Essential Properties of Affix-Genesis
3.7 Implications for SOV Languages
If the preceding discussion is correct, there is a significant association of structural affixation with several conditions: a syntax in which the neo-affix was frequently adjacent to the M-word which engulfed it, and in which the two terminals could be legitimately combined via head movement; and a possible bias for speakers to equate morphosyntactic words with phonological words when the syntactic evidence warrants such a conclusion. Phonological cues are arguably primary in this case; even if two M-words are both linearly adjacent and plausibly combinable via head movement, if both of them are polysyllabic and clearly constitute independent phonological words, language learners have no motivation to put them together.
These observations about the ideal conditions for the innovation of affixation coincide nicely with basic intuitions regarding verbal morphology in SOV languages. It has been frequently noted (cf. e.g. Bybee et al 1990, Julien 2002) that verbal suffixes are particularly ubiquitous in head-final SOV languages. In such languages, all the inflectional projections are, naturally, piled up at the end, for structural reasons, thereby creating linear adjacency. Also for structural reasons, each of the relevant morphemes is the head of its projection, and therefore potential landing sites for verb movement. Finally, given the nature of their content, these morphemes are highly likely to be de-stressed, and thus to lean on each other phonologically.
The potential exception to this fortunate coincidence are dissociated morphemes like subject-agreement. If linear adjacency is a prerequisite for diachronic affixation, and if SOV languages tend to have subject-agreement suffixes, then it must be the case that, under some conditions and at some previous stage in the language’s history, clause-final subjects were possible in this language. Unfortunately, documented instances of such cases are not as plentiful as one might wish.
The language most frequently cited in the literature as an example of innovative subject-agreement suffixes in an SOV language is Buryat Mongolian, which was discussed at length by Comrie (1980). At first glance, Buryat seems an ideal test case: it is an SOV language with suffixed subject agreement markers indicating non-third person. These suffixes are obligatory, as demonstrated in the paradigm in (3.58).
(3.57a) Exe -n xübü:- ge: daxin xile:men-de el’ge:-be. mother-3sg son.REFL.-ACC again bread -DAT send -PAST
‘The mother sent her son again for bread.’ (3.57b) Bi damdiny-iiyi xaraa- b.
1st.sg. -ACC. see.PAST.-1st.sg.
‘I saw Damdin.’ (3.58a) Bi jaba-na- b.
1st.sg. go -PRES-1st.sg.
‘I am going.’ (3.58b) Jaba-na-b. (3.58c) * Bi jaba-na.
Even better, these suffixes have an obvious formal relationship with the personal pronouns, as shown in Table 3.4.
65 Pronoun (Nominative) Verbal Ending
1st.sg. bi -b
2nd.sg. ši -š
1st.pl. bide -bdi
2nd.pl. ta -t
Table 3.4: Pronouns and Verbal Endings in Buryat
Most fortunately of all, the Mongolian languages have an extensive written history, and the data would appear to fall out the way we would like it. As shown in (3.59),72
Classical Mongolian also has a basic word order of SOV, but lacks subject-agreement suffixes. Subject-agreement suffixes have not developed in all of the Mongolian languages,
either (they are absent, for instance, from Khalka). Therefore, it would seem that we have in Mongolian an ideal test-case.
(3.59) Bi tegün-i ese mede-müį.
1st.sg. it -ACC NEG know-NARR.PRES.
‘I don’t know it.’
Comrie argued that the Buryat AgrS suffixes developed from sentences with a marked VS word order. VS sentences were allowed in Classical Mongolian, as shown in (3.60). 73
(3.60a) Tere metü jalbarin ügülemüi bi. This like prayer say 1st.sg.
‘I am praying in that manner.’ (3.60b) Inegeldüküi-yi yekin tayalamu či?
laughter -ACC why like 2nd.sg.
‘Why do you like laughter?’
These postverbal subjects could co-occur with preverbal subjects, although Poppe (1954:125) gives only a single, unglossed example, reproduced here with the relevant pronouns in bold and question marks representing morphemes I am unable to gloss.
(3.61) Čimayi bi ene edür minu dergede saγugeĵü ese kele-be- üü 2s.ACC 1s.NOM ? ? 1s.GEN by sit.? ? NEG say- PAST-Q
bi. 1s.NOM
‘Did I not tell you to sit by me today?’
The problems with Mongolian begin here. First, this is the only example I have found of a doubled subject in Classical Mongolian – though all the secondary sources agree that such examples exist – and it is an interrogative. Working out the syntax of these double- subject sentences from a single non-declarative example cannot be done with reliable precision. Second, there is also some question as to whether Classical Mongolian is really the most reliable source of data on this point. The Classical Mongolian period covers approximately the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries (Janhunen 2003:32), and is considered “the prototypical form of Written Mongol”. However, the history of Written Mongol dates back some eight hundred years, with the Preclassical period marked by “a greater degree of regional and individual variation” than the later texts. Moreover, Written Mongol itself is
72(3.59) comes from Poppe (1954:124). Poppe, like Skribnik, translates his examples but does not gloss them; again, any errors in the gloss are mine.
66 essentially a written lingua franca, much in the way of Chinese; it is used by speakers of many Mongolian languages but is the native language of none.
This passage from Janhunen (2003:30) gives some indication of the problem of using Classical Mongolian as the model for the earlier stage of Buryat.
The basic property of Written Mongol is its conservatism. During the entire duration of its use, Written Mongol has undergone only slight changes... At the same time, the spoken language has undergone intensive evolution and diversification, leading from the Middle Mongol stage to the various Modern Mongolic languages and dialects. Written Mongol has always kept a distance from the spoken vernaculars, though, at the same time, it has been influenced by them... In reality, the use of Written Mongol involves a special type of diglossia, in which the speaker of an oral form of Mongolic employs a related, but clearly distinct, idiom... It is particularly important to note that, although its recorded history dates back to the Middle Mongol period, Written Mongol was never identical with Middle Mongol. ... [T]herefore, some peculiarities of Written Mongol may well reflect the specific features of the Naiman dialect, later extinguished by the unification of the Mongols under Chinggis Khan.
Janhunen (2003:30)
From this description, Written Mongol sounds suspiciously artificial. The period of what is called Classical Mongolian falls fairly late in the history of Written Mongol; Written Mongol appears to have been based on a now-defunct dialect; and it has been affected by various vernaculars since its inception. When Janhunen later writes (p. 52) ‘syntax, and especially morphosyntax, has always been the area of Written Mongol grammatical structure that most easily has absorbed influences from the spoken language,’ the case against using Classical Mongolian as an earlier stage of Buryat is sealed. Although Janhunen (2003:31) does say that Buryat speakers are among those who employ Written Mongol, we cannot consider Classical Mongolian a reliable, plausible direct ancestor to modern Buryat.
Instead, we could turn to Middle Mongol, the language of the Mongol empire, in the thirteenth through early fifteenth centuries (Rybatzki 2003:57). Although it is known from historical documents, Middle Mongol was never used as a literary standard, and therefore is more likely to accurately reflect a historical vernacular than Written/Classical Mongol.
The problem with Middle Mongol, however, is that there has been rather little work published on its grammatical structure, and the available descriptions are not very comprehensive. The only full-length treatment of Middle Mongolian grammar, Street’s (1957) dissertation, has no (!) discussion of sentences with verbal predicates. Rybatzki (2003:78) discusses syntax only briefly; he says that Middle Mongol allowed for freer word order than either Written Mongol or the modern languages, but gives no examples. Nor does he give examples of sentences with enclitic first- or second-person subjects, though he says they existed and are written with the verb in late Arabic sources.
Therefore, although it may well be the case that Middle Mongol does contain important clues to the development of AgrS suffixes in Buryat, it has not yet been made available by current scholarship74, and a thorough study of the depth required lies far beyond
the scope of this dissertation.
Before abandoning the subject of Buryat, one misunderstanding of the crucial Buryat data should first be cleared up. Although it is true that modern Buryat (and several other Mongolic languages) has developed AgrS suffixes absent from either the written classical language or Middle Mongol, these AgrS suffixes, contrary to the impression given by the linguistic literature, are in fact not exclusively verbal suffixes. Rather, they are used on all predicates, be they verbal, nominal, or pronominal. The examples in (3.62) are taken from Skribnik (2003:120), who says that adverbs, numerals, and inflected nouns can also take these
67 suffixes (though her examples do not show this directly because they are mostly third singular. (3.62a) Bi bagsha-b. 1S teacher-1S ‘I am a teacher.’ (3.62b) Bagsha bi-b. teacher 1S-1S ‘I am the teacher.’
In short, despite its many intriguing properties, Mongolian cannot be used as evidence for the development of AgrS suffixes in SOV languages.75 It does, however, raise
some interesting questions about the development of these suffixes: do they often originate as suffixes on all predicates, verbal or otherwise? If so, what evidence motivates language learners to later restrict them to verbal predicates only? If not, what properties of the specific language influences the analysis of the language learners?
It is the last question that is of particular interest to us here, and returns us to the primary topic of this chapter. Since diachronic affixation is not deterministic, language- specific (and possibly speaker-specific) properties and biases play a crucial role in the changes that can occur when a language is transmitted to a new generation of speakers. In this chapter, I have identified a number of linguistic properties which correlate with novel affixes, but there is a crucial ingredient missing: why, when all of the necessary ingredients for innovation may have been present in a language for centuries, does innovation happen in a particular time and with a particular speaker or speakers? This is, of course, the actuation problem, the most recalcitrant issue in historical linguistics. The discussion in this chapter has not solved the actuation problem, but I hope that it has identified more clearly the context in which the problem is set.