![]() However, there’s a possible response that the 3noP camp could make that’s combatible with this data, which Preminger ( 2019) nicely articulates. Deal proposes that person features on a third person absolutive clitic are deleted when linearly preceding another third person clitic, and that jɨ= is the default exponent of an absolutive clitic, which only has a chance to surface when person features are deleted.ĭata like this seem to push us away from 3noP in favor of 3yesP. Additionally, if there is another clitic intervening between the two third person ones, then there is no issue: ɐ́ = surfaces and is not replaced by jɨ=. ![]() 6 In Ubykh, the third person absolutive clitic ɐ́ = cannot linearly precede a third person singular clitic-instead, you either drop the absolutive clitic (which is independently possible-absolutive clitics are optional), or you realize it as the otherwise unattested form jɨ=:ĭeal ( 2020) argues that this really is a surface morphological restriction, not a syntactic one, as it arises only when third person ɐ́ = is linearly adjacent to a third person singular clitic, no matter the case or syntactic role of the offending clitics. Both the conditioning environment for these kinds of rules (adjacency to a third person clitic) as well as the target of the rule (a third person clitic) have to be able to make reference to some kind of feature found only in third person, and not first or second.įor a concrete example, let’s consider the case of Ubykh (Northwest Caucasian), discussed by Deal ( 2020). In the abstract, these involve the ungramamaticality of two linearly-adjacent third person clitics that can be fixed by removing the person specification of one of the offending clitics, thus resulting in the spellout of an underspecified form. One of Nevins’s ( 2007) central arguments is the existence of 3-on-3 dissimilation effects. Of course, these exemplars of 3noP and 3yesP do not exhaust the possibility space, but they will do to illustrate the two opposing camps. We could also imagine a privative 3yesP theory, with privative, ,, and features-such a theory is proposed by Bondarenko ( 2020). ![]() Under this representation, there is a dedicated third person feature: it’s labelled. I conclude that we really do genuinely have omnivorous third person agreement in Algonquian, and we must accordingly recognize the existence of third person features in the syntax. 2 After outlining the omnivorous third person agreement pattern, I’ll respond to some potential alternative accounts that attempt to analyze it away in order to save 3noP: agreement for animacy, agreement for obviation, and agreement for features. 1 Here, I’ll guide us through data from two Algonquian languages from different branches of the family, Blackfoot (Plains Algonquian Frantz 2017 Goddard 2018) and Plains Cree (Central Algonquian Wolfart 1973 Dahlstrom 1991 Okimāsis 2018), that show the most straightforward instantiation of this pattern: “the suffixes show agreement with the highest 3rd person argument (proximate, obviative, or plural)” ( Bliss 2013: 234). In all Algonquian languages, the peripheral suffix displays an omnivorous agreement pattern ( Nevins 2011), always agreeing with a third person, no matter if it’s a subject or an object ( Xu 2020 2021). I’ll follow the majority of the generative literature on Algonquian in placing the peripheral suffix in C across the family ( Halle & Marantz 1993 Branigan & MacKenzie 1999 Bruening 2001 Bliss 2013 a.o.). This suffix appears in the independent order, which is generally characteristic of matrix declaratives, and it surfaces linearly rightmost on the verb, to the right of various kinds of tense/mood/evidential marking. The empirical domain is the peripheral suffix in Algonquian. Here, I add to this body of work by providing an example of a syntactic counterexample to invisbility. The literature has provided us with morphological counterexamples to Invisibility-we get morphological processes that can see third person to the exclusion of first and second ( Nevins 2007 Trommer 2008, a.o.). In contrast, 3yesP does give us the formal tools to refer exclusively to third person, predicting that we should get counterexamples to Invisbility. Nor could there be a syntactic process, like agreement, that targets only third person. ![]() Thus, there should be no morphological process, like Impoverishment, that could target only third person. In no language can third person explicitly be targeted to the exclusion of first and second person in various kinds of morphosyntactic processes.
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