Feature GB149: Is there a morphologically marked inverse on verbs?

Patrons: Jakob Lesage

Description ⇫

Summary

Inverse systems are based on an animacy, person, or topicality hierarchy. Inverse markers indicate that the patient outranks the agent on the hierarchy. In a system that has a hierarchy [speech act participants > 3SG pronouns > humans > animals, etc.], for example, ‘man INV-bite dog’ would mean ‘the dog bit the man’. Note that in some languages, there are portmanteau morphemes that both function as person indexes on verbs and as direct/inverse markers. They would trigger 1 for this question. This feature targets phonologically bound inverse markers.

Procedure

  1. Code 1 if the grammar discusses a marker on the verb that encodes that the patient outranks the agent on an animacy or person hierarchy. Be sure to consult sections dealing with argument marking, verbal derivation and verbal morphology in general. Sometimes authors do not explicitly discuss the function of these markers or they do not present a hierarchy, but they may present a paradigm from which you can figure out the pattern.
  2. Code 1 if different indexes are used according to whether the patient outranks the agent on an animacy or person hierarchy or the reverse is true.
  3. Code 0 if there are no signs of such a system in the language.

Examples

Panare (ISO 639-3: pbh, Glottolog: enap1235)

Panare is coded 1.

In Panare (Payne & Payne 2013: 24-25), the inverse marker y- only occurs in past-perfective verbs. It indicates that the patient of a clause outranks the agent of the clause on the following topicality hierarchy: 1SG/2 > 3/1PL. It also seems to be used when both the agent and patient are third person.

Kën        a-y-ïkïtï-yaj
ANIM.INVIS 2SG-INV-cut-PST.PFV
‘He/she cut you.’ (Payne & Payne 2013: 25)

Cherokee (ISO 639-3: chr, Glottolog: cher1273)

In Cherokee, there are two sets of prefixes, a ‘direct’ one and an ‘inverse’ one. In addition to marking direct or inverse, each prefix also indexes the most animate participant (indicating its person and number). Cherokee is coded 1.

a. Direct
anii-kééhya  sookwili   tee-anii-ahyvthéeɁa 
3A-woman     horse      DISTR-DIRC.3PL-kick:PRS 
‘The women are kicking the horses.’ (Montgomery-Anderson 2008: 197 following Scancarelli 1987: 128)

b. Inverse
sookwili    kaa-uunii-ahyvthéeɁa    anii-kééhya 
horse       ANIM-INV.3PL-kick:PRS   3A-woman 
‘The horses are kicking the women.’ (Montgomery-Anderson 2008: 197 following Scancarelli 1987: 128)

Further reading

Klaiman, M. H. 1992. Inverse languages. Lingua, 88(3/4). 227–261.

Zúñiga, Fernando. 2006. Deixis and alignment: Inverse systems in indigenous languages of the Americas. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

References

Montgomery-Anderson, Brad. 2008. A reference grammar of Oklahoma Cherokee. Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas. (Doctoral dissertation.)

Payne, Thomas E. and Payne, Doris L. 2013. A typological grammar of Panare: A Cariban language of Venezuela. (Brill's Studies in the Indigenous Languages of the Americas.) Leiden: Brill.

Scancarelli, Janine. 1987. Grammatical relations and verb agreement in Cherokee. Los Angeles: University of California. (Doctoral dissertation.)


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Name Glottocode Family Macroarea Contributor Value Source Comment