Spike Gildea

University of Oregon, Linguistics, Faculty Member

Linguistics +4

I am a historical linguist, field linguist, and typologist

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Papers

From grammaticalization to Diachronic Construction Grammar A natural evolution of the paradigm

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The Curious Case of Reconstruction in Syntax

by Spike Gildea and Eugenio R. Luján

The curious case of reconstruction in syntax, 2020

The general consensus in the historical linguistics community for the last half a century or so h... more The general consensus in the historical linguistics community for the last half a century or so has been that syntactic reconstruction is a bootless and unsuccessful venture. However, this view has slowly but steadily been changing among historical linguists, typologists, and anthropological linguists alike. More and more syntactic reconstructions are being published by respectable and virtuous publication venues. The debate on the viability of syntactic reconstruction, however, continues, and issues like i) lack of cognates, ii) lack of arbitrariness in syntax, iii) lack of directionality in syntactic change, iv) lack of continuous transmission from one generation to the next, and v) lack of form-meaning correspondences have, drop by drop, been argued not to be problematic for syntactic reconstruction. The present volume contributes to two of these issues in detail; first the issue of reliably identifying cognates in syntax and second , the issue of directionality in syntactic change. A systematic program is suggested for identifying cognates in syntax, which by definition is a different enterprise from identifying cognates in phonology or morphology. Examples are given from several different language families: Indo-European, Semitic, Austronesian, Jê, Cariban, and Chibchan. Regarding the issue of directionality for syntactic reconstruction, most of the studies in this volume also demonstrate how local directionality may be identified with the aid of different types of morphosyntactic flags, particularly showcased with examples from Chibchan, Semitic, and various Indo-European languages.

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Reconstructing the Source of Nominative- Absolutive Alignment in Two Amazonian Language Families

by Spike Gildea and Flávia de Castro Alves

Reconstructing Syntax, 2020

In this article, we take the strong position that syntactic constructions can be reconstructed , ... more In this article, we take the strong position that syntactic constructions can be reconstructed , first by identifying constructional cognates, then by identifying evidence for the directionality of constructional change that best explains the modern distribution of the cognate constructions from the hypothesized source construction. Further, we argue that the grammatical properties of the resultant constructions are often best explained by a combination of their etymological source(s) and the evolutionary pathways by which they arise. We illustrate these larger theoretical claims by reconstructing a typologically unusual set of constructions in the Jê and Cariban families, which present a rare ergative alignment pattern we call nominative-absolutive. Prior to 2010 this alignment pattern, which combines nominative free pronouns and absolutive verbal indexation, was held to be impossible, and it remains attested in very few language families. In the Jê and Cariban languages, this alignment type always occurs as part of ergative splits conditioned by TAM, which are again counter to previously claimed universals in that they are conditioned by future tense, imperfective aspects, and agent-oriented modalities. We reconstruct the sources of these nominative-absolutive constructions and then argue that the unusual formal properties and functional distributions of the nominative-absolutive clause types are both best understood as combinations of typologically unusual source constructions that follow well-established diachronic pathways of tense-aspect-mood renewal.

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Introduction: The evolution of argument coding patterns in South American languages

by Spike Gildea and Antoine Guillaume

Gildea, Spike & Guillaume, Antoine, 2018

This special issue of JHL reconstructs the diachrony of a number of innovations in the coding of ... more This special issue of JHL reconstructs the diachrony of a number of innovations in the coding of argument structure, particularly in the domain of verbal indexation, in four Amazonian language families (Chapacuran, Sáliban, Tukanoan and Tupi). It is one result of an international workshop on " Diachronic Morphosyntax in South American Languages " held in Lyon (France) in 2015, with financial support from the Collegium de Lyon (Institute for Advanced Study) and the LabEx ASLAN of the Université de Lyon. The goal was to encourage methodologically innovative (and more rigorous) historical studies of morphosyntactic patterns in languages or language families of South America. The five papers that compose this collection all demonstrate the viability of syntactic reconstruction, even in languages with little or no written history.

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Referential hierarchies: A new look at some historical and typological patterns

by Fernando Zúñiga and Spike Gildea

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Diachronic Construction Grammar: Epistemological Context, Basic Assumptions and Historical Implications

The main goal of this chapter is to discuss the value of the Construction Grammar framework to so... more The main goal of this chapter is to discuss the value of the Construction Grammar framework to solving perceived problems with diachronic syntax. As such, one part of this chapter provides a condensed review of previous research in diachronic syntax, including a brief discussion of why many linguists have doubted the value of such work. While most of this early work did not emphasize the importance of constructions to our understanding of either synchronic or diachronic syntax, we do identify earlier examples of work for which the notion of construction was crucial, although not richly developed. The bulk of the chapter then proposes ways in which a constructional perspective/theory allows us to address some of these perceived problems with the study of diachronic syntax, hence providing a research context for the individual studies published in this volume.

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Reconstructing the Source of Nominative-Absolutive Alignment in Two Amazonian Language Families

by Spike Gildea and Flávia de Castro Alves

Under Review

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The story of *ô in the Cariban family.

by Spike Gildea and Berend Hoff

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Clause Linking in Akawaio

A survey of the adverbial clause structures found in the texts appended to Fox (2003). Lots of da... more

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Attention, Topic Continuity, and Topic Persistence: Empirical studies of the functional basis of Ergativity in Akawaio (Cariban)

This paper is essentially three papers rolled up into one: the first documents a typologically un... more This paper is essentially three papers rolled up into one: the first documents a typologically unusual case of tense-aspect-based split ergativity in the Akawaio language, one which is, in some ways, reminiscent of a voice distinction. The other two papers provide empirical tests of a hypothesized interaction between topicality and the selection of the ergative versus the nonergative clause types in Akawaio speech. The Fish Film study directly manipulates the attention of the speaker, and observes the effect of that manipulation on descriptions of animated scenes on the computer screen. Akawaio is the third language (of 20 tested so far) to show no effect of attention manipulation, either in the domain of the ergative split or otherwise. Givónian text counts measure the accessibility and importance (two aspects of topicality) of participants in traditional planned narrative discourse, and then seeks to correlate those measurements to grammar. Again, the results show no correlation between topicality and the ergative split. The final portion of the paper explains the unusual split as the transitional final stage in the replacement of one series of tense-aspect morphology with a
new series, with the default clause type now the robust innovative ergative, and the etymologically prior nonergative clause type now used only in stylistically marked contexts.

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Ergativity in the northern Cariban languages

L'ergativité en Amazonie, v. 1, ed. by F. Queixalós. Brasília: CNRS, IRD and the Laboratório de ... more L'ergativité en Amazonie, v. 1, ed. by F. Queixalós. Brasília: CNRS, IRD and the Laboratório de Línguas Indígenas, UnB.

The purpose of this paper is to offer a framework for organizing the three primary types of ergative main clauses in the Cariban language family, and to briefly characterize what is known about the morphological and syntactic properties of each. I will also discuss briefly the main point of typological interest, which is that the tense-aspect based ergative splits in individual northern Cariban languages do not conform with expected universal patterns (cf. §4). While I will offer brief examples from individual languages to illustrate the claims I make here, in most cases, many more examples and much more detailed argumentation can be found in prior publications (cf. specific citations in various subsections). I encourage the interested (and especially the skeptical) reader to use this brief synopsis as a guide to points of interest that can be found in those works.

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Pre-Proto-Tupí-Guaraní Main Clause Person-Marking

Línguas Indígenas Brasileiras. Fonologia, Gramática e História. Atas do I Encontro Internacional ... more Línguas Indígenas Brasileiras. Fonologia, Gramática e História. Atas do I Encontro Internacional do GTLI da ANPOLL, v. I, pp. 315-326, ed. by Ana Suelly Cabral and Aryon Rodrigues. Belem: Editoria Universitária U.F.P.A.

Arguing that the hierarchical verbal indexation system does not appear to be derived from the absolutive indexation system seen in Tupí-Guaranían subordinate clauses.

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A Comparative Description of Syllable Reduction in the Cariban Language Family

International Journal of American Linguistics, 1995

Towards a new classification of the Cariban languages of northern Brazil

Unpublished paper based on the talk I gave at the International Congress of Americanists, Stockho... more

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The Proto-Cariban and Tupí-Guaraní Nominalizing Prefix

Lingüística Tupí-Guaraní/Caribe, ed. by Ignacio Prado Pastor, 163-77. Revista Latinoamericana de... more Lingüística Tupí-Guaraní/Caribe, ed. by Ignacio Prado Pastor, 163-77. Revista Latinoamericana de Estudios Etnolingüísticos, v. VIII. Lima, Peru.

Paper for the 1994 International Congress of Americanists, reconstructing the form and function of the object nominalizing prefix in Cariban and pointing out intriguing similarities between it and the object nominalizing prefix in TG.

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The Rigid VS Order in Panare (Cariban): A Historical Explanation

International Journal of American Linguistics, 1993

... language consultants were Pragedes Salas and Rafael Moncala of Perro de Agua, Miguel Castillo... more

On the evolution of a counter-universal pattern of split ergativity

A scan of my paper in the 1993 Proceedings of ESCOLL, ed. by Michael Bernstein. Ithaca, NY: Depar... more

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Comparative Cariban Morphosyntax: On the Genesis of Ergativity in Independent Clauses

A scan of my 1992 PhD thesis

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Structural correlates to functional change: A Panare nominalizer "surfaces" as main clause aspect

Scan of my paper in the Procedings of the Fourth Meeting of the Pacific Linguistics Conference, h... more Scan of my paper in the Procedings of the Fourth Meeting of the Pacific Linguistics Conference, held May, 1989 at the University of Oregon.

How the Proto-Cariban nominalizer *-ne becomes the Panare 'Nonspec.T' (Nonspecific Aspect, Transitive) inflection. At the time I wrote this, I was unaware of the Construction Grammar model, but given that the "grammaticalization" in question in this example was the reanalysis of a derivational morpheme (an agent nominalizer) into an inflectional TA morpheme (the "nonspecific aspect Transitive" is much like the English Present Tense), I was forced to think about grammatical change as a constructional, rather than merely morphological, phenomenon. This included using changes in the syntax of the reanalyzed construction as evidence that verb form in question *in the construction in question* had been reanalyzed, in that it was no longer acting like a noun *uniquely in that construction*.

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Simple and Relative Clauses in Panare

A scan of my 1989 MA Thesis

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From grammaticalization to Diachronic Construction Grammar A natural evolution of the paradigm

Download

The Curious Case of Reconstruction in Syntax

by Spike Gildea and Eugenio R. Luján

The curious case of reconstruction in syntax, 2020

Download

Reconstructing the Source of Nominative- Absolutive Alignment in Two Amazonian Language Families

by Spike Gildea and Flávia de Castro Alves

Reconstructing Syntax, 2020

Download

Introduction: The evolution of argument coding patterns in South American languages

by Spike Gildea and Antoine Guillaume

Gildea, Spike & Guillaume, Antoine, 2018

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Referential hierarchies: A new look at some historical and typological patterns

by Fernando Zúñiga and Spike Gildea

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Diachronic Construction Grammar: Epistemological Context, Basic Assumptions and Historical Implications

Download

Reconstructing the Source of Nominative-Absolutive Alignment in Two Amazonian Language Families

by Spike Gildea and Flávia de Castro Alves

Under Review

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The story of *ô in the Cariban family.

by Spike Gildea and Berend Hoff

Download

Clause Linking in Akawaio

A survey of the adverbial clause structures found in the texts appended to Fox (2003). Lots of da... more

Download

Attention, Topic Continuity, and Topic Persistence: Empirical studies of the functional basis of Ergativity in Akawaio (Cariban)

Download

Ergativity in the northern Cariban languages

Download

Pre-Proto-Tupí-Guaraní Main Clause Person-Marking

Download

A Comparative Description of Syllable Reduction in the Cariban Language Family

International Journal of American Linguistics, 1995

Towards a new classification of the Cariban languages of northern Brazil

Unpublished paper based on the talk I gave at the International Congress of Americanists, Stockho... more

Download

The Proto-Cariban and Tupí-Guaraní Nominalizing Prefix

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The Rigid VS Order in Panare (Cariban): A Historical Explanation

International Journal of American Linguistics, 1993

... language consultants were Pragedes Salas and Rafael Moncala of Perro de Agua, Miguel Castillo... more

On the evolution of a counter-universal pattern of split ergativity

A scan of my paper in the 1993 Proceedings of ESCOLL, ed. by Michael Bernstein. Ithaca, NY: Depar... more

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Comparative Cariban Morphosyntax: On the Genesis of Ergativity in Independent Clauses

A scan of my 1992 PhD thesis

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Structural correlates to functional change: A Panare nominalizer "surfaces" as main clause aspect

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Simple and Relative Clauses in Panare

A scan of my 1989 MA Thesis

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A Comparative survey of Verbal Negation in the Cariban Family

This paper presents a first survey of the morphology and syntax of verbal negation in the Cariban... more This paper presents a first survey of the morphology and syntax of verbal negation in the Cariban language family. After a brief survey of the negative suffix(es) and a unique third person prefix on the negative verb (§1), we consider the argument structure of the “standard” negative construction (§2), some possible hypotheses for the etymologies of the non-cognate negative suffixes found in Kari’nja, Panare, Tiriyó, and Yawarana (§3), and the innovative argument structure of the Makushi and Akawaio negative constructions (§4).

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The evolution of valence categories in the Cariban family

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15 years later: Current Perspectives on the Venezuelan Branch Hypothesis

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Main Clause TAM in Cariban

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Parts of Speech in Cariban Languages Working Conference on Venezuelan Cariban Languages

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Subject: Approaching a Theoretical Definition via Diachronic Typology

Presented 9 September, 2016, at the Workshop "40 Years After Keenan 1976", hosted at the Universi... more

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Antipassive and semantic classes of verbs in the Cariban family

by Spike Gildea, Racquel-María Sapién (Yamada), and Natalia Cáceres Arandia

This is the handout for our talk at the Annual Meeting of the SLE, September 3, 2016.

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Rethinking the Typology of Split Ergativity: The Patchwork Quilt of Synchronic and Diachronic Syntax

Presented at CRLAO, Paris, 25 March, 2015 When a language has some ergative alignment pattern, i... more Presented at CRLAO, Paris, 25 March, 2015

When a language has some ergative alignment pattern, it is usually found in only a subset of grammatical contexts, creating what has been called split ergativity. In one common pattern, tense-aspect-based split ergativity, ergative alignment occurs only in past tense or perfective aspect clauses, while some other alignment occurs elsewhere (Dixon 1994). Theoreticians have tried to explain these splits as a grammatical expression of abstract notions like viewpoint, transitivity, inherent agentivity, and ontological salience. In recent research, we have discovered that multiple languages from the Cariban and Jê families (spoken in northern and central South America) present the opposite pattern, in which ergative alignment occurs only in nonpast and imperfective clauses. Trivially, such facts contradict the putative universal about split ergativity; less trivially, they call into question the proposed explanations for that universal. This talk proposes to explain both the universal and counter-universal patterns with reference to the concrete details of historical processes that create individual clause types with their distinct alignments (cf. Gildea 2012).
The metaphor of "split" ergativity (or any other form of “split” alignment) encourages us to misconceptualize the phenomenon as a kind of “surface” division of some “deeper”, somehow fundamentally unified phenomenon. However, the evolution of such alignments suggests a completely different metaphor, that of a patchwork quilt: different constructions (with their different alignment) are like new patches added to the existing quilt of main clause grammar. This metaphor derives from the evolution of “splits", but it also helps to frame the synchronic analysis of such alignments in a more useful way. This sort of explanation illustrates the potential of diachronic typology, both to help us understand the prevalence of typological universals (without lamenting the discovery of counter-examples) and to bring a new perspective to explanations of these universals (and their counter-examples).

Dixon, R M W. 1994. Ergativity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Gildea, Spike. 2012. Linguistic Studies in the Cariban Family. Handbook of South American Languages, ed. by Lyle Campbell and Veronica Grondona, 441-494. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

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Grammaticalization Patterns in the Cariban Family

by Spike Gildea, Racquel-María Sapién (Yamada), and Natalia Cáceres Arandia

Areal Patterns of Grammaticalization. Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Mainz, Germany, 12-14 ... more

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Diachronic Typology of Passive in the Cariban Family

Workshop: Voice systems in diachrony: a comparative perspective. University of Pavia, Italy, 11 S... more Workshop: Voice systems in diachrony: a comparative perspective. University of Pavia, Italy, 11 September, 2014; revised and expanded for a talk at the University of Leiden 16 Feb, 2015.

Despite the relatively rich descriptive literature in the Cariban family, there is no canonical passive construction that is widely attested in the various sister languages. In descriptions available thus far, modern Cariban languages utilize four distinct constructions to code a passive function: the reflexive and three structurally more canonical passives, with patient subjects and optional oblique agent phrases. Of these four, only the reflexive-as-passive is reconstructible to Proto-Cariban with this function; the other three constructions are young enough to be readily reconstructible to their distinct sources. This paper will summarize the reconstructions of each different passive, then discuss how the four distinct constructions interact over time to share the encoding of the passive function.

• Reflexive > Middle > Passive
Every attested Cariban language has a modern reflex of the DETRANSITIVIZING prefix, which goes on transitive verbs and derives an intransitive verb whose single argument is either simultaneously agent and patient (i.e., reflexive) or a patient (middle/passive). In this construction, it is not possible to explicitly indicate an agent via an oblique phrase, nor does an absent agent appear to control any grammatical properties at all, a significant difference from the Romance reflexives documented in Cennamo (1993). Crucially for the definition of passive in Givón (2001) and Heine (2002), the detransitive verbs sometime appear in clauses where there is an (unexpressable) semantic agent distinct from the patient (1-2). In these cases, the construction is arguably an agentless passive with a patient subject.

• Causative-Reflexive > Agentive Passive
In Ye’kwana and Bakairi, there is a construction in which the patient is the subject, the agent an optional PP, and the passive verb bears both the reflexive and causative morphemes (3-4). This development has been reported only recently, in work in progress by Cáceres (for Ye’kwana) and Meira (for Bakairi). Although newly reported in the Cariban family, the causative-reflexive source of passive has been documented for other languages (Haspelmath 1990).

• Adjectival-Stative Participle > Passive
In Carib of Surinam and Apalaí, there is a construction in which the patient is subject of an optional copular auxiliary, agent is optionally expressed via an oblique PP, and the verb bears participial morphology (5-6). This has been reconstructed (Gildea 1997) to the cognate construction found in most modern Cariban languages: like an adjective, the participle codes a state (often the result of an event), which can be a stative predicate (cf. ‘the window was already broken’), but with no grammatical means to express the agent; to form the passive, the predicate participle gains eventive semantics and an innovative agent phrase is added. In a further development, the cognate construction serves as an ergative main clause in Tiriyó, Wayana, and Katxúyana.

• Patient Nominalization > Passive
In Panare, there is a construction in which the patient is subject of an optional copular auxiliary, agent is optionally expressed in an oblique PP, and the verb bears the suffix -sa’ ‘PAST PARTICIPLE’ (7). This form has been reconstructed to a patient (actually absolutive) nominalization (Gildea 1998: 120), a function that is still attested in modern Panare (Payne & Payne 2013). In a further development, the cognate construction in the Pemón Group (Akawaio, Makushi, Pemón) is an ergative perfect clause.

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Reconstructing the copulas and nonverbal predicate constructions in Cariban

Amazónicas 5: La estructura de las lenguas amazónicas: fonología y sintaxis. Museu Paraense Emíli... more

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The pluractional marker -pödï of Akawaio (Cariban) and beyond

by Spike Gildea and Simone Mattiola

The aim of this paper is to give a comprehensive description of the suffix-pödï of Akawaio (Carib... more The aim of this paper is to give a comprehensive description of the suffix-pödï of Akawaio (Cariban, Venezuelan). In particular, we aim at investigating the functions that this marker can express and the grammatical status that it has in the grammar of Akawaio. This is a challenge because-pödï shows broad multifunctionality that has not been fully explored before. A review of the typological phenomenon of pluractionality suggests that all of the functions of this suffix can be captured within the pluractional conceptual space. In addition to mapping the functions of-pödï into the Pluractional space, we also identify additional morphology that explains the absence of-pödï in the other typical pluractional functions. Finally, we give an overview of pluractional markers in other Cariban languages with particular reference to Kari'nja.

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Isomorphic coexpression across modification constructions: Modifiers that act like heads in possession constructions A workshop proposal for SLE 2020 (Bucharest, Romania

by Spike Gildea and Shahar Shirtz

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The Curious Case of Reconstruction in Syntax

by Spike Gildea and Eugenio R. Luján

Reconstructing Syntax

This is a preprint of the introduction to our edited volume, Reconstructing Syntax, currently und... more This is a preprint of the introduction to our edited volume, Reconstructing Syntax, currently under review at Brill Press. In this introduction, we propose a concrete and rigorous methodology for identifying syntactic cognates and for identifying the directionality of changes, the combination putting the reconstruction of syntax on a more solid theoretical and empirical foundation.

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Nonverbal predication in Amazonia: typological and diachronic considerations

by Spike Gildea, Rosa Vallejos-Yopán, and Simon Overall

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Reconstructing Syntax:

Reconstructing Syntax, 2020

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Barðdal, Jóhanna, Elena Smirnova, Lotte Sommerer & Spike Gildea (eds.). 2015. Diachronic Construction Grammar. [CAL Series, 18]. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

by Spike Gildea and Lotte Sommerer

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