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<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><FONT size=3><FONT
face="Times New Roman"><SPAN lang=EN-US style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US">Dear
typologists,</SPAN><SPAN lang=EN-US
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial Unicode MS'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US"><?xml:namespace
prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office"
/><o:p></o:p></SPAN></FONT></FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><SPAN lang=EN-US
style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US"><FONT size=3><FONT
face="Times New Roman"> <o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><SPAN lang=EN-US
style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US"><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman">I
would like to ask you how you define bipartite stems. The term has been used
originally for the description of verbs in some North American languages of the
West coast such as Washo (Jacobsen 1980) and Klamath (DeLancey 1999 IJAL 65.1).
An example from Klamath is 'itg- < 'i-odg
‘act_upon_plural_objects-out_of_a_container > take plural objects out of a
container’ (DeLancey 1999: 61).</FONT></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><SPAN lang=EN-US
style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US"><FONT size=3><FONT
face="Times New Roman"> <o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><SPAN lang=EN-US
style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US"><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman">The
phenomenon as such is undisputed. My question is about how it should be defined
in a general manner to make it a cross-linguistically useable term so that we
can decide for any language X whether it has bipartite stems or not (if this is
possible at all).<o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><SPAN lang=EN-US
style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US"><FONT size=3><FONT
face="Times New Roman"> <o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><SPAN lang=EN-US
style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US"><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman">I
have some problems with the definition of bipartite stems consisting of “bound
stem elements” (DeLancey 1999: 60). I wonder whether the notion of bound can be
applied to stem elements, since it is usually associated with morphemes in
general (including affixes). Thus, defining bipartite stems as consisting of at
least two bound stem elements suggests that we already know beforehand what a
stem element is. Couldn’t there be a definition which doesn’t contain “stem”?
Moreover, I wonder whether bipartite stems is always about verbal stems (are
there any bipartite noun stems?) and, if this is true, whether it would not be
better to define them for instance as <o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><SPAN lang=EN-US
style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US"><FONT size=3><FONT
face="Times New Roman"> <o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><SPAN lang=EN-US
style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US"><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman">units
consisting of at least two morphemes which together constitute the core of a
verb neither of which morpheme can be identified unequivocally as a verbal core
element by itself<o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><SPAN lang=EN-US
style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US"><FONT size=3><FONT
face="Times New Roman"> <o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><SPAN lang=EN-US
style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US"><FONT size=3><FONT
face="Times New Roman">However, this definition would include also cases where
stems are occasionally lacking (or zero) as in the Russian verb _vy-nu-t’_ ‘take
out, perfective’, where vy- ‘out’ obviously is a prefix and -nu (inchoative or
semelfactive) a suffix.<o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><SPAN lang=EN-US
style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US"><FONT size=3><FONT
face="Times New Roman"> <o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><SPAN lang=EN-US
style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US"><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman">A
further question: In what functional domains do bipartite stems occur? Are
(some) motion verbs always involved or are there languages with bipartite stems
where no motion verbs contain bipartite
stems?<o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><SPAN lang=EN-US
style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US"><FONT size=3><FONT
face="Times New Roman"> <o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><SPAN lang=EN-US
style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US"><FONT size=3><FONT
face="Times New Roman">Personally, I am particularly interested in whether
motion verbs in Adyghe (NW-Caucasian) and Car-Nicobarese (Austroasiatic) qualify
as bipartite stems or not.<o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><SPAN lang=EN-US
style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US"><FONT size=3><FONT
face="Times New Roman"> <o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><SPAN lang=EN-US
style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US"><FONT size=3><FONT
face="Times New Roman">Adyghe examples (I apologize for not being able to
produce the diacritic signs correctly in an e-mail) are _de-C’E_ ‘encircled-exit
> exit from an encircled space (e.g. town, village, courtyard)’ and _tye-Ha_
‘surface-enter > enter a surface (e.g. go out on a way)’. The two “stems”
-C’E- and Ha- are also termed illative and elative verbs and require a “prefix”
which indicates the kind of ground involved in motion. As soon as transitive
verbs are involved, things become more complicated. To express ‘put into’ or
‘take out of’ we need three elements: GROUND-‘put’-‘enter’,
GROUND-‘take’-‘exit’. Traditional descriptions speak in these cases of
incorporation of the transitive stem (which seems rather strange to me; more
reasonable would be to speak of root serialization, if the illative and elative
elements really are roots).<o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt; TEXT-INDENT: 14.2pt"><SPAN
lang=EN-US style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US"><FONT size=3><FONT
face="Times New Roman">In Adyghe, the final position is more stem-like, the
initial one more prefix-like. Nevertheless, some “stems” like the illative and
elative verbs, require a prefix and are bound in this respect. Are these
bipartite stems?<o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><SPAN lang=EN-US
style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US"><FONT size=3><FONT
face="Times New Roman"> <o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><SPAN lang=EN-US
style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US"><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman">A
Car-Nicobarese example is _meut-nyi_ ‘hidden/cover-exit/out > exit from a
covered space, such as e.g. from water or from inside a person’. The second
element seems to be a directional suffix, but there are a number of first
elements, such as _meut-_, which always require a directional element associated
with them and which do not seem to have any verbal character by themselves. If
one has to decide, the first element is more stem-like than the second, but the
first element is clearly bound in many motion verbs. So does Car-Nicobarese have
bipartite stems?<o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><SPAN lang=EN-US
style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US"><FONT size=3><FONT
face="Times New Roman"> <o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></SPAN></P>
<DIV><SPAN lang=EN-US
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: DE; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA">What
Adyghe and Nicobarese share with Klamath is that one of the two morphemes
encodes some information about the ground (the difference being that ground and
direction is conflated in one position in Klamath in contrast to Adyghe and
Car-Nicobarese and that figure is not encoded in Adyghe and Nicobarese).
Therefore a further question: Do languages with bipartite stems necessarily
encode information about the ground in verbs?</SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN lang=EN-US
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: DE; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA"></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV><SPAN lang=EN-US
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: DE; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA"><FONT
face=Arial size=2>Best,</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN lang=EN-US
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: DE; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA"><FONT
face=Arial size=2>Bernhard</FONT></SPAN></FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>