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Chapter II

Literature Review

2.1 Definition of Phonetics and Phonology:

The study of speech sounds is subdivided between two but related disciplines-
Phonetics and Phonology. Both the term comes from the Greek word meaning ‘sound’.
The boundaries between phonetics and phonology are very difficult to draw as the
discipline rely on each other to a large extent, in the sense that phonological analysis has
to be grounded in phonetic facts, and phonetic fact have to be geared towards these
capacities of the human vocal tract which sub serve language specifically (Ladefoged
1982. Catford1977).

Phonetics is the scientific study of the production, transmission and reception of


speech sounds. Phonology on the other hand, deals specifically with the way those
sounds are transmitted into the individual languages. Phonology is, in effect, a sub-
category of Phonetics.

According to Akmaijan et al. (1995), Phonetics refers to “the study of articulatory


and acoustic properties of sounds” while Phonology refers to “the abstract rules and
principles that govern the distribution of sounds in a language.”

Lass (1984) define Phonology as “concerned with the function, behaviour and
organization of sound as linguistic items” i.e. the sound that are found in a particular
language. Phonetics is ‘the study of sound themselves in the physical world’; the physical
world being comprised of fields like physical, anatomy, neurology and psychology of
human beings.

Phonetics and phonology are both concerned with the same subject matter or
aspect of language, speech sounds, as the audible result of articulation but, they are also
concerned with them from different points of view. Phonetics is general (i.e. concerned
with speech sounds as such without reference to their function in a particular language),
description and classificatory; Phonology in particular (having a particular language or
languages). Phonology has in fact been called functional phonetics.

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It is the task of Phonology to study which differences in sounds are related to
differences in meaning in a given language, in which way the discriminative elements are
related to each other, and the rules according to which they may be combined in words
and structures.

The different components of Phonology include the phonemes, allophones, the


different sounds which can be classified into the categories of consonants and vowels.
Distinctive features, phonological rules and processes and the intonations are the concern
of Phonology.

2.2 Theories on Phonology

2.2.1Structuralism:

The main work on structuralism was at the level of Phonology especially in the
Prague school led by Trubetzkoy and Jakobson. The Prague school is basically
associated with its phonology and with its phonological relevant functions. In fact, the
distinction between phonetics and phonology is associated with the Prague Linguistic
Circle. Trubetzkoy represents the essence of Praguian Phonology. Trubetzkoy’s
posthumously published work, “The Principles of Phonology” (1939), is considered the
foundation of the Prague School of Phonology. Trubetzkoy chiefly contributed to
Phonology and Phonological theory. He made the distinction between Phonetics and
Phonology by taking into account the criterion of function. In separating phonetics from
phonology and phoneme from sound, Trubetzkoy adopted the Ferdinand de Saussure’s
distinction between langue and parole. He defined the ‘phoneme’ as “the smallest
distinctive unit within the structure of a given language”, and he linked the concept of
neutralization with the distinction marked/unmarked. According to his theory when two
phonemes are distinguished by the presence or absence of a single distinction feature one
of them is marked and the other is unmarked. One of the major contributions of
Trubetzkoy in the field of Linguistics is the description of Morphophonology.
Trubetzkoy formulated three main tasks:

a. To establish the distinguishing phonological features of morphemes of


different classes (for example, inflexions, as distinct from root or suffixes).

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b. To formulate rules for transforming morphemes in morphemic combinations;
and
c. To create a theory of morphological sound alternation.

Another important figure in the Prague School was Roman Jakobson, who was
considered as one of the most prominent linguist of the twentieth century. It was
Jakobson and Trubetzkoy who initiated the modern distinctive feature theory. Distinctive
feature theory, based on his own work and the work of Trubetzkoy, was first formalized
by Roman Jakobson in 1941 and remains one of the most significant contributions to
phonology.

Bloomfield (1933), Pike (1947) and Hockett (1955) are some of the prominent
American Structuralists. For the American structuralist as for Bloomfield, a language
was basically a hierarchy of inventories; an inventory of phonemes which could be
concatenated to form morphemes, which could be combined to form words and syntactic
constructions, which themselves formed further inventories. American Structuralist
Phonology was concerned primarily with formalizing the notion of the Phoneme, and
with elaborating a framework for the phoneme analysis of languages. For Bloomfield, the
phoneme was not an ‘ideal sound’ or ‘mental image’ but rather a bundle of distinctive
features which are present in the overt, physical manifestation of speech. The task of
phonemic analysis is to isolate these distinctive features- principally through the
discovery of minimal pairs- and to state the distribution of redundant, non-distinctive
features. Bloomfield (1933), was one of the most noteworthy early practitioners of
morphophonemic’s method of description. The concept of morphophonemics in
Linguistics was discussed elaborately by Bloomfield, and it is still relevant in current
linguistic analysis.

2.2.2 Generative Theory:

The theoretical framework underlying generative phonology owes its


development primarily to Noam Chomsky and Morris Halle (1968), who published
“The Sound Pattern of English (SPE)”, which is considered as the basis for Generative
Phonology. In the SPE model of Phonology a derivation starts from an Underlying

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Representation (UR) which encodes all the information about the pronunciation of a word
which cannot be predicted by rule. This undergoes phonological rules which substitute
one segment or alter the order of segments. The result is Surface Representation (SR).
The SPE had a great influence on phonological theory with its downplaying of the
syllable and the focus on segments.

2.2.3 Natural Phonology:

Natural phonology was a theory developed by David Stampe in 1969 and (more
explicitly) in 1979. Rather than acting on segment, phonological processes act on
distinctive features within prosodic groups. Prosodic groups can be as small as a part of a
syllable or as large as an entire utterance. The basis of the theory is the claim that our
innate phonetics capacity can be represented in the form of a set of very general natural
processes. In addition to natural processes, languages are also assumed to contain
learned Rules. Natural phonology thus attempted to produce an account of “everything
that language owes to the fact that is spoken” (Doneger and Stampe 1979:128), and to
“exclude the topic of unmotivated and morphologically motivated alternations” (ibid., P.
127) such as German Umlaut or English velar softening.

In 1976, John Goldsmith introduced “Autosegmental Phonology”. Autosegmantal


phonology later evolved in Feature Geometry, which became the standard theory of
representation for the theories of the organization of phonology as different as Lexical
Phonology and Optimality Theory. Lexical Phonology is a theory about the
organization of grammar. In particular, it deals with the relationship among Phonology,
Morphology and the Lexicon. Its basic claim is that all morphological process and many
phonological ones are carried out in the lexicon.

The above discussion does not cover all the sources consulted. In the description on
the phonology of Sangtam no particular theory was followed. However, wherever
applicable, Bloomfield’s view on the concept of phoneme, Pike’s phonemic analysis,
and, the concepts of syllable introduced by Hockett are taken into consideration for
analysis.

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2.3 Morphology:
Morphology is the study of the internal structure of words. Somewhat
paradoxically, morphology is both the oldest and one of the youngest sub- disciplines of
grammar. It is the oldest because, as far as we know, the first linguists were primarily
morphologist.

Until the nineteenth century, western linguists often thought of grammar as


consisting primarily of word structure, perhaps because the classical languages Greek and
Latin had fairly rich morphological patterns that were difficult for speakers of the modern
European languages.

This is also the reason why it was only in the second half of the nineteenth
century that the term morphology was invented and became current.

In Linguistics Morphology refers ‘to the mental system involved in word


formation or to the branch of linguistics that deals with words, their internal structure and
how they are formed.’

Morphology is not only the study of the forms of words of a given point of time
but it also studies the form of words used over a period of time. Thus, it can be said that it
studies the words synchronically and diachronically.

Morphology is a branch of linguistics which studies the structure of form of words.


It is generally divided into two fields (a) inflectional morphology (the study of inflection)
and (b) derivational morphology (the study of word formation).

Inflectional affixes signal grammatical relationships, such as plural, past tense and
possession and do not change the grammatical class of the stems to which they are
attached. Derivational affixes changes the grammatical class of morphemes to which they
are attached. Inflectional affixes will inflect tense, aspects modality and mood in the
grammatical category like verb. Person, number, gender and case will be inflected in the
nouns.

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2.3.1 Structuralist Model (Hockett)

As the concept of the morpheme was developed by structuralist word formation


came to be viewed as the disposition of morphemes in a word structure. Morphology
came to be dominated by the metaphor of word analysis rather than word formation as
linguistic theory provides techniques for decomposing words into their compound
morphemes.

Structuralist linguistics is based as “Discovery procedure” i.e., finding out


morphemes in words by looking at recurring particles or elements such as un-, pre-
(termed as ‘prefixes’), or -ness , -ly, -tion (termed ‘suffixes’) in English.

According to Hockett (1958) “Morphology includes the stock of segmental


morphemes and the ways in which words are built up out of them”. Following are
Hockett’s (1958) models for language description.

a. Item and Arrangement (IA) Theory.

This is the clearest of Hockett’s model. This model took the morpheme as its
basic unit – ‘morphemes’ including roots, inflections, derivational affixes, and so on.
These items form what is called the surface structure. Hockett discusses the ablaut in the
formation consisting of affixation of -ed to the basic form (as bake - baked). He points
out that descriptive linguistics up to that time had a variety of means for describing the
fact that took is the past tense form of take, and proceeds to compare them.

Hockett’s list (1958: 393) is as follows:

i. Took is a single morpheme <…>


ii. Took is a portmanteau representation of the two morpheme sequence take and
/ed/.
iii. Took is an allomorph of the morpheme which appears elsewhere as take, plus a
zero allomorph of /ed/.
iv. Took is a discontinuous allomorph /t…k/ of take, and an infixed allomorph /u/ of
/ed/.
v. Took is take plus a replacive morph /u/ /ey/ (read ‘/u/ replaces /ey/’).

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This citation is self - explanatory expect for the term portmanteau, which means a
type of fusion of two morphemes into one. All of these solutions have their draw backs.
But the option Hockett seems to prefer is that of (iv), though he explicitly denies that.
This means that the form take is comprised of /t…k/ plus an infix /ey/. However, this
preference is relative to IA theory. As Hockett points out, in a different theoretical
framework we would expect different solutions to be favoured. Hockett mentions one
other approach in passing the word- and -paradigm theory, and devotes much of his
discussion to what he sees as the main alternative to IA, the item-and-process (IP) theory.

b. Item -and-process (IP) Theory:

The IP Approach historically precedes the IA approach described by Hockett. In


an IP account we would distinguish between basic or underlying forms derived after the
application of certain processes. Thus we would say that bake and take were underlying
forms and that two distinct processes applied to them is in the formation of past tense. In
the first, the process is affixation of -ed (or perhaps of the allomorph /t/), in the second,
the process is phonological in that the vowel is replaced by /u/.

There remains a class of phenomenon which neither IA nor IP seem well


equipped to handle and that is the fusional nature of inflectional systems. The problem is
that both IA and IP are fundamentally agglutinative. In IA, there is no distinction between
underlying forms and surface forms, all allomorphy is essentially agglutinative. In IP
word structure need not necessarily look agglutinative on the surface, but it is assumed to
be agglutinative at the underlying level. This difficulty becomes apparent when we ask
how the IA and IP theories would handle the problem passed by Russian adjectival forms
such as bol ‘shomu’ big (masc/neut. Dat. Sg. Adj).’

Large masc/ NEUT DAT SG ADJ

Bol'sh

omu

Here we have four morphemes all realized by a single portmanteau morph. It is


equally implausible that we would find a set of processes operating over underlying

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forms to express the separate categories of masculine/ neuter, dative, singular and
adjective.

c. Word - and - paradigm (WP) Theory:

Not much detail about WP theory was given by Hockett .This is an approach to
inflectional morphology, first presented in an articulated form in Robins (1959), and
defended meticulously within a generative framework by Matthews (1974). Robins
pointed out that there are certain generalizations, which can only be stated at the level of
the whole word. His proposal was to revamp a much earlier tradition of word analysis
derived from classical grammarian (Some writing 2,500 years ago, such as Panini and
Aristotle) describing classical languages such as Latin, Greek and Sanskrit.

The key to the WP approach is our notion of the morphosyntactic word. Each
inflected form (at least) one morphosyntactic description (e.g., past tense form or dative
singular of the masculine/neuter adjectival form) and the grammar then makes available
paradigms that specify the formatives which correspond to these categories. In an
agglutinating system the correspondence rules will be rather simple, one amounting to
one morphosyntactic category per formative and one formative per category.

The Item- and - arrangement (IA) Theory and the Item - and - Process (IP)
Theories are fundamentally agglutinating theories and are therefore relevant for
typologically agglutinating languages. Sangtam being an agglutinative language the two
theories are found to be suitable for the analysis of Sangtam morphological processes.

2.3.2 Nida’s Principles of Descriptive analysis5:

Nida is of the opinion that a descriptive analyst must be guided by “very fixed
principles” in order to be accurate and objective in the description of the language.
Language change is an attested fact of all human languages, but the rate of change varies
at different times in the history of a language.

5
Nida Eugene A. 1949.”Morphology: The Descriptive Analysis of Words”

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Nida states that “the science of descriptive linguistics should be concerned with
structural relations in any and in all languages” (P.4). Hence, according to Nida,
whenever the existing terms are applicable, they should be used.

The fundamental principles for linguistic description listed by Nida (1949) are:

a. Descriptive analysis must be based on what people say, i.e., the primacy of spoken
over written language, and the necessity to record what people actually say, not what
they should say.
b. The forms are primary and the usages secondary, i.e., a descriptive linguist should
start with the form, and then describe the grammatical position in which the forms
occur.
c. No part of a language can be adequately describe without reference to all other parts,
i.e., phonetics, morphology and syntax of a language can be describe with reference
to each other.
d. Language are constantly in the process of change, i.e., there are fluctuations in the
use of alternative forms (e.g. proven vs. Proved).

Nida while dealing with Morphology and the descriptive analysis of words puts
forward six important principles for the identification of morphemes. These six principles
have provided basic guidelines to field linguists dealing with morphological analysis
especially those working on “unknown”, undescribed languages.

The following are the six principles listed below:

Principle 1: “Forms which have a common semantic distinctiveness and an identical


phonemic form in all their occurrences constitute a single morpheme.”

Example:

1. -er in singer, dancer, walker, runner etc.


2. Comparative Degree –er in taller, bigger, smarter etc., is a different morpheme

Principle 2: “Forms which have a common semantic distinctiveness but which differ in
phonemic forms (i.e. the phonemes or the order of the phonemes) may constitute a

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morpheme provided the distribution of formal differences is phonologically definable.”
(Example: s~z~iz) which is phonologically definable.

Principle 3: “Forms which have a common semantic distinctiveness but which differ in
phonemic form in such a way that their distribution cannot be phonologically defined
constitute a single morpheme, if the forms are in complementary distribution.”

Principle 4: “An overt formal differences in the structural series constitutes a morpheme
if in any member of such a series, the overt formal difference and a zero structural
difference are the only significant features for distinguishing a minimal unit of phonetic-
semantic distinctiveness” (P. 54).

Principle 5: “Homophonous forms are identifiable as the same different morpheme on


the basis of the following conditions:

1. Homophonous forms are identifiable as the same or different meanings constitute


different morphemes.
2. Homophonous forms with related meanings constitute a single morpheme if the
meaning classes are paralleled by distributional differences, but then constitute
multiple morphemes if the meaning classes are not paralleled by distributional
differences.”

Principle 6: “A morpheme is isolatable if it occurs under the following conditions:

1. In isolation. (e.g., ‘boy’, ‘house’, etc.)


2. In multiple combination in at least one of which the unit with which it is combined,
occurs in isolation or in other combination. (e.g., conceive, consume; receive,
resume).
3. In a single combination, provided the element with which it is combined occurs in
isolation, or in other combination with non-unique constituents.” (e.g., ‘cranberry’,
‘raspberry’ because the element ‘berry’ occurs in isolation) (P.60)

Since this is a preliminary research on Sangtam language many of the principles


have not found a place in the analysis, for example principle 2 and principle 5 have not
been considered for the present study. The fundamental principles a, b and c listed

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above have been followed for this study. But under the fundamental principle c the
syntax of Sangtam has not been analyzed.

2.3.3 Recent Trends:

In the 1990’s some linguists, especially sociolinguists became disenchanted with


the highly abstract mental representation of language of the generativists and the
minimalists. Morphology, along with other branches of linguistics, again becomes a field
of enquiry. However an emerging trend is to find alternative theories of morphology,
such as Anderson’s (1992) “A- morphous morphology”, which is a theory of structure
related to a generative description of language. The theory rejects to the notion that
complex words are built up concatenating simple minimal signs or morphemes, and
proposes instead that word structure is described by a system of rule governed relations
between one word and another. A-morphous morphology, maintains significant
distinctions between inflection, derivation and compounding in terms of their place in a
manner.

Whole-Word Morphology (WWM) (sometimes called Seamless Morphology) is


a truly word – based theory of morphology; because it does not allow morphological
operations on units smaller than the word. It is an attempt to solve problems entailed by
the view of morphology as a combination of morphs or morphemes. WWM was first
outlined in Ford and Singh 1983. A series of papers dealing with various aspects of it was
published by Fort and Singh between 1983 and 1990. Drawing on these papers, they
published a full outline of it in 1991 and an even fuller defence of it in 1997 (with
Martohardjono). It has gained some attention as a viable approach to the study of word
structure. WWM sees morphology not as a combination of morphs or morphemes but as
a system of generalised abstract bidirectional correspondences among patterns
instantiated by sets of whole word that exploits the same contrast. WWM is a theory of
non-concatenated morphology based as the Paninian view of morphology where the word
is an entirely derived entity. In WWM, the focus for study is the relationship of shapes of
the whole words as in ‘bad’ (adjective) and ‘badly’ (adverb); ‘direct’ (adjective) and
‘directly’ (adverb). The first set of words is morphologically related because they differ
in exactly the same way as the second set. WWM consists exclusively of productive

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differences found in the lexicon. In other words, comparison of differences (which define
words), especially segmented differences are exploited in more than one pair of words. In
this way, WWM identifies word-based morphological relations in a lexicon. In the
WWM, the structuralist, multipartite analysis into root, stem, affix, etc gave way to
analysis of morphological relationships. Secondly, word formation strategies (WFS)
based on generalizations from known facts, are used in the production and understanding
of new words.

2.4 Case:

The western tradition of describing case systems can be traced back to the
Greeks. The nouns of Greek and Latin were classified by traditional grammarians
according to particular paradigms of declension for the inflectional categories of case in
number.

According to Lyons (1968: 289) the origin of case goes back to the Latin word
‘casus’ (and the Greek word which translated) which means ‘falling’ or ‘deviation’. Lyon
further explains that it was the Stoics who gave to the word ‘case’ the more particular
sense that it has since borne in grammar terminology. Case was the most important
inflectional categories of the nouns, as tense was the most important inflectional category
of the Verb.

Blake (1991) defines case as “a system of marking dependent nouns for the type
of relationship they bear to their heads.” The verb is taken to be the head of the clause,
since it largely determines what dependent may be present.

In traditional grammar, the term case refers to the inflectional marking. Case
marks the relationship of a noun to a verb at the clause level of a noun to prepositions,
postposition or another noun at the phrase level. Case in traditional grammar, therefore is
viewed primarily in morphological perspective.

Lyons (1968: 295) points out that in many treatments of the case inflections
found in various languages as distinction is drawn between their ‘grammatical’ and their
‘local’ functions. The distinction is sometimes formulated in terms of an opposition

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between the more ‘Abstract’ (grammatical) and the more ‘concrete’ (local) functions that
have been recognized in the description of many languages. Further, these ‘grammatical’
and ‘local’ functions may be realized in the same language partly by case – inflections
and partly by other means – most commonly by preposition or postposition, or by word -
order. Lyons view on the case system will serve as a background to configure the case
system or the case marking in Sangtam.

2.4.1 Traditional Approach:

The traditional model for describing case system is based on Ancient Greek or
Latin. Ancient Greek, like the other Indo - European languages was fusional inflecting
languages which case marking could not be separated from case marking, where there
was also some fusion of the stem and inflection. Cases were described in terms of what
were called case forms, where a case form is an inflected form of a noun. The term case
is from Latin ‘casus’ which is the translation of the Greek ‘Ptosis’ ‘fall’. The term
originally referred to verbs as well as nouns and the idea seems to have been falling away
from as assumed standard form, a notion also reflected in the term ‘declension’ used with
references to inflected classes.

For Aristotle the notion of ‘Ptosis’ extended to adverbial deviation as well as


inflections, with the stoics the term became confined to nominal inflection.

Case systems of the type represent by Latin and Ancient Greek present two
major problems for description. One is the problem of distinguishing the cases; the other
is the problem of describing their meaning and function. Distinguishing the case is a
problem, since different classes of stem exhibit a different range of distribution, i.e., the
paradigm are not isomorphic. The traditional solution is to identify across stem classes on
the basis of the functions they have in common. Describing the meaning and function of
the cases traditionally involved a principle meaning, which is reflected in the level, as
well as listing a range of separate meaning or functions.

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2.4.2 The Distributional Approach:

In Latin as in many Indo – European languages, the nominative and the accusative
have distinct case forms for masculine and feminine nouns, but there is neutralization or
‘syncretism’ of distinction with neuter nouns. There is also neutralization of nominative
and accusative with plural nouns. The distinction applies to all nouns, since it allows
making generalization about the form used for various functions in various syntactic
contexts. However, there is one point overlooked in traditional description and that is
pattern of syncretism. In a language like Latin, they may seem random at first, but two
syncretisms predominate. There is the syncretism of nominative and accusative in all
neuters and all plurals and the syncretism of dative in all plurals plus the singular of the
second declension and the i-stem in the third declension.

The origin of the generalized meaning goes back to the classical period, but it
becomes prominent in the thirteenth century both in the work of the Byzantine
grammarian Maximus Planudes (1260 -1310) and in the work of the Scholastic
grammarian (Hjelmslev 1935, Serbat 1981) where, generalized characterizations were
exploited in presenting inventories as systems. Simon of Dacia (Denmark), for instance,
characterized the Latin genitive and ablative as expressing origin as opposed to the dative
and accusative which express what is called destination. A cross - cutting, distinction is
made between relations of substance to action i.e., adverbial relations (Serbat 1981).
These binary distinctions can be represented in terms of distinctive features.

NOM ACC GEN DAT ABL


Origin - - + +
Destination - + - + -
Substance-to-Substance - - + +
Substance-to-Action - + - -

Table 1: Latin case system (Simon of Dacia)

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2.4.3 Modern Approach:

Since the early sixties, Linguistics has been dominated by the theories of
Chomsky. His influence can be seen even in works outside the Chomskyan framework.
Among them are ‘case grammar’ of Fillmore (1974), the ‘Relational Grammar’ of Perl
mutter and postal and the Lexical Functional Grammar of Bresman. These theories have
been provoked by Chomsky’s theoretical approach and have advanced over the last few
decades. These theories maintain that all the mechanisms observed by the traditionalists
may be used to signal case; that, case is abstract existing independently of the means of
expression and that it is universal.

Fillmore is responsible for positing the notion that there is a universal set of
atonics semantic roles. In his paper, ‘The case for case’ (1968), he proposed a set of six
‘cases’ which are agentive, instrumental, dative, factitive, locative and objective, but he
later switch to agent, instrument, object, source, goal, place and time. He called these as
‘Syntactic Semantic Relations’ cases and his conception of grammar and its congeners
came to be referred to as case grammar. These Fillmorean type cases are usually referred
to as Deep cases and the traditional cases as surface cases.

2.5 Ergative case:


The term ‘ergativity’ is used to describe a grammatical pattern in which the
subject of an intransitive verb is treated in the same way as the object of a transitive verb
and thus the subject of a transitive verb is treated differently. By this parameter of
ergativity the grammatical function of subject and object in different languages can be
marked as follows:

S – Intransitive subject
A – Transitive subject
O – Transitive object
On the basis of the above characterization of subject and object, languages are
classified into two broad categories, such as
1. Nominative-Accusative and
2. Ergative-Absolutive

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In languages with a nominative-accusative grammar, S (intransitive subject) and
A (transitive subject) are grouped together, with regard to the case marker i.e. nominative
case, however languages of the ergative-absolutive type would classify S (intransitive
subject) and O (transitive object) together (i.e. case-marked with same case form-
absolutive) and the A (transitive subject) is case marked with an ergative case. The
description of different kinds of treatment to the subject in different languages can be
summed up in a diagram given below:

Nominative
A ergative

s
Absolutive
o
If we elaborate the above diagram, we would say the nominative-accusative
languages fall on the left hand side of the diagram and the ergative-absolutive would fall
on the right hand side; meaning, the subject of both +/- transitive clauses will be case
marked as nominative in the languages that are known as ‘nominative-accusative’, and if
there is an object in case of transitive clause it is case marked with accusative case
(covert or overt). On the other hand side, the ergative-absolutive languages mark the
subject of intransitive clause and the direct object of a transitive clause with zero case
marker which is also known as absolutive form of nominative case. However, the subject
of a transitive clause gets a different case and that is what is termed as ergative case.
Nominative-accusative case systems can be illustrated for English:
a. Intransitive Subject (S)

1. The boy sleeps


Art. N.3MS-Nom Verb-pres.imp.-3MS
‘The boy sleeps’.

2. The baby cries


Art. N.3S-Nom Verb-pres.imp.-3S

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‘The baby cries’.
In the above examples 1 and 2, we find that the subjects of intransitive clauses i.e.
‘boy’ and ‘baby’ respectively appear in nominative case. The nominative case shows up
in null (or zero) case form in English.
b. Transitive Subject (A)
3. The boy hit the dog
Art. N.3MS-Nom Verb-pst. Art. N.3MS-Acc
‘The boy hit the dog’.

4. The student read the book


Art. N.3S-Nom Verb-pst. Art. N-Acc.
‘The student read the book’.
Examples 3 and 4 show that the subjects ‘boy’ and ‘student’ of the transitive
clauses are in nominative case and the objects ‘dog’ and ‘book’ are in accusative case. In
the above 1 to 4 examples from English, all subjects, both S (intransitive subject) and A
(transitive subject), appear with nominative case while O (transitive object) appear with
accusative case. Thus we can say that English is a nominative-accusative type of
language.
Let us now contrast this grammatical system of case in English with that of
Basque, with the examples given below:
BASQUE: SOV 6
5. emakume-a-k ogi-a ja-ten d-u
women-Det-Erg. bread-Det eat-imp. 3Agr-S-3Erg.
‘The woman eats (the) bread’.

6. gazteri-a-k pilot-a uz-ten ari d-u


youth-Det-Erg. ball-Det leave-imp. Prog. 3Agr-S-3Erg.
‘The youth is leaving the ball’.

6
Itziar Laka, A Johns et al. (eds.), Ergativity, 173-195, 2006: with some unification of glossing.

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7. emakume-a-k ogi-ak ja-n d-it-u
woman-Det-Erg. bread-Det.Pl eat-prf. 3Agr-Pl-have-3Erg.
‘The woman has eaten (the) breads’.
Example 5 has a transitive verb in imperfective aspect where the subject
‘emkume’ (the woman) carries ergative case (morpheme-k). The direct object ‘ogi’

(the bread) receives an absolutive case which is marked by zero. In 6, the subject
‘gzteri’ (the youth) functions as an agent of the transitive verb ‘uz-’ meaning ‘leave’.

Thus the subject is marked with an ergative case marker ‘–k’ and the direct object
‘pilotA’ (the ball) is zero case marked which stands for absolutive case. Example 7 shows
that a transitive verb in perfective aspect would take a subject that occurs with an ergative
case and the direct object bears zero the case marker which again stands for absolutive
case.
Some similar examples from Dyirbal7, spoken in north-east Australia are
illustrated below:
DYIRBAL: OSV
a. Intransitive Subject (S)
8. baji jaɽa walmanju
NCl.there.ABS man.ABS got up
‘Man got up’.

b. Transitive Subject (A) present progressive


9. ngajguna baŋgul jaɽa-ŋgu balgan
me.Acc. NCI.there.Erg. man-Erg. hit.NONFUT
‘Man is hitting me’.

c. Transitive Subject (A) past simple


10. jabu ŋuma-ŋgu gigan (banagaj-gu)
mother.ABS father-Erg. tell.to do.NONFUT return-Purp
‘Father told mother to return’.

7
Dixon, the Dyirbal language of North Queensland, 1972

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From the above Basque and Dyirbal examples, we could say that the pattern of
ergativity is displayed in these languages as it has been advocated by Dixon (1994). What
this means is that once the transitivity of the clause changes, the marking of subject will
also change. This change of ergative and nominative case with regard to the subject is
across the tenses, aspects and the phi- features (PNG) of the subject in Basque and
Dyirbal. So, such system of ergative case marking is referred as full-ergative system.
However, there are languages in which the ergativity is not marked with the subject
across the board, and thus are parameterized for various conditioned to be marked with
the subject. This system, since gets separated from the full ergative system, is known as
split-ergative system.

2.5.1 Ergativity in Sangtam:


Sangtam has ergative absolutive ergative case system and exhibits full split ergativity.
Following are some examples in Sangtam to initiate the above discussion proposed by
Dixon.
a. Intransitive subject (S)
1. akʰuŋa ʦǝ tra -kʰɔ
Baby DET cry PS.T
‘The baby cried.’

2. iʔ haʔʧi -kʰɔ
1st SG sneeze PS.T
‘I sneezed.’

3. iʔ skul -la vǝ -re


1st SG school LOC go PR.T
‘I go to school.’
In Sangtam, the subject occurs in Nominative case with no overt case suffix when it
has the S-function (intransitive subject) as in example 1 to 3. In all the above examples in
Sangtam, the subject appears in nominative form with no suffix attached to it. However

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the situation changes when we have a transitive clause. Below are some examples of
transitive clauses in different tenses.
b. Transitive Subject (A) in present, past and future simple:

4. iʔ -nǝ ʃǝti tʰraʔ -re


st
1 SG ERG letter write PRT
‘I write a letter.’

5. isa -nǝ ʃǝti tʰraʔ -kʰɔ


1st PL(EXCL) ERG letter write PST
‘We wrote a letter.’

6. iʔ -nǝ ʃǝti tʰraʔ -nuŋ


1st SG ERG letter write FUT
‘I will write a letter.’

From the above examples 4 to 6, that the subject is overtly case marked unlike the
example 1 to 3 of intransitive clauses. The case suffix /-nǝ/ occurs uniformly with the
subject when the verb is in transitive. The Direct Object is however unmarked and this
reflects the pattern of ergativity in Sangtam. This pattern fulfills the requirement for
ergativity that Dixon proposes.

c. Transitive Subject (A) in perfect aspects (past, future)


7. abu -nǝ vatʰraʔ tʰraʔ -pe -kʰɔ
2ndSGM ERG letter write PERF PST
‘He had written letter’.

8. iʔ -nǝ ʃǝti ʦǝ tʰraʔ -pe -nuŋ


st
1 SG ERG letter DET write PERF FUT
‘I will have written the letter’.

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From the above examples 7 and 8 we can see that the subjects of transitive verbs
are overtly case marked with an ergative case suffix ‘-nǝ’ in perfective aspect. The
ergative case marker in Sangtam is uniformly present in all different transitive clauses.
From the above examples we can say that Sangtam seems to display a pattern of ‘full-
ergative’ system that has been proposed by Dixon.
More details on case markers have been discussed in Chapter 5 (5.3).
2.6 Works on Sangtam

Grierson “Linguistics Survey of India” (VOL III PART II 1903), conducted over
a hundred years ago is the first work ever done in Sangtam. A brief list of words and
sentences are listed which are said to have been collected by Captain A.E.Woods, I.S.C.,
and Deputy Commissioner of the Naga Hills District. Grierson did not give any
description on the words and sentences which he listed. Grierson has mentioned about
this language by the name “Thukumi”8. Grierson (1903) states, “the Thukumi call
themselves Isachanu-re. Thukumi is a sema9 term......their villages are small. The Ao’s
call the tribe Sangtamra.”

As far as the non-linguistic written literature is concerned, it is based mostly on


religious writings, devotional songs and biblical stories. The works and books that have
been written on Sangtam people are mostly about their culture, festival and the society
and those that have dealt with languages, are concerned only with the genetic
classification. The “Sangtam Literature Committee” is the sole agency involved in the
publication of school text books and also various other teaching materials reprinted for
teaching purpose.

The “Sangtam Literature Committee” published a dictionary called the “Anglo


Sangtam Dictionary” in the year 2002. The dictionary is useful for its detailed description
but does not indicate its transcription, tone and does not identify the parts of speech of its
entries.

8
Tukhumi was the Sema name for the central Sangtam.
9
Presently called Sumi. It should be noted that ‘Sema’ is still commonly used in Nagaland to refer to this
group.

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Part of the Sangtam Bible was published for the first time in 1944, the New
Testament was first published in 1963 and the complete Bible was finally published in
the year 1995.

Apart from Grierson’s word list, so far, no linguistic work has been done in
Sangtam. This research work “The Phonology and Morphology of Sangtam” is a first of
its kind. Since this is the first linguistic work on the language, the researcher did not take
into account any particular theory or approaches; the discussion and analysis provided is
mainly descriptive study.

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