Re: THEORY: The fourth person

Ray Brown wrote at 2004-04-29 19:45:26 (+0100)
[...]
 > On Thursday, April 29, 2004, at 01:52 AM, Henrik Theiling wrote:
 > >
[...]
 > > It is similar in that it might express the same or a closely
 > > related idea, but it is different in that the languages you
 > > mention use 3rd person morphologically, instead of using a
 > > distinct 4th person (e.g. as an inflection on the verb).
 >
 > But all the examples below have the same verb.
 >
[...]
 >
 > Similarly, don't hit me because I seem obtuse on the 4th person
 > business.  I really want to know.
 >
 >

I think the important point is that the reflexive "4th person" marking
occurs not only on possessed nouns but also in the pronominal marking
of verbs in subordinate clauses, to show that the subject (or object?)
of a verb is coreferential with the subject of main clause.

Here is the section in Mithun's _Languages of Native North America_,
which discusses the phenomenon in a related language.  (Underlined
sections - highlighting the feature under discussion - have been
represented between asterisks.  "_" indicates italics, except in the
penultimate sentence of the last paragraph where it indicates that the
following letter is subscript (this is a difficult book to render in
plain text).)


 | 2.1.2 Long-distance coreference and empathy
 |
 | Reflexive constructions, which mark coreverence between the subject
 | and another argument of clauses, appear throughout North America,
 | as elsewhere: Mohawk _wa'k*atát*ken_ 'I saw *myself*'.  Some
 | languages also contain devices for specifying coreference over
 | longer stretches of speech, termed variously fourth persons,
 | long-distance reflexives, coreferential third persons, logophoric
 | pronouns, and more.  Examples of such structures can be seen in
 | languages of the Eskimo-Aleut family.
 |
 | In Central Alaskan Yup'ik, as in related languages, all verbs
 | contain pronominal suffixes referring to their core arguments, one
 | for intransitives and two for transitives.  Posessed nouns contain
 | suffixes referring to the possessor and the possession.
 |
 | (10)   YUP'IK PRONOMINAL SUFFIXES       Elizabeth Ali, speaker
 |   paqeta*nka*                           ila*nka*
 |   paqete-a-*nka*			   ila-*nka*
 |   visit-INDICATIVE-*1SINGULAR/3PLURAL*  relative-*1SINGULAR/3PLURAL*
 |   '*I* visited *them*'		   '*my* relative*s*'
 |
 | The pronominal suffixes always appear on verbs, whether or not
 | independent nouns appear in the sentence as well.  The verb and
 | noun in (10), for example, could be combined into a sentence.
 | Gender is not distinguished in Yup'ik, so the same pronominal forms
 | are used for males, females and objects.  There are two different
 | third person categories however, one basic and one for arguments
 | coreferent with the subject of the matrix clause.
 |
 | (11)   YUP'IK COREFERENTIAL THIRD PERSON  Elizabeth Ali, speaker
 |   Tuai-llu-gguq  tauna tutgara'urluq,
 |   tuai=llu=gguq  tauna tutgar-'urlur
 |   so=too=HEARSAY that  grandchild-dear
 |   'And so that dear grandchild,
 |
 |   apa'urlu*ni*                 kenekenga*miu*
 |   apa-'urlur-*ni*	          keneke-nga-*miu*
 |   grandfather-dear-*3R.SG*/3SG love-CONSEQUENTIAL-*3R.SG*/3SG
 |   because she (*herself*) loved her (*own*) grandfather,
 |
 |   neqkanek                  assilrianek,
 |   neqkaq-nek		       assir-lria-nek
 |   prepared.food-ABLATIVE.PL good-NM-ABLATIVE.PL
 |   paiveskii.
 |   paivte-ke-ii
 |   put.out-PARTICIPIAL.TR-3SG/3PL
 |   she was putting out good foods [on his plate].
 |
 | The subject of the main clause in (11) is the grandchild.  She is
 | referred to by a basic third person pronoun in the main verb
 | _paivesk*ii*_ '*she* put them out'.  In the embedded clause,
 | 'because *she* loved her grandfather', she is referred to by the
 | coreferential pronoun because the subject of the subordinate clause
 | is the same as that of the main clause.  The coreferential pronoun
 | appears in '*her* grandfather' as well, indicating that the
 | possessor of the grandfather is the same individual as the subject
 | of the clause in which it occurs: 'she_i loved her_i grandfather'.
 | (Basic reflexives are expressed in a different way in Yup'ik.)