Who: Yuliya Manyakina
When: Wednesday, October 16, 3-4 pm in room 117
When: Wednesday, October 16, 3-4 pm in room 117
What: The role of -ew in Mi’gmaq
Abstract:
In this talk I examine the morpheme -ew in Mi’gmaq, an Eastern Algonquian language. I propose an analysis drawing on Barker’s (1995) notion of Extrinsic Possession.
In previous literature -ew has been described as a marker indicating change in grammatical status, used when deriving a noun from a verb or locative, or a possessive pronoun from a subject/object pronoun (Inglis 1988). However, this does not capture its full range of distribution. –ew is also found on the possessor in alienable possession constructions and can attach to bare nouns.
Based on this data, I argue that -ew’s role in nominalization is connected to the concept of Extrinsic Possession—a vague relation that encompasses ownership, creation, adjacency, and other relationships that express ‘proximity’ between a possessor and a possessum.