Towards a typology of change in person marking reference

Previous studies of person marking referent shifts posited directionality: pl > sg and 3rd > 2nd > 1st person. The current study expands the documentation of person shifts, finding possible counter-examples to any directionality if all shifts represent the same phenomenon. However, comparison of shift trajectories allows them to be separated into two categories: paradigm-dependent and paradigm-independent shifts, analogous to the stages of known cycles like Jespersen’s Cycle for negation. Dependent shifts are context restrictions that occur after the introduction of more specific contrasting person markers. Independent shifts are context extensions. I analyze both shift types using a model of competition between referent-specific and referent-general markers causing pragmatic restriction of the more general form. Dependent shifts occur when the innovation of a referent-specific marker pragmatically restricts a general one to a subset of its original uses with no real change in reference. Independent shifts begin when some speakers use a referent-specific marker non-prototypically in more general contexts, triggering reanalysis of the marker’s reference by reducing specification to match the broader context. Crucially, using a general marker in more specific contexts would not trigger reanalysis, naturally resulting in directionality similar to ‘bleaching’.

Variable subject pronoun expression in Cabo-Verdean Creole

The Cabo-Verdean Creole (CVC) subject domain has clitic and tonic pronouns that often amalgamate in double subject pronoun constructions; the possibility of a zero-subject and the formal category underlying subject clitics are disputed (Baptista 1995, 2002; Pratas 2004). This article discusses five variable constraints that condition subject expression across three descriptive and inferential analyses of a corpus of speech collected from 33 speakers from Santiago and Maio. Double subject pronoun constructions and zero-subjects were promoted by a persistence effect, though for the former this applied across nonadjacent clauses since double subject pronoun constructions are switch reference and contrastive devices resembling the doubling of agreement suffixes by independent pronouns in languages traditionally classified as pro-drop. Zero-subjects were favored in third-person contexts as previously observed by Baptista and Bayer (2013), and when a semantically referentially deficient (Duarte & Soares da Silva 2016) DP antecedent was in an Intonational Unit that was prosodically and syntactically linked to the Intonational Unit containing the target anaphor (Torres Cacoullos & Travis 2019). Results support reclassification of CVC subject clitics as ambiguous person agreement markers (Siewierska 2004) and suggest that CVC is developing a split-paradigm for person marking and subject expression (Wratil 2009; Baptista & Bayer 2013).

The overabundance of the perfect and the restriction of evidentiality in Standard Azerbaijani: A diachronic study of -(y)Ib and -mIş

This article investigates the historical development and reorganization of variation in the individual cells of the Standard Azerbaijani perfect paradigms, a phenomenon known as overabundance (Thornton 2011, 2012). Unlike many previous examples of overabundance in the literature, the variation of the present perfect in Standard Azerbaijani applies to all the relevant verb lexemes in the language and shows no indication of developing verb classes. Rather, the present study argues that, (i) while there is an ongoing reorganization of this variation, it is along lines of specialization for paradigmatic oppositions in person marking, and (ii) this reorganization is attributable to analogical extension on the basis of structural asymmetries in the person-marking of the evidential paradigm. Differentiation by Person (Dmitriyev 1927, Əfəndiyeva 2005) is an inherent structural property of the Azerbaijani verb paradigm, manifested by analogical change. The synchronic asymmetries in the perfect paradigms are best explained as the result frequency-sensitive changes, i.e., lower frequency categories (but not lexemes) correlate with the persistence of variation.

Gender-switching strategies in the activity of tsinampantsi ‘joking’ among Northern Kampa Arawaks of Peru

Among Northern Kampas, the linguistically creative production of tsinampantsi by non-kin and affines intends – apart from having fun – to initiate an intimate relationship or affirm the intimacy of the existing interpersonal relationship. Northern Kampa participants of tsinampantsi ‘joking’ often resort to gender-switching strategies for jocular effects. Creatively playing with linguistic gender marking is characteristic of tsinampantsi-joking conduct. The study’s findings revealed that there are variable lexicogrammatical means for accomplishing the man > woman gender switch. Two basic gender-switching strategies are deployed: manipulation of person marking indexes and deployment of derivational morphology. The verbal person marking strategy is the most basic and most common means of indicating gender switches, whereas derivational morphology functions as a supplementary technique. In gender reversals, participation structure (production and reception roles) is predominantly coded by third person (other-role) markers on the verb. The woman > man direction of gender reversals is uncommon in joking sequences.

The morphologization of negation constructions in Nalca (Mek, Tanah Papua), or, how nothing easily moves to the middle of a word

The Mek language Nalca has undergone a rapid synthetization of verbal negation by way of two successive stages of asymmetric negation, the first one involving referential zeroing with a verbal noun, the second one reintroducing person marking with an auxiliary in analogy to non-verbal predicates. This development can be traced in texts in the more conservative closely related Mek language Eipo. Referential zeroing originally had the connotation of absolute negation (more than the denial of one specific event). As Nalca negation was integrated into inflectional morphology, it developed some of the hallmarks of autonomous morphology – morphomes and empty morphs. Nalca negation illustrates how grammaticalization and analogy can go hand-in-hand. The fusion of verbal negation is a case of the morphologization of a construction which does not occur in isolation but in concert with other similar processes, together entailing a fragmentation of negation marking. Finally, the Nalca development shows that cases of fusion of verbal negation must be taken into account when dealing with the interplay of existential negation and verbal negation in terms of cyclic processes.