<html><head></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><!--StartFragment--><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;mso-pagination:
none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><span style="font-family:
"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:Helvetica"><span style="mso-tab-count:
1"> </span>On
December 18, I posted the following query to this list:<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;mso-pagination:
none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:
normal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-bidi-font-family:Arial">Folks,</span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:
normal"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:Helvetica"><o:p></o:p></span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;mso-pagination:
none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:
normal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-bidi-font-family:Arial"><o:p> </o:p></span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;mso-pagination:
none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:
normal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-bidi-font-family:Arial">I am interested in beginning a statistical study on
the relative rarity of the following patterns (this query will not be the basis
for the study! Just a tool to start gathering data). I am first interested in
knowing of languages that have any one of the specific properties below.
Next I am interested in learning of any languages that are described by
any subset of these. Please respond to me individually, rather than to the list
as a whole. I will post a summary if there are enough responses. I would
particularly appreciate any suggestions for particular corpora to consult in
rarer languages. </span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:Helvetica"><o:p></o:p></span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;mso-pagination:
none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:
normal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-bidi-font-family:Arial"><o:p> </o:p></span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;mso-pagination:
none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:
normal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-bidi-font-family:Arial">Thanks very much in advance for your answers.</span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-bidi-font-family:Helvetica"><o:p></o:p></span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;mso-pagination:
none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:
normal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-bidi-font-family:Arial"><o:p> </o:p></span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;mso-pagination:
none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:
normal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-bidi-font-family:Arial">Dan</span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:Helvetica"><o:p></o:p></span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;mso-pagination:
none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:
normal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-bidi-font-family:Arial">**</span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:Helvetica"><o:p></o:p></span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;mso-pagination:
none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:
normal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-bidi-font-family:Arial">1. The language lacks independent factive
verbs and epistemic verbs (not counting the verb 'to see').</span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-bidi-font-family:Helvetica"><o:p></o:p></span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;mso-pagination:
none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:
normal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-bidi-font-family:Arial">2. The language has no morphosyntactic marker of
subordination.</span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:Helvetica"><o:p></o:p></span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;mso-pagination:
none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:
normal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-bidi-font-family:Arial">3. It has no coordinating disjunctive particles (no
words like 'or').</span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:Helvetica"><o:p></o:p></span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;mso-pagination:
none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:
normal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-bidi-font-family:Arial">4. It has no coordinating conjunctive particle (no
words like 'and').</span></i><i><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:14.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman""><o:p></o:p></span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;mso-pagination:
none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:
normal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-bidi-font-family:Arial">5. No unambiguous complement clauses (no strong
evidence for embedding as opposed to juxtaposition).</span></i><i><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:
"Times New Roman""><o:p></o:p></span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;mso-pagination:
none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:
normal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-bidi-font-family:Arial">6. No multiple possession (no structures like
'John's father's son' - whether pre or postnominal) .</span></i><i><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:
"Times New Roman""><o:p></o:p></span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;mso-pagination:
none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:
normal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-bidi-font-family:Arial">7. No multiple modification (no structures like
'two big red apples').</span></i><i><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:14.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman""><o:p></o:p></span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;mso-pagination:
none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:
normal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-bidi-font-family:Arial">8. No scope from one clause into
another: 'John does not believe you left' (where 'not' can negate
'believe' or 'left', as in 'It is not the case that John believes that you
left' vs. 'It is the case that John believes that you did not leave')</span></i><i><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:
"Times New Roman""><o:p></o:p></span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;mso-pagination:
none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:
normal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-bidi-font-family:Arial">9. No long-distance dependencies: 'Who do you think
John believes __ (that Bill saw__)?'; 'Ann, I think he told me he tried to like
___' <o:p></o:p></span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;mso-pagination:
none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:
14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:Arial"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;mso-pagination:
none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><span style="font-family:
"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:Helvetica"><span style="mso-tab-count:
1"> </span>Here
are some of the responses I have received so far on my query (I have not
checked this out yet, so I accept no responsibility for the accuracy of the
suggestions). I should add that there were several responses that addressed the
issue of culture and language. I did not ask about that, however. So I won't
include those in the summary.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>It
did seem that a few readers imagined more to my questions than I actually
asked. I asked about specific syntactic properties, not about alternate
functional realizations. Both are important. But I didn't ask about both. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;mso-pagination:
none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><span style="font-family:
"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:Helvetica"><span style="mso-tab-count:
1"> </span>With
respect to the absence of multiple modification, one reader suggests that Maori
might prohibit this as well.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;mso-pagination:
none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><span style="font-family:
"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:Helvetica"><span style="mso-tab-count:
1"> </span>A
couple of readers pointed out to me that cognitive, factive, and epistemic
verbs are often derived from perceptual verbs, e.g. 'to hear' (understand); 'to
see' (learn, know, etc.). I am aware of this, however, and it wasn't part of
the question. What I am after is lexically or morphosyntactically distinct
verbs;<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;mso-pagination:
none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><span style="font-family:
"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:Helvetica"><span style="mso-tab-count:
1"> </span>With
regard to morphosyntactic markers of subordination, it was suggested that
Iroquois, Athabaskan, and other families and languages, e.g. Arawak lack
nonfinite clauses and also lack markers of subordination. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;mso-pagination:
none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><span style="font-family:
"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:Helvetica"><span style="mso-tab-count:
1"> </span>With
regard to conjunctive and disjunctive particles, Tom Givon responded that Ute
lacks both 'or' and 'and'. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;mso-pagination:
none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><span style="font-family:
"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:Helvetica"><span style="mso-tab-count:
1"> </span>For
the absence of complement clauses, it was suggested that many serial-verb
languages might lack complementation. Givon's <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:
normal">Genesis of Syntactic Complexity</i>, chapter four, summarizes data and
discussions of this topic.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>It was
also pointed out that Marianne Mithun's work on the intonational aspects of the
development of complementation in Mohawk is particularly relevant.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;mso-pagination:
none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><span style="font-family:
"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:Helvetica"><span style="mso-tab-count:
1"> </span>On
the absence of multiple modification, it was suggested by Tom Givon that
multiple modification itself is "perhaps the product of an earlier
paratactic pattern, piling more modifiers after intonational breaks".<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;mso-pagination:
none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><span style="font-family:
"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:Helvetica"><span style="mso-tab-count:
1"> </span>On
the absence of scope from one clause to another (point 8 of my query), a couple
of readers suggested that most languages lack them, apart from the artificial
examples of formal linguistics;<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;mso-pagination:
none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><span style="font-family:
"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:Helvetica"><span style="mso-tab-count:
1"> </span>On
long-distance dependencies, Tom Givon says that "Once you look at
discourse, ALL languages have long-distance dependencies. You find them in
paragraph-level clause chaining, and they eventually grammaticalized (parataxis
> syntaxis) into syntactic constructions." I completely agree with Tom
on this. However, I was not asking about discourse, but about sentence-level
syntax. I think that the failure of some theories to include discourse in their
notion of 'grammar' is a serious shortcoming.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;mso-pagination:
none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><span style="font-family:
"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:Helvetica"><span style="mso-tab-count:
1"> </span>Lachlan
Mackenzie referred me to the new PhD dissertation defended at Vrie University
Amsterdam by David Eberhard on Mamainde (supervisor Leo Wetzels) which
manifests, he claims, many of the properties of my list. That dissertation can
be downloaded at: </span><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman""><a href="http://www.lotpublications.nl/index3.html"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:
13.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family:Verdana;color:windowtext">http://www.lotpublications.nl/index3.html</span></a></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:13.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:
Verdana">. </span><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:
Helvetica"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;mso-pagination:
none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:
13.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:Verdana"><span style="mso-tab-count:1"> </span>Joan
Bybee, Paul Hopper, Tom Givon, and others underscored the importance of
diachrony and grammaticalization in studying this type of phenomenon (a
position I agree strongly with). More than one reader referred me as well to
Bybee's chapter in </span><i><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-bidi-font-family:Helvetica">Essays on Language Function and Language Type:
Dedicated to T. Givon </span></i><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-bidi-font-family:Helvetica">(1997). See also discussion on southeast Asian
languages by Walter. Bisang.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;mso-pagination:
none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><span style="font-family:
"Times New Roman""><span style="mso-tab-count:1"> </span>Alex
Francois offers some answers based on his work in Oceania. The sources he provides
are:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:
"Book Antiqua"">François, Alexandre. 2002. <i>Araki: A disappearing
language of Vanuatu</i>. Pacific Linguistics, 522. Canberra: Australian
National University and François, Alexandre. (in prep). <i>A
grammar of Teanu, the language of Vanikoro</i>.</span><span style="font-family:
"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:Helvetica">..<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;mso-pagination:
none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><span style="font-family:
"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:Helvetica"><span style="mso-tab-count:
1"> </span>I
didn't cite the actual answers because they mainly concerned alternative
functional strategies for realizing complementizers and subordination. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Again, however, that is not quite what I
was after. <span style="color:#560000"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman""><span style="mso-tab-count:1"> </span>Thanks
to everyone who responded. Apparently, the lack of these syntactic markers is not
very common.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I will be looking
into this further and would love to hear from others on this list.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman""><span style="mso-tab-count:1"> </span>Sincerely,<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman""><span style="mso-tab-count:1"> </span>Dan
Everett<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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