The “marked nominative” in Datooga

Kießling, Roland

doi:10.1515/jall.2007.009

Cited by 11 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 2 publications

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“…"where there is a case system, the only case which ever has only zero allomorphs is the one which includes among its meanings that of the subject of the intransitive verb" (Greenberg, 1963) Although Marked-S systems are indeed typologically rare, they are not unheard of: according to Dixon (1994), Marked Nominative systems can be found in the Yuman languages of Southern California, as well as with several languages of the Afroasitic family, mainly Cushitic and Omotic in Eastern Africa, as well as Berber Sasse (1984); Hayward (1990). In addition to these, marked nominative systems have also been reported for several languages of the unrelated Nilotic family (Andersen, 1988;Dimmendaal, 1985;Kiessling, 2007) found in close vicinity to Cushitic and Omotic, making this property qualify as an areal feature.…”

Section: Mut-goldmentioning

confidence: 73%

Deriving superficial ergativity in Nias

Crysmann

2009

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In this paper, I discuss the case and agreement system of Nias, a language that has been described as a marked-absolutive system by various authors (Donohue and Brown, 1999; Corbett, 2006; Cysouw, 2005; Handschuh, 2008; Wichmann, 2005). I shall argue in particular that the ergativity of this language is highly superficial in nature, showing that hypothesised marked-absolutive arguments fail to display typical subject properties. Extending the linking theory of ergativity by Manning (1994) and Manning and Sag (1999), which assumes an inverse linking pattern for transitive, I shall suggest that Nias transitives are best analysed as a Nominative-Accusative system, attributing the ergative split in Nias to an inverse linking of intransitives instead. Under this perspective, case, agreement, and word order will receive a natural explanation.

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Section: Mut-goldmentioning

confidence: 73%

Deriving superficial ergativity in Nias

Crysmann

2009

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“…Like in Tima, the attentional shift to the non-agent referent is temporary and does not last beyond this clause (Lorenzen In prep. ;Mitchell & Lorenzen 2023a, 2023b; see also Kießling 2007).…”

Section: Outlook: Evidence From On-going Corpus Researchmentioning

confidence: 87%

Split case marking and constituent order in Nilotic languages

Mitchell,

Lorenzen,

Gertrud

et al. 2024

Preprint

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This paper presents a survey of split case marking across the Nilotic languages of East Africa. Expanding on König’s (2008) original insights, the survey is set within Chappell and Verstraete’s (2019) typology on alternations and optionalities in case marking, taking into account all accessible descriptions. It confirms the prevalence – and traces the extent – of a construction-based split, whereby only postverbal A (split ergative) or S/A (marked nominative) arguments receive case marking. Split ergativity is overall very rare; case is marked morphologically and the languages have a default OVA order. Marked nominative systems are more common; tonal inflection is the main marking strategy, and the default order is typically verb-initial. Languages without case marking have the default orders AVO or AOV, and do not have postverbal S/A arguments. The survey furthermore reveals an interaction with referent-based splits for some languages (where postverbal S/A arguments are obligatorily case-marked if they are animate, highly agentive and/or definite), and assembles all available information on factors that condition the construction-based split. On the basis of this survey and preliminary corpus-based investigations, we suggest that the concept of discourse prominence opens up a fruitful line for future research.

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“…Other marked-S splits on the nominal hierarchy can be found in K'abeena of the Cushitic language family (Crass 2005) and the Nilotic language Datooga (Kiessling 2007). A more detailed discussion of marked-S splits along the nominal hierarchy and their implications for the theoretical analysis of split marking in general can be found in Handschuh (2008Handschuh ( , 2014.…”

Section: Splits Based On the Semantics Of The Noun Phrasementioning

confidence: 99%

“…To account for the special status of the form used for the P relation, this form is not referred to as 'accusative' but as the 'absolute' case -e.g. in Turkana (Dimmendaal 1982) or Datooga (Kiessling 2007). The same terminology of 'Absolute' and 'Nominative' case was also introduced in an early description of the Yuman language Yuma (Halpern 1946: 210), although it did not catch on in the terminology of this genus, as noted above.…”

Section: Case-labelsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A typology of marked-S languages

Handschuh¹

2014

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The “marked nominative” in Datooga

Cited by 11 publications

References 2 publications

Deriving superficial ergativity in Nias

Deriving superficial ergativity in Nias

Split case marking and constituent order in Nilotic languages

A typology of marked-S languages

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