemes or morphological patterns from one of
their languages to the other than to transfer whole words or word orders. One
factor underlying the distributions of complexity might be the social
circumstances under which the languages are used and transmitted, as proposed
by Dahl (2004, to appear) and (Trudgill 2011, to
appear). In small, closed communities, where speakers interact with a constant
group of native interlocutors who share a common set of presuppositions about
the world, culture, and interests, certain expressions are likely to occur more
frequently in speech than in larger, more diffuse communities. The frequency
can lead to routinization of the recurring sequences
and the development of complex morphological structures, with large inventories
of lexicalized expressions. But language contact can have an impact on such
development. Morphological complexity can be reduced when there is a
substantial proportion of untutored adult second-language learners. It can present
special challenges for such speakers, leading them to select more analytic
alternatives in their speech. With intense contact of certain types, such as
when large numbers of adult second-language speakers are raising children,
choices made by these speakers can ultimately affect the shape of the language.
Contact can also have the opposite effect. In communities with substantial early
multilingualism, morphological complexity may be further enriched when speakers
draw on the enhanced communicative resources of multiple languages, each with its
own complexities, in their daily speech. Morphological
complexity is normally what Dahl has termed a ‘mature’ phenomenon: it tends to develop
gradually over time. But it need not be borrowed in its mature state.
Bilinguals may carry less mature structures, such as turns of phrase and even
compounding, from one of their languages to another, structures which then
continue to develop along common pathways of grammaticalization.
Areal parallelisms may originate even earlier in the process. Bilinguals may unconsciously
transfer propensities for specifying certain distinctions from one language to
another. The resulting frequencies of expression can lead, over time, to parallel
routinization and morphologization. Here
some potential effects of both kinds of circumstances, community makeup and
contact, are explored for languages indigenous to North America. The general
prevalence of morphological complexity on the continent accords at least in
part with the absence of heavy adult second-language learning. But the precise
nature of the complexity varies across areas, suggesting effects of longstanding early multilingualism, with
shared attention to certain kinds of semantic specification. 1. Morphological complexity Linguistic
complexity has been defined in a number of ways. Dahl (to appear) provides a
useful discussion of various approaches. As he points out, one can distinguish relative or agent-related complexity, pertaining to ‘the amount of effort a
generalized outsider has to make to become acquainted with it’ (from Kusters 2003, 2008:9) from absolute or objective complexity, an objective property of a system conceived of in terms of
information theory (Dahl 2004, Lindström 2008, Miestamo 2008). One can further distinguish system complexity, pertaining to the
language as a whole, from structural complexity, pertaining to the structure of individual utterances and
expressions: ‘While system complexity concerns competence/langue, structural
complexity pertains to performance/parole, since it is about properties of
individual utterances’ (Dahl to appear). A kind of measure halfway between the
two could be corpus complexity, the
complexity inherent in a substantial representative sample of the language.
Within the sample, one could calculate the morpheme-to-word ratio, or the
morpheme-to-word ratio just for verbs, where morphological complexity tends to
be concentrated. One could compare the number of distinct word forms, since
presumably larger paradigms would result in more word forms, or the total
number of words across comparable texts in different languages. One could also compare
the number of slots in verbal templates, or of obligatory slots.
Another
dimension of complexity discussed by Dahl and others is non-linearity in mapping
between content and expression. Non-linearity would include such phenomena as partial
or total fusion of morphemes, cumulative or portmanteau expressions, suppletion, dependence on lexical classes, and also
prosodic (suprasegmental) features of expression and
element order not predictable from hierarchical structure. The
kind of complexity most frequently cited as typical of North America is
polysynthesis, particularly the potential for morphologically complex verbs
that can function as complete predications in themselves. This is holophrasis in a specific sense, the specification within
the verb of both predicate and core arguments (Mithun
to appear a, b). Also often associated with polysynthesis is noun
incorporation, whereby a noun stem is compounded with a verb stem to form a new
stem, adding to the number of morphemes within verbs. 2. North America North
America north of Mexico shows tremendous genealogical diversity. It is home to perhaps
275 distinct languages so far as is known, and around 55 genetic groups. A
rough impression of the diversity can be grasped from Figure 1, which
represents the approximate ranges of tribal territories at the earliest times
for which information is available. Divisions between territories are
schematic; boundaries were not usually sharp, and not all areas were occupied. The
genealogical groups range in size from large families like Athabaskan-Eyak
Tlingit, with 37 languages, to isolates like Zuni, with just one language. Documentation
of the languages, many of which are no longer spoken, varies widely. For some there
are rich corpora of connected speech, grammars, and detailed dictionaries,
while for others, there are only short wordlists, making it difficult to assess
morphological structures. Figure 1. Languages
Indigenous to North America Despite
the genealogical diversity, degrees of complexity are not random. Not only is
the complexity pervasive, it can also be seen in many cases to be quite stable.
Language families whose ancestors can be reconstructed back over millennia,
such as Chumashan, Iroquoian, and Eskimo-Aleut, are
reconstructed with most of their morphological structures as they are today (Mithun in press, Fortescue,
Jacobson, and Kaplan 2010). 3. Holophrasis A
majority of the geneaological groups show what has
been called head-marking, with core arguments identified in the verb. In some
languages, all core arguments are specified: three persons and two or three
grammatical roles. In languages of the Chinookan
family, spoken along the Columbia River between modern Washington and Oregon, first,
second, and third persons are distinguished in pronominal prefixes; singular,
dual, and plural number; inclusive and exclusive first persons; masculine,
feminine, and neuter third persons; and ergative, absolutive, and dative roles. (1)
Wishram: Dyk 1933:77, 73,
74
Figure
2 provides a general idea of the distribution of languages with all core
arguments marked, in three persons or more. But
overt specification of all arguments is not ubiquitous. Very often one or more
third persons are unmarked, perhaps singulars, just subjects, just objects,
non-humans, inanimates, or indefinites. Details of
such differential argument marking vary from language to language. Sapir provides
the paradigm below from Takelma, an isolate earlier
spoken in southwestern Oregon. (2)
Takelma: Sapir 1922: 165
Here
there is no third person suffix. In
transitive verbs, object suffixes can be seen to precede subject suffixes
except when first persons act on second (1>2). Object suffixes are 1sg -xi,
2sg -bi, 1pl -am, and 2pl
-anp.
Third person human objects are optionally indicated by a suffix -kʰwa/-gwa when combined with third person subjects, but third
person non-humans are unmarked. (3)
Takelma: Sapir 1922:168
Figure 2. Languages with
All Core Arguments in Three Persons in the Verb Differential
argument marking can show other patterns as well. In some languages, one set of
core arguments is identified by affixes and another by clitics.
In the Tsimshianic languages of British Columbia, for
example, absolutives are indicated by verbal
suffixes, but ergatives by clitics
showing complex patterns. Figure 3 provides a general idea of the distribution of
languages with differential marking of various types. Figure 3. Pronominal
Reference to Subsets of Core Arguments in the Verb As can be seen by comparing Figures 2 and 3, head-marking is
pervasive in North America. In fact the languages lacking such marking are few
and far between, as can be seen in Figure 4. Figure 4. Languages without
Bound Pronouns The
development of pronominal affixes within the verb is not surprising, given the
kinds of recurring processes which create morphological structure. Unstressed
pronouns, representing given participants, are highly frequent in speech. Their
frequency, their frequent position adjacent to the verb, and their lack of stress
make them ripe for phonological reduction and ultimate fusion with the verb. It
is also not surprising that third persons, or inanimate third persons, etc.,
should be the last to develop into affixes. While first and second persons are
overwhelmingly given referents in speech, and thus normally represented by
unstressed pronouns, third persons may be given, or simply accessible, or brand
new. They are thus variously represented by unstressed pronouns,
demonstratives, lexical nouns, proper names, or larger determiner phrases. Human
third persons are more likely to be continuing topics than non-humans, and
animates more likely than inanimates, so it is not
surprising that some languages would have pronominal affixes referring to
humans or animates but not non-humans or inanimates. In
many languages continuing third person topics are not mentioned overtly at all,
so there would be no unstressed pronominal form to bond with the verb. Pronominal
affix paradigms can be complex in ways that independent pronouns are not. Sapir
(1922:159) notes that every Takelma verb has six
tense-mode paradigms. All but one have their own sets of pronominal endings. There
are in addition distinct paradigms for the two main classes of intransitive
verbs and for transitive verbs. Sapir lists eleven pronominal paradigms: aorist
subject intransitive I, aorist subject intransitive II, aorist subject
transitive, future subject intransitive I, future subject intransitive II,
future subject transitive, inferential subject, present imperative subject,
future imperative subject intransitive I and transitive, future imperative
subject intransitive II, and object transitive and passive subject. The forms
are further subject to various phonological processes. Complexity
of this sort apparently presents children immersed in their mother tongue with
little serious difficulty: languages with such structures have endured for
millennia. For adult learners, however, it can be daunting, and their language
is likely to show simplification. Trudgill (2011, to
appear) hypothesizes that when the proportion of adult second-language learners
passes 50%, such simplification can leave a mark on the language itself,
providing a kind of brake on the development of complexity. But without large
numbers of adult learners, complexity could develop largely uninhibited. Such
an account would accord with the widespread head marking across North America.
There are few clear records of the nature of language contact in North America
beyond the past several centuries, but for the most part, evidence is slim of
widespread adult second-language acquisition. In some areas, relatively small
groups speaking a single language occupied large territories. In other areas,
communities were small and in closer contact, but exogamy and multilingualism
were the norm, so that children learned neighboring languages early and used
them throughout their lives. In general, nearly all of the pronominal affix
systems found in languages indigenous to North America continue systems already
present in their reconstructed parent languages. 4. Noun Incorporation Another
frequently-cited contributor to morphological complexity is noun incorporation,
a word formation process of noun-verb or verb-noun compounding that creates
complex verb stems. Noun incorporation is pervasive in North America, but it
varies in the extent of its development and its productivity. 4.1. Basic Noun
Incorporation Examples
of contrasting analytic and incorporating constructions are in (4) from Crow, a
Siouan language of Montana. (4)
Crow incorporation: Graczyk 2007:280
As
Graczyk notes, ‘the combination of verb plus
incorporated object conveys the notion that the subject is engaged in a
customary, habitual, or repeated activity, or a habitual mental state.
Incorporation can even occur when a single action is referred to, as long as
the object is nonspecific’ (2007:280). There is no question that the noun-verb
combination in (4b) constitutes a single word: it contains just one stress and
there is no possibility of pause between the constituents. The
semantic relation between the incorporated noun and verb is not specified by
the construction, but the noun generally qualifies the verb in some way, often
indicating a kind of semantic patient, theme, or goal (‘pole-peel’), or an
instrument or location. Additional examples of Crow verb stems formed by
incorporation cited by Graczyk include ‘ask for
money’; ‘speak Crow’; ‘dislike Crows’; ‘ride horseback’; ‘steal horses’; ‘drink
water’; ‘make soup’; ‘fight fire’; ‘wash berries’; ‘climb trees’; ‘catch fish’;
watch TV’; ‘look for food’; ‘go into the sweat lodge’; ‘tell a dream’; ‘fix
fence’; and ‘put up a tipi’. The
functions of incorporation vary across languages. In all languages where it
occurs, it generally serves as a word-formation device, creating terms for
generic activities and recurring situations as in the Crow example above. It
may affect argument structure, as in (5). (5)
Crow incorporation: Graczyk 283
The
incorporation of the noun ‘head’ allows the speaker to cast the victim rather
than his head as a core argument: ‘he scalped him’ rather than ‘he took his
scalp’. In a great many languages, among the most frequently-incorporated
nouns are terms for body parts. Some additional Crow formations involving body
parts include ishtá-xia
‘eye-dim’ = ‘be nearsighted’, ahkúx-alee
‘ear-ache’ = ‘have an earache’, éel-isaa ‘belly-be.big’ = ‘be
pregnant’, and íishpuu-xachii
‘stomach-move’ = ‘have stomach cramps’ (Graczyk
2007:282). In
some languages noun incorporation is also used to manage the flow of
information through discourse. Referents are first introduced in separate words
or phrases, then subsequently carried along less obtrusively by noun stems incorporated
into verbs. In some languages incorporation constructions are also used as presentatives, with a noun incorporated into a light verb
of position, arrival, etc. In
some languages noun incorporation is pervasive and highly productive, while in
others it is more limited. In some it is no longer productive, but formations
remain in the lexicon, products of an earlier process. Traces of incorporation
can be seen in Cherokee, an Iroquoian language spoken in North Carolina and
Oklahoma. A number of modern verb stems show variation at the beginning
according to the kind of entity involved. (6)
Cherokee: Feeling 1975: 195-6
All
of these verbs contain identifiable prefixes and suffixes. The prefix a- is a third person agent pronominal
prefix. The prefix d- is a
distributive, cognate with the Northern Iroquoian duplicative. Here it indicates
actions involving multiple articles of clothing. The final suffix ‑a marks progressive or immediate past action. All
of these verb stems involving changing end in ‑aʔiyvʔ-. The initial elements of these
stems appear to be relicts of earlier incorporated nouns, but these are now
considered simply separate verb stems. In all other Iroquoian languages, noun
incorporation remains robust: productive and pervasive. Noun incorporation or
relicts of a once productive process are widespread across North America, as
can be seen in Figure 5. 4.2. “Lexical affixes” Productive
noun incorporation constructions are not necessarily static. They can undergo
further development into productive affixation. Very early stages of such
development can be seen in Algonquian languages, spoken across the continent
from the Plains to the Atlantic Ocean. Algonquian verb stems are traditionally
described as composed of up to three main parts, termed initials, medials, and finals. All stems contain an initial and a
final. Initials generally convey meanings similar to verb roots in other
languages, denoting events and states. Abstract finals add more grammatical
meanings, specifying argument structure (transitive, intransitive, causative,
reflexive, middle, passive), etc., though there are also derived finals with
more concrete meanings. Medial
suffixes, which are not obligatory, are in many ways similar to incorporated
nouns in other languages. They often evoke generic entities that qualify the
verb in some way, often as patients/goals/themes, like ‘fish’ in the Innu
example in (7). Like incorporated nouns in many languages, they often evoke
body parts. Also like incorporated nouns in many languages, they can be more
general and abstract then lexical nouns. They can serve a classificatory
function, evoking a general type of entity, such as ‘sheet-like object’ or
‘organic, solid, non-flexible objects, etc.
Drapeau (2014) has identified around 200 common medials, some of which have the form of full nouns, some
bound alternants of independent nouns, and a number
of other bound morphemes not
related to any noun in the contemporary language. There is, for example, an
independent noun name:š
‘fish’. Medials evoke such things as animals, body
parts, environmental phenomena such as ice, snow, earth, trees, mountains,
hills, rivers, etc, various foods, and useful
objects, just like incorporated nouns. A smaller set of less than a dozen medials have more abstract meanings (stringlike,
sheetlike, mineral, long and rigid, bound liquid,
unbound liquid objects), again like some incorporated nouns that serve
classificatory functions in other languages. Also like incorporated nouns, the medials are not arguments, and they alternate with
independent nouns according to information structure. The medial constructions show
the very beginning of a development of verb-noun
incorporating constructions to verb-suffix
constructions. Figure 5. Noun Incorporation and Relicts Other
constructions developing along this route occur in certain linguistic areas of
North America. The Salishan, Wakashan,
and Chimakuan families of the Northwest Coast area
all contain sizeable inventories of what are termed ‘lexical suffixes’, because
of their often surprisingly concrete meanings, of the sort more often carried
by roots in other languages. These languages show evidence of ancient,
longstanding contact. They are typologically quite similar to each other. All
are basically predicate-initial and show very weak differentiation of noun and
verb roots. In
their 1994 dictionary of Lushootseed, a Salishan language spoken around the Puget Sound area in
Washington State, Bates, Hess, and Hilbert list suffixes with meanings like the
following: ‘group viewed distributively’; ‘breath’;
‘parts of mouth’; ‘body, bulky object, enclosed area’; ‘people of’; ‘tree,
bush’; ‘hair of head, crest, hackles of dog’; ‘hand, forearm’; ‘ear, side,
sound’; ‘trap’; ‘along the base of the trees, among the trees at the base’;
‘house, room, building’; ‘testicles’; ‘side of head’; ‘year’; ‘leg, hip’;
‘house, some act being performed on a house’; ‘odor’; ‘place where something is
kept’; ‘clothes, clothing’; ‘bundle, pack’; ‘food’; ‘hat’; ‘tooth, straight
pin’; ‘domestic animal’; ‘water’; ‘shoulder’; ‘eye, color’; ‘paddle, animal
hide’; ‘meat’; ‘bottom, base, buttocks’; ‘throat, neck; forked’; ‘at the side,
edge, side appendage’; ‘direction of water flow’; ‘flame’; ‘path, road’;
‘homogenous group or cluster’; ‘abdomen, belly’; ‘baby, child’; ‘clothe, wear,
support from shoulder’; ‘cover(ing), surface, on top
of, over, series of items on a string, string cord, spine’: ‘torso, chest,
breast’; ‘ground, floor’; ‘inside human or animal body, the insides, mental
processes, inside small, tight-fitting area, side of body’; ‘things,
possessions’; ‘shirt’; ‘round thing, money, curved objects’; ‘shank of leg’;
‘incline, slope, bank, hill’; ‘thigh’; ‘nose, point’; ‘foot including shank,
entire leg and foot’; ‘body of water to be crossed, river, mouth, language,
doorway, opening in general, eat’; ‘conference, parley, agenda’; ‘container, belly’;
‘land’; ‘face, head upper part’; ‘end, edge’; ‘the very top’; and ‘throat’. The
suffixes follow roots with both verb-like and noun-like meanings, and form
words that serve as both predicates and referring expressions. The suffixes
themselves are not strictly categorical, sometimes adding more noun-like
meaning, sometimes more verb-like meaning. The construction does not specify
their semantic relationship to the root: sometimes they indicate a general kind
of patient/goal/theme, often a location. Their meanings are also not always as
specific as might first appear. Examples of the suffix -ucid are in (8). (8)
Lushootseed (Salish) -ucid ‘body of water to be crossed,
river, mouth, language, doorway, opening in general, eat’: Bates, Hess, and Hilbert 1994: 243
The
suffixes tend to show more concrete meanings than would normally be expected of
affixes, as well as less categoriality, features
typical of grammaticalization processes. Like
incorporated nouns in other languages, they often indicate kinds of themes,
goals, sources, pathways, and locations. They were clearly already in place in
Proto-Salishan. To
the west of the Salishan languages are languages of
the Chimakuan family, Quileute and Chemakum, on the Olympic Penninsula
at the extreme northwest corner of Washington State. Andrade (1933:194-198)
lists large inventories of suffixes with similar meanings, 165 he considers
more noun-like in meaning, 45 he considers more verb-like. They show such
meanings as ‘color’; ‘weather’; ‘wood’; ‘food’; ‘decorated blanket’; ‘tree,
log’; ‘intestines, sinew’; ‘stone arrowhead’; ‘rock’; ‘flounder’; ‘navel’;
‘nose’; ‘point’; ‘beach’; ‘wall’; ‘sky’; ‘basket’; ‘bow, gun, weapon’; ‘plant,
bush, tree’; ‘bow’; ‘leg, foot’; ‘fish tail’; ‘male anus’; ‘female anus or
buttocks’; ‘skin’, hide’; ‘hat’; ‘tooth’; ‘forehead’; ‘elbow’; ‘day (used with
numerals)’; ‘gravel at bottom of sea’; ‘footprints’; ‘dress’; ‘fishing
equipment’; ‘food to be eaten on a journey’; ‘bowstring’; ‘mind,, heart’;
‘dwelling, indoors’; ‘breast, trunk, lungs’; ‘village’; ‘dead whale’; ‘door’;
‘breasts’; ‘eye’; ‘prairie’; ‘place, location’; ‘sealing canoe’; ‘fishtrap’; ‘bed’; ‘hand, twig, branch’; ‘odor’; ‘tail of a
quadruped’; ‘vulva’; ‘extreme, end’; ‘eyebrow’; ‘knife’; ‘thigh’; ‘manner,
way’; ‘territory’; ‘wife’; ‘river canoe’; ‘whale’; ‘fire (for warming or
cooking)’; ‘size, room’; ‘river’; ‘throat’; ‘salmon egg’; ‘body’; and ‘’own’;
‘fishing in order to store it away’; ‘have’, ‘need’; ‘intend’; ‘smell
(intransitive)’; ‘come from’; ‘use’ ‘paddle’; ‘arrive’; ‘pack’; ‘give’; ‘catch
fish in large quantities’; ‘carry’; ‘speak a language’; ‘eat’; ‘share with’;
and many more. Andrade notes (1933:193-4) that in the vast number of cases,
there is no formal resemblance between the suffixes and roots in the language
with similar meaning, such as the word hae:tát and the suffix -k’i ‘arrow’, and the word há’ga: and the suffix -ya ‘tree’. He also notes that when both a word and a
suffix exist, the suffix is generally more generic in meaning. There are
several words for different types of canoes, for example, but the suffix -qa is used
for all of them. There are different words for ‘bow’, ‘arrow’, ‘gun’, and
‘weapon’, but all can be evoked by the suffix -pa. Their ranges of functions generally parallel those of the Salishan languages. To
the west of the Salishan languages and north of the Chimakuan languages are the languages of the Wakashan family. These, too, show large inventories of
suffixes. Again, their meanings tend to be more general and disparate than
their root counterparts, but more concrete and specific than what we normally
expect of affixes. They show less categoriality. Their
ranges of functions parallel those of their Salishan
and Chimakuan neighbors, but their actual inventories
differ in subtle ways. Directly
to the east of the Salishan languages in British
Columbia, Idaho, and Montana, is the Kutenai language, generally considered an
isolate. It too contains a set of lexical suffixes, with meanings and functions
very similar to those in Salishan languages. They
generally appear to be more noun-like than verb-like, and include many that
evoke body parts. Eskimo-Aleut languages, which are not adjacent, also contain
constructions which appear to be descended from noun-verb compounds. The modern
languages are uniquely (or nearly) suffixing, but contain many complex bases
consisting of an initial noun root followed by a verbalizing suffix with
relative concrete meaning, such as ‘eat’, ‘buy’, ‘catch’, etc. Figure
6 provides a general idea of the distribution of languages with lexical suffix constructions apparently
descended from noun incorporation. 4.3.
Means/Manner/Instrumental affixes Another
strong linguistic area shows special patterns of morphological elaboration that
go beyond genetic borders. Communities indigenous to Northern California and
neighboring areas of modern Oregon, Idaho, and Nevada were always small and
generally exogamous. Multilingualism was
the norm. Children often grew up with parents who spoke different languages. So
far as is known, there were no significant differences in prestige among the
languages; it was simply considered polite to speak the language of the
community one was in (Conathan 2004, O’Neill 2008, Jany 2009, Mithun 2010, Haynie 2012, Spence 2013). Bilinguals consciously choosing
to speak one of their languages would presumably pay attention to features they
were most conscious of, carefully selecting vocabulary from that language. But
they might easily transfer a propensity to specify certain distinctions from
one of their languages to the other. Bilinguals accustomed to mentioning the
source and/or reliability of information (evidentiality)
in one language, for example, might mention it more often in another, even if
that meant using analytic constructions: ‘it is said that’, ‘it appears that’,
. . . And frequency of expression is the foundation for the development of
grammatical structure. Not surprisingly, we find areal elaboration of
evidential distinctions. In Northern California, for example, the Palaihnihan languages contain verb prefixes for hearsay,
inference, and general knowledge; Shasta prefixes distinguish direct
experience, inference, and reportative sources; Washo distinguishes visual evidence, auditory evidence, and
inference; Wintu distinguishes knowledge acquired
from direct experience, hearsay, other hearing, touch, smell, taste, and
inference. The Pomoan languages distinguish personal
experience, hearsay or reportative evidence, other
aural evidence, factive statements (everyone knows
that), inference, performative evidence (I know
because I did it myself), and affective evidence (I know because it affected
me). Figure 6. Descendants of
Noun Incorporation: Lexical Affixes A
large number of languages in the West contain verbal prefixes indicating a kind
of means or manner of motion, sometimes referred to as ‘instrumental prefixes’
(Mithun 2007). Jansen provides examples from Yakima Sahaptin with the verb root -tł’ki‘break’.
(9)
Yakima Ichishkíin Sahaptin:
Jansen 2010: 234
As
Jansen notes, the meanings of the prefixes are actually not as specific as
their glosses might first suggest. They often indicate as much a manner of
motion as a specific instrument. She cites the prefix twá-, which indicates not simply involvement of a long instrument, but
one held by a handle, at an angle, moved radially, in the way that one writes,
stirs batter, scrapes a hide, or shaves. (10)
Yakima Ichishkíin Sahaptin:
Jansen 2010:235
The
prefixes show blurred categoriality: a prefix might
as well be glossed ‘with knife’ as ‘by sawing’. Among the prefixes listed by
Jansen are some glossed ‘with teeth, pulling, biting, lifting’; ‘rolling’;
‘with mouth, eating, tasting’; ‘with fire, heat, light, smoke’; ‘hearing, with
the ear’; ‘carrying, lifting’; ‘with hands, pushing, pushing with upper part of
the body’; ‘with knife, scissors, plane, cutting, scraping’; ‘crawling, on all
fours’; ‘with knife, slicing vertically or horizontally, plow’; ‘with pole,
needles, prying or pushing’; ‘by shooting, power, with extra force, missile,
arrow’; ‘by throwing’, ‘with butt, anus, backwards’; ‘while walking’; ‘lower
arm, hand, toes’; ‘stick, cane, vertical movement up and down’; ‘with foot, by
kicking’; ‘with head, butting motion’; ‘with pointed implement, point, end’;
‘with long implement, radial motion, as writing, shaving, golfing’; ‘with
instrument, chopping motion as when using an axe, hammer’; ‘circling and tying
something around’; ‘eye motion, seeing’; ‘paddling, in canoe’; ‘with speed’;
‘with movement’; ‘falling’; ‘reclining’; ‘water’; and ‘in fear’. (Jansen
2010:236-8) Inventories
of such prefixes are pervasive throughout the West, crossing genetic
boundaries. Means/manner prefixes with very similar meanings recur in language
after language. Yakima Sahaptin is a member of the Sahaptian family, which includes other Sahaptin
varieties and Nez Perce. All show such prefixes. The Sahaptian
family was once grouped into a superstock termed “Penutian”, based to some extent on structural similarities.
Other families grouped into this superstock also show
such prefixes: those of the Maidun family (Maidu, Konkow, Nisenan), Klamath, and Takelma. But they do not appear in other “Penutian” languages, such as those of the Wintun, Utian, and Yokutsan families of
California, or Coos, Siuslaw, and Alsea in Oregon, or others further afield. Such
prefixes also occur in languages of the area once hypothesized to be part of an
entirely different superstock, “Hokan”:
languages of the Pomoan family (Northern Pomo,
Central Pomo, Southern Pomo, Northeastern Pomo, Southeastern Pomo, and Kashaya, all in Northern California), languages of the Palaihnihan family (Achumawi and Atsugewi, in Northern California), languages of the Chumashan family (Obispeño, Purisimeño, Ineseño, Barbareño, Ventureño, and Cruzeño, on the Central California coast), and languages of
the Yuman-Cochimi family (Iipay,
Kumeyaay, Tiipay, Cocopa, Yuma, Maricopa, Mojave, Upland Yuman,
Paipai, Kiliwa, Cochimi in Southern California and into western Arizona),
as well as in Karuk and Yana in Northern California, and Washo
in adjacent Nevada. But such prefixes
do not appear in other languages grouped as “Hokan”,
such as Shasta, Esselen, and Salinan.
The
precise inventories of prefixes vary across the languages, but their functions
are strikingly similar. They are word-formation devices, so their meanings can
often only be assessed from the verbs in which they occur. Talmy
(1972: 407-427) lists a number of prefixes for Atsugewi,
with the kinds of verbs in which they are found. As in the other languages, the
prefixes show blurred categoriality, evoking both
kinds of instruments and kinds of actions: tu- ‘hands, working towards each other’; ci- ‘hands working manipulatively’; ma- ‘feet’, ti- ‘buttocks’; wi- ‘teeth’; pri- ‘mouth interior, sucking, tasting, smelling’; phu- ‘mouth
interior, spitting, blowing’; -
‘mouth exterior’; uh- ‘arm, swinging,
batting, throwing, pounding, chopping, sailing, load, falling into, as
hailstone, snow on limb, falling, spread out blanket, board nailed to wall’; cu- ‘linear object moving axially,
pool-cueing, prodding, pushing steadily with stick, poking, piercing, skewering,
holding pinned against a wall, supporting with a cane’; ra- ‘thrusting up at an angle, digging, awling,
sewing, propping, leaning, poling, raking, sweeping, scraping, smoothing over,
whittling, plowing, hugging, scoring, slicing, sawing, driving, steam-rolling,
getting run over, gas in stomach, ice under soil, leaning cradleboard,
shingle’; ta- ‘paddling (hot rock in soup), stirring’; ka- ‘boring, rain’; ru- ‘dragging
with cord, flexing (one’s muscle), suspending with cord, binding, girding,
sinew, belt, unerect penis, icicle’; mi-
‘knife, cutting’; ca-
‘wind blowing’; cu- ‘liquid flowing, car in collision’; miw-/mu- ‘heat, fire’; wu- ‘light shining on figure’; sa-/su-/si-/siw- ‘visually’; ka-/ku-/ ki-/kiw- ‘aurally’, tu- ‘touching’; cri-
‘hairs in a braid, stalks in a sheaf, sticks in a bundle’; The
prefixes occur in a third group as well, consisting of the Wappo
and Yuki languages, both in Northern California adjacent to the Pomoan languages. They also occur in a fourth group, by all
accounts unrelated to any of the previous three. The Uto-Aztecan family
consists of over 30 languages spoken from Idaho to El Salvador, and California
to Oklahoma. The means/manner prefixes occur in just one branch of the family,
however, Numic, whose speakers are in the Great Basin
in eastern California, Oregon, Idaho, and into Utah and Wyoming. The
languages vary in their inventories of prefixes and the transparency of their
meanings, though certain meanings appear in language after language. In some
languages the inventories are quite small, often only a single consonant, with
relatively vague meanings. Others show much larger inventories, with large
proportions of verb stems containing elements indicating
means/manner/involvement. Often the contribution of the prefix is somewhat
obscure; stems were formed one by one by analogy to existing vocabulary, often
metaphorically. In some languages, particularly those located at the periphery
of the area, sources of some of the prefixes can be seen in surviving noun or
verb roots. For Yakima, Jansen notes that the etymological sources of most of
the prefixes are no longer discernible; most bear no resemblance to an
independent noun indicating a body part or other object. She does note a few,
however: pá- ‘with hand’, resembling ɨpáp ‘hand, arm’,
and msh- ‘with ear’, resembling mɨshyú ‘ear’
(Jansen 2010:239). The
development of means/manner/instrumental affixes from compounds containing an
instrument noun or manner verb is not entirely surprising. Compounds with these
structures are not unusual, nor is the evolution of bound roots to affixes. Such
prefixes occur in several areas of North America: not only California and
adjacent areas, but also in the isolate Haida on the
northern Northwest Coast, in the Siouan family, which extends over the Plains
from north of the Canadian border to the Gulf of Mexico. Kutenai has a set of
similar suffixes. The concentration of means/manner prefixes in California and
its neighbors suggests contact factors at work, however. It appears that the
constructions originated in a propensity to specify means/manner often as the
first root of a compound. This propensity apparently spread from California
outward: languages at the center of the area generally have shorter forms,
sometimes just a single consonant, often with more abstract and diffuse
functions and no discernible lexical sources, while those at the periphery show
larger forms with somewhat clearer, more concrete meanings, some with surviving
root origins, and in some cases surviving compound constructions in which the
initial noun or verb stem indicates a means or manner of motion. Figure
7 provides an idea of the distribution of the means/manner affixes. Together,
noun incorporation, relicts of noun incorporation, and derivational descendants
of noun incorporation cover a wide area of North America, as illustrated in
Figure 8. In fact, languages with no trace of noun incorporation or its
descendants are few and far between, as illustrated in Figure 9. In
sum, the flourishing of morphologically complex constructions like noun
incorporation and its descendants could be facilitated by a preponderance of
small communities of intimates: incorporation can produce large inventories of
complex verb stems in the common lexicon of speakers who interact frequently. Areal
concentrations of certain types of morphological elaboration suggest that
language contact may play a role as well. In addition to the lexical suffixes
of the Northwest Coast and the means/manner/instrumental prefixes of the California
linguistic area, there are, for example, concentrations of locative/directional
suffixes in the California area (DeLancey 1996, Mithun 2010). Of all morphological structures, compounding
should particularly susceptive to replication under situations of language
contact, not far removed from the replication of idiomatic turns of phrase.
Compounding is a process that is already pervasive cross-linguistically, so it
would not necessarily be novel in the first place. The elements, full stems (or
words), still generally have their full phonological substance early on, and
relatively concrete meanings. What might be replicated by bilinguals would be a
propensity to specify certain distinctions, and particular patterns of
compounding, such as instrument-root. Figure 7. Means/Manner/Instrumental
Affixes Figure 8. Languages with
Incorporation or Descendants of Incorporation Figure 9. Languages with
No Trace of Noun Incorporation or its Descendants 5. Conclusion At
least two major kinds of factors can be hypothesized to underlie some of the
morphological complexity typical of North America. The widespread existence of pronominal
affixes for all core arguments and the sizeable sets of affixes with relatively
concrete and specific meanings (though not as concrete and specific as roots)
in different areas suggest that there might be general factors at play in their
development: as suggested by Trudgill and Dahl, long
periods of development, probably from compound constructions to affix constructions,
unhampered by the simplifying tendencies of large populations of adult
second-language speakers. But subtle differences in the inventories and
functions of the affixes in the different areas suggest a second. It appears
that early contact, at the compounding stage or before, affected propensities
for expressing certain distinctions in everyday talk. Bilinguals accustomed to elaborate
expression of certain features in one language presumably carried frequencies
of expression into their other language, frequencies which would lay the
groundwork for the development of the particular affix constructions we find
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Nicholas Evans, Michael Fortescue, and Marianne Mithun, eds. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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