Verbal Person Agreement

[zelos]

http://wals.info/feature/102
reading on that I see that some languages have A agreement, others P, some have both but some have either A or P but not both.

How come that you can have A or P but never both? How does that develop and is there a reason for such comming to being?

[MrKrov]

Your question makes no sense. You say WALS has languages with both A and P agreement, but then you ask why a language can't have both A and P.

[Ear of the Sphinx]

Your question makes no sense. You say WALS has languages with both A and P agreement, but then you ask why a language can't have both A and P.

(s)He meant: How can language have "A or P" and not "both A and P"? Other words: what's a difference between "A or P" and "A and P" agreement?

[MrKrov]

Going by what he actually wrote, I disagree. He’s not asking what’s the difference: he’s asking why one supposedly doesn't occur.
Seeing as he’s cited WALs which has as a prominent option both, the question is deranged.

[zelos]

Let me rephrase, it says there are language who have A or P agreement on their verb but that the verb CANNOT have A and P agreement at the same time, its either A or P at any given time never both at once.

Why would a language develop that and how?

[Systemzwang]

All kinds of ways with various restrictions on where pronouns can go, like V2 or more complex similar rules can lead to stuff like that. Especially if the prosody and intonation is likely to assimilate the pronoun after/before the verb into the verb, but not go further than that.

[eldin raigmore]

Zelos is asking why these 6 languages:

• Awa Pit
• Chepang
• Iquito
• Kalkatungu
• Kiowa
• Tiriyo

are listed as "A or P" but are not listed as "Both the A and P arguments" nor as "only the A argument" nor "only the P argument".
Or, assuming they are correctly so listed, how the languages came to be that way; why, in those languages, verbs often agree with their A argument, and verbs often agree with their P argument, but verbs never agree with both their A argument and their P argument.
Am I right, Zelos?

Person marking of the A or P but not of both is found, for instance, in Nocte (Naga, Tibeto-Burman; India).
(4) Nocte (Das Gupta 1971: 21)

Code: Select all

a. nga-ma ate    he(i)tho-ang 
   I-erg  he.acc teach-1sg.A 
  ‘I will teach him.’ 
 
b. ate-ma nga-nang he(i)tho-h-ang 
   he-erg I-acc    teach-inv-1sg.P 
   ‘He will teach me.’

Observe that the person marking on the verb in (4a) is of the A, while in (4b) it is of the P. Whether it is the A or the P that is marked on the verb is dependent on which is higher on the person hierarchy 1 > 2 > 3. If the higher ranking argument is a P rather than an A, the verb occurs with a special marker, h, in (4b), called an inverse marker.

That's one way it can happen. That's common in languages with Hierarchical MSAlignment.

Chepang and Kiowa are hierarchical (on verbs; Kiowa is neutral on nouns). Awa Pit is nominative/accusative (standard) alignment. Iquito and Kalkatungu are accusative. Tiriyo is split. And I can't tell about Nocte; apparently it has both accusative pronouns and ergative pronouns.

You'd need to look up their sources about Awa Pit, Iquito, Kalkatungu, and Tiriyo to see what the explanation is for each language. As Systemzwang pointed out there could be a separate reason for each language, for all we know.