Abstract
This paper provides a comprehensive overview of quantification in Gitksan, an endangered Interior Tsimshianic language spoken in British Columbia, Canada. This is the first published work devoted to the topic of quantification in any Tsimshianic language. The main syntactic and semantic division within the Gitksan system is between quantifiers over entities and quantifiers over events. Quantifiers over entities can be both D-type and A-type, but quantifiers over events are always A-type. While quantifiers over entities may be subdivided into universal and non-universal subcategories, no such clear-cut division holds within the class of event quantifiers. We include discussion of indefinite, existential, negative and interrogative expressions, and we introduce two aspects of Gitksan grammar which are particularly important in understanding the quantificational system: plurality and the count-mass distinction.
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Notes
- 1.
Due to the range of dialects represented in the paper, the reader will notice that the same word is often spelled in two or more different ways, depending on pronunciation. Phonological variation between dialects is complex and understudied, but is largely irrelevant to the concerns of this paper.
- 2.
Data are presented in the Hindle-Rigsby orthography (Hindle and Rigsby 1973); see Appendix I for a conversion chart to the Americanist Phonemic Alphabet.
- 3.
Data from our fieldwork are annotated with the speakers’ initials. We follow the Leipzig Glossing Rules where possible. Other abbreviations used: i/ii/iii = series i/ii/iii pronoun, assoc = associative plural, attr = attributive, ax = A (transitive subject) extraction, caus2 = second sub-type of causative, circ.poss = circumstantial possibility, cl.cnj = clausal conjunction, coll = collective, cn = common noun connective, cnt.amt = count amount, cntr = contrastive, desid = desiderative, detr = detransitive, dm = determinate connective, dwid = domain widener, epis = epistemic, exper = experiential, exist.inan = existential inanimate, hab = habitual, hum = human, incep = inceptive, lv = light verb, ph.cnj = phrasal conjunction, pn = proper noun, pr.evid = prior evidence, prep = preposition, mass.amt = mass amount, prosp = prospective, qudd = question under discussion downdate, rep = reportative, restr = restrictive, spt = spatio-temporal, sx = S (intransitive subject) extraction, t = ‘T’ morpheme (see Tarpent 1987: 634) verum = verum operator, wh.spt = wh spatio-temporal. Affixes are marked by a dash (–), clitics by an equals sign (=), and reduplicants by a tilde (∼).
- 4.
Direct evidence that ‘verbs’ in argument positions are actually the predicative nuclei of headless relative clauses is provided by some Eastern dialect speakers, who allow an overt WH-relative pronoun in cases such as (ib), but not (ia):
(i)
a.
'witxw=hl
(*naa=hl)
hanak'=ast
arrive=cn
(*who=cn)
woman=qudd
‘The woman arrived.’
(BS)
b.
hanak'=hl
(naa=hl)
'witxw-id=ist
woman=cn
(who=cn)
arrive-sx=qudd
‘The one who arrived was a woman.’
(BS)
- 5.
The two different verbs for ‘give’ in (3) and (4) have different argument structures: gin in (3) takes the recipient as its direct object and the theme as its oblique-marked indirect object (as in English ‘endow x with y’) whereas gi'nam takes the theme as its direct object and the recipient as its oblique-marked indirect object (as in English ‘give y to x’).
- 6.
These two forms may also co-occur, yielding a=loo=hl (prep=obl=cn) and a=loo=s (prep=obl=pn).
- 7.
In addition to a and g o'o, certain members of the heterogeneous class of prenominals have prepositional semantics, including la x ‘on’ and ts'im ‘in’; however, these elements differ in that they directly select NPs, without determiners, rather than DPs.
- 8.
The causative suffix -(d)in/-(d)an is in complementary distribution with the ‘transitive’ suffix -(y)i-/-(y)a) discussed in footnote 21 below. We assume the latter is underlyingly present with the causative, but undergoes a morphophonological deletion rule following a nasal: see Hunt (1993: 230).
- 9.
The terms are from Rigsby (1986), and replace Boas’s original distinction between ‘indicative’ and ‘subjunctive’ clauses – appropriately, since clause-typing in IT is not sensitive to mood.
- 10.
We do not adopt Tarpent’s terminology, since there is no evidence that independent clauses have any special focusing properties. See Hunt (1993: 247–250) for a careful evaluation of both the syntactic and semantic predictions of Tarpent’s analysis.
- 11.
For recent discussion of ergativity in Tsimshianic, see Peterson (in press).
- 12.
Pronominal suffixes with an initial resonant (i.e. -'y ‘1sg.ii’, - n ‘2sg.ii’, - 'm ‘1pl.ii’) trigger schwa epenthesis with consonant-final stems (which may then in turn trigger other phonological processes such as prevocalic voicing or intervocalic lenition on the stem-final consonant). In such cases (e.g., t'isi'y), epenthetic schwa is phonologically indistinguishable from the ‘transitive’ schwa which is morphosyntactically present in transitive clauses in the independent mode. However, transitive schwa can be readily distinguished with non resonant-initial pronominal suffixes, such as 3.ii -t: compare t'is-i-t ‘hit-tr-3.ii’ to t'is-t ‘hit-3.ii’.
- 13.
In fast speech, =hl is not infrequently deleted by our consultants; however, it is always restored in appropriate environments in more careful speech.
- 14.
In dependent clauses, evidential enclitics (including = g at ‘reportative’ and =im(a')a ‘epistemic’) may either encliticize to the main predicate, as in (25)c, or to the pre-predicative dependent marker, as in (i):
(i)
nee= g at=dii
lim(i)x=s
Vince gyaxxw
neg= rep= foc
sing[-3 .ii]= pn
Vince last.night
‘I hear Vince didn’t sing last night.’
(BS)
- 15.
An epenthetic i (schwa) is variably present in the verb lim(i)x ‘to sing’.
- 16.
The final t of =g at is optionally deleted before =hl or =s.
- 17.
The common noun connective is also used to introduce a range of other constituents, including the remnants of S and O extraction and the complements of certain dependent markers (e.g., imperfective yukw). It is unclear if and how these non-DP uses of =hl should be related to its primary function as a determiner; we set this issue aside here.
- 18.
The sole exception is in independent clauses where a Series III pronoun in an absolutive function co-occurs with an overt DP in ergative function; in that case, Rigsby (1986: 263–264) reports that Verb-Object-Subject order is unmarked for older speakers, as in (i); the same is true in Nisga'a, according to Tarpent (1988: 109). For ‘younger’ fluent speakers, including all of our consultants, however, this exception has been eliminated in favour of a uniform Verb-Subject-Object order for all overt DPs, including Series III pronouns, as shown in (ii).
- 19.
The complementizer an is homophonous with a nominalizing prefix an-, as in an-siip'insxw-i'y ‘my friend’, literally ‘my loving’: see Tarpent (1987: 250). It is unclear whether there is any synchronic relation between the two, however.
- 20.
The function of the ‘transitive’ schwa has been the subject of debate in the IT literature. Rigsby (1986) analyzes it as a transitivizer, parallel to causative -(d)in/-(d)an, but Tarpent (1987, 1988) points out that unlike causative suffixes (and other valency-increasing morphology) it suffixes to inherently transitive verbs; and unlike any other valency-related morpheme, it is confined to independent clauses and the clausal remnant of O-extraction. Tarpent dubs it ‘control’, noting the term is ‘not fully satisfactory … but suitably vague’ (Tarpent 1988: 140). Finally, observing that it is in complementary distribution with Series I (ergative) pronouns, Hunt (1993: 190) identifies transitive schwa as the default head of a ‘Tr(ansitive)P’, present if and only if Series I agreement is absent.
- 21.
We follow Rigsby (1986), Tarpent (1987), and Forbes (2012) in treating the attributive markers as suffixes. There is a case to be made that they are in fact enclitics, based on the fact that the connective =hl – a bona fide enclitic – is sometimes used with an attributive function in a similar environment (e.g., with numerals: see 4.1.1 below); however, we know of no conclusive evidence in favour of either analysis.
- 22.
All speakers permit (and most prefer) WH-pronouns in ‘headless’ relative clauses, as shown in (i)–(ii) below:
(i)
gya'a-'y=hl
[gu=hl
jab-i-t]]
see(tr)-1sg.ii=cn
[ what= cn
[make-tr-3.ii]]
‘I saw what s/he made.’
Consultant’s comment: “Better” [than without gu]. (VG)
(ii)
gya'a-'y
[naa
[an=t
jagw-i=hl
smax]]
see(tr)-1sg.ii
[ who
[ax=3.i
kill-t=cn
bear]]
‘I saw the one who killed the bear.’
Consultant’s comment: “Better with naa than without.” (BS)
- 23.
The underlying forms of the proximal and distal demonstrative roots are √xwin and √xwist, respectively (√gwin and √gwist in Nisga'a); this explains why the initial t in tun/tust and the p in dipun/dipust are not voiced by the regular rule that voices stops before vowels.
- 24.
Forbes (2013: 14) reports that obliques with a cannot be coordinated, though locative PPs headed by g o'o can.
- 25.
Rigsby (1986: 92–103) identifies five different subclasses of regular plural prefixes, which have differing phonological forms: la-/li-, g a-, and three different reduplicated forms. One of each is represented in the examples in (49). Rigsby also reports irregular plural forms.
- 26.
Gyat also has a collective or generic reading as ‘people’.
- 27.
Hunt has lakxw for ‘firewood, fuel’: this appears to be a mistranscription.
- 28.
Nevertheless, in less careful speech, number mismatches are not infrequent; their status is unclear, and we set them aside here for further investigation.
- 29.
Compare this example, with non-plural k 'ots, to the otherwise parallel example in (62), with plural g as∼k 'ots. We have not yet investigated the circumstances under which measure phrases can or must be pluralized.
- 30.
There are two possible structural analyses for clause-initial numerals. The first treats the quantifier and its restriction as having undergone movement to a clause-initial A'-position; the second treats the quantifier as a main predicate, taking the rest of the clause as a relative clause headed by the restriction. See 4.1.2 for discussion.
- 31.
Forbes (2012) does give one example where the numeral ‘one’ is linked to a following noun by an attributive marker, shown in (i). Though we have yet to come across other cases of this pattern, the forms used by some speakers for ‘twice’ (gilb-a) and ‘thrice’ (gwile'l-a) appear similar: see Sect. 6.1.1.
(i)
am
ky'ul-a
gyat
'nit
goo=hl
paatii
only
one.hum-attr
man
3sg.iii
loc=cn
party
‘He’s the only man at the party.’
(Forbes 2012: 55)
- 32.
Gitksan lacks any lexical quantifier which is monotone decreasing on its second argument (e.g., ‘no’, ‘not all’, etc.): see Sect. 5.4 below.
- 33.
Unlike numerals, however, value judgment quantifiers never appear with g abi ‘number, (count) amount’:
(i)
helt=hl
(* g abi=hl)
ii'uxwt
ts'im
galts'ep
many= cn
(* cnt.amt= cn)
pl.man
in
village
‘There are many men in the village.’
(VG)
(ii)
hlibuu=hl
(* g abi=hl)
smex
go'o=hl
s-ust
few= cn
(* cnt.amt= cn)
bear
loc=cn
dm-dem.dist
‘There are few bears around here’
(VG)
- 34.
BS normally employs miihluxw for ‘dance’; however, she remarked that miilukw was “okay for younger speakers”.
- 35.
At the current time, we do not have sufficient data to make a generalization about the available readings for value judgment quantifiers in post-predicative argument positions, as these are much rarer than Q-initial structures.
- 36.
There are two Series I subjects in this sentence. The example was rechecked with the same speaker who originally produced it, and judged grammatical; for at least some speakers, it thus appears that doubling of a Series I clitic is permitted.
- 37.
In support of this idea, the speaker who made the comment in (143) followed it up by volunteering (i), which clearly involves an inalienable subpart. (Note also the different translation into English of sda here.)
(i)
sda
dahliisx
half
sock
‘other part of a sock’ (VG)
Although most speakers appear to have no constraints on the type of restriction for sdo'o/sdu'u, one speaker (TB) offered the judgment that hli sdu'u (with the hli nominalizer) is “only for things, not people.”
- 38.
However, when followed by g abi ‘count amount’ sda can quantify over individuals, including humans: see Sect. 4.4.2, where sda g abi acts as a quantifier over individuals in a scope test.
- 39.
Unusually, the Eastern Gitksan variant taa x 'nitxws begins with an aspirated rather than a voiced or glottalized stop, historically due to metathesis of the fricative x with the following vowel. It is possible that cases like this provide evidence of an emerging class of contrastive aspirated stops, or alternatively, that there is a ‘hidden’ fricative here, as in the demonstrative stem t-un (< t-xwin; cf. Nisga'a txwin ‘this’). The Eastern form taa x 'nitsxw also involves a second metathesis, of xws to sxw; cf. its Nisga'a cognate t x aa'nitkws (Tarpent 1987: 128).
- 40.
The two interpretations of this example, though both robustly attested, had to be elicited from the consultant on different occasions, due to the strong aversion of Gitksan speakers to ambiguity. This aversion has proven a particularly difficult obstacle to the elicitation of scope judgments: see Sect. 4.4.
- 41.
The singular noun gyat ‘man’ is not infrequently used in plural contexts (whereas its plural counterpart ii'uxwt ‘men’ is never employed as a singular); this explains the relatively mild ungrammaticality of this example.
- 42.
'Wal k 'a/gwal k 'a is not analyzable as a main predicate, for the simple reason that universal quantifiers cannot be predicative.
- 43.
The numeral for ‘one animal’ k'eekw, is never used with mahla/mehla:
(i) *
dax-dog-o=hl
hlgu
t'ihlxw-um
gyat
mahla
k'eekw=hl
has∼us
firmly-pl.hold-tr=cn
small
young-attr
man
each
one .animal= cn
pl∼dog
‘The boys are each holding a dog.’
(BS)
- 44.
The second clause here is unusual in that it lacks the schwa ‘transitive’ suffix which normally marks object extraction: the expected form would be 'mugwihl, not 'mukwhl.
- 45.
Gyaanimx is the language of the Gitanyaaw, who consider their dialect distinctive enough from Gitksan to give it a separate name (though the two are fully mutually intelligible).
- 46.
‘Almost’ has several variant pronunciations: mooji, mooja, mooje, maaja.
- 47.
There is no question of gwal k 'a being predicative here, since universals can never be main predicates.
- 48.
The negative ellipsis construction illustrated in (229) and other examples in this section is used for contrastive focus. It has an unusual structure, consisting of the standard clausal negator nee with an unexplained t increment, followed by a PP containing the contrastively focused element.
- 49.
- 50.
Tarpent (1987: 381) observes that the corresponding Nisga'a element means ‘same’ when in combination with the root for ‘one’.
- 51.
A speaker of another dialect, MA, gives exactly the same sentence as (255), but with a transitivized version of ‘sing’, limindiit.
- 52.
By “duet”, VG means a duo (i.e., two singers).
- 53.
The contexts were provided in the same order to both speakers, so this is not an effect of the order of presentation.
- 54.
The inverse scope reading (in which three cups of coffee were each drunk by ten people) is ruled out on pragmatic grounds.
- 55.
The only difference between the test sentences as volunteered by VG and HH is that the latter employs t'ihlxw rather than tk'ihlxw for ‘young’.
- 56.
‘WH-copies’ are also possible for some speakers in the intermediate clauses of long-range WH-questions and relative clauses: see Davis and Brown (2011).
- 57.
The variation in the form for ‘what’ is determined by dialect: Eastern dialect speakers prefer forms with gwi, and Western speakers prefer forms with gu.
- 58.
Both g abi and g as g oo appear to contain the distributive prefix g a-, which is semantically transparent for a count quantifier, but not for a mass one.
- 59.
Compare (319) with (i), without elp'a:
(i)
Context: Asking a young girl which boy she likes.
naa=hl
siip'-in-in
who= cn
like-caus-2sg.ii
‘Who do you like?’
(LW)
Consultant’s comment: “[This] is like ‘Who is he?’ It’s like she’s already chosen.”
- 60.
- 61.
The measure noun g asxw has not been recorded elsewhere; however, it is clearly related to g abi ‘count amount’ and g as g oo ‘mass amount’, which both likely contain the ‘distributive’ pluralizer g a- (though it is effect is not necessarily distributive in these derivations). We gloss it here simply as ‘number’.
- 62.
HH uses guxw for ‘wake up’ (homophonous with the verb ‘to shoot’), in contrast to our other consultants, who use the expected form gyuksxw.
- 63.
Conversely, VG primarily uses edigwil for frequency quantification over events, and g ani wila to convey a continuous state interpretation, as in the examples below:
(i)
g ani wila
nee=dii=n
hoox
anooya
go'o=hl
ensiwilaksa
always
neg =foc=1sg.i
use
tool
loc=cn
school
‘I continue not to drive to school.’
(VG)
(ii)
g ani wila
nee=dii
hadiks-i'y
e=hl
maadim
always
neg= foc
swim-1sg.ii
prep=cn
winter
‘I still don’t go swimming in winter.’
(VG)
(iii)
nee=dii
g ani wila
hadiks-i'y
e=hl
maadim
neg= foc
always
swim-1sg.ii
prep=cn
winter
‘I still don’t go swimming in winter/I sometimes don’t swim in winter.’
(VG)
However, as illustrated in (ii) and (iii), alternate orderings of negation and the event quantifier yield different interpretations, suggesting that word order reflects the scope of these elements.
- 64.
In this example, g an wila unexpectedly induces dependent morphology.
- 65.
The mass domain equivalent of hlibuu ‘few’, ts'uus(xw) ‘(a) little’, is either marginal or ungrammatical when used as a frequency quantifier: speakers typically comment that it is “awkward” or “gets the meaning across, but …”.
- 66.
The (a) and (b) examples here also differ in pronominal marking: (a) is in the independent mode, while (b) is in the dependent mode, induced by mooja.
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Appendices
Appendices
1.1 Appendix I: Conversion Chart from the Hindle and Rigsby Practical Orthography to the APA (Americanist Phonemic Alphabet)
The Hindle-Rigsby orthography (Hindle and Rigsby 1973) is broadly phonetic rather than phonemic: it distinguishes voiced and voiceless stops, for example, which are non-contrastive in IT (the voiced allophones occur before vowels). Likewise, schwa is realized as i, a, u and sometimes o, depending on its consonantal environment. See Rigsby (1986: 122–132) for exposition.
Orth. | APA | Orth. | APA | Orth. | APA | Orth. | APA | Orth. | APA |
a | a | hl | ɬ | l | l | s | s | x | x |
aa | a: | i | ə | 'l | l' | t | t | x | χ |
b | b | ii | i: | m | m | t' | t' | xw | xw |
d | d | j | ʣ | 'm | m' | tl' | ƛ' | y | y |
e | e | k | k | n | n | ts | c | 'y | y' |
ee | e: | k' | k' | 'n | n' | ts' | c' | ' | ʔ |
g | g | k | q | o | o | u | u | ||
g | g | k' | q' | oo | o: | uu | u: | ||
gw | gw | kw | kw | p | p | w | w | ||
h | h | kw' | k'w | p' | p' | 'w | w' |
1.2 Appendix II: Pronominal Paradigms
SERIES I (PREVERBAL CLITICS) a
SINGULAR | PLURAL | |
FIRST PERSON | =n, ni=, na= | dip |
SECOND PERSON | =m, mi=, ma= | =m, mi=, ma=…=sim |
THIRD PERSON | =t | =t |
SERIES II (SUFFIXES)
SINGULAR | PLURAL | |
FIRST PERSON | -'y | -'m |
SECOND PERSON | -n | -si'm |
THIRD PERSON | -t | -diit |
SERIES III (INDEPENDENT PRONOUNS)
SINGULAR | PLURAL | |
FIRST PERSON | 'nii'y | 'nuu'm |
SECOND PERSON | ‘niin | 'nisi'm |
THIRD PERSON | 'nit | 'nidiit |
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Bicevskis, K., Davis, H., Matthewson, L. (2017). Quantification in Gitksan. In: Paperno, D., Keenan, E. (eds) Handbook of Quantifiers in Natural Language: Volume II. Studies in Linguistics and Philosophy, vol 97. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-44330-0_6
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