Standardizing relativization in Dinka (and other languages?)

[john at research.haifa.ac.il]

I'm sure that intonation does the disambiguation in speech. But that
doesn't help in writing.
John


Quoting Pamela Munro <munro at ucla.edu>:

> 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
>
>




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