Atelier Morphosyntaxe -- Imperatives & commands
Esteban Díaz Montenegro on Nasa Yuwe(Páez)
Michael Daniel (National Research University Higher School of Economics & Moscow State University) on Alutor (Chukotkan)
14h00 - 16h00
ISH
Esteban Díaz Montenegro on Nasa Yuwe (Páez)
In my corpus of Munchique’s Nasa Yuwe (isolate, Colombia)a clear syntactic distinction between directive and non-directive moods can be identified: while in non-directive moods subject agreement is obligatory, in directive moods dedicated marks of IMPERATIVE, PROHIBITIVE and JUSSIVE are mutually exclusive with subject agreement. A dedicated suffix (-we) marking either a plural addressee or a polite directive can also be added to the directive moods’ constructions. In addition to these three morphologically dedicated directive moods’ markers, some non-directive mood constructions are used to express directive meanings like HORTATIVE, polite orders, advises and requests. These constructions involve the use of non-directive mood subject agreement markers (ASSERTIVE or SUSPENSIVE) as well as the use of what I propose here to be an IRREALIS clitic (=ne). Hypothesis on the diachronic origin of some of these constructions will be also proposed.
Michael Daniel (National Research University Higher School of Economics & Moscow State University) on Alutor
Chukotkan languages are claimed to feature a homogeneous imperative paradigm across all persons. This is a rare case in the typology of volitionals cross-linguistically. In this (short) presentation of data form one of the languages of the family, Alutor, I provide arguments against and in favor of the homogeneity interpretation. On the one hand, it seems that considering Alutor volitionals of the first and third person (i.e. hortatives and jussives, respectively) as morphologically aligned with second person imperatives goes against the general morphological makeup of the language. On the other hand, the different-person imperatives have some non-trivial common uses, which makes it feasible to consider them all together.