BAJJIKA
SUMMARY
Like some other Indic languages, Bajjika has a complex agreement system in which ‘nominative’ and ‘non-nominative’ agreement patterns can be distinguished. Nominative agreement is always with the subject, and non-nominative agreement is controlled by some other referential element. Intransitive verbs can exhibit nominative agreement with their sole argument, or non-nominative agreement with another element. Transitive verbs can exhibit either agreement pattern, or both simultaneously (i.e. double agreement). There is also some evidence to suggest that allocutives may be indexed using double agreement on intransitives. Possessors can also control non-nominative agreement, when the possessor of the subject or object. Preliminary evidence suggests that referential conditions are important in determining when internal possessors are prominent.
LANGUAGE PROFILE
EVIDENCE IN SUPPORT OF PIPS
- Syntactic evidence in support of the internal status of prominent possessors is limited by the extent of their description.
- Prominent possessors appear to occupy the same syntactic position as other possessors within the NP.
- Prominent possessors have adnominal genitive case-marking, indicating dependency within the noun phrase.
KEY SOURCES
Kashyap, Abhishek Kumar. 2012. The pragmatic principles of agreement in Bajjika verbs. Journal of Pragmatics 44(13): 1868–87.
