Autori
Pasquereau, Jérémy
Cabredo Hofherr, Patricia

Titolo
Using semantics to probe paradigm structure: the case of multiple event marking in Seri
Periodico
Lingue e linguaggio
Anno: 2020 - Volume: 37 - Fascicolo: 1 - Pagina iniziale: 35 - Pagina finale: 60

The present study examines verbal morphology in Seri. Seri verbshave dedicated verb stems marking multiple events for singular and plural subjectsrespectively. However, the morphology marking the stem-forms is nottransparent: neither subject number nor multiple events are associated withconsistent exponents. As the exponents on the verb stems do not provide anyclues to the structure of the paradigm, the features structuring the paradigmhave to be inferred from syntactic and semantic properties. Syntactic cooccurrencerestrictions with singular and plural subjects clearly distinguishsingular and plural subject stems. Within singular and plural subject stems,the further distinction between the neutral and the multiple event form (multform)is based on semantic di􁞶erences between the stems: mult-forms areonly felicitous in contexts with multiple events. As multiple event marking onverbs is not a homogeneous class, it does not trivially follow that singular subjectand plural subject mult-forms express the same type of event multiplicity.To establish the paradigm structure of Seri verbs we therefore need to examinewhether the mult-forms express the same semantic feature value acrosssingular and plural subject stems. We 􁞷rst show that plural subject multformspass the same diagnostics that show that singular subject mult-formsmark event plurality. As a second step we compare the meaning of singularand plural subject mult-forms. In the initial elicitations younger speakers uniformlyinterpreted the singular and plural subject mult-forms as iterative withevents distributed in time; in contrast, older speakers interpreted singular subjectmult-forms as iterative but allowed simultaneous events distributed overa participant plurality for plural subject mult-forms. Elicitation with di􁞶erentmaterials showed that the initial di􁞶erence in truth-conditional judgements re-􁞸ects a di􁞶erence in the preferred contexts assumed by the older and youngerspeakers, not a di􁞶erence between the semantic range of singular subject andplural subject mult-marking as such. We therefore conclude that the semanticevidence supports an analysis of singular subject mult-forms and pluralsubject mult-forms as expressing a single type of event plurality marking.



SICI: 1720-9331(2020)37:1<35:USTPPS>2.0.ZU;2-D
Testo completo: https://www.rivisteweb.it/download/article/10.1418/97531
Testo completo alternativo: https://www.rivisteweb.it/doi/10.1418/97531

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