On Everett on Givon (on Everett)

[Daniel Everett]

I replied to the Sinha and Silva posting on LinguistList on April 23,  
2007.

I didn't mean to sound like Hale was the first person ever to have  
the idea that parataxis leads to embedding. It has been around for a  
while. Bloomfield even says some things about it.

But Ken's paper is in the generative tradition and that is where most/ 
all of the controversy about the claims that a language can lack  
subordination/recursion come from. So it is particularly pertinent.

Best,

Dan



On 8 Oct 2007, at 06:49, Esa Itkonen wrote:

> In his reply to Givon, Dan Everett seems to be saying that Ken Hale  
> was the first to claim (in 1976) that embedding/hypotaxis emerges  
> from parataxis. I must have misunderstood him, but for the benefit  
> of those who may be guilty of the same misunderstanding, I would  
> like to add the following comment.
>
> Hermann Paul (1975 [1880]: 145) points out, first, that hypotaxis  
> is generally thought to emerge from parataxis and, second, that  
> this view (if meant to state the whole truth) is wrong:  
> "Irrtuemlich ist ferner die gewoenliche Ansicht, dass die Hypotaxe  
> durchgaengig aus der Parataxe entstanden sei." Thus, more than 100  
> years before Ken Hale, most people thought what he thought, but  
> Paul thinks that they are wrong. But how, then, can hypotaxis come  
> into being, if not from parataxis? The answer is not blowing in the  
> wind, but is, rather, mentioned in the title of my 2005 book  
> (published by Benjamins).
>
> Paul adduces several cases of parataxis from his own speech. Surely  
> Germany under Bismarck is a less-than-ideal example of a hunter- 
> gatherer community. So those seem to be right who doubt the  
> plausiblity of a very close correlation between linguistic  
> structure and social structure.
>
> Another thing. In 1816, Franz Bopp started his historical- 
> comparative work by assuming that the Indo-European verb contains  
> the end results of two grammaticalization processes: from copula to  
> tense marker and from pronoun to person suffix. This is explains  
> why, for those who learned this in their first student year,  
> grammaticalization is no big deal. Besides, more should be said  
> about the emergence of ablaut (which fails to conform with the  
> lexical > grammatical cline)
>
> To conclude, I have to mention an important contribution by Vera da  
> Silva and Chris Sinha on how to teach the Pirahas to read and write  
> (sic!). Perhaps expectedly, the New Yorker refused to publish it.  
> Fortunately, however, it is to be be found in Linguist List and  
> Cogling (in late April, I think).
>
> Esa Itkonen
>
> Reference
> Paul, Hermann (1975 [first ed. 1880, fifth ed. 1920]): Prinzipien  
> der Sprachgeschichte. Tuebingen: Niemeyer.
>
>
> Homepage: http://users.utu.fi/eitkonen