Person, plurality, and speech-act participant in Totonac verbal paradigms

Person, plurality, and speech-act participant in Totonac verbal paradigms*David BeckUniversity of TorontoTotonacan languages show interesting asymmetries in the person-marking of verbs withnon-third-person subject and non-third-person object when either (or both) of these isplural. Neutralization of the distinction between 1PL:SUBJ–2SG:OBJ, 1PL:SUBJ–2PL:OBJ,and 1SG:SUBJ–2PL:OBJ forms is the result of morphonemic processes and theunselectivity of the prefix kA-, which may pluralize either (non-third-person) subject orobject. Clauses with 2PL:SUBJ–1SG:OBJ, 2PL:SUBJ–1PL:OBJ, and SG:SUBJ–1SG:OBJ,on the other hand, make use of a reciprocal marker, lA-,and what is typically glossed as afirst-person plural subject marker, -x, reanalyzed here to mean ‘speech-act participants’.The use of the reciprocal marker in these forms falls out from the semantics of reciprocityand the additive nature of Totonac morphology; the anomalies in Totonac person-paradigms are thus shown to be compositional in meaning, if somewhat unusual in form.Languages of the Totonac-Tepehua family show agreement for two verbal actants.1 With intransitive verbs, transitive verbs with third-person subjects or objects, and transitive verbs with 1- and 2-singular subjects, the person-marking system is highly regular and analytical. However, when the two actants of a transitive verb are first- and second-persons, and either of them is plural, distinctions in person-marking become neutralized, leading to multiple readings of verb-forms, as in the examples from the Upper Necaxa transitive completive paradigm in (1):(1)(a)ikAtúksnî(i)‘I hit you guys’(ii)‘we EXC hit you’(iii)‘we EXC hit you guys’(b)kilAtúkswî(i)‘you hit us’(ii)‘you guys hit us’(iii)‘you guys hit me’The form in (1a) has three possible glosses and is used in all sentences with IPL subjects and 2SG or2PL objects, and with 1SG subjects and 2PL objects. Instead of the expected1PL:SUBJ suffix -x, the verb bears the 2OBJ, -n, and a prefix, kA-, used primarily with plural objects. The form in (1b), on the other hand,*Thanks go out to my language consultants Porfirio Sampayo and Alvaro Barragán Alvarez, and to the people of Chicontla for their hospitality. This work owes a lot to discussions with Paulette Levy and Igor Mel’çuk, without whom it would be even more incomplete than it is. Jack Chambers, Henry Davis, Rose-Marie Déchaine, Bill Lewis, Richard Rhodes, and Roberto Zavala have also been kind enough to offer me their ideas and expertise. Funding for this research comes from an SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship, a PRA Fellowship from the Organization of American States, and an SSHRC Research Grant to Alana Johns.1The Totonac-Tepehua family, a linguistic isolate of Eastern Central Mexico, consists of two branches—Tepehua, concentrated in a small region of Northeastern Puebla State and the adjacent areas of Hidalgo and Veracruz, and Totonacan, spoken in the Sierra Madre Oriental of Puebla and the Northern Lowlands of Veracruz. This branch consists of four languages—Sierra, Northern, Papantla, and Misantla Totonac—each about as different from the others as individual Romance languages. Upper Necaxa (a.k.a. Patla-Chicontla) is a highly divergent and hitherto undescribed dialect of Northern Totonac spoken by about 2,000 people in four villages in the Necaxa River Valley at the foot of the Sierra Madre. The phonemic inventory of Upper Necaxa is p, t, k, ÷, c, ç, s, ß,¬, x, s©, ß©, ¬©,m, n, l, w, y. The vowels are i, e, u, a, and show distinctions for length and laryngealization. The transcription system used here is a standard Americanist IPA where /c/ is a voiceless alveolar affricate.takes the IOBJ prefix kin-, the 1PL :SUBJ suffix –x (-wî in the completive aspect), and the reciprocal prefix,lA-, and gives 2PL :SUB –1SG :OBJ , 2PL :SUBJ –1PL :OBJ , and 2SG :SUBJ –1PL :OBJ readings.Dual or multiple readings for verb-forms with plural non-third person subjects and objects are attested in other languages. Cree (Dahlstrom 1991), for instance, merges 2PL :SUBJ –1PL :OBJ with2SG :SUBJ –1PL :OBJ forms and 1PL :SUBJ –2SG :OBJ with 1PL :SUBJ –2SG :OBJ forms. Sayula Popoluca and Olutec, two Mixean languages (Clark & Clark 1960; R. Zavala, p.c.) go even further and merge 1PL :SUBJ –2PL :OBJ and 1PL :SUBJ – 2SG :OBJ forms, and, like Totonac, 2PL :SUBJ –1PL :OBJ with 2PL :SUBJ –1SG :OBJ and 2SG :SUBJ –1PL :OBJ forms. In Totonac-Tepehua, the patterns in (1) are pervasive and seem to be ancient: the same pattern is found in at least one other dialect of Northern Totonac(Apapantilla—Reid 1991), and the Lowlands Totonac language Papantla (Aschmann & Aschmann 1973).Forms cognate to those in (1) are also found in Sierra Totonac, although the (1b) pattern may have a more regular form using ki –kA – ‘1OBJ –PL :OBJ ’ as well (McQuown 1990: 169). In Tepehua, first-person subject forms are directly analogous to (1b), using the reciprocal marker but replacing kin- ‘1OBJ ’ with k-‘1SG :SUBJ ’ (Watters 1988).Careful analysis of this system of person-marking reveals it not to be as idiosyncratic as it appears.The forms in (1a) can be attributed to morphonemic processes which neutralize the surface distinction between ik–kA–túks–n–lî, the 1SG :SUBJ –2PL :OBJ form (which corresponds to the gloss in (1a-i)), and another form—ik–kA–túks–n–x–lî (1SUBJ –PL –hit–2OBJ –1PL :SUBJ –CMP )—which gives both thereadings in (1a-ii) and (1a-iii). This dual reading can be attributed to the ambiguous scope or “unselectivity”(Bach et al. 1995) of the plural “object” prefix kA-, which seems to be able to pluralize both objects and (non-third-person) subjects of transitive verbs. The (1b) forms are somewhat more opaque, but can also be shown to be regular and completely compositional. The use of the reciprocal suffix in these forms may well be the remnants of an older person-hierarchy in Proto-Totonac-Tepehua which excluded clauses with first person objects and second person subjects.1.Intransitive ParadigmsBefore undertaking an examination of the complex transitive paradigms, a quick look at intransitive verb forms will be a great deal of help in sorting out some of the intricacies of the subject and aspect morphology and the accompanying morphonemics. Subject and aspect markers are identical for transitive and intransitive verbs and can be readily identified in the intransitive completive forms given in Table 1:22 Totonac has a complicated system of tense and aspect, distinguishing three tenses—past, present, and future—and four aspects —imperfective, completive, perfect, and progressive. In total there are nine possible tense-aspect combinations (the future appears only in imperfective aspect) plus an additional paradigm formed with a subjunctive/imperative prefix. The unmarked tense is the present and the unmarked aspect is the imperfective, although the zero-marking of the imperfective is the result of a widespread syncope process that eliminates the imperfective suffix –ya except in the first- and second-person plural. In this article we will be concerned primarily with the completive aspect, which (in the transitive paradigms) is morphologically the most transparent.Class 1 completivetaßtú(to)leaveik –taßtú–¬I leaveik –taßtú–x we(EX c) leavetaßtú–x we(INC ) leavetáßtu you leavetaßtu –tít you(PL ) leavetaßtú–¬he/she/it leavesta –taßtú–¬they leave Class 2 completive pAß(to)bathe ik –pÄß–lîI bathe ik –pÄß–wîwe(EXC ) bathe pÄß–wîwe(INC ) bathe pÄß–tîyou bathe pAß–tít you(PL ) bathe pÄß–lîhe/she bathes ta –pÄß–lîthey batheTable 1 : Upper Necaxa Totonac intransitive completive paradigmsAs indicated in the table, Totonac verbs fall into declension classes based on the final segment of the root. Most Totonac languages (and other dialects of Northern Totonac) have three verb classes (those ending in a stressed vowel, those ending in a consonant, and those ending in a nasal); Upper Necaxa, however, has for the most part conflated the consonant- and nasal-final classes, distinguishing only those verbs that end in a stressed vowel (Class 1) from those that end in a consonant (Class 2); the remaining Class 3 verbs (which show Class 1 forms in the first- and third-person singular) are not predictably members of this class. Because Class 2 verbs are more transparent in the transitive paradigms, these will be the focus of our discussion, although all of the person-marking patterns discussed here apply to both verb classes (and to the third class in those languages and dialects that have it).From Table 1 we can deduce (at least provisionally) that the subject-markers are as follows:3(2)ik- ‘1SG’-x ‘1PL’-Ø/-t ‘2SG’-tit ‘2PL’Ø ‘3SG’ta- ‘3PL’These forms are largely transparent in the Class 1 paradigm, although the second-person singular is some-what enigmatic in that it is marked in Upper Necaxa Class 1 verbs only by a leftward shift in stress. In the neighbouring Apapantilla dialect, second-person singular is also marked by laryngealization of the final vowel if the last consonant in the root is not a stop or an affricate (Reid 1991: 20); laryngealization also appears in conjunction with the second-person in other aspect paradigms in Upper Necaxa, Apapantilla, and in the Sierra language (Aschmann 1983). In Tepehua, second-persons (both singular and plural) frequently trigger regressive laryngealization of vowels in the verb stem (Watters 1994) and all Totonacan-Tepehuan languages show some suppletion and irregularity in the second person of a small set of common verbs, as well as in the progressive aspectual paradigm.The second complication is the shape of the completive suffix, which interacts with the person-markers in instructive ways. Given that 3SG subjects are zeros, the basic form of the completive marker is likely to be that which surfaces in 3SG:SUBJ forms. If we posit the basic form of the suffix to be the one that surfaces with Class 2 verbs, -lî, we can then invoke syncope and word-final devoicing to derive the Class 1 form, -¬, as shown in (3):(3)-lî→ -l / V_#-l→ -¬ / _#Word-final syncope of vowels and continuants is a common morphonemic process in Totonac verbal paradigms (see, for example, the syncopation of the imperfective suffix –ya in the sentences in (10) and (13b) below). The second rule may seem a bit unusual, but Levy (1987: 103) also notes [–l] ~ [-¬] alternations in Papantla and final-devoicing of vowels (or the second mora of vowels) seems to be an important dialect feature of Upper Necaxa. The final devoicing of a liquid may be an extension of this process.Given the underlying form –lî for the completive marker, we can then posit the following interactions with the person-affixes to derive the Class 2 non-third-person singular completive forms:(4)-x ‘1PL:SUBJ’ + -lî ‘CMP’ → -wî / C_-t ‘2SG:SUBJ’ + -lî ‘CMP’ → -tî / C_Phonetically, the first-person plural suffix is realized as a voiceless [u], although phonologically the suffix can be shown to be consonantal. The Class 2 allomorph of the second-person subject-marker seems to be /-t/ (and may form a part of the second-person plural –tit); it is possible that the Ø Class 1 allomorph is underlyingly /-t/ and undergoes syncope, although the syncope of final stops (so far) hasn’t turned up in other environments. It is significant that the morphonemic rules here are essentially rules of cluster3 The abbreviations used here are: 1, 2, 3 = first-, second-, third-person; CMP = completive; CLS = classifier; EXC = exclusive; IMPF = imperfective; INC = inclusive; OBJ = object; PL = plural; PRS = present; RCP = reciprocal; SAP = speech-act participants; SG = singular; SUBJ = subject.simplification. We will have occasion to invoke such processes again in the discussion of the more complicated transitive paradigms in Section 2.1 below.Table 1 also illustrates the existence of the inclusive/exclusive distinction in the first-person plural, formed by the combination of ik- ‘1SG:SUBJ’ with –x , what we have been glossing up to now as the first-person plural subject-marker. Consider the forms of tuks ‘hit’ given in (5):(5)(a)ik–túks–lî1SG:SUBJ–hit–CMP‘I hit him’(b)túks–wîhit–1PL:SUBJ:CMP‘we INC hit him’(c)ik–túks–wî1SG:SUBJ–hit–1PL:SUBJ:CMP‘we EXC hit him’(5a) shows the first-person singular subject–third-singular object form. Because third-person objects are zero, it bears only the subject-prefix ik-. The next example, (5b), is the first-person plural inclusive, which has the subject-suffix –x. Finally, (5c) shows the first-person plural exclusive form, which bears not only the suffix –x found in the first-person plural inclusive, but also the first-person singular prefix seen in(5a).4Although we have been glossing –x as a first-person plural marker, such an interpretation seems in some ways at odds with its co-occurrence with ik- ‘1SG:SUBJ’ in exclusive forms. However, if we re-cast the gloss of –x slightly to mean ‘speech-act participants’ this pattern begins to make some sense. First-person plural inclusive forms would thus denote an event in which all of the parties to the speech act participated in some action—that is, forms such as (5b) would mean literally ‘the participants in this speech-act hit him’. The function of ik- in first-person exclusive forms could then be regarded as a form of further specification of the subject. Given that exclusivity implies a subdivision of the speech-act participants into two parties—the speakers (obligatorily plural) and the addressee(s)—(5c) can be interpreted as meaning ‘of the speech act participants, the speaker’s party hit him’. This is represented in (6): Array(6)In this diagram, the large outer circle represents the set of participants designated by the subject suffix –x‘speech-act participants’. Within this set, a smaller subset of participants containing the speaker is singled out by the first-person singular subject prefix –ik-. Because ik- is a subject-marker, the further specification is understood to apply to the subject of the clause; the plurality of the expression is derived from the subject suffix, ‘speech-act participants’ being necessarily plural. Looked at in this light, the use of the first-person singular subject-marker as a part of the first-person plural exclusive form is an example of the “additive”(Mel’çuk 1986) nature of Upper Necaxa morphology, whereby each additional morpheme combined with a stem adds an additional layer of meaning—a sort of semantic agglutinativity.4 Note that both Cree (Dahlstrom 1991) and Sayula Popoluca (Clark & Clark 1960) make use of the first-person singular subject marker in the formation of the first-person exclusive. In Cree, the inclusive is formed with the second-person singular subject prefix, whereas in Popoluca a different affix entirely comes into play.2.Transitive ParadigmsThe Upper Necaxa transitive paradigm makes use of essentially the same elements as the intransitive paradigm, simply adding object-markers to the mix. The Class 2 completive paradigm is shown in Table 2: 1S:OBJ2S:OBJ3S:OBJ1P:OBJ2P:OBJ3P:OBJ1S:SBJ——iktúksnîI hit youiktúkslîI hit 3SG——ikAtúksnîI hit 2PLikAtúkslîI hit them2S:SBJ kintúkstîyou hit me ——túkstîyou hit 3SGkilAtúkswîyou hit us——kAtúkstîyou hit them3S:SBJ kintúkslî3SG hit metúksnî3SG hit youtúkslî3SG hit 3SGkinkAtúksnî3SG hit uskAtúksnî3SG hit 2PLkAtúkslî3SG hit them1P:SBJ (EXC)——ikAtúksnîwe hit youiktúkswîwe hit 3SG——ikAtúksnîwe hit 2PLikAtúkswîwe hit them1P:SBJ (INC)————túkswîwe hit 3SG————kAtúkswîwe hit them2P:SBJ kilAtúkswî2PL hit me ——tukstít2PL hit 3SGkilAtúkswî2PL hit us——kAtukstít2PL hit them3P:SBJ kintatúkslîthey hit metatúksnîthey hit youtatúkslîthey hit 3SGkinkAtatúksnîthey hit uskAtatúksnîthey hit 2PLtatúkslîthey hit themTable 2 : Upper Necaxa Class 2 transitive completive paradigm (√tuks ‘hit’)Aside from the highlighted areas of the paradigm, the person-morphology on the transitive verb is highly compositional and regular. Based on the ordinary-looking forms, the object-markers can be analyzed as:(7)kin- ‘1OBJ’-n ‘2OBJ’Ø ‘3OBJ’What is immediately striking about (7) is the absence of inherently plural object forms: plurality of objects is marked by a separate prefix, kA-, which is in itself an interesting affix. Generally, plural-marking of NPs is dispreferred, and countable number is marked by numeral classifiers, as in (8) (note the absence of kA-):(8)kit ik–çiwinán–^÷empA–tütún taçiwín1SG1SUBJ–speak–IMPF CLS–three language SG‘I speak three languages’Otherwise, object-plurality is marked on the verb alone (9a), or on both verb and noun (9b). kA-, however, is omissible with overtly pluralized objects, as in (9c). The (9b) and (9c) forms are relatively rare:(9)(a)ik–kA–puca–yá–uxçîçì1SUBJ–PL–search–IMPF–SAP dog‘we EXC look for the dogs’(b)ik–kA–puca–yá–uxçîçì–n1SUBJ-PL-search-IMPF-SAP dog-pl‘we EXC look for the dogs’(c)ik–puca–yá–uxçîçì–n1SUBJ-search-IMPF-SAP dog-PL‘we EXC look for the dogs’When both subject and object are plural and third-person, kA- and ta- ‘3PL:SUBJ’ are mutually exclusive:(10)(a)ßla–kán ta–pucá–Ø çîçì(–n)3SG–PL3PL:SUBJ-search-IMPF dog(-PL)‘they look for the dogs’(b)ßla–kán kA–pucá–Ø çîçì3SG–PL PL–search–IMPF dog‘they look for the dogs’(c)*ßla–kán kA–ta–pucá–Ø çîçì3SG–PL PL–3PL:SUBJ–search–IMPF dogWhen the object is first- or second-person, however, this restriction does not hold, which gives us the analytical and regular third-person subject series in (11):(11)tuksnî ‘he hit you’kAtuksnî ‘he hit you guys’kinkAtuksnî ‘he hit us’ta tuksnî ‘they hit you’kAtatuksnî ‘they hit you guys’kinkAtatuksnî ‘they hit us’Here, the plurality of second-person objects is marked by kA- plus –n ‘2OBJ’, and the plurality of first-per-son objects is marked by kA- plus a combination of kin- ‘1OBJ’ and –n ‘2OBJ’.5 This is interesting in that it is an iconic recognition of the fact that ‘we’ = ‘you’ + ‘me’ and illustrates the additive nature of Totonac morphological processes: as meanings grow more complex, additional morphemes are required to add successive layers of meaning.2.1First-person subjects with second-person objects—i k A túk s nîNow that we have dealt with the regular portion of the paradigm, we can turn our attention to the more problematic areas. The first to be dealt with is the first-person subject–second-person object form illustrated in (1a), the thickened boxes in Table 2. Although there is a single surface form that gives us the three glosses in (1a), there may well be two distinct underlying forms involved. The first of these appears in (12), which corresponds to gloss (1a-i):(12)ikAtúksnîik–kA–tuks–n–lî1:SUBJ–PL–hit–2:OBJ–CMP‘I hit you guys’This is a fairly straightforward form if we allow for a simple morphonemic rule reducing the /nl/ sequence to /n/. The same process is found in the Class 1 paradigm (e.g.ikAmusún ‘I kissed you guys’), although—as in the intransitive Class 1 forms—syncope applies to remove the word-final vowel.There is, however, a second underlying form which gives rise to the two other possible readings of the sentence in (1a). The first of these—(1a-ii), 1PL:SUBJ– 2PL:OBJ—can be taken as regular if we posit a slightly more complex cluster simplification, as in (13) (cf. the rules in (4)):(13)(a)ik–kA–tuks–n–x–lî>ikAtúksn–wî>ikAtúksnî1:SUBJ–PL–hit–2:OBJ–SAP–CMP‘we EXC hit CMP you guys’(b)ik–kA–tuks–ya–n–x>ikAtuksán–x>ikAtuksán1:SUBJ–PL–hit–IMPF–2:OBJ–SAPyou guys’‘we EXC hitI MPF5 Note that the exclusive/inclusive distinction is lost in the object paradigm. The combination of the pluralizer with the first- and second-person markers is reminiscent of Dakota, which combines the dual marker with a pluralizer to get first-person plurals (Boas & Deloria 1941).Again, Class 1 verbs show the same cluster simplification process, followed by syncope of the final vowel— ikAmusún ‘we kissed you guys’. Even though the subject of these sentences is first-person plural, the presence of ik- ‘1SG:SUBJ’ is predictable in that it marks exclusivity (a requirement of an event in which ‘we’ act on ‘you’).It is the gloss in (1a-iii)—1PL:SUBJ–2SG:OBJ—which is the most problematic. Positing the same underlying form for the expression of this gloss as for that in (1a-ii) allows for the same cluster simplifica-tion process proposed in (13). This would make these two forms morphologically identical to one another (but underlyingly distinct from (12)), although this is a problem in that we have different glosses for compositionally identical forms. The heart of the matter seems to be the behaviour of the affix kA-, which up until now we have seen acting as an object-pluralizing morpheme. In (1a-iii), however, the reading we get is that of subject plurality. While this sort of ambiguity or unselectivity of plural markers seems strange from an Indo-European perspective, it is not unheard of cross-linguistically: it is attested in Dakota/Lakhota (Boas & Deloria 1941; van Valin 1977) and Mixe (Clark & Clark 1960; R. Zavala, p.c.), as well as in Georgian and the Paleo-Siberian language Alutor, as shown in these examples:Georgian(14)(a)g–cem–t2OBJ–beat–PL‘I beat you guys’‘we beat you’‘we beat you guys’‘he beat you guys’(Mel’çuk 1986: 431)Alutor(b)n–j\lqat–tk\–na–wwi3SG:SUBJ–sleep–PRS–3SG:SUBJ–PL‘they are asleep’(c)Ø–taw\jat\–tk\–nina–wwi3SG:SUBJ–feed–PRS–3OBJ–PL‘he feeds them’(Mel’çuk 1986: 426 – 27)In Georgian, the pluralizer’s scope seems simply to be ambiguous, while in Alutor it depends on the verb’s transitivity, applying to the subject of intransitives and the object of transitives. Totonac seems more like Georgian in this respect, although it resembles Alutor in not having plural object morphemes (Georgian has them in other persons). Totonac differs from Georgian, however, in that kA- seems only to be unselective in the 1PL:SUBJ–2OBJ forms, which may follow from the loss of the plural subject suffix (via the cluster simplification process in (13)). If kA- is like the Georgian pluralizer and is underspecified with respect to which actant it pluralizes, its combinatorial properties may prohibit it from taking scope over an actant whose plurality is already shown by a plural subject-morpheme; since the only forms with plural subjects that don’t have overt plural subject-markers are those created by cluster simplification, these are the only forms where kA- can take scope over a subject and to mark its plurality.2.2Second-person subjects with first-person objects—k i l A túk s wîSomewhat more opaque than the (1a) forms are those in (1b), the double boxes in Table 2. These are forms with second-person subjects acting on first-person objects, and their most salient feature is the pres-ence of the reciprocal prefix lA-, which is also found in more straightforward expressions such as:(15)(a)lA–túks–wîRCP–hit–SAP:CMP‘we INC hit each other’(b)ik–lA–túks–wî1SUBJ–RCP–hit–SAP:CMP‘we IEXC hit each other’(c)lA–tuks–títRCP–hit–2PL:CMP:SUBJ‘you guys hit each other’(d)ta–lA–túks–lî3PL:SUBJ–RCP–hit–CMP‘they hit each other’In these examples the semantic endpoint of the event is encoded by the reciprocal marker, lA-, which replaces the ordinary object suffixes and indicates a particular kind of coreference between subject and object.Semantically, reciprocal markers such as lA- indicate that the agent or initiator of the event is subdivided into (minimally) two groups which are simultaneously the agent and the patient of the event in that each acts upon the other. In (15a), for example, lA- combines with the subject-marker –x in much the same way that ik- does in first-person exclusive forms: when the subject of the sentence is the first-person inclusive, lA- indicates that these agent–patient (A–P) groups are subdivisions of the speech act participants (-x). This is illustrated in (16):(16)l A-Again, the large circle here denotes the speech-act participants, marked as the subject of the clause by –x. The smaller subdivisions within this set indicate the subdivision of the subject into A–P groups by lA-, and the arrows indicate the direction of the action—in this case, from each of the A–P groups to the other. The speaker (small dark circle) is contained within one of the two subdivisions, maintaining the exclusive speaker–addressee distinction.Given this analysis of reciprocals, we can now turn our attention to the form in (1b). Here lA- appears with both a subject and an object marker, as shown in (17):(17)kilAtúkswîkin–lA–tuks–x–lî1OBJ–RCP–hit–SAP–CMPThe 1OBJ prefix, kin-, can be treated in the same way as the 1SG:SUBJ prefix, ik-, is treated in first-plural exclusive forms—as a further specification of one of the verbal actants, and its role is again purely additive. As in the previous examples, the subject (17) is specified by -x ‘speech-act participants’. Then, as in (15a), the reciprocal lA- marks the subdivision of that subject into two A–P groups, one the speaker’s group and the other the addressee’s. The addition of the 1OBJ prefix kin- is subsequently used to specify the syntactic object/semantic patient as that A–P subdivision pertaining to the speaker in precisely the same way asthe1SUBJ prefix ik- is used to single out as a subject/agent that division of the speech act pertaining to the speaker in 1PL:EXC forms. This gives us the configuration in (18), which can be interpreted as ‘the addressee’s division of the speech act acts upon the speaker’s division’. As in the previous diagrams, (18) represents the successive subdivision of the subject, the set of speech-act participants, into progressively finer groups—first by the reciprocal-marker, which establishes that the speech-act participants have been split into separate A–P groups, then by the 1OBJ prefix, which tells us that one of the A-P groups, that containing the speaker, is the semantic patient of the event. The ambiguity which results in multiple readings of this verb form—kilAtúkswî—stems from the fact that there are multiple possible combinations of first- and second-persons which correspond to the compositional meaning of these affixes, depending on the number of participants that fall into each of the A-P subdivisions. The gloss in (1b-i)。