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Chapter 11. Morphosyntactic coding of proper names and its implications for the Animacy Hierarchy

  • Johannes Helmbrecht✝ , Lukas Denk , Sarah Thanner and Ilenia Tonetti
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Typological Hierarchies in Synchrony and Diachrony
This chapter is in the book Typological Hierarchies in Synchrony and Diachrony

Abstract

The Animacy Hierarchy (AH) is an important construct employed for the description and explanation of variation and splits in case marking and agreement in various grammatical domains. The AH is a scale that combines person, definiteness and semantic animacy and is used to state clear preferences of certain morphosyntactic coding types over others. One assumption of the AH is that proper names (PNs) occupy an intermediate place between personal pronouns and common nouns. Despite the large body of research since its first extensive formulation in Silverstein (1976), it is astonishing that there has been almost no empirical evidence published for this claim. Since the AH has been formulated mostly on the basis of case marking and agreement phenomena in languages with split ergativity or hierarchical alignment, we compiled a sample of more than 30 such languages in order to find data on the morphosyntactic coding of PNs. While there are only a very few instances that confirm the claim, there are more instances that contradict it. We concluded that PNs should be removed from the AH, since their assumed position has no predictive value for typological generalizations.

Abstract

The Animacy Hierarchy (AH) is an important construct employed for the description and explanation of variation and splits in case marking and agreement in various grammatical domains. The AH is a scale that combines person, definiteness and semantic animacy and is used to state clear preferences of certain morphosyntactic coding types over others. One assumption of the AH is that proper names (PNs) occupy an intermediate place between personal pronouns and common nouns. Despite the large body of research since its first extensive formulation in Silverstein (1976), it is astonishing that there has been almost no empirical evidence published for this claim. Since the AH has been formulated mostly on the basis of case marking and agreement phenomena in languages with split ergativity or hierarchical alignment, we compiled a sample of more than 30 such languages in order to find data on the morphosyntactic coding of PNs. While there are only a very few instances that confirm the claim, there are more instances that contradict it. We concluded that PNs should be removed from the AH, since their assumed position has no predictive value for typological generalizations.

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Part I. Setting the stage
  4. Synchronic vs. diachronic approaches to typological hierarchies 3
  5. Part II. Foundational issues
  6. Chapter 1. Evolutionary Phonology and the life cycle of voiceless sonorants 31
  7. Chapter 2. The Obligatory Coding Principle in diachronic perspective 59
  8. Chapter 3. Deconstructing teleology 111
  9. Part III. Hierarchical effects and their origins
  10. Chapter 4. The development of referential hierarchy effects in Sahaptian 131
  11. Chapter 5. Diachrony and the referential hierarchy in Old Irish 191
  12. Chapter 6. From ergative case-marking to hierarchical agreement 217
  13. Chapter 7. The direction(s) of analogical change in direct/inverse systems 257
  14. Chapter 8. Are the Tupi-Guarani hierarchical indexing systems really motivated by the person hierarchy? 289
  15. Chapter 9. Incipient hierarchical alignment in four Central Salish languages from the Proto-Salish middle 309
  16. Part IV. Conflicting hierarchical patterns and how to deal with them
  17. Chapter 10. Deictic and sociopragmatic effects in Tibeto-Burman SAP indexation 345
  18. Chapter 11. Morphosyntactic coding of proper names and its implications for the Animacy Hierarchy 377
  19. Chapter 12. Generic person marking in Japhug and other Gyalrong languages 403
  20. Author index 425
  21. Language Index 429
  22. Subject Index 433
https://doi.org/10.1075/tsl.121.11hel

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Part I. Setting the stage
  4. Synchronic vs. diachronic approaches to typological hierarchies 3
  5. Part II. Foundational issues
  6. Chapter 1. Evolutionary Phonology and the life cycle of voiceless sonorants 31
  7. Chapter 2. The Obligatory Coding Principle in diachronic perspective 59
  8. Chapter 3. Deconstructing teleology 111
  9. Part III. Hierarchical effects and their origins
  10. Chapter 4. The development of referential hierarchy effects in Sahaptian 131
  11. Chapter 5. Diachrony and the referential hierarchy in Old Irish 191
  12. Chapter 6. From ergative case-marking to hierarchical agreement 217
  13. Chapter 7. The direction(s) of analogical change in direct/inverse systems 257
  14. Chapter 8. Are the Tupi-Guarani hierarchical indexing systems really motivated by the person hierarchy? 289
  15. Chapter 9. Incipient hierarchical alignment in four Central Salish languages from the Proto-Salish middle 309
  16. Part IV. Conflicting hierarchical patterns and how to deal with them
  17. Chapter 10. Deictic and sociopragmatic effects in Tibeto-Burman SAP indexation 345
  18. Chapter 11. Morphosyntactic coding of proper names and its implications for the Animacy Hierarchy 377
  19. Chapter 12. Generic person marking in Japhug and other Gyalrong languages 403
  20. Author index 425
  21. Language Index 429
  22. Subject Index 433
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