Pied-piping with inversion
Pied-piping with inversion is a special word order phenomenon found in some languages, such as those in the Mesoamerican linguistic area.
Introduction
[edit]The phenomenon was first named and identified as an areal characteristic of the Mesoamerican linguistic area in Smith Stark (1988). Some sources also refer to pied-piping with inversion as "secondary wh-movement".
The phenomenon can be described as follows:
- the language has wh-movement.
- the language has pied-piping; that is, when certain words undergo wh-movement, the interrogative word and also the rest of the phrase moves.
- the word order within the pied-piped phrase is different from the order of ordinary phrases.
The following examples from San Dionisio Ocotepec Zapotec illustrate the phenomenon. As the following example shows, a possessor normally follows the noun that is possessed in the language (Broadwell 2001):
Cù’á
COM:grab
Juààny
Juan
[NP
x-pè’cw
P-dog
Màríí ].
Mary
‘Juan grabbed Mary’s dog.’
*
Cù’á
COM:grab
Juààny
Juan
[NP
Màríí
Mary
x-pè’cw ].
P-dog
If the possessor is questioned, the whole noun phrase must pied-pipe to the beginning of the sentence. However, the order of the initial phrase must have the possessor before the possessed:
¿ [NP
Túú
who
x-pèh’cw ]
P-dog
cù’á
COM:grab
Juààny?
Juan
‘Whose dog did Juan grab?’
* ¿ [NP
X-pèh’cw
P-dog
túú ]
who
cù’á
COM:grab
Juààny?
Juan
The difference in order between the noun phrases in (1) and (2) illustrates pied-piping with inversion. (1) shows the ordinary order in which the noun is the first element of the noun phrase, and (2) shows the inverted order found in the pied-piped noun phrase.
The following examples from Tzotzil (Aissen 1996) show the same process:
I-cham
COM-die
[NP
x-ch’amal
A3-child
li
the
Xun ]-e
Xun-ENC
‘Xun’s child died.’
[NP
Buch’u
who
x-ch’amal ]
A3-child
i-cham?
COM-die
‘Whose child died?’
Types of phrases that show pied-piping with inversion
[edit]Pied-piping with inversion is most often found in noun phrases (NP), prepositional phrases (PP), and quantifier phrases (QP). The following example, also from San Dionisio Ocotepec Zapotec, shows pied-piping with inversion in a quantifier phrase (Broadwell 2001):
¿[Xhíí
what
tyóp]
two
ù-dàw
COM-eat
Juààny?
Juan
‘What did Juan eat two of?
¿[Tyóp
two
xhíí]
what
ù-dàw
COM-eat
Juààny?
Juan
‘What did Juan eat two of?’
As the example shows, languages may differ in the degree to which pied-piping with inversion is obligatory in different types of phrases. Therefore, (2) above shows that the interrogative must be initial in a pied-piped noun phrase, but (5) shows that the interrogative is only optionally initial in a pied-piped quantifier phrase.
The following example, from Quiegolani Zapotec (Black 2000), shows pied-piping with inversion in a prepositional phrase:
[Txu
who
lo]
to
n-dux
STAT-angry
xnaa
mother
noo?
1.EX
‘With whom was my mother angry?’
*[Lo
to
txu]
who
n-dux
STAT-angry
xnaa
mother
noo?
1.EX
Environments for pied-piping with inversion
[edit]The most frequently-cited type of sentence with pied-piping with inversion is a wh-question. However, a number of Mesoamerican languages also show fronting of negative or indefinite phrases to a position before the verb.
Fronted negative and indefinite phrases may also show pied-piping with inversion in some languages, as in this example from San Dionisio Ocotepec Zapotec:
Rú-tè’cà
ANIM:NEG
[túú
anyone
x-pè’cw]
p-dog
ù-dííny
COM-hit
Màríí.
Maria
‘Maria didn't hit anyone’s dog.’
*Rú-tè’cà
ANIM:NEG
[x-pè’cw
p-dog
túú]
anyone
ù-dííny
COM-hit
Màríí.
Maria
The noun phrase "anyone's dog" has been fronted to a position before the verb and shows the same pied-piping with inversion that is seen in other syntactic environments.
Languages that show pied-piping with inversion
[edit]Pied-piping with inversion seems to be found in all Mesoamerican languages. It is documented in many of them, including several Zapotec languages (San Dionisio Ocotepec Zapotec, Tlacolula de Matamoros Zapotec, and Quiegolani Zapotec), several Mayan languages (Kʼicheʼ, Kaqchikel, Chuj, Tzotzil), and several Mixtecan languages (Ocotepec Mixtec, and Copala Triqui).
Pied-piping with inversion is unusual outside Mesoamerica but is documented in Sasak, an Austronesian language of Indonesia(Austin 2001).
A somewhat similar phenomenon is found in a number of Germanic languages in which certain pronominal objects of prepositions appear before the preposition.[1] The following Dutch examples show that ordinary objects follow the preposition op "on," but the pronouns er "it," daar "there," and hier "here" precede the preposition:
- Ik reken [op je steun]. ("I count on your support.")
- Ik reken erop/daarop/hierop ("I count on it/on that/on this.")
Those examples show inversion of a prepositional phrase, but the inversion does not necessarily occur in contexts of pied-piping.
Possibly related is the phenomenon known as swiping[2] in which a wh-phrase is inverted with a governing preposition in the context of sluicing:
- Ralph was arguing, but I don't know who with.
Such inversion requires pied-piping but also ellipsis, unlike Meso-American languages.
See also
[edit]Notes
[edit]References
[edit]- Aissen, Judith. 1996. Pied-piping, abstract agreement, and functional projections in Tzotzil. Natural language and linguistic theory 14:447-491.
- Austin, Peter. 2001. Content questions in Sasak, eastern Indonesia: an OT syntax account. manuscript. University of Melbourne.
- Black, Cheryl. 2000. Quiegolani Zapotec syntax: A Principles and Parameters Account. Dallas: SIL International and UT Arlington Publications in Linguistics 136.
- Broadwell, George Aaron. 1999. Focus alignment and optimal order in Zapotec. Proceedings of the 35th Chicago Linguistics Society.
- Broadwell, George Aaron. 2001. Optimal order and pied-piping in San Dionisio Zapotec, in Peter Sells, ed. Formal and empirical issues in optimality theory. Stanford: CSLI.
- Broadwell, George Aaron. 2002. Constraint symmetry in Optimality-Theoretic Syntax. In Miriam Butt and Tracy Holloway King, eds. Proceedings of the Lexical Functional Grammar 2000 Conference. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.
- Broadwell, George Aaron and Brook Danielle Lillehaugen. 2006. Pied-piping with inversion in Tlacolula de Matamoros Zapotec. Presented at the Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas, Albuquerque, Jan 2006.
- Broadwell, George Aaron and Michael Parrish Key. 2004. Pied-piping with inversion in Copala Trique. Presented at the Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas, San Francisco, Jan 2004.
- Eberhardt, Roy. 1999. Questions and inversion in Ocotepec Mixtec. Work Papers of the Summer Institute of Linguistics, University of North Dakota Session 43. [1]
- Heck, Fabian. 2004. A theory of pied-piping. Ph.D. thesis, University of Leipzig.
- Merchant, Jason. 2002. Swiping in Germanic. In C. Jan-Wouter Zwart and Werner Abraham (eds.), Studies in Comparative Germanic Syntax, 289–315. John Benjamins: Amsterdam.
- van Riemsdijk, Henk. 1978. A case study in syntactic markedness: The binding nature of prepositional phrases. Foris: Dordrecht.
- Sells, Peter, ed. 2001a. Formal and Empirical Issues in Optimality Theory. Stanford: CSLI.
- Smith Stark, Thomas. 1988. ‘Pied-piping’ con inversion en preguntas parciales. Ms. Centro de estudios lingüísticos y literarios, Colegio de México y Seminario de lenguas indígenas.
- Trechsel, Frank. 2000. A CCG Approach to Tzotzil Pied-Piping. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 18: 611–63.