1 Low applicatives and the mapping hypothesis in Sumerian J. Cale ...

Low applicatives and the mapping hypothesis in Sumerian
J. Cale Johnson
Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America
(January 7, 2005, Syntax and Morphology panel, 2pm)
[[Introduction]]
Sumerian, the first written language, which is preserved on clay tablets dating to four to five
thousand years ago, is a radically SOV language that seems to exhibit almost no movement in its
syntax. What it apparently lacks in movement is more than made up for through a vast and
complex morphology consisting of a full set of case-marking postpositions as well as an
inordinately complex verb with from twelve to fourteen paradigmatic slots, all but two of which
are prefixes.
What I am here today to report on is the role of possessor raising and the non-specificity of the
possessed entity in possessor-raising constructions in the formation of a small set of noun-verb
complex predicate constructions in Sumerian. One type of such noun-verb complex predicate fits
very nicely into Pylkkänen’s description of a low source applicative, in which a theme is
transferred from one possessor to another. The crucial point, however, is that there is another
type of noun-verb complex that is morphologically identical with the Sumerian low applicative
but that is causative in meaning. Thus I argue in the following that these two constructions are in
fact morphologically identical but differ in the syntactic position of the nominal component of
the complex predicate: where this nominal component is non-specific and remains within the VP,
it undergoes existential closure and restricts the predicate along the lines sketched by either
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Chung and McCloskey (2004) or Van Geenhoven and McNally (2005). When, however, the
nominal component is specific and moves out of the VP, it forms a kind of internally headed
relative that is causative in meaning. In the end, I use a negative contrastive focus construction in
combination with Diesing’s mapping hypothesis to differentiate the applicative and the causative
in Sumerian.
[[Possessor raising]]
In a language like English, possessor raising is a relatively limited phenomenon found in
constructions in which the possessed entity—rather than the possessor—has raised out of the
ordinary, prenominal possessive DP to form an encompassing NP as in Kayne’s famous example
in (1): “two pictures of John’s.” Kayne is primarily interested in what “of” is doing in this
construction, the parallels with datives of possession in other languages and how this feeds into
his theory of relative clause formation, but the reason why this example is important to me is that
it offers a mechanism for attaching a non-specific NP like “two pictures” to a highly specific DP
like the possessor in (1). The non-specificity and consequent absence of a DP superstructure is
particularly clear in an existential sentence such as in (2). Note that if the unraised “John’s two
pictures” were to appear in (2), it would yield a pair-list reading, thereby demonstrating the
specificity contrast.
Now, in the kind of language where possessor raising is typically described—and here I’m
thinking of primarily of Biblical Hebrew rather than the Hungarian that has figured so centrally
in syntactic research—it is actually the possessor that raises rather than the possessed entity: in
fact the possessor raises all the way out of the DP that it specifies and forms a separate phrase in
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the dative case as in the example in (3) from Biblical Hebrew: rΩ’îtî ben le-yiåΩ y . Hebrew splits
the possessor off into a separate phrase in the dative case, while English buries the possessor
deep within whatever kind of phrase is headed by “of” in “two pictures of John’s.” Both
mechanisms manage to separate a non-specific possessed noun from a specific or even definite
possessor and prevent the transmission of specificity or definiteness from possessor to possessed
entity.
In 1999, Gábor Zólyomi was the first person to identify possessor raising in Sumerian as in (4).
In (4), the raised possessor is a deity named Ningirsu—on the far left—while the possessed
entity—åu meaning ‘hand’—occurs immediately before the verb. Since the two components of
the raised possessor construction are not adjacent, it isn’t immediately clear whether the phrase
in the dative case marks the ordinary dative of a recipient, or alternatively, the raised possessor
of åu and only indirectly a recipient. As already suggested by Zólyomi, the syntactic problem
that possessor raising solves in this sentence is that there are simply too many arguments: four in
total. The ergative agent, a king named Eannatum, is unexpressed; the absolutive patient, aåa
ki’aÑani—meaning ‘his beloved field’—is in the middle of the clause; åu-ni-a—literally ‘in his
hand’—immediately before the verb, acts as the third and what would normally be the final goal
argument. The problem is that the predicate in (4) is a complex predicate made up of the noun åu
and the verbal root gi, meaning as a whole ‘to return something to someone’. Since åu-ni-a
already occupies the goal argument, the recipient is coded as the possessor of åu. The rather
“involved” nature of the construction is somewhat clarified by comparison with an example of
the same construction in which the recipient remains unexpressed. Here in (5), which I have
modified slightly from the original, the *bi- prefix is used in place of the *-ni- prefix seen in (4)
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and, more importantly, both the raised possessor and the resumptive pronoun are absent. The
nominal component of the verbal complex, åu, still occurs in the locative case as the idiom
demands, but there is no resumptive pronoun.
[[The morphology of the verbal prefix]]
The morphosyntactic test that differentiates a dative functioning as a raised possessor from the
dative associated with an ordinary recipient is the form of the verbal prefix. If we compare the
verbal prefix in (4) to the prefix of an ordinary ditransitive verb like the one in (6), it should be
immediately apparent that the prefix in (6) is *-na-, the third person animate dative prefix.
Unlike the *-ni- prefix, there is widespread agreement that *-na- and the other members of its
paradigm code the dative case, prototypically representing recipients, addressees and
benefactees.
The *-ni- prefix, however, shows up in a variety of constructions, but crucially whenever
possessor raising seems to be present, we also find *-ni- or one of the other members of its
paradigm. This correlation is further stengthened by the morphological form of the *-ni-
paradigm itself as in (7). One of the standard ways of marking a noun as definite or topical in
Sumerian is through the use of redundant possessive pronouns, so it makes a certain amount of
sense that non-specificity and the predicational quality often associated with non-specific
nominal phrases would be indicated by forming a raised possessor construction and at the same
time—or perhaps as part of the same derivational or historical process—moving a possessive
pronoun that agrees in person and gender with the possessor into the verbal predicate itself in the
form of a prefix. The pronoun then functions as a clause-level possessive predicate that takes a
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non-specific possessed entity immediately before the verb and codes the possessor in a separate
postpositional phrase that tends to move to clause-initial position where datives generally occur
in Sumerian.
[[Applicative/causative alternation]]
Let me emphasize here that there are many different kinds of complex predicate in Sumerian, but
the type that I have been working on recently is somewhat different from the rest in that the
nominal component of the class of complex predicates that I would like to talk about never bears
either a resumptive pronoun or any case-marking postposition other than, perhaps, the zero-
marked nominative-absolutive case. At the same time, certain features of the nominal component
such as alienability or specificity seem to differentiate verbs of direct perception and deprivation
from causatives.
From a simplistic English point of view, the syntactic association between direct perception and
causation is fairly evident in that both constructions take small clause complements (“I saw
[Mary leave]” vs. “I made [Mary leave]”). The same is true for several types of infinitival
complement in both Romance and Germanic. This was the approach in Kayne’s early work on
French Syntax (Kayne 1975), nicely summarized in Guasti’s comparative study of Causative
and Perception Verbs (Guasti 1993). Recent work by Pylkkänen (2000; 2002) and Harley
(2002), building on Larson’s classic description of double object constructions (1988), has
offered a slightly different elucidation of a set of similar constructions in terms of an
applicative/causative alternation. The similarity between verbs of direct perception and causative
verbs is particularly clear in Sumerian,where both a perceived entity and a causee appear in the
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dative case as the raised possessor of an absolutive direct object that appears immediately before
the verb and forms part of a verbal complex. Both constructions make use of the NI paradigm in
the verb rather than the ordinary dative series.
In (8), the verbal complex is made up of igi ‘eye’ and du—meaning uncertain but perhaps ‘to
spread’ or ‘to hold’—while gig.e ‘wheat’ acts as the raised possessor of igi and codes the
perceived entity. The animacy, or better, the inanimacy of the wheat is indicated by the use of the
inanimate dative postposition *-e and the *bi- prefix on the verb. In (9), we have the same
construction except that the raised possessor—that is to say the perceived entity—is a deity and
hence animate. The possessor is coded therefore by the animate dative postposition *-ra, while
the verbal prefix is *-ni-, the third person animate member of the NI paradigm. At least in terms
of morphology and apparent surface distribution, the causative exemplars in (10) and (11) are
the same as the applicative ones. In (10), a group of goats is the causee and is followed by the
inanimate dative case, *-e, with the inanimate *bi- prefix, while the animate causee in (11) takes
the animate dative postposition, *-ra, and occurs with the *-ni- verbal prefix. In 2004, in my
dissertation, I argued that the alienability of the nominal component of the verbal complex
determined whether or not it was causative: inalienable nouns form verbs of perception, whereas
alienable nouns form causatives. The problem with this view is that there are simply too many
exceptions, hence my appeal to specificity.
[[Low source applicative in Sumerian]]
The breakthrough, if you will . . . the big new idea that allows possessor raising to figure
centrally in a typology of applicatives is Pylkkänen’s description of the low applicative (2002).
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Now, to be fair to Pylkkänen, she has argued quite extensively in opposition to, for example,
Idan Landau’s suggestion that low applicative constructions are simply a form of possessor
raising. In my view, however, the interaction between applicatives, possessor raising and
specificity is still very much in flux. All that I would like to do today is throw another batch of
admittedly messy data into the pot and leave it as a puzzle for the theoreticians. In simple terms,
a low applicative is low because the point at which the applied argument—the argument that is
being added into the structure of the verb—attaches to the syntactic tree is below the level of the
VP. Thus there is an inherent connection between Pylkkänen’s low applicative and Diesing’s
mapping hypothesis, which also sees the VP as the point at which specific and non-specific
nominal phrases are differentiated. If you’ll compare the two Korean sentences in (12) and (13),
note that the only difference between the two is that the possessor is coded by a genitive case in
(12), but by a raised possessor in (13), and it is the example involving possessor raising that
includes the notion that the possession of the ring transfers from Mary to the thief. That is to
say, Mary is the possessor of the ring at its source, hence the terminology of the example in (13)
as a low source applicative: it is a low applicative because the applied argument, namely Mary,
initially attaches below the level of the VP and is therefore involved in event-level semantics; it
is a source applicative because the raised possessor of the ring is the source rather the goal of the
transfer of possession. Interestingly enough, the typically inalienable bare noun in this
construction turns out to be fairly abstract in meaning as we might expect of an inalienable noun
that is non-specific. The similarities to body-part nouns that function as adpositions seems fairly
clear.
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In (8), igi normally means ‘eye’ but in the context of these constructions it comes to mean
‘perception’ and it is the perception of the raised possessor that is transferred from the perceived
entity to the ergative agent of the clause. Now in the Old Babylonian corpus that served as the
basis for my study, there are only sixteen complex predicates that occur in the particular kind of
possessor raising construction in examples (8) through (11) and also include an inalienable noun
as the direct object of the verb; these are listed in (14). Of these sixteen verbal complexes, five
are verbs of direct perception, while seven seem to involve some form of adversity or deprivation
with respect to the raised possessor. No verbs of indirect perception of the ‘look at’ variety occur
in the set.
While Pylkkänen’s typology of applicatives and her transfer of possession model are truly
insightful, I would like to re-examine the syntactic structure that Pylkkänen proposes. Pylkkänen
treats the applicative head, the *bi- prefix in Sumerian, as a higher order predicate that takes the
verbal lexeme, the direct object and the raised possessor as arguments, presumably in some kind
of VP shell as in (15). The possessive/dative phrase, namely gig ‘wheat’, raises into the
postpositional phrase immediately above it and the postpositional phrase as a whole then moves
entirely out of the VP. The ergative DP was probably never in the VP to start with, so we are left
with the surface order of constituents in (15) with the exception of the raising of the possessor
out of the VP. The problem with (15) is that it seems to obscure the thematic relation between
the possessor and the possessed entity, so taking the possessor raising construction as a model,
we might end up instead with something like (17): with the introduction of the low applicative
head in (17b), igi ‘eye’ starts out as the complement of the low applicative head with its
possessor coded in a dative or postpositional phrase. gig ‘wheat’ moves into the specifier
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position of the dative postpositional phrase and then the entire postpositional phrase moves out
of the VP. In (17c), igi moves into the specifier position of the low applicative and the low
applicative phrase as a whole moves into the specifier of VP. If nothing else, the scenario in (17)
moves igi through the thematic positions that it needs to move through and also prevents any
further modification of the noun that forms a component of the predicate. Now, even though the
nominal component of this complex is buried deep under several layers of syntactic material and
should presumably have nothing further to contribute to the derivation of the clause, I would like
to suggest that the nominal component is still affected by specificity contrasts as defined by
Diesing’s mapping hypothesis.
[[The mapping hypothesis]]
Diesing’s mapping hypothesis states that DPs that remain within the VP are accorded a kind of
default existential quantification that leaves them, or perhaps better, defines them as non-
specific, while DPs that move out of the VP can act as the restriction for other quantifiers in the
clause and can therefore be described as specific. The important thing is that any particular DP
can only act as the restriction for one particular quantifier. That is to say, a nominal phrase
cannot both undergo existential closure within the VP and then later also act as the restriction for
another quantifier in the clause. With the continuing development of the notion of semantic
incorporation or more generally the view that non-specific nominal phrases denote properties
rather than individuals, the hypothesis can also be turned on its head so as to argue that if a noun
needs to be non-specific so as to restrict its predicate rather than referring to some entity, then it
should remain within the VP.
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In the contrastive focus construction in (18), the topic ama-bi is a definite DP and acts as the
quantifier for the clause as a whole, the focus phrase tilla iri-za-ka-åe nu-am ‘it is not to the
square of your city’ is the nuclear scope in the clause and the only remaining part of sentence,
namely bibsared—meaning ‘that they should be made to run’—must be mapped into a
restriction on the quantifier ama-bi. The example in (18) therefore yields something like: “As for
the mothers, it is not to the square of your [= Gilgamesh’s] city that they should be made to run.”
Now, translating the topic/focus articulation into the quantificational language that Diesing uses,
the topic, ama-bi, is the quantifier; the restriction on the quantifier is the restrictive relative at the
far right of (18), and the nuclear scope—the part of the sentence that is being asserted rather than
presupposed—corresponds to the focus phrase that is marked by the copula and immediately
precedes the verb. Since the verb bibsared ‘that they should be made to run’ acts as the
restriction on the topicalized DP ama-bi, it must move out of the VP so as to avoid existential
closure. I would suggest that the underlying head of what seems to be an internally headed
restrictive relative, namely ama, pied-pipes the relative into IP as predicted by Basilico’s study
of head placement in internally headed relatives (1996) and is subsequently topicalized out of
the relative and into clause-initial position. The important distributional fact is that low
applicatives, namely the verbal complexes that select for a non-specific nominal component as in
(8) do not occur in the type of contrastive focus construction in (18) apparently because the non-
specific bare noun must remain within the VP if it is to restrict the predicate.
[[Conclusion]]
Thus, as long as the verbal complex remains within the VP, the nominal component is non-
specific, denotes a property, and forms part of the predicate as part of a low applicative. When,
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however, the verbal complex moves out of the VP, several things happen: the nominal
component becomes referential and specific and in (18), for example, can be topicalized, or
alternatively, it can appear under contrastive focus as in (19). In both cases, the verb is
interpreted as causative rather than applicative.
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Low applicatives and the mapping hypothesis in Sumerian
J. Cale Johnson (cale@ucla.edu)
Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative, UCLA
(1) NP-Raising as a form of possessor “raising” in English
[ NP two pictures [ XP of [ DP John’s [ NP two pictures]]]]
(2) English existential sentence with raised NP in definiteness effect position
There are [ NP two pictures of John’s] in the attic.
(3) Possessor raising in Biblical Hebrew (Waltke and O’Connor 1990, 157)
rΩ’îtî ben le-yiåΩ y
I.saw a.son Dat-Jesse
I saw a son of Jesse’s
(4) Possessor Raising in Sumerian (Zólyomi 1999, 231, ex. 25)
[Ningirsu-ra]i aåa ki’aÑa-ni åu-[ni]i-a mu-ni-n-gi
PN-Dat.Anim field beloved-3Poss hand-3Poss-Loc Vent-NI-Agr-return
He (= Eannatum) returned (lit. returned to the hand [åu—gi]) his beloved field to
Ningirsu
(5) Possessor raising with unspecified/inanimate recipient (Zólyomi 1999, 231, ex. 27)
Eniggal nubanda-e e-a åu-a bi-n-gi
PN overseer-Erg house-Loc hand-Loc BI-Agr-return
Eniggal, the overseer, returned them (= various sorts of wood) in the house
(6) Ordinary use of dative as recipient with dative verbal prefix (VS 14, 27)
Eniggal-e Lugalgaba gudu Baba-k-ra e-na-n-sum
PN-Erg PN priest PN-Gen-Dat.Anim E-Dat.Anim-Agr-give
Eniggal gave (a number of pots) to Lugalgaba, the gudu-priest of Baba
(7) Dative prefix, NI series, possessive pronoun and demonstrative
Dat NI Possessive pronoun Demonstrative
1º ºa- ay- -Ñu N/A
2º ra- ri- -zu N/A
3ºAnim na- ni- -(a)ni ne(n)
3ºInan ba- bi- -bi be(n)
(8) Low source applicative with inanimate raised possessor
(Enmerkar and the lord of Aratta, line 554)
en aratta-k-e gig-e igi bi-n-du
lord GN-Gen-Erg wheat-Dat.Inan eye Ap/Caus.Inan-Agr-?
The lord of Aratta saw the wheat
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(9) Low source applicative with animate raised possessor
(Gudea Cyl. A, col. i, lines 17-18)
maåÑek-a gudea-Ø ninÑirsuk-ra igi mu-ni-n-du-am
night.vision-Loc PN-N/A PN-Dat.Anim eye Vent-Ap/Caus.Anim-Agr-?-Cop
Gudea saw Ningirsu in a night-vision
(10) Causative construction with inanimate causee
(Nanna-Suen’s journey to Nippur, line 271; Zólyomi 1999, 218, ex. 3)
ud-e niÑara-Ø bi-b-gu-en
goat-Dat.Inan groats-N/A Ap/Caus.Inan-Agr-eat-1Sg.N/A
I am the one who made the goats eat groats
(11) Causative construction with animate causee
(Iddindagan Hymn A, line 160; Zólyomi 1999, 217, ex. 2)
nugig-ra ki sikil-a ninda-Ø mu-ni-gu-e
priestess-Dat.Anim place pure-Loc bread-N/A Vent-Ap/Caus.Anim-eat-Dur
He is making the priestess eat bread in the pure place
(12) Korean transitive verb with possessed direct object
totwuk-i Mary-ui panci-lul humchi-ess-ta
thief-Nom Mary-Gen ring-Acc steal-Past-Plain
The thief stole Mary’s ring (with no implication as to the prsence of Mary at the theft)
(13) Korean low source applicative (Pylkkänen 2002, 21)
totwuk-i Mary-hanthey panci-lul humchi-ess-ta
thief-Nom Mary-Dat ring-Acc steal-Past-Plain
The thief stole a ring from Mary (and it was in her possession when he stole it)
(14) Low source applicative predicates in Sumerian
Noun Verb Meaning Type
a 2 dar ‘to confiscate’ Adversity
a 2 Ñar ‘to lose’ Adversity
a 2 su 3 ‘to spread out’ ?
du 10 Ñal2 ‘to fight’ Adversity
dur 2 Ñar ‘to sit; to seat’ ?
Ñiå tuk ‘to hear’ Perception
gu 2 du 3 ‘to neglect’ Adversity
gu 2 e 3 ‘to wear, to cover’ ?
gu 2 gur ‘to bend down; to spy’ Perception
igi du 8 ‘to see’ Perception
igi kar 2 ‘to examine’ Perception
ka keå2 ‘to tie up; to bind’ Adversity
åa3 dab 5 ‘to be angry; to be worried’ ?
umbin la 2 ‘to scratch’ Adversity
za 3 tag ‘to push away; to reject’ Adversity
zu 2 gub ‘to taste’ Perception
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(15) [ VP igi [ Vº bi [ VP du [ PP -e [ DP gig …]]]]]
[ VP eye [ Vº LoAp [ VP hold/spread [ Poss/DatP Poss/Dat [ DP wheat …]]]]]
(16) [ NP two pictures [ XP of [ DP John’s [ NP two pictures]]]]
(17) a. [ VP du [ DP gig [ NP igi]]] (Genitive)
b. [ VP du [ LoAp bi [ NP igi [ PP Dat [ DP gig] (Possessor raising)
c. [ VP [ LoAp [ NP igi] bi] du …] (Dative moves out of VP, NP
and LoAp roll up)
(18) Negative contrastive focus construction (Gilgamesh and Huwawa, line 84)
[TopP ama-bii [FocP tilla iri-zu-ak-åe nu-am
[ TopP mother-3Pos i [ FocP square city-2Poss-Gen-Ter Neg-Cop
[IP bi-b-sar-ed [VP e …]]]]
[ IP Ap/Caus-Agr-run-Mod [ VP e …]]]]
[TopP As for their mothers
[FocP it is not TO THE MARKETPLACE OF YOUR CITY
[IP that they should be made to run ...
Context: (Enkidu is speaking to Gilgamesh) “Gilgamesh, for how long will you sleep?
The sons of your city who came with you should not have to wait at the foot of the hills.
As for their mothers, it is not to the marketplace of your city that they should be made to
run” (but rather it is to their sons that should run).
(19) Complex predicate in negative contrastive focus construction (Lugalbanda II, line 215)
[ TopP gu 3 i.ri.de 2.a nam mu.ni.ib.be 2.en … åeå-zu-ne-r
[ TopP what I have told you the fate I have fixed for you] … brother-2Poss-Pl-Dat.Anim
[FocP pa nu-am [ IP bi-b-e-en [ VP ...]]]]
[FocP branch/wing Neg-Cop [ IP Ap/Caus.Inan-Agr-go.out-1Sg.N/A [ VP
[ TopP As for what I have told you, as for the fate I have fixed for you
[ FocP it is not THE BRANCH/WING
[ IP that you should cause to go forth to your brothers
Context: (Anzu speaking to Lugalbanda:) “Come now, my Lugalbanda. I shall give you
some advice. May my advice be heeded. I shall say words to you. Bear them in mind!
As for what I have told you, the fate I have fixed for you, do not make it known to your
brothers.”
1Sg.N/A = first person singular, nominative/absolutive
2Poss = second person possessive pronoun
3Poss = third person possessive pronoun
Agr = agreement
Ap/Caus.Anim = animate applicative/causative
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Ap/Caus.Inan = inanimate applicative/causative
Cop = copula
Dat.Anim = animate dative
Dat.Inan = inanimate dative
Dur = durative
Erg = ergative
Gen = genitive
GN = geographical name
Loc = locative
Mod = future modal
N/A = nominative/accusative
Neg = negation
Pl = plural
Ter = terminative (allative) case
Vent = ventive, indicating motion away from speaker
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