Chapter 5. The pronoun-to-agreement cycle in Iranian
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Geoffrey L.J. Haig
Abstract
There is a broad consensus within linguistics that personal pronouns may undergo grammaticalization to yield person agreement morphology. Furthermore, it is widely assumed that similar processes apply to both subject and object pronouns. In this chapter I consider the fate of a phonologically identical set of clitic pronouns in Middle West Iranian languages, which were deployed in both subject and object indexing. The modern outcomes have been rather different; while erstwhile clitic subject pronouns have spawned subject agreement morphology in some languages, these clitic pronouns have not yielded obligatory object agreement in the category of person in any Iranian language. Neither traditional grammaticalization theory, nor recent formalizations of grammaticalization within Minimalism, offer a compelling explanation for this asymmetry. I suggest it reflects a fundamental difference in the informativity of subject as opposed to object indexing with respect to the category of person, as opposed to that of gender and number.
Abstract
There is a broad consensus within linguistics that personal pronouns may undergo grammaticalization to yield person agreement morphology. Furthermore, it is widely assumed that similar processes apply to both subject and object pronouns. In this chapter I consider the fate of a phonologically identical set of clitic pronouns in Middle West Iranian languages, which were deployed in both subject and object indexing. The modern outcomes have been rather different; while erstwhile clitic subject pronouns have spawned subject agreement morphology in some languages, these clitic pronouns have not yielded obligatory object agreement in the category of person in any Iranian language. Neither traditional grammaticalization theory, nor recent formalizations of grammaticalization within Minimalism, offer a compelling explanation for this asymmetry. I suggest it reflects a fundamental difference in the informativity of subject as opposed to object indexing with respect to the category of person, as opposed to that of gender and number.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Chapter 1. Advances in Iranian linguistics 1
- Chapter 2. Syntactic and semantic constraints on pronoun and anaphor resolution in Persian 15
- Chapter 3. A multi-dimensional approach to classification of Iran’s languages 29
- Chapter 4. The additive particle in Persian 57
- Chapter 5. The pronoun-to-agreement cycle in Iranian 85
- Chapter 6. The suffix that makes Persian nouns unique 107
- Chapter 7. The meaning of the Persian object marker rā 119
- Chapter 8. Topic agreement, experiencer constructions, and the weight of clitics 137
- Chapter 9. Another look at Persian rā 155
- Chapter 10. The Ezafe construction revisited 173
- Chapter 11. Quantitative meter in Persian folk songs and pop lyrics 237
- Chapter 12. Stripping structures with negation in Persian 257
- Chapter 13. Oblique marking and adpositional constructions in Tat 275
- Author index 301
- Languages index 305
- Subject index 307
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Chapter 1. Advances in Iranian linguistics 1
- Chapter 2. Syntactic and semantic constraints on pronoun and anaphor resolution in Persian 15
- Chapter 3. A multi-dimensional approach to classification of Iran’s languages 29
- Chapter 4. The additive particle in Persian 57
- Chapter 5. The pronoun-to-agreement cycle in Iranian 85
- Chapter 6. The suffix that makes Persian nouns unique 107
- Chapter 7. The meaning of the Persian object marker rā 119
- Chapter 8. Topic agreement, experiencer constructions, and the weight of clitics 137
- Chapter 9. Another look at Persian rā 155
- Chapter 10. The Ezafe construction revisited 173
- Chapter 11. Quantitative meter in Persian folk songs and pop lyrics 237
- Chapter 12. Stripping structures with negation in Persian 257
- Chapter 13. Oblique marking and adpositional constructions in Tat 275
- Author index 301
- Languages index 305
- Subject index 307
