Feature GB027: Are nominal conjunction and comitative expressed by different elements?

Patrons: Hedvig Skirgård

Description ⇫

Summary

Is there a difference between the marking of NP coordination (John and Mary went to market.) and the marking of comitative phrases (John with Mary went to market.)? In some languages the only way to coordinate noun phrases is with a comitative phrase, i.e. the only way to say ‘X and Y’ is ‘X with Y’. To see whether an element is comitative or coordinating you can check case marking and agreement. For example, if X is the element in question and in the dative you get ‘John-DAT X Mary-DAT’, then X is likely coordinating. If you get ‘John-DAT X Mary’, X is likely comitative. If there is agreement, if you get ‘John X Mary verb-PL’ rather than 'John X Mary verb-SG' (just like ‘John X suitcase verb-SG’), this suggests that X is coordinating.

Procedure

  1. Determine if both comitative and nominal conjunction are overtly marked (i.e. not solely by juxtaposition). If one of them is zero-marked, code 0.
  2. Code 1 if there is an example of NP coordination (e.g. John and Mary went to the market) which uses an element that is distinct from the comitative marker (e.g. John went to the market with Mary.).
  3. Code 0 if a grammar states that the language uses the same elements to coordinate NPs and to mark comitative phrases.
  4. Grammars do not always explicitly state whether or not the same element is used for comitative marking and nominal conjunction. Look for examples in example sentences and in appended texts as well as in the prose of the grammar.

Examples

Turkish (ISO 639-3: tur, Glottolog: nucl1301)

Turkish used to be a language with only comitatives for NP coordination namely the -le/-la marker as in Mary-le John ‘Mary with/and John’. Modern Turkish also has the borrowed ve ‘and’, so one can now also produce John ve Mary (Kornfilt 1997: 113–117). Thus modern Turkish gets a 1 while older versions of the language, before the borrowing, would get a 0.

Maale (ISO 629-3: mdy, Glottolog: male1284)

In Maale, sometimes the same element is used for coordination and comitative but with a difference in the number of times the element appears (e.g. twice for coordination and once for comitative). In such cases, code as 0 because it is nevertheless the same element of Maale.

Maale repeats the instrumental/comitative marker -na with every conjoined noun within a coordinated NP. To express comitatives, only one -na is used (Amha 2001: 79; further examples on pp. 62–63).

a. táání    suugg-atsí   laal-éll-ó-na    (ʔá-á-nte)       zag-é-ne
1SG:NOM  chief-M:NOM  woman-F-ABS-COM  (exist-IPFV-TPR) see-PFV-AFF:DECL
‘I saw the chief with the woman.’ (Amha 2001: 79)

b. táání    suugg-atsí-na     laal-éll-ó-na      zag-é-ne
1SG:NOM  chief-M:NOM-CONJ  woman-F-ABS-CONJ   see-PFV-AFF:DECL
‘I saw the chief and the woman.’ (Amha 2001: 79)

Further reading

Drellishak, Scott. 2004. A survey of coordination strategies in the world’s languages. Seattle: University of Washington. (MA thesis.)

Stassen, Leon. 2000. AND-languages and WITH-languages. Linguistic Typology 4. 1–54.

Stassen, Leon. 2013. Noun phrase conjunction. In Matthew S. Dryer & Martin Haspelmath (eds), The world atlas of language structures online. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.

References

Amha, Azeb. 2001. The Maale language. Leiden: University of Leiden. (Doctoral dissertation.)

Kornfilt, Jaklin. 1997. Turkish. (Descriptive Grammars Series.) London: Routledge.


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