chrisintheweeds 21st Jun 2023 conlang, linguistics

Why Noun Sandwiches?

This post is a bit chain of thought, so apologies if it doesn’t quite reach a firm and justified conclusion. It’s another indirectly conlanging related one… Ch’ubmin so far also has incorporated nouns sandwiched between the coverb and verb root, but I’m still not sure why that’s the “right” position for them.

The next topic to ponder in relation to Algonquian and Ojibwe is why the medials are where they are. Algonquian verb stems contain many elements, but the core is a sequence containing one or more of:

Initial – an open class of morphemes, many of which with adjectival or adverbial meanings, which modify the generic action type specified by the final and make it more specific. They may be bound (roots requiring a final affix to be used), or they may be free word-stems.

Medials – Noun-like elements which replace or classify arguments of the verb, especially but not exclusively the patient. Sometimes they are independent noun stems, but often they are special classifier morphemes which do not occur elsewhere in exactly the same form.

Finals – These are mostly affixes which require an initial to attach to, although a few can form complete verb stems with no additional material. They mark distinctions of valency, animacy of the patient/absolutive argument, and they may also encode more specific event type or dynamics. In my previous post, I argued that they were light verbs, although unlike most light verbs they have lost any kind of independent stem or word status. The finals are what make a verb stem verbal, and therefore they are semantically the head of the construction even if the morphological root is the initial.

Some examples with the abstract, mostly bleached final -e which appears to have transitive meanings like ‘have’ and ‘get’:

naajmiijme naad-miijim-e fetch-food-e “fetch food”
moon’hapnii moonah-apiny-e dig-potato-e “dig potatoes”

The thing which is bothering me a little bit is that in general, Algonquian morphology is mostly left-branching / right-headed. But if that’s the case, why is the noun-like element in the middle? I would have naively expected it to more naturally come first in such a left-branching language, since the initial+final together mostly define both the verbal transitivity, kind of action, and any selection effects on verbal arguments.

Of course you just say it’s templatic, you don’t have to explain it, but firstly Algonquian morphology does have a greater degree of recursiveness than I’d previously appreciated (you can stack finals in what’s called “secondary derivation”), and secondly, even if there’s no synchronic reason, there was presumably a historical one.

The first option you could consider is that the grouping is [Initial-[Medial-Final]], e.g. [dug-[potato-get]] “to have/get potatoes dug”. The final is mostly the component of the verb stem which has an argument structure, a valency and licenses arguments, so to a certain extent this grouping makes sense – especially since medials are associated with arguments, and if the medial groups primarily with the initial, then what argument structure is it associated with?

But according to Valentine, the initials seem to show stronger selection effects when it comes to medials than the finals do. He says:

Arguments can be made that within the word initials and classificatory medials show a closer connection to each other than either does to the final. For example, certain roots appear to select for the presence of medial classifiers, such as /ginw-/ 'long' and /dakw-/ 'short', whereas other roots such as /aabad-/ 'be useful, be used' and /-ishp-/ 'high' tend to occur in words lacking classifiers. Also, Rhodes 1981 points out that many initials that occur in verbs of breaking tend to be associated with specific classes of objects, such as /book-/, which is especially associated with breaking of sticklike objects, and /baashk-/, which is associated with three dimensional objects. But we rarely find finals that are associated with specific classes of objects, though in some cases, such as the element /-bii/ 'liquid, by means of liquid', as in giiwshkwebii, 'be drunk' (VAI) (with initial /giiwashkw-/ 'be dizzy, disoriented'), the boundary does blur somewhat.

These observations suggest that initials and medials are more closely linked to each other than either is with finals. Perhaps this is true of roots and classificatory medials. On the other hand, certain medials seem to select for a particular form of finals, suggesting a close link between medials and finals. For example, body part medials that end in /n/ often show up with a zero final, that is, with no apparent final at all, as in gzhiibaawgan 'have an itchy back' (M), with body part medial /-aawgan-/ 'back', and gaagiijgondaagan, 'have a sore throat' (M), with body part medial /-gondaagan/ 'throat'.

So it seems like we’re left with the initial+medial forming a secondary adjectival~adverbial predicate together, one which can be classified by a nominal element without losing its original adjectival sense.

In English, indefinite nominals and simple NPs without markers of specific reference can serve as depictive and resultative secondary predicates, although they are less common in this role than adjectives. Consider “he left the meeting a beaten man”… which you might even compound to say he “beaten-man-left” in some alternate dimension version of English.

Other Classificatory Processes in Ojibwe

There are some other aspects of Ojibwe which perform a classificatory function, but sadly the classifiers often don’t seem to have exactly the same form as verb medials, so most initial-medial combinations probably can’t be used as noun stems or as modifiers within NPs without forming part of a verb / relative clause / participle.

This poses a bit of a challenge to the model of medials as “nominalising” or adjectival classifiers, at least as a synchronic analysis of the language.

The main nouny classificatory structures reminiscent of medials that I’ve spotted so far in my attempt to digest 1000 pages of grammar are:

Noun Formation by Initial + Noun Final

Many noun stems are basic / unanalysable, but if I understand correctly:

Many noun finals are somewhat classificatory.
The initial that such classificatory finals can be attached to may have the same form as verb initials with adjectival senses in some cases, although it may also be an existing noun stem

A comparison of verb medials with classificatory and derivational noun finals shows some overlap. There are a few elements which derive nouns when used as suffixes but which occur as medials within verbs with no change in form like /-aakw/ ‘wood’, and many more where the verb medial and noun final form is similar but not identical: /-min/ vs /-minag/, /-aaby/ vs /-aabig/, /-aabik(w)/, /-iiginw/ vs /-iig/.

Numeral Classification

According to Valentine, when talking about quantifiers:

Traditional Nishnaabemwin has a set of classifiers which classify objects according to their physical properties. The most common classifiers are /-aatig/ 'wooden, pole-like', /-eg/ 'clothlike', /-aabik/ 'metal, glass, plastic, stone', and /-aabiig/ 'string-like', though others exist as well (see discussion in Chapter 9, beginning on page 331). These classifiers are used in counting in the traditional language, basically by adding the appropriate classifier to a numeral root to produce a classifier-sensitive number. Nowadays the most commonly used classifier is /-aabik/, used in counting money.

Many of the medials used in verbs appear to have exactly the same form as the suffixes used on numerals and quantifiers within noun phrases, so with numerals at least there seems to be considerable overlap between classificatory elements incorporated into predicates and classifiers attached to attributive modifiers within NPs.

Bound Adjectival Classifier Languages

Anyway, this led me a bit to languages with productive adjectival noun classification via bound morphemes / suffixes / compounding, a good example of which is Tariana. Tariana has a large set of classifier suffixes which distinguish animacy, shape, and function, and the set of expandible via the use of suffixed noun ‘repeaters’ when no existing classifier is suitable. According to Aikhenvald’s grammar, adjectives within noun phrases can only be used when suffixed with an appropriate classifier or repeater:

All adjectives require classifier agreement with the head noun. 

...

Example 3.6 illustrates classifier agreement with an underived adjective, and 3.7 shows classifier agreement on an adjective derived from a verbal phrase (dithi sede 'his eye does not exist').

3.6 heku-na hanu-na
wood-CL:VERT big-CL:VERT
'a big tree'

3.7 tʃãri di-thi-sedite
man 3sgnf-eye-NEG.EX+NCL:ANIM
'an eyeless man'

...

5.3.1 The use of repeaters

Not all inanimate nouns in Tariana occur with one of the established classifiers listed in Table 5.1. These classifiers cover about 60 per cent of underived nouns with an inanimate referent. To classify the rest, a different morphological technique is used which consists in repeating the head noun on the modifier. The following semantic groups of underived nouns require a repeater, unless a particular shape property has to be focused:

(a) culturally important artifacts, e.g. ãda 'grater', mukutu, ka:me, kusiwa 'types of baskets', tuda 'fishing net';
(b) important abstract nouns, e.g. daikina 'afternoon', de:pi 'night', and sometimes also ke:ri 'sun, moon';
(c) some body parts, e.g. -daki 'body', -kapi 'hand', -heni 'ear'
(d) occasional loans, mostly from Portuguese, e.g. mesa 'table', pilya 'battery', garavadora 'tape recorder'

However, Tariana mostly doesn’t incorporate adjectives with classifiers into the verb, and nor does it have any kind of adjective-based secondary depictive or resultative predicate which agrees via a classifier. There are a small number of cases when classifiers do make it into the predicate:

Topic advancing voice

Tariana has an affix which marks a topic fronting construction that resembles a cleft or a relative clause, and which involves affixation of a classifier which agrees with the topical referent on the verb. For example, the following clause has a verbal classifier agreeing with a topical instrument:

ha sipi itʃiri nu-inu-ni-pi-na
DEM:INAN gun animal 1sg-kill-ni-CL:LONG-REM.P.VIS
"This gun was for me to kill animals"

On verbs in certain kinds of subordinate clause, e.g. verbs inflected for the purposive

Nor have I been able to find any other language with classifiers which uses them (optionally) on depictive or resultative secondary predicates as we’d usually understand them, although languages where adjectives show gender or case agreement often permit or require such agreement in depictives and resultatives too.

Googling this topic is hard though, and I only can only manually check so many language grammars.

Possible Conlanging Implications

One possible adjustment for Ch’ubmin would be to move in the direction suggested by the above vague speculation. Namely:

Shift towards the coverbs / initials being the ‘root’ and making incorporated classifiers and the closed class verbs more suffix-like… this would be more economical in many ways, since currently most of my verb roots are CVC, but this feels a bit heavy as a firm requirement for a closed class with some high frequency semantically bleached members
Make many of the coverbs describing stable or resultant state also function as adjectives within the NP (Ch’ubmin as written already has this)
Have a set of bound classifier suffixes (including repeaters as an explanation for more generic noun incorporation) which occur both as incorporated absolutives within verbs, as nominal derivational affixes and as adjectival agreement / licensing markers

That is, unify the equivalent of Algonquian verb medials and noun finals and treat [coverb-classifier] ~ [initial-medial] combinations as the incorporation of a fully inflected depictive or resultative adjectival modifier. Since Ch’ubmin also already has noun derived coverbs with causal or instrumental nouns, e.g. rain-hit “get rained on”, this would also imply the kind of selectional restrictions on incorporation suggested by Valentine’s grammar for Ojibwe. Coverbs which are stative~adjectival in origin would be compatible with a wide array of classifiers, whereas a number of noun derived coverbs would be more or less semantically incompatible with incorporated classifiers. Compare:

[split-CL:STRING.LIKE]-cut = cut it split-string = “cut it apart”
??? [rain-CL:PERSON]-hit = hit him/her rain-person = “get rained on (for a person)”

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Ozaawaabineshiinh on 5th Jul 2023 at 2:48 am
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Apologies for being a bit late on the reply, but I thought I could add some expansion and clarification on the Ojibwe/Algonquian parts of the post. (None of it should affect the options you have for your conlang ofc.)

First, let me just recommend a couple of useful resources on these topics for Algonquian: Goddard’s “Primary and Secondary Stem Derivation in Algonquian” (IJAL 56.4: 449-483, 1990; DOI 10.1086/466171) and Biedny et al.’s “Classifier Medials Across Algonquian: A First Look” (IJAL 87.1: 1-47, 2021; DOI 10.1086/711606). Another paper you might find interesting, offering a slightly different approach to Algonquian stem derivation/composition than the traditional ones — relegating some of what is traditionally considered synchronic derivation to frozen diachronic stuff that’s opaque to actual speakers — is Macaulay and Salmons’s “Synchrony and Diachrony in Menominee Derivational Morphology” (Morphology 27.2: 179-215, 2017; DOI 10.1007/s11525-016-9299-y [preprint: https://www.academia.edu/28624244/%5D). If you need copies of any, just let me know.

[Also note: below I’ll continue my preferred practice of capitalizing “Initial,” “Medial,” and “Final” when they refer to the Algonquian morphemes/morphosyntactic categories, which is primarily to avoid any confusion with the use of the terms when talking about the boundaries of words or other elements.]

— Finals “are mostly affixes which require an initial to attach to, although a few can form complete verb stems with no additional material”. — It’s actually *Initials* which can sometimes be used with no Final, or at least no non-null Final (e.g. Proto-Algonquian *nep- “to die (AI)” takes no (overt) Final in this meaning; this Initial=stem combined — without any epenthetic vowel and with subsequent debuccalization — with the transitivizing Final *-r to derive the stem *neʔr- “to kill (TA)”). While this is pretty uncommon for verbs, many nouns consist only of an Initial (e.g. PA *nepyi “water”, stem *nepy-; *-i is the INANsg gender/number/obviation inflectional suffix). And this remains true into the daughter langs, e.g. Meskwaki still has the verb Initial=stem nep- “die (AI),” though I follow the analysis that this has a null abstract Final (light verb) which assigns the transitivity+absolutive gender category to the stem (= nep-Ø- = die-AI). But I see no similar justification for such an analysis for nouns which lack overtly expressed Finals, so the natural interpretation of PA *nepy-i, Meskwaki nep-i “water” (etc.) are as a plain Initial with no Final at all.

— On why Medials occur in the position they do: obviously I can only speculate as well, and I don’t think I have a very good answer, unfortunately. (I will say that a structure of [Initial-[Medial-Final]] is probably wrong. I would add that in addition to Valentine’s comments, there are examples in which Initials and Finals seem to be more closely knit than either is to a Medial. For example, in PA, it was the Initial — not the Medial — that determined whether the abstract Final used after incorporated Medials was *-e· or *-a· [see Goddard 1990:467]. And in secondary derivation, the only possible operation is to treat an entire existing stem as an Initial, and add a new Final to it; secondary derivative stems can never consist of anything other than Initial+Final.)

— I agree for the most part with your discussion of other classificatory (or classificatory-like) constructions in Ojibwe, with one exception. I think the appearance of some noun Finals as being rather classificatory (not counting when they’re literally classifiers after quantifier Initials) is an illusion — or rather, is more like a case of the semantics kinda-sorta ending up like that in a psedo-epiphenomenal sort of way. It just derives from the kinds of semantics that it is possible for noun Initials and Finals to have — where the Initial is much more clearly the “root” in a semantic sense, compared to verb Initials (so such nouns very often have a sort of ‘noun-adjective’ feel to them [but cf., for example, ex. 39 in Goddard’s paper, where the Initial is derived from a verb], which, with the right elements, can blend towards a ‘noun-classifier’ feel). The resemblance or identity in shape between some verb Medials and noun Finals, at least historically, just results from the fact that there’s a set of unitary processes for deriving non-Initial elements from Initials or stems, rather than two separate sets of processes, one for Medials and one for Finals. So for example, the PA Initial/noun stem *mi·n- “(blue)berry” becomes the non-Initial element *-min- “berry/fruit/nut; round object” through a common derivational process in which an *i· or *o· in the Initial is shortened. When used as a Medial (or a classifier Final), it’s followed by what historically was a separate morpheme, the semantically bleached Postmedial *-ak (*-min-ak-), which is very commonly added to certain kinds of Medials. (Though you can reasonably make the argument that this is no longer the case synchronically in some or all of the daughter languages, including Ojibwe.) [I don’t know how well I’ve articulated any of this, or if it makes sense…]

— The noun Finals that occur after quantifier Initials are definitely genuine classifiers, though. And traditionally there were a fair number of them, some much more specific/narrow and uncommon than others. This feature of the grammar, incidentally, goes back to Proto-Algic — both Yurok and Wiyot had/have basically identical systems (including idiosyncrasies such as the numbers from 1-4 adding a classifier Final directly, but numbers from 5 and up needing to use a collocation “NUMBER thus.many-CLASS.FINAL”; Ojibwe happens to have innovated away from this, but other Algonquian langs retain it), although almost none of the classifier morphemes themselves are cognate anymore.

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  chrisintheweeds on 5th Jul 2023 at 10:25 pm
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  Thanks! Copies would be good if possible and if my Googling fails to turn up free copies.
  
  Regarding finals without initials, I think that was something I got from Valentine’s grammar. This may be a matter of analysis, but Valentine says (section 9.2) that there are a few finals that can occur without initials, like gwaashkni “jump” and gzi “move camp”.
  
  It’s a bit sad that my guess / attempted analysis of [initial-medial] as a kind of classified secondary predicate doesn’t really work out. I’m still tempted to use the idea and see how far I can get with it in a constructed language context though…
  
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    Ozaawaabineshiinh on 6th Jul 2023 at 2:13 am
    
    Okay, no problem, if you want to send me an email I’ll have your address and can send you the papers. (My email is my nick, at outlook.)
    
    I guess I had forgotten that analysis in the grammar. It diverges from the ‘standard’ approaches based on Goddard (1990), though — the more traditional analysis (and certainly the correct one *historically*, at least) would be to treat verbs like gzi- as Initials or complex stems, which can then be converted into non-Initial derivational elements (“deverbals”) in stems like maajiiyoodegzi-. I guess you could argue that this no longer holds synchronically, but there’s at least some evidence that it does. For example, in this process, Initials/stems can undergo various semi-regular phonological adjustments when converted into deverbals, such as dropping initial sonorants. E.g., you have the verb waaban- “be dawn (II)” (itself a complex stem: waab-an- = light/pale + a stative abstract II Final) and a corresponding deverbal -aaban- (= a complex II Final meaning “dawn”), with the initial w- dropped, in verbs like biidaaban- “dawn to approach (II)” (with Initial biid- “come hither”). In deciding which of waaban- or -aaban- is derived from the other, we can see that it’s easy to regularly derive forms like -aaban- from forms like waaban-, but not the reverse (because then you’d just be randomly adding /w/s or /m/s or /n/s with no rhyme or reason, instead of — when viewing the process from the correct standpoint — simply deleting that whole class of consonants).
    
    (Another consideration is that, as noted, waaban-/-aaban- are morphologically complex [waab-an-/-aab-an-], and positing a morphologically complex sequence of concrete Final + abstract Final, which together can operate as an independent stem or be incorporated into a larger verb as a normal Final complex, is just … I don’t know, on a vague level it’s not consonant with other aspects of the grammar; on a more concrete level it’s adding unnecessary permutations to what sort of processes must be posited in order to explain how the derivational system works. The reverse process doesn’t have the same problems. And note that one of Valentine’s own examples, gwaashkni- “to jump (AI)”, is historically morphologically complex, although it isn’t synchronically.)
    
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Other Classificatory Processes in Ojibwe

Bound Adjectival Classifier Languages

Possible Conlanging Implications

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