gender marking recruited as number marking in garifuna (arawak)
TRANSCRIPT
GENDER MARKING RECRUITED FOR NUMBER MARKING IN GARIFUNA (ARAWAK)
48th annual meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea
Leiden 2 – 5 Sept 2015
Steffen Haurholm-Larsen Universität Bern
OVERVIEW
! 1. History of Garifuna – cultural gender and language
! 2. Grammatical gender (neutral speech)
! 3. Number (neutral speech)
! 4. Cultural / grammatical gender correlates: neutral vs. male speech ! Gender marking used as number marking (male speech)
! 5. Conclusion
1. HISTORY OF GARIFUNA – CULTURAL GENDER AND LANGUAGE
! I. Arawak speakers migrate to Lesser Antilles from mainland SA
! II. Carib speaking male warriors kill all Arawak speaking men on the islands and take women as partners.
! III. Possible language stages ! a. Arawak-Carib bilingualism
! b. Men adopted a modified variety of the women's Arawak language with a large number of Carib lexemes and some grammatical features while continuing to speak a pidginized Carib trade language AND their native Karina
! c. Karina and the Carib pidgin went out of use leaving an Arawak language with a male speech register and a neutral speech register, surviving today in Garifuna. Male speech register is today all but obsolete
Information from ethno-historical sources fit the linguistic facts
Source: ll-map.org
2. GRAMMATICAL GENDER IN GARIFUNA
! Two genders: masculine, feminine
! Gender of inanimate nouns generally follows this classification: ! Masculine: piercing instruments, body parts, body products and wild plants
! Feminine: containers, vehicles, trees, clothing, cutting instruments, domesticated plants and fruits and guns (Taylor 1977, Munro 1997).
! Gender marking is confined to 3rd person singular agreement
NP AGREEMENT: POSSESSION
uhabu 'hand'
1.SG n-uhabu
2.SG b-uhabu
3.M l-uhabu
3.F t-uhabu
1.PL wa-habu
2.PL h-uhabu
3.PL ha-habu
NP AGREEMENT: DEICTIC DEMONSTRATIVES
ará:nsu le 'this orange' (here) ará:nsu l-i:ra 'that orange' (out of reach) ará:nsu l-igita 'that orange' (far away but visible) ará:nsu l-igí:ra 'that orange' (far away and out of sight) faluma to 'this coconut' (here) faluma t-u:ra 'that coconut' (out of reach) faluma t-uguta 'that coconut' (far away but visible) faluma t-ugú:ra 'that coconut' (far away and out of sight)
VERB AGREEMENT: 1 ARGUMENT
! chülû-ti-na 'I arrived' chülû-ha-di-na 'I have arrived'
! chülû-ti-bu 'you arrived' chülû-ha-di-bu 'you have arrived'
! chülû-t-i 'he arrived' chülû-ha-l-i 'he has arrived'
! chülû-t-u 'she arrived' chülû-ha-r-u 'she has arrived'
! chülû-ti-wa 'we arrived' chülû-ha-di-wa 'we have arrived'
! chülû-tü-rü 'y'all arrived' chülû-ha-dü-rü 'y'all have arrived'
! chülû-ti-nya 'they arrived' chülû-ha-nya 'they have arrived'
VERB AGREEMENT: 2 ARGUMENTS
l-idaragu-ny-ón t-idaragu-ny-én
3.M-help-PROG-3.F 3.F-help-PROG-3.M
'he is helping her' 'she is helping him'
idaragwa l-umú-tu idaragwa t-umú-ti
help 3.M-PST-3.F help 3.F-PST-3.M
'he helped her' 'she helped him'
3. NUMBER
! Singular, plural, collective
! Collective is confined to human referents; minus agreement
! Number is only distinguished for animate referents
! For inanimate nouns, gender is the only available agreement category
NUMBER: NP
iráhü le 'that boy' bagasu le 'that bull'
iráhü to 'that girl' bagasu to 'that cow'
iráhû-nyü ha 'those children' bagasu ha 'those cows'
ará:nsu le 'that orange; those oranges'
agúsa le 'that needle; those needles
faluma to 'that coconut; those coconuts'
gusínyu to 'that knife; those knives'
NUMBER: VERBS
n-agányeha-ny-on faluma bime-tu to
1.SG-buy-PROG-3.F coconut sweet-3.F 3.F:DEM
'I'm buying this sweet coconut; I'm buying these sweet coconuts'
n-agányeha-ny-en ará:nsu bime-ti le
1.SG-buy-PROG-3.M orange sweet-3.M 3.M:DEM
'I'm buying this sweet orange; I'm buying these sweet oranges'
4. CULTURAL VS. GRAMMATICAL GENDER CORRELATES: NEUTRAL VS. MALE SPEECH
! Gender marking used as number marking
MALE SPEECH: FEM. INANIMATE
agányeha n-umú-tu faluma to buy 1.SG-PST-3.F coconut 3.F:DEM
'I bought that coconut' ; 'I bought those coconuts'
n-eygi-ny-on bimina to
1.SG-eat-PROG-3.F banana 3.F:DEM 'I'm eating that banana' ; 'I'm eating those bananas'
MALE SPEECH: MASC. INANIMATE
agányeha n-umú-ti ará:nsu le buy 1.SG-PST-3.M orange 3.M:DEM
'I bought that orange'
agányeha n-umú-tu ará:nsu to
buy 1.SG-PST-3.F orange 3.F:DEM 'I bought those oranges'
MALE SPEECH: MASC. INANIMATE
feyndi n-umú-ti faga:yu le paint 1.SG-PST-3.M paddle 3.M:DEM
'I painted that paddle'
feyndi n-umú-tu faga:yu to
paint 1.SG-PST-3.F paddle 3.F:DEM 'I painted those paddles'
MALE SPEECH: MASC. INANIMATE
n-agányeha-ny-en ará:nsu bime-ti le
1.SG-buy-PROG-3.M orange sweet-3.M 3.M:DEM
'I'm buying that sweet orange'
n-agányeha-ny-on ará:nsu bime-tu to
1.SG-buy-PROG-3.F orange sweet-3.F 3.F:DEM
'I'm buying those sweet oranges'
MALE SPEECH: MASC. INANIMATE
n-eféyndiru-ny-en faga:yu weya:-li le
1.SG-paint-PROG-3.M paddle old-3.M 3.M:DEM
'I'm painting that old paddle'
n-eféyndiru-ny-on faga:yu weya:-ru to
1.SG-paint-PROG-3.F paddle old-3.F 3.F:DEM
'I'm painting those old paddles'
Reminiscent of Arabic gender-number for non-humans
NUMBER MARKING IN CARIB AND ARAWAK
! Some Arawak languages mark number of inanimates (-pe) (Aikhenvald1999) but Garifuna lacks cognate of marker.
! Garifuna neutral speech does not mark number of inanimates
! Garifuna male speech came from Cariban context (Karina?)
! Most Cariban languages do not have a singular/plural distinction (Gildea1998) ! Cariban collective marker was borrowed into Garifuna as –gu
! Cariban languages do not have gender agreement on verbs and adpositions (Debyshire 1999)
An important question becomes: are M and F nouns of different origins? Carib vs. Arawak? Apparently does not seem so.
5. CONCLUSION
! Neither the Arawak language from which Garifuna stems nor the Cariban language that gave rise to the male speech register are likely to have had number agreement for inanimate referents
! Garifuna neutral speech register does not mark number of inanimates
! Male speech register has innovated a strategy for marking number of inanimate referents by recruiting the opposite gender marker
! However, this strategy only applies to one part of the lexicon, namely inanimate nouns of masculine gender, i.e. feminine gender inanimates remain without a number marking strategy
This presentation has benefited hugely from ideas presented in Barchas-Lichtenstein (2012:169) and Munro et al. (2014:39)
WHY ?!
CITED WORKS
! Aikhenvald, Alexandra. 1999. Arawak. In The Amazonian Languages.
! Barchas-Lichtenstein, Jena. 2012. Garifuna Quantificadtion. In Handbook of Quantifiers in Natural Language.
! Derbyshire. 1999. Carib. In The Amazonian Languages.
! Gildea, Spike. 1998. On Reconstructing Grammar.
! Munro, Pamela. 1997. "The Garifuna gender system". In The Life of Language.
! Munro, Pamela, Maurice Lopez, Anita Lambey-Martinez, Martha Clayton and Jena Barchas-Lichtenstein. 2014. Adímureha Waman Garífuna. UCLA.
! Taylor, Douglas. 1977. Languages of the West Indies.
BONUS MATERIAL ... 4. MORE CULTURAL / GRAMMATICAL GENDER CORRELATES: NEUTRAL VS. MALE SPEECH ! Gender marking in expletive constructions: default
gender
! Neutral speech register has MASC as default gender
! Male speech register has FEM as default gender
TIME ADVERBIALS
Gloss Neutral speech Male speech
Right now gwen le gwen to
Today ugúnye le ugúnye to
The other day ligíra=buga tugúra=buga
At that time dan le dan to
OBLIQUELY MARKED STATIVE VERBS NEUTRAL SPEECH
chu 'intelligent' aw 'with' (INSTRUMENTAL) -b(a) 'FUT' Present Future Doubt chu-ti n-aw chu-b-ey n-aw chu l-an n-aw chu-ti b-aw chu-b-ey b-aw chu l-an b-aw chu-ti l-aw chu-b-ey l-aw chu l-an l-aw chu-ti t-aw chu-b-ey t-aw chu l-an t-aw chu-ti w-aw chu-b-ey w-aw chu l-an w-aw chu-ti h-aw chu-b-ey h-aw chu l-an h-aw chu-ti h-aw chu-b-ey h-aw chu l-an h-aw
OBLIQUELY MARKED STATIVE VERBS MALE SPEECH
chu 'intelligent' aw 'with' (INSTRUMENTAL) -b(a) 'FUT'
Present Future Doubt chu-tu n-aw chu-b-on n-aw chu t-an n-aw chu-tu b-aw chu-b-on b-aw chu t-an b-aw chu-tu l-aw chu-b-on l-aw chu t-an l-aw chu-tu t-aw chu-b-on t-aw chu t-an t-aw chu-tu w-aw chu-b-on w-aw chu t-an w-aw chu-tu h-aw chu-b-on h-aw chu t-an h-aw chu-tu h-aw chu-b-on h-aw chu t-an h-aw