Pseudo Incorporation and Ditransitives

[chris_notts]

Hi all, I'd like feedback on an idea I'm thinking of adding to a project I've had going on and off for a few months now. The language is mostly isolating with a lot of serialisation, and so far no true ditransitive verbs. What it does have though is a number of verbs of giving and induced motion where the object can be theme/object and/or the recipient but not both at the same time. This is much like the English alterations below:

he loaded the crates onto the truck
he loaded the truck with crates

Or, to use examples from the conlang:

GIVE WITH THEME ARGUMENT
meŋ m psè
give ART thing
he/she gave the thing (to him/her/it/us/you...)

GIVE WITH RECIPIENT ARGUMENT
dèn m psè meŋ se
handle ART thing give 3SG
he/she gave him/her the thing

NOT CURRENTLY ALLOWED:
*meŋ m psè se
give ART thing 3SG
he/she gave him/her the thing

What I'm thinking about doing is allowing pseudo ditransitives in restricted circumstances. Specifically:

1. the article m is a marker of pragmatically relevant specificity (i.e. it can be definite or specific indefinite), and its absence signifies either that the noun is non-specific or that its identity and number are irrelevant. M vs zero marked object NPs therefore have a similar distribution to differential object marking or pseudo-incorporation in other languages:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Different ... ct_marking
https://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/003346/cu ... Z-FRD1m0PL

2. For verbs which have flexible object roles, if this kind of covert pseudo-incorporation with a non-specific object happens, then perhaps a "slot" opens up for a specific object in the other role, e.g.:

POSSIBLY ALLOWED
meŋ psè se
give thing 3SG
he/she gave him/her things OR he/she thing-gave him/her

The version with two specific / referential objects would still be disallowed and require an SVC which has separate verbs for the theme and recipient.

3. Transitive verbs with flexible object role are basically of two types. There are ones with instrument/object ambiguity (shoot gun / shoot person) and ones with theme/recipient ambiguity (give gift / give to somebody). For true (not pseudo) noun incorporation, I believe that incorporation of recipients is either unlikely or impossible, so I expect the pseudo-incorporation would be limited to the non-final element in the causal chain, i.e. pick the first of instrument > theme > recipient/goal. This means that a clause with a non-specific recipient could not be pseudo-incorporated and would still require the full SVC structure.

The reason I'm not sure about this is that it feels like a bit of a slippery slope. If a language allows this kind of pseudo ditransitive with a non-referential "incorporated" object, which on the surface looks pretty similar to any other non-referential noun phrase, it feels like this pattern might be quite quickly generalised by speakers to allow two referential objects and true ditransitives.

What do you think?

[akam chinjir]

I like it!

I just refereshed my memory a bit by scanning a few pages of Clemens, Prosodic Noun Incorporation (the most recent thing I read about this stuff). One thing it mentions is the in Niuean, it's not just themes that can be pseudo-incorporated (p.5)---applied and instrumental objects can too, for example. So recipients should be safe, I think?

I'm curious about a couple of things

With something like meŋ se give 3s, would you think of this as something like a covert applicative? To me anyway, with my vague knowledge of such things, that looks like a way to make sense of what's going on. (Not the only way, I'm sure!)

Also, in Niuean, if I've got it right, nothing can come between the verb and a pseudo-incorporated object (though the object can be phrasal, and in fact quite complex---just none of the complexity can go before the noun). In your language, does it end up the same?

[chris_notts]

I like it!

I just refereshed my memory a bit by scanning a few pages of Clemens, Prosodic Noun Incorporation (the most recent thing I read about this stuff). One thing it mentions is the in Niuean, it's not just themes that can be pseudo-incorporated (p.5)---applied and instrumental objects can too, for example. So recipients should be safe, I think?

Yes, I can't imagine recipients being ever "pseudo" incorporated really, because of typical animacy and topicality patterns.

I'm curious about a couple of things

With something like meŋ se give 3s, would you think of this as something like a covert applicative? To me anyway, with my vague knowledge of such things, that looks like a way to make sense of what's going on. (Not the only way, I'm sure!)

Possibly, although it also resembles double object constructions (e.g. in languages where theme and recipient are marked identically). The main difference is the restriction that an individual verb can only have one (referential) overt object. There is also in Pñaek another class of verbs which take what you might call covert applicatives, namely intransitive verbs. In Lao and other East Asian languages like Hmong, you find semi-intransitive verbs used like this, in a way I have copied:

I hurt leg = I hurt (on the/my) leg
He die poison = he died (from) poison

Note that "hurt" here is not a true transitive, at least in Pñaek and also in some of those real SE Asian languages I think, because it cannot be used for an agentive subject affecting a completely separate third party. Pñaek has flexible object roles but very rigid subject roles, so there are basically no S=P ambitransitive verbs. Intransitives can be converted by a covert applicative to take a kind of ambient or circumstantial object, but they can't be zero converted to causative verbs. Due to a simultaneous paucity of grammatical voice, state change verbs tend to be intransitives, and causative state change is marked by serialisation.

The post-verbal argument in these clauses is generally not affected and also not agentive, although it may be an inanimate cause (like poison above), or in the case of Pñaek a location for a wide class of stative locative and positional verbs.

Also, in Niuean, if I've got it right, nothing can come between the verb and a pseudo-incorporated object (though the object can be phrasal, and in fact quite complex---just none of the complexity can go before the noun). In your language, does it end up the same?

Basically, yes. The main difference is that in Niuean pseudo incorporation is always overt, I think, because NP role marking is lost and verbal particles follow the incorporated noun. In Pñaek all post-verbal particles are clause final, not post-verbal, word order is rigid, and there is little else apart from an article/determiner which could intervene between the verb and its object in any case. So apart from perhaps prosody, there's not much surface syntactic difference between a non-specific object noun and an "incorporated" noun.

[akam chinjir]

Yes, I can't imagine recipients being ever "pseudo" incorporated really, because of typical animacy and topicality patterns.

Ah, I was actually thinking that if applied objects can be pseudo-incorporated, you should be able to get at least beneficiaries. Maybe a sufficiently institutionalised or conventionalised recipient? (give-church, give-ancestors, maybe something like that.)

With something like meŋ se give 3s, would you think of this as something like a covert applicative? To me anyway, with my vague knowledge of such things, that looks like a way to make sense of what's going on. (Not the only way, I'm sure!)

Possibly, although it also resembles double object constructions (e.g. in languages where theme and recipient are marked identically).

I think those are often analysed as covert applicatives? (At least the analogous construction in English is.)

(One reason I brought it up is that I'm under the impression is that one function incorporation can serve is to give syntactic space to an applied object.)

(Snipping some interesting stuff I wish I knew more about.)

Also, in Niuean, if I've got it right, nothing can come between the verb and a pseudo-incorporated object (though the object can be phrasal, and in fact quite complex---just none of the complexity can go before the noun). In your language, does it end up the same?

Basically, yes. The main difference is that in Niuean pseudo incorporation is always overt, I think, because NP role marking is lost and verbal particles follow the incorporated noun. In Pñaek all post-verbal particles are clause final, not post-verbal, word order is rigid, and there is little else apart from an article/determiner which could intervene between the verb and its object in any case. So apart from perhaps prosody, there's not much surface syntactic difference between a non-specific object noun and an "incorporated" noun.

Ah, interesting. I was thinking that a strict verb-adjacency requirement might head off your worry about slippage, but I guess not---depending on how salient the prosodic differences end up being? (Slightly relatedly, recently I've been toying with the idea of trying to get something like differential object-marking from phonological-phrase-final devoicing, or something like that.)