Pragmatically determined word order in Cherokee and its exceptions - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Pragmatically determined word order in Cherokee and its exceptions Brian Hsu and Benjamin Frey LSA 2020 Annual Meeting January 4, 2020 1

Introduction and overview Information structure is known to play a primary role in Cherokee word order (Scancarelli 1987, Montogmery-Anderson 2008) § Thematic structure plays a relatively limited role in determining word order Goals of this project : § Closer examination of relative ordering restrictions on information structure specifications. § Examining effects of other properties on word order, particularly quantification. 2

Introduction and overview Preview of findings: § Relative order of major constituents in the clause, based on information structure: Frame-setter, > new info., > verb > given info. topic focus § Exception: quantified nouns are uniformly pre- verbal , independent of their information structure status. 3

Organization of the talk 1. Introduction and overview 2. Background and prior works 3. Information structure in the Cherokee clause 4. Quantified nominals 5. Conclusion 4

Background and prior works Southern Iroquoian language – indigenous to western North Carolina and adjacent areas. Currently severely endangered: • ~1991 speakers in Oklahoma • ~211 speakers in North Carolina (Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20190629081731/https://www.t heonefeather.com/2019/06/tri-council-declares-state-of- emergency-for-cherokee-language/) 5

Background and prior works Often classified as polysynthetic: § Verbs highly inflected for person, tense, aspect, mood specification. § Single words can express full propositions. (1) ᏲᎠᎦᏎᏍᏓᏁᎴ y-oj-a 3 gasesda 32 n-el-e 3 NEG -1. EXCL -pay .attention- BEN - REP ‘We didn’t pay much attention to it.’ (Feeling et al. 2017: 12) 6

Background and prior works Unlike other polysynthetic languages, Cherokee does not have productive noun incorporation. (2) Cherokee (3) Mohawk (N. Iroquoian) ᎩᏟᏍ ᎯᏩᏎ kiihli=s hii-hwas-e wa'-ke-nakt-a-hnínu-’ dog= Q 2 A . AN -buy: CMP - NXP FACT -1 SG .S-bed- O -buy- PUNC ‘Did you buy the dog?’ ‘I bought the bed’ (Baker 1996) 7

Background and prior works Key consequence: It is relatively easy to investigate the placement of major constituents in the clause (3) Cherokee (4) Mohawk (N. Iroquoian) ᎩᏟᏍ ᎯᏩᏎ kiihli=s hii-hwas-e wa'-ke-nakt-a-hnínu-’ dog= Q 2 A . A N -buy: C M P - N X P FA C T -1 SG .S-bed- O -buy- PUNC ‘Did you buy the dog?’ ‘I bought the bed’ (Baker 1996) 8

Methods Our data are from narrative texts, particularly useful in identifying information structure. § Occasionally checked against the Cherokee Corpus (http://www.cherokeedictionary.net/corpus/corpusMain) Sources: § Montgomery-Anderson, Brad. 2008 . A reference grammar of Oklahoma Cherokee . Ph.D dissertation, University of Kansas. § Feeling, Durbin, William Pulte, and Gregory Pulte. 2017. Cherokee narratives: a linguistic study. Norman: University of Oklahoma press. 9

Organization of the talk 1. Introduction and overview 2. Background and prior works 3. Information structure in the Cherokee clause 4. Quantified nominals 5. Conclusion 10

Information structure in the Cherokee clause A quick glance shows that all orders of Subjects (S), Objects (O), Verbs (V) are possible (Scancarelli 1986) (5) ᏭᏢᏍᏔᏁ ᏩᏯ wi-uu-atlvvstan-éʔi wahya TRN -3 B -take.off: CMP - NXP wolf ‘the wolf took off’ ( M-A 2008: 552) 11

Information structure in the Cherokee clause A quick glance shows that all orders of Subjects (S), Objects (O), Verbs (V) are possible (Scancarelli 1986) (6) ᎩᎶ ᎤᏛᏐᏅ ᎤᏢᎬ kilo utvsohnv u-dlv-g-v some old.man 3 B -sick- PROG - EXP ‘an old man was sick’ (Feeling 2017: 22) 12

Information structure in the Cherokee clause A quick glance shows that all orders of Subjects (S), Objects (O), Verbs (V) are possible (Scancarelli 1986) (7) ᎦᏂᏓᏛ ᏭᎪᎮ ᏥᏍᏛᎾ ka-níitaʔtv́v́ʔi wi-uu-kooh-éʔi jíistvvna 3 A -tail TRN -3 B -saw: CMP - NXP crawdad ‘the crawdad saw (the wolf’s) tail.’ (M-A 2008:552) 13

Information structure in the Cherokee clause However, word order is largely predictable from information structure factors (Scancarelli 1987) . § Our proposed template: Frame-setter, > new info., > verb > given info. topic focus 14

New information > verb Frame-setter, > new info., > verb > given info. topic focus Best observed in the first sentence(s) of narratives. § These typically consist of all new information . § Nominal arguments not likely to be realized only as pronoun prefixes. § Initial sentences are uniformly verb final . 15

New information > verb First sentences of “Water Beast” (Feeling et al. 2017) (9) ᎾᏍᎩᏃ ... Nasgi-hno That-and ᎯᎠ ᎠᏂᏔᎵ ᎠᏂᏍᎦᏯ ᎠᏂᎦᏪᎯᎮ hi ʔ a a-ni-ta ʔli a-ni-sgaya a-ni-gawehih-e this 3-pl-two 3-pl-man 3-pl-paddle- REP P “these two men were paddling” 16

New information > verb First sentences of Water Beast (Feeling et al. 2017) (10) ... ᏥᏳ ᎤᏍᏗ ᎤᎾᎣᏕ jiyu usdi u-n-ajod-e canoe small 3- PL -be.in- REP P ‘they were in a small canoe’ 17

New information > verb First sentences of Water Beast (Feeling et al. 2017) (11) ... ᏦᎩ ᎠᎦᏘ ᎠᏂᎦᏪᎯᎮ jog akti a-ni-gawehih-e Upstream toward 3-pl-paddle-repP ’they were paddling upstream’ 18

Verb > given information Frame-setter, > new info., > verb > given info . topic focus § After their first occurrence in a text, given information phrases occur postverbally. § Following examples from “Two dogs in one” (Feeling et al. 2017): 19

Verb > given information In the first (all new information) sentence, television precedes the verb. (20)ji-juja-gwu si ji-ge-sv ogi-lvgwodi ge-sv 1-boy-just yet R EL -be- EX P 1. EX L -like be- EX P ‘when I was a boy, what we liked was...’ a-dayvladv-s-gi og-agadosdo-di 3-in.view- PR O G - A G 1. EX L -watch- IN F ‘For us to watch television’ (Feeling et al. 2017: 103) 20

Verb > given information In the second clause, television , now old information, is postverbal. (21) ᎣᎬᏌ ᏲᎩᎮ o-gv-sa y-ogi-h-e 1. EXCL -have- REP NEG -1. EXCL -have- REP ᎠᏓᏯᎳᏛᏍᎩ a-dayvladv-s-gi 3-in.view- PROG - AG “… but we ourselves did not have television.” 21

Verb > given information The third clause introduces new information electricity , which precedes the verb. (22) ᎠᎾᎦᎵᏍᎩᏊ ᏱᏂᏙᎬᏁ a-n-galis-g-i-gwu yi-ni-do-gv-ne 3- PL -flow- PR O G - A G -just NEG -1- PL -have- REP ‘and we didn’t even have electricity’ (Feeling p. 99) 22

Newsworthiness reconsidered Newsworthiness principle ( Mithun 1986): word order in some languages is determined by the relative newsworthiness of constituents. A constituent is newsworthy if it: § (i) introduce[s] pertinent, new information § (ii) present[s] new topics § (iii) indicate[s] a contrast (Mithun 1992: 58) 23

Newsworthiness reconsidered Based in part on Cayuga (Northern Iroquoian). Cherokee shown to follow same basic pattern by Scancarelli (1986) A constituent is newsworthy if it: § (i) introduce[s] pertinent, new information § (ii) present[s] new topics § (iii) indicate[s] a contrast (Mithun 1992: 58) 24

Newsworthiness reconsidered Problem 1: Fixed orderings among different types of newsworthy items, ex. Topic / frame-setter > new information are unexpected. Languages can vary in preferred relative orders of these items. 25

Newsworthiness reconsidered Both new info. > given and given > new info. orders attested cross-linguistically (Gundel 1988) § Object placement in Yiddish (Diesing 1997: 390) (23) a. Maks hot nekhtn geleyent a bukh Max has yesterdayread a book ‘Max read a book yesterday.’ c . Maks hot dos bukh nekhtn geleyent Max has the book yesterdayread Max read the book yesterday’ 26

Newsworthiness reconsidered Next: Ordering restrictions on quantified nominals that cannot be explained in terms of newsworthiness. 27

Organization of the talk 1. Introduction and overview 2. Background and prior works 3. Information structure in the Cherokee clause 4. Quantified nominals 5. Conclusion 28

Quantified nominals Quantified nouns ᎩᎶ kilo ‘someone’, Ꮭ ᎩᎶ tla kilo ‘no one’ always precede verbs . § To some extent expected: these items are difficult to interpret as given information. Next: Preverbal instances of ᎩᎶ khilo ‘someone’ that refer to given, specific individuals, not plausibly newsworthy. 29

Quantified nominals Kilo precedes the verb, even though the fact that the car has been purchased is more pertinent. (24) ᎢᎩᎾᏚᎵᏍᎪ ᎠᎵᏗᏝ ji-kin-tuuliisk-ő altííthla R EL -1 B . D L -want: C M P - H A B \ SU B car ‘the car that we want...’ ᎦᏳᎳ ᎩᎶ ᎤᏩᏎ káayuùla khilo uu-hwas-éʔi already someone 3 B -buy: C M P - N X P ‘someone already bought it.’ (MA 132) 30