11.2572, Qs: Australian Aboriginal Lang, French Anaphor/UG

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Wed Nov 29 16:48:39 UTC 2000


LINGUIST List:  Vol-11-2572. Wed Nov 29 2000. ISSN: 1068-4875.

Subject: 11.2572, Qs: Australian Aboriginal Lang, French Anaphor/UG

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1)
Date:  Tue, 28 Nov 2000 22:41:08 -0500
From:  <colkitto at sprint.ca>
Subject:  Australian Aboriginal Language

2)
Date:  Wed, 29 Nov 2000 08:21:13 -0500
From:  "Tosh" <ftachino at chat.carleton.ca>
Subject:  UG parameters in French anaphor binding

-------------------------------- Message 1 -------------------------------

Date:  Tue, 28 Nov 2000 22:41:08 -0500
From:  <colkitto at sprint.ca>
Subject:  Australian Aboriginal Language

I seem to remember that there is an Australian Aboriginal language which has
special markers depending on where a certain item is located along a certain
specific river.  Could someone please enlighten me?

Thanks in advance,

Robert Orr


-------------------------------- Message 2 -------------------------------

Date:  Wed, 29 Nov 2000 08:21:13 -0500
From:  "Tosh" <ftachino at chat.carleton.ca>
Subject:  UG parameters in French anaphor binding

I'm working on a paper, and a section of it involves a syntactic analysis of
the person I interviewed.

The subject is a native speaker of French who is learning English and I
wanted to see how her syntactic competence differ from that of a native
speaker.  I adminstered a grammaticality judgment test and she had trouble
with the following items:  (* indicates ungrammaticality)

1-1  *Jane hopes that Fred has her own keys.
1-2  Jane hopes that Fred has his own keys.
1-3  The boys promised their mothers to behave themselves.
1-4  Jane expects that picture of herself will be on sale.
1-5  *Jane expects that picture of her will be on sale. (Jane=her)

My aim is to find some explanations through contrastive analysis of English
and French UG parameters.
I asked two native speakers of French and they came up with the following
translation:

2-1  Jane (Jeanne) espère que Fred ses clées (à elle).
2-2  Jane espère que Fred à ses clée (à lui).
2-3  Les garçons on promis leurs mères de se bien conduire.
     Les garçons promettent a leurs mères de bien se conduire.
2-4  Jane s'attend que la photo d'elle même sera à vendre.
2-5  Jane s'attend que la photo d'elle vas sera à vendre.

My questions are:

1. Are all the French sentences grammatical?
2. If I delete the parentheses in 2-1 and 2-2, can the 'keys' belong to Fred
and be grammatical?
3. If I delete the parentheses in 2-1 and 2-2, can the 'keys'  belong to
Jane and be grammatical?
4. Is there any ambituity as to what 'se' in 3-3 refer to?  (les garçons /
leurs mères)
5. Can 'elle' in 2-5 be 'Jane' or does it ALWAYS have to refer to somebody
else?
6. What is the UG (Universal Grammar) parameter that governs anaphor binding
in French?

If you know answers to any of those questions, I really appreciate it.

-
Tosh

e-mail:    lastcreature at yahoo.com
homepage:  http://www.freespeech.org/lastman/index.html




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