Polypersonality
Polypersonality is a term used in general linguistics , especially language typology , and describes the property of some languages to mark more than just one syntactic actant in the verb , unlike e.g. B. in the Indo-European languages . Polypersonality is widespread in polysynthetic languages .
Contrast with non-polypersonal languages and examples
The meaning of the term is best understood when comparing polypersonal languages with non-polypersonal languages such as German using examples.
(1.) Hans eats an apple .
The verb eats in this set has two actants: One as a subject acting noun phrase , the semantic role agent fills, so that designates a active participants acting ( Hans ) and a noun phrase that the Patiens called ( an apple ) and the object is . In the verb eats , however, only the grammatical properties (in this case: person and number ) of one of the two actants (namely those of the subject) are marked: For example, if you change the number of the subject NP (e.g. in Hans and Klaus ), the marking must adapt to the verb ( Hans and Klaus essen , see congruence ). But if you change the number of the object NP, nothing happens to the verb ( Hans eats apples ).
In polypersonal languages, however, this is exactly the case: Not only the agentive actant is morphologically marked on the verb , but also the patientive actant and possibly other actants with other semantic roles. The following example is from the Iroquois language Tuscarora :
| (2.) | ru-tyá ː k-e | |
| 3sm A -3s U -marry- PFV | ||
| 'He married her' |
The prefix r- pronominally represents the 3rd person singular agentive ('he'), but the prefix u- also marks the patientive actant ('she') on the verb (Both persons have already occurred in the discourse from which the example originates and are resumed by the prefixes).
The following example from the Australian language Jaminjung works in a similar way :
| (3.) | nanggayan guny -bi -yarluga ? | |
| who 2 YOU . A .3 SG . P - FUT -poke | ||
| 'Who do you two want to spear?' ' |
In the verb, the prefix guny fusional marks two participants at the same time: an agent ("you both") and also a patient (a third person singular, which cannot be taken into account in the English translation, precisely because English is like German is not polypersonal either).
distribution
Polypersonality languages are not limited to any geographic area or language family. Many indigenous North American languages are polypersonal, but the phenomenon can also be found in many Caucasian languages , in Australia and in Europe in Basque and Hungarian .
Web links
- armazi.fkidg1.uni-frankfurt.de - Materials on typology in general, with examples of polypersonality in the Caucasian region.
Individual evidence
- ^ An example can be found in Blair Rudes, Dorothy Crouse: The Tuscarora Legacy of JNB Hewitt: Materials for the Tuscarora Language and Culture. National Museum of Canada, Ottawa 1987, p. 80.
- ↑ Eva Schultze-Berndt: Simple and complex verbs in Jaminjung: A study of event categorization in an Australian language. Katholieke Universiteit Nijmegen, 2000, Ph.D. Dissertation, p. 80. Quoted from the Leipzig Glossing Rules: eva.mpg.de (PDF)