Volume 17 Issue 2 (2022) DOI:10.1349/PS1.1537-0852.A.526 Note: Linguistic Discovery uses Unicode characters to represent phonetic symbols. Please see Optimizing Display for requirements to accurately reproduce this page. The Emergence of Accusative
Case in Copala Triqui George Aaron Broadwell University of Florida 1. Introduction 1.1 Copala Triqui transitives Copala Triqui (TRC) is an Otomanguean language, originally from
Oaxaca, Mexico. Our research group, the Albany Triqui
Working Group, has been working with members of the Copala
Triqui community in the Albany NY area since 1998 to
produce a dictionary, videos, a phone app and literacy materials.[1] We have also been working to understand the grammar of this language, and in particular its morphosyntax. The language has an accusative case particle man which occurs with transitive predicates in examples like (1) and (2).[2] As these examples show, Copala Triqui is a VSO language, and the accusative particle is obligatory for a pronominal object (1) and optional for a non-pronominal object (2).
Copala Triqui also allows SVO order, and the pattern for accusative particle is the same -- obligatory for a pronominal object (3) and optional for a non-pronominal object (4).
Copala Triqui also has a homophonous noun man, meaning ‘body’, as in (5).
A homophonous preposition man is used before the recipient with a number of ditransitive verbs such as rqué ‘give’, as in (6) and (7). For expository purposes, we can call this ‘dative man’.
It is possible for a sentence to have both the accusative particle and the dative preposition man
I argue in this
paper that the noun ‘body’, the accusative particle, and dative preposition man are synchronically three different
parts of speech in modern Copala Triqui,
as spoken by our consultants. However, in earlier recorded Copala
Triqui (from about 1965-75), we find somewhat
different grammatical patterns, and I will argue that in earlier Copala Triqui, the accusative
particle and dative preposition man
were not yet distinct. Thus, a distinct accusative case particle appears to
have emerged out of a dative preposition in about the last sixty years. It is
thus a contemporary example of a diachronic path from adposition
to case-marker which has been proposed for several other languages.[4] 1.2 Prior research on the diachrony of datives and accusatives The question of theoretical interest is how a language without overt case marking develops a case marker. Copala Triqui is one of three languages in the Triqui subgroup, and the other two members (Itunyoso and Chicahuaxtla Triqui) lack any accusative marker. Thus, it is reasonable to assume that Proto-Triqui (spoken perhaps 1000 years B.P.) had no accusative and Copala Triqui has developed overt case marking. The literature
of the origins of case systems identifies a few known pathways, as discussed in
Blake (2001). • Serial verb constructions, where verbs like ‘give’ are reanalyzed as dative [Heine et al (1991) for Ewe] or verbs like ‘take’ are reanalyzed as instrumental or accusatives cases. [Lord (1982:286-8) for the language Gã] . • Nouns of position or relationship are reanalyzed as various local cases. For example in the Finnic language Komi-Permiak, the noun vyv ‘top’ is the historical source of five cases (superlative, sublative, superessive, superterminative, and perlative) Austerlitz (1980:237). In many languages, body part terms such as ‘mouth’, ‘face’, ‘heart’ are the diachronic sources of case markers. The Triqui diachronic development is an example of the second pathway, body part term to case marker. Some parts of this diachronic development as discussed in prior work on Copala Triqui by Barbara Hollenbach. For example, writes of sentences like (1) and (2), “A personal object is often marked by man ‘body of’, and a pronominal object always is.” (Hollenbach 1992:187). However, this quote seems to claim that the man which precedes the object is a noun meaning ‘body’. Her more recent work lists man as a preposition (Hollenbach 2008:132) or as a preposition and a noun (Hollenbach 2015:152). However, Hollenbach’s analysis has never distinguished between
prepositional and case-marking uses of man,
and no prior research has identified three different kinds of man. I will argue in this paper that
understanding the three different parts of speech involved is important to
understanding the historical development. Contemporary Copala
Triqui has three distinct readings for man, which I argue are: 1. A noun meaning ‘body’ 2. A case marker for accusative 3. A preposition appearing before datives. Although these
three kinds of man are phonologically identical, they show quite different
syntactic behavior. They can be distinguished by four properties: 1. Optionality in-situ. Only the case marker man can be omitted before an in-situ NP 2. Pied-piping. Only the noun and the preposition can be pied-piped. 3. Stranding. Only the preposition shows unrestricted stranding.[5] 4. Omission before a gap. Only the case marker and the preposition man can be omitted before a gap. The following
table summarizes these facts.
Table 1 In 2, I discuss the
first criterion, omission in situ. In section 3, I discuss contexts in which the dative appears. In
section 4, I discuss the
second and third criteria, pied-piping and stranding.
And in section 5, I discuss the
fourth criterion, optionality in extraction. 2. Conditions on the use of the accusative As stated above, in elicitation contexts, the accusative is obligatory for a pronominal object and optional for a non-pronominal object.
However, there are a few cases where the accusative is either obligatory or strongly preferred. In all of these cases, it may be that the function of the accusative is to reduce ambiguity as to the subject and object of the transitive verb. There are two subcases. The first is when subjects are extracted. The second is when the animacy of the subject is equal to or lower than that of the object. 2.1 Accusative and subject extraction If the subject is extracted and the animacy of the subject is equal to or lower than that of the object, then the object must be preceded by the accusative. Contrast subject and object extraction in (11) and (12). As these examples show, when the object is extracted in (11), there is no accusative and the NP which follows the verb must be interpreted as the subject of the verb. When the subject is extracted in (12), then the object must be preceded by the accusative.
If the accusative is omitted, then speakers interpret the sentence as showing object extraction instead of subject extraction.
Similar facts are seen in relative clauses. Note that in (14a) and (15a), the inclusion of the accusative leads to an interpretation of the example as subject extraction. If the accusative is omitted, then speakers interpret the examples as object extraction, even when this yields implausible results, as in (15b).
If the subject outranks the object in animacy or the semantics of the verb make the subject and object unambiguous, then the accusative may be omitted before the object in subject extraction. Thus in (16), there is no accusative before sa'anj ‘money’, since its lower animacy makes it clear that it must be the object of the verb.
The obligatory
use of the accusative in instances of subject extraction seems clearly to
function as a way of reducing ambiguity in transitives. 2.2 Accusative preference and animacy A related case is found when the subject and object are equal in animacy and the semantics of the verb allow either to potentially be interpreted as subject.[6] In such cases, some speakers report that omission of the accusative is ‘confusing’. See (18) for an example of this judgment.
Some speakers also say that it sounds odd to omit the accusative in examples like (20), where there is an inanimate subject and object.
However, these judgments are variable; other speakers accept (18) and (20). Thus, the judgments for obligatory use of man differ for the sentences discussed in 2.1 and 2.2. The ambiguity created by subject extraction requires accusative marking for all speakers. Some speakers also prefer to use the accusative in cases where the subject’s animacy is equal to or lower than the object’s animacy. 2.3 Accusative marking in discourse While accusative is usually judged optional in elicitation, natural discourse follows some familiar patterns from research on differential object marking (discussed in Aissen (2003), Bossong (1991) inter alia). In order to gain a better understanding the occurrence of overt accusative marking, I annotated a sample of approximately 1,240 clauses from Copala Triqui folkloric texts. The corpus contained 217 transitive clauses with overt objects. Of these clauses, only 41 (18.9%) show an overt accusative. Categorizing the clauses by type of direct object reveals clear preferences in the use of the accusative. The major factors appear to be animacy, pronominal status, and specificity. The examination shows that accusative marking is clearly sensitive to the pronominal and animate status of the object, with both kinds of objects far more likely to be marked. Of the 17 animate pronominal objects, 100% have overt accusative marking, confirming the results of elicitation and previous literature. Below is an example from the corpus showing the accusative with an animate pronominal object:
Inanimate or non-human pronominal objects, however, show different behavior in elicitation. Our consultants find the use of the accusative before yo' ‘it, that’ to be optional in sentences like the following.
While this is the judgment in elicitation tasks, the corpus does not show a clear example of this sort. Instead, the majority of inanimate pronominal objects are null in the text. Our corpus contained 13 inanimate or non-human objects, and all were null. (23) shows an example of the kind of non-human null object found in Copala Triqui discourse. Here the two italicized locations show null pronouns referring to the objects of the verbs ‘search for’ and ‘eat’. In context, the null pronoun is understood to refer to insects.
Animacy is also important for non-pronominal objects. While animate objects are frequently accusative, inanimate objects very rarely occur with an overt accusative. Of 139 inanimate objects, only 2 (1.44%) have an overt accusative marker, while the remainder (97.84%) are unmarked. For the purposes of this paper, the most important generalization about the accusative case-marker can be summarized as follows: Case-marking rule Accusative man is optional, except a.) when the object is an animate pronominal, or b.)
when the subject is extracted and the subject is equal
to or lower than the object in animacy. In contrast to the accusative, the noun man ‘body’ cannot be deleted
Nor can the dative man be deleted:
As stated above, the dative man is used before the recipient with a number of ditransitive verbs such as rqué ‘give’, as in (26).
The verbs that allow this dative include a.) verbs of transfer such as rqué ‘give’ (usually to 1st or 2nd person recipient), o' ‘give’ (usually to 3rd person recipient), narqué ‘return’, nago' ‘deliver, return to its original owner’[7] b.) verbs of causation like naqui'yaj ‘make’, as in examples like (27):
c.) a few verbs that take equative complements such as tucu'náj ‘call (someone by a name)’, in examples like (28):[8]
d.) a few verbs of deprivation such as 'yaj itu̱u̱ ‘steal’, as in (29):
e.) a few verbs of position and placement, such as axríj..taga' ‘put in jail’, as in (30):
f.) a few idioms with double objects. One such idiom is o'...xto' ‘give a kiss’, seen in (31):
A generalization
about all the types of verbs which appear with dative man is that they have a subcategorization like the following: <NP[subject] NP[object] [PP man NP[object2] ]>. Many of the syntactic criteria that distinguish the three types of man from each other rely on filler-gap constructions. Copala Triqui has several such constructions in which noun phrases and prepositional phrases have been dislocated from their positions after the verb. This can happen through Topicalization, Wh-movement, relative clauses, and Neg-fronting. In this paper, I will only illustrate two of these filler-gap constructions: Wh-movement and relative clauses. Wh-movement obligatorily displaces NPs and PPs to a clause-initial position, leaving a gap. ___ shows the expected postverbal position for the subject:
This is fairly simple for the extraction of the subject. However, there are multiple complications for the extraction of other constituents, as discussed in the sections that follow. 4.1 Objects in filler-gap constructions The normal way to question an object is to front the NP without any accusative marker.
The wh-word is not normally preceded by the accusative marker:[10]
Also ungrammatical is pied-piping with inversion:
The accusative is also not stranded in wh-questions.
Similar patterns are seen in relative clauses. Consider again the
following examples (repeated from (15) above), where relativization of the object is accompanied by
omission of the accusative in (38b):
Thus the general pattern for objects in filler-gap constructions is
omission of the accusative marker. Although we have no volunteered or textual
examples of the accusative before an object gap in contemporary Copala Triqui, in 6.2 we show that older texts do show this pattern and contemporary
speakers accept constructed examples of this type. 4.2 Prepositions in filler-gap
constructions When the questioned element is the object
of a preposition, we see two possibilities. Prepositions can be stranded (40) or pied-piped (followed by inversion) (41).[11]
Relative clauses only show the stranding
option, as seen in (42) and (43).
4.3 Dative man in filler-gap
constructions Recall from our previous discussion that man is also used before the recipient
with a number of ditransitive verbs such as rqué ‘give’ and o' ‘give’. The following examples (repeated from (6) and (25)) show this dative man.
Although dative man is phonologically identical to accusative man, it shows surprisingly different syntactic properties. Dative man may be pied-piped (46a) and stranded (46b).
In this respect, dative man shows behaviour
identical to a preposition. Compare the judgments in (46) to the stranding (40) or pied-piping (41) options seen with prepositions. Relativization of the object of the dative
man shows stranding, like the
patterns seen in 4.2. Consider (47) and (48).
4.4 Interrogative possessors in
filler-gap constructions Nouns pied-pied with an interrogative
possessor. Note that they show a wh-initial order
(pied-piping with inversion):
Some speakers also allow extraction of
just the possessor, stranding the noun.[12]
However, most speakers prefer the
pied-piped structure, and this is almost always the order which is volunteered.
In contrast to relativization of subjects,
objects, and objects of prepositions, Copala Triqui avoids relative clauses with a gap corresponding to
the possessor of some argument (e.g. structures
comparable to ‘the man whose wife fell’), and thus our evidence about
possessors is confined to wh-questions.[13] The noun man ‘body’ is like other nouns in stranding or pied-piping
when there is extraction of the possessor. Verbs like tu'na̱a̱ ‘be itchy’ require a body part as their subject. If no more
specific body part (e.g. hand, leg, head) is
mentioned, then man serves as the
subject (53).
The body part cannot be omitted for such
verbs (54).
4.5 Summary The following table summarizes the
behavior of various elements in filler-gap constructions demonstrated in this section
Table 2 As this table shows, man ‘body’ is exactly like ordinary nouns in its possibilities and
dative man is exactly like ordinary
prepositions. The accusative man,
however, shows a pattern that is unlike either nouns or prepositions. 5. Preposition omission in extraction A poorly understood phenomenon in Copala Triqui is the deletion of
some prepositions before an extraction site. Consider the following examples of
preposition deletion with rihaan ‘to’.
Dative man
is like some other Copala Triqui
prepositions in that it may be deleted before a gap.
Recall that the accusative marker shows a
somewhat similar pattern, but its omission is obligatory. Contrast (57) with (56).
It is not possible to delete other
elements, such as nouns, before an extraction site.
Preposition deletion at extraction sites
has also been documented in a few other languages. For example, Joseph (1980) notes that in Modern Greek, "When
the target of Relativization is the object of a preposition, and the deletion
strategy is employed, Greek displays an interesting added wrinkle. Greek does
not tolerate preposition stranding, and when the object of the preposition is
deleted, the preposition itself is deleted along with its object." This is
shown by sentences like (60)
Contrast this with the normal syntax of eksartame ‘depend
on, which cannot take a direct object in simple sentences, always occurring
with the preposition apo ‘from’:
Old English also shows cases of deletion
of a preposition before an extraction site, as in Greek and Copala
Triqui, as discussed in Allen (1980). 6. Comparison to older Copala Triqui In the preceding sections, I have shown
that contemporary Copala Triqui
has three different types of man
corresponding to three different part of speech categories. This is shown by
the syntactic tests shown above. However, when we look at texts collected
in Copala Triqui in the
last century, we find some slight differences in the patterns of the use of man which suggest that about sixty years
ago the accusative and dative uses of man
were not so clearly separated. The two areas where there are detectable
differences are a.) multiple instances of man
in the same clause and b.) stranded accusatives. In contemporary Copala
Triqui, the available case marking patterns for verbs
of transfer are as follows: 1. V NP1 [sto̱n/rihaan NP2] 2. V NP1 man NP 3. V man
NP1 man NP2 The first possibility is seen in (62).
The second possibility is seen in (63).
The third pattern is seen in a sentence
like following (repeated from (8) above):
However, although our consultants accept
sentences of this third type, we have reasonably strong evidence that this
pattern is innovative, and not found in older Copala Triqui. There is a large body of texts in Copala Triqui, due to the work of
Barbara Hollenbach, who published various folktales (Hollenbach
1977,1982,1988) and along with her husband Bruce Hollenbach, translated the New Testament into Copala Triqui. This work
comprises a corpus of about 280,000 words. A search of this corpus, focused on the
grammar of verbs which potentially take two objects, finds no instances of such
verbs followed by two instances of man.
The great majority of the verbs which occur with the dative discussed in
section 3 appear in this corpus with man before the second object and no overt marker before the first
object. That is, nearly all the examples in the older textual material show a
syntax like the following:
A small number of instances of such verbs
appear with an alternative case-marking pattern, with accusative before the
first object and rihaan
‘to’ before the second object. It seems to occur when the NP (theme) is forced
to be accusative since it is a pronoun. In that case, the recipient is marked
with rihaan.
Our contemporary speakers judged sentences
like (66) as unnatural, which probably indicates a
change in grammaticality. Instead, they offered alternatives like (64), which have both accusative and dative man in the same clause. The fact that the older corpus contains no
such examples calls for an explanation. Many languages avoid using the same adposition or case-marker more than once in the same
clause, an effect often called ‘Case OCP’ or ‘identity avoidance’ in the
syntactic literature. (Similar effects have been discussed in general Yip (1998), as well as specific cases in English (Ross 1972), Hindi (Mohanan
1994), and
Japanese (Hiraiwa
2010 among
others). Thus, if we posit an analysis of earlier Copala Triqui in which both
accusative and dative are marked by a preposition man, we find a natural explanation for why there is an apparent
prohibition on using both accusative and dative man in the same clause. However, since accusative man is no longer prepositional in
contemporary Copala Triqui,
there is no prohibition in the grammar against sentences such as (64). As discussed above, in contemporary Copala Triqui, the accusative
cannot be stranded in wh-questions.
In this respect it contrasts with the
dative, which may be stranded:
However in the Copala Triqui texts of the mid-20th century, we often find
instances of stranded accusatives. These are mostly confined to relative
clauses, since the text corpus contains few wh-questions:
Our Copala Triqui consultants apparently never volunteer accusatives
in object relative clauses, but accept constructed
examples of this sort as grammatical. Consider the pair of examples in (71), where (71a) is volunteered, but the constructed
example in (71b) is also accepted.
The difference between contemporary Copala Triqui and that recorded
in the mid-20th century texts can also be explained through the idea that in
earlier Copala Triqui, the
accusative was marked via a preposition man.
Since accusative man was still
prepositional in the early texts, stranded accusatives are just another
instance of stranded prepositions. 7. Conclusion In conclusion, this paper has attempted to
demonstrate that in contemporary Copala Triqui, there are three parts of speech corresponding to
the word man. ‘Body’ man is a noun, dative man is a preposition, and accusative man is a case marker. The only category shared with other Triqui languages is the nominal ‘body’ reading, so this
must be the oldest sense of the word. Mid 20th century Copala
Triqui, as attested in the textual corpus, shows the
grammaticalization of ‘body’ into a preposition used to mark both accusatives
and datives. (This is the grammaticalization discussed in Hollenbach
(1992:187) and Hollenbach
(2015:152).) In the speech of contemporary Copala Triqui people, however,
the accusative has become a separate case marker, with a grammar distinct from
that of the dative preposition. Thus the research
reported here has documented the evolution of a case marker from a preposition
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In Steven G Lapointe, Diane Brentari,
and Patrick Farrell, eds., eds. Morphology
and its Relation to Phonology and Syntax. 216-246. Stanford, CA: CSLI. [1]I extend my sincere thanks to several Copala Triqui speakers – Román Vidal López, José Fuentes, Irma Fuentes, Jesús Fuentes, and Monica deJesus Ramírez – who have helped me in in learning about this language. I also thank the other members of our research group (Lauren Clemens, Rebecca Dinkel, Walter Little, Jamilläh Rodriguez, and Michael Stoop) for their assistance in investigating Triqui grammar. Thanks are also due to Martina Martinovic, Brent Henderson, Marcin Dadan, Brook Lillehaugen, and Eric Potsdam, and two anonymous referees for discussion of the facts in this paper. The orthography used in this paper is based on the practical orthography developed by Barbara and Bruce Hollenbach of the Summer Institute of Linguistics for their translation of the New Testament. I follow their usage in the representation of the consonants, including the following conventions: <x> = [ʃ], <xr> = [ʂ] (a retroflex alveopalatal sibilant), <ch> = [tʃ], <chr> = [tʂ], <c> = [k] (before front vowels), <qu> = [k] before back vowels, [v] = [β] and <j> = [h]. <Vn> represents a nasalized vowel. Trique has five level tones (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) and three contour tones (13, 31, 32), as discussed in Hollenbach (1984). There are two orthographies — a popular orthography used in most publications intended for Triquis (which shows the five most important tonal distinctions) and the linguistic orthography with full tone marking. This paper uses the less cumbersome popular orthography, which is detailed enough to show the relevant morphological distinctions of the language. This paper uses the following abbreviations 1 = first person, 2 = second person, 3 = third person, acc = accusative, an = animal, com = completive, dat = dative, dec = declarative, du = dual, f = feminine, indef = indefinite, m = masculine, neg = negation, negative, parag = paragraph, p = plural, pl = plural, pot = potential aspect, q = question particle/marker, rel = relative, s = singular. [2]I refer here to the man which marks accusative as a case-marking particle, without making a commitment to its part of speech. As argued in 3, case in Copala Triqui may also be marked by a homophonous preposition man. [3]Our speaker suggested a context of daycare center, where the staff return children to their parents at the end of the day. [4]See for example the Latin topicalizing preposition ad 'with regard to' which has evolved to a case-marking preposition in modern Spanish Pensado (1995), Torrego Salcedo (1999), inter alia. [6]A verb-initial sentence is not truly ambiguous, since VSO is grammatical and VOS is ungrammatical. Nevertheless, some speakers still report that they find sentences of the kind in (18) ‘confusing’ and add the omitted man. [7]Although the difference between the two verbs for give o' and rqué is usually based on the person of the recipient, there are
some complex issues involving point of view with these verbs which are outside
the scope of this paper. [8]Note that Copala Triqui and English have different orders for the objects in equative contexts. The Copala Triqui in (28) is literally ‘and Jesus called Peter to him’. [9]On this point I have slightly varying judgements. Some speakers judged these sentences as bad, others as unusual but possibly acceptable. This type of sentence has so far as I can tell, never been volunteered as a translation of English or Spanish sentences with a questioned object. [10]On this point, I have slightly varying judgments. Some speakers judged these sentences as bad, others as unusual but possibly acceptable. This type of sentence has, so far as I can tell, never been volunteered as a translation of English or Spanish sentences with a questioned object. [11]Pied-piping with inversion (PPI) is an areal feature of Mesoamerican languages, as first noted by (Smith Stark 1988). In this word order, the interrogative element precedes the preposition. PPI has been explored in some detail in San Dionicio Ocotepec Zapotec (Broadwell 1999), (Broadwell 2001), in Ocotepec Mixtec (Eberhardt 1999), and in Tzotzil (Aissen 1996). [12]The conditions for extraction of possessors from NPs are still under. Investigation and the judgments are somewhat variable from speaker to speaker. Some speakers seem to allow extraction only from absolutive NPs. [13]Speakers prefer to paraphrase the sentence to avoid such gaps. Thus instead of saying ‘The man whose wife fell got mad’, speakers volunteered alternatives such as ‘Because the man’s wife fell, he got mad’ or ‘The woman fell and her husband got mad’. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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