Re: revisions in Tepa number marking

On Thu, 17 Aug 2000, dirk elzinga wrote:

> By doing this, I've essentially eliminated the need for the number
> distinctions on nouns. Since the person prefixes also capture the
> argument structure for any given predicate, the nouns become
> superfluous in context--hence, a Pronominal Argument language.
Mark Baker has claimed that in these languages, these superfluous nouns
don't have any features for gender, number, case, person, etc.  Hence, the
features of the nouns and clitics do not have to match.  That is, a
singular clitic could license multiple nouns, or a first person clitic
could license a third person noun.  Mohawk does this, as do Chickasaw and
Choctaw.  An example:

John we-danced
"John and I danced" or "John danced with me" or "I danced with John".

A less typical sentence, but logically equivalent, would be "John
I-danced".

Note that Chickasaw and Choctaw have comitative applicatives, but they are
not used in these contexts, so there really does appear to be a mismatch
between the clitic and nouns.

Marcus

P.S. Just because the Pronominal Argument Hypothesis is an area I'm
working in, I can't leave this disclaimer out. I am very skeptical about
this theory. Jelinek tried to account for Choctaw in this manner, but her
account doesn't fly. I think she didn't learn enough about the language
before jumping to her conclusion. As a result, I don't quite trust the
analyses she has given for other languages either.  Perhaps a bit unfair,
but that's the way it goes.