Head Marking and Dep_nichols

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Head-Marking and Dependent-Marking GrammarAuthor(s): Johanna NicholsReviewed work(s):Source: Language, Vol. 62, No. 1 (Mar., 1986), pp. 56-119Published by: Linguistic Society of AmericaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/415601 .Accessed: 26/01/2012 14:50

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HEAD-MARKING AND DEPENDENT-MARKING GRAMMAR

JOHANNA NICHOLS

University of California, Berkeley Morphological marking of grammatical relations may appear on either the head or the

dependent member of the constituent (or on both, or on neither). Grammatical relations- and whole languages-may be classified according to their propensity for using one of these types of marking. Implicational relations among various marking patterns can be stated: languages display a tendency to use one type consistently throughout their grammar. The difference in patterns provides a typological metric and a functional explanation for certain word-order preferences. For historical linguistics, it provides a diagnostically conservative feature and a clue to genetic relatedness. Although the head-marked pattern is cross-linguistically favored, grammatical theory is strongly biased toward the dependent-marked patterns that happen to dominate in Indo-European.*

1. INTRODUCTION. This paper points out a simple descriptive fact which has considerable implications for typology, historical linguistics, and grammatical theory. In view of the breadth and depth of its implications, it is surprising that this phenomenon has gone unnoticed for so long. One reason for such neglect may lie in the fact that it is easily observed and described in dependency grammar, but is less obvious to the constituency grammar that forms the backbone of contemporary mainstream Western theory. Another reason may be the fact that mainstream theory, despite considerable efforts to test ideas on exotic languages, happens to have looked almost exclusively at those languages which differ little from Indo-European with regard to the phenomenon at issue.

The analysis proposed here is built on only two concepts, both of them straightforward and non-theoretical. One is HEADEDNESS, a theory-independent notion which in fact figures as a primitive in almost all theories-and which, although not directly given in linguistic data, is often directly reflected in such structural features as word order. The other is the presence and location of overt morphological MARKING of syntactic relations-the fact that a given word bears a given affix, while another does not. The presence and location of morphological markers is directly given in linguistic data.

The grammatical phenomenon at issue is the fact that syntactic relations can

* Much of the research for this project was done in Moscow (1975-76) and Tbilisi (1979-80, 1981, 1984) with the support of International Research and Exchanges Board and Fulbright-Hays Faculty Research Abroad fellowships from the Office of Education and the then Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. I am grateful to the Russian Language Department of Moscow State University and to the Foreign Division and the Caucasian Languages Department of Tbilisi State University. Deepest thanks go to the friends and colleagues who shared with me their native intuitions on languages of the Caucasus. For comments and examples, I am indebted to Joan Bresnan, Neusa Carson, Jim Collins, Jon Dayley, Scott DeLancey, Matthew Dryer, Thomas V. Gamkrelidze, Orin Gensler, Victor Golla, Dee Ann Holisky, Gary Holland, John Kingston, Tom Larsen, Maya Machavariani, Igor Mel'cuk, Larry Morgan, Catherine O'Connor, David Shaul, Alan Timberlake, Robert Van Valin, Kenneth Whistler, Anthony Woodbury, and Karl Zimmer. I am also grateful to Ann Kalinowski for statistical consultation and Kenneth Whistler for programming. My thanks should not be taken to imply that these people unanimously endorse all my views. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 1982 LSA Annual Meeting (San Diego).

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be morphologically marked either on the head of a constituent, or on the dependent. Exx. 1-2 are a minimal pair in this respect. Both are noun phrases with possessed noun heads and possessor dependent nouns. Here and below, heads are indicated by superscript H, affixal markers by M:

(1) English the man-M's Hhouse (2) Hungarian az ember Hhdz-Ma

the man house-3sg. In 1, the possessive construction is marked by the genitive case on the dependent noun man. In 2, it is marked by a pronominal suffix on the head noun haz 'house'. The SYNTACTIC RELATION is one and the same-possessor noun dependent on possessed noun-but the principles for marking that relation morphologically are diametrically opposed.

Throughout this paper, I will use the term 'syntactic relation' as in the preceding paragraph. I assume that the syntax of a sentence is an abstract network of relations which are not configurationally defined, but are best viewed as labeled. They are binary, directed relations between a head and a dependent. Most important, syntactic relations are absolutely independent of the morphology (or other means) that signals them. (The nature of the morphological marking does have some impact on the character of the connections between words in a sentence, as will be argued in ?5.22 below; but it does not affect syntactic relations as that term is defined here.)

Linguists of divergent theoretical persuasions are in almost complete agreement as to what is the head and what is the non-head in a given construction; cf. Tesniere 1966, Garde 1977, Mel'cuk 1979, 1981, Bresnan 1982 (passim), Marantz 1984. Briefly, the head is the word which governs, or is subcategorized for-or otherwise determines the possibility of occurrence of-the other word. It determines the category of its phrase. The dependency relations in the constructions discussed in this paper are shown in Table 1.1

LEVEL HEAD DEPENDENT Phrase possessed noun possessor

noun modifying adjective adposition object of adposition

Clause predicate arguments and adjuncts auxiliary verb lexical ('main') verb

Sentence main-clause predicate relative or subordinate clause TABLE 1.

The function of the morphology of government, agreement, cross-reference etc. is to identify these syntactic relations by appropriately marking either the

1 The entry 'arguments and adjuncts' is intended to subsume subjects, objects, and the other nominal functions known variously as non-core relations, adjuncts, circumstantials, obliques etc. I will occasionally use 'actant' as generic for 'argument' and 'adjunct'.

The head of a clause is normally a verb; the entry 'predicate' is used here because of the crucial example presented by the Nootkan languages, discussed in Jacobsen 1979.

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LANGUAGE, VOLUME 62, NUMBER 1 (1986)

head (as in 2) or the dependent (as in 1). I will thus speak of syntactic relations as HEAD-MARKED or DEPENDENT-MARKED: this distinction is the central principle of this paper.

Aside from this dichotomy, morphology can signal syntactic dependency in four ways. First, the morphological marker may simply register the presence of syntactic dependency-as does the Persian and Tadzhik 'izafet' (Abaev et al. 1982:111) or the Semitic 'status constructus':

(3) a. Tadzhik HkUh-Mi baland 'high mountain' b. Persian Hkuh-Me bolind

mountain high (4) Hebrew Hb-Me-t sefer 'school', lit. 'book house'

house-of book

In 3, the suffix -il-e marks the noun as having a dependent-without further specifying the type of dependency, the gender/number/person of the dependent or head, or the like. In 4, bet is the construct form of the noun bayit 'house', in which phonological changes in the stem mark it as having a dependent.

Second, the morphological affix can mark not only the presence, but also the TYPE of dependency. This kind of marking is quite common. Noun cases are a good example: an ergative, dative, or accusative case marks a noun not only as being dependent on a verb, but also as being in a particular relation to it: agent or subject, indirect object, direct object etc. Similarly, IE verb agreement identifies a noun not merely as dependent, but also as specifically subject.

Third, the morphological affix may, in addition, index particular inflectional or lexical categories of either the head or the dependent, marking them on the other constituent. For instance, person/number agreement in the IE verb indexes properties of the (dependent) subject on the (head) verb. That of Abkhaz, shown in 24 below, indexes the same properties (plus, in part, gender) of three different actants on the verb. In languages having gender classes, these classes are typically indexed on the verb. Similarly, gender/number agreement in the IE attributive adjective indexes the lexical properties of the head noun on the dependent adjective, while case agreement indexes its syntactic properties. All these agreement patterns, in addition to indexing various properties of one constituent on another, also directly signal the presence and type of syntactic relations. Henceforth I will speak of morphological forms as MARKING the presence and type of dependency, but as INDEXING various grammatical and lexical categories of the head or dependent on the other.

Fourth, morphological marking can be purely internal: it can index properties of the head on the head itself, as when aspect is marked on Russian verbs, or when subject agreement varies according to the tense or conjugational class of the verb. It can index properties of dependents on the dependents themselves, as when IE case endings also signal gender and number of the noun bearing the case, or when nouns in Bantu and some Australian languages carry markers of their own gender class. Such patterns amount to the marking of heads as heads and of dependents as dependents, in that Russian aspect iden-

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tifies a verb as a verb, and case identifies a noun as a noun. Purely internal marking of these sorts will not be dealt with further in this study.2

Marking may take forms other than straight affixation. For example, relative clauses are frequently marked as such by deletion of the coreferential noun or by a relative pronoun. In the Semitic status constructus, the head noun is marked by phonological changes. In speaking of morphological marking, then, I also include forms that might not usually be considered morphological, although most of the discussion to follow does concern ordinary affixal morphology. Languages of the isolating type will be left out of the discussion entirely-although their 'grammatical words', 'function words', 'empty words' etc. presumably also exhibit head-marking and dependent-marking tendencies.

In what follows, ?2 illustrates the two polar marking patterns at the various levels of syntactic structure, and also illustrates non-polar patterns; ??3-5 show the impact which recognition of the two patterns can have for typology, historical linguistics, and theory. It is not the purpose of this paper to provide a typology, a history, or a theory of any linguistic phenomenon or set of languages; rather, its goal is to demonstrate that the existence of the two marking patterns has significant implications for many branches of linguistics, and that both should be explicitly accommodated by grammatical theories.

2. EXAMPLES. Schematic examples of head-marked and dependent-marked patterns are shown below, with illustrations from real languages. In the schematic representations, specifically head-final order and suffixal morphology are indicated; the real-language examples often follow this order. Scanning the examples will show that Chechen, a language of the Northeast Caucasus, consistently uses dependent-marking strategies, while Abkhaz, a language of the Northwest Caucasus, consistently uses head-marking strategies. The respec- tive sets of examples give clear profiles of the two types.3

2.1. THE POSSESSIVE PHRASE has these two patterns.4 (5) a. Dependent-marked: Noun1+MGEN HNoun2

b. Head-marked: Noun1 HNoun2 + MPronominal affixNl

2 I believe the distinction of marking the presence or type of dependency vs. indexing categories

of one member on the other corresponds to the spirit of Sapir's distinction (1921:101) of pure relational vs. concrete relational concepts, respectively, although it is not clear from Sapir's discussion whether he would agree with me on the classification of every category. My notion of purely internal marking includes categories that Sapir classifies as relational (e.g. tense, mood); to judge from his discussion on p. 87, his reason for classifying them as relational was the fact that such categories are often bound up with subject agreement, a relational category.

3 Abbreviations used in the examples are standard: N(oun), V(erb), A(djective), GEN(itive),

ERG(ative) etc.; lsg. = first person singular, 2pl. = second person plural, 3 = third person. Tran- scription symbols are standard, except for the use of 7 for the glottal stop in Mayan and ? (e.g. k?) for labialization in Abkhaz and Shuswap. Transcription follows that of the source unless otherwise stated.

4 In schematic formulae, subscript letters stand for affixes marking the presence of, or indexing

features of, a word shown with a capital letter such as N or A.

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The pronominal affix of the head-marked pattern agrees with the first noun; it is sometimes called a possessive affix. An example of the dependent-marked type 5a is from Chechen:

(6) de:-Mn Ha:xca 'father's money' father-GEN money

The head-marked type 5b can be illustrated from Abkhaz (Hewitt 1979:116): (7) sara Msd-Hy nf 'my house'

I/me my-house (8) a-c'k0'an My-HynAf 'the boy's house'

the-boy his-house

2.2. THE ADPOSITIONAL PHRASE shows these patterns. (9) a. Dependent-marked: Noun+MCase HAdposition

b. Head-marked: Noun HAdposition + MAFFN

A dependent-marked example (9a) can be given from Chechen:

(10) be:ra-Mna Ht'e 'on the child' child-DAT on

Particularly clear examples of such phrases come from IE languages such as Russian, where the preposition not only triggers an oblique case on its object, but governs a specific case:

(11) H5 brat-Mom 'with (my, one's, etc.) brother' with brother-INSTR

(12) Hbez brat-Ma 'without (my, etc.) brother' without brother-GEN

(13) Hk brat-Mu 'toward (my, etc.) brother' toward brother-DAT

Head-marked examples (9b) come from Abkhaz (14) and Tzutujil Mayan (15):

(14) a-j]yas Ma- q'fl 'at the river' (Hewitt, 103) the-river its-at

(15) Mruu-Hmajk jar aachi 3sg.-because.of the man

'by the man; because of the man' (Dayley 1981:216)

2.3. THE ATTRIBUTIVE PHRASE shows these patterns.

(16) a. Dependent-marked: Adjective + MAFFN HNoun b. Head-marked: Adjective HNoun + MAFFA

Examples of the dependent-marked type (16a) come from Russian (17) and Chechen (18):

(17) zelen-Myj Hdom 'green house' green-NOM. SG . MASC house(NOM. SG . MASC)

zelen- Muju Hknigu 'green book' green- ACC . SG . FEM book(ACC. SG . FEM)

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(18) Md-ovxa Hxi 'hot water' hot water(d-)

Mj-ovxa Hsura 'hot milk' hot milk( j-)

(In Chechen, the initial consonant of the adjective shows its agreement with the covert gender class of the head noun.)

Head-marked examples (16b) include 3a-b, above, and the following from Shuswap (Kuipers 1974:78):

(19) wist Mt-HCitx0 'high house' high REL-house

(Shuswap has a minimal two-case system which opposes the absolutive, used on core arguments, to the relative, used on oblique actants. The relative case is also regularly used, as in this example, on a noun modified by an attributive.)

2.4. CLAUSE RELATIONS show these patterns. (20) a. Dependent-marked:

Noun + MCase Noun + MCase Noun + MCase HVerb b. Head-marked:

Nounl Noun2 Noun3 HVerb+ MAFFN1 + MAFFN2 + MAFFN3

Examples of the dependent-marked type 20a come from Chechen (21), Japanese (22), and Dyirbal (23):

(21) da:-Ms wo?a-Mna urs-0 Htu:xira. father-ERG son-DAT knife-NOM struck

'The father stabbed the son.' (lit. 'father struck son with knife') (22) Boku Mga tomodati Mni hana MO Hageta.

I SUBJ friend DAT flowers OBJ gave 'I gave flowers to my friend.' (Kuno 1973:129)

(23) balan djugumbil baygul yasangu ART.NOM woman. NOM ART.ERG man. ERG

baygu yuguygu balgan. ART.INSTR Stick.MINS Hhit

'The man is hitting the woman with a stick.' (Dixon 1972:95) In all three examples, the nominal cases are the only bearers of syntactic information; the verbs do not agree with anything.

Head-marked examples (20b) come from Abkhaz (24) and Tzutujil (25): (24) a-xdc'a a-ph?3s a-?q0?' M-Ml3My-Hte-yt.

the-man the-woman the-book it-to.her-he-gave-FINITE 'The man gave the woman the book.' (Hewitt, 36)

(25) x-M0-Mkee-Htij tzyaq ch'ooyaa7. ASP-3sg.-3pl.-ate clothes rats

'Rats ate the clothes.' (Dayley, 417) In both these examples, all nouns are caseless; the clause relations are marked only by verbal affixes which index person and number, and whose ordering indexes the syntactic relations of the nouns.

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2.5. RELATIVIZATION displays the following patterns.5 (26) a. Dependent-marked: [[M{0, PRO} ...]RC ... HNoun ...]

b. Head-marked: [[... Noun .. ]RC M{0, PRO} H...]

In inter-clause relations, a word in the main clause is the head, and the subordinate or embedded clause is the dependent. Thus, in relativization, the head is the main-clause noun, and the dependent is the relative clause. In dependent- marked relativization, the relative-clause noun is affected, typically by deletion or pronominalization, while the main clause is left intact. In head-marked relativization, the main clause is affected, typically by deletion or pronominalization of the noun; the relative clause is intact, and is often indistinguishable from an ordinary independent clause.

Examples of dependent-marked relativization by deletion are the constructions found in Japanese (27) and a number of other verb-final languages of Eurasia, such as Chechen (28):

(27) Kore wa [watakusi ga M0 kaita] Hhon desu. this TOP I SUBJ wrote book is

'This is a book that I have written.' (Kuno, 234) (28) [M0 su:na a:xca della] Hk'ant a:rave:lira.

I.DAT money.NOM having.given boy.NOM went.out 'The boy who gave me money went out.'

In both these examples, the relative-clause copy of the relative noun is deleted; in Chechen, the verb therefore appears in participial form. In both examples, the relative clause is immediately followed by the main-clause noun, whose case is that required by its main-clause function.

Dependent-marked relativization by pronominalization is represented by the typical European construction:

(29) The Hboy [Mwho gave me money] went out. Head-marked relativization by deletion is shown in the following Navajo

example (Platero 1974:10, with zero added; note Platero's argument that the zero is indeed in the main clause):

(30) [tLeechjq'i maa'iitsoh bishxash-e] M0 Hnahal'in. dog wolf 3 .PERF.3 .bitten-REL IMPF.3 .bark

'The dog that was bitten by the wolf is barking.' Head-marked relativization by pronominalization is represented by the follow-

5 This section discusses only head-marking vs. dependent-marking patterns in relativization, and glosses over a number of other properties of these examples. A fuller treatment of relativization, and a correlation of relativization strategies with over-all language type, are given in Nichols 1984 (cf. Lehmann 1984). This section and the following one speak of relativization and subordination as though they applied between clauses; but this is only a convenient way to describe the location of markers, not a claim about dependency relations. As is well known, a relative clause (or at least a relative clause not involving head-marked deletion, i.e. not of the headless type) is syntactically dependent not on the main clause, but on the head noun; and a subordinate clause is a dependent of the main verb, not of the main clause. This follows from the general principle that syntactic dependency holds between words, not between constituents, which have no theoretical status in dependency grammar.

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ing Arizona Tewa example (Gorbet 1977:272, citing work by P. Kroskrity): (31) [he'i sen c'a:ndi n:bap'o mansu'-n] M'i Hdokumq.

that man yesterday wine 3>3.drink-DS 3sg. 1>3.bought 'I bought the wine which that man drank yesterday.'

2.6. OTHER SUBORDINATION.6 Dependent-marking patterns set off the subordinate clause as such. A typical device is the non-final or non-finite verb used to mark the non-main clause(s) of a chaining construction, as in Chechen. (Where the head consists of more than one word, as here, superscript H is placed at both the beginning and the end.)

(32) [musas su:na a:xca Mdelca] Hasla:n a:ra-ve:lira.H M.ERG me.DAT money. NOM when.gave A.NOM out-went

'When Musa gave me money, Asian went out.' The Chechen construction is further dependent-marked by reflexivization or deletion of a dependent-clause actant under coreference to the main-clause subject:

(33) [musas Msiena a:xca Mdelca] Hasla:n a:ra-ve:lira.H M. REFL.DAT

'When Musa gave him money, Asian went out.' (34) M[M su:na a:xca a Mdella] Hasla:n a:ra-ve:lira.H

me.DAT PTC having.given A. 'Having given me money, Aslan went out.'

Deletion or reflexivization in the main clause is unacceptable:

(35) *asla:n-a su:na a:xca a Mdella, M0 Ha:ra-ve:lira. A.-ERG me. DAT

'Aslan gave me money and went out.' In Navajo, head-marked and dependent-marked deletions may both occur

(Platero, 228; zero added): (36) [Ashkii yah-i(yd- M(a)go] 1eechqq'i M0 Hbishxash.

boy into-pERF.3.walk- COMP dog 3.PERF.3.bite (37) [M0 Yah-fiyd- M(a)go] Hashkii leechgq'i bishxash.

into-walk- COMP boy dog bit 'When the boy walked in, the dog bit him'; '... he was bitten by

the dog.' In both examples, the special form of the verb 'walk' marks the dependent clause as such. Deletion can take place either in the main clause, as in 36, or in the dependent clause, as in 37. Given the general predominance of head- marking patterns in Navajo, it is not surprising to find that 37 is less preferred, and is subject to constraints that do not apply to 36. In contrast, Chechen

6 I use the term 'subordination' in a broad sense. Unless otherwise indicated, a subordinate clause is the one that bears a subordinate semantic relation (reason, condition, time etc.) to another, which is the main clause. Only for head-marked subordination with conjunctions, as in 38, does traditional analysis disagree with my analysis of which clause is subordinate; see the discussion there. I assume that 38 differs from 39 not in which clause is main and which subordinate, but only in where the subordination is marked.

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grammar is strongly dependent-marking, and only the dependent-marked chaining construction is possible.

The IE subjunctive is another verb form which marks a subordinate clause. Similarly, subordinating conjunctions appear in subordinate clauses to mark them as such:

(38) MSince I overslept, HI was late.H Head-marked patterns leave the subordinate clause intact, so that it is formally indistinguishable from an ordinary independent clause; but they mark the main clause as having a subordinate:

(39) 1 overslept, M50so HI was late.H

This is not really an example of subordination, and so is not a subordinating conjunction, since subordination in the traditional sense is strictly dependent- marked. It is important to note that 38-39 are identical in their semantics and represent polar opposites in the marking of the semantic relation; canonical subordination is a consequence of the choice of dependent-marking strategies.

Another example of head-marked subordination, from a generally head- marking language,7 is from Makah (Jacobsen 1979:113):

(40) M'udu:X-s-isi Hp 'usak ba:babu:pibitxsi. because-INDIc. lsg.REsPoNsIvE tired I.overworked

'I'm tired because I overworked.' i.e. '[I'm tired because] I overworked.'

Table 2 classifies a number of familiar morphological categories and processes as either head-marked or dependent-marked. It might be said that verbal categories such as voice or overtly marked transitivity are head-marked patterns of an indirect type: they carry information about the verb's valence, although they do not directly mark the occurrence in the clause of particular nominals filling the valence. They might be said to convey information about the clause as a whole, rather than about its individual actants-and thus to be purely internal verbal markers, rather than markers of syntactic dependency. I leave the question open; such categories will not be discussed further here.

Dependent-marking: Head-marking: case verbal agreement or cross-reference with adnominal genitive nominal arguments non-finite verbs incorporation agreement in adjectives instrumental, directional (etc.) affixes on uninflected adpositions which govern verbs

cases inflected adpositions pronominal (possessive) affixes on nouns polysynthesis

TABLE 2.

7 Jacobsen uses this example to make the point that 'because' is the predicate of the main clause, and would be better translated 'the reason that ... is'. What is at issue here is not its status in its own clause, but which clause it is in.

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2.7. NEUTRAL MARKING is exemplified by certain NP's in Tagalog, where the first element in the phrase takes a linker nal-ng which identifies the construction type. Since word order is free, either the head or the dependent may come first and hence acquire the linker (Schachter & Otanes 1972:116 ff., 123):

(41) nasa mesa-Mng Hlibro on table-LINKER book onH

taleLI KE M 'the book on the table' (42) HlibroM-ng nasa mesa

book-LINKER on table J Although in 41 the linker happens to be attached to the head, and in 42 to the dependent, its position is determined only by word order and is completely independent of syntactic relations. Hence these examples represent variants of a single construction type which is neutrally marked. Many languages use clitics whose position is determined by constituent boundaries and/or prosody, rather than by syntactic relations; such clitics also represent neutral marking. (Diachronically, however, they can often be regarded as former dependents which have floated away and are on their way to becoming head markers. This evolutionary tendency will be discussed in ?4.1.) A well-described example is the AUX of many Uto-Aztecan languages. It usually combines a clitic pronoun with modal and/or tense elements, and is generally in sentence-second position, as in Luiseno (Steele 1979:447):

(43) noo-Mn-il xwaan-i H2ariquX. I-lsg.-TENSE John-oaj was.kicking

'I was kicking John.' The element n-il is the AUX. It contains a pronominal agreement marker which, since it is affixed to neither the independent subject pronoun noo nor the verb, represents neutral marking. The following example, from Klamath, a Penutian language of Oregon (Barker 1962:6-7), shows a second-position clitic bundle consisting entirely of pronominal elements:

(44) mo: M?ans ge: k'ot'as Hsiwga. many 3pl.>lsg. these flea kill

'These fleas are killing me!'

2.8. OTHER MARKING PATTERNS. In addition to head-marked and dependent- marked patterns, two further major possibilities exist. One is the complete absence of formal marking, on either head or dependent-a pattern which is, of course, frequent in languages having little or no morphology. An example at the phrase level is found in English compounds like grocery store, bus stop. The second pattern is the formal marking of both head and dependent, as in Turkish; this will be called DOUBLE MARKING:

(45) ev- in HkapiM-si 'the door of the house' house-GEN door-3 sg.

3. IMPLICATIONS FOR TYPOLOGY. It is not uncommon to see a language described as having many cases, but little verbal inflection; or as using extensive verbal affixation rather than case. Examples are Keenan's distinction of noun- coding vs. verb-coding languages (1972b: 171-2), or Milewski's opposition of

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'excentric' to 'concentric' (1967). That is, the literature generally recognizes the complementarity between certain morphological categories. What has not been recognized is that such complementarities neatly reduce to two polar possibilities-marking of heads vs. marking of dependents-and that a language is likely to make a consistent choice as to marking type throughout its morphosyntax.8 This section shows how morphological marking patterns can be used as typological parameters.

3.1. THE RANGE OF TYPES. The typological conclusions offered in this section are based on a core sample of 60 languages, shown in Table 3. The core sample comprises only languages having a considerable amount of morphology; the minimum for inclusion in the core sample is a total of four morphological markings of the types surveyed.9 The sample is designed to cover as completely as possible the languages of North America and northern Eurasia, with enough coverage of other areas (the Pacific, Australia, Africa, and South America) to rule out typological surprises. (A sample based exclusively on the northern hemisphere would, as it turns out, have covered all possibilities.) The core sample is restricted to a maximum of three languages from any one family.

Table 3 shows dependent-marked and head-marked patterns for the following constituents: adpositional phrase (abbreviated PP) with pronoun object (e.g. with me); PP with noun object (with a friend); NP with dependent possessive pronoun (my house); NP with dependent possessive noun (Father's house); NP with attributive adjective (green house); and clause. Relativization and subordination are not surveyed. At the clause level, I tabulate marking of three core actants: subject, direct object, and indirect object. The dependent-marked value for the clause is the total number of distinct cases, particles, adpositions etc. which mark those three core relations; the head-marked value is the total number of those three core relations that can be indexed on the verb.10 Non-

8 Milewski surveys both clause and phrase levels in a number of languages, implicitly assuming consistency between levels. The essence of his opposition 'excentric' to 'concentric' involves not heads and dependents, but a matter which I treat as secondary in ?5.2, below. In Milewski's excentric type (which largely coincides with my dependent-marking type), verbs and arguments are constituents of the clause, and all constituents bear markers of their syntactic function in the clause; in the concentric type (which includes all of my head-marking languages), the verb is the only clause constituent, and it determines (in its morphological marking) the functions of the other words in the sentence.

9 The limit of four was chosen so that Wichita, a language with four head-marking patterns and no dependent-marking patterns, would qualify. Wichita is a polysynthetic language which strikes one as having a great deal of morphology. Yet, with this limit of four, the Polynesian languages- with four dependent-marking patterns and no head-marking patterns-also qualify, although these languages do not strike one as having a great deal of morphology. Part of the difference in morphological complexity lies in the fact that Wichita morphology uses many types not included in Table 3: indexing of non-core actants on the verb, incorporation, etc. In addition, Wichita lacks the PP constituent; hence it spreads its four morphological points over fewer constituents than does Polynesian, which has PP's. It would obviously be possible to adjust the qualifying parameters so that Wichita would qualify and Polynesian would not. This would considerably simplify the distribution of word-order patterns, as will be discussed in ?3.4.

10 In addition to languages that lack adpositions entirely, some languages have functional equiv- alents which belong to a form class other than the canonical adposition. In Squamish, 'relator verbs' (Kuipers 1967:153) are functionally equivalent to prepositions; but formally they are a sub-

66


core clause actants, and the valence patterns of derived causative verbs, were not surveyed. Most of the morphological markings surveyed appear to be inflectional; however, for verbs that index three core actants, it is common for subject and direct object to be indexed inflectionally, while indirect object is indexed derivationally.1l

As explained in the legend, the 'Totals' column reflects only primary and salient patterns, i.e. those with entries D, H, (D), and (H). A total including minor patterns was computed for pilot studies-but is not used here for com- parisons, for two reasons. First, all grammars describe major patterns, but the extent to which minor patterns are described varies from grammar to grammar; second, the decision as to whether a given minor pattern belongs to synchronic morphology or to etymology can often be made only by a specialist. Hence total figures including minor patterns might not be comparable. (It should be noted, however, that pilot studies based on totals including minor patterns produced typological scales which were not substantially different from those based only on major patterns.) There are two totals: the 'full total', based on values for all constituents surveyed, and the 'short total', based on clauses and possessive phrases only. The short total was computed because many languages lack adpositions, and a number lack adjectives; these facts complicate cross- linguistic comparison based on the full total.12

Figures 1 and 2 (page 70) plot the D values against the H values for each language in the core sample-Fig. 1 for the full total, and Fig. 2 for the short

type of verb, distinguished by government of an oblique object. In Table 3 these have been classified as adpositions on functional grounds. This classification has important implications for the typological classification of Squamish: if relators are classified as prepositions, the oblique object counts as a dependent-marked pattern, but if they are classified as verbs, Squamish is entirely head- marking (only direct and indirect objects are counted as core relations in this survey). Wishram has a set of forms which Dyk (1933:142) calls 'postpositions'; they differ from canonical adpositions in being suffixed to their objects. The suffixation precludes the possibility of any further marking on either 'postposition' or stem. These 'postpositions' should probably be regarded as a set of cases; Wishram would then fall into the large group of consistently head-marking languages which exhibit oblique cases. The decision in this instance has no impact on the language type, since neither analysis yields any markings to be counted.

tl Most languages of the North Caucasus form some of their tenses with auxiliary verbs which agree (in transitive constructions) with the agent-while the lexical verb, if it can take agreement, agrees with the patient. For these languages, I have counted only the simple tenses for Table 3, since they appear to be the unmarked type. Counting the analytic tenses would increase the number of head-marking patterns by one point per language. For Basque, in contrast, only a handful of verbs have synthetic inflection, and the open class conjugates with auxiliaries in all tenses; here the entries in Table 3 are based on the inflection of the auxiliary.

12 The maximum count of three D and three H values at the clause level assumes that all languages can have three core valence places. But a number of languages, e.g. the Mayan and Salishan groups, give evidence of having only two core valence places. Again we have a comparability problem: agreement with two core actants in such a language is agreement with 100% of the core actants, while in another language it is agreement with only 67% of them. Table 3 and the quantification of types simply ignore this problem; a cross-linguistic survey of the notion of core argument, fundamental though it is to a meaningful quantification of morphological marking-types, is a topic for a separate paper. Lushootseed, a Coast Salish language, appears to permit a maximum of one core argument per clause; this fact complicates assigning numerical values so much that this language has not been included in the sample.

67


CONSTITUENT: PP PP NP NP NP CLAUSE

DEPENDENT: PRO- NOUN PRO- NOUN ADJEC-

TOTALS TYPE

FULL SHORT FULL SHORT

NOUN

H [o]

H H H

D D

D

D

D

D D

NOUN TIVE

H H H d o H H D D(H) H DIH o D/H H D/H H o D//HD d D D/H D/H D

o H H o D D D o D D D D o H D D - H H I,d D D/h D/h o

D DII(H) D o

D D D D D (D)/I (D)/I (D)/I

? o D/H D/H o -I -I H H ?

[-] [-] H H o _ -

D D D H d/H H H D D/(H) D D/(H) D D D D D D D D D D D D

D D D D D o o D D o H D D/H D/H D

[o] O D D O O O D D D D//h D D//H D o H H H o H H H H (D) D D D D D H D (D)/H D/H o

- _ H H O

- - D D D

D D D/h D/h o H H H H o H H H H o ?

o D d D ? ? D D D

TABLE 3.

0/3 0/7 0/5 0/2 0/4 0/4 2/3 4/6 3/5 311 5/6 4/3 3/2 6/3 5/3 2/3 6/6 4/5

0/3 0/5 0/4 3/3 7/3 5/3 311 8/1 511 2/2 413 3/3 0/3 0/5 0/5 2/2 6/2 4/2 3/1 7/2 5/2

3/(1) 8/1 5/1 3/2 8/5 514

2/2 4/4 4/4 0/3 0/5 015 212 214 2/4 3/0 6/0 5/0 3/1 4/5 3/3 3/1 8/2 5/2 3/3 8/3 5/3 3/1 8/1 5/1

3/1 8/1 5/1 2/0 4/0 4/0 2/3 6/5 4/5

3/1 3/0 3/1 0/2 2/2 2/0 3/1 0/2 3/1 3/0 3/1 *

0/3 3/2 2/2

5/1 5/1 6/0 5/0 7/2 5/2 0/6 0/4 3/6 2/4 7/0 4/0 6/3 5/3 0/4 0/4 6/2 5/2 7/0 5/0 3/5 3/3 0/7 0/5 5/2 4/2 5/2 4/2

LANGUAGE

Abkhaz Acoma Adyghe Aleut Amharic Arabic Barbareno

Chumash Basque Batsbi Beja Blackfoot Burushaski Buryat Chechen-

Ingush Chukchi Cochabamba

Quechua Cree Diegueno Dyirbal Evenki Finnish Georgian German Greek

(Homeric) Hawaiian Hebrew Imbabura

Quechua Japanese Kalmyk Karok Ket Klamath Komi Lakhota Mangarayi Mongol Nanai Navajo Nera Nez Perce

-7 -5 -4 -4 -2 -2 -1 1

3 2 O -1

-5 -4 4 2 7 4 1 0

-5 -5 4 2 5 3

7 4 3 1

O O -5 -5 -2 -2

6 5 -1 0

6 3 5 2 7 4

7 4 4 4 1 -1

4 4 6 5 5 3

-6 -4 -3 -2

7 4 3 2

-4 -4 4 3 7 5

-2 0 -7 -5

3 2 3 2

68


CONSTITUENT: PP PP NP NP NP CLAUSE TOTALS TYPE

DEPENDENT: PRO- NOUN PRO- NOUN ADJEC- FULL SHORT FULL SHORT

NOUN NOUN TIVE

LANGUAGE

Ngandi - - H D/(H) D 3/2 5/4 4/4 1 0 Nootka h H H H o 0/1 0/4 0/3 -4 -3 Patwin

(Hill) D/h D D D D 2/0 7/0 4/0 7 4 Rotuman o o D D d 2/0 4/0 3/0 4 3 Russian D D D D D 3/1 8/1 5/1 7 4 Sacapultec H H H H d 0/2 0/6 0/4 -6 -4 Samoan H D D D d 2/0 5/0 4/0 5 4 Sahaptin (NW)? D D//h D D 3/2 7/2 5/2 5 3 Shuswap [-] o H H H 1/2 1/5 1/4 -4 -3 Squamish D D d/H d/H [o] 1/2 3/4 1/4 -1 -3 Turkish D/(H) D/(H) D/H D/H o 3/1* 7/5 5/3 2 2 Tzutujil H H H H d 0/2 0/6 0/4 -6 -4 Uradhi - - D D D 3/0 6/0 5/0 6 5 Warndarang - - h H D 0/2 1/3 0/3 -2 -3 Wichita -I -I -I//H d o 0/3 0/4 0/4 -4 -4 Wishram [-] [ -] H [H] o 0/3 0/5 0/5 -5 -5 Wiyot o o H H o 0/3 0/5 0/5 -5 -5 Yakut (D)/(H)( D)/(H) H H o 2/1 4/5 2/3 -1 -1 Yukulta - - D D D 3/2 6/2 5/2 4 3 Yurak H D H D o 3/2 5/4 4/3 1 1

TABLE 3. (Continued)

LEGEND:

H Head-marking pattern D Dependent-markiing pattern H/D Double-marking pattern H//D Two patterns: H or D o No marking - Construction type lacking in the language ? Information not available 0/3, 2/1 etc. Number of head-marked patterns/number of dependent-marked patterns. For

CLAUSE entry, a maximum of three places (subject, direct object, indirect object) were counted; dependent-marked patterns were counted for nouns only.

* Accusative case counted, although used only for definite direct objects. () Salient partial pattern; not known whether this pattern is primary or secondary,

marked or unmarked, etc. For PP:PRO and NP:PRO with H, the entry (D) means that the dependent is optional but, if present, is case-inflected.

[ ] Inferred from generalizations in grammars; no examples given. h, d Minor (marked) patterns. I Incorporation of dependent into head. - I Pattern absent because of incorporation of the constituent in question into the

verb. Total Sum of D and (D), H and (H), entries plus figures from CLAUSE column.

69


0 1 2 3 4 5

H values FIGURE 1.

5-

4- c)

- 3-

2-

1-

)

H values FIGURE 2.

8-

7-

6-

G) 5 -

> 4-

3-

2-,

1

0

S ~* 0t 0

0~~ k ~ * *

>~~ ~ 4-

* - * *

11 :

8 6 7

4 5

2 lk2.tt. ~~~~-- -- -- --

2.

* -

-. ,k~ 2 *

.9.

70

_ I I- - -

-


total. It can be seen that the languages in the core sample cluster in the upper left and lower right corners; i.e., languages cluster around the extreme types. Between the two extremes are scattered languages of less polar types. The lower left corner is not really empty; languages with little or no morphology, had they been surveyed, would appear there. The upper right corner, in contrast, is really empty, or nearly so. No language uses all possible morphological markings on both heads and dependents of all the constituents surveyed, and few even approach this maximum. This must be a matter of economy: there is no need to mark everything twice.

Figs. 1-2 also show that languages near the upper left corner-the dependent-marking languages-show more dispersion than the head-marking languages in the lower right area, which are more compactly distributed. This is because many otherwise dependent-marking languages have verbal agreement with one or even two arguments, while few of the strongly head-marking languages show any analogous preference for a particular dependent-marked pattern.

Before proceeding with a quantification of types, it may be helpful to give profiles of the various language types. There are two polar language types, head-marking and dependent-marking, and two non-polar language types, double-marking and split-marking. The polar types, which represent the majority of languages surveyed, are those which are most consistent in their use of head- marking or dependent-marking morphology across constituents. All four types are idealized to some extent. The examples to follow come from languages that most closely approach the ideals.

(a) A typical head-marking language is one like Abkhaz (exx. 7-8, 14, and 24 above), which has a total of zero dependent-marking patterns and seven head-marking patterns. It has no cases; it uses verbal agreement with up to three core actants, possessive inflection of nouns, and adpositions which take possessive inflection in agreement with their objects. The only possible head- marking pattern which Abkhaz fails to exploit is the marking of head nouns for the presence of an adjective; neither the attributive adjective nor the noun it modifies bears a marker of the attributive relation. Another language with totals of D = 0 and H = 7 is Navajo. Here, in contrast to Abkhaz, relativization and subordination are also head-marked (for relativization, see Nichols 1984, interpreting Platero). Other consistently head-marking languages in the sample are Blackfoot, Barbareno Chumash, Cree, Lakhota, Nootka, Sacapultec, Shus- wap, Tzutujil, Wichita, Wishram, and Wiyot.

(b) A typical dependent-marking language is Chechen (exx. 6, 10, 18, 21, 28, and 32-35), which has totals of D = 8 and H = 1. Its sole head-marking feature is agreement of the verb with its intransitive subject or transitive object; and this takes place in only a minority of the verbs in the lexicon. Chechen uses cases, adnominal genitives, agreeing adjectives, and uninflected postpositions which govern cases in their dependents; all these are dependent-marked patterns. Another example of the extreme dependent-marking type is Japanese, which differs from Chechen in having no verbal agreement with the subject and no agreement of adjectives with nouns (as well as in using what are called particles rather than cases). Other consistently dependent-marking languages

71


in the sample are Batsbi, Dyirbal, German, Greek, Hawaiian, Klamath, Mon- golian, Hill Patwin, Rotuman, Russian, Samoan, and Uradhi.

(c) A double-marking language marks several of its constructions twice, on both the head and the dependent. Huallaga (Huanuco) Quechua (examples from David Weber, p.c.) shows such a pattern both in the possessive phrase (46) and the adpositional phrase (47):

(46) hwan-Mpa Hwasi-Mn 'John's house' John-GEN house-3

(47) hwan-Mpa Hhana-Mn-chaw 'above John' JOhn-GEN above-3-Loc

Languages in the sample that may be characterized as double-marking are Aleut and Arabic. Many languages exhibit only one or a few double-marked constituents; examples are Georgian and Basque, with double-marked clauses but strictly dependent-marked phrases.

(d) Split-marking languages have some head-marked and some dependent- marked patterns. A clear example is the Bantu family, where clauses are head- marked (with caseless nouns and verbal cross-reference), while phrases are dependent-marked (the dependent noun copying the gender class of the head). The following examples from Tonga (Carter 1963; John Kingston, p.c.) show this in the possessive phrase (48) and in the clause (49):

(48) irku Hboko f-Mku-d-mu-kaintu DEF- 15-arm DEF- 15-ASSOC- 1-woman

'the woman's arm' (Carter, 25) (49) (-kd-bwa Mka-ld-Mmu-Hlumd.

DEF-12-dog 12- PRES-1-bite 'The puppy is biting her.'

In 48, the dependent 'woman' carries the class 15 prefix of the head 'arm' (as well as its own class 1 prefix). In 49, the head 'bite' carries the prefixes of its subject ('dog' + diminutive class 12 = 'puppy') and object ('woman', class 1).

Languages in the sample exhibiting splits of various types include Adyghe, Finnish, Nanai, Squamish, Yurak, and Komi-in addition to Georgian and Basque, mentioned above.

While most languages in the sample are predominantly either head-marking or dependent-marking, probably no language is exclusively of one or the other type. For instance, the Quichean branch of Mayan, despite overwhelmingly head-marking grammar, nonetheless marks the dependent in certain NP's. A monosyllabic preposed adjective takes a special suffix, as in Tzutujil (cf. Dayley):

(50) kaq-Ma Hjaay red house

Chechen and Ingush, Northeast Caucasian languages representative of the polar dependent-marking type, exhibit one head-marking pattern in the affixation of locative preverbs (discussed below), another in gender agreement with the S/O in some verbs, and still another in the fact that negation can be marked only on the verb and never on the nominal in its scope (discussed below).

72


An analogous observation can be made about the non-polar double-marking type. Huanuco Quechua is one of the most consistently double-marking languages; but in PP's with non-human nouns as objects, the object is NOT in the genitive case, and the construction is thus head-marked (cf. double-marked 47 above):

(51) wasi Hhana-Mn-chaw 'above the house' house above-3-Loc

Patterns such as these are among the minor types shown in Table 3.

3.2. QUANTIFICATION OF TYPES. The over-all type of a language can be cap- tured with the figures in its 'Totals' column from Table 3. Thus Dyirbal, with full totals D = 6 and H = 0, can be represented as 6/0; Yurak is 5/4; Navajo is 0/7. This classification is represented in Figs. 1-2. But it is frequently ex- pedient to express the array of types as a one-dimensional continuum with a small number of possible positions. However, simply taking the ratio of D to H values does not yield a straightforward continuum; one reason is that all ratios with H = 0 require the mathematically impossible operation of division by zero. Another is that the amount of typological distance that is expressed as an integer at the dependent-marking end of the scale (e.g. 7/1 = 7, 6/1 = 6, a difference of 1) is expressed as a tiny fraction at the head-marking end of the scale (e.g. 1/7 = .14, 1/6 = .17, a difference of .03). A less problematical way of producing a continuum is to reduce the two-dimensional Figs. 1-2 to their projections onto a single line running from upper left (extreme dependent- marking type) to lower right (extreme head-marking type). This can be done by assigning positive values to D scores and negative values to H scores: for Dyirbal, +6, -0 = 6; for Yurak, +5, -4 = 1; and for Navajo, +0, -7 =

-7. This technique produces a scale of types expressed as integers. The full total yields 17 different types (8 to -8); the short total, 11 types (5 to -5). Henceforth I will call these continua the 'full scale' and the 'short scale', respectively.

This technique is revealing only as long as the sample is confined to languages having comparable amounts of morphology. If languages with little or no morphology are admitted, we find that a language with a low number along one dimension and a zero along the other collapses into the same category as double-marking and split-marking languages, which are far from having zeroes along either dimension. For instance, a hypothetical language with a single D value and no H values (1/0) falls into the same type 1 as do Yurak (5/4) and Hebrew (6/5); a pure isolating language, at 0/0, belongs to the same type 0 as Arabic does at 6/6; English at 3/1 falls into type 2 with Turkish (5/3). Even by restricting the sample to languages having a total of at least four combined H and D values, we find that the Oceanic languages Hawaiian and Rotuman- strictly dependent-marking, but with only moderate morphological complexity (4/0)-fall into the same type 4 as split-marking and double-marking Basque (7/3) and Mangarayi (6/2). Despite this problem, and despite the grossness of this metric, it will be used below to support statistical generalizations.

Figures 3 and 4 (overleaf) show the number of languages of each type in the

73


7 6 5 4 2J

TYPE FIGURE 3.

Z 1 U -1-2-1-4-D

TYPE FIGURE 4.

cn) LX 0

D 10- 0 z

LL- 0

?L 5- LU

D z)

Z

0- 8

15-

C/) LU 0

10-

LL

5-

Z

0. ' 5'4'3

74

2 1 0 -1 -2-3 -4 -5 -6 -7 -8

I


sample. They show clusters of languages in the dependent-marking and head- marking ends of the scale, and a smaller cluster of split and double-marking languages near the center of the continuum. The clustering is particularly clear in Fig. 4, based on the short scale.

3.3. SPLITTING AND HIERARCHIES. Split systems and split subsystems follow regular principles, which lend themselves to statement as implicational hierarchies. Two broad types of splitting principles can be identified: those distin- guishing different kinds of constituents (?3.31), and those dealing with the particular categories and relations indexed. Within the latter type, we can distinguish preferred head-marking patterns (?3.32) from preferred dependent- marking patterns (?3.33); the former pertain to particular grammatical categories, and the latter to particular grammatical relations.

3.31. SPLITS BETWEEN CONSTITUENTS. Table 4 ranks the constructions sur-

FAVORED MARKING LEVEL CONSTRUCTION SUBTYPE Head clause governed argument

A subcategorized ungoverned inner adverbial outer adverbial

phrase possessive dependent pronoun dependent noun

adpositional dependent pronoun dependent noun

adjective + noun

v sentence relative construction Dependent clause chaining

TABLE 4.

veyed here in order of their propensity to be head-marked.13 The relative ranking of clause and phrase is justified by splits such as that in Bantu languages (discussed above), where clauses are head-marked and phrases are dependent- marked. It is also justified by the use of double-marking morphology at the clause level, with dependent-marking morphology everywhere else, in languages like Basque, Batsbi, Burushaski, Georgian, and Mangarayi (as well as verbal agreement with one argument in Indo-European and other languages, and the partial verb agreement of Chechen-Ingush). Based on such languages, we can express the ranking of phrases and clauses in the form of two implicational statements:

(52) If a language has major, salient, head-marking morphology anywhere, it will have it at the clause level.

(53) If a language has dependent-marking morphology at the clause level, it will have it at the phrase level.

13 The distinction between government and subcategorization, indicated here under 'Construc- tion', is discussed in ?5.21.

75


There are no exceptions to 52 in the sample. There is one departure from 53: Nanai, in which phrases are head-marked, but clauses are mostly dependent- marked. Two potential departures are Ket and Evenki. Ket uses subject and object cases, but is otherwise almost entirely head-marking: its sole phrasal dependent-marked pattern is partial agreement of adjectives with head nouns. Evenki is much like Nanai, except that its adjectives agree. Ket and Evenki thus support 53; but this is poor support, in that agreement of adjectives with head nouns is cross-linguistically not well correlated with over-all language type. (It is interesting that all three of these languages are spoken in Siberia.) Tadzhik and Persian, languages not in the core sample, also have head-marked phrases, but mostly dependent-marked clauses. Principle 53 is well supported in the core sample-somewhat trivially by the consistently dependent-marking languages, and interestingly by fourteen double-marking and split-marking languages. It is thus a statistical generalization of considerable strength.

The relative ranking of phrases and sentences is supported by the fact that some languages use head-marked phrases, but dependent-marked relativization and subordination; an example is Abkhaz (for relativization, see Nichols 1984). Within phrases, NP's with modifying adjectives are least prone to be head- marked. The only instance of head-marked treatment of such phrases is the construction of Tadzhik and Persian (ex. 3, above) and of Shuswap (19). Head- marked treatment of these phrases seems to occur only in languages that are generally head-marking at the phrase level (e.g. Tadzhik and Persian-Shuswap is head-marking at all levels); but it is extremely rare even in such languages. It is likely that attributive phrases will prove to disfavor head-marking even more than subordinate clauses, and it is clear that they are to be ranked lower than relative constructions-in that head-marked relativization, though not frequent, is found in a number of languages and is systematically correlated with over-all morphological marking type, while head-marked attributive phrases are extremely rare and not well correlated with over-all language type. Rankings for relative and chained clauses are indicated on Table 4; however, pending a systematic survey of subordination, they are somewhat tentative. (The rankings were determined by an informal survey of several Northeast Caucasian languages.)

All constituent types show a cross-linguistic propensity to favor head-marking of pronoun objects, relative to noun objects. This differential treatment is systematic in NP's and PP's in the Uralic and Semitic families. The following illustrate Hungarian adpositional phrases:

(54) a. Pronoun object: Hmellett-Mem 'beside me' beside-1 sg. [head-marked]

b. Noun object: a haz Hmellett 'beside the house' the house beside [neutral marking]

The following illustrate Yurak possessive phrases:

76


(55) a. Pronoun possessor: man' HxarduM-v 'my house' I.NOM house-lsg. [head-marked] (Terescenko 1973:221)

b. Noun possessor: jaxaM-h Hvar 'the shore of the river' river-GEN shore Ldependent-marked] (Decsy 1966:71)

The same distinction is manifested at the clause level, though it is not reflected in Table 3. In Arabic, objects may be marked on the verb with pronominal clitics only if the pronominal clitic is the sole occurrence of the object in the clause (i.e., the pronominal clitic cannot cross-reference an independent NP).

A number of languages exhibit a contrast between alienable and inalienable possession, with the latter favoring head-marking. Alienable vs. inalienable possession is determined by the possessed (i.e. head) noun. Although the exact membership of the inalienable class varies from language to language, it typically includes body parts and kin terms; it is a minor, marked class. For instance, in Burushaski, a set of kin terms takes head-marked possession, but possession is otherwise dependent-marked.

3.32. PREFERRED HEAD-MARKING PATTERNS. Three patterns favor head- marking; they are better described in terms of the grammatical categories indexed than in terms of the syntactic relations marked. They are as follows:

(a) Person, number, and/or gender agreement on heads is common, even in otherwise dependent-marking languages. An example is the partial agreement of verbs with the covert gender class of the S/O in Ingush (v, j, and d mark gender classes):

(56) k'ant c'a v- oay. boy(v) home v-comes

'The boy comes home.' jwof c'aj-oay. girl(j)

'The girl comes home.' be:r c'a d-oay. child(d)

'The child comes home.'

All instances of verbal agreement found among core-sample languages, as well as all instances of possessive inflection on nouns and adpositions, are for categories of person, number, and/or gender. The sample contains occasional examples of possessive inflection which mark only the possessive RELATION as such, and do not index features of the dependent; but it contains no examples of these patterns indexing categories other than gender, number, or person.

(b) Quantifiers, delimiters, negation etc. tend to be head-marked, associated with the head of the constituent rather than with the dependent in their scope. It is well known that such elements tend to float away from their nominals;

77


what is important here is that they float toward the verb. The result is a clause- level head-marked pattern: the verb carries markers of the quantification (etc.) of its dependent nominals. Some English examples:

(57) MNot Mall sizes and colors Hare available. [no floating] (58) MA// sizes and colors Hare Mnot available. [negation floated] (59) These sizes and colors Hare Mnot Mall available. [negation and quan-

tification floated] In many languages, negation can be only on the verb, regardless of its scope; this is true of Chechen and Ingush, otherwise strongly dependent-marking languages. Sometimes negation is rendered only with special verb paradigms, and there is no independent word for 'not'; such is the case in Avar, an otherwise dependent-marking language of the Northeast Caucasus. These phenomena differ from those discussed thus far in that they are markers of semantic, not syntactic, relations; but it is striking that their patterning and diachronic be- havior (cf. ?4.1) can be subsumed under the generalizations offered here.

(c) The third preferred head-marking pattern is the semantically based hierarchy of adverbials, discussed in ?3.33(a) below.

3.33. PREFERRED DEPENDENT-MARKING PATTERNS. Unlike the preferred head- marking patterns, these are better stated in terms of the relation marked than in terms of grammatical categories indexed:

(a) Predominantly head-marking languages may exhibit case inventories. Sometimes there are only oblique cases, with no formal distinction of subject vs. object, as in several non-Pama-Nyungan languages of Australia (cf. Dixon 1980:223-4; Warndarang is an example from the core sample). Sometimes (as in Adyghe) there is a minimal two-case opposition of direct vs. oblique which distinguishes subjects and objects; Shuswap has such a two-case opposition, but both subjects and objects take the direct case. Such languages provide evidence for an implicational statement: if cases exist, at least one may be described as oblique; its functions may or may not include the marking of core relations, but must include the marking of non-core relations. This hierarchy is also found in the next pattern.

(b) Adjuncts and the like are usually dependent-marked, by means of cases or adpositions. The oblique-only case systems of the Australian languages mentioned in (a) serve exactly this function. Bantu nouns in core relations are caseless, while adverbials are overtly marked in some way. Cross-linguistically, the following general hierarchy seems to determine the propensity of nominals to trigger verbal marking:

(60) MOST LIKELY LEAST LIKELY

Governed > Subcategorized > Inner > Outer adverbials adverbials

That is, verbs agree with subjects and/or objects before they agree with goals; and so on.14 Within this hierarchy, adjuncts can be ranked on a purely semantic

14 An interesting piece of evidence for the ordering of inner and outer adverbials in this hierarchy is discussed by Hyman & Duranti 1982: in some Bantu languages, an indexed nominal having an

78


basis for their propensity to be marked on the verb: those of location or direction, and of instrument or manner, are most often indexed on verbs. IE preverbs are locative, directional, and manner markers; in a number of North American families (Uto-Aztecan, Yuman, Pomoan, Siouan, Algonkian, Cad- doan), instrumental, locative, and directional affixes on verbs are grammaticalized. Adverbial notions like reason, condition, purpose, concession, time etc. seem not to be marked on verbs.

3.4. WORD ORDER. Table 5 shows languages ranked by the short scale and dominant word orders for their NP and clause constituents (those tabulated in the short scale).15 Tables 6a-b show the frequencies of clause-level word-order types among the morphological types.'6

The following conclusions about word order and morphological marking type can be drawn (a multinomial chi-square test showed that the patternings are very unlikely to result from chance):

(a) SOV languages are frequent in all types: as pointed out by Greenberg 1963, this is the most common word order. SOV languages are especially predominant among the double-marking and split-marking languages (types 2 to - 2), where Arabic and Hebrew are the only sample languages to exhibit other orders.

(b) VO languages of all types (SVO, VSO, VOS) are more common in the negative range of the scale than in the positive. Three of those in the positive range come from Oceanic languages, which (as mentioned above) in other respects pattern atypically, because of their relatively simple morphology; if they were removed from the sample on those grounds, VO languages would predominate even more strongly in the negative range, i.e. among languages with head-marking tendencies.

inner meaning changes to the outer meaning when an applicative suffix is added to the verb. This shows that outer adverbials require a special voice-like marker on the verb if they are to be indexed on the verb-and hence that, in such a language, they are to be ranked below inner locatives.

15 The standard abbreviation G (g) referring to possessor (Greenberg 1963, Hawkins 1983), has only a mnemonic connection with 'genitive'-since, in head-marked possessive constructions, the possessor is uninflected and hence not in a genitive case.

16 Since some of the expected values at the bottom of this table are less than 5, which may decrease the validity of the chi-square test, I performed nine back-up tests, collapsing the three word-order categories into two; this procedure yielded higher numbers. For each of the three language types, at least one such test was significant at P = .05, and at least one other was close to significant. The collapsings that yielded significance at .05 or better were:

LANGUAGE TYPE CATEGORIES COMPARED SIGNIFICANCE

Dependent-marking (5 to 3) Verb-medial vs. other* P < .05 Double and split (2 to -2) Verb-final vs. other P < .025

Head-marking (-3 to -5) fVerb-initial vs. other* P < .005 lVerb-final vs. other P c .05

The asterisked collapsings still left one expected value less than 5 (in both instances, 4). The second asterisked one is undoubtedly safe, in view of its high significance level; the first may not be. In their relative significance levels and the distribution of uncertainties as asterisked, these cross- tests further support the conclusions drawn from Table 6.

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TYPE LANGUAGE

5 Dyirbal Japanese Mongol Uradhi

4 Batsbi Chechen-Ingush German Greek (Homeric) Hawaiian Imbabura Quechua Klamath Patwin (Hill) Russian Samoan

NP ORDER CLAUSE ORDER VO

GN GN GN

GN GN NG,gn GN/NG GN//NG GN GN GN NG,gn NG

[SOV] sov SOV sov sov sov SVO,sov SOV,svo VSO sov SVO//SOV sov svo v...

x

x

x

x x

3 Buryat GN SOV Finnish GN SVO,sov x Kalmyk [GN] SOV Mangarayi NG,gn OVS, others Rotuman GN//NG SVO Sahaptin (NW) [GN] VSO x Yukulta GN,ng SVO,sov x

2 Amharic GN SOV Basque GN SOV Burushaski GN SOV Georgian GN SOV Komi [GN] SOV,svo Nera [GN] SOV,ovs Nez Perce GN VSO x Turkish [GN] [SOV]

1 Aleut [GN] [SOV] Beja GN SOV Chukchi GN SVO,sov x Yurak GN SOV

0 Cochabamba Quechua SOV Evenki GN SOV Nanai GN SOV

-1 Arabic [NG] [VSO] [x] Hebrew NG SVO x Yakut GN SOV

-2 Adyghe GN SOV Diegueno GN SOV Ket GN SOV

-3 Nootka NG VSO x Shuswap [NG/GN] V ... x Squamish [NG] VSO x Wamdarang [NG,gn] SVO

TABLE 5. Morphological marking type and word-order type (based on short scale).

VERB-INITIAL

x

x

x

x

[x]

x x x

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TYPE LANGUAGE

- 4 Acoma Barbareno Chumash Karok Lakhota Sacapultec Tzutujil Wichita

-5 Abkhaz Blackfoot Cree Navajo Wishram Wiyot

NP ORDER CLAUSE ORDER VO

GN GN/NG

[GN] GN NG NG

[GN] GN GN GN GN

[GN]

SOV,svo V...

[SVO/SOV] SOV vos vos OVS,sov SOV svo V ... SOV

[VSO] [sov/Svo]

x (x)

x x

x x

[X]

(x)


LEGEND:

G,g N, n NG, SOV etc. ng, sov etc.

V... [x]

(x) NG/GN etc. NG//GN etc.

Possessor Possessed (head) noun Major order Minor or restricted order (including order for constituent with pronominal

dependents, if different from order with nominal dependents) Verb-initial order Order based on inference from grammatical descriptions or on my text surveys

(unbracketed entries are based on explicit statements in grammars) One of two equally prevalent patterns Both orders equally frequent or basic Different sources give different orders

(c) Verb-initial languages are found in the positive range, but most of them occur in the negative range. Although this is not a frequent type cross- linguistically, it makes up over half of the distinctly head-marking languages (types -3 to -5).

(d) Verb-medial languages are commonest among dependent-marking languages (types 5 to 3), although the inclusion of Oceanic languages in the sample may have influenced this distribution, as discussed above. Another reason for the clustering of verb-medial languages here is the combined action of principles just discussed: if verb-final order is favored by types 2 to - 2 (and hence disfavored by types 5 to 3), and if verb-initial order is favored only by head- marking languages, then a default preference for verb-medial order by dependent-marking languages is to be expected.

The main conclusion to be drawn from these facts is that head-marking morphology favors verb-initial order, while dependent-marking morphology dis- favors it. This appears to have a functional motivation: if the verb comes first in a head-marking language, then the grammatical relations (which are marked on the verb) are established at the outset; if the nouns come first in a language

VERB-INITIAL

x

x x

x

[x]

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TYPE V ... SVO SOV TOTAL

(short scale) 5 to3 3 5.5 10.5 19 2 to -2 2 2 16 20 -3to -5 8 3 5 16 TOTALS 13 10.5 31.5 55

TABLE 6a. Observed frequencies. LEGEND:

V ... Verb-initial (VSO, VOS) Note: The three languages with SOV/SVO or SOV//SVO order were each counted as one-half an

entry in both SVO and SOV categories. P = about .05 for types 2 to -2 and -3 to -5, and for V ... order P = about .10 for SOV order Other types (5 to 3, SVO): not significant

TOTAL

TYPE V ... SVO SOV (observed)

5 to 3 4 4 11 19 2 to -2 5 4 11 20 -3 to -5 4 3 9 16 TOTALS 13 11 31 55

TABLE 6b. Expected distribution (if marking type had no influence on word order and vice versa). Legend as for Table 6a.

having at least some dependent-marked morphology, then the grammatical relations (which are marked on the nouns) are established at the outset. Es- tablishing grammatical relations at the beginning must be communicatively ef- ficacious, in that it streamlines the hearer's processing.

Table 7 suggests that the functional principle does not extend to NP's. In the great majority of languages in the sample, possessives precede their heads, regardless of marking type. The distribution is indistinguishable from the results of chance.

MARKING DEPENDENT DOUBLE HEAD

ORDER GN 21 6 14 NG 6 2 5 GN/NG 0 0 2

TOTAL 27 8 21

TABLE 7. Ordering and marking type in possessive phrases. Not significant (P = 1.0 for NG, .9 for others).

However, other evidence indicates that the functional principle is valid for NP's as well. Two language groups show examples in which a departure from the dominant word-order type is accompanied by a departure from the dominant morphological type. The clearest example comes from the Mayan family, where the sole dependent-marked pattern of Tzutujil is a particle found on preposed attributive adjectives (see ex. 50 above). Other languages of the Quichean

82


branch, which includes Tzutujil, have the same particle; Day (1973:48) men- tions a functionally analogous but phonologically dissimilar particle in Jacaltec, which belongs to another branch. Recall that the Mayan family is uniformly head-marking; its word order is head-first at both clause and phrase levels (VSO or VOS; noun + adjective, possessed noun + possessor, preposition + object). The preposed attributive construction is atypical, both in its dependent- first word order and in its dependent-marked morphology.

Tadzhik and Persian (neither of which is in the core sample) present a somewhat less clear example. Their NP's are head-marked when they are head-first (the typical word order); clauses are sparsely double-marked (by a postpositional particle which marks objects, and by one-place agreement on the verb); and they have SOV order. The clause continues the inherited IE word order and marking type, although the postpositional noun-marker is secondary (the IE noun cases having been lost), and only two clause dependents can be distinguished by the postposition. NP's have changed both the inherited word order (free or perhaps dependent-first) and the inherited marking type (IE languages ordinarily have no head-marked phrases). Speaking in broad diachronic terms, a departure from the typical NP order is correlated with a departure from the typical NP marking type.17

In both Mayan and Iranian, then, an atypical word order is associated with a morphological marking type which is atypical of the language family. In both families, the general functional principle of marking the first element in a constituent is upheld by the simultaneous switching of both word order and marking type. To judge from these two examples, it may be that the functional principle acts to facilitate word-order change. I therefore suggest the following hypothesis: The functional principle of marking the first element in a constituent will be upheld most consistently in areas where word-order change is attested, inferable, or on-going. This hypothesis predicts that evidence for the operation of the principle at the phrase level will be found in precisely the contexts just described for Mayan and Iranian.

Note that, in both these language groups, the association of marked word order and marked morphological type amounts to an instance of iconicity. But this iconicity has no historical, explanatory power; it misses the important synchronic functional explanation. To invoke iconicity would not account for or explain observed facts, but would merely label one type of configuration displayed by the facts.

4. IMPLICATIONS FOR HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS. This section presents (a) a principle concerning mechanisms of change, and (b) a principle of interest to

17 The changes in phrase-level word order transformed an inconsistent order typical of IE languages into a consistent, if split, order: modern Tadzhik and Persian are head-first at the phrase level (they have prepositions and mostly preposed modifiers), but head-last (SOV) at the clause level. The marking patterns can also be described as split, but not so neatly: phrases are predominantly head-marked, in that NP's exhibit the particle discussed above, although PP's are without marking; clauses are more nearly dependent-marked, in that the verb agrees with one actant, and up to two can be distinguished by postpositional particles.

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reconstruction and to the establishment of genetic connections. The latter, since it is based on demonstrably conservative areas of grammar, may offer historical linguistics a tool we so far lack: a criterion for NoN-relatedness at any recoverable time depth (and the principle may extend the recoverable time depth beyond that available now to standard comparison). In ?4.4, I present some facts about geographical distribution of types that may have significance for the study of prehistoric movements of languages and peoples.

4.1. MIGRATION OF AFFIXES may be classified into the types described below. 4.11. HEADWARD MIGRATION. If any adposition or piece of affixal mor-

phology moves, it will go from the dependent to the head of the constituent, not vice versa. An example is the attachment of the English infinitival marker to onto the main verb, producing wanna, gonna, oughta etc. Another is the development of the split infinitive in English, where infinitival to separates from the infinitive and migrates to the head word, bypassing preposed modifiers of the infinitive, as in I hope to really understand your paper this time. Another is the frequent change of nominal adpositions to verbal affixes. This process is described for IE preverbs by Kurylowicz (1964, Ch. 7) and Ivanov (1965:219 ff.) The same process is visible today in Chechen:

(61) 'Put some sugar in your tea.' a. caj-na MCu s<iekar Htasa.

tea-DAT in sugar. NOM sprinkle. IMPER b. caj-na siekar Mcu-Htasa.

tea-DAT sugar.NOM in-sprinkle.IMPER

Here the postposition cu governs the dative (as postpositions regularly do in Chechen). In 61b, it is a preverb, and its former object has now become a second object of the verb (in the dative, as are most second objects). Both constructions are possible in all possible word orders. In closely related Ingush, the pattern of 61b is apparently preferred; it is often lexicalized (and hence obligatory). In the isolated Jordan dialect and in more distantly related Batsbi, the pattern of 61a is preferred. Based on this distribution (and on the etymology and inflectional class of this word), we can reconstruct only the postpositional function of 61a for the proto-language; 61b is thus innovative, and the migration has indeed been from dependent noun to head verb. This example is a particularly strong demonstration of the universality of headward migration, since Chechen and Ingush are among the world's most consistently dependent-marking languages.

An analogous example comes from Abkhaz, a consistently head-marking language (Hewitt, 114):

(62) 'I hit him with a/the hammer.' a. a-zah0a M{-la / a-la} sd-yd-Hsd-yt.

the-hammer with it-with I-him-hit-FINITE b. a-zahta s- a + la-y-sa yt.

the-hammer I-it + with-him-hit-FINITE

In 62a, the meaning 'with' is conveyed by a suffix or adposition on the noun

84


'hammer'; in 62b there is no mark on the noun, and 'with' is marked on the verb. Ex. 62b is the neutral variant, preferred except in specific circumstances.

Sapir (1915:548-9) gives an explicit diachronic interpretation of the same development in Athabaskan. Hupa xa 'after' functions both as a verbal prefix and as a nominal postposition:18

(63) 0-Mxa-n-Hthe: 'look for it!' it-after-you-search

(64) no-Mxa: '[following] after us' us-after

Sapir's interpretation is that removal of the postposition-marked object causes the postposition to become a verbal prefix. My interpretation differs from his only in claiming that we do not need to posit the removal of the object in order to justify the shift of the postposition to a verbal prefix: as in Chechen-Ingush, Indo-European, and Abkhaz, the postposition could have migrated to the verb while its object was present.

It is important to make clear that such instances of migration are not simply linear resegmentations, and not simply changes in boundary types. Although adjacency of the constituents may be among the conditions favoring migration (as it appears to be for some Chechen speakers), it is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for migration (and all possible word-order variants of 61a-b can be elicited). Migration is motivated by, and statable in terms of, syntactic relations and morphological categories, not linear order. Evidence that adjacency is not required comes from the floating of quantifiers and delimiters in English, where the floated word jumps over intervening words:

(65) I work at home only in the evening. (66) I only work at home in the evening.

Another good example is the Abkhaz pair above (62a-b), where the instrumental element jumps over a verbal prefix when it migrates. Clear evidence that syntactic relations constrain migration comes from the development of bound pronominal forms in the languages of Australia (Dixon 1980:362 ff.) That some of the Australian languages have only subject clitics, while others have both subject and object clitics (363, 368), shows that syntactic relations condition cliticization and/or migration.

If linear order were the primary conditioning factor for migration-i.e., if migration were just a shift in boundary types-then we would expect that affix order would regularly follow word order, or reflect earlier word order. That it does not mechanically do so has been argued by Langdon 1977 and Comrie (1981:209 ff.) What is now needed is a positive understanding of the mechanics and motivation of the processes which turn words into affixes. One principle has been given here: dependents (or parts of them) become affixes on heads. A complete account of the causation must also establish hierarchies of syntactic relations, pronominal categories, semantic functions, lexical classes etc. which

18 Vowels have been rephonemicized and interlinears added in these examples, with help from Victor Golla.

85


favor migration. Such work will require close knowledge of etymology for the languages concerned.

4.12. MIGRATION AWAY FROM THE DEPENDENT. Sometimes the marker of a syntactic relation leaves the dependent, but does not attach to the head; instead, it assumes a position determined by clause boundaries and/or stress. An example is the English split subject infinitive, as in To really answer your question would take a lot more time, where to has broken away from answer and is clause-initial. Another example may be archaic English postverbal quantifiers, as in They seem both very obstinate (Jespersen 1961:595), where both has broken away from they. (In modern They both seem very obstinate or We have all come, the quantifier has migrated to the head; Shakespeare's both they and Swift's both which, cited by Poutsma 1916:1063, preserve the early order with no floating.) Such examples show that headward migration can be broken down into two steps: migration away from the dependent, and migration to the head. All migrating affixes undergo the first step; some (apparently most) also undergo the second step. It is important to emphasize that movement in the opposite direction-away from the head and toward the dependent-seems never to occur.

4.13. REDUCTION. Migration can account only for movement of affixal morphemes and other grammaticalized elements. It does not account for another major source of affixes: the reduction of whole words to affixes via cliticization. Such reduced elements have the same two repositioning possibilities as migrating affixes. Sometimes they change from dependents to markers on heads, as when pronominal cliticization in the Romance languages changes subjects and objects into clitics on verbs. (This is not the same thing as headward migration, because the entire dependent-not just its marker-gravitates to the head.) Sometimes, rather than becoming markers on heads, clitics become free atonic elements whose position is determined not by syntactic relations (and hence not by headedness) but by prosody and clause boundaries. An example is provided by the second-position clitics of South and West Slavic,19 e.g., in Serbo-Croatian:

(67) Jovan mu gaje dao juce. J. to.him it TNS gave yesterday

'Jovan gave it to him yesterday.' The clitics mu, ga, andje are no longer dependents; but neither are they markers on heads.

Another source of affixes is the reduction of heads themselves, whereby they become markers on dependents. A common example is the change of postpositions into case suffixes-a process endemic among the languages of northern Eurasia (Oinas 1961 discusses some Uralic examples). Another is the evolution of auxiliary verbs into affixes on the main verb, attested in many

19 The clitic elements of these languages also include some non-pronominal elements, e.g. former auxiliary verbs which have become tense markers. Thus the clitic string includes exactly the categories we expect to find marked on verbs: indexing of some actant properties and tense/aspect categories.

86


families. Another is the boundary shift visible in etymologically transparent subordinating conjunctions, e.g. Russian potomu cto 'because', derived from po 'by, because of, according to' + tomu 'that' (dative, the case governed by po) + the subordinating conjunction cto 'that'. The boundary shift is:

(68) [NP VP po tomu [cto S]] '... because of the fact that S' (69) [NP VP [po tomu cto S]] '... because S'

In 68, we have a clause subordinated with cto and dependent on po tomu 'because of the fact' in the main clause. In 69, the left boundary of the subordinate clause has moved, so that po tomu is now in the subordinate clause, and has become part of an etymologically complex subordinating conjunction.

4.14. IMPLICATIONS FOR LINGUISTIC DIACHRONY. The reduction of words to affixes via cliticization is analogous to headward migration of affixes, in that it involves a progression from dependent to head: the cliticized dependent becomes a marker on a head. The reduction of clitics to free atonic elements (e.g. second-position clitics) may well be a transitional stage to the reduction of words to affixes. (Sometimes the clitic string itself develops into an auxiliary, which is the new clause head. This process is characteristic of Uto-Aztecan; see Steele.)

The reduction of heads to markers on their former dependents, however, reverses the principle of headward migration. Hence it shows that grammatical restructuring because of cliticization of words is subject to fewer constraints than is migration of elements already below the word level: the latter, but not the former, is restricted to headward movement. Reduction of heads is the only process, among those surveyed here, that arguably results from morpheme- boundary shifts. This suggests that reversal of the headward-migration principle can occur only because of boundary shifts, which in turn suggests that it would be fruitful to seek constraints on such changes in the form of restrictions to certain constituent or boundary types. One obvious hypothesis is that boundary shifts will be commonest at the levels which, as shown in ?3.3, inherently favor dependent-marking.

The principle of headward migration is of obvious relevance to the study of mechanisms of change: it reduces instances of morphological migration to a single principle, and states a constraint on possible changes. It is also of relevance to historical linguistics: it gives us some constraints on reconstruction and a potential criterion for cognacy. It entails that pieces of verbal morphology may go back etymologically to elements of nominal morphology, but not vice versa.20 It also means that, if a piece of verbal morphology in one language is

20 Let us assume that the head-to-dependent progression found in the reduction of postpositions to case suffixes, and of auxiliary verbs to verbal affixes, is restricted to certain kinds of constituents. Then it may well be that verbs never directly become elements of nominal morphology (although they may do so indirectly, by first turning into adpositions and then into case affixes). If this is correct, we can restate the principle in a much more general form (although, to be of use, it requires etymological knowledge for the language being investigated): pieces of verbal morphology may go back etymologically to nouns, pronouns, or parts of either, but never vice versa-unless there has been an intermediate change in part of speech.

87


clearly cognate to a piece of nominal morphology in another, we will reconstruct the nominal function for the proto-language-in the absence of compelling evidence to the contrary. Note that this principle, like the extension of the first one suggested in fn. 20, requires fairly specialized knowledge of etymology.

4.2. EVOLUTION. The principle of headward migration entails that head- marked patterns will have more possible historical sources than dependent-marked ones. New dependent-marking patterns can arise only through boundary shifting. As shown in ?4.1, this means that dependent-marking patterns can arise only through clisis of previously independent words. Of course, pre-existent dependent-marking morphology may spread because of analogical extension; but there seem to be no other sources of entirely new dependent- marking morphology.

Head-marking patterns, in contrast, have many possible sources-e.g., headward migration of morphemes; clisis of independent words, such as subject and object pronominals; fusion of clitics into an auxiliary that heads the clause; and boundary shifting, as when auxiliaries become affixes of the main verbs that formerly depended on them. (Most examples of the latter type involve purely verb-internal inflection for tense/aspect categories, and are not of interest here; but in at least some instances-e.g. affixation of auxiliaries in a number of North Caucasian languages-the auxiliary imposes its valence, and hence its agreement pattern, on the whole clause.) There is another sense in which head-marking patterns have more sources than do dependent-marking patterns: since any constituent has only one head, but potentially has more than one dependent, a head receiving affixes through migration or clisis can receive them from more than one source.

These observations have implications for the evolution of linguistic types. They suggest that head-marking languages have many possible typological sources, which seems to be true: they may arise as isolating languages become agglutinating, and pronouns are cliticized to verbs (as has apparently occurred in some branches of Otomanguean); or they may develop from dependent- marking languages, through migration and clisis (as Oregon Penutian may have developed from a California Penutian model; see Silverstein 1979). Polysyn- thetic languages can develop from languages of a more moderate head-marking type as additional elements migrate to the verb. Split and double-marking systems can give rise to polar head-marking systems through erosion or migration of the dependent-marking affixes.

Dependent-marking languages, in contrast, evolve only through extensive use of boundary shifting-particularly within NP's, so that the adposition becomes an affix on its former dependent. Such boundary shifting is greatly favored by consistent, polar word-order types, where heads consistently precede dependents or vice versa. This is because if, at the NP level, the adposition (head) and any modifiers (dependents) are on opposite sides of the noun, there is little obstacle to boundary reduction, and to interpretation of the adposition as an affix or clitic. But if the word order is inconsistent-so that the sequence of elements in a PP is PREPOSITION + MODIFIER -+- NOUN, or NOUN + MODIFIER

88


+ POSTPOSITION-then the use of PP's with modifiers blocks analysis of word boundaries as morpheme boundaries.

An example of increased dependent-marking through boundary shifting is found in the Uralic family, whose western members gradually change their type from double-marking to dependent-marking-partly by restricting or losing possessive affilxes, and partly by adding to the inherited case inventory through accretion of postpositions (see Oinas for examples of the latter process). Ac- cretion of postpositions is favored by the rigid modifier-head order of Uralic.

The evolutionary patterns provide one more methodological principle for historical linguistics: in the event that we have two clearly related languages with clearly cognate morphology, one of them strongly head-marking and one strongly dependent-marking, we should reconstruct the dependent-marking type. (For non-cognate morphology, of course, this principle does not apply.)

4.3. STABILITY OF TYPES. Morphological marking type is a conservative, stable feature in languages-as shown by the absence of radical changes within known genetic units, and by the remarkable consistency in marking type exhibited by families of great time depth and wide geographical spread. The Mayan, Athabaskan, Wakashan, Salishan, Iroquoian, Siouan, and Algonkian families are consistently head-marking; California Penutian, Northeast Cau- casian, Indo-European, and Dravidian are consistently dependent-marking. Indo-European has retained its basic type-dependent-marked with subject inflection on verbs, short type 4 and full type 7 for languages preserving the inherited morphology-for some 6,000 years, with only a recent trend toward head-marked clauses in the pronominal clisis of the Romance languages (a process which occurs only after most of the morphology has been lost). The Bantu split pattern of head-marked clauses and dependent-marked phrases is consistent throughout the family. Some of these families have undergone considerable change in other typological features, such as word order; this indicates that patterns of morphological marking are more stable than word-order patterns.

That these patterns reflect a general truth can be shown statistically. For this demonstration, I use a second sample of languages, the GENETIC SAMPLE, shown in Table 8 (overleaf). This sample contains 86 languages, chosen for different purposes than the core sample of 60 languages. The genetic sample is intended to be representative of known and probable genetic groupings, and at the same time to be representative of the numerical types established on the basis of the core sample. It comprises 15 families, with member languages chosen so as to cover the major genetic branches within families, to include a minimum of three languages per family (for the core sample, three languages per family is the maximum), and to cover any known typological or geographical diversity within families.2' (Availability of grammatical descriptions sometimes restricts these ideals.) The genetic sample includes 28 languages of the dependent-mark-

21 Typological diversity was deliberately sought out, since it is damaging to the hypothesis that genetic groups show relatively little internal diversity.

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SHORT

TYPE

Afro-Asiatic Semitic:

Amharic Arabic Hebrew Ge'ez

Nilo-Saharan: Nera

Cushitic: Beja

Omotic: Dizi

Algic Algonkian:

Blackfoot Cree

Ritwan: Wiyot Yurok

Altaic Mongolian:

Buryat Kalmyk Mongol

Turkic: Nogai Turkish Tuva Yakut

Tungusic: Evenki Nanai

Athabaskan Chasta Costa Hupa Navajo Mattole

Australian Pama-Nyungan:

Dyirbal Uradhi Yukulta

Non-Pama-Nyungan: Mangarayi Warndarang Ngandi Gunwinggu

TABLE 8. Typological diff

* Full totals not shown ** Wakashan 1 based o

Kwakwala in Levine 1977

2 -1 -1

0

MEAN STANDARD

DEVIATION

.3 1.3 0 1.4

FULL

TYPE

3 0 1

-1

2

MEAN STANDARD

DEVIATION

.85 1.6 0 1.7

3

0

0

0

-5.3 0.5

2.1 3.1 5.7 1.2

1.3 1.5

-6.3 .6

0 -4.8 0.5

-5 -5

-5 -4

3 3 5

2 2 2

-1

0

-4 -4 -5 -4

5 5 3

-5 -5

1.8 1.9 3.7 1.2

1.2 1.5

-4.3

-5 -6

5 5 7

2 2 2

-1

-l -2

.5

1.0 3.1 4.3 1.2

-6 -7 -6

5.3 1.2 6 6 4

.3 2.4 3 4

-3 *

0 1

'erentiation within language families and comparison groups (based on short and full type numbers)

for languages lacking adpositions. n analysis of Kwakwala in Boas 1947; Wakashan 2 based on analysis of

90


Maung Malak-Malak Tiwi Djingili

Hokan Washo Shasta Karok Barbareno Diegueho Eastern Porno

Indo-European English French (coll.) German Greek Latin Russian

Mayan Jacaltec Sacapultec Tzutujil Yucatec

NE Caucasian Nakh:

Chechen-Ingush Batsbi

Daghestanian: Kubachi Tabassaran Karati

NW Caucasian Abkhaz Adyghe Ubykh

Oceanic Polynesian:

Hawaiian Samoan Futuna-Aniwa

North Hebridean: Rotuman Nguna

Penutian California:

Maidu S.Sierra Miwok Patwin Yawelmani

Oregon: Klamath

SHORT MEAN STANDARD FULL MEAN STANDARD TYPE DEVIATION TYPE DEVIATION

-2 -1 -3

3

-4 0

-4 -4 -2

4

1

4 4 4

4

-4 -4 -4

4

4

3 4 4

-5

-2 -5

4 4 3

-1.6 3.2

3.0 1.6

-4.0

-6

-6 -5

*

4

2

7 7 7 7

0

3.6 .5

3.3 .6

-4.0 1.7

3.2 .8 3.7 .6

-2.6 4.9

5.3 2.6

-5.8 -5 -6 -6 -6 ?

7 7

6 5

7

-7 -2 -7

4 5 4

3 2

4 2

2.3 3.2 3.5 1.7

4 1 4 5

4

5 ? 2 ? 7 8

1.0 4.1

.5

6.4 .9

6.0 1.0

-5.3 2.9

3.8 1.1 4.0 0

4.0 4.1 5.6 2.6

2.5 5.3 7


91


SHORT

TYPE

2 3

-5

-4

-3 -2 -5

Nez Perce NW Sahaptin Wishram

Salishan Bella Coola

Coast: Squamish Halkomelem Tillamook

Tsamosan: Upper Chehalis

Interior: Shuswap Coeur d'Alene

Uralic Finno-Ugric:

Cheremis Finnish Komi

Samoyed: Yurak

Wakashan 1** 2**

Nootkan: Nootka Makah

Kwakiutlan: Kwakwala 1** Kwakwala 2**

MEAN STANDARD DEVIATION

-3.6 1.0

-3.3 1.5

-4

FULL

TYPE

3 5

-5

MEAN STANDARD DEVIATION

-3.2 1.6

-1 -2

-5

-4 -4

-3 -4

2.0 .8 2.3 .6

2 3 2

-3.7 -2.7

1 6 3

.6 1.5

-3 -4

-4 -1

9

2.8 2.4 3.3 2.5

-5.0 1.0 -3.7 1.5

-4 -5

-6 -2

Two non-genetic groupings, for comparison: Caucasus:

Abkhaz -5 Adyghe -2 Ubykh -5 Georgian 2 Chechen-Ingush 4 Batsbi 4 Kubachi 3 Tabassaran 3 Karati

North Eurasian isolates: Japanese Basque Burushaski

3.8 6.0 -7 -2 -7

5 7 7 6 5 7 4

2.9 5 2 2

4.7 6 4 4


ing type (types 5 to 3), 29 of the double-marking and split types (2 to -2), and 29 of the head-marking type (-3 to -5) on the short scale; for the full scale, the figures are 26 (types 8 to 4), 25 (types 3 to -3), and 23 (types -4 to -8). (The total for the full scale is only 74, because full types could not be determined

92

1


for all languages.) The genetic sample includes some families within larger groups (e.g. Semitic within Afro-Asiatic), and some groups whose genetic affiliation is supported by some specialists but not proven (Afro-Asiatic, Altaic, Hokan, Penutian, Australian).22 Table 8 shows standard deviations of the type numbers within each group.23 (Standard deviations were not computed for subgroups containing fewer than three members.)24

Table 9 (overleaf) shows the rank order of the standard deviations of the type values. The range is from 0 to 4.1 on the short scale, with a median of 1.3 and a mean of 1.7; and from 0 to 4.6 on the full scale, with a median of 1.7 and a mean of 2.0. (The range is greater for the full scale, and the mean and median higher, because it spans 17 types, while the short scale comprises only 11.) Table 9 also shows the range, mean, and median of 20 randomizations of the genetic sample for the short scale, and 10 randomizations for the full scale. For both scales, the mean and median standard deviations among genetic groupings are much lower than those for random samples. The median for random samples in both instances coincides with the over-all standard deviation within the core sample. Both means and medians for the random samples are at or near the extreme upper range of the genetic groupings. The mean and median values differ very little among the randomizations: the medians on the short scale range from 3.15 to 3.65, and the means from 2.9 to 3.4. A chi-square test showed that the difference between the median values of the genetic and random groupings is highly significant at a level much better than 0.0001.

Further evidence supporting the hypothesis of stability within genetic groups

22 Dixon (1980:225) is confident of the genetic unity of all the non-Pama-Nyungan (and for that matter all Australian) languages except for Tiwi and Djingili (included in Table 8), which seem to lack the essential Australian cognate base. If these two languages are excluded from the non-Pama- Nyungan sample, the standard deviation becomes negligibly smaller (2.2); the range is unaffected. It is interesting that these languages are typologically quite dissimilar, and their types represent the extremes (short types 3 and -3) to be found within non-Pama-Nyungan.

23 For computing standard deviations, type numbers were converted to positive integers (ranging from 0 to 10 for the short scale, 0 to 16 for the full scale).

24 Under Wakashan, note that Kwakwala can be described in two ways, depending on whether the analysis is done before or after cliticization applies. If the analysis follows cliticization, surface strings are characterized by 'the subordination of the noun under the verb by means of particles which coalesce phonetically with the preceding word, while they determine the function of the following word' (Boas 1947:206). This means that nouns lose their relation-marking particles; hence clause relations are not dependent-marked, and the verb (normally sentence-initial) can carry the particle markers of two noun relations. On this analysis, the clause is mostly head-marked, and the language belongs to short type -4. If the analysis is done on uncliticized strings, then the relation-marking particles accompany their nouns; the verb takes only one agreement marker, the clause is mostly dependent-marked, and the language is of short type - 1. This analysis is used by Levine. These two values for Kwakwala-and hence for Wakashan-are included in the sample because the difference between the two analyses was the greatest such variance encountered for any language in either the core sample or the genetic sample; the difference between the two entries thus serves as a sort of plausibility check on the entire procedure. Even if all genetic groupings showed standard deviations of .9 higher than their actual values (corresponding to the difference between Wakashan 1 and Wakashan 2, produced by including two values for Kwakwala), the mean and median values for genetic groupings would still be significantly lower than those of randomized groupings.

93


SHORT SCALE

GENETIC GROUPINGS

o *Chumashan Mayan

0.5 ALGIC Athabaskan

*NE Caucasian 0.6 *Daghestanian

*Polynesian *Finno-Ugric Wakashan 1

0.8 Uralic Oceanic

1.0 Salishan 1.2 *Mongolian

*Pama-Nyungan 1.3 AFRO-ASIATIC 1.4 *Semitic 1.5 *Turikic

*Coast Salish Wakashan 2

1.6 Indo-European 1.7 NW Caucasian

*California Penutian 1.9 ALTAIC 2.4 *Non-Pama-Nyungan 2.9

3.1 3.2

NON-GENETIC GROUPINGS

Median for genetic sample Mean for genetic sample

North Eurasian isolates AUSTRALIAN HOKAN PENUTIAN

3.4

3.7

4.1

5.8

*Oregon Penutian

Mean for random samples Median for random samples; over-all

for core sample Caucasus

Highest value among random samples

TABLE 9. Standard deviation in type, in rank order

Capitals indicate higher-order families (phyla etc.); the asterisk marks families included in larger groups also listed here.

comes from the ordering of the non-random entries on Table 9. The non-genetic groupings of North Eurasian isolates and languages of the Caucasus have values in the vicinity of the highest values for genetic groups; on the full scale, both non-genetic groups have higher standard deviations than any genetic group. Of the six groups whose genetic status is still unsettled-Penutian, Oregon Pen- utian, Australian, non-Pama-Nyungan (Australian), Altaic, and Hokan-all have higher values than any other group; and the four most controversial groups (Oregon Penutian, Penutian, Hokan, and Australian) have values substantially higher than those of any other groups. (Australian and hence non-Pama-Nyun-

94


FULL SCALE

GENETIC GROUPINGS

0 *Chumashan ALGIC

0.5 Mayan 0.6 Athabaskan

0.9 NE Caucasian 1.0 Wakashan 1

*Daghestanian 1.1 Oceanic 1.2 *Pama-Nyungan

*Mongolian 1.5 Wakashan

*Turkic 1.6 AFROASIATIC

Salishan 1.7 *Semitic

1.8

2.4 Uralic 2.5 *Finno-Ugric 2.6 Indo-European

*California Penutian

2.9 NW Caucasian Quechuan

3.1 ALTAIC

4.1 PENUTIAN

4.4 4.6 4.7 4.9

5.3

6.0

7.5

NON-GENETIC GROUPINGS

Lowest value among random samples

Median for genetic groups

Mean for genetic groups

Median for random samples

Mean for random samples Overall for core sample

North Eurasian isolates HOKAN

*Oregon Penutian

Caucasus

Highest value among random samples


gan are not included on the full scale because they lack adpositions, and their full totals could not be calculated.)

Comparing standard deviations of types is an extremely gross index of relatedness. What is shared by demonstrably related languages is not numbers, but particular configurations of the D and H values shown in Table 3. Thus the Bantu family is remarkably consistent in showing head-marked clauses and dependent-marked phrases; the Uralic family is remarkably consistent in its pattern of head-marked phrases with pronoun dependents, and dependent- marked phrases with noun dependents; and the languages of Australia share certain agreement patterns which have the effect of unifying their types, as will be discussed below. The figures in Tables 8-9 should not be taken to mean

95


that shared type numbers prove genetic connection; they merely show that over-all types are conservative and stable, in that non-genetic groups diverge more in type than do genetic groups.

Instances of documented or inferable substantial change within families are found only in families of considerable time depth. The changes involved are almost never radical, and are based on the diachronic principles established in ?4.1. Some families have no variation at all in type; several have a range of only two or three points on the type continuum. Afro-Asiatic is a particularly compelling example, with a range of only four (short scale) or five (full scale) points despite its great age (over 8,000 years). Indo-European has a range of seven points on the full scale-a discrepancy achieved by losing most of the morphology (as in English), and then by increasing head-marked patterns at the clause level through cliticization of pronominal subjects and objects (as in colloquial French and in Spanish). Another family with a wide range is Uralic: here types 1 and 2 of the more eastern and northern languages (the Samoyed branch, represented in the sample by Yurak, and the Permian branch, represented by Komi) are conservative: Finnish and other western languages have achieved a strongly dependent-marked type (6 for Finnish) by losing object agreement markers and possessive affixes (which were word-final and hence susceptible to erosion).25

Altaic has a range comparable to that of Uralic or Indo-European; its genetic unity is widely (but not universally) accepted. Of the Altaic groups, Turkic and Tungusic have cases, possessive affixes (used on nouns and postpositions), and verbal agreement with the subject. The over-all effect is double-marking, but Turkish increases the dependent-marking patterns by using possessive affixes more and the genitive case less. The Mongolian family makes little or no use of possessive affixes, and some of the languages also lack verbal agreement; hence these languages are strongly dependent-marking. Since the possessive affixes of Turkic and Tungusic are clearly cognate to independent pronouns, the rise of the double-marking type in these groups can be attributed to cliticization of pronouns.26

25 In Turkic and in some of Uralic (under Turkic influence), nominal possessive suffixes precede case suffixes. In Proto-Uralic, the opposite order was used: possessive suffixes were word-final. (The history of the Uralic change is described in Nichols 1973, and independently in Comrie 1980.) Word-final position would seem the most appropriate for an agreement marker. The Turkic order, and the innovative order in Uralic, suggest that the possessive marker functions as a semantic component of the noun, rather than as an agreement marker. In other words, it is treated as having originated with the noun, instead of being put on the noun by an agreement rule marking the relation to the dependent nominal. It has thus acquired the status of something other than a strictly head- marking affix. This means that Turkic and Turkic-influenced Uralic languages are not actually as strongly head-marking as the numbers would indicate.

26 Possessive suffixes precede case suffixes in Turkic, but follow them in Tungusic; this suggests that cliticization of pronouns took place at different times, or developed by different means in the two families. It also shows that Turkic morphology cannot be derived straightforwardly from cliticization onto a Mongolian-type base, in that Mongolian cannot detach its case suffixes and insert clitics before them (see again fn. 25).

96


Another group whose genetic status is in doubt is Australian, whose range is nine points on the short scale. All the Pama-Nyungan languages use cases, and are strongly dependent-marked. Some of them cliticize pronouns to the verb and thus exhibit double-marked clauses; e.g. Western Desert (Dixon 1980:362):

(70) Hpu-ngku-Mrna-Mnta. hit-FUT- lsg. SUBJ-2sg.OBJ

'I will hit you.' Phrases in the Pama-Nyungan languages are dependent-marked. The non-

Pama-Nyungan languages all use verbal cross-reference; some of them have possessive affixes for inalienable possession, and some lack core cases. How- ever, none achieves a consistently head-marking character-partly because of the use of cases in some languages, and partly because of the use of agreement (in gender class, number, and/or case) of modifiers, both attributives and pos- sessors, with head nouns. This use of phrase-level agreement throughout Aus- tralia is thus a strong contributor to typological uniformity: except for phrasal agreement, some of the double-marking non-Pama-Nyungan languages might be radically head-marking. (Implementation of phrase-level dependent-marking in the form of gender agreement gives the non-Pama-Nyungan languages an over-all type similar to that of the Bantu languages-as Capell 1965 points out, using different terms.)

All the internal diversities discussed so far involve shifting between a polar and a non-polar type, or simply accentuation of one or the other marking pattern within a general type. Radical changes from one polar type to another are represented by only two examples; in both of them, the genetic status is problematical. (Were it not for the moderating influence of NP-level agreement, the Australian languages just discussed would be a third example.) The first example is the Hokan family, within which the dependent-marking Pomoan group is sharply divergent from its double-marking and head-marking kin; but the genetic unity of Hokan is debated (Langdon 1979, 1982 finds support for genetic unity). The second group is Penutian. The Oregon Penutian groups have become head-marking and double-marking through transparently secondary clisis, notably of pronominal elements, onto the verb (Silverstein 1979), thus diverging radically from the strongly dependent-marking type of California Pen- utian; but Penutian is another group whose genetic status is far from certain. The Penutian and Oregon Penutian groups show extremely high standard deviations on Table 9. These figures result from the inclusion of Wishram, a completely head-marking language, as a representative of the coastal Oregon languages (Coos-Alsea-Siuslaw; Takelma-Kalapuya; and Chinookan, including Wishram) whose connection to Penutian is controversial (as is their internal connection).

If Australian, Hokan, and Penutian are indeed families, then they evidently represent the time depth and areal disparity at which the conservative nature of morphological marking-type ceases to be visible, and work on their prehis- tories can give us information on the rate and mechanisms of change in type.

97


Areal distribution further testifies to the stability and conservatism of morphological marking type. At least one linguistic area is marked by intensive convergence, but a radical opposition of types: this is the North Caucasus, where phonological convergence, massive lexical borrowing, and shared grammatical features (such as ergativity and word-order type), plus near-identity of material culture and folklore, unite the strongly head-marking Northwest Cau- casian and strongly dependent-marking Northeast and North Central Caucasian groups. Table 9 shows that the diversity of morphological marking types within the Caucasus is greater than that within any other non-random grouping on the full scale-second only to Oregon Penutian on the short scale, and above the mean and median for random samples on both scales.

There are several linguistic areas where morphological marking type is also shared: Meso-America and the Pacific Northwest are head-marking, while India and Europe are dependent-marking. Areal influence on marking type is further demonstrated by the fact that almost all the changes in type mentioned above, and both the candidates for radical changes, involve accommodation to areal patterns. The western Uralic languages assimilate to the neighboring European type, while eastern Uralic languages remain double-marking like their Siberian neighbors; the Hokan subgroup Pomoan assimilates to the dependent-marking type of adjacent California Penutian and of Yukian (a small isolate family); the Oregon Penutian language Wishram converges with the polysynthetic Northwest Coast type represented by the Salishan and Wakashan families.

Such examples show that morphological marking type figures as implicans in statements about propensity to yield to areal influence: if the marking type converges, then phonological, lexical, syntactic, and cultural sharings also occur; but the converse is not true, as shown by the crucial example of the Caucasus. The obvious interpretation of this implicational relation is that the areal influence required to produce shared types must be both intense and long- term.

The resistance of morphological marking type to change has four implications for historical linguistics. First, marking type may be useful as a negative criterion for relatedness. Since it is stable in language families as old as Uralic, Indo-European, and Afro-Asiatic-whose time depth is at or near the maximum accessible to the comparative method-we are probably justified in assuming that languages of radically different types are either absolutely unrelated, or else not related at least up to a time depth significantly greater than that afforded by standard comparative procedures. Hokan and Penutian-which exhibit radical internal differences in morphological marking type, give some evidence of relatedness, yet defy firm genetic classification based on standard criteria- suggest that languages whose marking types are polar opposites, though they may actually stem from a single ancestor, cannot be proven related by currently available methods.

Second, it may be that morphological marking type can also provide us with a negative criterion for deciding areal questions and questions of migration. It is likely that a sharp discontinuity in type bespeaks a relatively recent migration,

98


and that the divergent types have been adjacent for less time than was required for the typological differentiation of Hokan or Penutian. We need not assume a uniform rate of change in order to use this criterion as a rule of thumb. Supporting evidence comes from Whistler 1977, who argues that the (dependent-marking) California Penutian languages are intrusive into California, where the indigenous languages were mostly Hokan (and hence head-marking and double-marking). This criterion suggests that the typological rift in the North Caucasus results from intrusion of one of the two groups into the other- although, of course, it alone cannot tell us which group was indigenous and which intrusive.

Third, even where morphological marking type may be of use as a positive criterion-e.g., in judging the intensity and/or time depth of areal interaction- it has no value unless we have independent evidence for typological change. For instance, the consistently head-marked character of those Athabaskan languages spoken on the Pacific coast cannot be taken as evidence for the duration or intensity of Athabaskan participation in the head-marking Pacific Northwest convergence area, since the entire Athabaskan family is consistently head- marking (and most members are distant from the coast).

Fourth, morphological marking type in itself can never be invoked as a positive criterion for genetic relatedness. It cannot, for instance, justify seeking a Proto-Japanese/Penutian/Northeast-Caucasian/Pama-Nyungan on the strength of shared dependent-marking tendencies, or a Proto-Northwest-Caucasian/Ath- abaskan/Mayan on the strength of shared head-marking tendencies. However, under the right combination of circumstances-geographical plausibility, areal considerations, and (most importantly) specific types and positions of affixation-typological similarity can be used profitably as a heuristic. Thus, Sil- verstein's refinement (1979) of Sapir's classification (1929) identifies ancient Penutian as a predominantly dependent-marking language with verbal suffixes of certain types; the means by which the proto-language may have increased its head-marking tendencies are the universals of change discussed in ?4.1. Establishing that Oregon Penutian can plausibly be traced back to a dependent- marking base does not in itself establish its genetic unity with California Pen- utian; but it tells the comparativist where to look for possible correspondences, and it removes a major obstacle-typological discrepancy-to positing genetic unity.

A similar example involves the two Australian groups: the mostly dependent- marking Pama-Nyungan languages, and the double-marking non-Pama-Nyun- gan languages. The differences between the groups center on cliticization of pronouns, with the consequent rise of head-marking verbal morphology, loss of core cases, and expansion of the head-marked treatment of inalienable possession. These differences involve universal changes: migration of clitics to heads, loss of morphological markers, and expansion of pre-existent patterns to more lexical items. They are also incremental or even gradual, in that they can be thought of as isoglosses in the form of head-marking tendencies emanating from the innovating northeast (the non-Pama-Nyungan area) and spreading through the conservative southwest (the Pama-Nyungan area). The

99


deep-seated typological affinities between the two groups support the findings of recent etymological scrutiny (Dixon 1980:382 ff.) This support does not amount to the use of marking type as a positive criterion for relatedness; rather, as with Penutian, the typological argument has the effect of removing an apparent typological discrepancy, and hence a major obstacle to positing genetic unity. Again we see that the typological argument is meaningful only when combined with etymological research of the type that requires a specialist.

4.4. GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION. The facts presented in this section pertain to both history and typology. Table 10 (overleaf) shows the distribution of types (based on the short scale) by continent or similar large-scale area.27 Dependent- marking languages are found in all areas. Most areas have a range of types covering about half the scale. Only Europe, America, and (to a lesser extent) Australia include both extremes.28 In Eurasia (and especially in Europe), dependent-marked patterns predominate. In America, and especially in North America, head-marking languages are commonest.29 Only in America, indeed, are the head-marking types predominant.30 In continental Asia, head-marked patterns become more frequent (and type numbers become lower) as we move either north or east, i.e. as we approach North America. The only exceptions to this generalization are Ket, spoken in the Ural Mountains-i.e. at the western border of Asia and hence maximally far from North America, yet predominantly head-marking-and Chukchi, spoken in Kamchatka, adjacent to North America, yet exhibiting many dependent-marked patterns.

It is interesting that, in Eurasia, the large, widespread families are dependent- marking; but the isolates, small families, and peripherally distributed languages have more head-marking tendencies, and hence type numbers near or in the negative part of the range. These include the Paleo-Siberian languages, a group of isolates and small families: Ket (type -3 on the full scale), Chukchi and its relatives (languages with double-marked clauses and a great deal of incorporation into heads), Yukagir (which has very little morphology, rather evenly split between head-marked and dependent-marked patterns), and Gilyak (largely isolating, though some sandhi follows a head-marked pattern). Other Eurasian isolates include Basque and Burushaski, both having verbal agreement with more than one actant. By contrast, in North America it is the head- marking languages that make up the large, widespread families, while the dependent-marking groups are found in peripheral and refuge areas.

In the history of Uralic, we can see evidence for the spread of the dominant Eurasian type. The loss of head-marking patterns and extension of dependent-

27 I put the boundary between Europe and Asia at the Ural Mountains (and a line extending

southward from them). The part of the Near East included with Africa is that portion lying south of northernmost Africa.

28 Since the Bantu languages cover most of Africa, the type entry for that family dominates the

continent. The Khoisan languages appear to be dependent-marking, while West African groups are nearly isolating.

29 The coverage of South America in this survey is particularly cursory, which leaves open the

possibility that head-marking languages may be equally frequent there. 30 The head-marking type is also frequent, at least on the clause level, in Papua New Guinea

(William Foley, p.c.)

100


marked ones in western Uralic languages results from the influence of the IE languages to the west. It indicates that Uralic came into this typological sphere of influence as a language with much more pronounced head-marking tendencies, and fewer dependent-marked patterns. Proto-Uralic would then have had affinities with the Paleo-Siberian and Eskimo-Aleut languages to the north and east. The type change within Uralic suggests that the peripheral location of head-marked and double-marked patterns in Eurasia results not from displace- ment of languages or peoples by dependent-marking languages or their speakers, but from the spread of broad areal tendencies-in the form of isoglosses which spread from a southern and western center, but did not extend all the way to the periphery. A similar spread of isoglosses in Australia was suggested in ?4.3 above.

4.5. CONCLUSIONS. So far, typology has had rather less to contribute to historical linguistics than might be wished. None of the presently available typological criteria can safely be invoked in an argument for genetic relatedness or non-relatedness, or for former contacts. This is because none of them has been designed with the goal of pinpointing diagnostically conservative features of languages.31 In contrast, the distinction of morphological marking patterns is a typological parameter chosen specifically because of its apparent stability, and its consequent potential contributions to historical linguistics. This section has shown how it can be used in arguments about genetic relatedness and areal contacts.

5. IMPLICATIONS FOR LINGUISTIC THEORY. There are several respects in which head-marking patterns appear to be favored and universally preferred.32 This section presents some concrete evidence for this status, some abstract properties which present further evidence for it, and some implications of these facts for theory. Some of the evidence comes from clause-level grammar, which (as shown in ?3) inherently favors head-marked patterns, relative to other levels of grammar. I argue that head-marked patterns are favored there, not only relative to other levels, but also absolutely; and that the same absolute preference is also shown at other levels of grammar.

31 The status of today's typology vis-a-vis historical linguistics is reviewed in Comrie 1981, Ch. 10. It is risky to use typology as an argument for genetic affiliation, or to use it in assessing the likelihood that a reconstruction is correct; it is unwise to assume immutability of types, to expect typological consistency of proto-languages, or to infer proto-word-order from morpheme order. The only positive contribution is the hope that the study of typology and universals may aid reconstruction, and explain developments in daughter languages, by providing a universal account of mechanisms of change. In other words, typology has almost nothing to contribute to reconstruction and the study of genetic connections, although it may one day have something to contribute to the study of mechanisms of change. The present paper argues, however, that typology has great potential for historical linguistics, particularly if historical linguistics has some say in the choice of typological parameters.

32 Throughout ?5, the terms 'favored' and 'preferred' are used in place of 'unmarked' to avoid the stylistic infelicity of 'the head-marked type is unmarked' etc. Only in ?5.11, ?5.23, and the final paragraph was it necessary to use 'unmarked', 'marked', and 'markedness'.

101

EUROPE AFRICA,

NEAR EAST

Japanese Mongol

Chechen- Ingush

German Greek Russian

*Karati

Batsbi Finnish

*Kubachi *Tabassaran

Georgian Basque Turkish

*Komi Nogai

Buryat Chukchi Kalmyk

Burushaski Yurak

*Tuva

Aleut Yurak

Evenki Nanai

Yakut

Amharic Nera

Beja Ge'ez

**Bantut

Arabic Hebrew

PACIFIC AUSTRALIA

Dyirbal Uradhi

Hawaiian Rotuman Samoan

*Futuna- Aniwa

Mangarayi Yukulta

*Djingili

*Nguna

*Gunwinggu

Ngandi

*Malak- Malak

*Maung Adyghe

N.AMERICA

*Yawelmani

Klamath Patwin

*Maidu

NW Sahaptin

Nez Perce

S .AMERICA, MESOAMERICA

> Imbabura Z

Quechua C

0 M C

X

0

S M

k) z ts M

Oo oo

*S.S.Miwok

Cochabamba Quechua

**Macuxi

*Kwakwala 2

Diegueno *Halkomelem

TYPE

5

4

3

2

0

-1

ASIA

1

-2 Ket

- 3 *Warndarang Nootka Tiwi Shuswap

Squamish - 4 Acoma Sacapultec

Karok Tzutujil Lakhota Jacaltec =

Wichita Yucatec *Mattole p *Hupa *Chasta Costa *Bella Coola 5 *Upper Chehalis *Coeur d'Alene *Makah Z *Kwakwala 1

-5 Abkhaz Blackfoot *Ubykh Chumash tT

Cree z Navajo E3 Wishram H Wiyot g

*Tillamook >

Continental mean (core sample): 1.9 1.7 .4 4 2.3 -2.4 -1

Continental mean (genetic and core samples): C 1.8 1.7 .3 3.4 1 -2.3 -1.7

TABLE 10. Continuum of types, by continent (based on short scale). * Languages not included in core sample. > ** Languages not included in either core or genetic sample. t The entry for Bantu is the type shown by most languages of this family.


5.1. CONCRETE EXAMPLES showing that head-marked patterns are favored include the following.

5.11. WORD ORDER. The facts about word order presented in ?3.4 show that the head-marked clause pattern favors verb-initial word order. Clauses of other types-dependent-marked, split, and double-marked, i.e. all the types having a strong dependent-marked component in their grammar-favor verb-final order.33 This distribution may be functionally motivated. But as a structural pattern, apart from functional motivation, it gives evidence for the favored character of head-marked grammar. One piece of evidence is the fact that the head-marking languages have the greatest freedom of choice as to word order: they can be either verb-initial or verb-final with equal ease. Non-head-marking languages are much less flexible as a class, and tend to be confined to the verb- final type. Another piece of evidence is the fact that the verb-initial order favored by the head-marked clause is a much less frequent order, cross-linguistically, than the verb-final type favored by the non-head-marked clause. These two pieces of evidence can be restated in terms of criteria for markedness and unmarkedness. The head-marking language type behaves like the unmarked category, in that it displays the greater frequency of formal variety (of word- order types); and it systematically includes a subtype (verb-initial word order) that is rare over-all, and particularly rare in non-head-marking languages. Non- head-marking languages behave like the marked category in that most of them exhibit neutralization of word-order types to a single possibility, SOV. (The word-order types themselves also fit criteria for markedness: the verb-final type is unmarked in that it has the widest range, and appears where we find the analog to neutralization; the verb-initial type is marked in that it appears only in restricted facilitating environments, namely in the unmarked morphological type of language.)

5.12. HEADWARD MIGRATION. As shown in ?4.1, affixal morphology can move in only one direction, from dependent to head; and cliticized words most often change from dependents to non-dependents, frequently becoming markers on heads. But a change from head to marker of dependent occurs only under restricted circumstances.

5.13. SOURCES. As shown in ?4.2, head-marked patterns have a greater number of possible sources than dependent-marked patterns.

5.14. SUBJECT-VERB AGREEMENT. As shown in ?3.1, many consistently dependent-marking languages exhibit verbal agreement with one or two arguments; but few consistently head-marking languages have an analogous dependent-marked pattern. This was shown graphically in the clustering on Figs. 1-2. (The reason that it is specifically verbal agreement which appears in otherwise dependent-marking languages is that verbal agreement is a clause-level pattern, and the clause level was shown in ?3.31 to favor head-marking.)

5.15. POLYSYNTHESIS. The amount of head-marked morphology that can be

33 This discussion ignores SVO order because I assume, from its distribution on Tables 5 and 6, that it can be seen as a contextual variant of verb-initial order, favored by dependent-marked morphology.

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concentrated in a single word seems virtually unlimited, to judge from the elaborate polysynthesis of languages like those of the American Northwest. Yet the relation-marking morphology of nouns is almost universally limited to a single case affix. The maximum seems to be two-as in certain Australian languages, where a case-marked noun can take a second case suffix, marking agreement with another noun in the sentence. Although some languages (e.g. the Eskimo, Algonkian, Siouan, and Iroquoian families) have morphologically complex nouns, most of this complexity can probably be relegated to word formation (especially nominalization of morphologically complex verbs); but the complexity of verbs in the same languages is arguably inflectional. Put more simply, if we confine ourselves strictly to inflection, many languages have polysynthetic verbs, but there are no polysynthetic nouns.

5.16. SIMPLIFICATION. There is evidence that simplification involves a relative increase of head-marked over dependent-marked patterns (although often an absolute decrease of all morphology), in comparison to the source language. Thus in Chinese pidgin Russian-and throughout the spectrum of broken and simplified Russian-relativization, subordination, and coordination are usually marked on the main rather than the dependent clause, in contrast to literary Russian usage (Nichols 1980). Similarly, English examples like 71 are simpler and more colloquial than 72 (= 38-39, above):

(71) MSince I overslept, HI was late.H (72) 1 overslept, M50 HI was late.H

Further evidence is the appearance in a number of pidgins and creoles of subject and object markers which either can be viewed as, or go back etymologically to, pronominal clitics which function as head-marked agreement or cross-referencing particles. For example, verbs in English-based Tok Pisin (Sankoff & Brown 1976, Smeall 1975) have a variable subject marker i- and an object marker -(i)m, which evidently go back to he and him.34 Although, in the contemporary creole, i- and -(i)m are not subject and object markers (for i, cf. Smeall), their etymologies demonstrate that simplification of English into ancestral Tok Pisin involved innovation of head-marking patterns by pronominal cliticization. In the ancestral pidgin, these forms marked the subject and object relations, and indicated the presence of subject and object; but they did not index their gender and number categories, as shown by the fact that neither of them is now restricted to masculine singular arguments.

A similar innovation of head-marked clause patterns is found in Krio, which is also English-based. Krio and Tok Pisin are especially strong evidence for a correlation of head-marking with simplification: the English source probably did not make systematic use of head-marked patterns, and pidginization hence involved innovating them. Less strong evidence comes from the French-based Caribbean creoles; these do not innovate, but simply preserve the subject and

34 Smeall argues that i- is not from Eng. he, but rather goes back to Melanesian subject agreement markers. The question is not crucial here: either etymological source yields a head-marked pattern, and hence supports my argument. I assume that Tok Pisin i- actually has a double etymology, reflecting both Eng. he and the Melanesian subject markers.

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object cliticization found in colloquial French. Generalizing over these creole examples, we can say that head-marked clause patterns will be retained, and may even be innovated, in pidginization. They may be lost-or their functions altered, as in Tok Pisin-with creolization, as the process of simplification is reversed, and complexity is added to a former pidgin.

5.17. CONCLUSIONS. The preceding paragraphs deal with the favored and disfavored status of morphological marking patterns, not of whole language- types. When we look at the status of language types, the opposite conclusion holds: dependent-marking languages are the most frequent (see Figs. 3-4) and have the widest geographical distribution (Table 10). Head-marking languages are the next most frequent, but have the narrowest geographical distribution; double-marking and split-marking languages are the least frequent, but have wide geographical distribution.

5.2. ABSTRACT GRAMMATICAL PROPERTIES. The preceding section gave evidence that head-marked patterns, although exotic from the IE perspective, are universally favored. This section will examine some of the abstract grammatical properties of head-marked and dependent-marked relations and will show that, in various ways, head-marked patterns increase the simplicity and efficiency of grammar.

5.21. RELATIONS WHICH ARE SUBCATEGORIZED BUT NOT GOVERNED. In what

follows, I use 'governed' to refer to dependents whose presence is required, and whose morphological form is determined, by their heads; and 'subcategorized' for those whose presence is required, but whose form is not determined by the head.

The examples in ?4.1 show migration of adpositions to verbs, where they figure as preverbs or similar affixes. Exx. 61-62 show a typical syntactic consequence of such migration. Before migration, the verb subcategorizes the PP but does govern it. I.e., the verb's semantics requires that phrase-which is typically the location of a stance or state verb, the goal of a motion verb (61a), the instrument of a verb that semantically requires an instrument (62a), or the like; the morphological marking of the PP is not assigned by the verb, but rather reflects the semantic role of the phrase. After migration, however, the now- adpositionless NP is an object; the verb governs that object, and the former adposition serves as a formal marker of the verb's valence on the verb.

Migration, then, has turned a non-governed actant into a governed one, thus increasing the verb's valence. Furthermore, the particular non-governed actant that has been removed is of a type-subcategorized but ungoverned location, goal, or instrument-which has caused numerous problems in grammatical analysis, because of its status midway between the governed arguments and the adjuncts. Of course, the anomaly in traditional grammar of relations which are subcategorized but ungoverned results most obviously from the inability of traditional grammar to distinguish subcategorization from government. But the cross-linguistic frequency with which migration converts exactly these relations into governed ones suggests that these relations are inherently unstable, and even disfavored.

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We thus have three hypotheses that warrant further testing: (a) subcategorized but ungoverned relations are unstable, perhaps disfavored; (b) polarization of nominal relations into governed and adverbial is favored; (c) decreasing the number of ungoverned relations in a clause is favored.35

5.22. SYNTACTIC BONDS. In head-marked grammatical relations, the dependent is usually an optional element of the constituent. For instance, in languages with consistently head-marked clauses, the verb itself normally constitutes a complete sentence; full NP's are included only for emphasis, focus, disambig- uation etc. Such languages are particularly prone to use zero anaphora.

In addition, in head-marked constructions the relation of the head to any overt dependents differs in character from that of a head to a dependent-marked dependent. The dependent in a head-marked constituent stands in a roughly appositive relation to the head (or, more precisely, to the coreferential marker on the head); the term 'government', developed in traditional grammar on the basis of exclusively dependent-marked relations (as is argued in ?5.3), is not appropriate for head-marked constituents. Since the appearance of Boas 1911, descriptions of American Indian languages have insisted that subject and object in these languages are in apposition to the pronominal markers on the verb, rather than (as in Indo-European) being syntactically governed by a verb which agrees with them.36 This position is systematized and placed in a structural framework by Milewski-who, relying on works like those in Boas 1911, claims that in head-marked clauses the verb is the only clause constituent. Since Bloomfield 1933, clause-level head-marked morphology has usually been de-

35 The changes surveyed here decrease the number of ungoverned relations and increase the number of governed ones. In principle, hypothesis (c) could also read:

(c') Increasing the number of governed relations in a clause is favored. This would predict that languages tend to add governed relations to their valence patterns-a contention which is rendered dubious by the existence of languages with a maximum of two valence places (and perhaps even one, to judge from Lushootseed). See again fn. 12.

36 For instance (Boas 1911:30): 'When, for instance, in Chinook, we find expressions like he her it with cut, man, woman, knife, meaning The man cut the woman with the knife, we may safely say that the nouns themselves appear without any trace of case relationship, merely as appositions to a number of pronouns.' The 'pronouns' are the pronominal elements on the verb; today we would represent the verb as he-her-it-with-cut. Note that 'case relationship' is treated as a syntactic relation in this passage. Boas regards possessive affixes (head-marked) on nouns as being in the same appositional relation to the possessor: 'In the same language [Chinook], the genitive relation is eliminated by substituting for it possessive expressions, like, for instance, the man, his house instead of the man's house.' For Boas, the appositional relation is a consequence of polysynthetic structure, which he defines as follows (62): 'in polysynthetic languages, a large number of distinct ideas are amalgamated by grammatical processes and form a single word, without any morphological distinction between the formal elements in the sentence and the contents of the sentence; and in the inflecting languages, on the other hand, a sharp distinction is made between formal elements and the material contents of the sentence, and stems are modified solely according to the logical forms in which they appear in the sentence.' Although he denies that Chinook is polysynthetic, he still classifies it among the 'languages in which the pronouns are not incorporated but loosely joined to the verb' (63). His term for the relation of the pronominals to the verb is 'modification' (63 et passim)-the same term he uses to describe the syntactic relations among words in a dependent-marking language (see the previous quote from p. 62).

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scribed as 'cross-reference' rather than 'agreement'; the latter term is used for the head-marked indexing of one or two clause actants in a generally dependent- marking language, as in Indo-European. The Boas-Bloomfield position has recently been formalized by Van Valin 1985.

Head-marked and dependent-marked relations, then, are seen as fundamen- tally different in character. But in the sense in which this paper uses the term 'syntactic relation'-claiming fundamental syntactic identity between, say, a head-marked and a dependent-marked verb/object relation-they are identical. Compare the following head-marked Abkhaz clause (73a) and its dependent- marked Chechen translation (73b):

(73) 'The man gave the woman a book.' a. a-xac'a a-pth?3s a-s?q?'3 M0_Ml_My_Hte-yt'.

the-man the-woman the-book it-to.her-he-gave-FINITE (= 24, above)

b. cu stag-Ma zudcun-Mna kni:ga-M Mj-Helira. DEM.OBL person-ERG woman-DAT book- NOMj-gave

In both sentences, 'man' is the subject, 'woman' the indirect object, 'book' the direct object, and the verb is the predicate; the nouns are dependent on the verb, which is the head of the clause. These are syntactic relations, as that term was defined in ?1; and in these relations, the two sentences are identical. In both of them the predicate is head; the nouns are its dependents; and it makes sense to ask which of a set of terms like 'subject', 'direct object', and 'indirect object' applies best to which noun. But even granted the identity of such syntactic relations, the two examples differ in the nature of the bond between, say, 'book' and the verb. In Chechen, it is the canonical relation of government, inherited from traditional grammar, and marked by case deter- mination and gender agreement (in the form of the noun class prefix j- on the verb). In Abkhaz, it is a looser link of apposition, specification, or the like between 'book' and the first prefix slot on the verb (and that prefix represents cross-reference, not agreement).

Therefore it is necessary to distinguish 'syntactic relations' (as defined in ?1), such as subject or direct object, from what I will provisionally term 'syntactic bonds'. In 73a-b, the syntactic relations are identical, but the syntactic bonds differ. The difference in syntactic bonds corresponds to what Brown & Miller (1980:254 ff.) term 'unilateral' and 'bilateral' dependency. The dependent-marked dependency (i.e. bond) is bilateral, in that the head requires the dependent, and the dependent requires the head. The head-marked dependency (i.e. bond) is unilateral, in that the dependent requires the head; but the head- since it can occur alone with the same reference-does not require the dependent.

There are two other respects in which syntactic bonds appear to differ according to morphological marking type. One concerns relations between clauses. The notion of subordination was worked out on the basis of IE grammar, and it handles dependent-marked inter-clause relations quite well. It ex- tends easily to the dependent-marked non-finite clauses of most OV languages,

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and to the dependent-marked finite clauses with subordinating conjunctions found in many VO languages.37 It is much less successful where the semantically subordinate clause bears no marks of subordination, but the semantically principal clause does, in head-marked constructions like these (= 39-40, above):

(74) English I overslept, Mso HI was late.H (= 39, above) (75) Makah M'udu:4-s-isi Hp'usak ba:babu:pibitxsi.

because-lsg.-RESP tired I.overworked 'I'm tired because I overworked.' (Jacobsen, 113)

Another example showing that head-marked relations differ in character from dependent-marked ones comes from PP's. Head-marked, i.e. inflecting, adpositions are often called something other than prepositions or postpositions; e.g., the Mayan grammatical tradition uses the term 'relational noun' rather than 'preposition' for words like that in ex. 15.

5.23. CENTRICITY.38 Head-marked constituents can be endocentric where their dependent-marked and double-marked correspondents are always exocentric. According to Bloomfield's definition for English (1933:194 ff.), an endocentric construction is one whose head has the same distribution as the entire construction; an exocentric one has a head whose distribution is not that of the whole constituent. For instance, NP is endocentric: the head noun and the whole NP both have the syntactic distribution of a noun. Prepositional phrases and clauses are exocentric in English: the preposition or verb does not have the distribution of a PP or an S. Thus the preposition cannot be substituted for the PP, and hence the non-sentencehood of *He wrote to or *I talked about. But consistently head-marking languages have no exocentric constructions. Head-marked adpositional phrases and sentences DO have the same distribution

37 This is actually an oversimplification. Linguists in the USSR continue to debate about whether the dependent-marked clause-chaining constructions of Uralic, Altaic, and Northeast Caucasian represent subordination. Grammarians who deny that chained clauses represent subordination do so on formal grounds: chained clauses lack the finite verbs and subordinating conjunctions that are definitive of subordination in Russian; they are therefore 'reduced clauses' (oboroty), i.e. phrases, and hence parts of simple sentences (e.g. Magometov 1963:263, 1965:341). Of the grammarians who recognize subordination, some have apparently done so on functional grounds: chaining conveys the meaning of subordination (e.g. Jakovlev 1940:175 ff.) In most recent works, subordination is recognized on formal grounds: where the chained clause has a subject different from that of the main clause, it cannot be a reduced construction (by the definition of oborot current in the Russian grammatical tradition); it is therefore a subordinate clause (e.g. Ozdoev 1981, Gad- ziev 1954, 1963), but same-subject chained clauses are still parts of simple sentences. Juldasev (1977:134-8, 153, 155) regards even same-subject chained clauses as subordinate clauses, arguing (153) that the relation of what we would call control proves that they are not parts of simple sentences. Some of this debate is summarized by Ozdoev (21-4). The problem lies in the analysis of dependent clauses, which are neither true subordinates nor true coordinates. (For a solution to this dilemma, see Foley & Van Valin 1984, Ch. 6, and Van Valin 1985.) No one denies that the non-main clause can be semantically equivalent to a Russian subordinate clause, or that it is syntactically non-main; the only difficulty lies in the formal non-congruity between chained clauses and the subordinate clauses of Russian.

38 This section owes much to discussions with Robert Van Valin and Joan Bresnan.

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as their heads. For instance, in the head-marked adpositional phrases of Abkhaz and Tzutujil shown in exx. 14-15, the dependent nouns can be omitted, leaving heads which can stand alone:

(76) Abkhaz a-Hq'ns 'at it' its-at

(77) Tzutujil ruu-Hmajk 'because of him/her/it, by him/her/it' 3sg.-because.of

In other words, these head-marked adpositions have the same distributions as do the entire phrases which they head. Similarly, as is often pointed out, the head-marked verb constitutes an independent utterance; i.e., it has the distribution of a sentence. The constituent which it heads is therefore endocentric.

Although all head-marked constituents are endocentric, it is not conversely the case that all dependent-marked constituents are exocentric. Dependent- marked NP's like those of 6 and 17-18 are endocentric. The opposition of endocentric to exocentric arises only where constituents are headed by governing or valence-bearing words-verbs or adpositions, to cite the clearest examples. To refine the above statement, then: a constituent headed by a governing or valence-bearing word will be endocentric if it is head-marked, but exocentric if dependent-marked.39

There are two ways of formalizing the notion of centricity: one relying on projection, and one on external distribution. On the projection-based definition, a phrase is endocentric if its head and its dominating category are projections of the same lexical category, and it is exocentric otherwise (Bresnan 1982:296). On this definition, 'because it is the projection of no lexical category, S is an exocentric category in all languages' (297). Such a definition is valid for English and similar languages, where S is indeed not a projection of V. But for a number of head-marking languages, field linguists (beginning with Boas; see again fn. 36) have insisted that the verb is equivalent to a clause or sentence, and that any independent nominals in a clause are in apposition to morphemes of the verb rather than governed by the verb. This amounts to an informal claim that S is a projection of V in such languages; and this means that S is endocentric on a definition based on lexical projection.

On a formal definition of centricity based on external distribution, a category is endocentric if the head may be freely substituted for the entire constituent (as e.g. houses is substitutable for several large white houses in the context I saw , in the endocentric English NP). This is precisely what occurs in head-marked clauses and PP's. Since the head-marked verb without overt independent arguments is equivalent in meaning to an English verb with pronominal actants, substituting the verb for the entire clause is fully normal in all contexts; it has no more effect on syntactic structure than does pronom-

39 A dependent-marked governed constituent might qualify as endocentric in a language tolerating a good deal of zero anaphora-since, in such a language, a head in isolation could be interpreted as having zero dependents, and on that interpretation would stand alone. Such an analysis would depend on a very literal reading of Bloomfield's criterion, and on the willingness of grammarians to let discourse features like anaphora affect the definitions of constituents below the sentence.

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inalization in English. Since the head-marked adposition contains a marker of its understood object, it is equivalent to an English adposition plus pronomirnal object; and substitution is again possible in all contexts. Examples of PP's are 76-77 above. In general, a head-marked valence-bearing word bears inflectional indicators of its arguments; those arguments are therefore optional clause constituents, and the inflected head word is not distinct from the type of constituent it heads.

In another respect, however, the head-marked verb and clause are categorially distinct. In head-marking Abkhaz, subordination creates a variety of non- finite verb forms such as verbal adverbs, participles, and verbal nouns. Such forms are not verbs; they head embedded clauses, and hence have the syntactic functions of adverbials, modifiers, and nominal arguments respectively. If we assume that endocentricity of S entails formal identity of finite main verbs with subordinate clauses or their heads (just as it entails formal identity of finite main verbs with main clauses), then the Abkhaz clause is exocentric. Predicates of many subordinate clauses must be non-finite; hence a finite verb cannot replace such subordinate clauses. By this criterion, Abkhaz, a consistently head-marking language, nonetheless has exocentric clauses.

This is not true of all head-marking languages, however: thus Lakhota embeds finite verbs (or finite clauses) under NP just as easily as it inserts N under NP. The following example shows that nominalization is done with a finite verb, followed by the same article that follows nouns:

(78) cheya-pi kj nawax'ti. wail-3pl. ART I.heard

'I heard the wails, the wailing' (Boas & Deloria 1941:146), i.e. 'I heard [Npthe [Nthey wail]]'.

Adpositional phrases in both Abkhaz and Lakhota (and in all head-marking languages for which I have information) are endocentric by this criterion, as well as by the projection criterion. In Abkhaz-as in other languages, e.g. the Mayan group-they are categorially (and often etymologically) identical to possessively inflected nouns; hence there is no categorial distinction between PP and NP. In Lakhota-as in many other North American languages-adpositions are categorially (and often etymologically) identical to adverbs; hence there is no categorial distinction between PP and an adverb phrase.

In summary: for both Lakhota and Abkhaz, S and PP are endocentric on the criterion of projection; for Lakhota, but not for Abkhaz, S is endocentric on the criterion of external distribution as well (and on this criterion PP's are endocentric in both languages). Both of these constituents are exclusively head- marked in both languages. The double-marked clause of Walbiri (Hale 1983) is endocentric on the criterion of projection. I know of no dependent-marked clause which is endocentric on either definition. It can evidently be concluded that the absence of head-marked morphology restricts the clause to exocentricity, while the presence of head-marked morphology gives the clause the option of being either exocentric or endocentric. Much the same is true at the phrase level. Head-marked PP's are endocentric, as just argued; the double-

llf


marked postpositional phrases of the Uralic languages appear to be both pro- jectionally and distributionally endocentric when they have pronominal objects; and dependent-marked PP's are exocentric. Again the absence of head-marked morphology restricts the PP to exocentricity, while the presence of head- marked morphology gives it the option of exocentricity or endocentricity. The fact that the absence of head-marking results in exocentricity, while its presence allows both exocentricity and endocentricity, shows that morphology limits syntax in this respect. The fact that head-marking permits either type of distributional centricity shows that distributional centricity and morphological marking are two different things. The fact that head-marking entails projectional endocentricity suggests that projectional centricity and morphological marking may not be distinct things.

Centricity is another area in which the head-marking type emerges as unmarked (in the Praguean sense). The head-marked S has available to it two types of centricity, which are neutralized in the dependent-marked S; and neutralization is diagnostic of markedness. Furthermore, the ABSENCE of head- marked morphology acts as a positive factor limiting the privileges of occurrence of centricity types; but the PRESENCE of such morphology does not act as a positive factor, and hence does not limit the privileges of occurrence of centricity types. This statement about markedness differs from those given in ?5.1 in that it must be phrased in terms of the presence vs. absence of head- marking morphology, while those in ?5.1 were phrased in terms of head-marked vs. dependent-marked morphology.

There has been very little discussion of centricity in the literature, and to my knowledge none of it is explicitly based on consideration of head-marked constituents. The cross-linguistic generalizations offered in this section are thus based on fairly cursory examination of a few sample languages, with very little help from the theoretical literature. They should be taken only as hypotheses.

5.24. INDEXING AMBIGUITIES AND HIERARCHIES. Head-marking systems are faced with the problem of indicating just which clause actant stands in which of the relations marked on the verb-a problem unknown to dependent-marking languages, in which each noun bears a mark of its own function in the clause. Imagine a head-marking language with person/number agreement for three clause actants; and imagine constructing in that language a sentence with 3sg. actants in all slots. Ambiguity is possible, since the verb agrees with the same person/number combination for all three. There are various possible solutions to this impasse:

(a) Set up a rigid hierarchy of animacy, definiteness, or the like, to determine which actant is eligible for the subject slot, which for the direct-object slot, and which for the indirect-object slot. This strategy may obscure semantic functions since it will, for example, mechanically select 'man' over 'dog' as subject on the basis of their hierarchical ranking, regardless of who is biting whom. But it does answer the question of what agrees with what. (Further clarity can be added by using inverse person-marking or obligatory passivization when a non-agent outranks an agent in animacy and hence becomes

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subject. This is done in a number of head-marking languages, e.g. Blackfoot, Cree, and Nootka.)

(b) Set up a rigid control or accessibility hierarchy based on syntactic relations. This will not clarify the hypothetical example described above, but it will be useful in disambiguating certain coreference relations. Suppose that one of our three actants is coreferential to, or possessed by, another. If the verb is obligatorily made reflexive when, say, agent possesses patient, but not when agent possesses goal, then the presence or absence of reflexivization will help disambiguate the construction. To cite a concrete example, Barber 1975 shows that a strict hierarchy governs the interpretation of the Greek middle-a form which signals coreference between one actant and another, or between one actant and the possessor of another. (Greek, of course, is not a head-marking language; this example proves only that such a constraint can arise, not that it arises in head-marking languages.)

(c) Develop gender classes, and let verbal inflection index gender. (See Heath 1975 for the disambiguating function of gender classes.) It is particularly helpful if these are non-natural gender classes; then they will intersect randomly with properties like animacy or potential agency, and will provide maximally in- formative verbal inflection. In the absence of gender classes, other categories such as deixis, obviation, or shape classification provide additional means for indexing nouns.

(d) Mark the dependents themselves. This principle accounts for the des- ultory case inflection sometimes found in otherwise head-marking languages (e.g. the two-case oppositions of Adyghe and Shuswap), and for the double- marked clause type.

(e) Develop a fixed word order for nominals. (f) Restrict the number of overt NP's per clause. Thus Lushootseed, a Sa-

lishan language, appears to allow only one overt NP per clause. This strategy, well grammaticalized, reduces the number of head-marking points and gives Lushootseed a non-head-marking cast, in contrast to its neighbors and kin. It eliminates the ambiguity, although it imposes restrictions of its own.

The above listing might suggest that rigid, grammaticalized hierarchies of animacy, control hierarchies, gender, fixed word order, and reduced valence are epiphenomena of the head-marking type. But that is plainly not the case; all these phenomena are also found in dependent-marking languages. These features evidently have contributions to make to languages of all types. For example, gender classes of non-natural types contribute to the taxonomization of reality in languages where they make little or no contribution to text dis- ambiguation. (That natural gender classes such as those of Dyirbal [Dixon 1972] taxonomize the universe is, of course, trivially obvious.) For instance, dependent-marking Chechen and Ingush have non-natural gender classes whose taxonomic value is revealed by their role in riddles and in contexts of poetic equation (Nichols 1985). Gender classes found in some of the dependent-marking Pama-Nyungan languages of Australia have taxonomic value that echoes folk taxonomy and mythic functions (Dixon 1980:273-4); they also play a role

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in discourse coreference (Foley & Van Valin, ?7.5). However, it is still possible that at least some of the occurrences of these phenomena in dependent-marking languages are relics of former head-marked patterns. This is a question that can be answered only by specialists in the histories of individual families.

5.25. FLAT SYNTAX. Head-marked patterns contribute to a flat syntax which minimizes intra-clause and inter-clause structure, freeing a language to con- centrate on the grammaticalization of discourse prominence and cohesion. In fact it turns out that it is precisely for head-marking languages that a number of traditional grammatical questions prove to be somewhat moot, because pragmatic and discourse relations (rather than strictly syntactic relations) are being grammaticalized. Thus Heath 1985 argues for the dispensability of clause structure, using text data from a language with strong head-marking tendencies. Another example comes from languages where access to particular verbal affix slots is more obviously conditioned by pragmatic and discourse factors, such as animacy and definiteness, than by strictly syntactic relations. A well-documented example is object choice with three-place verbs in the Bantu languages (Hyman & Duranti). Similar phenomena are illustrated by object choice in Huichol (Comrie 1982) and in Mayan (Larsen & Norman 1979), and by subject choice in languages with animacy-based passivization and inverse person marking. All such patterns involve head-marking. The concluding statement of Hyman & Duranti shows how the grammaticalization of non-syntactic properties is crucially linked to head-marking tendencies, which are manifested in Bantu by cliticization of pronouns: 'The conclusion is that, within Bantu as well as without, when a language has clitics [on the verb, i.e. head-marked clause relations], semantic hierarchies acquire an upper hand in determining object properties, while grammatical considerations step to the side' (237). That semantic hierarchies such as animacy are hierarchies of potential discourse prominence is argued by Silverstein 1976. In summary, then, the head-marked clause patterns-in grammaticalizing animacy, definiteness etc., rather than clause-level syntactic relations-are grammaticalizing (potential) discourse relations, at the expense of the clarity and discreteness of clause-level syntactic relations.

5.3. SOME IMPLICATIONS FOR THEORY. We have now seen a number of different respects in which head-marked and dependent-marked syntactic relations differ, often considerably. A number of empirical questions remain to be investigated: How do double-marked relations behave in these respects? Does the occasional head-marked pattern in a mostly dependent-marking language have the unilateral syntactic bonds, centricity, flatness etc. exhibited by the same relation in a consistently head-marking language? The discussion in ?5.2 pertained mostly to clause relations; can the generalizations made there be extended to phrases and sentences?

Even in the absence of a complete account, the evidence that morphological marking types have implications for abstract grammatical structure is sufficient to force some rethinking of the foundations of syntactic theory. It turns out that many fundamental analytic notions of formal and theoretical syntax are

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designed for dependent-marked relations; some of them even seem to be based on an implicit assumption that grammatical relations are normally dependent- marked. The effects of this assumption were discussed above in connection with the distinction between syntactic relations and syntactic bonds (?5.22) and with centricity (?5.23). The same assumption appears to underlie the conception of case and government presented by Chomsky (1982:48 ff.) The effect of Chomsky's system is to build into the fundamentals of core grammar the dependent-marking nature of English (and generally IE) morphosyntax. The basic principles are these (this enumeration preserves Chomsky's terms, but is stated informally):

(79) a. An NP having phonetic content must have Case. b. Case is assigned by governing categories. c. A verb governs and assigns Case to its complements (in the VP). d. INFL (the verbal inflection comprising tense and agreement) gov-

erns the subject of a tensed S, and assigns the nominative Case to it.

That is, the verb does not govern its subject or assign case to it; INFL does that. In all other grammatical relations, the traditionally recognized head governs and assigns case to the traditionally recognized dependent. Subject-verb agreement is the only salient head-marked pattern of English, and the non- traditional element INFL makes it possible to treat that pattern as though it were dependent-marked. Chomsky's analysis of case and government can be read as making the following implicit assumptions:

(80) a. Dependency and government are the same thing. b. Every dependent must bear the marker of its syntactic relation. c. Heads govern dependents, and assign formal marking to them.

The use of INFL accommodates the sole head-marked pattern of English to these assumptions. (It also represents the exocentricity of the English clause as a structural fact; and by treating the subject as not dependent on the lexical verb, it captures the fact that S is not a lexical projection of V in English.)

This discussion has not questioned the adequacy for English of Chomsky's analysis; it has simply pointed out that his analysis rests on an assumption of the universal, necessary, and exclusive character of dependent-marked grammar. But dependent-marked patterns are NOT universal; they are possibly not even the preferred type. (For a detailed critique of Chomsky's system as applied to a head-marking language, see Van Valin.)

5.4. CONCLUSIONS. Despite the efforts of formal grammarians to take a range of languages into consideration, there is a glaring gap in the typological coverage: the exotic languages that have so far received significant attention have been almost exclusively dependent-marking (Japanese, Korean, Finnish, Ma- layalam, Australian languages) or double-marking (Turkish, Arabic, Hebrew, Australian languages). Of the head-marking languages, only Navajo has received significant theoretical attention. In addition, Relational Grammar has investigated a number of head-marking languages (primarily from the Algon- kian, Salishan, and Wakashan groups); but these languages have not been used

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to raise questions of constituency, centricity, syntactic bonds, government etc.40

The view of grammar presented here raises serious questions for universal grammar. I have argued that the theoretical apparatus of classical, traditional, structural, and formal grammar is heavily based on dependent-marked syntax.41 If the hypothesis of the universally preferred nature of head-marked patterns holds true, then we will have to recognize that describing the world's languages in standard theoretical terms is not merely Eurocentric distortion, but in fact forces the unmarked grammatical structure into a framework devised for the marked type. The fact that linguistic theory is ultimately rooted in linguistic typology shows how important it is to capture the uniqueness of individual languages in cross-linguistically and cross-theoretically meaningful terms.42

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42 After this paper had been accepted, Igor Mel'cuk informed me that ex. 3 is an example of a head-marked but not endocentric construction (see ?5.23); and both he and Mark Durie informed me of an Australian language, Kayartilt (see Evans MS), which uses cases to mark modality as well as syntactic relations and thus stacks up to four case suffixes on a single noun, thereby falsifying the generalization in ?5.15.

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[Received 24 August 1983; revision received 26 January 1985; accepted 6 June 1985.]

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