Standardizing relativization in Dinka (and other languages?)

[Pamela Munro]

Intonation?

On 12/11/11 1:09 PM, Angus Grieve-Smith wrote:
> On 12/11/2011 3:33 PM, john at research.haifa.ac.il wrote:
>> That's right, Mike. There are things which are like relative clauses, 
>> but
>> they're really inefficient in terms of reading because either they look
>> like main clauses (until you get to the end and realize that you've 
>> misparsed
>> it) or else are headed by markers which have a really wide variety of 
>> other
>> functions (which also leads to misparsing).
>>
>
>     Well, okay, but they're not that inefficient in terms of speech, 
> right?  It's not like Dinka speakers are constantly misunderstanding 
> each other because they thought that a relative clause was a main 
> clause.  How do they know?
>

-- 
Pamela Munro,
Professor, Linguistics, UCLA
UCLA Box 951543
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1543
http://www.linguistics.ucla.edu/people/munro/munro.htm