His talk aims to investigate the agreement markers that encode the core arguments in Tenetehára transitive sentences. The goal is to evaluate to which extent animacy and definiteness features regulate the agreement in these clauses. Another purpose is to show that the Tenetehára agreement markers are a reflection of differential subject and object marking, whose main role is to mark the external and internal arguments that are high in the person/animacy/definiteness hierarchy. Within the typological literature (Givón 1976; Comrie 1981; Croft 1988; 1990; Bentley 1994; Aissen 2003), it has been assumed that the relevant semantic features that trigger subject and object agreement on the verb stem are the ones that occupy a higher position in the hierarchies, as shown below:
Relevant hierarchies for licensing agreement:
a. Definiteness/specificity Hierarchy:
b. Animacy Hierarchy:
Based on these theories, I propose that it is indeed these animacy and person features that are the main factors that constraint the occurrence of the subject and object differential agreement in Tenetehára. I will also posit that the verb in Tenetehára always agrees with the core argument that presents the feature geometry below, regardless of the syntactic position they occupy in the sentence:
[+specificity, +definite, +participant (+/-speaker), (+/-plural)]
Given the featural decomposition above, this proposal will show that the verb in Tenetehára systematically agrees with the arguments that carry the high animate and person features: [+participant, +/-speaker]. In this system, arguments that carry the features [+participant, +/-speaker] systematically control agreement in the verbal complex, regardless of whether they are in subject or object position. However, when both the external and internal arguments exhibit the same set of semantic features [+participant, +/-speaker], a set of portmanteau prefixes is triggered. Finally, when both the subject and the object correspond to non-pronominal arguments, syntactic and pragmatic factors control agreement.
* Esta comunicação será proferida em português.
Relevant hierarchies for licensing agreement:
a. Definiteness/specificity Hierarchy:
- personal pronouns > proper name > definite NP > indefinite specific NP > non-specific NP
b. Animacy Hierarchy:
- human > animate > inanimate
Based on these theories, I propose that it is indeed these animacy and person features that are the main factors that constraint the occurrence of the subject and object differential agreement in Tenetehára. I will also posit that the verb in Tenetehára always agrees with the core argument that presents the feature geometry below, regardless of the syntactic position they occupy in the sentence:
[+specificity, +definite, +participant (+/-speaker), (+/-plural)]
Given the featural decomposition above, this proposal will show that the verb in Tenetehára systematically agrees with the arguments that carry the high animate and person features: [+participant, +/-speaker]. In this system, arguments that carry the features [+participant, +/-speaker] systematically control agreement in the verbal complex, regardless of whether they are in subject or object position. However, when both the external and internal arguments exhibit the same set of semantic features [+participant, +/-speaker], a set of portmanteau prefixes is triggered. Finally, when both the subject and the object correspond to non-pronominal arguments, syntactic and pragmatic factors control agreement.
* Esta comunicação será proferida em português.