lameens
commented
1 year ago PS: Looking at Egyptian Arabic and Maltese, I notice that the expression of comparative degree through pattern morphology has consistently been marked as 0 for GB275, i.e. as not constituting a bound comparative degree marker. I find this very strange - what could possibly be more tightly bound than non-concatenative pattern morphology? - but if it's consistent across the project, then I suppose it should be applied here too. If so, however, could this please be made explicit in the description provided at https://grambank.clld.org/parameters/GB275#2/21.0/151.9 , and/or in the wiki page [[Wordhood and phonological boundness or independence]]?
jlesg
JanisReimringer
HedvigS
Are you submitting a comment in regards to more than 10 data-points? If so, please complete this form and attach a spreadsheet with columns for feature ID number, language name/glottocode and a comment field. You can find a blank Grambank coding sheet here. Please fill in Feature and Language ID for the relevant datapoints. The file needs to be zipped in order to be attached to an issue.* Yes; attached: Grambank_most_updated_sheet-siwi-corrections.csv For features that I consider to already be correctly coded, I have left the value blank.
Have you read the Grambank wiki article for the features that you want to suggest a change for? If not, please visit our wiki . Yes, I have (in most cases).
What features do you want to suggest a change for? (If more than 10 data-points, please just refer to the spreadsheet.)* See spreadsheet, comments below. The proposed changes concern a total of 37 data-points.
What language or dialect would you like to suggest a change in coding for? Please give the Name and/or glottocode. (If more than 10 data-points, please just refer to the spreadsheet.)* Siwi (siwi1239)
What is the reason behind this change?* Some of the features values are incorrect (even just relative to the source cited), and some of the comments are wrong or misplaced, or deserve further elaboration.
What is your expertise in regards to this feature/language(s)?* I have done months of in situ fieldwork on Siwi, and wrote one of the two references used for it in GramBank.
What sources do you have in regards to this change in coding?* Those already cited, plus the following: Souag, Lameen. 2013. Berber and Arabic in Siwa (Egypt): A Study in Linguistic Contact. Berber Studies Vol. 37. Köln: Rüdiger Köppe. Souag, Lameen. 2014. The Development of Dative Agreement in Berber: Beyond Nominal Hierarchies“. Transactions of the Philological Society 113:2, pp. 213-248, 2015. https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-01376203/document . Souag, Lameen. Unpublished ms. Siwi lexicon.
The proposed changes may be seen as needing more elaboration, especially since several of them are based on the same sources already cited. To provide clarity, more specific comments by feature are given below:
GB025 What is the order of adnominal demonstrative and noun? 1 Vycichl 2005: 198 Demonstrative prefixes.
This should have been encoded as 0; adnominal demonstratives very consistently follow the noun. The citation refers to a situation hypothesised by Vycichl to hold for pre-proto-Berber, not to present-day Siwi, where the noun prefixes are not demonstratives of any kind. Vycichl’s synchronic description is confusing on this point, but his examples of adnominal demonstratives in context consistently follow the noun (2005:223); for more explicit statements confirming their invariably postnominal position, cf. Souag (2010:261-263; 2013:146).
GB041 Are there several nouns (more than three) which are suppletive for number? 0 Vycichl 2005: 198-206 There are masculine and feminine plural suffixes and Arabic irregular/internal plural forms. The irregular plurals are not considered suppletive, because their root consonants remain the same.
This should be changed to 1. The source cited gives precisely three nouns which are suppletive for number (Vycichl 2005:203): ‘bread’, ‘son’, and ‘foot’. Souag (2013:64) also gives three: ‘foot’, ‘sister’, and ‘bedding’ (the first two are also in Souag 2010:80). Combining both sets yields five, thus changing the correct coding to 1. (From a purely synchronic perspective, other nouns could also have been added, e.g. ‘brother’.)
GB042 Is there productive overt morphological singular marking on nouns? 0 Vycichl 2005: 198-199
This should have been encoded as 1; an explicit statement to this effect may be absent, but cp. the examples in Vycichl 2005:200-207, and compare e.g. Souag 2013:91. Most nouns in Siwi feature a noun class prefix which marks gender and number; the prefix a-/ta- reliably indicates singular number, and is frequently added even to Arabic loanwords.
GB059 Is the adnominal possessive construction different for alienable and inalienable nouns? 0 Souag 2010: 1-519
This should have been encoded as 1, based on Souag 2010:307 as well as Vycichl 2005:219, Souag 2013:162.
GB071 Are there morphological cases for pronominal core arguments (i.e. S/A/P)? 1 Vycichl 2005: 216
This should have been encoded as 0, based on the stated criteria and the source cited (which agrees in this respect with all other sources). The case-marked forms are phonologically bound, and “This question is about phonologically independent pronouns only; indexes are irrelevant”.
GB072 Are there morphological cases for oblique non-pronominal NPs (i.e. not S/A/P)? 1 Vycichl 2005: 208 Dative case is formed with the preposition i- (y-/ye-).
The encoding is consistent with the source cited, and as such is defensible. Note, however, that I analyse this preposition as a separate word (Souag 2010:308; 2013:163). Neither I nor Vycichl present arguments for our respective positions, so this could motivate encoding it as ?. In the absence of clearly stated criteria for distinguishing proclitics from short words, answers to this question are likely to be inconsistent not only cross-linguistically but across different sources for the same language.
GB083 Is there overt morphological marking on the verb dedicated to past tense? 1 Vycichl 2005: 226, 230
While the coding is consistent with the source’s preferred label, it should be corrected to 0. What Vycichl labels “past tense”, in accordance with the terminological habits of his generation, is more correctly analysed by Comrie’s standards as aspect, as seen both by its use with stative verbs for present time reference (see Souag 2010:385, 2013:193-194) and by the possibility of using Vycichl’s “present” with past time reference (see Souag 2010:386-387, 2013:194-195).
GB084 Is there overt morphological marking on the verb dedicated to future tense? 1 Vycichl 2005: 229
As far as I can tell from the rather ambiguous wording of the description (“It can be hard to distinguish future tense from different modal categories”), this should be corrected to 0 for the same reasons as with GB083. Siwi has no dedicated future tense marker; ga- is best described as an irrealis marker (Souag 2010: 382-383), used in a wide range of contexts including but not limited to future tense reference.
GB099 Can verb stems alter according to the person of a core participant? 0 Vycichl 2005: 1-258 Using the root and pattern system, there is no strong suppletion as long as the root consonants remain the same.
There is indeed no strong suppletion, but weak suppletion (i.e. synchronically unproductive alternations) conditioned by person is seen in the verbs ‘go’ and ‘come’ (Vycichl 2005:237-238). ‘Go’ has the stem ṛaḥ in 3sg/1pl vs. ḥḥ in 1/2sg and 3pl; ‘come’ has the stem usəd in 3sg/1pl vs. us in 1/2sg and 3pl. So, according to the guidelines, this is encoded correctly, but should have a comment.
GB103 Is there a benefactive applicative marker on the verb (including indexing)? 0 Souag 2010: 1-519
This should be encoded as 1, since “datives/benefactives are marked through apparently obligatory dative pronominal affixes on the verb stem”; cf. Souag 2010:311, Souag 2013:165.
GB105 Can the recipient in a ditransitive construction be marked like the monotransitive patient? 0 Souag 2010: 311 Recipients/benefactives take the prepositional dative marker i.
This is correctly encoded based on the source, but further data reveals that some ditransitive verbs, e.g. ‘teach (by memorisation)’, do allow the recipient to be encoded without i, yielding a double object construction; see Souag 2015:236 (“The development of dative agreement in Berber”).
GB113 Are there verbal affixes or clitics that turn intransitive verbs into transitive ones? ? Vycichl 2005: 1-258 Not discussed.
Should be coded 1. There is a highly productive causative prefix s-; see Souag 2010:359, 2013:177 (and indeed Vycichl 2005:239 passim).
GB114 Is there a phonologically bound reflexive marker on the verb? ? Vycichl 2005: 1-258 Not discussed.
Should be coded 0; not discussed, but examples using the reflexive pronoun may be found in Souag 2013:247, 258; for a partial paradigm of the reflexive pronoun, see Vycichl 2005:221.
GB115 Is there a phonologically bound reciprocal marker on the verb? ? Vycichl 2005: 1-258 Not discussed.
Not discussed in available sources, but should be coded 0 (personal observation).
GB123 Are there verb-adjunct (aka light-verb) constructions? 0 Souag 2010: 1-519
This accurately describes the source referred to, but in the light of subsequent evidence should be changed to 1; Siwi turns out to have a limited number of expressions that fit the definition given for light verbs, e.g. əṃṃəl yəṭ, lit. ‘say yəṭ’, for ‘gleam’ (Souag, unpublished lexicon).
GB138 Can standard negation be marked clause-initially? 1 Souag 2010: 436
This should be coded as 0 according to steps 5-7 of the criteria provided; since Siwi default word order is SVO, and negation directly precedes the verb, clause-initial negation only occurs as a result of argument omission, with presumably pragmatically marked VS order, or (as in the only example on p. 436) in imperatives.
GB159 Are nouns reduplicated? 1 Souag 2010: 184 Sometimes, numbers are reduplicated to form ordinal numbers.
Surely numbers (and quantifiers) are not nouns? Unless they are deemed to count as such, this should be coded as 0 or as ? (personally, I would go for ? - I suspect that nouns can be reduplicated in distributive uses, but I can’t find any for the moment).
GB204 Do collective ('all') and distributive ('every') universal quantifiers differ in their forms or their syntactic positions? 0 Vycichl 2005: 223
This should be encoded as 1; cf. Souag 2010:196-197. Vycichl 2005:223 misleadingly glosses kul as “every, all”, which would be accurate for Arabic but is not accurate for Siwi.
GB250 Can predicative possession be expressed with a transitive 'habeo' verb? 0 Souag 2010: 236 Predicative possession is formed with the existential plus dative pronoun. Not explicitly mentioned; inferred from examples.
The encoding is correct, but the comment is not; ɣuṛ- is a preposition ‘at, chez’, not an existential, and there is no dative pronoun.
GB252 Can predicative possession be expressed with an S-like possessum and a locative-coded possessor? 0 Souag 2010: 236 Predicative possession is formed with the existential plus dative pronoun. Not explicitly mentioned; inferred from examples.
This should be encoded as 1; see discussion for GB250.
GB254 Can predicative possession be expressed with an S-like possessum and a possessor that is coded like an adnominal possessor? 0 Souag 2010: 236 Predicative possession is formed with the existential plus dative pronoun. Not explicitly mentioned; inferred from examples.
This should be encoded as 0; see discussion for GB250.
GB256 Can predicative possession be expressed with an S-like possessor and a possessum that is coded like a comitative argument? 0 Souag 2010: 236 Predicative possession is formed with the existential plus dative pronoun. Not explicitly mentioned; inferred from examples. The comment is incorrect; see discussion for GB250.
GB263 Is there a clause-final polar interrogative particle? 1 Souag 2010: 452 The last vowel of a sentence is lengthened to form a question.
The coding is correct, but the comment should rather note that “ na ula “or no?” may be placed finally as a question tag”.
GB273 Is there a comparative construction with a standard marker that elsewhere has neither a locational meaning nor a 'surpass/exceed' meaning? 0 Souag 2010: 159
This should have been encoded with 1; the standard marker is genitive n, as indicated in the source cited.
GB275 Is there a bound comparative degree marker on the property word in a comparative construction? 0 Vycichl 2005: 212
The property word is typically marked using non-concatenative pattern morphology, as the source already makes clear; does that not count as “bound”? If it does (the criteria are not explicit on this point), this should be coded as 1.
GB276 Is there a non-bound comparative degree marker modifying the property word in a comparative construction? 1 Vycichl 2005: 212
The coding is correct, in that some adjectives cannot take the pattern morphology discussed in GB275, but Vycichl 2005: 212 says nothing about this; for examples with a phonologically free marker, see rather Souag 2010:160-161.
GB300 Does the verb for 'give' have suppletive verb forms? 1 Souag 2010: 42
This should be encoded as 0, according to the guidelines, since the stem form variation referred to in the source happens to be weak suppletion, not strong suppletion. See Souag 2013:51-52.
GB306 Is there a phonologically independent non-bipartite reciprocal pronoun? 0 Souag 2010: 1-519
The source does not address this question, so the coding was procedurally correct; it should, however, be changed to 1 (Souag ms), since Siwi uses ajar-sən “between-3PL” to mean “each other”, e.g. yəẓṛina ajar-sən “they saw each other”, itərrafən af ajarsən “they fear each other”.
GB309 Are there multiple past or multiple future tenses, distinguishing distance from Time of Reference? 1 Vycichl 2005: 230
This should have been encoded as 0. Vycichl’s distinction between the “past” (i.e. perfective) and the “present past” (i.e. perfect/resultative) has nothing to do with distance from Time of Reference.
GB314 Can augmentative meaning be expressed productively by a shift of gender/noun class? 1 Souag 2010: 61
This should have been encoded as 0; I explicitly state (p. 66) that the process is not productive in Siwi.
GB315 Can diminutive meaning be expressed productively by a shift of gender/noun class? 1 Vycichl 2005: 199
This should have been encoded as 0; the process is not productive in Siwi (Souag 2010:66), and Vycichl already calls it “rather rare”.
GB334 Is there synchronic evidence for any element of a quinary numeral system? 0 Vycichl 2005: 213-215
This encoding is correct for normal numerals. However, it should perhaps be noted that Siwi also has a secondary system of cryptic/argot numerals using base 5 (Souag 2010:185, 2013:112).