avertive constructions in europe and north asia: an areal typology [presented at chronos 12 - 12th...

Avertive constructions in Europe and North Asia

An areal typology

Anna Alexandrova Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa [email protected] Chronos 12, Université Caen-Normandie, June 15–17, 2016

mailto:[email protected]

Avertive as a TAM-related category

• The AVERTIVE was introduced by Kuteva (1998; 2001) as a gram with the meaning ‘X was on the verge of V-ing, but did not V’.

(1) Kayardild (Australian > Tangkic; Evans 1995: 261)

bulkurdudu ngijin-jina baa-nangarra kurthurr-ina crocodileNOM 1sgPOSS-MABL bite-ALMOST shin-MABL ‘A crocodile almost bit me on the leg.’

(2) Choctaw (Muskogean; Broadwell 2006: 322)

Sa-lli-naaha-tok. 1SII-die-ALMOST-PST ‘I almost died.’

• The avertive is a semantically complex category inasmuch as its semantic features admittedly belong to different semantic domains:

pastness ~ TEMPORALITY counterfactuality ~ MODALITY

imminence ~ ASPECT

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Avertive as a TAM-related category • The avertive is distinct from another gram with the imminentiality feature,

the proximative (and from the lest-clause/apprehensional, frustrative etc.)

Problems

Semantics

1. Overlaps with the proximative

2. Imminence is not an atomic feature itself (temporality/modality/aspect)

3. It is not clear whether pastness is an independent defining feature or rather an epiphenomenon of counterfactuality

Formal properties

1. seemingly rarely grammaticalized

2. multiple strategies of encoding are highly common

3. does not seem to be obligatory in any language (lexical equivalents)

4. redundant marking is highly common (lexical+grammaticalized markers)

me

Avertive ‘N almost V-ed (was on the verge of V-ing but didn’t V)’

Proximative ‘N is/was on the verge of V-ing’

Counterfactuality obligatory cancellable

Temporality inherently restricted to the past (counterfactuality a situation

cannot be helped anymore)

potentially unrestricted (but in some languages it is

grammaticalized as a past gram)

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Avertive vs. proximative and temporal restrictions In Lithuanian, there is a grammaticalized past proximative, ‘be.PST+CONT-VPRSPTCP’ (classified as an avertive in Arkadiev 2011), whereas the avertive meaning is encoded by an ‘ADVL+NEG+V.PST’ construction:

(3) Lithuanian (Indo-European > Baltic)

a. Aldona vakar vos ne-pa-skend-o, Aldona.NOM.SG yesterday hardly NEG-PFV-drown.PST-3 be-plaukio-dam-a ežer-e. CONT-swim-CVB.WHILE-F.SG lake.M-LOC.SG ‘Yesterday Aldona almost drowned while swimming in the lake.’ [Avertive]

b. Kai aš į-ėjau į kambar-į, when 1SG.NOM inside-go.PST.1SG in room.M-ACC.SG Aldona buv-o be-iš-einanti. Aldona.F.NOM.SG be.PST-3 CONT-out-go.PRSPTCP.F.SG ‘When I entered the room, Aldona was about to leave.’ [Proximative, counterfactual implicature can be cancelled, e.g. ‘She left a minute later.’]

c. Aš buv-au be-duod-anti Aldonai savo 1SG.NOM be.PST-1SG CONT-give-PRSPTCP.F.SG Aldona.F.DAT.SG REFLPOSS nešiojam-ąjį kompiuter-į, bet per.si.galvojau. portable-M.ACC.SG.DEF computer.M-ACC.SG but change.one’s.mind.PST.1SG ‘I was about to give Aldona my laptop but then changed my mind.’ [Proximative, counterfactual reading, contextually disambiguated]

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Avertive vs. proximative and temporal restrictions

Is pastness an independent defining feature of the avertive or rather an epiphenomenon of counterfactuality?

My preliminary answer is: counterfactuality is a true defining feature, whereas pastness is a mere epiphenomenon of the latter. If a gram encodes imminence and is restricted to the past, it does not imply that it also encodes uncancellable counterfactuality. On the contrary, if such a gram encodes counterfactuality, it has to be restricted to the past. Hence, the avertive can be described as a proximative with a conventionalized counterfactual implicature.

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The scope of the present study

• Investigate the diversity of strategies of avertive marking crosslinguistically in an areal typological perspective (Nichols 1992; Dahl 2001)

• Study both grammaticalized and lexical avertives, as well as fuzzy phenomena

• Build comparable sets of contexts and use first-hand data for a relatively large set of languages in order to:

o account for the degree of variation (co-existing multiple strategies of marking in synchrony) within single languages

o evaluate the role of contact (pattern and matter borrowing) and observe the distribution of the respective patterns across Europe (and North Asia)

Some questions (1) Is the avertive a rare gram? How many languages have a grammaticalized avertive marker? (2) What are the most common paths of grammaticalization? How are they distributed across linguistic families and areas? (3) Is pattern borrowing of avertive constructions diffused? (4) What instances of semantic and morphosyntactic cross-linguistic variation can be found? (5) How do avertives interact with other TAM categories? (6) What are the actional restrictions on the avertive? Do they vary crosslinguistically?

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Data and methodological issues

First-hand data was collected using translation questionnaires. • The availability of large comparable sets was crucial to the purposes of the

present study. • For topics regarding relatively abstract concepts language samples can

only be completed by doing additional fieldwork (see Bickel (2007: 242)).

• Although most of the languages from the European sample are (relatively) well described, grammars often lack information regarding the topics under study or only provide a partial account.

• Notwithstanding all the drawbacks, the method of translation questionnaires seems to be the most appropriate and feasible solution for a large-scale typology. Dahl (1985: 50): “the only realistic method for large-scale data collection in typologically oriented linguistic research”.

• Responses of as many informants as possible were collected for each language.

• Checking against other sources (second-hand literature, parallel corpora, when available). 7

Language sample (first-hand data)

• A convenience sample (i.e. no sampling technique was used), includes 42 languages

• Areas: extended Europe (in the sense of EUROTYP) and its fringes, as well as North Asia plus some languages from other parts of the world

• Currently biased towards Indo-European (and Turkic and Uralic as well), but more languages will be added later on...

8 WALS

Is the avertive a rare gram in Europe (and North Asia)?

1 This map shows only the most grammaticalized constructions available for each language (e.g., French along with an auxiliary construction also has a biclausal construction and an adverbial). In general, languages with grammaticalized avertives often also have lexical avertive constructions. 2 I call ‘biclausal’ a conventionalized avertive construction of the type ‘little (time) remained/lacked that V’.

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WALS

Is the avertive a rare gram in Europe (and North Asia)? Zones of areal convergence with a grammaticalized avertive

1. South Europe (excluding the Balkans) Spanish, Basque, French • Spanish and Basque exhibit a shared pattern (a proximative construction in

the perfective receives a strictly avertive interpretation) • French has an auxiliary construction with the verb faillir ‘fail, make a mistake’

(but also a biclausal construction) (4) Basque (Isolate) Xabier oso gaixo-rik egon Xabier.ABS entire sick-PART [be/stay.NFIN.PFV zen iaz. Hil-tze-ko be/AUX.ITR.PST.IND.3SG]PFV.PST last.year die.NFIN.PFV-NMLZ-REL zorian egon zen. on.the.verge.of [be/stay.NFIN.PFV be.PST.IND.3SG]PFV.PST ‘Xabier was very sick last year. He almost died.’

(5) European Spanish (Indo-European > Romance) José estuvo a punto de beber José.M.SG be.in.a.place.AOR.3SG at point.M.SG of drink.INF el vino. DEF.M.SG wine.M.SG ‘José almost drank the wine.’

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2. The Balkans Fully grammaticalized: Bulgarian (South Slavic), Romanian (Romance) (unrelated strategies). However, Gagauz (Turkic), Macedonian (South Slavic), Slovene and Greek have similarly structured ‘mixed’ constructions (adverbial+counterfactual conditional or subjunctive). Not found in Serbian, Croatian, Albanian. Pattern borrowing from Turkic towards Slavic

Bulgarian, Macedonian, Gagauz, Turkish: future-in-the-past > counterfactual conditional > avertive

(6) Bulgarian (Indo-European > Slavic > South Slavic) Kučeto šteše da za.xape Ivan dog.N.SG.DEF WANTAUX.IPFV.IPF.3SG COMP bite.PFV.NPST.3SG Ivan ‘The dog almost bit Ivan (but it didn’t manage to).’

(7) Macedonian (Indo-European > Slavic > South Slavic) Ja fativ za raka, mi 3SG.ACC grasp.PFV.AOR.1SG for hand.F.SG 1SG.DAT odgovori so stisok kojšto za malku answer.AOR.3SG with handshake which.M.SG for little ḱe mi ja smačkaše raka-ta... WANTAUX 1SG.DAT 3SG.F.ACC smash.PFV.IPF.3SG hand.F.SG-DEF ‘I grasped her hand, (and) she answered me with a handshake that almost broke my hand.’ [ParaSOL corpus]

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(8) Gagauz (Altaic > Turkic > Oghuz > Western Oghuz) Taa biraz da kap-ı çay-lan devir-ecey-di-m. just a.bit EMPH cup-ACC tea-COM upset-FUT-PST-1SG ‘I almost upset the cup with tea.’ (9) Turkish (Altaic > Turkic > Oghuz > Western Oghuz) Çocuk süt yer-i-ne az child.NOM milk.NOM place-POSS3SG-DAT/ALL a.bit kal-sın bira-yı iç-ecek-ti. / remain-HORT.3SG beer-ACC.DEF drink-FUT-DIRPST.3SG Çocuk nerdeyse süt yer-i-ne child.NOM almost/just.about milk.NOM place-POSS3SG-DAT/ALL bira-yı iç-ecek-ti. beer-ACC.DEF drink-FUT-DIRPST.3SG ‘The child almost drank beer instead of milk!’

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3. North Asia (Turkic: Tuvan, Sakha, Kyrgyz; Khalkha Mongolian, Buryat) plus Turkic and Mongolic spoken in the European part of Russia (Tatar, Bashkir; Kalmyk) Convergence within Altaic: Turkic and Mongolic (but not Tungusic…) Old-date areal convergence or a genetically determined shared pattern? Auxiliaries with the meaning ‘to fail; to err; to miss (a mark)’ (10) Sakha (Altaic > Turkic > North Siberian Turkic) Olus xaltarxaj e-t-e. Byøtyr oxt-o sɯːs-pɯt-a. very slippery be-PST-3SG Büötür.NOM fall-CVB1 miss/fail-REMPST-3SG ‘It was slippery. Büötür almost fell.’ (11) Buryat (Altaic > Mongolic) Üsegelder Darima nuur soo šenge-n aldaa. yesterday Darima.NOM lake in drown-CVB.IPFV2 lose/miss.PST.3SG ‘Yesterday Darima almost drowned in the lake.’

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4. The Volga-Kama area (European part of Russia) Uralic (Udmurt, Mari, Moksha), Turkic (Chuvash) Imperfective > counterfactual conditional > avertive (12) Udmurt (Uralic > Permic) a. Kolja pi ri-ku, Maša komnata-iš pot-e val. Kolja.NOM enter-CVB.SIM Masha.NOM room-ELA [ go.out-PRS.3SG be.DIRPST]PROG ‘When Kolja entered, Masha was leaving the room.’

b. mon ton dori piri-ško val, no ton gurt-ad vi limte-jed I you to go in-PRS/1SG but you home-IN/2SG NEX/PERF-2SG ‘I wanted to visit you, but it seemed that you haven’t been at home.’ (Lit.: ‘I would have visited you, but…’) [Winkler 2001: 48]

c. Kuliške ni val. [ die.PRS.3SG already be.DIRPST]PRET3 ‘S/he almost died.’ 14

Compositionality in the marking of the avertive Patterns involving irreality and negation markers

1. Irreality (conditionals, irrealis, subjunctives…)

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WALS

Compositionality in the marking of the avertive Patterns involving irreality and negation markers

2. Negation

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WALS

Some conclusions

1. It is difficult at this point to account for the prototypical sources of grammaticalization

of the avertive due to genetic and areal bias.

2. Verbal approximation marking strategies are subject to massive areal skewing across Eurasia. For instance, avertive constructions of the type ‘a.bit NEG V’ were copied from Russian into numerous Turkic and Uralic languages. Another area with a wealth of negative avertives is South Europe (several Romance languages, Albanian, Balkan Slavic, Gagauz and Maltese).

3. Avertives are often irrealis-based, while partial completion is construed as pertaining to realis in Europe. Irrealis-based avertives are concentrated in South Europe (and is diffused to some extent in Central and Eastern Europe), as well as in Iranic and Turkic languages that have undergone extensive contact with Iranic.

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Selected references (1)

Arkadiev, Peter. 2011. On the aspectual uses of the prefix be- in Lithuanian. Baltic Linguistics 2. 37–78. Bugenhagen, Robert D. 1993. The semantics of irrealis in Austronesian languages of Papua New Guinea: A cross-linguistic study. In Ger P. Reesink (ed.), Topics in descriptive Austronesian linguistics, 1–39. Leiden: Vakgroep Talen en Culturen van Zuidoost-Azië en Oceanië, Rijksuniversiteit te Leiden. Comrie, Bernard. 1976. Aspect: an introduction to the study of verbal aspect and related problems. (Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cristofaro, Sonia. 2012. Descriptive notions vs. grammatical categories: Unrealized states of affairs and “irrealis.” Language Sciences 34(2). 131–146. Dahl, Östen. 1985. Tense and aspect systems. Oxford: Basil Blackwell Ltd. Dahl, Östen. 2000. The tense-aspect systems of European languages in a typological perspective. In Östen Dahl (ed.), Tense and aspect in the languages of Europe. Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Dahl, Östen. 2001. Principles of areal typology. In Martin Haspelmath, Ekkehard König, Wulf Oesterreicher & Wolfgang Raible (eds.), Language typology and language universals: An international handbook, vol. 2, 1456–1470. Berlin, New York: Walter de Gruyter. Dowty, David R. 1979. Word meaning and Montague Grammar: The semantics of verbs and times in Generative Semantics and in Montague’s PTQ. Dordrecht, Holland – London: D. Reidel Publishing Company. Dryer, Matthew S. & Martin Haspelmath (eds.). 2013. The World Atlas of Language Structures Online. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. http://wals.info.

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Erelt, Mati & Helle Metslang. 2009. Some notes on proximative and avertive in Estonian. Linguistica Uralica 45(3). 178–191. Heine, Bernd. 1994. On the genesis of aspect in African languages: the proximative. Proceedings of the Twentieth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society: Special Session on Historical Issues in African Linguistics 20(2). 35–46. Horn, Laurence R. 2011. Almost forever. In Etsuyo Yuasa, Tista Bagchi & Katharine Beals (eds.), Pragmatics and Autolexical Grammar: In honor of Jerry Sadock, 3–21. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Kaufmann, Magdalena & Ting Xu. 2013. Almost or almost not? The interaction between chad(yi)ian “almost” and negation in Mandarin Chinese. Chicago Linguistic Society (CLS) 49 proceedings (In press). Kozlov, Alexej A. 2015. Glagol’nye pokazateli imperfektivacii v mokšanskom jazyke. Moskovskij gosudarstvennyj universitet im. M.V. Lomonosova. Kuteva, Tania. 1998. On identifying an evasive gram: Action Narrowly Averted. Studies in Language 22(1). 113–160. Kuteva, Tania. 2000. TAM-auxiliation, and the avertive category in Northeast Europe. Areal Grammaticalization and Cognitive Semantics: the Finnic and Saami languages, 27–41. Tallinn: Eesti Keele Sihtasutus. Kuteva, Tania. 2001. Auxiliation: An enquiry into the nature of grammaticalization. Oxford University Press. Nichols, Johanna. 1992. Linguistic diversity in space and time. Chicago, London: The University of Chicago Press.

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Plungian, Vladimir A. 2001. Antirezul’tativ: do i posle rezul'tata. In Vladimir Aleksandrovič Plungian (ed.), Issledovanija po teorii grammatiki. Vyp. 1: Glagol’nye kategorii, 50–88. Moskva: Russkie slovari. Plungian, Vladimir A. 2005. Irrealis and modality in Russian and in typologiсal perspесtivе. In Björn Hansen & Petr Karlík (eds.), Modality in Slavonic languages: New perspectives. München: Verlag Otto Sagner. Rapp, Irene & Arnim von Stechow. 1999. Fast “almost” and the visibility parameter for functional adverbs. Journal of Semantics 16(2). 149–204. Serebrennikov, Boris Aleksandrovič. 1960. Kategorii vremeni i vida v finno-ugorskix jazykax permskoj i volžskoj grupp. Moskva: Izdatel’stvo Akademii nauk SSSR. Smith, Carlota S. 1991. The parameter of aspect. Kluwer Academic Press. Winkler, Eberhard. 2001. Udmurt. Munich: LINCOM Europa.

avertive constructions in europe and north asia: an areal typology [presented at chronos 12 - 12th...

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