Case and morphosyntactic anti-identity in Yimas
Summary: In Yimas (Lower Sepik; Papua New Guinea), morphological case (m-case) distinctions are
made over a sequence of optional doubled clitics, yet their associated DPs are case-invariant. Moreover,
the case that surfaces on a clitic depends on the other clitics also present, suggesting that case is calculated directly over the span of clitics. I pursue a postsyntactic, context-dependent treatment of case
reminiscent of dependent case (Yip et al. 1987, Marantz 1991), and argue that m-case is assigned to the
clitics as an indirect response to the case-invariance of the DPs. Since doubled clitics are reduced copies
of these DPs, clitic doubling of multiple DPs yields a sequence of clitics that are also case-invariant.
This runs into well-formedness issues in the postsyntax, but is repaired by m-case assignment (and, if
m-case assignment is insufficient, by other means), explaining its context-dependency. This talk thus
recasts m-case as a tool used by the grammar to ensure non-identity among otherwise featurally identical
elements within a specific domain—here, the domain of doubled clitics.
Data: Yimas has a set of preverbal morphemes that encode person and number, organized into three
case paradigms: ABS, ERG, and DAT. I analyze these morphemes as doubled clitics. Clitic doubling in
Yimas is non-obligatory—as a result, Yimas permits both full and partial clitic doubling (as well as no
doubling at all). In the straightforward cases, ABS encodes S/O, ERG encodes A, and DAT encodes IO,
as shown in (1).1 The clitic order is fixed: always ABS-ERG-1/2.DAT-verb or ABS-ERG-verb-3.DAT.
(1)
a.
k-mpu-Na-tkamt
6 S . ABS-3 P.ERG-1 S.DAT-show2
‘They showed me it (the coconut).’
b.
uraN
k-ka-tkamr-akn
coconut.6 6 S . ABS-1 S.ERG-show-3 S.DAT
‘I showed him the coconut.’
A closer look, however, reveals that the realization of ERG and DAT on a given clitic depends on its clitic
environment, meaning that these cases may fail to surface if the appropriate environment is not met.
This may be seen by comparing full vs. partial doubling constructions, since, in the partial construction,
there are fewer doubled clitics than there are syntactic DPs. In (2), the subject clitic bears ERG in (a), but
surfaces instead as ABS in (b) in the absence of a clitic cross-referencing the object ‘Mitchell.’ Similarly,
in (3), the clitic cross-referencing the causee is DAT in (a), but ABS in (b) because the object ‘mat’ is not
doubled; however, ERG is retained on the subject clitic. Thus, a clitic may only surface as ERG in the
presence of another clitic (two in total), and as DAT in the presence of two other clitics (three in total).
(2)
a.
(3)
a.
na- kay -cay
b. Mitchell ipa -tay
Mitchell 1 P.ABS -see
3 S.ABS- 1 P.ERG -see
‘We saw him.’
‘We saw Mitchell.’
tpuk
ka-ka-na-tmi-amnt- akn
b.
pancake 10 S . ABS-1 S.ERG-DEF - CAUS-eat- 3 S.DAT
‘I made him eat it (a pancake).’
irwa
na -mpu-tmi-ampat
mat.9 S 3 S.ABS -3 P.ERG-CAUS-weave
‘They got her to weave a mat.’
M-case assignment: I argue that these patterns instantiate a version of the dependent case system of Yip
et al. (1987) and Marantz (1991), wherein case is assigned on the basis of competition between caserequiring elements. Under this analysis, ERG and DAT in Yimas are both dependent cases, requiring
one and two case competitors respectively. Though this approach to case assignment normally relies on
syntactic configuration (c-command relations) between DPs, in Yimas the case patterns are ultimately
sensitive to clitic environment; as shown above, clitics act as case competitors for one another. I therefore
propose the following dependent case assignment rules for Yimas, modified from Marantz (1991):
(4)
Dependent case assignment in Yimas:
a. ERG: Assigned to a clitic, iff it cross-references a DP c-commanding a lower caserequiring DP, and both DPs are clitic doubled.
b. DAT: Assigned to a clitic, iff it cross-references a DP both c-commanding and being
c-commanded by case-requiring DPs, and all three DPs are clitic doubled.
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All examples are from Foley (1991). Case/AGR morphemes are bolded, and are additionally boxed when under discussion.
Abbreviations: ABS = absolutive, ADV = adverb, CAUS = causative, DEF = definitive, DAT = dative, ERG = ergative, S / D / P
= singular/dual/plural, 1/2/3 = 1st/2nd/3rd person, 6/9/10 = noun classes 6/9/10.
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The assignment of ERG and DAT thus depends jointly on the total number of clitics and the syntactic
position of the cross-referenced DPs. I propose that clitics are by default ABS upon doubling, before
being assigned m-case according to the rules in (4) (see Kornfilt & Preminger 2013 for a similar view
of ABS); this is supported by the identity between the pronominals and the ABS paradigm (5), as well as
the general case-invariance of the non-pronominal DPs. Therefore, when the rules in (4) cannot apply,
a clitic is realized as its default form, ABS. ABS, then, is an ‘elsewhere’ case, its distributions limited to
where ERG and DAT are unavailable.
(5)
a.
kapwa taNka-mpi
kapwa-wat
where-ADV 2 D-go
2D
‘Where have you two gone?’
b.
ipa wara ipa-na-amn
1P
what 1 P-DEF-eat
‘What do we eat?’
Anti-identity: The defaultness of ABS provides a point of departure to understanding why m-case is assigned on the clitics. The logic of the analysis predicts that multiple clitic doubling yields multiple ABS
clitics. However, no verb ever surfaces with more than one ABS clitic (Phillips 1995), suggesting that
multiple ABS clitic sequences are banned. I propose that m-case is assigned to repair such sequences,
and further argue that this ban is motivated by a general requirement of domain-internal morphosyntactic anti-identity (Richards 2010, Nevins 2012, a.o.). One implementation of this is Richards’ (2010)
Distinctness condition on linearization, in which all nodes in a spell-out domain are required to be sufficiently featurally non-distinct, to prevent generating a contradictory linearization statement <α,α>;
Richards shows that languages apply various dissimilatory strategies to fix such statements. I abstract
away from linearization here, and assume for the purposes of this talk that (i) anti-identity is upheld
and evaluated cyclically in the postsyntax, and (ii), in Yimas, the relevant domain for anti-identity is the
span of preverbal clitics. In Yimas, any pair of ABS clitics constitutes a sequence of morphosyntactically
indistinguishable objects, but by adding a case feature ([F]) to one of the two clitics in such a sequence,
m-case assignment ensures that these clitics are sufficiently distinct. This is schematized as follows:
(6)
*<Cl,Cl> → <Cl,Cl[F ] >
Beyond case: This analysis may extend to certain properties found in trivalent constructions containing
both ERG and DAT. While m-case assignment featurally distinguishes ERG and DAT from ABS, sequences
of m-cased clitics are, according to this system, still non-distinct from each other: *<Cl[F ] ,Cl[F ] >. I
propose that, in the event that non-distinctness still persists after m-case assignment, the grammar may
then look at the clitics’ φ-specifications; however, if this too fails, a further repair is invoked. This
cyclicity of anti-identity evaluation and repair application accounts for the participant dissimilation data
in (7): ERG-DAT clitic sequences with participant/3rd person combinations are tolerated (a), but ERGDAT sequences where both are participants are banned (b). This ban is, however, irrelevant when one of
the two clitics is ABS (c)—it is triggered specifically by two participant m-cased clitics.
(7)
a.
k-mpu-Na-tkamt
6 S.ABS-3 P.ERG-1 S.DAT-show
‘They showed me it (the coconut).’
wa- ∅ -Nkra-Nat
9 S . ABS- 2 D.ERG -1 D.DAT-give
‘ You two gave us two it (makau).’
b.
c.
ma-Na-tay
2 S.ABS-1 S.DAT-see
‘You saw me.’
While <Cl[F ] ,Cl[F,φ] > clitic sequences (7a) are distinct, <Cl[F,φ] ,Cl[F,φ] > sequences (7b) are not. The
latter is repaired by deleting the entire ERG clitic, resulting in the participant dissimilation effect in (7b).
By the same logic, two 3rd person m-cased clitics should also be ruled out; however, this is satisfied
vacuously, since 3rd person DAT clitics are always postverbal. If the relevant domain for anti-identity
evaluation is the span of preverbal clitics, then 3rd person DAT is not computed with the other clitics.
Conclusion: Yimas clitics make m-case distinctions, while their associated DPs do not. The distributions of the individual cases are partially sensitive to the number of clitics present on the verb, and
are predictable from dependent models of case assignment. I argued that m-case assignment arises as
a response to an anti-identity requirement on the surface realization of the clitics. This necessitates
a redefinition of the notion of ‘case competition,’ from caseless elements competing for a particular
m-case, to certain caseless elements being necessarily assigned m-case in accordance to conditions on
morphological well-formedness.
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