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<p><font face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif">Here is the Middle High
German nursery song sometimes suspected to be a source for <i>Had
Gadya</i>:</font></p>
<p><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Der_Bauer_schickt_den_Jockel_aus"><font
face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif">https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Der_Bauer_schickt_den_Jockel_aus</font></a></p>
<p><font face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif">A farmer asks the
farmboy to cut the oats, but the farmboy doesn't want. Then the
farmer asks the farmworker to summon the farmboy who doesn't
want to cut the oats, but he doesn't want, either, so he
unleashes his dog after the farmworker who doesn't want to
summon the farmboy who doesn't want to cut the oats etc etc<br>
</font></p>
<p><font face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif">Interestingly and to
the contrary of <i>Had Gadya</i>, in <i>Der Bauer schickt den
Jockel aus</i>, the cumulation does NOT rely on the embedding
of standard relative clauses. What we have is a series of NPs
followed by verb-second relative clauses, but these can also be
analyzed as matrix clauses with a left-dislocated subject:<br>
</font></p>
<p>Der Bauer schickt den Hund hinaus:<br>
Er soll den Knecht beißen.<br>
Hund, der will den Knecht nicht beißen,<br>
Knecht, der will nicht Jockel holen,<br>
Jockel will nicht Hafer schneiden,<br>
will lieber zuhause bleiben.</p>
<p>Roughly equivalent to:<br>
</p>
The <font face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif">farmer unleashes the
dog:</font><br>
<font face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif">It must bite the
farmworker</font><br>
<font face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif">Dog, he doesn't want to
bite the farmworker</font><br>
<font face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif">Farmworker, he doesn't
want to summon the farmboy</font><br>
<font face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif">Farmboy, he doesn't want
to cut the oats</font><br>
<font face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif">rather wants to sta</font>y
at home.
<p>etc.</p>
<p>Depending on the hypothesis on the link between the availability
recursive embedding strategies in discourse and the success of
cumulative songs, that kind of syntactic pattern may be
interesting to look after, too.<br>
</p>
<p>Best,</p>
<p>Pierre-Yves<br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">Le 12/02/2023 à 07:36, Moshe Taube a
écrit :<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:CAAY0DLD4Oaj37ZpJ_rtG7s_kGpFkNzdL_CT7+s+cdFxTb_hdtA@mail.gmail.com">
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
<div dir="ltr">
<div>Another one in English is:</div>
<div>There was an old lady who swallowed a fly... </div>
<div>(<a
href="https://allnurseryrhymes.com/there-was-an-old-lady-who-swallowed-a-fly/"
moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-freetext">https://allnurseryrhymes.com/there-was-an-old-lady-who-swallowed-a-fly/</a>)</div>
<div>As for the Jewish Aramaic Had Gadya, I doubt whether it is
very early, since, as far as I remember, it is not attested
before the 16th c. CE, and according to Khone Shmeruk (I don't
have the bibliographical details) was adapted from the Middle
High German nursery song <i>Zicklein klein</i> or something
like that. </div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Moshe</div>
<div><br>
</div>
</div>
<br>
<div class="gmail_quote">
<div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Sun, Feb 12, 2023 at 9:14
AM David Gil <<a href="mailto:gil@shh.mpg.de"
moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-freetext">gil@shh.mpg.de</a>>
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px
0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">
<div>
<p>Dear all,</p>
<p>A cumulative song is one in which each unit, or stanza,
introduces an additional layer of syntactic embedding,
such as the following ...</p>
<dl>
<dd>This is the house that Jack built.</dd>
</dl>
<dl>
<dd>This is the malt that lay in the house that Jack
built.</dd>
</dl>
<dl>
<dd>This is the rat that ate the malt</dd>
<dd>That lay in the house that Jack built.</dd>
</dl>
<dl>
<dd>This is the cat</dd>
<dd>That killed the rat that ate the malt</dd>
<dd>That lay in the house that Jack built.</dd>
</dl>
<dl>
<dd>This is the dog that worried the cat</dd>
<dd>That killed the rat that ate the malt</dd>
<dd>That lay in the house that Jack built.</dd>
</dl>
<p>... and so forth. Perhaps the earliest example of a
cumulative song is the Jewish Aramaic hymn <i>Had Gadya</i>.</p>
<p>My query: Is anybody familiar with examples of cumulative
songs from other non-WEIRD cultures and languages. While
my main interest is in "indigenous" attestations, I would
also be interested in successful adaptations and
translations of western cumulative songs into other
languages.</p>
<p>(Background to the query: I am interested in exploring
variation in the propensity of different languages to make
use of syntactic embedding. My focus is on languages such
as Malay/Indonesian, which have various tools to construct
embedded clauses but generally choose not to make use of
them in natural discourse. I would like to test the
hypothesis that such cumulative songs are absent or
otherwise less successful in such languages.)</p>
<p>Thanks,</p>
<p>David<br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<pre cols="72">--
David Gil
Senior Scientist (Associate)
Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Deutscher Platz 6, Leipzig, 04103, Germany
Email: <a href="mailto:gil@shh.mpg.de" target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-freetext">gil@shh.mpg.de</a>
Mobile Phone (Israel): +972-526117713
Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-082113720302
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<div dir="ltr" class="gmail_signature">
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<div dir="ltr">
<div dir="ltr">Professor Moshe Taube (Emeritus)
<div>The Hebrew University of Jerusalem</div>
<div>Mt. Scopus 91905 Israel</div>
<div><a href="https://huji.academia.edu/MosheTaube"
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