A Grammar of Miya - UCLA Department of Linguistics

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A Grammar of Miya
(57) Jee faara takay aa Mangila 'gnaa Gituwa:
Nakan duw, "Mgn dg faara buwahiyu-wun!"
Nakan duw, "Mgn dg faara buwahiyu-wun!"
'Then Mangila and Gituwa started arguing: (see fn. 14 for word order)
This one says, "I was the first to come!"
That one says, HI was the first to come!'"
(58) Niykin dg baa-t1gn aakan ha niykin,
niykin dg baa-t1gn aakan ha niykin.
'These [people] went to the house of those [people], (and)
those went to the house of these.'
Similarly, 'lykin 'here' can be repeated to mean 'here ... there':
(59) "Nay'iykan." Dg nayaw. "Nay ·iykan." Dg nayaw.
'''Look here." He looked. "Look there." He looked.'
4. Nonn Phrases withont Determiners vs. Noun Phrases with Determiners
The majority of nouns that appear in discourse have no overt indefinite or definite determiners
of the types described in §§ 1_3. 16 One must therefore ask what factors allow a
noun to appear with no overt determiner. There are three broad factors which account for
such cases: referential nouns determined by something other than one of the determiners
described in §§1-3 (§4.1); nouns used generically (§4.2); and nouns which are inherently
definite (§4.3). There are some residual cases which I cannot explain where noun phrases
lacking overt determiners appear in similar contexts to noun phrases with determiners.
4.1. Referential nonns with specifiers other than determiners
4.1.1. Genitive phrases as determiners. Referential nouns are nearly always
marked as such in some way. The majority have either a referential indefinite determiner
(§ I) or some definite determiner (§§2-3). Another large class comprises nouns which are
N I in a genitive construction as in the following examples:
(60) shim ta wiy 'somebody's farm'
(61) a. kwaa dgnga duw sgm dg miy-uwsg, koo shim tuwsa ta bay gan mil dgr5itim ...
'if one says that a man has died, even if his farm is as far as 10 miles .. .'
160f the common nouns appearing in ten pages of running text, the following figures emerged:
some sort of overt determiner (indefinite, definite, universal quantifier) 47
no overt determiner 130
TOTAL 177
However, of the nouns without an overt determiner, 44 are Nt of a genitive construction and thus have N2
as their determiner. In most of the examples, N2 is a proper name, a pronoun, or a noun with a definite
detenniner. Thus, over half the nouns in the sample (47 + 44 = 91 out of 177) are determined in some
way.
9. Reference, Definiteness, Universality, and Reflexivity (§4)
b. daga dam eewuya, 'an ta san n-aaGituwa dg baa-z ee kuwa aabiy
'one day, the Wife of the man of Gituwa went to draw water'
(62) a. kwaa piya aakarn aa jifg naaza ka, a tarde 'an tUWSd rna n-aakam-uw
'when her husband returns home, he will find that his wife is not at home'
b. dg dzara-tlgn-ay, san n-aaMangila dg b-uwsg h-uws-ay
'they separated and the man of Mangila went to his place'
In the examples in (60) and (6Ia, b), NI has not been previously mentioned.
However, no indefinite determiner (§I) is needed with NI since the noun is determined by
an indefinite referential N2 in (60) and by definite N 2 's in (61), appearing as a pronoun in
(6Ia) and as a proper noun in (61b). In (62a, b), NI has been previously mentioned,
hence is definite. However, no definite determiner is needed for the same reason no
determiner is needed in (6Ia, b).
Though N I in a genitive construction is rarely marked by a determiner, determiners are
not syntactically precluded from genitive constructions:
(63) kwaa biy dgnga duw a kwiy su niywiy sdbd niyma ka ... [Indefinite]
'if it is said that one has captured some people of ours ... '
(64) daga nay-uws aa naka san n-aaGituwa, jee dgnga-ya ... [Demonstrative]
'when that man of Gituwa saw him, he said to him .. .'
(65) a. jee kiya gwalfg dg tsaa Gituwa, waataw, ngana gwalfa ka jii Sarkin Duwtsiy [PRM]
'then they took the chieftainship and gave it to Gituwa, that is, the name of the
chieftainship is "Sarkin Duwtsiy'"
b. too niy azuwriya ha-fa ka dg kiya gangan [PRM]
'well those of your clan begin drumming'
c. dg b-uwsg saar aakan hajifa na 'an ka [PRM]
'he goes off to the house ofthe husband of that woman'
In terms of function, the indefinite determiner in (63) forces a partitive interpretation,
which would not clearly emerge from the genitive NP without a determiner (see §4.3.2).
The function of ndka in (64) is not clear; the sentences preceding and following this one
have a phrase with no determiner, san n-aaGituwa, which is definite in all its occurrences
here. In (65b), kd probably functions as a topic marker (§2.1.2), but in (65a, c) it is a
mark of previous reference (see §2.1.! and below for further discussion).
The problem in all these examples is knowing whether the determiner has in its scope
just the noun to which it is adjacent or the entire NP. For phrase initial determiners as in
(63) and (64), it is not clear that there would be any logical difference between just NI
being determined or the whole NP-the whole NP will be definite or indefinite depending
on the definiteness of the head (N I ). Where the determiner is phrase final as in (65), it
appears that the determiner may modify just N2 or the whole phrase, but not just N I. In
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