Case in Coptic: what’s ‘coded’? Workshop on ‘Case and agreement: Between grammar and pragmatics’

Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 13 January 2014 Eitan Grossman (HUJI)1

eitan.grossman@mail.huji.ac.il

1. The claims made in this talk • The item nče in Coptic is a nominative (A/S) case-marker. • Its distribution in Coptic is dependent on both syntactic and information-

structural factors: o Syntactic: postverbal only o Information-structural: associated with the discourse profile of

antitopic, or, more aptly, highly accessible A/S referents. These descriptive claims allow us to articulate a hypothesis about overt case-marking:

• Overt case-marking, at least at early stages of grammaticalization, marks unexpected associations between grammatical role and information-structural properties of referents in discourse.

• This hypothesis, advocated by Iemmolo (2010, to appear), differs from most current theories of overt case-marking, which depend on either (1) the need distinguish A from P in transitive clauses, or (2) the need to index prominent semantic or pragmatic features of referents; some approaches combine the two explanations as competing motivations or constraints.

• The hypothesis argued for here is in line with general properties of languages, which overwhelmingly tend to show coding asymmetries such that frequent form-function associations are coded with less (zero- or shorter realizations) than infrequent associations (Haspelmath 2008).

2. The data: case-marking in Coptic 2.1 Coptic Differential Object Marking Coptic DOM involves the alternation between P-incorporation and overt case marking. P-incorporation is realized by the selection of a bound form of the verb root, to which the object attaches directly (free forms found in parentheses). (1) mp-ou-čem-boêthos de nn-adam P-incorporation PST.NEG-3PL-find-helper PTCL for-Adam (čimi) ‘A helper was not found for Adam’ (Early Bohairic, Genesis 2:20) (2) a-f-či n-ou-kahi ebol Accusative PST-3SGM-take ACC-INDEF.ART-earth out ‘He took earth’ (Early Bohairic, Genesis 2:7).

1 This talk is based on ongoing joint work with Giorgio Iemmolo (UZurich).

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[‘The term noun incorporation refers to morphological structures in which a nominal constituent is added to a verbal root, and the resulting construction is both a verb and a single word’ (Aikhenvald 2007).]

2.2 Coptic Differential Subject Marking For full lexical NPs, Coptic DSM involves the alternation between A/S-incorporation and overt case marking. (3) a-roouhi šôpi S-Incorporation

PST-evening become ‘It became evening’ (Early Bohairic, Genesis 1:8)

(4) a-ph[nou]ti thamio n-ni-thêrion A-incorporation PST-G[o]d create ACC-the.PL-beast ‘God created the beasts’ (Early Bohairic, Genesis 1:25) (5) a-f-i de nče-iê[sou]s Nominative PST-3SGM-come PTCL NOM-Je[su]s ‘Then Jesus came.’ (6) a-u-khop-ou nče-adam nem-tef-shimi Nominative PST-3PL-hide-3PL NOM-Adam with-his-woman ‘Adam and his wife hid themselves’ (Early Bohairic, Genesis 3:8). 2.3 Both A and P can be incorporated in the same clause (7) a-ph[nou]ti thamie-ti-phe (thamio)

PST-G(o)d create-the-heaven ‘God created Heaven’ (Early Bohairic, Genesis 1:1) 2.4 Both A and P can be overtly case-marked in the same clause (8) a-f-thamio nče-ph[nou]ti m-pi-tačro PST-3SGM-creat NOM-G[o]d ACC-the-firmament ‘God created the firmament’ (Early Bohairic, Genesis 1:7). (9) a-f-či de n-ni-ôik nče-iê[sou]s PST-3SGM-take PTCL ACC-the.PL-bread NOM-Je[su]s ‘Then Jesus took the loaves of bread.’ 2.5 Linear order and case-marking

• Incorporated arguments are never case-marked. • Preverbal arguments are never case-marked.

Preverbal S (10) abel de a-f-šôpi Abel PTCL PST-3SGM-become ‘As for Abel, he became…’ (Early Bohairic, Genesis 4:2)

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Preverbal A (11) adam de a-f-ti-ran e-ni-tebnôou adam PTCL PST-3SGM-give-name ALL-the.PL-animals ‘And Adam named the animals’ (Early Bohairic, Genesis 2:20) (12) adam de a-f-souen-tef-shimi adam PTCL PST-3SGM-know-his-woman ‘As for Adam, he knew his wife’ (Early Bohairic, Genesis 4:1) Preverbal P (13) pi-khaki de a-f-ti-ren-f če-pi-ečôrh the-darkness PTCL PST-3SGM-give-name-3SGM QUOT ART-evening ‘As for the darkness, he named it “evening”’ (Early Bohairic, Genesis 1:5) Preverbal arguments are typically ‘about-topics,’ and are often found in situations of topic-shift or contrastive topics. However, they are also rarely focal elements, e.g., interrogatives. (14) nim a-f-tamo-k who PST-3SGM-inform-2SGM ‘Who told you?’ (Early Bohairic, Genesis 3:11). ➤All post-verbal arguments must be case-marked, and only post-verbal arguments can be case-marked >> OBLIGATORY CASE AFTER THE VERB, NO CASE ANYWHERE ELSE. 2.6 Interim summary: case marking, agreement, and linear order TABLE 1: AGREEMENT AND CASE FOR LEXICAL A/S Agreement Case Incorporated A/S no no Preverbal A/S yes no Postverbal A/S yes yes TABLE 2: AGREEMENT AND CASE FOR LEXICAL P Agreement Case Incorporated P no no Preverbal P yes no Postverbal P no yes Several generalizations:

1. All postverbal core arguments must be case-marked. 2. Preverbal and incorporated core arguments are never case-marked. 3. All pre-verbal core arguments, as well as postverbal subjects, entail

agreement. 4. There is no implicational relationship between A and P agreement; all

combinations of A and P agreement and full NPs are possible:

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TABLE 3: CO-OCCURRENCE OF A/P AGREEMENT AND LEXICAL NP ARGUMENTS Indexed P Incorporated P Indexed A a-f-thamio-f

PST-3SGM-create-3SGM ‘He created him.’

a-f-thamie-th-pe PST-3SGM-create-the-heaven ‘He created heaven.’

Incorporated A a-ph[nou]ti thamio-f

PST-G[o]d create-3SGM ‘God created him.’

a-ph[nou]ti thamie-thpe PST-G[o]d create-the-heaven ‘God created heaven’

* All combinations possible. TABLE 4: CO-OCCURRENCE OF CASE-MARKING AND INCORPORATION FOR LEXICAL NP ARGUMENTS Case-marked P Incorporated P Case-marked A Exx. 8-9 a-u-el-ôni nče-ni-ouidai

PST-3PL-throw-stone NOM-the.pl-Jew Incorporated A Ex. 4 Ex. 7

*All combinations possible. 3. Turning to function: a quick vulgate of Differential Subject Marking (DSM) Broadly, Differential Subject Marking (DSM) refers to situations in which different types of subjects are coded differently (Dixon 1994, Aikhenvald et al. 2001, Malchukov 2006, 2008, 2009, the papers in de Hoop & de Swart 2008, Fauconnier 2012, among others). • More narrowly, DSM generally refers to situations in which coding differences

depend on semantic features of the subject, e.g., volitionality or animacy, or clausal features (TAM, ‘ordination’). It has also been argued that DSM can be associated with information structure, particularly focus (see, e.g., Fauconnier 2012).

(26) Fore (Trans-New Guinea, PNG, Scott 1978) yagaa wa aeguye pig man 3sg.hit.3sg ‘The man hits (or: kills) the pig.’ (27) yagaa-wama wa aeguye Animacy pig-erg man 3g.hit.3sg ‘The pig hits the man.’ (28) Agul (Lezgic, Ganenkov et al. 2008) baw.a nek atuzu-ne mother.ERG milk.ABS pour_out-PST ‘Mother poured out the milk.’ (29) baw.a-f-as nek atuzu-ne mother-AD-ELA milk.ABS pour_out-PST ‘Mother accidentally poured out the milk.’ Volitionality

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(30) Newari (Tibeto-Burman, Givón, 1984) wo manu-na jhya tajya-na co-na

the man-ERG window break-AUX be-AUX ‘The man is breaking the window’ (‘Who is breaking the window?’)

(31) wo manu jhya tajya-na co-na Focus the man window break-AUX be-AUX ‘The man is breaking the window’ (‘What is the man doing?’)

The last type of DSM is extremely common in Australian and Papuan languages (McGregor 1998, Malchukov 2008). 4. The function of NOM-marking in Coptic

• As noted earlier, pre-verbal core arguments usually represent new or contrastive topics, or, very occasionally, focus (exx. 10-14).

• Incorporated S/A arguments usually represent referents that are either non-referential (for incorporated roots), or discourse-old/otherwise accessible (for full NPs), most typically in discourse situations with a single topic over a long stretch of discourse, i.e., little ‘competition.’

• But what is the function of post-verbal NOM-marked A/S arguments? 4.1 NOM is not triggered by animacy, volitionality, or focal status (32) [e]thbêt f-šop nče-pai-hôimi [b]ecause.1SG 3SGM-exist NOM-this-wave ‘Because of me this wave exists.’ (‘wave’ is the current discourse topic) (33) n-etbêt an a-f-šôpi nče-pai-xrôou alla ethbethnêou NEG-because.1SG NEG PST-3SGM-become NOM-this-voice but because.2PL ‘This voice did not happen because of me, but rather because of you.’

4.2 NOM is not triggered by contrastive topic status (34) abraham a-f-mou nem-ni-ke-prophêtês abraham PST-3SGM-die with-the.PL-other-prophet ‘As for Abraham, he died, and so did the prophets ouohe nthok hôk k-čô mmos če and 2SGM INTNSF-2SGM 2SGM-say ACC-3SGF QUOT and you, for your part, you say that phê et-na-areh e-pa-sači nne-f-čemtipi m-ph-mou DEM REL-FUT-keep ALL-my-word JUSS.NEG-3SGM-taste ACC-the-death “As for he who keeps my word, he will not taste death.’

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4.3 NOM is typical of already-active, given topic (35) Jesus talks with an official about his son, who is ill. Jesus tells him, ‘Go: f-onx nče-pek-šêri (John 4:50) 3SGM-alive NOM-your-son ‘Your son is alive’ (36) a-pč[oi]s ph[nou]ti kha-ou-mêini n-kain PST-the.Lord G[o]d put-INDEF.ART-sign ACC-Cain ‘The Lord G[o]d marked Cain.’ a-f-i de nče-kain ebol ha-p-ho m-ph[nou]ti PST-3SGM-come NOM-Cain out from-the-face of-G[o]d ‘(and) Cain came away from the Lord’s presence’ (Gen. 4:15-16). (37) Martha said to Jesus ‘My lord, if you had been here, my brother would not

have died […] Jesus said to her: f-na-tôn-f nče-pe-son 3SGM-FUT-raise-3SGM NOM-POSS.M/2SGF-brother ‘Your brother will rise up’ (John 11,23)

4.4 NOM is typical of ‘referent tracking’ discourse environments, e.g., dialogue exchanges: (37) a-u-erouô nče-ni-ouidai pečô-ou na-f [….] PST-3PL-reply NOM-the.PL-Jew QUOT-3PL to-3SGM ‘They, the Jews, replied to him and said…’ a-f-erouô nče-iê(sou)s če […] PST-3SGM-reply NOM-Je(su)s QUOT ‘He, Jesus, replied […]’ (John 8: 48-49) *In fact, a large percentage of tokens of NOM-marking in the corpus are of this sort. 4.5 Marked topics and NOM are compatible in the same construction (38) Jesus speaks at length. nai a-f-čot-ou nče-iê(sou)s DEM.PL PST-3SGM-say-3PL NOM-Je(su)s ‘These things, he, Jesus, said ouohe a-f-še na-f a-f-hop-f ebol harô-ou and PST-3SGM-go DAT-3SGM PST-3SGM-hide-3SGM out from-3PL and went and hid himself from them.’ (John 12:36) ➤ Coptic NOM-marking, limited to post-verbal subjects and entailing agreement, is strongly associated with highly accessible, usually discourse-old or inferable entities. ➤Coptic Post-verbal nominatives fit the description of antitopic:

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Antitopic: a construction used to clarify the identity of an already introduced referent, especially when multiple topics are available. Antitopics are usually located at the right edge of the clause in postverbal position.

The recurrent cross-linguistic features of antitopics commonly reported in the literature are (Chafe 1976, Dik 1997, Lambrecht 2001):

• postverbal position; • indexed via pronominal affixes/clitics ; • case-marked and integrated into clausal syntax; • identifiable (textually, frame-evoked, inferable, following Prince 1981, 1992),

because they do not introduce new topics. • Referents of antitopics cannot be new, nor contrastive/emphatic.

• However, saying that NOM-marking in Coptic ‘codes’ an antitopic function is

probably an overstatement. • Moreover, it doesn’t explain why overt NOM-marking is present, since

postverbal position would probably be enough, as in most languages. • Finally, there is nothing in the concept of antitopic that would explain why

overt NOM-marking is much more frequent in certain discourse situations than others.

4.6 Frequency The first frequency study of this phenomenon is Zakrewska (2006), on a corpus of ca. 700 narrative clauses from later (ca. 9th century) Bohairic narratives.

A/S-INCORPORATION PREVERBAL A/S POSTVERBAL A/S (NOM)

31.5% 25.7% 42.8%

TABLE 7: ZAKREWSKA’S CORPUS DATA

• Nearly 70% of lexical A/S are non-incorporated. • Postverbal nominatives account for nearly half of the tokens.

Another corpus (Early Bohairic) results (a) Genesis 1,1-4,3 (Papyrus Bodmer III, 268 clauses) (b) The Gospel of John 18,1-19,16 (235 clauses) Incorporation Preverbal Postverbal Index only Other Number 68 12 29 79 80 % 25.373 4.478 10.821 29.477 29.851

TABLE 8: SUBJECT ENCODING IN GENESIS 1,1-4,3 IN ALL CLAUSES

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Incorporation Preverbal Postverbal Total Number 68 12 29 109 % 62.385 11.009 26.606 100

TABLE 9: SUBJECT ENCODING IN GENESIS 1,1-4,3 IN CLAUSES WITH LEXICAL S/A

• The frequency of A/S-incorporation vs. dislocated A/S is close to the inverse of what Zakrewska (2006) found for later Bohairic.

• The frequency of A/S incorporation is much higher (62%). • Postverbal nominatives account for about a quarter (26.6%) of tokens. • However, this has to do, at least in part, with the nature of the text: God is the

global topic of the first 200 clauses. • Frequencies change when there is more competition for A/S status.

Incorporation Preverbal Postverbal Index only Other Number 10 20 36 71 99 % 4.237 8.474 15.255 30.085 41.949

TABLE 10: SUBJECT ENCODING IN THE GOSPEL OF JOHN 18,1-19 IN ALL CLAUSES Incorporation Preverbal Postverbal Total Number 10 20 36 66 % 15.152 30.303 54.545 100 TABLE 11: SUBJECT ENCODING IN THE GOSPEL OF JOHN 18,1-19 IN CLAUSES WITH LEXICAL

S/A

• Despite being the same dialect (and same manuscript!), the frequencies are quite different from those in Genesis.

• A/S incorporation is much less frequent. • Preverbal and postverbal subjects are much more frequent (30.3% and 54.5%). • In this chunk of narrative, there are many more referents to be kept track of,

almost all of which are textually identifiable/accessible (Jesus, Pilate, the Jews, the various disciples, the archpriests) or situationally evocable (e.g., the servants), so more topic shift/promotion and more antitopics.

4.7 Bringing Accessibility into the picture Coptic DSM, especially NOM-marked referents, highlights an interesting problem, and suggests a broader hypothesis about overt case-marking. Problem: Why would a language explicitly index ‘antitopical’ properties of subjects by case-marking? It’s vanishingly rare in the world’s languages that case-marking is dedicated to this. Linear order is usually enough. Ngandi (Arnem, Australia, Heath 1978) (39) nacuweleñ-uŋ gu-jarkyuŋ gu-ja-walk then-ABS GU-water-ABS now-go.through ‘Then water passes through.’

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(40) nacuweleñ-uŋ gu-ja-geyk-da-ni gu-jark-yuŋ nicuʔ then-ABS GU-now-throw-AUG-PR GU-water-ABS this.way

‘Then the water rushes through.’

(41) bulukiʔ ma-jalma barma-ma-ni

also MA-yam 3PL/MA-get-PRES ‘They also get round yams’ ma-ja-bolk-du-ni ma-gulaʔ-nutayi-yuŋ MA-now-appear-AUG-PRES MA-skin-its-ABS ‘Their skin comes off…’ barma-geyk, barma-geyk ma-gulaʔ-yuŋ guniñ 3pl/MA-throw 3PL/MA-throw MA-skin-ABS that’s.all

‘They throw the skin away and that’s that.’ Cayuga (Iroquoian, Canada, Mithun 1992) (42) katsihwáʔ kihsa:s hammer I.seek ‘I am looking for a hammer.’ (43) to: tiʔ nika:no:ʔ ne:kye katsíhwaʔ how then so.it.costs this hammer

‘How much does this hammer cost?’

• In these languages, which all have ‘free,’ information-structurally motibated, linear order, new/indefinite referents precede old/definite referents, which is the mirror image (in some respects) from the Prague School assumption about the interaction of linear order and information structure and a universal preference for old/given > new.

• Importantly, discourse-old or hearer-inferrable elements are post-verbal. • Such languages include Lakhota, Coos, Ojibwa, Mohawk, Tuscarora,

O’odham, Chamorro, Japanese, French, Syriac Aramaic, and a number of Northeast African languages.

• However, very few languages are described as having case markers associated with this function. A possible exception is Kanuri (Nilo-Saharan), in which the nominative case-marker –ye is licensed only in particular syntactic and pragmatic conditions; one condition is that the referent has to be (1) A and (2) discourse-old or inferrable (Bondarev et al. 2011).

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Proposed answer to the quandary: • Lexical NPs typically refer to low-accessibility referents. • Subjects, especially A arguments, are typically high-accessibility. • Overt case-marking is likely to occur when there is an unexpected association

between grammatical role and information-structural properties (Iemmolo 2010).

Accessibility: [C]ontext retrievals of pieces of information from memory are guided by signaling to the addressee the degree of accessibility with which the mental representation to be retrieved is held. […] Each referring expression codes a specific (and different) degree of mental accessibility (Ariel 1988), and referring expressions are actually accessibility markers, i.e., expressions cueing the addressee on how to retrieve the appropriate mental representation in terms of mental accessibility’ (Ariel 2001). Accessibility itself is a complex notion, involving multiple factors, which include informativity (the amount of information supplied by the expression, e.g., the other report > the report > it); rigidity (the degree to which an expression picks out the intended referent, e.g., Pamela > she, Davis > this guy); and attenuation (less attenuated referring expressions (longer or louder) code lower degrees of activation than more attenuated referring expressions (shorter or less prominent), e.g., he vs. hé). Individual factors influencing accessibility: saliency (the higher the saliency, the higher the accessibility: global discourse topic > local discourse topic > non-topics; SAP > non- SAP; frame-available > non-frame-available inferrables); competition for role of antecedent of a referring expression (‘the more potential antecedents there are, the lower the degree of accessibility each is entertained with’); paragraph and episode boundaries; referential distance, including recency of mention and number of mentions) (Ariel 2001). The Accessibility Marking Scale (Ariel 1990, 2001) FULL NAME+MODIFIER > FULL NAME > LONG DEFINITE DESCRIPTION > SHORT DEFINITE

DESCRIPTION > LAST NAME > FIRST NAME > DISTAL DEMONSTRATIVE+MODIFIER >

PROXIMATE DEMONSTRATIVE + MODIFIER > DISTAL DEMONSTRATIVE + NP > PROXIMATE

DEMONSTRATIVE + NP > DISTAL DEMONSTRATIVE (-NP) > PROXIMATE DEMONSTRATIVE

(-NP) > STRESSED PRONOUN+GESTURE > STRESSED PRONOUN > UNSTRESSED PRONOUN >

CLITICIZED PRONOUN > VERBAL PERSON INFLEXTIONS > ZERO ***Expressions to the left indicate lower degrees of activation, whereas expressions to the right indicate higher degrees of activation.

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Nominative marking in Coptic (in bold) FULL NAME + MODIFIER > FULL NAME > LONG DEFINITE DESCRIPTION > SHORT

DEFINITE DESCRIPTION > (LAST NAME > FIRST NAME >) DISTAL

DEMONSTRATIVE+MODIFIER > PROXIMATE DEMONSTRATIVE + MODIFIER > DISTAL

DEMONSTRATIVE + NP > PROXIMATE DEMONSTRATIVE + NP > DISTAL

DEMONSTRATIVE (-NP) > PROXIMATE DEMONSTRATIVE (-NP) > STRESSED

PRONOUN+GESTURE > STRESSED PRONOUN > UNSTRESSED PRONOUN > CLITICIZED

PRONOUN > VERBAL PERSON INFLEXTIONS > ZERO

• The point to be made here is that nominative marking in Coptic does not ‘code’ low accessibility.

• Low accessibility is already coded by the type of referring expression (lexical NPs).

• Rather, nominative case in Coptic marks the unexpected association of a low-accessibility marker (= lexical NP referring expression) and the discourse profile of the grammatical role A/S, which is typically associated with highly-accessible referents.

• Accessibility provides a better account of the distribution of case-marking in Coptic than simple ‘givenness’ or ‘topicality.’

o Both incorporated A/S and NOM-marked A/S are often given, old, or inferable.

o Only accessibility has anything to say about the differences in frequency when there is referential conflict (Kibrik), multiple competing referents.

6. Broadening the view: Accessibility and overt case marking The description of Coptic presented here, buttressed by Accessibility Theory, makes several clear and empirically falsifiable predictions about overt marking: Expected association 1: In general, direct objects tend to be new/focal/low accessibility (Du Bois 1987, 2003; Iemmolo 2010, to appear) Prediction 1: old/given/highly accessible direct objects will be coded overtly Evidence:

• Incipient accusative markers in the context of DOM are topic markers. • In some cases, only topical objects are marked overtly.

Expected association 2: A tends to be old/topical/high accessibility (‘Avoid New A,’ Du Bois 1987, 2003) Prediction 2: New/focal/low-accessibility A will be coded overtly. Evidence:

• Ergative markers are almost always overt (vis-à-vis absolutive marking) • When ergative markers are ‘optional’ or motivated by information-structural

properties, they overwhelmingly tend to be associated with focus (Hyslop

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2010, MacGregor 1998, MacGregor 2009, MacGregor & Verstraete 2010, Verstraete 2010, Zeisler 2012).

Expected association 3: A is typically associated with high-accessibility markers (‘Avoid Lexical A,’ Du Bois 1987, 2003). Prediction 3: diachronically, lexical A will be coded overtly before pronominal A; synchronically, splits in which lexical A is overtly marked while pronominal A is not.

• Ergative markers are often found on lexical NPs, while pronouns are unmarked, e.g., in Sunwar (Kiranti, Tibeto-Burman).

Expected association 4: pronouns tend to be associated with highly accessible referents. Prediction 4: diachronically, pronominal direct objects will be coded overtly before lexical NP direct objects; synchronically, splits in which pronominal DOs are overtly marked while lexical NP DOs are not. Evidence:

• In Romance and Uralic, DOM begins with dislocated pronouns, which are high accessibility markers (Iemmolo 2010, to appear). In some cases, e.g., Catalan, only pronouns are case marked, and only in postverbal position.

Of course, such information-structurally motivated markers can become grammaticalized, e.g., topical object > animate/definite object, focal A > all A (ergative), and can probably spread by analogy, e.g., definite/animate objects > non-DOM accusative. 7. Getting more primitive: what motivates this principle? A universal of morphosyntactic coding asymmetries: All universal morphosyntactic asymmetries can be explained on the basis of frequency asymmetries, i.e. they all show economic motivation: more frequent patterns are coded with less material (Haspelmath 2008, emphasis mine).

1. Universal Frequency Asymmetry: In all languages, what is identified as “expected association” here is more frequent than the corresponding “unexpected associations”.

2. Systematic Coding Asymmetry: In all languages, the expected associations are at least as economically coded as the unexpected associations.

One type of such asymmetry is that frequent form-function associations are zero-coded, while rare associations are overtly coded, e.g.

• Sex and typical occupation: poet/poet-ess, nurse/male nurse • Number and gregariousness: ‘individualist’ nouns (e.g., house) tend to be

singular, and ‘gregarious’ nouns (‘leaf’) tend to be plural. Frequency counts show that singular is overall more frequent than plural. Crosslinguistic

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evidence for a systematic coding asymmetry: languages in which all nouns behave like individualist nouns, but whenever there are singulative markers, they occur with gregarious nouns.

• Possessedness and alienability: possessive markers on ‘inalienables’ (e.g., kinship terms) are typically shorter and involve fewer morphemes; some languages lack unpossessed forms of inalienable nouns (Tzutujil), but all languages allow inalienables to be possessed. In corpora, many nouns are rarely possessed (e.g., occupational terms), while kinship terms are often possessed.

This line of argumentation has also been used by Fauconnier for animacy-based systems: ‘Inanimates are unexpected to occur as Agents because they are not readily associated with Agent semantics. Because of this unexpectedness, inanimate Agents can either be avoided, or they can receive special case marking (i.e., DAM)’ (2011).

• Essentially, the argument here is based on the notion of expectedness, which

correlates with frequency. • Expected associations are basically frequent associations. • Frequent form-function associations are coded with less material (shorter or

zero realizations). • In terms of case marking, this is easily translated into overt marking vs. lack

thereof.

‘Grammars code best (viz., most economically) what speakers do most’ (Du Bois 1985).

References

Ariel, Mira. 1990. Accessing Noun-Phrase Antecedents. Routledge. Ariel, Mira. 2001. ‘Accessibility Theory: An Overview,’ in: Ted Sanders. Joost Schilperoord and Wilbert Spooren (eds), Text representation: Linguistic and Psycholinguistic Aspects. John Benjamins, 29-87. Ariel, Mira. 2008. Pragmatics and Grammar. Cambridge University Press. Chafe, Wallace. 1976. ‘Givenness, contrastiveness, definiteness, subjects, topics and point of view,’ in: Charles Li (ed.) Subject and Topic. New York: Academic Press: 25-55. Cooreman, Ann 1992. ‘The pragmatics of word order variation in Chamorro narrative text,’ in: Doris L. Payne (ed.) Pragmatics of Word Order Flexibility. Amsterdam: John Benjamins: 137-XXX. de Hoop, Helen & Peter de Swart (eds.). 2006. Differential Subject Marking. Dordrecht: Springer. Du Bois, John. 1987. The Discourse Basis of Ergativity. Language 63: 805-855.

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Du Bois, John. 2003. Argument Structure: Grammar in Use,’ in: John Du Bois, Lorraine Kumpf, and William Ashby (eds), Preferred Argument Structure: Grammar as Architecture for Function. John Benjamins, 11-60. Fauconnier, Stefanie. Constructional Effects of Involuntary and Inanimate Agents: A cross-linguistic study. PhD thesis. Catholic University of Leuven. Haspelmath, Martin. 2008. Iemmolo, Giorgio. 2010. Iemmolo, Giorgio. To appear. König, Christa. 2008. Case in Africa. Oxford University Press. König, Christa 2009. Marked Nominatives, in: Andrej Malchukov & Andrew Spencer (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Case. Oxford. 534-548. Lambrecht, Knud. 1981. Topic, Antitopic, and Verb Agreement in Non-Standard French. Amsterdam. Lambrecht, Knud. 1994. Information structure and sentence form: Topic, focus, and the mental representation of discourse referents. Cambridge University Press. Mithun, Marianne. 1992. ‘Is basic word order universal,’ in Payne (ed.) 1992: 15-61. Payne, Doris L. 1992. Nonidentifiable information and pragmatic order rules in ‘O’odham. In Payne, Doris L. (ed.) Pragmatics of Word Order Flexibility. Amsterdam: John Benjamins: 137-167. Tomlin, Russell S. and Richard A. Rhodes 1992. Information distribution in Ojibwa. In Payne, Doris L. (ed.) Pragmatics of Word Order Flexibility. Amsterdam: John Benjamins: 117-135. Zakrewska, Ewa. 2006. The Hero, the Villain and the Mob: Topicality and Focality in Bohairic Narrative Discourse. Lingua Aegyptia 14: 325-346.

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