Obviative
≈ 3 min read
Names in other languages
No names in other languages are held for this entry yet.
Article bodies are English and are not machine-translated. A name in another language is not a translation of the article.
Within linguistics, obviative (abbreviated ) third person is a grammatical-person marking that distinguishes a referent that is less important to the discourse from one that is more important (proximate). The obviative is sometimes referred to as the "fourth person".
Within linguistics, obviative (abbreviated ) third person is a grammatical-person marking that distinguishes a referent that is less important to the discourse from one that is more important (proximate). The obviative is sometimes referred to as the "fourth person".
Geography
North America
Obviate/proximate distinctions are common in some indigenous language families in northern North America. Algonquian languages are perhaps best known for obviation, but the feature occurs also in some Salishan languages and in the language isolate Kutenai as well as in the more southern Keresan languages.
Africa
Obviative markers are used in Africa in some Nilo-Saharan and Niger–Congo languages.
Eurasia
Obviation has also been attested in the Northeast Caucasian Ingush language in the northern Caucasus.
Cross-linguistic patterns
If animacy is involved, animate noun phrases tend to be proximate, and inanimate noun phrases tend to be obviative. Possessors are frequently required to be proximate, with possessees thus required to be obviative. Obviation is most common in head-marking languages since the obviative is useful in disambiguating otherwise unmarked nominals. The obviative referent seems to be always the marked form, and the proximate is unmarked. Obviative marking tends to apply only to the third person, but it has been attested in the second person in a handful of Nilo-Saharan languages. Proximate/obviative assignments are preserved throughout the clauses and are also often constant over longer discourse segments.
Examples
Ojibwe
The following is a typical example of obviate/proximate morphology in the Eastern dialect of the Algonquian Ojibwe in which the obviative is marked on nouns and demonstratives and reflected in pronominal verb affixes: That example shows that the proximate referent need not necessarily be the subject of a clause.
Potawatomi
Potawatomi (an Algonquian Language) is notable for having two degrees of obviation, "obviation" and "further obviation." "Further obviation" is rare, but when it occurs, a "further obviative" referent, deemed to be even less salient than the obviative referent, can be marked by an additional obviative suffix. The following is the sole example to appear in the literature on Potawatomi: Charles Hockett posited the following example, but he never checked it to see if it was grammatical:
Ingush
Obviation in Ingush, a heavily dependent-marking language, is an exception to the generalization that the obviative occurs in head-marking languages. Obviation is not overtly marked in Ingush but is implied, as certain constructions are impossible unless one referent has salience over another. For example, if a non-subject-referent has salience over the subject and precedes the other co-referent, reflexivisation (normally used only when there is a coreferent to the subject) is possible. That is shown in the example below whose non-subject-referent appears to have salience over the subject: If the subject is salient ("proximate"), on the other hand, the subject's possessor does not antecede the third-person object, and the possession must be indirectly implicated as follows:
See also
Direct–inverse language
References
Obviation in Mi'gmaq How exactly does an obviative proximate system work?
Text derived from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=1352324181 under CC BY-SA 4.0; modifications have been made.