Workshop on (the) Afroasiatic Middle t-Morpheme (WAMt)

We are excited to announce the following invited speakers:

Ahmad Al-Jallad

Sabrina Bendjaballah

Malka Rappaport-Hovav

Lameen Souag

Mauro Tosco

While the studies of argument structure and transitivity alternation have received more attention in recent years, especially in theoretical discourse (e.g., Alexiadou et al. 2015, Borer 1994, Horvath & Siloni 2011, Ramchand 1997, 2014, Spathas et al. 2015), our typological understanding of the mechanisms involved remains limited, not least due to a relatively limited sample of languages investigated.

In Afroasiatic, three valency-alternating morphemes can be identified: t-, H/s-, and N-. While the H/s-morpheme increases transitivity, typically functioning as a causative, the t- and N-morphemes serve as generally de-transitivising morphemes with middle, passive, and anticausative functions attested in different languages and branches (Retsö 1989, Weninger 2011). In the context of the systems of the individual languages in which these morphemes are attested, their effects on argument structure have been investigated and discussed, among others, in Al Kaabi & Ntelitheos (2019), Amberber (2000), Arad (2005), and Kastner (2020) for Semitic, as well as Bedar et al. (To appear) and Gutova (2013) for Berber. Similar studies for the other branches of Semitic (i.e., Egyptian, Cushitic, Chadic, and Omotic) remain rare and, at most, descriptive.

One of the more poorly understood valency-alternating morphemes in Afroasiatic is the de-transitivising t-morpheme. Synchronically, the morpheme is prone to great semantic variation in the form of functional overlaps. As mentioned above, the morpheme can be used to derive a. middles, b. passives, and c. anticausatives. Thereby, in some languages (e.g. Amharic (Semitic), see Amberber 2000, or Agaw (Cushitic), see Mous 2001), its functions are clearly defined and do not overlap across event types. In Amharic  (Amberber 2000:313ff., Edzard 2019), for instance, the t-morpheme passivizes transitive verbs and can denote an antipassive or reflexive to intransitive verbs (especially for body-altering verbs). However, in many other languages, no such clear patterns have been found, either due to missing research, or because the morpheme shows great functional overlap. Such overlap can be found in Akkadian, where the t-morpheme can form reflexives, passives, and anticausatives to transitive verbs, as well as reflexives and reciprocals to intransitive verbs (see Kouwenberg 2010).

Diachronically, the morpheme raises multiple questions, too. On the one hand, with the t-morpheme attested in all branches of Afroasiatic, as well as in most (if not all?) individual languages in the family, its reconstruction to Proto-Afroasiatic stands to reason. No bigger-scale comparative studies have attempted to trace the diachronic development of the morpheme either during its attested periods or to pre-attested stages, however. Studies on the diachrony of diathesis in Afroasiatic languages (e.g., Retsö 1989) have only hypothesized a set of functions and developments for the morpheme and its later development into a de-transitiviser. We hypothesise, however, that an investigation into the functional origin of the t-morpheme could bear fruitful results for our understanding of its synchronic functions.

On a related note, we are also interested in the diachronic development of the morpheme from a middle to any potential other functions. An example for a language-specific innovation of the morpheme can be found in Akkadian, an East-Semitic language, where two curious innovations took place:

1. The morpheme acquired pluractional (verbal diminutive), habitual, and continuous semantics

2. The morpheme was reanalysed as an ‘event relator.’

Elaborating on development 2., the t-morpheme reanalysed as a discourse particle when inserted into the perfective conjugation. Deriving a new conjugation (iptaras), it could be used to relate the event described to a different event occuring within the same discourse section. Interestingly, it is impossible to morphologically distinguish between verbal forms in which the t-morpheme functions as a de-transitive marker, forms in which it functions as an ‘event relator,’ and in the case of some derived stems, forms in which it functions as a pluractional-marker. All three functions overlapped synchronically in the attested stages of Akkadian (compare Kouwenberg 2010, Streck 1995). In light of the curious innovations found in Akkadian, we are thus also curious to discuss any other potential innovations of similar or entirely new character found in the languages of Afroasiatic.

Concluding, the Workshop on the Afroasiatic t-morpheme seeks to address both the synchronic and diachronic issues associated with the (mostly) de-transitivising morpheme. We are interested in facilitating a discussion between researchers specialising in the theory of linguistics and researchers specializing in the investigation of Afroasiatic languages. We hope that theoretical linguists interested in Afroasiatic will benefit from valuable linguistic input into less known phenomena and patterns, while comparative Afroasiatic researchers can benefit from theoretical input on how the issues the t-morpheme famously causes in Afroasiatic may be addressed.

References

Alexiadou, A., Anagnostopoulou, E., & Schäfer, F. 2015. External arguments in transitivity alternations: A layering approach (Vol. 55). Oxford Studies in Theoretical Linguistics.

Al Kaabi, Meera & Dimitrios Ntelitheos. 2019. Rethinking templates: a syntactic analysis of verbal morphology in Emirati Arabic. Glossa: A journal of general linguistics 4(1): 132.

Amberber, Mengistu. 2000. Valency-changing and Valency-encoding Devices in Amharic. In Changing valency: Case studies in transitivity, ed. R. M. W. Dixon and Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald, 312-332. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Arad, Maya. 2005. Roots and patterns: Hebrew morpho-syntax. Vol. 63. Springer Science & Business Media.

Bedar, Amazigh, Sabrina Bendjaballah, & Martin Haiden. To appear. The verbal n-stem in Taqbaylit Berber. Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft, In press, Perspectives on Templatic Morphology. halshs-03924659

Borer, Hagit. 1994. The projection of arguments. University of Massachusetts occasional papers in linguistics 17(20). 19–48.

Gutova, Evgeniya. 2013. Voice, lability, and causatives in Berber (i).  Études et documents berbères 32(1). 105–121.

Horvath, Julia & Tal Siloni. 2011. Anticausatives: against reflexivization. Lingua 121(15). 2176–2186.

Jasanoff, Jay H. 2003. Hittite and the Indo-European verb. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Kastner, Itamar. 2020. Voice at the interfaces: The syntax, semantics, and morphology of the Hebrew verb. Berlin: Language Science Press.

Kouwenberg, Norbertus Johannes Cornelis. 2010. The Akkadian verb and its Semitic background. Penn State Press.

Mous, Maarten. 2001. The middle in Cushitic languages. In Annual meeting of the Berkeley linguistics society, vol. 27, 75–86.

Ramchand, Gillian. 1997. Aspect and predication: the semantics of argument structure. Oxford University Press.

Ramchand, Gillian. 2014. Argument structure. Structuring the Argument: Multidisciplinary research on verb argument structure 10. 185.

Retsö, Jan. 1989. Diathesis in the Semitic Languages: A Comparative Morphological Study. Vol. 14. Brill.

Spathas, Giorgos, Artemis Alexiadou & Florian Schäfer. 2015. Middle voice and reflexive interpretations: afto-prefixation in Greek. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 33. 1293–1350.

Weninger, Stefan. 2011. Reconstructive Morphology. In Handbücher zur Sprach-und Kommuni-kationswissenschaft; 36: The Semitic languages, 151-178. De Gruyter Mouton.

Organisers:

Iris Kamil, University of Edinburgh

Marwan Kilani, University of Basel / SNSF

Itamar Kastner, University of Edinburgh