Within
linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...
, obviative (
abbreviated
An abbreviation (from Latin ''brevis'', meaning ''short'') is a shortened form of a word or phrase, by any method. It may consist of a group of letters or words taken from the full version of the word or phrase; for example, the word ''abbrevia ...
) third person is a
grammatical-person clusivity
In linguistics, clusivity is a grammatical distinction between ''inclusive'' and ''exclusive'' first-person pronouns and verbal morphology, also called ''inclusive " we"'' and ''exclusive "we"''. Inclusive "we" specifically includes the addressee ...
marking that distinguishes a non-
salient (obviative) third-person referent from a more salient (proximate) third-person referent in a given discourse context. The obviative is sometimes referred to as the "fourth person".
Comparison with other grammatical-person marking systems
In
English
English usually refers to:
* English language
* English people
English may also refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
** English national ide ...
and many other
European languages
Most languages of Europe belong to the Indo-European language family. Out of a total European population of 744 million as of 2018, some 94% are native speakers of an Indo-European language. Within Indo-European, the three largest phyla are Rom ...
, the principal means of distinguishing between multiple third-person referents is using gender or (lack of) reflexive. Thus, in "she saw him," it is clear that there are two third persons because they are of different genders. In "she saw her," it is clear that there are two third persons because otherwise, one would say "she saw herself." However, "she saw her mother" is ambiguous: it could mean that she saw her own mother or that she saw someone else's mother.
This is because it is not clear, in some contexts, if "she" and "her" refer to the same person.
An obviative/proximate system has a different way of distinguishing between multiple third-person referents. When there is more than one third person named in a sentence or discourse context, the most important, salient, or topical is marked as "proximate" and any other, less salient entities are marked as "obviative." Subsequent sentences that refer to previously-named entities with pronouns or verbal inflections can then use the proximate and obviative references that have already been established to distinguish between the two.
For example, in the sentence "
the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
"The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" is an English-language pangram — a sentence that contains all the letters of the alphabet. The phrase is commonly used for touch-typing practice, testing typewriters and computer keyboards, displ ...
," there are two third-person referents, the fox and the dog. Thus, one of them has to be proximate and the other one has to be obviative, depending on which one the speaker considers more central to the story. If the fox is the more important one, the sentence might look something like "the quick brown fox-PROX jumps-PROX>OBV the lazy dog-OBV," where PROX>OBV is verbal inflection indicating a proximate subject acting on an obviative object. In that case, a subsequent sentence "and then PROX went-PROX away" would mean that the ''fox'' went away.
On the other hand, if the dog is the more important one, the sentence might look something like "the quick brown fox-OBV jumps-OBV>PROX the lazy dog-PROX," where OBV>PROX is verbal inflection indicating an obviative subject acting on a proximate object. In that case, the same subsequent sentence "and then PROX went-PROX away" would mean instead that the ''dog'' went away. By contrast, an equivalent subsequent sentence in English, such as "and then he went away," would not necessarily indicate whether "he" is the fox or the dog.
An analogy that has been used to explain obviation is that the proximate is the entity in the "spotlight," and any other, obviative entities are out of the spotlight or "hangers-on."
Geography
North America
Obviate/proximate distinctions are common in some indigenous language families in northern
North America
North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Car ...
.
Algonquian languages
The Algonquian languages ( or ; also Algonkian) are a subfamily of Indigenous languages of the Americas, indigenous American languages that include most languages in the Algic languages, Algic language family. The name of the Algonquian language f ...
are perhaps best known for obviation, but the feature occurs also in some
Salishan languages
The Salishan (also Salish) languages are a family of languages of the Pacific Northwest in North America (the Canadian province of British Columbia and the American states of Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana). They are characterised by ag ...
and in the
language isolate
Language isolates are languages that cannot be classified into larger language families. Korean and Basque are two of the most common examples. Other language isolates include Ainu in Asia, Sandawe in Africa, and Haida in North America. The num ...
Kutenai
The Kutenai ( ), also known as the Ktunaxa ( ; ), Ksanka ( ), Kootenay (in Canada) and Kootenai (in the United States), are an indigenous people of Canada and the United States. Kutenai bands live in southeastern British Columbia, northern ...
as well as in the more southern
Keresan languages
Keres (), also Keresan (), is a Native American language, spoken by the Keres Pueblo people in New Mexico. Depending on the analysis, Keres is considered a small language family or a language isolate with several dialects. The varieties of each ...
.
[Mithun, Marianne. The languages of Native North America. 76-68.]
Africa
Obviative markers are used in
Africa
Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...
in some
Nilo-Saharan and
Niger–Congo languages.
Eurasia
Obviation has also been attested in the
Northeast Caucasian
The Northeast Caucasian languages, also called East Caucasian, Nakh-Daghestani or ''Vainakh-Daghestani'', is a family of languages spoken in the Russian republics of Dagestan, Chechnya and Ingushetia and in Northern Azerbaijan as well as in ...
Ingush language
Ingush (; , , pronounced ) is a Northeast Caucasian language spoken by about 500,000 people, known as the Ingush, across a region covering the Russian republics of Ingushetia and Chechnya.
Classification
Ingush and Chechen, together with Bats, ...
in
Asia
Asia (, ) is one of the world's most notable geographical regions, which is either considered a continent in its own right or a subcontinent of Eurasia, which shares the continental landmass of Afro-Eurasia with Africa. Asia covers an area ...
.
Cross-linguistic patterns
*If animacy is involved, animate
noun phrase
In linguistics, a noun phrase, or nominal (phrase), is a phrase that has a noun or pronoun as its head or performs the same grammatical function as a noun. Noun phrases are very common cross-linguistically, and they may be the most frequently oc ...
s tend to be proximate, and inanimate
noun phrases
In linguistics, a noun phrase, or nominal (phrase), is a phrase that has a noun or pronoun as its head or performs the same grammatical function as a noun. Noun phrases are very common cross-linguistically, and they may be the most frequently occ ...
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 language
A language is head-marking if the grammatical marks showing agreement between different words of a phrase tend to be placed on the heads (or nuclei) of phrases, rather than on the modifiers or dependents. Many languages employ both head-marking ...
s since the obviative is useful in disambiguating otherwise unmarked nominals.
["The Scientific Interest of Ingush - Section 5, Obviation" University of California, Berkeley (Unpublished)]
Retrieved on 2009-10-29.
*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
The Nilo-Saharan languages are a proposed family of African languages spoken by some 50–60 million people, mainly in the upper parts of the Chari River, Chari and Nile rivers, including historic Nubia, north of where the two tributaries of the ...
.
[Gregersen, Edgar A. Language in Africa: an introductory survey. New York: Gordon and Breach Science Publishers Inc, 1977. 51-52.]
*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
The Ojibwe, Ojibwa, Chippewa, or Saulteaux are an Anishinaabe people in what is currently southern Canada, the northern Midwestern United States, and Northern Plains.
According to the U.S. census, in the United States Ojibwe people are one of ...
in which the obviative is marked on
nouns
A noun () is a word that generally functions as the name of a specific object or set of objects, such as living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, or ideas.Example nouns for:
* Living creatures (including people, alive, ...
and
demonstratives
Demonstratives (abbreviated ) are words, such as ''this'' and ''that'', used to indicate which entities are being referred to and to distinguish those entities from others. They are typically deictic; their meaning depending on a particular frame ...
and reflected in pronominal verb affixes:
'Then this (PROX) young man (PROX) dreamed (PROX) that foreigners (OBV) would come (OBV) to kill (OBV) them (PROX).'
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
[Hockett, Charles. What Algonquian is Really Like. International Journal of American Linguistics. 1966. 32:59‒73.] posited the following example, but he never checked it to see if it was grammatical:
Ingush
Obviation in
Ingush, a heavily
dependent-marking language A dependent-marking language has grammatical markers of agreement and case government between the words of phrases that tend to appear more on dependents than on heads. The distinction between head-marking and dependent-marking was first explored ...
, is an exception to the generalization that the obviative occurs in
head-marking language
A language is head-marking if the grammatical marks showing agreement between different words of a phrase tend to be placed on the heads (or nuclei) of phrases, rather than on the modifiers or dependents. Many languages employ both head-marking ...
s. 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:
'Musa's dog barked at him.'
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:
'Musa's wife is looking for him.' (Literally, 'The wife is looking for Musa.')
See also
*
Direct–inverse language
References
{{reflist
:7. Aissen, Judith. 1997. On the syntax of obviation. Language 73:4.705-50.
External links
Obviation explained with a "spotlighting" analogy (starting on page 5, section 3)Obviation in Mi'gmaqHow exactly does an obviative proximate system work?
Grammatical categories