Abstract
After presenting some basic genetic, historical and typological information about Garifuna this chapter outlines the quantification patterns it expresses. It illustrates various semantic types of quantifiers, such as generalized existential, generalized universal, proportional, definite and partitive which are defined in the Quantifier Questionnaire in Chapter 1. It partitions the expression of the semantic types into morpho-syntactic classes: Adverbial type quantifiers and Nominal (or Determiner) type quantifiers. For the various semantic and morpho-syntactic types of quantifiers it also distinguishes syntactically simple and syntactically complex quantifiers, as well as issues of distributivity and scope interaction, classifiers and measure expressions, and existential constructions. The chapter describes structural properties of determiners and quantified noun phrases in Garifuna, both in terms of internal structure (morphological or syntactic) and distribution.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
- 3.
All examples are presented in a modified version of the standard Garifuna orthography (Cayetano 1993); the largest difference between the two orthographies is that I mark stress in all words. Following Munro (2007), I have normalized the presentation of auxiliaries; they are written as separate unstressed words. I also write long vowels, and do not indicate stem differences for verbs. All abbreviations used in glosses are presented at the end of this chapter.
- 4.
See Munro (1997) for a fuller discussion of Garifuna gender.
- 5.
Sentence (6) is, itself, ambiguous for number. It can also mean ‘I ate all of the plantain’ (i.e. ‘I ate the whole plantain’), as discussed in Section 4.4.1.
- 6.
According to Taylor (1951a: 44), ‘star’ is one of two non-animate nouns that can take plural agreement; ‘name’ is the other. In Mr. Lopez’s speech, neither of these nouns does take plural agreement regularly, although sentences with ‘star’ and plural agreement are occasionally judged to be grammatical.
- 7.
During one elicitation session, Mr. Lopez did not use plural agreement for ‘worms’, but in subsequent sessions he did so. Note additionally that nouns denoting animates have ‘common’ gender: one gender may be felt to be less marked, but these can agree as either gender depending on the gender of their referent (Munro 1997, Taylor 1951c).
- 8.
The ba morpheme – here used to indicate a focus construction – is enormously complex. See Ekulona (2000).
- 9.
Nouns of this sort, like ‘writer’, ‘singer’, and ‘fisherman’, are segmentable, but their segmentation is beyond the scope of this paper. See Taylor (1952: 156) for some discussion of these types of forms.
- 10.
All kin terms are given here with first person singular possessor.
- 11.
This word is morphologically complex, from leskuéla ‘school’.
- 12.
ba-i and ba-u become bei and bou through phonological processes outside the scope of this paper; yan-i and yan-u become yein and youn.
- 13.
All Bible citations are based on the Sociedades Bíblicas Unidas Garifuna Bible translation, Sandu Bürütu (2001). Forms given here were checked with Maurice Lopez, occasionally changed, and retranslated.
- 14.
These ‘which’ questions in (22a) and (22b) use partitive constructions, although these questions do not always do so (22c). See Section 4.6.1.6 for a description of Garifuna partitives.
- 15.
The People’s Garifuna Dictionary (Cayetano 1993) lists this word as búidürügü-, suggesting a derivation:
-
buidü -rügü
-
be.good-only
-
- 16.
While míbe- is the regularly derived negative form of gíbe-, I include it in this list because the other forms are not negatable in this way (see Munro and Gallagher in press). Similarly, while gíbeya- is transparently related to gíbe-, the exact meaning of -ya remains unclear. Suazo (1991: 180–181) suggests that gíbe- means ‘be much/many’, and translates -ya- as ‘too much, very’. While this explains a number of cases, gíbe- is often used too mean ‘too many’.
- 17.
While Mr. Lopez begrudgingly accepted this sentence, he is often quite resistant to many transparent English loanwords and refused to use the word inófu- in any other sentence. Presumably, its distribution is the same as that of burídügü-.
- 18.
The third-person marking on yûndü-, as opposed to first-person, most likely indicates the indeterminate nature of this construction. That is, one does not know exactly who among ‘us’ went to school.
- 19.
Probably from French souvent temps (Taylor 1956b: 149), and later reanalyzed as containing sún ‘all’. I have normalized the spelling of this word as súnwan following the suggestion of Pamela Munro; the stress on this word is not consistent. Stress on the second syllable supports Taylor’s impression that this is from the French, while stress on the first syllable may support the idea that it has been reanalyzed as a variant of sún.
- 20.
I gloss a variety of negative elements as ‘neg’; Munro and Gallagher (in press) have an excellent analysis that treats this issue in much greater detail.
- 21.
Although I use the same gloss ‘all’ for ságü and sún, ságü can only be used in temporal constructions.
- 22.
This construction is partitive. See Section 4.6.1.6.
- 23.
This word is listed in The People’s Garifuna Dictionary (Cayetano 1993) as furumieguárügü. If the form I have is correct, the most likely derivation is:
fúna
-guwa
-rügü
maybe
-mid
-only
- 24.
Spanish la mitad ‘half’ was likely borrowed as lamída and then reanalyzed.
- 25.
These are segmentable, most likely as
-au
-giya;
-abu
-giya
-with
-from;
-behind
-from
- 26.
Discussing the syntax of this sentence in any detail is beyond the scope of this paper, but it is parallel to other sentences in which a prepositional phrase serves as a predicate. For example:
L-uwágu
ye-in
isíyedu
lé
díngu
be-i
éifi.
p3m-on
aux.yan-r3m
plate
3m.prox
be.blue
aux.ba-r3m
bean
‘The beans are on a blue plate.’
- 27.
Speakers disagree about whether this sentence is acceptable.
- 28.
This example contains an oblique subject construction. See Munro (2007).
- 29.
Although I have glossed -ídagiya as a single morpheme to avoid confusion, it is actually a complex preposition (Rodríguez, ms):
-ida
-giya
-in
-from
- 30.
There are at least three ways to explain this construction. Either a. ‘prepositions’ are actually ‘a preposition-like word with a person-marker prefix (morphologically a noun)’ (Taylor 1956a: 6), but nouns that are unspecified for gender and number, and so these raise from the possessor; b. ‘prepositions’ are true prepositions (Munro 2007), but since verbs need to agree with their subjects, subject prepositional phrases take their number and gender from their objects; or c. verbs only agree for gender and number but not person in order to constructionally indicate, e.g., the indeterminate nature of ‘some of us’ with regard to person since the speaker may or may not be included in the referent. All of these explanations have some truly odd consequences. For the moment, I remain agnostic.
- 31.
Lábugei is almost certainly a phonological variant of lábugiya.
- 32.
It may also be used as an A-quantifier meaning ‘completely’, as suggested tantalizingly by Taylor (1952: 165); the only example I have seen of this usage is in example (42b) of this paper.
- 33.
Pamela Munro (personal communication) suggests that this word has some sort of distributive meaning.
- 34.
As in English, Mr. Lopez recognizes that this sentence is potentially ambiguous. However, he finds this the most natural way of expressing ‘the same’.
- 35.
This verb takes an oblique subject. See Munro (2007) for more discussion.
- 36.
Suazo (1991: 81) also lists gauba gauba, meaning something like ‘to walk in pairs’; I have never heard this form.
- 37.
Person agreement is difficult to test for:
Hínsiye-ti
ába
sán
íburu
lé
b-uwágu
be-i
n-ú.
like-t3m
one
hundred
pound
3m.prox
p2sg-on
aux.ba-r3m
p1sg-to
‘I love all one hundred pounds of you.’
(Lit. ‘I love all one hundred pounds on you.’)
Unfortunately, ‘all one hundred pounds of you’ is not idiomatically parallel to a construction like ‘one hundred pounds of fish’. Instead, ‘all one hundred pounds of you’ is, literally, ‘one hundred pounds (that you have) on you’, meaning something akin to ‘one hundred pounds that you weigh’.
- 38.
Awási may mean ‘ear of corn’ rather than simply ‘corn’, although the proverb Móungirauti gáyu awási, ‘A chicken will not take care of corn’, suggests that a mass reading is possible.
- 39.
Alternatively, these may be better translated as ‘Each picture of a student is on the table’ (119) and ‘A picture of each student is on the table’ (120), a difficult distinction to make in most contexts (Pamela Munro, personal communication).
- 40.
Similar sentences have been judged fully ungrammatical; súngubei appears to be more acceptable as a bare quantifier than sún.
- 41.
-amída ‘half’ is usually but not always definite. As a bare quantifier, it is often indefinite, but when it modifies a noun, it is definite unless the construction is partitive.
- 42.
Feminine agreement in this and following examples comes from the prompt given in (125b); durúgu ‘car’ is feminine.
- 43.
The syntactic structure of such sentences, however, is far from clear.
- 44.
Nikáta, like English ‘anything’, appears to be a negative polarity item. Although ní ‘not even’ can appear in subjects, as well as in objects of non-negative verbs, nikáta cannot appear as either. See also Section 4.15.
- 45.
Sarágu ‘many’ is probably not analyzable by most speakers, but it is not historically monomorphemic. Taylor (1956a: 13–14) suggests that sarágu probably contains collective –gu, possibly deriving from sara ‘upright’.
- 46.
The way that –gü affects word stress (not noted here) suggests it may be a clitic, but (168d) suggests otherwise.
References
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Acknowledgements
Thanks to a wonderful teacher, Maurice Lopez, for providing all data analyzed in this paper, as well as to Dr. Pamela Munro and the entire 2009 Garifuna group (Kathy Chong-Cheung, Holly Farless, Caitlin Gallagher, Valerie Gofman, Zachary Hart, Heidi Klockmann, Mikael Miller, Pamela Munro, María Rodríguez, Svetlana Tchistiakova, Michael Tessler, and Jennifer Zhang) for insights and collaboration. I am also grateful to Henrietta Augustine, Vincent Guzman, Efigenia Hill, Vincent Lopez, Dora Williams, and Joseph Williams in Seine Bight, Belize; I was unable to work directly with these speakers but am endlessly grateful to Pam Munro for making these data available to me. Finally, I am grateful to the participants in the American Indian Languages Seminar, especially Marcus Smith, for feedback and suggestions on multiple occasions, and to Ed Keenan and Denis Paperno.
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Barchas-Lichtenstein, J. (2012). Garifuna Quantification. In: Keenan, E., Paperno, D. (eds) Handbook of Quantifiers in Natural Language. Studies in Linguistics and Philosophy, vol 90. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-2681-9_4
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