A Description of Logophors in Ibibio

This paper concerns the description of logophors in Ibibio, a Lower-Cross language spoken in southern Nigeria. Logophors are grammatical forms used in reference to the person in a sentence whose point of view is being reported (Clements 1975). In Ibibio, these appear as both individual pronouns as well as agreement marking on the embedded tense and verbs.∗ The pronouns and agreement markers I will focus on in this paper may appear in embedded under certain verbs, specifically verbs of saying, telling, or thinking:


A Description of Logophors in Ibibio
Lydia Newkirk University of Kansas

Introduction
This paper concerns the description of logophors in Ibibio, a Lower-Cross language spoken in southern Nigeria.Logophors are grammatical forms used in reference to the person in a sentence whose point of view is being reported (Clements 1975).In Ibibio, these appear as both individual pronouns as well as agreement marking on the embedded tense and verbs.*   The pronouns and agreement markers I will focus on in this paper may appear in embedded under certain verbs, specifically verbs of saying, telling, or thinking: (1) a. á-ké bò ké (ènyé) á-mà kòt ńgwèt Non-logophoric 3SG-PST say C (3SG) 3SG-PST read book 'He i said that he i/j read a book.' b. á-ké bò ké (ímÒ) ì-mà kòt ńgwèt Logophoric 3SG-PST say C (LOG) I-PST read book 'He i said that he i/*j read a book.'In these contexts, the usage of the ordinary person pronoun (and accompanying agreement marking) versus of a logophoric pronoun (and agreement) creates a distinction in meaning between the pronoun referencing the subject of the matrix clause (as in 1b) or some other person (as in 1a).
Section 2 provides some background information on the Ibibio language as well as a brief introduction to logophors.Section 3 examines the appearance and distribution of these forms, what predicates and structures license them, and some restrictions on their reference.Section 4 concludes and gives some suggestions for further investigation.

The Ibibio language
Ibibio is a Niger-Congo Language in the Lower-Cross language group.It's spoken in southern Nigeria by about four million Ibibio people.The distribution of linguistic groups may be seen on the map in Figure 1.Ibibio is spoken in southern Nigeria, mainly in Akwa Ibom, but also somewhat in Cross-River.Ibibio is an SVO language, with both subject and object agreement marking that appear on the tense head and verb, respectively: 2 (2) (àmì) ḿ-mà ú-míà (fíèn) (1SG) 1SG-PST 2SG-hit (2SG) 'I hit you.' Subject agreement appears as a prefix on the tense head, whereas object agreement appears as a prefix on the verb (although see Baker & Willie 2010 for a more complex analysis of this agreement).With this extensive agreement marking, Ibibio is a pro-drop language, and both subject and object pronouns are optional in many contexts.Table 1 (from Baker & Willie, 2010) summarizes the basic agreement markers of Ibibio.
Okon I-PAST2-I-do-NEG 'Okon didn't do it.' This same agreement also appears in logophoric contexts, as already illustrated in (1b), repeated here: (1) b. á-ké bò ké (ímÒ) ì-mà kòt ńgwèt 3SG-PST say C (LOG) I-PST read book 'He i said that he i/*j read a book.' Baker and Willie analyze this as the agreement that occurs "when the copy of the subject in Spec,TP does not properly represent the scope of the subject" (Baker & Willie 2010: 125).I refer the reader to their work for further discussion of this agreement.Following Baker and Willie, I will be glossing this agreement as I-, but I may refer to it equivalently as logophoric marking, when in the appropriate context.It may be that the contour tones are not completely contrastive, but for my analysis here I will be marking them as in (4).
Tone also provides grammatical information, noticeably in agreement marking, where tone marks the difference between second and third person: 3PL-PST 3SG-buy gourd 'They bought a gourd.'First, notice that both agreement singular forms (5a-b) have the vowel [a], while the plural forms (5c-d) have the vowel [e].It is the tone on the vowel, however, that distinguishes second from third person: both second person forms (5a,c) have a low tone on the vowel, while both third person forms (5b,d) have a high tone on the vowel.

Logophors
A logophor is a grammatical form that refers specifically to the subject or source in certain linguistic contexts.Take, for example, the English sentence in (6) below: (6) Molly i thinks she i/j is beautiful.
In English, which does not have logophors, (6) is ambiguous.It may be the case that Molly thinks herself beautiful, or it may be the case that she thinks someone else is beautiful.This is in contrast to a language such as Ibibio, in examples ( 7) and ( 8).
The logophoric pronoun that appears in (7) could be described as referring to "the individual (other than the speaker) whose speech, thoughts, feelings, or general state of consciousness are reported or reflected in the linguistic context in which the pronoun occurs" (Clements 1975).These forms may appear as pronouns, as in Mundang in (9), or as a marker on the verb, like in Gokana, in (10).( 9) Logophoric marking in Mundang: (Sells 1987: 446) à i r̼ í ʒÌ i lwà fàn sa̼ ̄: PRO say LOG find thing beauty 'He i said that he i had found something beautiful.'(10) Logophoric marking in Gokana: (Sells 1987: 447) aè kɔ aè dɔ -ɛ ̀ PRO said PRO fell-LOG 'He i said that he i fell.'

Logophoric forms in Ibibio
To express logophoricity, Ibibio uses both a pronoun distinct from the non-logophoric version as well as separate logophoric agreement markers on the embedded tense and verb.However, this marker only appears on the second and third person forms, and is not permissible in the first person forms at all.The appearance of logophoricity based on person is illustrated in the following paradigm (11)-( 16), using bò ('say'), a licensing verb:  The third and second person forms may present with logophoric marking, while the first person forms do not permit the logophoric marking or pronouns, and although the marker that appears with logophoric agreement, i-, is already homophonous with the first person plural agreement marker, it is evident from (12c) that the logophoric pronoun cannot refer to a first person subject (the ambiguity can occur when the relevant pronouns are dropped is further described in section 3.1.2).Logophoricity may be marked by both a pronoun distinct from the non-logophoric pronoun and accompanying agreement marking on the verb.

The logophoric pronoun
Ibibio does not use distinct logophoric pronouns for any persons except for third person singular and plural.The comparison between these forms is displayed in Table 2 Although there are different non-logophoric pronouns based on case, there are only two logophoric pronouns: ìmÒ and m ̀mìmÒ, which correspond to singular and plural, and may appear in subject, object, or possessive position, as seen in ( 17)-( 19 17) has the logophor in the subject position of the embedded clause, (18) has the logophor in object position, and ( 19) contains a logophoric genitive.The pronoun itself doesn't vary, but may evidently serve in the place of any of the other third person forms, with the additional function of reference to its logophoric antecedent.
There is one puzzling aspect to the possessive pronouns in particular.While there's typically no reference ambiguity between the logophoric and normal pronoun (as in section 2), such ambiguities are present with the possessive pronoun, which is capable of both logophoric and non-logophoric reference.Compare ( 19) with ( 20): (20) Ekpe i á-bÒ ké Udo j á-mà á-díà ńdídíà ámÒ i/j Ekpe 3SG-say C Udo 3SG-PST 3SG-eat food 3SG 'Ekpe i says that Udo j ate his i/j food.' The logophoric possessive in ( 19) refers unambiguously to the logophoric antecedent Ekpe, (20) may also refer to Ekpe, as well as Udo.The general feeling about these sentences is that the use of ìmÒ has a sense of direct quotation, or speaking for the sentence-internal speaker: (19) might also be translated as 'Ekpe says "Udo ate my food."'By comparison, ámÒ appears to allow the speaker to keep some distance from the situation, or avoid putting words in someone else's mouth.

Logophoric marking on verbs and tense
When logophors are properly licensed, the agreement prefix that appears on the tense head and/or the verb is always the vowel i-, regardless of the person or number features of the referent.
The agreement marker i-only appears in third person singular and plural; in short, apparently to provide agreement to a logophoric pronoun or referent.This marking is often homophonous with the first person plural marker, which can lead to ambiguity if the logophoric pronoun is not included, such as in ( 21): (21) Akon i á-kèré (á-bò) ké ì-mé ì-yáiyà Akon 3SG-think (3SG-say) C I-PRES I-beautiful 'Akon i thinks that she i is beautiful.'or 'Akon thinks that we are beautiful.'Typically this ambiguity would be clarified by the context, or else by the insertion of either the logophoric pronoun ìmÒ or the first-person plural pronoun ǹnyÀn.

Licensing predicates
According to Sells (1987), a logophor must be licensed by an appropriate verb or construction.He identifies three primitive discourse roles that a logophor may reference: SOURCE, SELF, and PIVOT.A fully logophoric verb would allow reference to the sentence-internal source of information: for example, the subject of 'say'.Psych-verbs would allow reference to a sentenceinternal psyche (or 'self') without necessarily reporting the speech of that subject.The verb 'be happy' could perhaps be logophoric in this regard.The third role that a logophor may reference, PIVOT, refers to the actual physical location or point of view of the sentence-internal referent, but not necessarily their emotional/psychological state (which is represented by the role SELF).
Ibibio's licensing contexts are restricted to verbs of saying or telling in which the logophor can reference the subject, as will be shown below.This can be explained, at least in part, by the i-agreement marker discussed in section 2.1, which only refers to Spec,TP in a sentence as analyzed by Baker & Willie (2010).
(  26) and ( 27) it appears that these effects may be either due to tendency of logophors to refer only to subjects in some languages, or simply that the object of a verb such as 'tell' is not perceived as a source or speaker, and therefore is not semantically acceptable as a logophoric antecedent.The subject-orientation is further discussed in section 3.4.
As for the need for a speaker or source of information, further evidence comes from the fact that Ibibio does not permit logophors with díÓngÓ ('know'), in contrast to Ewe: (28) Ewe: (Clements 1975 Although the verb 'know' does not license logophoricity, the verb kèré ('think') does, as in (7), repeated here.
It is also not enough to say that a verb of transfer of information is enough to license logophors in Ibibio.To once again compare with Ewe, 'hear' is logophoric in some languages, but not so in Ibibio. (30) Ewe: (Clements 1975 Even with Akpan introduced as the source of information in (32), the logophoric pronoun is illicit, so there is no reference either to Ekpe, in the subject position of the matrix clause, which would parallel the reference possibility in (30) for Ewe, nor can there be reference to Akpan as the semantic source of the information.This suggests that Ibibio requires a combination of reference to the source of information and that source resting in subject position of the matrix clause.
Psych-verbs in Ibibio do not license logophoricity, though this has been observed in Ewe and Taburi: (33) Logophoric psych-verbs in Ewe: (Clements 1975: 163) Ama i kpɔ dyidzɔ be yè i -dyi vi Ama see happiness that LOG-bear child 'Ama i was happy that she i bore a child.'This supports the analysis of i-in Baker and Willie (2010); psych-verbs in Ibibio appear to encode the experiencer as an object, rather than a subject, and due to this there is no appropriate reference for i-.Embedding the psych-verb under bò, however, places the experiencer of the verb in the correct subject position.
Also of note is that while both (36a) and (36b) take logophoric marking on the tense head and the verb 'be happy', (36b), with the additional logophoric possessive and object pronouns, is interpreted as a direct quote.As a matter of fact, this is the only possible method to quote someone, as can be seen in ( 37 The use of logophoric pronouns, especially, seem to put the external speaker into the point of view of the internal speaker (Ekpe in 37b), allowing them to report his words as he said them, after a fashion, although the utterance has clearly changed from the original to the reported speech.

Multiple embedded logophors
As Culy (1997) and Clements (1975) described, in some languages (for example, Ewe and Donno Sɔ) it is possible to embed a logophoric pronoun under multiple licensing verbs and obtain an ambiguity of reference, as in (38) below.(38) Logophoric ambiguity in Ewe: (Culy 1997: 850) Kofi i xɔ-e se be Ama k gblɔ be yè i/k -ju yè i/k Kofi receive-PRO hear that Ama say that log-beat log 'Kofi i believed that Ama k said that he i beat her i .' or 'Kofi i believed that Ama k said that she k beat him i .' Because the logophoric pronouns appear embedded under two licensing verbs ('believe' and 'say'), Ewe permits an ambiguity of reference for each other logophors, giving the two separate readings in (40).
The same ambiguity does not appear in Ibibio, as can be seen in examples ( 39) and ( 40).
(39) Ekpe i á-bò ké Udo j á-ké bò ké Akpan k á-ké díyà ńdídíyà ámÒ i/j/k Ekpe 3SG-say C Udo 3SG-PST say C Akpan 3SG-PST eat food 3SG 'Ekpe i says that Udo j said that Akpan k ate his i/j/k food.' (40) Ekpe i á-bò ké Udo j á-ké bò ké Akpan k á-ké díyà ńdídíyà ìmÒ j Ekpe 3SG-say C Udo 3SG-PST say C Akpan 3SG-PST eat food LOG 'Ekpe i says that Udo j said that Akpan k ate his j food.' (39), with a non-logophoric possessive, contains a three-way ambiguity of the ownership of the food that was eaten: it may belong to any of the antecedents in the sentence, whether in a matrix clause or not (there is, in fact, a slight dispreference for the food belonging to Akpan, the nearest antecedent, but I believe this to be a function of ké as a past tense focus marker in this case).In contrast, (40), with its logophoric possessive form, is completely unambiguous as to its referent, counter to what appear to be the case in Ewe.Rather, the food in (40) may only belong to Udo, the nearest logophoric referent, and it cannot refer to Ekpe, a higher logophoric antecedent.

Subject orientation and precedence
Ibibio logophors require that their antecedent be in the subject position of the dominant clause, as already mentioned in section 3.2.This requirement is best illustrated in (32), repeated here.
Ibibio, furthermore, does not allow a logophoric pronoun to be focused to outside of the embedded clause, although non-logophoric pronouns may be focused so.Compare ( 41)-( 44 ' In (42) focus extraction is permitted from the embedded clause, but as a non-logophoric pronoun, it may not refer to the logophoric source.In (43) extraction of a logophoric pronoun past its matrix clause yields ungrammaticality.The farthest it may be extracted seems to be just below the logophoric verb 'say', as in (44), which preserves the direct quotation flavor of the utterance.
The binding and extraction restrictions bring to light some interesting effects found in subject wh-questions, especially when there are other embedding verbs involved.As discussed in section 2.1, the i-marker occurs not only in logophoric constructions but also wh-questions where the subject has been extracted, but not where the object has been extracted, exemplified below: In (46), the expected i-marking for a subject wh-question does not appear.This could be because of the extraction across multiple embedded clauses, with nothing to do with logophoricity whatsoever.However, there are further effects when extracting across logophoric contexts in the third person, when logophoric marking appears on embedded tense heads and verbs: In (47), the expected i-marking is absent from the embedded tense head, and instead the ordinary third person singular marking appears.However, this preserves a nice contrast between ( 47) and ( 48), where the extraction of an object leaves behind two logophoric markers present just as they are in the statement in ( 49). ( 50) does not extract across the verb, which seems to allow the logophoric marking on 'hit' in the embedded clause to continue to refer logophorically.
Given this data, however, further analysis of Baker & Willie (2010)'s account may be necessary to determine the effects of the interaction of these phenomena.

Antecedence and split antecedence
As for what the grammatical restrictions on the logophoric antecedent are, there may be a number mismatch between the logophor and its antecedent in certain cases such as those in the contrast between (51) and ( 52 3PL-PST 3PL-eat all rice DEM 'Ekpe i says that they *i/j+k ate all of the rice.' The plural third person or logophoric pronoun may be used in the embedded clause with a singular antecedent, which either creates a combined reference to the logophoric antecedent and other entities in the discourse, as in (51), or else when the third person plural pronoun is used, the logophoric antecedent is prevented from being the antecedent; this is parallel to the distinguishing effects seen earlier in examples ( 7) and (8): Once licensed, logophoric subject and object markers refer exclusively to the subject of the nearest matrix clause in which there is a licensing verb.The agreement markers that thus appear are themselves quite problematic, being not only ambiguous at times with the first person plural agreement marker and at other times finding complications with the default agreement marker as analyzed in Baker & Willie (2010).A more in-depth investigation of the behavior of these agreement markers, especially when there is extraction across clauses (logophoric and not) would be a fruitful avenue for investigation.
Another issue to investigate is the other purposes of the verb bò, which appears not only as the logophoric verb 'say' and in some constructions that appear to be similar to serial verbs (kèré bò 'think'), but has also appeared as some sort of aspectual or mood marker, and when it appears as such, it apparently allows for this particular i-marker to appear, seen in ( 56): (56) èkà á-bò í-fát áyèn mother 3SG-say I-embrace child 'It is the mother who will hug the child.' The motivation behind this particular reference would be another interesting issue to investigate.
ìmÒ of (22b) is illicit without a properly licensing predicate or structure, so the non-logophoric pronoun must be used as in (22a), leaving reference for ownership of the rice potentially ambiguous.Logophors must rather be licensed by an appropriate verb or structure.The verb 'say' allows for logophoric agreement in Ibibio as well as other West African languages such as Ewe and Uda: LOGThe logophoric pronoun Akpan k ké Udo j á-mà díyà àdésí ámÒ i/j/k Ekpe 3SG-PST 3SG-hear 3SG-from Akpan C Udo 3SG-PST eat rice 3SG 'Ekpe i heard from Akpan k that Udo j ate his i/j/k rice.' b. *Ekpe i á-mà á-kòp á-tò Akpan k ké Udo j á-mà díyà àdésí ìmÒ Ekpe 3SG-PST 3SG-hear 3SG-from Akpan C Udo 3SG-PST eat rice LOG PST 3SG-sweet heart when mother LOG 3SG-PST come see-RED LOG Logophoric forms are available when a psych-verb is embedded under a verb such as 'say', however.Ekpe i said "I was happy when my mother came to see me".' Ekpe i says that they i+j ate all of the rice.'