Male vs. female speech

Trechter, Sara STrechter at csuchico.edu
Thu Jan 20 20:41:21 UTC 2005


I haven't notice that gender particles as evidentials affect the use of verbs at all although they do tend to occur with certain meanings more than others.  Verbs of presence or arrival often will receive an assertion particle if such information is a change of scene or new information, and therefore have a kind of deictic effect, locating the speaker with the respect to the utterance, or so I argues in my dissertation on Lakhota gender. This seems to be the case with the OP texts I've looked at as well.   
 
Some languages like Newari and a bunch in South America (whose names aren't at the tip of my fingers) have an intricate system matching the use of specific evidentials, verb meanings, and person, but I haven't found anything like this is Lakhota.  Lakhota seems to have a more fully developed system of gendered illocutionary/affective force particles than the other Mississippi Valley languages, but the basic commands and assertion particles are probably reconstructible within the Mississippi Valley branch.  If you send me your address, I'll send you the unpublished paper, where I go into the details. 
 
BTW, Haas' (1944) article in Language mentions the Biloxi particles with brief examples.  I've also noticed that a few of the particles that Dorsy and Swanton list in their introduction don't ever seem to occur in the texts.  
 
best, sara    
 
Dr. Sara Trechter, Associate Professor
Linguistics Program and English Department
CSU, Chico
Chico, CA 95926
(530) 898-4450 (fax)
(530) 898-5447 (office)
 



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