Reciprocal constructions in

MeeteilonATANU SAHA

Center for LinguisticsJawaharlal Nehru University, India

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Overview of the language • Spoken in four states of India namely Manipur, Assam, Tripura and Nagaland and also in Bangladesh and Myanmar.

• Estimated population is 1,370,000 in India (2000-1).

• Alternative names are Kathe, Kathi, Manipuri, meeteilon, meeteiron, Meithe, Meithei, Menipuri, Mitei, Mithe, Ponna.

• Dialects meetei, Loi (Chakpa), Pangal (Panal, Panan, Manipuri Muslim)

• Bengali script and Meetei Mayek script.

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Contd..Meiteilon

Sino-Tibetan

Tibeto-Burman

Kamarupan

Meeteilon

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• This research is motivated at a detail description of the reciprocal constructions found in Meeteiron/ Meeteilon .

• Unlike English, Meetei shows reciprocity by a different verbal morphology in which an affix is attached to the base.

• According to Chelliah 1997 since Meetei does not have similar clause structure like English therefore the binding principle cannot make appropriate predictions for Meetei Anaphora.

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Important works•Thoudam 1980•Chelliah 1997•Bhat and Ningombam 1997•Subbarao and Sajudevi 2002•Subbarao and Everaert 2007

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Reciprocals in general1. məkʰoi məʃən pʰu-nə-ri

they among hit-RCP-ASP ‘They hit each other’.

2. jɔn-gə meri-ge nuŋsi-nə-iJohn Mary love-RCP- ASP‘John and Mary love each other.’

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Reciprocals in general3. məkʰoi amana amagi kʰhuŋup seŋdok-nə-ithey one another shoes clean rcp-asp‘they cleaned shoes for each other.’

4. jɔnge meri-ge amana amabu nuŋsi haiba tʰajei

john marry one another love believe

‘ john and marry believe they love each other.’

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Expanding the Picture : Meetei

• Coordinate noun phrase5. tombə-gə cawba-gə ann-gə pʰu-nə-y

Tomba –CONJ Chaoba –CONJ Ann-CONJ beat –RCP-ASP ‘Tomba Chaoba and Ann beat each other.’• With a plural subject 6. məkʰoy əmə-nə -mə-də sel ləw-nə-y they one-NOM-one –LOC money take-RCP-ASP ‘They took money from one another.’

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Meetei : Thoudam P.C. 1980

ROOT 1 2 3 4 5 6ca nə kʰieat RCP DEF

nə kʰi deRCP DEF NEG

min nə bi lu nutogether

RCP POL GFA PROHBTV

min nə bi lu kʰi nutogether

RCP POL GFA DEF PROHBTV

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• It is known that if the verb is not inherently reciprocal then a language must have other strategies such as lexical reciprocity.

• For Manipuri (Subbarao, T.Sarjudevi 2002)7. məkʰoi na ama-na amabu thagat-*(nə)-rammithey nom one-nom one-acc praise-RCP- PST‘They each praised the other.’

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• There are many constructions in this language where lexical reciprocal and verbal encoding co occur. In this case what kind of syntactic structure it possesses?

• 8. məkʰoi amana amagi kʰhuŋup seŋdok-nə-ithey one another shoes clean-RCP-ASP‘they cleaned shoes for each other.’ 1110/11/22 11

Some interesting constructions

• Verb ‘meet’ məbəni amana amabu u-nə-ithey one-nom one-BNF meet-RCP-ASP‘they are meeting each other.’

• ‘see’• aŋam ani ədu lepiŋəidə amana amabu u-ichild 2 DET stand-Process of standing one another see‘the two children saw each other as they are standing.’

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Some interesting constructions

• Verb ‘to talk’14. nupa adu-na ma-ga wari sa-rigirl two-NOM she-GEN story-tell-ASP

‘two girls are talking’ 15. nupa adu-ga wari sa-na-rigirl two-NOM she-GEN story tell-RCP-ASP

‘two girls are talking to each other.’

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Some interesting constructions

• Verb ‘play’

12. məkʰoi məʃən sanə-rithey among play-ASP‘they played with each other.’

13. məkʰoi məʃən sanə-*nə-ri

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Reciprocal suffix is not reflexive, comitative,

causative 16. məkʰoi moigi anderwər su-min-nə-kʰithey their underwear wash-COM-RCP-ASP

lit. they washed their underwear with each other.’

17. əy-nə məkʰoy-bu cak ca-nə-həl-liI-NOM they-ACC food eat-RCP-CAUS-ASP

‘I made them eat food with one another.’

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Reciprocal suffix is not reflexive, comitative,

causative 18. məkʰoy cak ca-nə-jə-yThey food eat-RCP-RFL-NFu

‘They ate food with one another by themselves’.

• It is neither a passive marker because it is very hard to even get a simple passive construction.

• Passive construction is infrequent. 10/11/22 16

Other functions• Reciprocal suffix in Meetei can be marked for other informations such as Collective action or a group denoting activity.

• ca –eat canə- feast• cət- go cətnə-culturally customary

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Scope ː Narrow vs. Broad• ‘John and Mary believe that they love each other.’

• This sentence has the ‘I, we and they’ readings in English. (Heim, Lasnik & May 1991).

• ɟɔngə merigə tʰaɟei məkʰoy əmana əmabu nuŋsinəiJohn mary believe they one-NOM one-BNF love-RCP-ASP‘John and Mary believe that they love each other.’

• However, in Meetei it’s not easy to get these three readings. The ‘they’ reading is the strongest possibility and hence has the ‘broad’ scope.

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Strong vs. Weak • Meetei allows to drop RCP suffix in some cases and we can get the strong and weak effect accordingly.

• That means the strongness effects comes from the fact whether the verb is overtly reciprocal marked or not.

• The nominal reciprocal (object) might give other information such as direction, affectedness etc.

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typology • Blake’s generalizations of CASE 2004 • Case pattern nom- acc- gen- dat- loc- abl- inst- com- purp

• At some point a language has a choice of lexicalizing the reciprocal.

• Else the reciprocity will be marked by affixation.

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what syntax to take up• Kayne’s antisymmetry : the unmarked word order is SOV in Meetei.

• Kayne (1994) suggested for any pair of non- terminal nodes < X; Y >, if X asymmetrically c-commands Y then each terminal node dominated by X preceded each terminal node dominated by Y.

• Therefore for Kayne the LCA schema for Metei reciprocal predicates would be

• Root>COM>RCP> CAUS>ASP and this is derivable by the operation pied piping.

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Contd.. • Cinque’s hierarchy• Cinque’s (1999) assumption that the basis of categorizing the adverbs is primarily based on their interaction with other elements in a sentence and adverbs are specifiers of their own projection, I want to propose that even within the verbal paradigm in this language there is a clear arrangement of the suffixes in this language.

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Syntax

• hierarchy of suffixes » ASP» Caus» RCP» COM» ROOT

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SyntaxIP [following Bruening 2004]

ti ɟəngə merigə I’ eu

IRecipVP ri-i VP RecipVru - nə-NP V

amana amabu nuŋsi-‘John and Mary love each other.’ 2410/11/22

observation• I propose that when the Nominal reciprocal and the RCP suffix co occur then it does not behave like a reciprocal marker but they perform those actions which are stated above.

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observations•The proposal is that RCP/RecipV is an else where case. It’s a kind of default set up for languages.

•Reciprocal suffix in Meitei can be marked for other informations such as Collective action or a group denoting activity and in these cases the constrcutions are not reciprocal.

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References • http://www.ethnologue.org/show_language.asp?code=mni• Thoudam, P.C. 1980. A grammatical sketch of Meteiron. PhD Thesis submitted to Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.

• Chelliah, S. 1997. A grammar of Meithei. Berlin: Mouton.• Bhat and Ningombam. 1997. Manipuri grammar. Mysore: CIIL, India.

• Subbarao,K.V. and Sarju Devi 2002. Reduplication and case copying: the case of lexical anaphors in Manipuri and Telegu. In Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area, 25.2. Pages: 47-72.

• Everaert ,M. and Karumuri V. Subbarao. 2007. Verbal and Nominal Reciprocals in South Asian Languages: A Syntactic Typology. Reciprocals Cross-Linguistically, Berlin, Nov 29-Dec 2, 2007.

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Thank you

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