(Alienable and Inalienable?) Possession in Chocktaw

In Chocktaw, nouns that act as possessors are marked with agreement by prefixes in a very similar way to how verbs are marked with agreement. (See https://lisatravis2012.wordpress.com/2015/02/10/inflectional-morphology-in-choctaw/). In fact, the agreement morphemes used with possessors are almost exactly identical to the class II and III agreement morphemes on verbs, with the exception of the removal of 1P Multiple forms in possessors, as we can see in the table below.

Moreover, the difference in agreement generally correlates with the traditional notion of alienably and inalienably possessed nouns, where inalienable nouns are those that cannot be dissociated with the noun they are possessing–i.e. body parts, kin, age, mental states, etc.–and alienable nouns are those that can be dissociated–i.e. objects in general, like money, toys, etc. In general in Chocktaw, inalienable nouns are generally marked with class II possessor agreement while alienable nouns are marked with class III.

However, there are difficulties that arise when simply classifying class II as inalienable and class III as alienable in Chocktaw. For example, whereas “my brother’s wife” will take a class II possessor, “my paternal aunt” will take a class III possessor.

(1)

sa-hàyya’

1SII-brother’s.wife

“my brother’s wife”

(2)

a   -hokni’

1SIII-father’s.sister

“my paternal aunt”

Furthermore, by referring to the same object with both modifiers, one encounters subtle but different meanings. The following minimal pair demonstrates this distinction:

(3)

sa  -hólbatóba’

1SII-picture

“a picture of me” (i.e. a picture with me in it)

(4)

a    -hólbatóba’

1SIII-picture

“my picture” (i.e. a picture that belongs to me)

The following trees will depict (3), the class II possessor sa-hólbatóba 

Word Structure Tree:

The noun root, hòlbatòba, carries the internal argument of Referent, which is passed up along with the noun feature to its dominating node, where it adjoins with the possessor prefix sa-, which passes up its Internal Argument of Theme as well as its features of first person, singular, and class II to the top N node, which also received the noun feature and <R> argument from the N_<R> node below.

The syntax tree before movement is as follows:

And the syntax tree after movement is quite similar, as is shown below:

Inflectional Morphology in Choctaw

In Choctaw, verbs are inflected for–among some other things–argument agreement markers with prefixes*, and tense with a suffix. Moreover, the argument agreement markers are of 3 distinct classes that, at their most basic, can be seen as subject (I), object (II), and indirect object (III) markers, respectively, that differ with respect to person and number. Nevertheless, the type of arguments used are generally defined by the verb being used, so many verbs take class II or III arguments as subjects.

*Note: the first person singular marker is the only agreement suffix.

The table below describes this pattern:

*

*Note: The N column refers to negation markers, which are inflected in the same way as the person/number agreement markers. The “unmarked” prefixes are used where the verb fails to agree, such as in imperatives. There are no 3rd person agreement markers.

The following examples demonstrate a simple paradigm showing alternation from the 2nd person singular class I prefix (ish-) to the 2nd person plural class I prefix (hash-) in subject position, as well as from the 1st person plural class II prefix (pi-) to the 1st person singular class II prefix (sa-) in object position:

(1)

ish-     pi-           pisa-                    tok

2SI-    1PII-       see-                   Past.Tense

“You saw us.”

(2)

is-       sa-            pisa-                    tok

2SI-   1SII-         see-                   PST.TNS

“You saw me.”

(3)

hash-  pi-            pisa-                      tok

2PI-    1PII-        see-                   PST.TNS

“You all saw us.”

(4)

has-     sa-           pisa-                      tok

2P1-   1SII-        see-                    PST.TNS

“You all saw me.”

Furthermore, in terms of the phonology, we see that both of the 2nd person class I prefixes lose their morpheme-final [h] before the 1st person singular class II prefix, which would otherwise sandwich the [h] between two [s]s. Therefore:

• /hash-/ + /sa-/ becomes /hassa/
• /ish-/ + /sa-/ becomes /issa/

The following examples demonstrate simple variation in tense from present/unspecified tense (-h) to past tense (-tok).

(5)

baliili-      li-           h.

run           1SI-     TNS

“I am running”

(6)

baliili-       li-          tok.

run            1SI        PST.TNS

“I ran.”

The Word Structure tree is below, showing the percolation of tense, person, and agreement, features as they are added to the verb:

 

 

The syntax tree below shows the

 

The syntax tree below shows head movement from TP to VP to AgrII to AgrI.