14.3521, Qs: Siouan Langs/Gender; Relativization Survey

[LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List:  Vol-14-3521. Fri Dec 19 2003. ISSN: 1068-4875.

Subject: 14.3521, Qs: Siouan Langs/Gender; Relativization Survey

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1)
Date:  Thu, 18 Dec 2003 00:31:22 -0500 (EST)
From:  Belle Matheson <belleann at socrates.berkeley.edu>
Subject:  Women's and Men's speech

2)
Date:  Thu, 18 Dec 2003 22:47:52 +0100 (CET)
From:  Sonia Cristofaro <russo at inrete.it>
Subject:  Questionnaire on the relativization of circumnstantials

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

Date:  Thu, 18 Dec 2003 00:31:22 -0500 (EST)
From:  Belle Matheson <belleann at socrates.berkeley.edu>
Subject:  Women's and Men's speech

Hello all,

I'm looking at lexical differences in women's and men's speech in
Arapaho, and some of the interjections I've heard are similar to
Lakhota interjections.  I would appreciate any and all lists you may
have of interjections,imperatives, greetings, or any other lexical
differences based on the gender of the speaker in any Siouan language,
or references to such lists. I keep hearing that there are many such
differences in Siouan languages, but I've found it difficult to find
much published on the subject.  Thank you for your time!

Language-Family:  Siouan; Code: SI


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

Date:  Thu, 18 Dec 2003 22:47:52 +0100 (CET)
From:  Sonia Cristofaro <russo at inrete.it>
Subject:  Questionnaire on the relativization of circumnstantials

Dear all,

my colleague Anna Giacalone Ramat and I are working on a project on
the relativization of circumstantials of time, place, manner, and
reason, as exemplified in the following English sentences

(1) The day we met it rained

(2) The place where we had dinner was packed with people

(3) The reason why he did that is really stupid

(4) The way you do that is very important

Working on languages such as Hebrew, Maltese and several Romance
languages, we found out that these relativization types are often
expressed by means of -case relativization strategies, that is,
strategies providing no indication about the syntactic role of the
relativized item. This is the case even if the language expresses
other relativization types by means of strategies providing explicit
indication about the role of the relativized item (+case strategies).
For instance, Italian has a relative pronoun ('il quale') inflected
for the syntactic role of the relativized item. This pronoun can be
used for indirect object, possessor and oblique relativization, as in
(5) below.  However, Italian also has an invariable relative marker
('che') that provides no indication about the role of the relativized
item, and this marker can be used for subject relativization, direct
object relativization, and the relativization of time circumstantials,
as in (6) and (7).

(5) L'uomo *al quale* ho dato le chiavi e' un mio collega
`The man I gave the keys to is a colleague of mine'

(6) L'uomo *che* e' venuto qui ieri sera e' un mio collega
`The man who came here last night is a colleague of mine'

(7) Il giorno *che* ci siamo incontrati pioveva
`The day we met it rained'


Similarly, relativization in Hebrew involves the use of an invariable
relative marker. This marker is usually accompanied by personal
pronouns indicating the role of the relativized item in indirect
object, possessor, and oblique relativization, but not in subject and
direct object relativization, or the relativization of time, place,
manner, and reason circumstantials.

Our data also suggest that the use of -case strategies in the
relativization of circumstantials is favored when the head noun is
accompanied by universal quantifiers such as 'every' and 'all', when
the head noun is semantically less specific and less referential, and
when the head noun is itself in circumstantial function in the main
clause.

We would like to investigate these phenomena in as many languages as
possible. Therefore we set out a questionnaire on the relativization
of circumstantials, and we would be extremely grateful if you could
fill it out for your native language or language of expertise, if this
language allows for the use of both -case and +case relativization
strategies.

The questionnaire can be found on my homepage, at the address

http://dobc.unipv.it/linguistica/paginadocente.php?idd=121&id=121

The questionnaire consists of 35 sentences, that should be translated
in your native language or language of expertise. In addition to that,
we would really appreciate if you could provide us with some basic
description of relativization strategies in the language. Ideally,
translations should be provided with (minimal!) glosses, but as we
understand that would be extremely time-consuming, it will suffice to
specify which of the relativization strategies available in the
language is being used in each case.

Please send your responses both to me and to Anna Giacalone Ramat
(annaram at unipv.it).

Many thanks in advance for your help,

Sonia Cristofaro

-
Sonia Cristofaro
Dipartimento di Linguistica
Universita' di Pavia
Strada Nuova, 65
I-27100 Pavia Italy
e-mail: sonia.cristofaro at unipv.it, russo at inrete.it

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