Report #3: Subject and object marking (due on 12 Feb).

In this report you will be examining the nominal and/or verbal morphology of your language in some detail: How are the subject and/or object distinguished from other NP's? In answering this question the first step is to establish which NP's are subjects and which are objects. Some grammars may discuss this in an explicit manner. Most don't. In the absence of explicit criteria, the most practical procedure is to determine what is a subject or an object on the basis of the glosses in the majority of a number of different examples.

I. Identification of subjects and objects. To do this most efficiently you should begin by looking at intransitive clauses. Intransitive clauses are those with one-place predicates:

(1) A log fell. The man smiled. His campfire was glowing in the dark.

The predicates in these clauses (fall, smile, glow) do not allow direct objects:

(2) *A log fell a stick. *The man smiled his brother. *His campfire was glowing the dark.

Typically, subject NP's in intransitive clauses will either have no case-marking or adposition or will be in the "nominative", "subjective", "absolutive", "direct", or "topic" case. (Caution: NP's may be in some special "absolute" form just in case they are not the possessees of a possessor. And in some languages a morphological distinction is made between the subjects of "active" vs. "stative" intransitive predicates: See Whaley, pp. 161ff.)

The next step is to find three or four transitive clauses; ie, those with two- or three-place predicates (three-place predicates are sometimes called ditransitives):

(3) The man nudged his sister. She handed her brother the axe. He felled a tree.

(Some languages may treat both 'her brother' and 'the axe' as direct objects; others will distinguish Recipients ('her brother') from Patients or Themes ('the axe').

Transitive predicates do not allow the absence of a direct object (except where, in some languages, the direct object can be recovered from previous discourse):

(4) *The man nudged. *She handed her brother. *She handed the axe. *He felled.

"Subject" (and "object") in the target language can be established with fair reliability by looking at the subjects (and objects) in the glosses provided a number of different examples are considered.

II. Questions about subject- and object-marking to be answered:

(a) Are intransitive subjects marked as such by: zero; a nominative, direct, or other case; a postposition, particle, or topic marker? Is there an agreement marker in the finite verb?

(b) Are direct objects marked: by zero; an accusative or objective case; a postposition, particle, or topic marker? Is there an agreement marker in the verb? Is there a special position for objects in the clause? A special position for an affix marking the object in the verb?

(c) Are transitive subjects marked in the same way as intransitive subjects (with zero or with a case, postposition, or particle termed nominative, absolutive or subjective)? Or are they marked in the same way as direct objects (ergative/oblique)? (Such double oblique marking is rare.) Or in some way different from either (tripartite)? Read Whaley, pages 155-160, and draw a chart showing the morphological similarities and dissimilarities among S, A, and P (as will be done in class today or next week). Are perhaps all three types of NP's marked the same with the distinction(s) made in the form of the verb? Is there a nominative (or absolutive) slot in the verb for agreement affixes as opposed to an ergative (or accusative) slot? (as in Mayan languages)

(d) Does the marking of an NP as subject and/or object depend in some way on what the NP refers to? Or on whether or not it is a full NP or a pronoun? For example, direct objects in English are marked in the same way as subjects unless they are pronouns, for which special objective or accusative forms are used: I > me; we > us; he > him; they > them; etc. (Notice that this does not apply to the neuter singular pronoun: it > it.)

(e) Does the choice of marking pattern depend on the aspect, tense, or mood of the verb? (ie, is there aspectually or tensually split ergativity? Aspectually or tensually split accusativity?)

(f) Does the choice of marking pattern depend on the effectiveness of the action expressed by the verb (a condition found in some chiasmatic case-marking systems in languages of the Caucasus)?

(g) Are there co-existent splits belonging to two or more of the types listed in (d), (e), or (f)? (This situation occurs in some Australian languages.)