Group in American Indian Languages

Thursday, March 15, 2007
6:00 pm at the home of Leanne Hinton

Speaker: Christian DiCanio
Title: "Issues in Itunyoso Trique Clitic Morphology"

Abstract:
In this talk I will present on morphologically-conditioned tonal and laryngeal alternations in Itunyoso Trique encliticization. Enclitics apply to noun stems with genitive marking. A subset of the enclitics condition phonological alternations on the stem. The set of alternations includes first-person morphological toggling, second-person low tone spreading, vowel quality changes, and vowel insertion. However, the conditioning environments for these processes is irregular. For first-person marking, in certain environments tone does not change while the laryngeal toggles. For second-person marking, low tone spreading applies to an unpredictable set of root shapes. Hollenbach (1984) describes similar processes for Copala Trique, yet the data in Itunyoso Trique is more irregular, suggesting the need for some alternative analysis.

Wednesday, January 17, 2007
6:00 pm at the home of Andrew Garrett

Speaker: Keren Rice, University of Toronto
Title: "Activity incorporates and middle voice in some Athabaskan languages"

Abstract:
Many Athapaskan languages exhibit a structure in which an incorporated noun contributes an activity that occurs simultaneous with the activity of the verb: X while Y-ing. In this paper I examine some of the constraints that exist on this structure. The incorporating verb is restricted semantically, being drawn only from verbs of motion, verbs of position, and verbs of saying. The incorporated noun is likewise restricted, representing an activity. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the construction is that it requires the voice/valence marker typically found in middle voice forms including reflexives, reciprocals, indirect reflexives, indirect reciprocals, self-benefactives, incorporated body parts, intransitive iteratives, and erratives (“doing an activity referred to by the verb excessively or incorrectly and being unable to stop or escape from the consequences” Axelrod 1993: 108; “quite often connotes a reflex idea not only of impropriety, but of unwished for consequences for the subject of the verb” Morice 1932 II:327), and others. I propose that what unifies this set is that in each case, two elements, be they entities, events, or times, are interpreted as identical in some way – a shared entity, a common time, an event repeated. This expands the understanding of middle voice, and offers an account of a perplexing problem in some Athapaskan languages.