Solutions to Linguistics Puzzles - Xmas Special
SOLUTIONS
The Inuktitut sentences have the following general structure:
Schemata 1 X-(q) V – ‘X V (himself).’
Schemata 2X -(q) Y-(r)mik V-si ‘X V a Y.’
Schemata 3 X-up Y-(q) V– ‘X V the Y.’
where X and Y are nouns, and V is a verb. If a noun gets the ending -q when it is either a definite object or a subject of a sentence that doesn’t have a definite object, it also gets -r before the ending -mik when it is an indefinite object (nanu-q — nanu-r-mik; iluaqhaiji — iluaqhaiji-mik). To say ‘your’, -(q) is replaced by -it, -up by -vit.
The verb receives the following suffixes:
• -j following a vowel or -t following a consonant;
• an ending for the persons of the subject and the definite object, if there is one:
– in the first two schemata: -u-tit ‘2’, -u-q ‘3’;
– in the third schema: -a-it ‘2/3’, -a-nga ‘3/3’, -a-atit ‘3/2’.
A transitive verb without an object is interpreted as reflexive.
(a) 13. The wolf saw your shaman. 14. Your polar bear hurt a boy. 15. Your hunter cured himself. 16. You shot the teacher. 17. You came. 18. You cured a hunter.
(b) 19. Angatkuup aanniqtaatit. 20. Ilinniaqtitsijiup inuuhuktuq takujanga. 21. Amaruit ukiakhaqtuq. 22. Qingmirmik qukiqsijutit. 23. Qingmiit ilinniaqtitsijimik aanniqsijuq.
1. A Typology Primer: The Solutions to the Extra Credit Problem
(c) If you think about the passive, it reduces the valency[1] of the verb from two or more arguments[2] to one. In English, if you changed “I wrote this problem” to “the problem was written by me”, “I” has been moved from the core (either subject in an intransitive sentence, or agent or patient in a transitive one) to the oblique (i.e. “demoted” to a more removed role as a prepositional clause). In English, this means that passivisation changes a transitive sentence thus:
X-nom V Y-acc → Y-nom V Y-obl. This might seem like a strange and overly formal way to think about the passive voice, but bear with me.
Let’s apply this theoretical perspective to what the antipassive might be. Of the three sentence structures that we found in the first half of this problem, one of them clearly only has one argument (the first schemata). This is not what we’re interested in. Comparing Schemata 2 and 3, we hit a bit of a roadblock. Which one has two core arguments and which one has one core argument and an oblique? The answer is in the information provided about Inuktitut typology. If transitive sentences are distinctly marked by an agent in a different case (ergative [3]), then it stands to reason that Schemata 3, where the agent is marked with the same ending as the subject in Schemata 1, that this cannot be the antipassive. The antipassive is the construction in Schemata 2 which employs the ‘(r)mik’ as a kind of object marker, or a kind of accusative case ending (it’s actually in the instrumental case in Inuktitut, but let’s set that aside for the minute). This can be represented as:
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And you thought Year 9 chemistry wouldn’t help you at any other place in your life lmao
Also referred to as theta-roles.
Actually, no-one really agrees on whether the ergative is a structural case, but let’s not go further down the rabbit hole when we’re so close to finding something cool.
X-erg V Y-abs → X-abs V Y-obl, similar to the passivisation illustrated earlier, in a language like English.
2. Going Deeper: The Nature of Transitivity
(d) The more interesting question is what role the accusative-antipassive serves in the context of Inuktitut grammar. The dataset provided here aligns the use of the antipassive with an indefinite object, and the ergative-absolutive pattern with definite objects. But why?
Spreng (2001)[1] says it has to do with a specific criterion of transitivity that Hopper and Thompson (1980) created: the individualisation of the object. There are perhaps two natural questions that follows from this claim: First, what does individualisation actually mean, and second, what does the individualisation of the object have to do with transitivity?
The individualisation of the object just means whether the object is distinguished from other things or not. This isn’t a difficult concept to understand, but it is quite difficult to think about it on a scale. It essentially boils down to how separate the object is from other description or parts of the action, and so definiteness (the vs a) would definitely (I’ll see myself out) matter here.
The answer to the second question will become clearer if we think about this claim together with Næss’ (2007) assertion that the transitivity continuum is about maximising the distinction between the participants of the sentence. The “most transitive” sentences are ones where the agent and the patient are highly contrastive and distinct, in that they have different roles and different agencies, and where the verb action similarly reflects a strong contrast. For example, whether the verb is “telic” or not is also part of Hopper and Thompson’s criteria, meaning whether the action is ever completed[2]. In the context of transitivity, this matters because it heightens the contrast between the doer and the object (associated with the done deed).
In the end, there is hardly ever firm consensus when it comes to theoretical linguistics. But one thing that most linguists can agree on is that transitivity doesn’t appear to be a black-and-white phenomenon, and we should not expect it to behave as such. So this is one explanation for the different structures in the dataset. I want to stress that there are many other explanations posited by many other linguists working on typology and syntax, but for us, this one explanation will serve us satisfactorily and in good faith. It is a beautifully rich account for a tiny fraction of the complete strangeness of our own world.
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I know it’s bad scholarship, but this is the Bulletin and I’m not going to actually write a reference. Sorry.
This aspectual distinction’s ability to affect transitivity does actually appear in Inuktitut, according to Spreng (2005).
3. Epilogue: The Big Questions
If you’ve followed me this far, well done! Linguistics can be really confusing, and syntax (and by extension, morphosyntax) really does your head in sometimes. Transitivity is a complex and non-binary phenomenon, and dancing around real examples of transitivity and more theoretical perspectives can be a true performance art. But we’ve made it through the tough bits now. We know that split ergativity, insofar as it represents shifts in valency and fine distinctions in different theoretical criteria for transitivity, is really fascinating and can pop up in unexpected places (like in that original olympiad problem).
Zooming out a bit, away from the particular example of Inuktitut and the technicalities of this discussion, this split ergativity is an important key in unlocking how language evolves structurally. If ergativity can adjust itself to accommodate a whole range of other cases, it provides us an example of how linguistics typology, like so much about language, is more fluid than one might first think. The bottom line is that while more complicated theoretical approaches[1] might help us understand the behaviour of language, we still can’t definitely model how these forms and typologies manifest themselves, nor can we model exactly how they change.
But split ergativity is a good start in answering some of these bigger questions. If language can provide a bridge between different syntactical constructions and allow for all sorts of typological permutations, then we get a little closer to accounting for the astounding diversity in the blindingly diverse structures of the world’s languages (if we begin with a version of the theory of Universal Grammar, that is).
I think herein lies the beauty of this problem, and by extension, the practice of linguistics. This interface between underlying mathematical truths of structure and actual language use provides us a good opportunity to think about the nature of things. In our exploration of transitivity, we have discovered (or more precisely, reaffirmed) notions of non-binary and scalar features, weird relations between different aspects of language, and difficulties in constructing complete theories of language fluidity. Indeed, we may never be able to definitively describe what language is, or how its structure came to be in its observably magnificent form. But in the context of our quest to find out more about the way we speak, and in our adventures in which we we peer deeper and deeper into the fabric of our minds, that doesn’t mean that there’s no value in trying.
Hope you have a great break, and stay curious. Merry Christmas, Baulko!
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Particularly theta-grids and form-function mapping re transitivity.
