Open AccessAthapaskan Classifiers, Person, and Deference
Author(s) -
James Collins
Publication year - 1979
Publication title -
proceedings of the annual meeting of the berkeley linguistics society
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2377-1666
pISSN - 0363-2946
DOI - 10.3765/bls.v5i0.3254
Subject(s) - deixis , linguistics , subject (documents) , deference , coreference , transitive relation , sociology , psychology , computer science , artificial intelligence , philosophy , social psychology , resolution (logic) , mathematics , combinatorics , library science
When we view the verb classifier prefixes from the perspective of comparative subject (actor)2properties, and from the perspective of discourse structure, we see the interplay of Person and Anaphora on two levels of historical grammar. Comparative subject (actor) properties, indefiniteness and depersonalization, figure importantly in the constitution of the morphological set known in the Athapaskan literature as "classifiers." In particular, we find that depersonalization via pluralization of first person subject (actor) plays a major role in the regularization of this paradigm. Additionally, deictic elements employed in discourse coreference and deference behaviors intersect the Proto-Athapaskan person system at first person plural.