#grammaticalisation

Bonus 90: Don't you love to do a "do" episode?

We do love the word "do", and we hope you do too. Don't you want to know what the word "do" can do?  

The imperative in Vougerå is quite different from that of the other Tuuric languages. While Tjȁr has -ji, -ci, -ī, -či and Miõrra has -ggje, -že, -je, -jaì both from Old Tuura -je and in turn Proto-Sumric -ję (compare Old Sumrë -je). Vougerå has the imperative prefix smou- which attaches to the supine form of the verb unlike any of it’s relatives. The reason is due to grammaticalisation in Soyra (the mother of Vougerå and daughter of Old Tuura). 

Soyra in general was pretty innovative, shedding many of it’s Old Tuura feathers and gaining new ones, such as a total pronoun reform and a wave of grammaticalisation bringing many new derivational morphemes into the language. The Old Tuura imperative -je was dropped and was replaced by a construction meaning “you allow there to be X-ing” where the supine form of the verb was used alongside an existential construction. For example “soothe!” was dar rotys må emti kvjes (you allow-2S it.INAN be-INF SUP-soothe) “you allow there to be soothing”. The verb “to be” was optionally dropped giving the more common construction dar rotys må kvjes. If the imperative had a subject and another verb such as “let the frog hop” then the construction would be “you allow there to be hopping from the frog” where the object would have the postposition jån “from” e.g dar rotys må kmarågg lamg jån “let the frog hop” (you allow-2S it.INAN SUP-hop DEF/frog from). Eventually the verb rotys “you allow” (second person present of the verb rosi “to allow”) became cliticised as s- onto må (third person singular inanimate pronoun) which was itself cliticised onto the supine verb giving småkvjes “soothe!” (compare with the infinitve vjessi “to soothe”)

However since these clitics were still identifyable as contractions of rotys “you allow” and må (3S inanimate pronoun) because the uncontracted forms were still attested. It wasn’t until Late Soyra that små- could be anaysed as a new imperative prefix. This is because of a major pronoun reform where older pronouns were dropped and new pronouns were derived from verbs meaning “to be self”, for example the pronouns dar and må fell out of speech as the second person singular and third person singular inanimate pronouns and were replaced by ječjyhså (literally meaning “you who are yourself) and jemåråsådå (literally meaning “I’ve never heard of a functioning pronoun”…just kidding it means “that which is itself”). Then verb inflections were eroded by sound changes which left the s- from rotys (-ys being the second person singular present suffix) also as being unanalysable. With these reanalysations the construction was no longer identifyable as “you allow there to be X-ing” and so the construction “you allow there to beX-ing from Y” when the imperative verb had an object no longer made any sense. So a sentence like “let the frog hop” was then structured as småkrot kmarågg lamg jån (IMP-allow SUP-hop DEF/frog from) or “allow hopping from the frog”. Notice that in this case the imperative suffix attaches to the very same verb from which it was (partially) derived from!

This rendered the clitic cluster små- unanalysable as as contracted pronouns for those pronouns no longer existed, and so it is then reasonable to analyse it instead as an imperative prefix which attaches to supine verbs. Then sound changes from Vougerå caused the prefix to become smou- ([ɑ] had been raised by Ungeish Raising, the presence of [u] being due to the sound change where [o] broke into [o̯u] before velars which was triggered by the supine prefix k- which always occures after the imperative suffix). If I derive further daughters from Vouregå then I may analyse the g- (a consonant shift caused [k] to become [g])as part of the prefix resulting in smoug- if I switch the supine verb with an infinite one which would leave the g- to attach to the prefix before it. 

Vougerå had some more fun with grammaticalisation in imperatives when it derived new imperative prefixes which mean “to allow” and “to make, to cause” such as “let the frog hop” or “make the frog hop”. These derive from the Soyra imperatives småkrot “allow!” and småkiss “cause!,  make!”. In Vougerå these became smougrut and smougess. These two words then became the prefixes grut-  and gess- which attached to verbs. Since a later sound change in Vougerå deleted word final consonants the supine verbs from which the prefixes derive from became gru and ge (as supine forms of rusi and esi). As the final consonants in the prefixes were preserved it’s reasonable to analyse them as prefixes. More grammaticalisation occured when the postposition jån “from” (now jo) attached itself to the object of the imperative verb, causing it to become a suffix for objects of imperative clauses. As such I name it the imperative accusative.  The prefixes attach to infintive verbs instead of the supine. So “let the frop hop” is now gessmarrogse lajo (CAUS.IMP-hop-INF frog-ACC)

An example of the imperative in Proto-Sumric, the Tuuric languages, Hajec and Old Sumrë

“Make the frog eat the mushroom”

Proto-Sumric: Tar istję bəlmkə́ njak atyókəw   ( you cause-IMP DEF/frog-ACC.ANIM eat DEF/mushroom-ACC.INAN

Hajec: Tar ist bilmké njak atiokō (you cause DEF/frog eat DEF/mushroom)

Old Sumrë: Tar ñacisče bálmcü aduócû (you eat-CAUS-IMP DEF/frog-ACC.DEER DEF/mushroom)

Old Tuura: Dar ihhtje bålmkå njakti adyogüü (you cause-IMP frog-ACC.ANIM eat-INF DEF/mushroom-ACC.INAN)

Tjȁr: Dra uči bòlmkò jnaktu aduòg (you cause-IMP frog-ACC eat-INF mushroom-ACC)

Miõrra: Tar išče pežkmaì oñakči ačoaaìkuà (you cause-IMP DEF/frog-AC.ANIM eat-INF DEF/mushroon-ACC-INAN)

The Chomskyan idea of Universal Grammar (a set of innate principles specific to language which is manifest in every human language and which a child may bring to the task of language acquisition) does not sit easily with the idea that a language’s grammar may be the result of cultural constraints. However, the major bone of contention with Chomskyan UG is its language-specificity and separateness from other areas of cognition, rather than innateness per se. Consider a usage-based conception of grammar, i.e. one which says the grammar of a language develops in response to the norms/pressures of communication found in the community of speakers. Grammaticalisation most often involves content words (i.e. nouns and verbs) assuming increasingly ‘grammatical’ functions, e.g. prepositions, markers of tense/aspect etc. The content words which undergo grammaticalisation are not random but tend strongly to be drawn from certain semantic fields. For example, parts of the body may take on prepositional/locative/spatial functions which in turn may take on temporal/aspectual functions, such as ‘back’ as in ‘my back hurts’, ‘stay well back’ and ‘three weeks back’ etc. These tendencies are probably based on ‘universal’ traits of perception.

Classifiers are an important part of Chinese grammar – virtually every noun is associated with (at least) one and, if you want to specify the number of a noun or point to ‘this’ and ‘that’ one etc., you need to know its classifier, for example, sì běn shū ‘four [classifier] book’ or zhè tiáo yú ‘this [classifier] fish’. The noun phrase would be ungrammatical without the classifier. (Note, I am using 'Chinese' to mean 'Mandarin Chinese' - other Chinese dialects/languages also have classifiers, it's just that I'm not so familiar with these as I am with Mandarin!).

There are some generalisations (note they are not hard and fast rules) about which classifier to use, for example, zhī is used for many animals and wèi is used (politely) for people etc. Whilst this may seem to be a complicated aspect of Chinese grammar, such aspects are found closer to home as well.

In English, if we want to talk about groups of animals for example there are often specific (collocational) terms which go with some animals but not others. For example, consider the words we would use to describe a group of…

Lions (pride)

Wolves (pack)

Sheep (flock)

Birds (flock)

Whales (Pod, school)

People (group, crowd)

Fish (school)

Cattle (herd)