From linguista at gmail.com Fri Jun 1 02:31:53 2007 From: linguista at gmail.com (Bryan Gordon) Date: Thu, 31 May 2007 21:31:53 -0500 Subject: obviation in Siouan languages In-Reply-To: Message-ID: How about a giant summary? Little of what follows is my original work; I'm sure you've all heard much of this before but it's just too much information to keep in your head at once. I believe that there is some sort of historical areal influence that links the Algonquian phenomenon with the Siouan. It has been proposed before that the Algonquian phenomenon preceded the Siouan, and that makes sense to me considering the hit-and-miss dispersion of obviation in Siouan compared to Algonquian. There are certainly some serious differences, though. I'll use the pair Omaha-Ponca/Ojibwe to explicate: The Ojibwe obviative canonically serves as a part of the theme/animacy system in such sentences as: Onaagaans egaasaanig obi-dakonaan. Dish.DIM P.small+OBV+P 3s.TS-hold.DIR.OBV She carried me a little bitty dish. (DIM - diminutive, P - participial, TS - towards speaker, TS - towards speaker) The covert subject is proximate, so the dish and its "small" participle are both marked obviative. The verb is marked Direct because the argument structure is the same direction as the animacy hierarchy (2 > 1 > 3Prox > 3Inan/Obv). It is not clear whether two referents are "stuck" with their obviation/proximacy assignments once assigned. Any Algonquianists know the answer? If so, then certainly there is some referent-tracking behaviour going on here; if not, though, it's not clear that this is any more than a weird sort of case-marking. While I haven't seen Ojibwe referents switching from obviative to proximate or vice-versa within a short span of text, I have noticed obviative referents switching relatively rapidly (and, unsurprisingly, have not noticed that for proximates). For instance: Mii iw animoshishan wegitiziimimaad anindowa gaa-aawid. CNF CMP dog.CTP.OBV P.have.for.parent.DIR.3s.P such P.PST-be.sth.3s.P Gii-bezhigowan oniijaanisiwaan akwezensan. PST-sole.OBV 3.POSS.child.3p woman.DIM.OBV One such [farmer] was one of those who had a dog for a parent. They had an only child, a daughter. In the first sentence the obviative is a dog; in the second, it is the child; the proximate is the same for both, although the number changes. (This is a good example of another areal phenomenon, in which a singular can become plural when it includes "implicit" others such as, in this case, a husband.) I'd be interested in whether there are any cases of obviation in Ojibwe sentences with inverse thematic morphology (where the argument structure is the reverse of the animacy hierarchy - this has sometimes been called passive, but is not). I've never seen any such cases. Of course, it's not even theoretically possible in OP, as we'll see. The Omaha-Ponca obviative, like the Ojibwe obviative, occurs with animate referents alone. However, Ojibwe marks animate obviatives and inanimate plurals with much of the same morphology, which suggests that the effect starts out somewhere pretty close to VP or TP/IP/whatever-you-like in the syntax. This is not the case at all for OP. As mentioned earlier in this thread, there are a couple of different phenomena that have to do with obviation in OP. The most noticeable is that there are separate groups of articles. Some of the obviative articles encode the same positional information as the inanimate articles: kHe for horizontally scanned inanimates vs. kHe for dead animates tHe for vertically scanned inanimates vs. tHaN for standing animates ge for scattered/diffuse inanimates vs. ma for multiple animates or generic classes Others do not: there is no inanimate analogue to "thiN" - moving; nor any animate analogue to "thaN" - symmetrical/round. The proximate animate articles are akHa and ama, and seem to have nothing to do with the obviative articles historically, synchronically, positionally, pragmatically, semantically or anyhow at all. The obviation system of OP, in short, is epiphenomenal compared to the well-integrated obviation of Ojibwe. Also, OP animate objects are almost never marked with a proximate article, and animate subjects likewise are only marked obviative when they occur in an intransitive sentence. In Ojibwe, on the other hand, an object is never marked obviative unless there is another animate referent competing for attention. I believe there must be two referents in short-term memory (activated) in order for obviation to occur in Ojibwe; this is not the case for OP, which has encoded obviation in a fashion more similar to Indo-European case-marking. We've all seen a few examples of how Siouan split transitivity intersects with obviation. The other way that obviation is marked in OP is actually quite the opposite: proximacy is marked with the "plural" morpheme at clause-end! So it is quite possible that in OP proximacy is the marked phenomenon, in direct contrast to marked obviation in Ojibwe. A potential gold mine, which I would love to hear others' thoughts on, is the Legend of Ukiabi (Dorsey 1890 pp 609-612). In this story there's an action sequence in which Ukiabi and his son are constantly being referent-tracked. The following differences are apparent, some of which have been analysed as obviation effects, and others which I've never heard mention of: Ukiabi gets the proximate -bi and -i ("plural") affixes. His son does not. Ukiabi gets the proximate a- prefix on motion verbs and "have". His son does not. Ukiabi gets the proximate continuatives ama and akHa. His son has only one sentence marked with a continuative, and it is kHe (lying/dead/horizontal). Ukiabi's sentences regularly end with evidential tHe. His son's do not. His son's sentences regularly end with reportive/dubitative ama. His do not. From marino at skyway.usask.ca Fri Jun 1 02:53:00 2007 From: marino at skyway.usask.ca (Marino) Date: Thu, 31 May 2007 20:53:00 -0600 Subject: obviation in Siouan languages In-Reply-To: Message-ID: The papers are: Muehlbauer, Jeffrey "Opportunistic verbal correlates to obviation in Plains Cree: the 'obviative' suffix -yi-" Piriyawiboon, Nattaya "Reconsidering the obviative" Muehlbauer is at UBritish Columbia (jefmuehl at interchange.ubc.ca) , and Piriyawiboon (n.piriyawiboon at utoronto.ca) is at U Toronto. Both papers were presented at the Canadian Linguistic Association Meeting, 2007, in Saskatoon. Muehlbauer's paper is, as the title suggests, focused on Plains Cree. He uses corpus data from Bloomfield's "Sacred Stories" and Ahenakew/Wolfart published texts as well as elicitation data from 6 speakers, including their metalinguistic judgements. Piriyawiboon's paper is focused on Nishnaabemwin of S Ontario. Mary At 12:53 PM 5/31/2007, you wrote: >As Rory points out, Dhegiha languages have something very similar >distinguishing primary from non-primary actors. Ardis's dissertation was >at least partly on this distinction in Omaha. > >I have toyed with the idea of trying to redefine the "switch-reference" >distinction in those Siouan languages that have it as an obviation >distinction. Such redefinition clearly works in Muskogean, where it is >the only way to tie "S-R" and argument marking particles together without >a hopelessly complex appeal to homophony, but I haven't really gotten down >to the business of trying to demonstrate it in Siouan. Clearly the more >inclusive concept of "referent tracking" operates in Siouan grammars, >though it differs from language to language. If I had to guess, I'd say >it is historically primary in Algonquian but secondary in Siouan. > >What were the papers you're referring to on Algonquian? > >Bob > >________________________________ > >From: owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu on behalf of Marino >Sent: Thu 5/31/2007 12:20 AM >To: siouan at lists.colorado.edu >Subject: obviation in Siouan languages > > > >There were two excellent papers on obviation in Cree at the CLA >meetings. One of the presenters asked me if there is obviation in any of >the Siouan languages. I have a vague memory that this has come up before, >but I can't find time to troll through the archives. Any suggestions? > >Best >Mary Marino > > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From marino at skyway.usask.ca Fri Jun 1 03:22:30 2007 From: marino at skyway.usask.ca (Marino) Date: Thu, 31 May 2007 21:22:30 -0600 Subject: obviation in Siouan languages In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Well, to put it baldly, obviation is a systematic morphological distinction in 3rd-person reference, whereby one referent is focused (proximate) and other 3rd-person referents (obviatives) are given *some sort* of background status. In Algonquian, this seems to be always confined to animate nominals. In Plains Cree at least, nominals in the 3rd person can be divided into 3 groups: animates whose internal state the speaker has knowledge of, animates whose internal state the speaker does not have knowledge of, and inanimates that cannot have an internal state. There are also various morphological correlates to obviation in verbal morphology. One such morpheme is -yi- , which Muehlbauer discusses in his CLA paper. To quote from his abstract: "Verbal morphemes can be exploited to track obviation, but do not inherently encode it." Mary At 08:10 AM 5/31/2007, you wrote: >Mary, would you be willing to offer a brief explanation of what obviation >means in Algonquian? There has certainly been a good deal of discussion >about a distinction, or a partially overlapping pair of distinctions, in >Omaha-Ponka, for which the categories "proximate" and "obviative" have >been proposed, I believe originally by John Koontz. My understanding is >that there is some uncertainty as to whether the distinctions in question >are equivalent to the Algonquian distinction or not. > >Thanks, >Rory -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From willemdereuse at unt.edu Fri Jun 1 15:35:46 2007 From: willemdereuse at unt.edu (willemdereuse at unt.edu) Date: Fri, 1 Jun 2007 10:35:46 -0500 Subject: obviation in Siouan languages In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Hi all: I have always thought that the chankhe/yunkhan alternation of conjunctions in Lakota texts, first discussed by Chafe (I think) and then by Dahlstrom had something to do with obviation. It is definitely not switch-reference. Does Richard Lungstrum's diss. say anything about this? I am sorry to say I have not yet gotten hold of a copy of Richard's diss. Willem de Reuse Quoting "Rankin, Robert L" : > As Rory points out, Dhegiha languages have something very similar > distinguishing primary from non-primary actors. Ardis's dissertation > was at least partly on this distinction in Omaha. > > I have toyed with the idea of trying to redefine the > "switch-reference" distinction in those Siouan languages that have it > as an obviation distinction. Such redefinition clearly works in > Muskogean, where it is the only way to tie "S-R" and argument marking > particles together without a hopelessly complex appeal to homophony, > but I haven't really gotten down to the business of trying to > demonstrate it in Siouan. Clearly the more inclusive concept of > "referent tracking" operates in Siouan grammars, though it differs > from language to language. If I had to guess, I'd say it is > historically primary in Algonquian but secondary in Siouan. > > What were the papers you're referring to on Algonquian? > > Bob > > ________________________________ > > From: owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu on behalf of Marino > Sent: Thu 5/31/2007 12:20 AM > To: siouan at lists.colorado.edu > Subject: obviation in Siouan languages > > > > There were two excellent papers on obviation in Cree at the CLA > meetings. One of the presenters asked me if there is obviation in any of > the Siouan languages. I have a vague memory that this has come up before, > but I can't find time to troll through the archives. Any suggestions? > > Best > Mary Marino > > > > From marino at skyway.usask.ca Fri Jun 1 16:51:42 2007 From: marino at skyway.usask.ca (Marino) Date: Fri, 1 Jun 2007 10:51:42 -0600 Subject: obviation Message-ID: I need to correct my earlier e-mail: Nishnaabemwin (Piriyawiboon's paper) is Ojibwe, not Cree. Mary From pankihtamwa at earthlink.net Fri Jun 1 17:05:37 2007 From: pankihtamwa at earthlink.net (David Costa) Date: Fri, 1 Jun 2007 10:05:37 -0700 Subject: obviation In-Reply-To: <6.1.2.0.0.20070601104821.021a4088@sask.usask.ca> Message-ID: Odawa, to be exact. David > I need to correct my earlier e-mail: Nishnaabemwin (Piriyawiboon's paper) > is Ojibwe, not Cree. > > Mary > From rood at spot.Colorado.EDU Fri Jun 1 20:50:51 2007 From: rood at spot.Colorado.EDU (ROOD DAVID S) Date: Fri, 1 Jun 2007 14:50:51 -0600 Subject: obviation in Siouan languages In-Reply-To: <20070601103546.t61b2v2njxogwgs8@eaglemail.unt.edu> Message-ID: Lungstrum's dissertation claims that chanke and yukhan are switch reference markers, defining "reference" as any major change of scene, characters, point of view, or some other discontinuity. I wasn't convinced. David David S. Rood Dept. of Linguistics Univ. of Colorado 295 UCB Boulder, CO 80309-0295 USA rood at colorado.edu On Fri, 1 Jun 2007, willemdereuse at unt.edu wrote: > Hi all: > > I have always thought that the chankhe/yunkhan alternation of conjunctions in > Lakota texts, first discussed by Chafe (I think) and then by Dahlstrom had > something to do with obviation. It is definitely not switch-reference. Does > Richard Lungstrum's diss. say anything about this? I am sorry to say I have > not yet gotten hold of a copy of Richard's diss. > > Willem de Reuse Quoting "Rankin, Robert L" : > >> As Rory points out, Dhegiha languages have something very similar >> distinguishing primary from non-primary actors. Ardis's dissertation was >> at least partly on this distinction in Omaha. >> >> I have toyed with the idea of trying to redefine the "switch-reference" >> distinction in those Siouan languages that have it as an obviation >> distinction. Such redefinition clearly works in Muskogean, where it is the >> only way to tie "S-R" and argument marking particles together without a >> hopelessly complex appeal to homophony, but I haven't really gotten down to >> the business of trying to demonstrate it in Siouan. Clearly the more >> inclusive concept of "referent tracking" operates in Siouan grammars, >> though it differs from language to language. If I had to guess, I'd say it >> is historically primary in Algonquian but secondary in Siouan. >> >> What were the papers you're referring to on Algonquian? >> >> Bob >> >> ________________________________ >> >> From: owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu on behalf of Marino >> Sent: Thu 5/31/2007 12:20 AM >> To: siouan at lists.colorado.edu >> Subject: obviation in Siouan languages >> >> >> >> There were two excellent papers on obviation in Cree at the CLA >> meetings. One of the presenters asked me if there is obviation in any of >> the Siouan languages. I have a vague memory that this has come up before, >> but I can't find time to troll through the archives. Any suggestions? >> >> Best >> Mary Marino >> >> >> >> > > From marino at skyway.usask.ca Sat Jun 2 18:03:03 2007 From: marino at skyway.usask.ca (Marino) Date: Sat, 2 Jun 2007 12:03:03 -0600 Subject: obviation In-Reply-To: Message-ID: I think of Odawa as a variety of Ojibwe and I tend to refer every named variety in the respective regions to either *Ojibwe* or *Cree* - I am sure that this is very inexact from an Algonquianist perspective. Is there an issue here with the speech community? Do speakers of the varieties of Odawa object to having their languages referred to as Ojibwe? Mary At 11:05 AM 6/1/2007, you wrote: >Odawa, to be exact. > >David > > > > I need to correct my earlier e-mail: Nishnaabemwin (Piriyawiboon's paper) > > is Ojibwe, not Cree. > > > > Mary > > From linguista at gmail.com Sat Jun 2 20:59:34 2007 From: linguista at gmail.com (Bryan Gordon) Date: Sat, 2 Jun 2007 15:59:34 -0500 Subject: obviation In-Reply-To: <6.1.2.0.0.20070602115823.0210ed80@sask.usask.ca> Message-ID: Actually, that can be a pretty serious issue (speaker preference). There are some Odaawaa speakers who dislike having their language called Ojibwe, others who consider Ojibwe a "family" to which Odaawaa belongs. Most Ojibwe/Chippewa people around these parts (Minnesota, Wisconsin, Upper Peninsula) consider Odaawaa a different language from their varieties, but there is great mutual intelligibility. Maybe a safe, neutral terminology that would satisfy both linguists and speakers would be something like "Odaawaa Ojibwe". I suppose you'd have to ask an Odaawaa speaker to find out whether that would solve the problem. I don't know any in this area. - Bryan 2007/6/2, Marino : > I think of Odawa as a variety of Ojibwe and I tend to refer every named > variety in the respective regions to either *Ojibwe* or *Cree* - I am sure > that this is very inexact from an Algonquianist perspective. Is there an > issue here with the speech community? Do speakers of the varieties of > Odawa object to having their languages referred to as Ojibwe? > > Mary > > At 11:05 AM 6/1/2007, you wrote: > >Odawa, to be exact. > > > >David > > > > > > > I need to correct my earlier e-mail: Nishnaabemwin (Piriyawiboon's paper) > > > is Ojibwe, not Cree. > > > > > > Mary > > > > > From mawakuni-swetland2 at unlnotes.unl.edu Sun Jun 3 14:41:27 2007 From: mawakuni-swetland2 at unlnotes.unl.edu (Mark J Awakuni-Swetland) Date: Sun, 3 Jun 2007 09:41:27 -0500 Subject: local reactions to language family terms Message-ID: An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pankihtamwa at earthlink.net Sun Jun 3 18:54:12 2007 From: pankihtamwa at earthlink.net (David Costa) Date: Sun, 3 Jun 2007 11:54:12 -0700 Subject: obviation In-Reply-To: Message-ID: I'm no expert, but my impression was that the most commonly preferred name for the language of the Odawa by the people themselves was Nishnaabemwin. Of course, Nishnaabemwin is the same word as Ojibwe Anishinaabemowin, but run through Odawa's syncope rules. It's also worth pointing out that while no tribal communities in Canada use the name 'Ottawa' anymore (AFAIK), there is in fact a recognized Ottawa tribe in Oklahoma who always call themselves 'Ottawa'. Among the linguistic community, on the other hand, it's accepted that Odawa/Ottawa, Algonquin, Chippewa/Ojibwe, Salteaux, and Severn Ojibwe/Ojicree are all forms of one language complex, which linguists often call 'Ojibwean'. David > > Actually, that can be a pretty serious issue (speaker preference). > There are some Odaawaa speakers who dislike having their language > called Ojibwe, others who consider Ojibwe a "family" to which Odaawaa > belongs. Most Ojibwe/Chippewa people around these parts (Minnesota, > Wisconsin, Upper Peninsula) consider Odaawaa a different language from > their varieties, but there is great mutual intelligibility. Maybe a > safe, neutral terminology that would satisfy both linguists and > speakers would be something like "Odaawaa Ojibwe". I suppose you'd > have to ask an Odaawaa speaker to find out whether that would solve > the problem. I don't know any in this area. > > - Bryan > > 2007/6/2, Marino : >> I think of Odawa as a variety of Ojibwe and I tend to refer every named >> variety in the respective regions to either *Ojibwe* or *Cree* - I am sure >> that this is very inexact from an Algonquianist perspective. Is there an >> issue here with the speech community? Do speakers of the varieties of >> Odawa object to having their languages referred to as Ojibwe? >> >> Mary >> >> At 11:05 AM 6/1/2007, you wrote: >>> Odawa, to be exact. >>> >>> David >>> >>> >>>> I need to correct my earlier e-mail: Nishnaabemwin (Piriyawiboon's paper) >>>> is Ojibwe, not Cree. >>>> >>>> Mary >>>> >> >> From rankin at ku.edu Mon Jun 4 14:30:23 2007 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Mon, 4 Jun 2007 09:30:23 -0500 Subject: obviation Message-ID: Taking off from Dave's comment, since the granting agencies are forcing us to play these little games, I'd suggest (tongue- partly- in-cheek) that Mark call the language he wishes to document "ie angota" 'our language' (at least that's how it would be in Kansa). Then in parens use the ISO 3 letter codes for the bureaucrats. If that isn't viable, then just vary "Omaha and Ponca" with "Ponca and Omaha" throughout the document. I can't imagine how everyone could possibly be made happy no matter what you do though. People can be wonderfullly creative when it comes to obstructing the advance of knowledge. Bob > I'm no expert, but my impression was that the most commonly preferred name for the language of the Odawa by the people themselves was Nishnaabemwin. Of course, Nishnaabemwin is the same word as Ojibwe Anishinaabemowin, but run through Odawa's syncope rules. >> Actually, that can be a pretty serious issue (speaker preference). From linguista at gmail.com Mon Jun 4 20:47:15 2007 From: linguista at gmail.com (Bryan Gordon) Date: Mon, 4 Jun 2007 15:47:15 -0500 Subject: local reactions to language family terms In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Mark's comments are well-thought out and on target. I was speaking with a fellow graduate student (éshti waxé skáxti tHaN - quite white) about field work in indigenous communities earlier in the spring. As is typical of academics who know nothing about indigenous communities, she was completely shocked that there exist indigenous people who would reject the accumulated knowledge of the discipline of linguistics even in the face of rapidly shrinking speaker populations. She was also quite sure that there must be a simple, theoretically acceptable way to describe indigenous languages without offending anyone. That's just not the case. Linguists may grow tired of putting entries in their paper like "Language X, also known as Y, a member of the Z family, referred to as W by speakers from place V, as U by speakers from place T, and not considered to be the same language by speakers of mutually intelligible language S..." but that's just a hazard of the profession! The reality is that the landscape of political designation and cultural designation is constantly shifting, and that linguists, even indigenous linguists, are a part of a colonial academic system that has no right to make those decisions on behalf of any indigenous community. As I see it, we are faced with two choices: either we fill our papers with long-winded descriptions like the one above, or we choose to behave disrespectfully towards speaker communities. I know which choice I prefer! C'mon, our rep is already bad enough, let's not make it worse for the sake of brevity in one section of a paper. There is no easy answer, and as soon as we think we have found one, we are already beginning down the path of entitlement and disrespect. - Bryan Gordon PS: Here are a couple of templates I use regularly in my writing: Ponca is a language indigenous to the area of the Niobrara Valley, part of present-day Nebraska and South Dakota. The language's main speech community is currently located in north central Oklahoma. Ponca is mutually intelligible with the Omaha language, but is not considered by Ponca and Omaha people to be the same language. Linguists usually speak of the "Omaha-Ponca" language, of the "Dhegiha" family (Siouan - Central - Mississippi Valley). Ojibwe is the name of some closely related languages and also of a family of languages. Minnesota Ojibwe, also called Chippewa, is spoken in present-day Minnesota. Closely related forms are also spoken in Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Salteaux, from western Ontario and eastern Manitoba, is considered by some, but not all, speakers, to be the same language. In the language itself, "Anishinaabemowin" is used to describe this particular language, while "Ojibwemowin" may be used to describe either this language or the whole family. The family also includes "Nishnaabemwin," or Ottawa, which is spoken in central and eastern Ontario, and is similar to forms spoken in the islands of Lake Huron. This form is not considered to be the same language, but is sometimes referred to as "Ojibwe" as well. Anishinaabemowin and Nishnaabemwin fluent speakers enjoy extensive mutual intelligibility, but this may not be the case for all speakers. These descriptions are long, it is true, but I believe they only barely pass the muster of descriptive sufficiency. 2007/6/3, Mark J Awakuni-Swetland : > Yes, it can be an emotion-driven mess. > > I recall the discussion raised by our Wichita hosts at the Anadarko SCLC a > few years ago. They voiced opposition to the label "Caddoan" being applied > to their language. David Rood gave a credible explanation about it being a > linguist-applied term that did not intend any classification or attack upon > the individual tribe's status, language, or sovereignty... to little avail. > > In a recent grant application I described an O/P dictionary project... with > the O/P reflecting Dorsey's classification. When I approached the Southern > Ponca for a letter of support their first comments were about that > designation. They requested I change the project title to "Omaha and Ponca" > so as to reduce the impression that the Ponca are somehow part of the > "Omaha". > > Bryan suggests asking an Odaawaa person for clarification on tribal > preferences. Yet we all know that one person cannot represent the tribe > (although outsiders routinely settle on the approachable or pliable > individual's opinion as being representative of the whole). > > Even in the Southern Ponca situation, the former Council's ideas did not > represent the current Council's ideology... and neither were guaranteed to > represent all of the factions of the community. > > Uthixide > Mark Awakuni-Swetland > oNska abthiN! > > -----owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu wrote: ----- > > To: siouan at lists.colorado.edu > From: "Bryan Gordon" > Sent by: owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu > Date: 06/02/2007 03:59PM > Subject: Re: obviation > > Actually, that can be a pretty serious issue (speaker preference). > There are some Odaawaa speakers who dislike having their language > called Ojibwe, others who consider Ojibwe a "family" to which Odaawaa > belongs. Most Ojibwe/Chippewa people around these parts (Minnesota, > Wisconsin, Upper Peninsula) consider Odaawaa a different language from > their varieties, but there is great mutual intelligibility. Maybe a > safe, neutral terminology that would satisfy both linguists and > speakers would be something like "Odaawaa Ojibwe". I suppose you'd > have to ask an Odaawaa speaker to find out whether that would solve > the problem. I don't know any in this area. > > - Bryan > > 2007/6/2, Marino : > > I think of Odawa as a variety of Ojibwe and I tend to refer every named > > variety in the respective regions to either *Ojibwe* or *Cree* - I am sure > > that this is very inexact from an Algonquianist perspective. Is there an > > issue here with the speech community? Do speakers of the varieties of > > Odawa object to having their languages referred to as Ojibwe? > > > > Mary > > > > At 11:05 AM 6/1/2007, you wrote: > > >Odawa, to be exact. > > > > > >David > > > > > > > > > > I need to correct my earlier e-mail: Nishnaabemwin (Piriyawiboon's > paper) > > > > is Ojibwe, not Cree. > > > > > > > > Mary > > > > > > > > > > From willemdereuse at unt.edu Mon Jun 4 22:42:06 2007 From: willemdereuse at unt.edu (willemdereuse at unt.edu) Date: Mon, 4 Jun 2007 17:42:06 -0500 Subject: local reactions to language family terms In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Very interesting comments from Mark and Bryan. To some extent, name recognition makes it a bit easier. I work with Apaches, and I do not see any move to change the term Apache to the Native term Nnee, or Ndee, or Dinde, etc. etc., whereas Navajos like the term Dine and Papagos are now Tohono O'odham. The term Apache is so recognizable, even though it is, as far as we can tell, a Zuni word for enemy! Also if one used the native words for "Apache", one would have to decide on which spelling to use, depending on which Aapche variety/language. Apache is equally un-Apache to al Aapches and that si its appeal... From linguista at gmail.com Mon Jun 4 23:44:57 2007 From: linguista at gmail.com (Bryan Gordon) Date: Mon, 4 Jun 2007 18:44:57 -0500 Subject: obviation In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Back to the main topic: I found this example from Nishnaabemwin/Ottawa/Odaawaa/East Ojibwe: Gakina ogii-boodaakwenan aniw makakoonsan bangwaaboo ate-magak. All PST-she.put.in.kettle the little.boxes lye being.there Nibaagoba aw abinoojiins. Sleep.DUB.PRET the child. Ogii-odaapinaan. PST-she.picked.her.up. What's interesting here is that the object marker in the third sentence is obviative, but the child is not marked obviative in the second sentence. I'm not saying this is different from how it would work in Siouan, in fact it's probably exactly the same. What it definitely means for me is that obviation has just as much to do with simple case as with referent tracking. The only reason the child needs to be marked obviative in "Ogii-odaapinaan" is that there is another third-person referent from which the child must be disambiguated, and as the object the child gets marked obviative. 2007/6/4, Rankin, Robert L : > Taking off from Dave's comment, since the granting agencies are forcing us to play these little games, I'd suggest (tongue- partly- in-cheek) that Mark call the language he wishes to document "ie angota" 'our language' (at least that's how it would be in Kansa). Then in parens use the ISO 3 letter codes for the bureaucrats. If that isn't viable, then just vary "Omaha and Ponca" with "Ponca and Omaha" throughout the document. I can't imagine how everyone could possibly be made happy no matter what you do though. People can be wonderfullly creative when it comes to obstructing the advance of knowledge. Bob > > > I'm no expert, but my impression was that the most commonly preferred name > for the language of the Odawa by the people themselves was Nishnaabemwin. Of > course, Nishnaabemwin is the same word as Ojibwe Anishinaabemowin, but run > through Odawa's syncope rules. > > >> Actually, that can be a pretty serious issue (speaker preference). > > > From lameen at gmail.com Mon Jun 4 23:46:42 2007 From: lameen at gmail.com (Lameen Souag) Date: Tue, 5 Jun 2007 00:46:42 +0100 Subject: local reactions to language family terms In-Reply-To: Message-ID: I'm not sure whether this was the author's intention, but Bryan's comments gave me the impression of saying that what we say about a given language should to some extent be determined by the preferred ideologies of their speakers. Now whether to call two more-or-less mutually intelligible speech varieties the same or different languages is usually determined by political as well as linguistic factors (you don't often hear people talk about dialects of the Scandinavian language, for example); and it's hard to see what calling a given variety a "language" or a "dialect" of some other language says that can't be said more precisely by talking about degrees of mutual intelligibility. Even the name of a language family is essentially arbitrary; if words like "Bantu" or "Caddoan" are found to be politically problematic, changing them is inconvenient but possible. But it is worth setting out such justifications clearly, if only to encourage thinking about where linguists should draw the line. If some speakers of Wichita were to object not just to the term "Caddoan" but to linguists saying their language is related to Caddo (the way some Hungarians object to the idea that their language is related to Finnish), should linguists working on the language steer clear of doing any classification or reconstruction? If some speakers of Hebrew object to Hebrew being described as a descendant of Proto-Semitic or any other implication that Hebrew has not been around since the creation of the universe (as a few do), should linguists stop attempting to reconstruct Proto-Semitic? If the Libyan government insists that Berber/Tamazight is descended from Arabic (as it does), should linguists working on Libyan Berber languages make the same claim and cite government-approved papers in support of it (thus, incidentally, offending at least some speakers of those languages)? I would hope not; yet scenarios are easily conceivable where these would have exactly the same practical advantages as the far less problematic practice of not calling two mutually intelligible varieties the same language. - Lameen Souag On 04/06/07, Bryan Gordon wrote: > Mark's comments are well-thought out and on target. I was speaking > with a fellow graduate student (éshti waxé skáxti tHaN - quite white) > about field work in indigenous communities earlier in the spring. As > is typical of academics who know nothing about indigenous communities, > she was completely shocked that there exist indigenous people who > would reject the accumulated knowledge of the discipline of > linguistics even in the face of rapidly shrinking speaker populations. > She was also quite sure that there must be a simple, theoretically > acceptable way to describe indigenous languages without offending > anyone. > > That's just not the case. Linguists may grow tired of putting entries > in their paper like "Language X, also known as Y, a member of the Z > family, referred to as W by speakers from place V, as U by speakers > from place T, and not considered to be the same language by speakers > of mutually intelligible language S..." but that's just a hazard of > the profession! The reality is that the landscape of political > designation and cultural designation is constantly shifting, and that > linguists, even indigenous linguists, are a part of a colonial > academic system that has no right to make those decisions on behalf of > any indigenous community. > > As I see it, we are faced with two choices: either we fill our papers > with long-winded descriptions like the one above, or we choose to > behave disrespectfully towards speaker communities. I know which > choice I prefer! C'mon, our rep is already bad enough, let's not make > it worse for the sake of brevity in one section of a paper. There is > no easy answer, and as soon as we think we have found one, we are > already beginning down the path of entitlement and disrespect. > > - Bryan Gordon > > PS: Here are a couple of templates I use regularly in my writing: > Ponca is a language indigenous to the area of the Niobrara Valley, > part of present-day Nebraska and South Dakota. The language's main > speech community is currently located in north central Oklahoma. Ponca > is mutually intelligible with the Omaha language, but is not > considered by Ponca and Omaha people to be the same language. > Linguists usually speak of the "Omaha-Ponca" language, of the > "Dhegiha" family (Siouan - Central - Mississippi Valley). > Ojibwe is the name of some closely related languages and also of a > family of languages. Minnesota Ojibwe, also called Chippewa, is spoken > in present-day Minnesota. Closely related forms are also spoken in > Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Salteaux, from western > Ontario and eastern Manitoba, is considered by some, but not all, > speakers, to be the same language. In the language itself, > "Anishinaabemowin" is used to describe this particular language, while > "Ojibwemowin" may be used to describe either this language or the > whole family. The family also includes "Nishnaabemwin," or Ottawa, > which is spoken in central and eastern Ontario, and is similar to > forms spoken in the islands of Lake Huron. This form is not considered > to be the same language, but is sometimes referred to as "Ojibwe" as > well. Anishinaabemowin and Nishnaabemwin fluent speakers enjoy > extensive mutual intelligibility, but this may not be the case for all > speakers. > These descriptions are long, it is true, but I believe they only > barely pass the muster of descriptive sufficiency. > > 2007/6/3, Mark J Awakuni-Swetland : > > Yes, it can be an emotion-driven mess. > > > > I recall the discussion raised by our Wichita hosts at the Anadarko SCLC a > > few years ago. They voiced opposition to the label "Caddoan" being applied > > to their language. David Rood gave a credible explanation about it being a > > linguist-applied term that did not intend any classification or attack upon > > the individual tribe's status, language, or sovereignty... to little avail. > > > > In a recent grant application I described an O/P dictionary project... with > > the O/P reflecting Dorsey's classification. When I approached the Southern > > Ponca for a letter of support their first comments were about that > > designation. They requested I change the project title to "Omaha and Ponca" > > so as to reduce the impression that the Ponca are somehow part of the > > "Omaha". > > > > Bryan suggests asking an Odaawaa person for clarification on tribal > > preferences. Yet we all know that one person cannot represent the tribe > > (although outsiders routinely settle on the approachable or pliable > > individual's opinion as being representative of the whole). > > > > Even in the Southern Ponca situation, the former Council's ideas did not > > represent the current Council's ideology... and neither were guaranteed to > > represent all of the factions of the community. > > > > Uthixide > > Mark Awakuni-Swetland > > oNska abthiN! > > > > -----owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu wrote: ----- > > > > To: siouan at lists.colorado.edu > > From: "Bryan Gordon" > > Sent by: owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu > > Date: 06/02/2007 03:59PM > > Subject: Re: obviation > > > > Actually, that can be a pretty serious issue (speaker preference). > > There are some Odaawaa speakers who dislike having their language > > called Ojibwe, others who consider Ojibwe a "family" to which Odaawaa > > belongs. Most Ojibwe/Chippewa people around these parts (Minnesota, > > Wisconsin, Upper Peninsula) consider Odaawaa a different language from > > their varieties, but there is great mutual intelligibility. Maybe a > > safe, neutral terminology that would satisfy both linguists and > > speakers would be something like "Odaawaa Ojibwe". I suppose you'd > > have to ask an Odaawaa speaker to find out whether that would solve > > the problem. I don't know any in this area. > > > > - Bryan > > > > 2007/6/2, Marino : > > > I think of Odawa as a variety of Ojibwe and I tend to refer every named > > > variety in the respective regions to either *Ojibwe* or *Cree* - I am sure > > > that this is very inexact from an Algonquianist perspective. Is there an > > > issue here with the speech community? Do speakers of the varieties of > > > Odawa object to having their languages referred to as Ojibwe? > > > > > > Mary > > > > > > At 11:05 AM 6/1/2007, you wrote: > > > >Odawa, to be exact. > > > > > > > >David > > > > > > > > > > > > > I need to correct my earlier e-mail: Nishnaabemwin (Piriyawiboon's > > paper) > > > > > is Ojibwe, not Cree. > > > > > > > > > > Mary > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > From linguista at gmail.com Tue Jun 5 00:21:18 2007 From: linguista at gmail.com (Bryan Gordon) Date: Mon, 4 Jun 2007 19:21:18 -0500 Subject: local reactions to language family terms In-Reply-To: <375f01a70706041646y240f21fq697358b53021d3e6@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: I think it is possible to be sensitive and respectful to the wishes of those in the community while at the same time keeping to the rigours and standards of academia, for the most part. I have argued that Israeli Hebrew is to large extent a relexified Slavic/Germanic creole, and that hits much closer to home than any claim that Wichita and Caddo come from the same language thousands of years ago. If linguists want to claim this latter point (and most do), while not angering our hosts (and we are at best guests in a host's household and should do well to remember that), then we can simply explicitly state the point rather than using terminological shorthand like "Wichita is a Caddoan language." Why not try, "Most linguists believe that Wichita and Caddo languages both come from the same language long, long ago, and someone somewhere decided to use the word Caddoan to describe this, but this does not mean that Wichita people are Caddo people!" If that is still too offensive to work with, maybe the methods of linguistics are simply not welcome in the Wichita household, which is a contingency we should always be prepared to work with. 2007/6/4, Lameen Souag : > I'm not sure whether this was the author's intention, but Bryan's > comments gave me the impression of saying that what we say about a > given language should to some extent be determined by the preferred > ideologies of their speakers. > > Now whether to call two more-or-less mutually intelligible speech > varieties the same or different languages is usually determined by > political as well as linguistic factors (you don't often hear people > talk about dialects of the Scandinavian language, for example); and > it's hard to see what calling a given variety a "language" or a > "dialect" of some other language says that can't be said more > precisely by talking about degrees of mutual intelligibility. Even > the name of a language family is essentially arbitrary; if words like > "Bantu" or "Caddoan" are found to be politically problematic, changing > them is inconvenient but possible. > > But it is worth setting out such justifications clearly, if only to > encourage thinking about where linguists should draw the line. If > some speakers of Wichita were to object not just to the term "Caddoan" > but to linguists saying their language is related to Caddo (the way > some Hungarians object to the idea that their language is related to > Finnish), should linguists working on the language steer clear of > doing any classification or reconstruction? If some speakers of > Hebrew object to Hebrew being described as a descendant of > Proto-Semitic or any other implication that Hebrew has not been around > since the creation of the universe (as a few do), should linguists > stop attempting to reconstruct Proto-Semitic? If the Libyan > government insists that Berber/Tamazight is descended from Arabic (as > it does), should linguists working on Libyan Berber languages make the > same claim and cite government-approved papers in support of it (thus, > incidentally, offending at least some speakers of those languages)? I > would hope not; yet scenarios are easily conceivable where these would > have exactly the same practical advantages as the far less problematic > practice of not calling two mutually intelligible varieties the same > language. > > - Lameen Souag > > On 04/06/07, Bryan Gordon wrote: > > Mark's comments are well-thought out and on target. I was speaking > > with a fellow graduate student (éshti waxé skáxti tHaN - quite white) > > about field work in indigenous communities earlier in the spring. As > > is typical of academics who know nothing about indigenous communities, > > she was completely shocked that there exist indigenous people who > > would reject the accumulated knowledge of the discipline of > > linguistics even in the face of rapidly shrinking speaker populations. > > She was also quite sure that there must be a simple, theoretically > > acceptable way to describe indigenous languages without offending > > anyone. > > > > That's just not the case. Linguists may grow tired of putting entries > > in their paper like "Language X, also known as Y, a member of the Z > > family, referred to as W by speakers from place V, as U by speakers > > from place T, and not considered to be the same language by speakers > > of mutually intelligible language S..." but that's just a hazard of > > the profession! The reality is that the landscape of political > > designation and cultural designation is constantly shifting, and that > > linguists, even indigenous linguists, are a part of a colonial > > academic system that has no right to make those decisions on behalf of > > any indigenous community. > > > > As I see it, we are faced with two choices: either we fill our papers > > with long-winded descriptions like the one above, or we choose to > > behave disrespectfully towards speaker communities. I know which > > choice I prefer! C'mon, our rep is already bad enough, let's not make > > it worse for the sake of brevity in one section of a paper. There is > > no easy answer, and as soon as we think we have found one, we are > > already beginning down the path of entitlement and disrespect. > > > > - Bryan Gordon > > > > PS: Here are a couple of templates I use regularly in my writing: > > Ponca is a language indigenous to the area of the Niobrara Valley, > > part of present-day Nebraska and South Dakota. The language's main > > speech community is currently located in north central Oklahoma. Ponca > > is mutually intelligible with the Omaha language, but is not > > considered by Ponca and Omaha people to be the same language. > > Linguists usually speak of the "Omaha-Ponca" language, of the > > "Dhegiha" family (Siouan - Central - Mississippi Valley). > > Ojibwe is the name of some closely related languages and also of a > > family of languages. Minnesota Ojibwe, also called Chippewa, is spoken > > in present-day Minnesota. Closely related forms are also spoken in > > Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Salteaux, from western > > Ontario and eastern Manitoba, is considered by some, but not all, > > speakers, to be the same language. In the language itself, > > "Anishinaabemowin" is used to describe this particular language, while > > "Ojibwemowin" may be used to describe either this language or the > > whole family. The family also includes "Nishnaabemwin," or Ottawa, > > which is spoken in central and eastern Ontario, and is similar to > > forms spoken in the islands of Lake Huron. This form is not considered > > to be the same language, but is sometimes referred to as "Ojibwe" as > > well. Anishinaabemowin and Nishnaabemwin fluent speakers enjoy > > extensive mutual intelligibility, but this may not be the case for all > > speakers. > > These descriptions are long, it is true, but I believe they only > > barely pass the muster of descriptive sufficiency. > > > > 2007/6/3, Mark J Awakuni-Swetland : > > > Yes, it can be an emotion-driven mess. > > > > > > I recall the discussion raised by our Wichita hosts at the Anadarko SCLC a > > > few years ago. They voiced opposition to the label "Caddoan" being applied > > > to their language. David Rood gave a credible explanation about it being a > > > linguist-applied term that did not intend any classification or attack upon > > > the individual tribe's status, language, or sovereignty... to little avail. > > > > > > In a recent grant application I described an O/P dictionary project... with > > > the O/P reflecting Dorsey's classification. When I approached the Southern > > > Ponca for a letter of support their first comments were about that > > > designation. They requested I change the project title to "Omaha and Ponca" > > > so as to reduce the impression that the Ponca are somehow part of the > > > "Omaha". > > > > > > Bryan suggests asking an Odaawaa person for clarification on tribal > > > preferences. Yet we all know that one person cannot represent the tribe > > > (although outsiders routinely settle on the approachable or pliable > > > individual's opinion as being representative of the whole). > > > > > > Even in the Southern Ponca situation, the former Council's ideas did not > > > represent the current Council's ideology... and neither were guaranteed to > > > represent all of the factions of the community. > > > > > > Uthixide > > > Mark Awakuni-Swetland > > > oNska abthiN! > > > > > > -----owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu wrote: ----- > > > > > > To: siouan at lists.colorado.edu > > > From: "Bryan Gordon" > > > Sent by: owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu > > > Date: 06/02/2007 03:59PM > > > Subject: Re: obviation > > > > > > Actually, that can be a pretty serious issue (speaker preference). > > > There are some Odaawaa speakers who dislike having their language > > > called Ojibwe, others who consider Ojibwe a "family" to which Odaawaa > > > belongs. Most Ojibwe/Chippewa people around these parts (Minnesota, > > > Wisconsin, Upper Peninsula) consider Odaawaa a different language from > > > their varieties, but there is great mutual intelligibility. Maybe a > > > safe, neutral terminology that would satisfy both linguists and > > > speakers would be something like "Odaawaa Ojibwe". I suppose you'd > > > have to ask an Odaawaa speaker to find out whether that would solve > > > the problem. I don't know any in this area. > > > > > > - Bryan > > > > > > 2007/6/2, Marino : > > > > I think of Odawa as a variety of Ojibwe and I tend to refer every named > > > > variety in the respective regions to either *Ojibwe* or *Cree* - I am sure > > > > that this is very inexact from an Algonquianist perspective. Is there an > > > > issue here with the speech community? Do speakers of the varieties of > > > > Odawa object to having their languages referred to as Ojibwe? > > > > > > > > Mary > > > > > > > > At 11:05 AM 6/1/2007, you wrote: > > > > >Odawa, to be exact. > > > > > > > > > >David > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > I need to correct my earlier e-mail: Nishnaabemwin (Piriyawiboon's > > > paper) > > > > > > is Ojibwe, not Cree. > > > > > > > > > > > > Mary > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > From pustetrm at yahoo.com Tue Jun 5 09:59:20 2007 From: pustetrm at yahoo.com (REGINA PUSTET) Date: Tue, 5 Jun 2007 02:59:20 -0700 Subject: SCLC 07 In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Hi Bob, How’s it going? I’m glad that the date for SCLC ‘07 has been changed. It’s a lot easier for me to attend that way. I have applied for some funding (travel money) for this conference, and in order to complete this application, my institution needs to know the exact date of the conference. Would it be possible to obtain some official or semi-official document from you that can be used for this purpose? Such as a general announcement on Siouanlist or something like that. In the previous announcements, the date was not 100% clear yet, as I understand it. Thanks a lot! I’m also attaching my conference abstract. Best, Regina --------------------------------- The fish are biting. Get more visitors on your site using Yahoo! Search Marketing. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: abstract.doc Type: application/msword Size: 23552 bytes Desc: 1585669817-abstract.doc URL: From pustetrm at yahoo.com Tue Jun 5 10:14:10 2007 From: pustetrm at yahoo.com (REGINA PUSTET) Date: Tue, 5 Jun 2007 03:14:10 -0700 Subject: SCLC 07 In-Reply-To: <533619.44772.qm@web54604.mail.re2.yahoo.com> Message-ID: My previous message was meant for Bob Rankin only, but I inadvertently sent it to the whole list. Sorry! Regina REGINA PUSTET wrote: Hi Bob, How’s it going? I’m glad that the date for SCLC ‘07 has been changed. It’s a lot easier for me to attend that way. I have applied for some funding (travel money) for this conference, and in order to complete this application, my institution needs to know the exact date of the conference. Would it be possible to obtain some official or semi-official document from you that can be used for this purpose? Such as a general announcement on Siouanlist or something like that. In the previous announcements, the date was not 100% clear yet, as I understand it. Thanks a lot! I’m also attaching my conference abstract. Best, Regina --------------------------------- The fish are biting. Get more visitors on your site using Yahoo! Search Marketing. --------------------------------- Be a better Heartthrob. Get better relationship answers from someone who knows. Yahoo! Answers - Check it out. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From heike.boedeker at netcologne.de Tue Jun 5 13:39:59 2007 From: heike.boedeker at netcologne.de (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Heike_B=F6deker?=) Date: Tue, 5 Jun 2007 15:39:59 +0200 Subject: Differential case marking in Algonquian (was: obviation in Siouan languages) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Dear Bryan, > It is not clear whether two referents are "stuck" with > their obviation/proximacy assignments once assigned. Any No, they definitely aren't stuck with any of that. There's multiple proximatives (all NPs marked PRX instead of an PRX/OBV gradation), as well as both proximate and obviate shifts attested. A good account probably still being Goddard (1984) for Fox. Whereby Fox seems to not make much use of absolutives, i.e. zero-marked NPs, which are pervasive e.g. in Blackfoot and Potawatomi (Hockett 1948, text I, b): nušnape-cu ?o-weni?ke-t ?esp:un indian:AN-TOP DEM-go.trap:AI-3:PTC racoon:AN ki-yawu. PT-accompany:AI "The Indian, who (=> when) he went trapping, the raccon was with him. Instead of otherweise expected either: nušnape-n-cu niw-weni?ke-nu-t ?esp:un ki-yawu or: nušnape-cu ?o-weni?ke-t ?esp:un-un ki-yaw-nu-t. > Algonquianists know the answer? If so, then certainly > there is some referent-tracking behaviour going on here; > if not, though, it's not clear that this is any more than > a weird sort of case-marking. Partly it certainly does serve referent-tracking functions, but I for one wouldn't hesitate to call that differential case marking actually. It's not all that weird to have both differential subject as well as differential object marking, c.f. e.g. Burmese. > I'd be interested in whether there are any cases of > obviation in Ojibwe sentences with inverse thematic > morphology (where the argument structure is the reverse > of the animacy hierarchy - this has sometimes been called > passive, but is not). I've never seen any such cases. Of > course, it's not even theoretically possible in OP, as > we'll see. I'm not sure I understand this correctly. Just why should an inverse verb form not be able to occur with an OBV marked NP? Apart from the fact it indeed is not a passive because it is not detransitivized (Alg. lgs. additionally have such options, too, btw) but transitive, horribile dictu like an ergative construction. Anyway, if Cree textbook examples (taken from Ellis ²1983) will do as a first starter: Moos kii-kiisis-ok-ow ni-kaawiy-a elk:AN PV:AFF-cook-INV-PRX 1:POR-mother-OBV "The elk (PRX) was cooked by my mother (OBV)" That also works in the conjunct order, btw (Ellis ²1983: 504): Tantee kaa-ataawee-t where? CO:REL-sell:AI-3:S kaa-iši-nakat-ikot o-kosis-a CO:REL-ANA-leave:TA/TI-4>3 3:POR-son:AN-OBV "Where did the trader's son leave him?" References: Ellis, Clarence Douglas (²1983): Spoken Cree. West coast of James Bay. Edmonton, AB: Pica Pica Goddard, Ives (1984): The obviative in Fox narrative discourse.PAC 15: 273-286 Hockett, Charles F. (1948): Potawatomi, IV: Particles and sample texts. IJAL 14/4, 213-225 All the best, Heike From rankin at ku.edu Tue Jun 5 14:20:19 2007 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Tue, 5 Jun 2007 09:20:19 -0500 Subject: FW from Linguist List: MALC 2007. Official announcement and call for papers. Message-ID: Full Title: Mid America Linguistics Conference Short Title: MALC Location: Lawrence, Kansas, USA Start Date: 26-Oct-2007 - 28-Oct-2007 Contact: Sara Rosen Meeting Email: rosen at ku.edu Meeting URL: http://www.linguistics.ku.edu Meeting Description: The Department of Linguistics at the University of Kansas is pleased to announce that it will be hosting the 2007 Mid-America Linguistics Conference (MALC). The conference will take place on October 26-28 2007 at the University of Kansas campus in Lawrence. We invite abstracts in all areas of linguistics, including (but not restricted to) phonology, phonetics, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, historical linguistics, sociolinguistics, neurolinguistics, and psycholinguistics. Interdisciplinary papers are more then welcome. This year's meeting will feature special interest sessions on Psycho/Neurolinguistics, Endangered Languages, and/or African Languages. Each presentation will be allowed 20 minutes plus 10 minutes for discussion. You may also submit to the poster session. Linguistic Subfield: General Linguistics LL Issue: 18.1433 Mid America Linguistics Conference Call for Papers Call Deadline: 01-Aug-2007 Please send abstracts of maximum 500 words in Word or PDF format to Mircea Sauciuc (mcs at ku.edu) or Sara Rosen (rosen at ku.edu). Your name, affiliation, mailing address and email address should be included in the body of the email, in addition to whether you are submitting to a poster or presentation session. The deadline for abstract submission is August 1, 2007. Acceptance notification will go out by early September. From shokoohbanou at yahoo.co.uk Wed Jun 6 13:37:44 2007 From: shokoohbanou at yahoo.co.uk (shokooh Ingham) Date: Wed, 6 Jun 2007 14:37:44 +0100 Subject: obviation in Siouan languages In-Reply-To: Message-ID: It would be a great help if they were, as I always find this difficult in Lakota. The is^ eya complex often seems to signify a change of topic or subject, but it is very hard to tie down Bruce ROOD DAVID S wrote: Lungstrum's dissertation claims that chanke and yukhan are switch reference markers, defining "reference" as any major change of scene, characters, point of view, or some other discontinuity. I wasn't convinced. David David S. Rood Dept. of Linguistics Univ. of Colorado 295 UCB Boulder, CO 80309-0295 USA rood at colorado.edu On Fri, 1 Jun 2007, willemdereuse at unt.edu wrote: > Hi all: > > I have always thought that the chankhe/yunkhan alternation of conjunctions in > Lakota texts, first discussed by Chafe (I think) and then by Dahlstrom had > something to do with obviation. It is definitely not switch-reference. Does > Richard Lungstrum's diss. say anything about this? I am sorry to say I have > not yet gotten hold of a copy of Richard's diss. > > Willem de Reuse Quoting "Rankin, Robert L" : > >> As Rory points out, Dhegiha languages have something very similar >> distinguishing primary from non-primary actors. Ardis's dissertation was >> at least partly on this distinction in Omaha. >> >> I have toyed with the idea of trying to redefine the "switch-reference" >> distinction in those Siouan languages that have it as an obviation >> distinction. Such redefinition clearly works in Muskogean, where it is the >> only way to tie "S-R" and argument marking particles together without a >> hopelessly complex appeal to homophony, but I haven't really gotten down to >> the business of trying to demonstrate it in Siouan. Clearly the more >> inclusive concept of "referent tracking" operates in Siouan grammars, >> though it differs from language to language. If I had to guess, I'd say it >> is historically primary in Algonquian but secondary in Siouan. >> >> What were the papers you're referring to on Algonquian? >> >> Bob >> >> ________________________________ >> >> From: owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu on behalf of Marino >> Sent: Thu 5/31/2007 12:20 AM >> To: siouan at lists.colorado.edu >> Subject: obviation in Siouan languages >> >> >> >> There were two excellent papers on obviation in Cree at the CLA >> meetings. One of the presenters asked me if there is obviation in any of >> the Siouan languages. I have a vague memory that this has come up before, >> but I can't find time to troll through the archives. Any suggestions? >> >> Best >> Mary Marino >> >> >> >> > > --------------------------------- Yahoo! Mail is the world's favourite email. Don't settle for less, sign up for your freeaccount today. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pustetrm at yahoo.com Thu Jun 7 09:36:42 2007 From: pustetrm at yahoo.com (REGINA PUSTET) Date: Thu, 7 Jun 2007 02:36:42 -0700 Subject: obviation in Siouan languages In-Reply-To: <782368.77186.qm@web27007.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Message-ID: In my data, i(N)s^ is used mainly as a marker for strong contrast, as in Sally is^tiNme na Harry iNs^ TV waNyaNke S. sleep and H. CON TV watch ‘Sally is sleeping and Harry is watching TV’ or Sally is^tiNme na iNs^ Harry TV waNyaNke S. sleep and CON H. TV watch ‘Sally is sleeping and Harry is watching TV’ This can, but doesn’t have to, be accompanied by topic change, introduction of a different argument, and similar notions. Regina shokooh Ingham wrote: It would be a great help if they were, as I always find this difficult in Lakota. The is^ eya complex often seems to signify a change of topic or subject, but it is very hard to tie down Bruce ROOD DAVID S wrote: Lungstrum's dissertation claims that chanke and yukhan are switch reference markers, defining "reference" as any major change of scene, characters, point of view, or some other discontinuity. I wasn't convinced. David David S. Rood Dept. of Linguistics Univ. of Colorado 295 UCB Boulder, CO 80309-0295 USA rood at colorado.edu On Fri, 1 Jun 2007, willemdereuse at unt.edu wrote: > Hi all: > > I have always thought that the chankhe/yunkhan alternation of conjunctions in > Lakota texts, first discussed by Chafe (I think) and then by Dahlstrom had > something to do with obviation. It is definitely not switch-reference. Does > Richard Lungstrum's diss. say anything about this? I am sorry to say I have > not yet gotten hold of a copy of Richard's diss. > > Willem de Reuse Quoting "Rankin, Robert L" : > >> As Rory points out, Dhegiha languages have something very similar >> distinguishing primary from non-primary actors. Ardis's dissertation was >> at least partly on this distinction in Omaha. >> >> I have toyed with the idea of trying to redefine the "switch-reference" >> distinction in those Siouan languages that have it as an obviation >> distinction. Such redefinition clearly works in Muskogean, where it is the >> only way to tie "S-R" and argument marking particles together without a >> hopelessly complex appeal to homophony, but I haven't really gotten down to >> the business of trying to demonstrate it in Siouan. Clearly the more >> inclusive concept of "referent tracking" operates in Siouan grammars, >> though it differs from language to language. If I had to guess, I'd say it >> is historically primary in Algonquian but secondary in Siouan. >> >> What were the papers you're referring to on Algonquian? >> >> Bob >> >> ________________________________ >> >> From: owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu on behalf of Marino >> Sent: Thu 5/31/2007 12:20 AM >> To: siouan at lists.colorado.edu >> Subject: obviation in Siouan languages >> >> >> >> There were two excellent papers on obviation in Cree at the CLA >> meetings. One of the presenters asked me if there is obviation in any of >> the Siouan languages. I have a vague memory that this has come up before, >> but I can't find time to troll through the archives. Any suggestions? >> >> Best >> Mary Marino >> >> >> >> > > --------------------------------- Yahoo! Mail is the world's favourite email. Don't settle for less, sign up for your free account today. --------------------------------- You snooze, you lose. Get messages ASAP with AutoCheck in the all-new Yahoo! Mail Beta. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From shokoohbanou at yahoo.co.uk Thu Jun 7 10:57:43 2007 From: shokoohbanou at yahoo.co.uk (shokooh Ingham) Date: Thu, 7 Jun 2007 11:57:43 +0100 Subject: obviation in Siouan languages In-Reply-To: <548946.95772.qm@web54608.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Interestingly, however, your two examples do show change of topic. Can you think of an example where it doesn't? Bruce REGINA PUSTET wrote: In my data, i(N)s^ is used mainly as a marker for strong contrast, as in Sally is^tiNme na Harry iNs^ TV waNyaNke S. sleep and H. CON TV watch ‘Sally is sleeping and Harry is watching TV’ or Sally is^tiNme na iNs^ Harry TV waNyaNke S. sleep and CON H. TV watch ‘Sally is sleeping and Harry is watching TV’ This can, but doesn’t have to, be accompanied by topic change, introduction of a different argument, and similar notions. Regina shokooh Ingham wrote: It would be a great help if they were, as I always find this difficult in Lakota. The is^ eya complex often seems to signify a change of topic or subject, but it is very hard to tie down Bruce ROOD DAVID S wrote: Lungstrum's dissertation claims that chanke and yukhan are switch reference markers, defining "reference" as any major change of scene, characters, point of view, or some other discontinuity. I wasn't convinced. David David S. Rood Dept. of Linguistics Univ. of Colorado 295 UCB Boulder, CO 80309-0295 USA rood at colorado.edu On Fri, 1 Jun 2007, willemdereuse at unt.edu wrote: > Hi all: > > I have always thought that the chankhe/yunkhan alternation of conjunctions in > Lakota texts, first discussed by Chafe (I think) and then by Dahlstrom had > something to do with obviation. It is definitely not switch-reference. Does > Richard Lungstrum's diss. say anything about this? I am sorry to say I have > not yet gotten hold of a copy of Richard's diss. > > Willem de Reuse Quoting "Rankin, Robert L" : > >> As Rory points out, Dhegiha languages have something very similar >> distinguishing primary from non-primary actors. Ardis's dissertation was >> at least partly on this distinction in Omaha. >> >> I have toyed with the idea of trying to redefine the "switch-reference" >> distinction in those Siouan languages that have it as an obviation >> distinction. Such redefinition clearly works in Muskogean, where it is the >> only way to tie "S-R" and argument marking particles together without a >> hopelessly complex appeal to homophony, but I haven't really gotten down to >> the business of trying to demonstrate it in Siouan. Clearly the more >> inclusive concept of "referent tracking" operates in Siouan grammars, >> though it differs from language to language. If I had to guess, I'd say it >> is historically primary in Algonquian but secondary in Siouan. >> >> What were the papers you're referring to on Algonquian? >> >> Bob >> >> ________________________________ >> >> From: owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu on behalf of Marino >> Sent: Thu 5/31/2007 12:20 AM >> To: siouan at lists.colorado.edu >> Subject: obviation in Siouan languages >> >> >> >> There were two excellent papers on obviation in Cree at the CLA >> meetings. One of the presenters asked me if there is obviation in any of >> the Siouan languages. I have a vague memory that this has come up before, >> but I can't find time to troll through the archives. Any suggestions? >> >> Best >> Mary Marino >> >> >> >> > > --------------------------------- Yahoo! Mail is the world's favourite email. Don't settle for less, sign up for your free account today. --------------------------------- You snooze, you lose. Get messages ASAP with AutoCheck in the all-new Yahoo! Mail Beta. --------------------------------- Yahoo! Answers - Get better answers from someone who knows. Tryit now. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pustetrm at yahoo.com Thu Jun 7 13:49:55 2007 From: pustetrm at yahoo.com (REGINA PUSTET) Date: Thu, 7 Jun 2007 06:49:55 -0700 Subject: obviation in Siouan languages In-Reply-To: <712393.51860.qm@web27015.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Message-ID: It all depends on how you define “topic”. If topic is the same as the English subject, then there is, as you say, a topic change on the two examples I gave. It’s different here: h^tal-ehaN wophethuN wa-I na iNs^ le aNpetu ki chuwignake waN wa-kayeg^e yesterday shop 1SG.AG-go and CON this day DEF dress IDF 1SG.AG-sew ‘yesterday I went shopping and today I sewed a dress’ h^tal-ehaN wophethuN wa-I na le aNpetu ki iNs^ chuwignake waN wa-kayeg^e yesterday shop 1SG.AG-go and this day DEF CON dress IDF 1SG.AG-sew ‘yesterday I went shopping and today I sewed a dress’ Harry Sally wowapi k’u na iNs^ Mary waks^ica cha k’u H. S. book give and CON M. plate such give ‘Harry gave Sally books and he gave Mary plates’ Regina shokooh Ingham wrote: Interestingly, however, your two examples do show change of topic. Can you think of an example where it doesn't? Bruce REGINA PUSTET wrote: In my data, i(N)s^ is used mainly as a marker for strong contrast, as in Sally is^tiNme na Harry iNs^ TV waNyaNke S. sleep and H. CON TV watch ‘Sally is sleeping and Harry is watching TV’ or Sally is^tiNme na iNs^ Harry TV waNyaNke S. sleep and CON H. TV watch ‘Sally is sleeping and Harry is watching TV’ This can, but doesn’t have to, be accompanied by topic change, introduction of a different argument, and similar notions. Regina shokooh Ingham wrote: It would be a great help if they were, as I always find this difficult in Lakota. The is^ eya complex often seems to signify a change of topic or subject, but it is very hard to tie down Bruce ROOD DAVID S wrote: Lungstrum's dissertation claims that chanke and yukhan are switch reference markers, defining "reference" as any major change of scene, characters, point of view, or some other discontinuity. I wasn't convinced. David David S. Rood Dept. of Linguistics Univ. of Colorado 295 UCB Boulder, CO 80309-0295 USA rood at colorado.edu On Fri, 1 Jun 2007, willemdereuse at unt.edu wrote: > Hi all: > > I have always thought that the chankhe/yunkhan alternation of conjunctions in > Lakota texts, first discussed by Chafe (I think) and then by Dahlstrom had > something to do with obviation. It is definitely not switch-reference. Does > Richard Lungstrum's diss. say anything about this? I am sorry to say I have > not yet gotten hold of a copy of Richard's diss. > > Willem de Reuse Quoting "Rankin, Robert L" : > >> As Rory points out, Dhegiha languages have something very similar >> distinguishing primary from non-primary actors. Ardis's dissertation was >> at least partly on this distinction in Omaha. >> >> I have toyed with the idea of trying to redefine the "switch-reference" >> distinction in those Siouan languages that have it as an obviation >> distinction. Such redefinition clearly works in Muskogean, where it is the >> only way to tie "S-R" and argument marking particles together without a >> hopelessly complex appeal to homophony, but I haven't really gotten down to >> the business of trying to demonstrate it in Siouan. Clearly the more >> inclusive concept of "referent tracking" operates in Siouan grammars, >> though it differs from language to language. If I had to guess, I'd say it >> is historically primary in Algonquian but secondary in Siouan. >> >> What were the papers you're referring to on Algonquian? >> >> Bob >> >> ________________________________ >> >> From: owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu on behalf of Marino >> Sent: Thu 5/31/2007 12:20 AM >> To: siouan at lists.colorado.edu >> Subject: obviation in Siouan languages >> >> >> >> There were two excellent papers on obviation in Cree at the CLA >> meetings. One of the presenters asked me if there is obviation in any of >> the Siouan languages. I have a vague memory that this has come up before, >> but I can't find time to troll through the archives. Any suggestions? >> >> Best >> Mary Marino >> >> >> >> > > --------------------------------- Yahoo! Mail is the world's favourite email. Don't settle for less, sign up for your free account today. --------------------------------- You snooze, you lose. Get messages ASAP with AutoCheck in the all-new Yahoo! Mail Beta. --------------------------------- Yahoo! Answers - Get better answers from someone who knows. Try it now. --------------------------------- Ready for the edge of your seat? Check out tonight's top picks on Yahoo! TV. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From shokoohbanou at yahoo.co.uk Thu Jun 7 16:01:20 2007 From: shokoohbanou at yahoo.co.uk (shokooh Ingham) Date: Thu, 7 Jun 2007 17:01:20 +0100 Subject: obviation in Siouan languages In-Reply-To: <666308.120.qm@web54608.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Those are interesting examplels. I think it is not topic in the sense of English subject, but something more general. They are all definite in the sense of either having ki or being proper names. So I suppose iNs^ le aNpetu ki, le aNpetu ki iNs^ and iNs^Mary could all be changes of topic in some definition of the term Bruce REGINA PUSTET wrote: It all depends on how you define “topic”. If topic is the same as the English subject, then there is, as you say, a topic change on the two examples I gave. It’s different here: h^tal-ehaN wophethuN wa-I na iNs^ le aNpetu ki chuwignake waN wa-kayeg^e yesterday shop 1SG.AG-go and CON this day DEF dress IDF 1SG.AG-sew ‘yesterday I went shopping and today I sewed a dress’ h^tal-ehaN wophethuN wa-I na le aNpetu ki iNs^ chuwignake waN wa-kayeg^e yesterday shop 1SG.AG-go and this day DEF CON dress IDF 1SG.AG-sew ‘yesterday I went shopping and today I sewed a dress’ Harry Sally wowapi k’u na iNs^ Mary waks^ica cha k’u H. S. book give and CON M. plate such give ‘Harry gave Sally books and he gave Mary plates’ Regina shokooh Ingham wrote: Interestingly, however, your two examples do show change of topic. Can you think of an example where it doesn't? Bruce REGINA PUSTET wrote: In my data, i(N)s^ is used mainly as a marker for strong contrast, as in Sally is^tiNme na Harry iNs^ TV waNyaNke S. sleep and H. CON TV watch ‘Sally is sleeping and Harry is watching TV’ or Sally is^tiNme na iNs^ Harry TV waNyaNke S. sleep and CON H. TV watch ‘Sally is sleeping and Harry is watching TV’ This can, but doesn’t have to, be accompanied by topic change, introduction of a different argument, and similar notions. Regina shokooh Ingham wrote: It would be a great help if they were, as I always find this difficult in Lakota. The is^ eya complex often seems to signify a change of topic or subject, but it is very hard to tie down Bruce ROOD DAVID S wrote: Lungstrum's dissertation claims that chanke and yukhan are switch reference markers, defining "reference" as any major change of scene, characters, point of view, or some other discontinuity. I wasn't convinced. David David S. Rood Dept. of Linguistics Univ. of Colorado 295 UCB Boulder, CO 80309-0295 USA rood at colorado.edu On Fri, 1 Jun 2007, willemdereuse at unt.edu wrote: > Hi all: > > I have always thought that the chankhe/yunkhan alternation of conjunctions in > Lakota texts, first discussed by Chafe (I think) and then by Dahlstrom had > something to do with obviation. It is definitely not switch-reference. Does > Richard Lungstrum's diss. say anything about this? I am sorry to say I have > not yet gotten hold of a copy of Richard's diss. > > Willem de Reuse Quoting "Rankin, Robert L" : > >> As Rory points out, Dhegiha languages have something very similar >> distinguishing primary from non-primary actors. Ardis's dissertation was >> at least partly on this distinction in Omaha. >> >> I have toyed with the idea of trying to redefine the "switch-reference" >> distinction in those Siouan languages that have it as an obviation >> distinction. Such redefinition clearly works in Muskogean, where it is the >> only way to tie "S-R" and argument marking particles together without a >> hopelessly complex appeal to homophony, but I haven't really gotten down to >> the business of trying to demonstrate it in Siouan. Clearly the more >> inclusive concept of "referent tracking" operates in Siouan grammars, >> though it differs from language to language. If I had to guess, I'd say it >> is historically primary in Algonquian but secondary in Siouan. >> >> What were the papers you're referring to on Algonquian? >> >> Bob >> >> ________________________________ >> >> From: owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu on behalf of Marino >> Sent: Thu 5/31/2007 12:20 AM >> To: siouan at lists.colorado.edu >> Subject: obviation in Siouan languages >> >> >> >> There were two excellent papers on obviation in Cree at the CLA >> meetings. One of the presenters asked me if there is obviation in any of >> the Siouan languages. I have a vague memory that this has come up before, >> but I can't find time to troll through the archives. Any suggestions? >> >> Best >> Mary Marino >> >> >> >> > > --------------------------------- Yahoo! Mail is the world's favourite email. Don't settle for less, sign up for your free account today. --------------------------------- You snooze, you lose. Get messages ASAP with AutoCheck in the all-new Yahoo! Mail Beta. --------------------------------- Yahoo! Answers - Get better answers from someone who knows. Try it now. --------------------------------- Ready for the edge of your seat? Check out tonight's top picks on Yahoo! TV. --------------------------------- Inbox full of unwanted email? Get leading protection and 1GB storage with All New Yahoo! Mail. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rlarson at unlnotes.unl.edu Thu Jun 7 18:01:19 2007 From: rlarson at unlnotes.unl.edu (Rory M Larson) Date: Thu, 7 Jun 2007 13:01:19 -0500 Subject: obviation in Siouan languages In-Reply-To: <257320.54706.qm@web27015.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Well, how _do_ we define "topic", or "subject" for that matter? I've been learning Japanese recently, which makes this distinction using particles: wa - topic marker ga - subject marker wo - object marker ga is used to mark either the one that is doing the action or the one you are trying to identify as the point of the communication. It normally appears only in the latter case or in embedded clauses. In most simple sentences, the subject uses the topic marker wa. However, wa can also replace the object marker wo, and can be used to mark prepositional phrases as well as nouns. Both wa and ga can be used contrastively, in ways that would involve vocal emphasis in English. For ga, the issue is on clarifying who it is we are talking about: It was _Sally_ (ga) that slept (not Harry). But for wa, alternate topics are taken as given points of reference for contrasting information: _Sally_ (wa) is sleeping, while _Harry_ (wa) is watching TV. It seems to me that "topic" means an uncontroversial point of reference to which further information can be related. That point of reference can be a subject noun, but doesn't have to be. It can be an adverb, a prepositional phrase, a full clause, or an object noun just as easily. I think all of the examples Regina cites might reasonably match the Japanese contrastive wa usage: > Sally is^tiNme na Harry iNs^ TV waNyaNke S. sleep and H. CON TV watch ‘Sally is sleeping and Harry is watching TV’ or Sally is^tiNme na iNs^ Harry TV waNyaNke S. sleep and CON H. TV watch ‘Sally is sleeping and Harry is watching TV’ Or: '_Sally_ (wa) is sleeping and _Harry_ (wa) is watching TV' (The contrasting topics are subject nouns.) > h^tal-ehaN wophethuN wa-I na iNs^ le aNpetu ki chuwignake waN wa-kayeg^e yesterday shop 1SG.AG-go and CON this day DEF dress IDF 1SG.AG-sew ‘yesterday I went shopping and today I sewed a dress’ h^tal-ehaN wophethuN wa-I na le aNpetu ki iNs^ chuwignake waN wa-kayeg^e yesterday shop 1SG.AG-go and this day DEF CON dress IDF 1SG.AG-sew ‘yesterday I went shopping and today I sewed a dress’ Or: '_yesterday_' (wa) I went shopping and _today_ (wa) I sewed a dress' (The contrasting topics are adverbs of time.) > Harry Sally wowapi k’u na iNs^ Mary waks^ica cha k’u H. S. book give and CON M. plate such give ‘Harry gave Sally books and he gave Mary plates’ Or: 'Harry gave _Sally_ (wa) books and he gave _Mary_ (wa) plates' (The contrasting topics are indirect object nouns.) The main mechanical difference would be that in Japanese, wa always follows its topic and is used to mark both in a contrast, while in Lakhota, iNs^ appears only on the second one in a contrast, and can either precede or follow its topic. Would this be a helpful interpretation of iNs^ ? Rory -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pustetrm at yahoo.com Thu Jun 7 18:31:41 2007 From: pustetrm at yahoo.com (REGINA PUSTET) Date: Thu, 7 Jun 2007 11:31:41 -0700 Subject: obviation in Siouan languages In-Reply-To: Message-ID: >>From what I know about Japanese, case marking in that language is so messy (especially when it comes to wa) that using it as a template for describing other languages will inevitably make these look messy too. As far as I remember, there are so many rules to the use of wa that this marker is really hard to pin down functionally. But the specific notion of contrast expressed by double wa does go with what we see in Lakota, I think, so this is a good analogy. In case the idea is out there, I would not analyze iNs> a topic marker though. It is simply a marker for what Wally Chafe once referred to as 'focus of contrast'. Regina Rory M Larson wrote: Well, how _do_ we define "topic", or "subject" for that matter? I've been learning Japanese recently, which makes this distinction using particles: wa - topic marker ga - subject marker wo - object marker ga is used to mark either the one that is doing the action or the one you are trying to identify as the point of the communication. It normally appears only in the latter case or in embedded clauses. In most simple sentences, the subject uses the topic marker wa. However, wa can also replace the object marker wo, and can be used to mark prepositional phrases as well as nouns. Both wa and ga can be used contrastively, in ways that would involve vocal emphasis in English. For ga, the issue is on clarifying who it is we are talking about: It was _Sally_ (ga) that slept (not Harry). But for wa, alternate topics are taken as given points of reference for contrasting information: _Sally_ (wa) is sleeping, while _Harry_ (wa) is watching TV. It seems to me that "topic" means an uncontroversial point of reference to which further information can be related. That point of reference can be a subject noun, but doesn't have to be. It can be an adverb, a prepositional phrase, a full clause, or an object noun just as easily. I think all of the examples Regina cites might reasonably match the Japanese contrastive wa usage: > Sally is^tiNme na Harry iNs^ TV waNyaNke S. sleep and H. CON TV watch ‘Sally is sleeping and Harry is watching TV’ or Sally is^tiNme na iNs^ Harry TV waNyaNke S. sleep and CON H. TV watch ‘Sally is sleeping and Harry is watching TV’ Or: '_Sally_ (wa) is sleeping and _Harry_ (wa) is watching TV' (The contrasting topics are subject nouns.) > h^tal-ehaN wophethuN wa-I na iNs^ le aNpetu ki chuwignake waN wa-kayeg^e yesterday shop 1SG.AG-go and CON this day DEF dress IDF 1SG.AG-sew ‘yesterday I went shopping and today I sewed a dress’ h^tal-ehaN wophethuN wa-I na le aNpetu ki iNs^ chuwignake waN wa-kayeg^e yesterday shop 1SG.AG-go and this day DEF CON dress IDF 1SG.AG-sew ‘yesterday I went shopping and today I sewed a dress’ Or: '_yesterday_' (wa) I went shopping and _today_ (wa) I sewed a dress' (The contrasting topics are adverbs of time.) > Harry Sally wowapi k’u na iNs^ Mary waks^ica cha k’u H. S. book give and CON M. plate such give ‘Harry gave Sally books and he gave Mary plates’ Or: 'Harry gave _Sally_ (wa) books and he gave _Mary_ (wa) plates' (The contrasting topics are indirect object nouns.) The main mechanical difference would be that in Japanese, wa always follows its topic and is used to mark both in a contrast, while in Lakhota, iNs^ appears only on the second one in a contrast, and can either precede or follow its topic. Would this be a helpful interpretation of iNs^ ? Rory --------------------------------- Fussy? Opinionated? Impossible to please? Perfect. Join Yahoo!'s user panel and lay it on us. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From linguista at gmail.com Thu Jun 7 21:52:20 2007 From: linguista at gmail.com (Bryan Gordon) Date: Thu, 7 Jun 2007 16:52:20 -0500 Subject: obviation in Siouan languages In-Reply-To: <929737.55667.qm@web54609.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Topics can easily be described in Prague-school terms quite simply as "old information." The Japanese topic behaviour generally aligns with contexts where "as for TOPIC" would be possible in English, e.g. "As for yesterday, I went shopping, while as for today, I sewed a dress" or "As for Sally, Harry gave her books, while as for Mary, he gave her plates." Japanese ga cannot be translated with "as for", on the other hand: "#!As for Harry, he slept, not Mary." This, from the Prague-school terminology, is precisely the opposite of a topic: it is a focus, or "new information." We already know that someone slept, the new information is the identity of the sleeper. In the other contexts, the dates and characters are not important, but rather the new information is what is associated with them. Of course, to make things even more complicated, both topic and focus have similar syntactic behaviour in many languages. But it is also quite common cross-linguistically to see topics fronted and foci right-edged. Ojibwe is one such language, and so is Finnish. Spanish, too, to a certain extent, right-displaces new and left-displaces old information. In fact, that's precisely what English "as for" does, is moves old information left. The sort of focus that contrasts with topic in pragmatic terms should not be confused with the entirely different cognitive/psychological use of the word focus, which is ironically enough almost never associated with a pragmatic focus and almost always with a pragmatic topic. Ojibwe has particles that seem to behave similarly to the Lakhota/Dakota particles mentioned earlier. I know this is the Siouan list, but we've been comparing Algonquian and Siouan during the whole thread, so why stop now? One is (i)dash (I believe in Cree this is itahsh), and can be appended to just about any constituent, as long as that constituent is near the left edge. It serves to contrast the constituent before it with something mentioned earlier. Some examples: Gii-nagamo dash gii-niimi'iwed PST-sing CTR PST-make.dance While he had them dance, he sang. Bezhig onik odanokaazon dewe'iged nagamod. Bezhig idash odanokaazon onik nisaad. One arm he.worked.with drumming singing. One CTR he.worked.with arm killing. He used one arm to drum while he sang. One arm he used to kill. Zhingiben' dash ashkwaandeng gii-niimi. Gomaapii dash gii-dooskaabi a'aw zhingiben'. Hell.diver CTR at.the.door PST-dance. A.while CTR PST-peek D hell.diver Hell-Diver, now, was dancing at the door. After a while he peeked out. (i)dash is also contracted onto many other function words to create things like aaniish "well now", awenesh "now, who on earth", miish "now, that's who/what"... What these have in common is simply contrast, not topic or focus. In the first example, in fact, dash is appended to the focus (we already knew about the dancing before this sentence), while in the second example there's a topic with idash, and in the third there's a focus again on Hell-Diver, and then a contrastive topic on the elapsing of time. Contrast is not necessarily related to topic or focus, as Rory notes by exploring the two very different contrastive particles in Japanese. The other contrastive particle I'm thinking of in Ojibwe is (i)sa, which is just as common as (i)dash, and is appended to things which could be said to answer contrastive questions, even if the question is not overtly stated. For instance: "Wegonesh iw ziing? 'Akawaabin' sa wii nii gigii-inin." "What.CTR D sizzle? 'Watch.out' CTR I you I.told.you "What's that sizzling? I told you 'Watch out'" (not something else) Babaa-anokiitaage apane. Mii sa iw ezhi-bimaadizid. Always.going.around-working.for always. FOC CTR D way-she.lives She's always going around working for people. That's the way she lives (and not some other way). Sometimes (i)sa just throws extra intensity on something which may not be contrastive in any significant way beyond that it is not what was just being talked about. Aw isa niningwan gaa-aawid gagwaanisagakamig gaa-gidimaaginaagozid. D CTR son-in-law PST-was.so awfully PST-looking.wretched That son-in-law of mine looked awfully wretched. Although these things can clearly be used for switch-reference-like effects, much like the proximate -(b)i in Omaha-Ponca, which has little if anything to do with contrast, topic or focus, I'd hesitate to call them that. These contrastive particles also have no distributional restrictions relative to obviation, and can occur on obviatives and proximates alike. Part of the reason -(b)i is called proximate in OP is that it does NOT appear on verbs that agree with obviative subjects. At least, not above margin of error. I wonder what the distribution of these Lakhota/Dakota particles is relative to "obviation" or "case marking" or whatever else Lakhota/Dakota has in its repertoire. From rlarson at unlnotes.unl.edu Fri Jun 8 13:55:38 2007 From: rlarson at unlnotes.unl.edu (Rory M Larson) Date: Fri, 8 Jun 2007 08:55:38 -0500 Subject: obviation in Siouan languages In-Reply-To: <929737.55667.qm@web54609.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: > From what I know about Japanese, case marking in that language is so messy (especially when it comes to wa) that using it as a template for describing other languages will inevitably make these look messy too. As far as I remember, there are so many rules to the use of wa that this marker is really hard to pin down functionally. Hmm. I hadn't thought of Japanese as being particularly messy. It does take a certain amount of internalization for us westerners, because their logical system is so different from what we are used to in European languages. >But the specific notion of contrast expressed by double wa does go with what we see in Lakota, I think, so this is a good analogy. In case the idea is out there, I would not analyze iNs> a topic marker though. It is simply a marker for what Wally Chafe once referred to as 'focus of contrast'. I hadn't meant to imply that iNs^ was a general topic marker, only that it seemed to mark the second topic used in the equivalent of a double wa type contrast. I guess my question would be whether it says: "This is the other topic that I am raising to contrast with the topic I was referring to a moment ago"; or whether it says: "I am now presenting a contrast". Does iNs^ point to the contrasting topic (Harry, today, Mary), or does it simply introduce the entire contrasting phrase? As a possible test, can iNs^ ever be non-adjacent to the contrasting topic? Also, can it be used in a ga type contrast or focus: "It is _Sally_ (ga) who is sleeping; iNs^ _Harry_ (ga) is the one who is watching TV. (You had them confused)"? Rory -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pustetrm at yahoo.com Mon Jun 11 07:03:50 2007 From: pustetrm at yahoo.com (REGINA PUSTET) Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2007 00:03:50 -0700 Subject: obviation in Siouan languages In-Reply-To: Message-ID: > Hmm. I hadn't thought of Japanese as being particularly messy. It does take a certain amount of internalization for us westerners, because their logical system is so different from what we are used to in European languages. Right. But the main reason why I called the system "messy" is that more than one Japanese linguist told me that despite the huge amount of literature that is available on the subject, there is no satisfactory description of distribution of wa and ga yet. > Does iNs^ point to the contrasting topic (Harry, today, Mary), or does it simply introduce the entire contrasting phrase? As a possible test, can iNs^ ever be non-adjacent to the contrasting topic? My guess is that it cannot. At least I don't have examples of this type. > Also, can it be used in a ga type contrast or focus: "It is _Sally_ (ga) who is sleeping; iNs^ _Harry_ (ga) is the one who is watching TV. (You had them confused)"? In this case, there’s two different pragmatic categories at work: topic (in the sense of “emphasized constituent”) and contrast. This kind of topic is marked via e (cha) in Lakota. I’m not sure whether an e (cha)- constituent can be additionally marked with iNs>, or not. Regina Rory M Larson wrote: > From what I know about Japanese, case marking in that language is so messy (especially when it comes to wa) that using it as a template for describing other languages will inevitably make these look messy too. As far as I remember, there are so many rules to the use of wa that this marker is really hard to pin down functionally. Hmm. I hadn't thought of Japanese as being particularly messy. It does take a certain amount of internalization for us westerners, because their logical system is so different from what we are used to in European languages. >But the specific notion of contrast expressed by double wa does go with what we see in Lakota, I think, so this is a good analogy. In case the idea is out there, I would not analyze iNs> a topic marker though. It is simply a marker for what Wally Chafe once referred to as 'focus of contrast'. I hadn't meant to imply that iNs^ was a general topic marker, only that it seemed to mark the second topic used in the equivalent of a double wa type contrast. I guess my question would be whether it says: "This is the other topic that I am raising to contrast with the topic I was referring to a moment ago"; or whether it says: "I am now presenting a contrast". Does iNs^ point to the contrasting topic (Harry, today, Mary), or does it simply introduce the entire contrasting phrase? As a possible test, can iNs^ ever be non-adjacent to the contrasting topic? Also, can it be used in a ga type contrast or focus: "It is _Sally_ (ga) who is sleeping; iNs^ _Harry_ (ga) is the one who is watching TV. (You had them confused)"? Rory --------------------------------- Be a better Heartthrob. Get better relationship answers from someone who knows. Yahoo! Answers - Check it out. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pustetrm at yahoo.com Mon Jun 11 07:05:37 2007 From: pustetrm at yahoo.com (REGINA PUSTET) Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2007 00:05:37 -0700 Subject: obviation in Siouan languages In-Reply-To: Message-ID: > I wonder what the distribution of these Lakhota/Dakota particles is relative to "obviation" or "case marking" or whatever else Lakhota/Dakota has in its repertoire. To me, there is no evidence for the existence of obviation in Lakota, if we define obviation as a system for manipulating pragmatic perspective. As for compatibility of iNs^ with case markers, I don't have too many examples for non-core relations in contrastive position, but I assume that iNs^ goes with any type of argument, including those marked with postpositions. Regina Bryan Gordon wrote: Topics can easily be described in Prague-school terms quite simply as "old information." The Japanese topic behaviour generally aligns with contexts where "as for TOPIC" would be possible in English, e.g. "As for yesterday, I went shopping, while as for today, I sewed a dress" or "As for Sally, Harry gave her books, while as for Mary, he gave her plates." Japanese ga cannot be translated with "as for", on the other hand: "#!As for Harry, he slept, not Mary." This, from the Prague-school terminology, is precisely the opposite of a topic: it is a focus, or "new information." We already know that someone slept, the new information is the identity of the sleeper. In the other contexts, the dates and characters are not important, but rather the new information is what is associated with them. Of course, to make things even more complicated, both topic and focus have similar syntactic behaviour in many languages. But it is also quite common cross-linguistically to see topics fronted and foci right-edged. Ojibwe is one such language, and so is Finnish. Spanish, too, to a certain extent, right-displaces new and left-displaces old information. In fact, that's precisely what English "as for" does, is moves old information left. The sort of focus that contrasts with topic in pragmatic terms should not be confused with the entirely different cognitive/psychological use of the word focus, which is ironically enough almost never associated with a pragmatic focus and almost always with a pragmatic topic. Ojibwe has particles that seem to behave similarly to the Lakhota/Dakota particles mentioned earlier. I know this is the Siouan list, but we've been comparing Algonquian and Siouan during the whole thread, so why stop now? One is (i)dash (I believe in Cree this is itahsh), and can be appended to just about any constituent, as long as that constituent is near the left edge. It serves to contrast the constituent before it with something mentioned earlier. Some examples: Gii-nagamo dash gii-niimi'iwed PST-sing CTR PST-make.dance While he had them dance, he sang. Bezhig onik odanokaazon dewe'iged nagamod. Bezhig idash odanokaazon onik nisaad. One arm he.worked.with drumming singing. One CTR he.worked.with arm killing. He used one arm to drum while he sang. One arm he used to kill. Zhingiben' dash ashkwaandeng gii-niimi. Gomaapii dash gii-dooskaabi a'aw zhingiben'. Hell.diver CTR at.the.door PST-dance. A.while CTR PST-peek D hell.diver Hell-Diver, now, was dancing at the door. After a while he peeked out. (i)dash is also contracted onto many other function words to create things like aaniish "well now", awenesh "now, who on earth", miish "now, that's who/what"... What these have in common is simply contrast, not topic or focus. In the first example, in fact, dash is appended to the focus (we already knew about the dancing before this sentence), while in the second example there's a topic with idash, and in the third there's a focus again on Hell-Diver, and then a contrastive topic on the elapsing of time. Contrast is not necessarily related to topic or focus, as Rory notes by exploring the two very different contrastive particles in Japanese. The other contrastive particle I'm thinking of in Ojibwe is (i)sa, which is just as common as (i)dash, and is appended to things which could be said to answer contrastive questions, even if the question is not overtly stated. For instance: "Wegonesh iw ziing? 'Akawaabin' sa wii nii gigii-inin." "What.CTR D sizzle? 'Watch.out' CTR I you I.told.you "What's that sizzling? I told you 'Watch out'" (not something else) Babaa-anokiitaage apane. Mii sa iw ezhi-bimaadizid. Always.going.around-working.for always. FOC CTR D way-she.lives She's always going around working for people. That's the way she lives (and not some other way). Sometimes (i)sa just throws extra intensity on something which may not be contrastive in any significant way beyond that it is not what was just being talked about. Aw isa niningwan gaa-aawid gagwaanisagakamig gaa-gidimaaginaagozid. D CTR son-in-law PST-was.so awfully PST-looking.wretched That son-in-law of mine looked awfully wretched. Although these things can clearly be used for switch-reference-like effects, much like the proximate -(b)i in Omaha-Ponca, which has little if anything to do with contrast, topic or focus, I'd hesitate to call them that. These contrastive particles also have no distributional restrictions relative to obviation, and can occur on obviatives and proximates alike. Part of the reason -(b)i is called proximate in OP is that it does NOT appear on verbs that agree with obviative subjects. At least, not above margin of error. I wonder what the distribution of these Lakhota/Dakota particles is relative to "obviation" or "case marking" or whatever else Lakhota/Dakota has in its repertoire. --------------------------------- Got a little couch potato? Check out fun summer activities for kids. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From shokoohbanou at yahoo.co.uk Mon Jun 11 15:35:07 2007 From: shokoohbanou at yahoo.co.uk (shokooh Ingham) Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2007 16:35:07 +0100 Subject: obviation in Siouan languages In-Reply-To: <196690.335.qm@web54609.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: I haven't checked this , but my experience is that postpositional phrases don't take everything that other core noun phrases do, ie they less frequently show the Topic marker ki/k'uN and I don't think iNs^ or iNs^ eya occur with postpositions. I can't envisage a phrase like mni iNs^ el. Rather the pronoun iye can occur giving examples like lena wowakhaN kiNhaN iye el aikichigluthapi 'they tested each other on these holy powers' Bruce REGINA PUSTET wrote: > I wonder what the distribution of these Lakhota/Dakota particles is relative to "obviation" or "case marking" or whatever else Lakhota/Dakota has in its repertoire. To me, there is no evidence for the existence of obviation in Lakota, if we define obviation as a system for manipulating pragmatic perspective. As for compatibility of iNs^ with case markers, I don't have too many examples for non-core relations in contrastive position, but I assume that iNs^ goes with any type of argument, including those marked with postpositions. Regina Bryan Gordon wrote: Topics can easily be described in Prague-school terms quite simply as "old information." The Japanese topic behaviour generally aligns with contexts where "as for TOPIC" would be possible in English, e.g. "As for yesterday, I went shopping, while as for today, I sewed a dress" or "As for Sally, Harry gave her books, while as for Mary, he gave her plates." Japanese ga cannot be translated with "as for", on the other hand: "#!As for Harry, he slept, not Mary." This, from the Prague-school terminology, is precisely the opposite of a topic: it is a focus, or "new information." We already know that someone slept, the new information is the identity of the sleeper. In the other contexts, the dates and characters are not important, but rather the new information is what is associated with them. Of course, to make things even more complicated, both topic and focus have similar syntactic behaviour in many languages. But it is also quite common cross-linguistically to see topics fronted and foci right-edged. Ojibwe is one such language, and so is Finnish. Spanish, too, to a certain extent, right-displaces new and left-displaces old information. In fact, that's precisely what English "as for" does, is moves old information left. The sort of focus that contrasts with topic in pragmatic terms should not be confused with the entirely different cognitive/psychological use of the word focus, which is ironically enough almost never associated with a pragmatic focus and almost always with a pragmatic topic. Ojibwe has particles that seem to behave similarly to the Lakhota/Dakota particles mentioned earlier. I know this is the Siouan list, but we've been comparing Algonquian and Siouan during the whole thread, so why stop now? One is (i)dash (I believe in Cree this is itahsh), and can be appended to just about any constituent, as long as that constituent is near the left edge. It serves to contrast the constituent before it with something mentioned earlier. Some examples: Gii-nagamo dash gii-niimi'iwed PST-sing CTR PST-make.dance While he had them dance, he sang. Bezhig onik odanokaazon dewe'iged nagamod. Bezhig idash odanokaazon onik nisaad. One arm he.worked.with drumming singing. One CTR he.worked.with arm killing. He used one arm to drum while he sang. One arm he used to kill. Zhingiben' dash ashkwaandeng gii-niimi. Gomaapii dash gii-dooskaabi a'aw zhingiben'. Hell.diver CTR at.the.door PST-dance. A.while CTR PST-peek D hell.diver Hell-Diver, now, was dancing at the door. After a while he peeked out. (i)dash is also contracted onto many other function words to create things like aaniish "well now", awenesh "now, who on earth", miish "now, that's who/what"... What these have in common is simply contrast, not topic or focus. In the first example, in fact, dash is appended to the focus (we already knew about the dancing before this sentence), while in the second example there's a topic with idash, and in the third there's a focus again on Hell-Diver, and then a contrastive topic on the elapsing of time. Contrast is not necessarily related to topic or focus, as Rory notes by exploring the two very different contrastive particles in Japanese. The other contrastive particle I'm thinking of in Ojibwe is (i)sa, which is just as common as (i)dash, and is appended to things which could be said to answer contrastive questions, even if the question is not overtly stated. For instance: "Wegonesh iw ziing? 'Akawaabin' sa wii nii gigii-inin." "What.CTR D sizzle? 'Watch.out' CTR I you I.told.you "What's that sizzling? I told you 'Watch out'" (not something else) Babaa-anokiitaage apane. Mii sa iw ezhi-bimaadizid. Always.going.around-working.for always. FOC CTR D way-she.lives She's always going around working for people. That's the way she lives (and not some other way). Sometimes (i)sa just throws extra intensity on something which may not be contrastive in any significant way beyond that it is not what was just being talked about. Aw isa niningwan gaa-aawid gagwaanisagakamig gaa-gidimaaginaagozid. D CTR son-in-law PST-was.so awfully PST-looking.wretched That son-in-law of mine looked awfully wretched. Although these things can clearly be used for switch-reference-like effects, much like the proximate -(b)i in Omaha-Ponca, which has little if anything to do with contrast, topic or focus, I'd hesitate to call them that. These contrastive particles also have no distributional restrictions relative to obviation, and can occur on obviatives and proximates alike. Part of the reason -(b)i is called proximate in OP is that it does NOT appear on verbs that agree with obviative subjects. At least, not above margin of error. I wonder what the distribution of these Lakhota/Dakota particles is relative to "obviation" or "case marking" or whatever else Lakhota/Dakota has in its repertoire. --------------------------------- Got a little couch potato? Check out fun summer activities for kids. --------------------------------- Yahoo! Mail is the world's favourite email. Don't settle for less, sign up for your freeaccount today. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From willemdereuse at unt.edu Mon Jun 11 15:42:57 2007 From: willemdereuse at unt.edu (willemdereuse at unt.edu) Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2007 10:42:57 -0500 Subject: obviation in Siouan languages In-Reply-To: <196690.335.qm@web54609.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Quoting REGINA PUSTET : >> I wonder what the distribution of these Lakhota/Dakota particles is >> relative to > "obviation" or "case marking" or whatever else Lakhota/Dakota has in > its repertoire. > > To me, there is no evidence for the existence of obviation in > Lakota, if we define obviation as a system for manipulating pragmatic > perspective. Regina: I was wondering if you had any thoughts/ideas about the yuNkhaN/chaNke alternation in Lakota. I agree with Dave Rood's earlier answer to my question about this, i.e. that Lungstrum's dissertation has not elucidated this convincingly. There is definitely some sort of alternation in Deloria's Dakota Texts, even though texts by (at least some) modern speakers do not seem to have this. Willem de Reuse From rood at spot.Colorado.EDU Mon Jun 11 15:58:03 2007 From: rood at spot.Colorado.EDU (ROOD DAVID S) Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2007 09:58:03 -0600 Subject: obviation in Siouan languages In-Reply-To: <20070611104257.4lv2sxj2huo00woo@eaglemail.unt.edu> Message-ID: For what it's worth, my purely anecdotal impression is that "chanke" marks a more or less expected continuation of a narration (hence translations like "and so" or "and then" or "and next", while "yunkhan" (or yukhan) means "I bet you weren't expecting this next event". They thus correlate very often with switch reference (or switch-scene, or switch-topic) because a new or changed element in the conversation or narration is often somewhat unexpected by the hearer. Eli James used to translate "yukhan" as "and here" in useages like (this one is made up): "They were walking along and here all the time someone had been following them". David S. Rood Dept. of Linguistics Univ. of Colorado 295 UCB Boulder, CO 80309-0295 USA rood at colorado.edu On Mon, 11 Jun 2007, willemdereuse at unt.edu wrote: > Quoting REGINA PUSTET : > >>> I wonder what the distribution of these Lakhota/Dakota particles is >>> relative to >> "obviation" or "case marking" or whatever else Lakhota/Dakota has in >> its repertoire. >> >> To me, there is no evidence for the existence of obviation in Lakota, if >> we define obviation as a system for manipulating pragmatic perspective. > > Regina: > > I was wondering if you had any thoughts/ideas about the yuNkhaN/chaNke > alternation in Lakota. I agree with Dave Rood's earlier answer to my > question about this, i.e. that Lungstrum's dissertation has not elucidated > this convincingly. > > There is definitely some sort of alternation in Deloria's Dakota Texts, even > though texts by (at least some) modern speakers do not seem to have this. > > Willem de Reuse > From chafe at linguistics.ucsb.edu Mon Jun 11 16:35:38 2007 From: chafe at linguistics.ucsb.edu (Wallace Chafe) Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2007 09:35:38 -0700 Subject: Switching topics In-Reply-To: Message-ID: I wasn't going to say anything because I've been away from Siouan linguistics for many years, but David's message rings a loud bell for me. I remember a Lakota speaker in Oakland telling how she heard a loud noise in the night. She looked out the window "and here" (yunkhan) somebody had plowed into their car. So two speakers evidently came up independently with that translation. I've long had a suspicion that most (or all?) of what has been called switch-reference is just a special case of switch-topic. The switch-reference notion arose because people were making up isolated sentences. I hope everybody realizes that "topic" here is what is sometimes called "discourse topic", which has little if anything to do with the "topic-comment" use of this term. Wally > For what it's worth, my purely anecdotal impression is that "chanke" > marks a more or less expected continuation of a narration (hence > translations like "and so" or "and then" or "and next", while "yunkhan" > (or yukhan) means "I bet you weren't expecting this next event". They > thus correlate very often with switch reference (or switch-scene, or > switch-topic) because a new or changed element in the conversation or > narration is often somewhat unexpected by the hearer. Eli James used to > translate "yukhan" as "and here" in useages like (this one is made up): > "They were walking along and here all the time someone had been following > them". (David Rood) From shokoohbanou at yahoo.co.uk Mon Jun 11 19:01:49 2007 From: shokoohbanou at yahoo.co.uk (shokooh Ingham) Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2007 20:01:49 +0100 Subject: Switching topics In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Yes I've often noticed that the yuNkhaN could very well be translated into the Biblical 'lo and behold' prefacing some unexpected event. Bruce Wallace Chafe wrote: I wasn't going to say anything because I've been away from Siouan linguistics for many years, but David's message rings a loud bell for me. I remember a Lakota speaker in Oakland telling how she heard a loud noise in the night. She looked out the window "and here" (yunkhan) somebody had plowed into their car. So two speakers evidently came up independently with that translation. I've long had a suspicion that most (or all?) of what has been called switch-reference is just a special case of switch-topic. The switch-reference notion arose because people were making up isolated sentences. I hope everybody realizes that "topic" here is what is sometimes called "discourse topic", which has little if anything to do with the "topic-comment" use of this term. Wally > For what it's worth, my purely anecdotal impression is that "chanke" > marks a more or less expected continuation of a narration (hence > translations like "and so" or "and then" or "and next", while "yunkhan" > (or yukhan) means "I bet you weren't expecting this next event". They > thus correlate very often with switch reference (or switch-scene, or > switch-topic) because a new or changed element in the conversation or > narration is often somewhat unexpected by the hearer. Eli James used to > translate "yukhan" as "and here" in useages like (this one is made up): > "They were walking along and here all the time someone had been following > them". (David Rood) --------------------------------- What kind of emailer are you? Find out today - get a free analysis of your email personality. Take the quiz at the Yahoo! Mail Championship. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pustetrm at yahoo.com Mon Jun 11 18:39:38 2007 From: pustetrm at yahoo.com (REGINA PUSTET) Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2007 11:39:38 -0700 Subject: obviation in Siouan languages In-Reply-To: Message-ID: (quoting David Rood) > For what it's worth, my purely anecdotal impression is that "chanke" marks a more or less expected continuation of a narration (hence translations like "and so" or "and then" or "and next", while "yunkhan" (or yukhan) means "I bet you weren't expecting this next event". They thus correlate very often with switch reference (or switch-scene, or switch-topic) because a new or changed element in the conversation or narration is often somewhat unexpected by the hearer. Precisely. I don’t have much to add to this. A switch-reference analysis for yuNkhaN and chaNkhe is untenable because there are too many counterexamples to a DS analysis for yuNkhaN and an SS analysis for chaNkhe. yuNkhaN occurs frequently with DS but is fine with SS when the event is unexpected; chaNkhe occurs a lot with SS but is fine with DS as well. Willem’s impression that yuNkhaN vs. chaNkhe have something to do with obviation stems from the fact that both switch reference and obviation function to “highlight” changing referents in discourse, so there is a connection. But as David says, what we are looking at in Lakota is a system in which switch reference is a secondary byproduct of pragmatic factors inherent in the meaning of the participating elements. Regina ROOD DAVID S wrote: For what it's worth, my purely anecdotal impression is that "chanke" marks a more or less expected continuation of a narration (hence translations like "and so" or "and then" or "and next", while "yunkhan" (or yukhan) means "I bet you weren't expecting this next event". They thus correlate very often with switch reference (or switch-scene, or switch-topic) because a new or changed element in the conversation or narration is often somewhat unexpected by the hearer. Eli James used to translate "yukhan" as "and here" in useages like (this one is made up): "They were walking along and here all the time someone had been following them". David S. Rood Dept. of Linguistics Univ. of Colorado 295 UCB Boulder, CO 80309-0295 USA rood at colorado.edu On Mon, 11 Jun 2007, willemdereuse at unt.edu wrote: > Quoting REGINA PUSTET : > >>> I wonder what the distribution of these Lakhota/Dakota particles is >>> relative to >> "obviation" or "case marking" or whatever else Lakhota/Dakota has in >> its repertoire. >> >> To me, there is no evidence for the existence of obviation in Lakota, if >> we define obviation as a system for manipulating pragmatic perspective. > > Regina: > > I was wondering if you had any thoughts/ideas about the yuNkhaN/chaNke > alternation in Lakota. I agree with Dave Rood's earlier answer to my > question about this, i.e. that Lungstrum's dissertation has not elucidated > this convincingly. > > There is definitely some sort of alternation in Deloria's Dakota Texts, even > though texts by (at least some) modern speakers do not seem to have this. > > Willem de Reuse > --------------------------------- Ready for the edge of your seat? Check out tonight's top picks on Yahoo! TV. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Mon Jun 11 23:43:17 2007 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2007 17:43:17 -0600 Subject: local reactions to language family terms In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Sun, 3 Jun 2007, Mark J Awakuni-Swetland wrote: > Yes, it can be an emotion-driven mess. ... > In a recent grant application I described an O/P dictionary project... > with the O/P reflecting Dorsey's classification. When I approached the > Southern Ponca for a letter of support their first comments were about > that designation. They requested I change the project title to "Omaha and > Ponca" so as to reduce the impression that the Ponca are somehow part of > the "Omaha". Thanks, Mark! I'm glad to hear some Ponca views of this. Just for the record, I've always intended Omaha-Ponca as a sort of "tight" coordination construction, like Crow-Hidatsa or Eskimo-Aleut or Serbo-Croatian, or, escaping the surly bonds of linguistics, Canadian-American as in "Canadian-American Relations." I definitely never meant one term to modify the other, e.g., as a modifier-modified construction like Anglo-Norman, etc. Admittedly most of the tight coordinations like this that come to me are names of linguistic groupings! As far as the relative order of things, I put Omaha before Ponca because the rhythm worked better for me than Ponka-Omaha. I definitely didn't intend to put Omaha first or, on the other hand to refer to something like the Omaha form of Ponca, etc. For what it is worth, OP seems safer than PO as a two letter abbreviation, since that leaves OM and PO for Omaha and Ponca alone, when they is needed. I don't have any problem with the expression Omaha and Ponca per se, but in practical terms, there seems to be only one language being shared by these two or actually three (Omaha, Northern Ponca, Southern Ponca) political groups. Although some interesting things surface (sometimes) when you look at the nominal affiliation of speakers in the Dorsey corpus, there are even more noticeable differences in the sample that seem to have nothing to do with Omaha vs. Ponca. I suspect there really are small real differences between the two communities since speakers always implied that they could tell one from another, and Omaha speakers often suspected that my strange pronunciation could be accounted for by Ponca influence. (Sadly, a serious English accent was more like it.) However, while I have some slight idea of where some those differences might lie, gained from comments by Tom Leonard and more recently from Kathy Shea's extensive work, I don't know that I would like to be put on the spot about them, and a lot of the ones I know of are fairly recent in origin. I think I've mentioned that the wide distribution in both communities of gdhebaN 'ten' from earlier ghdhebdhaN (as recorded by the Long Expedition and clearly the original form, cf. Dakotan (wi)kc^emna). This suggests that the boundary between Omaha and Ponca may have been fairly permeable in the 1800s. The same applies to the change of s^n to n in certain forms (the same ones). Unfortunately, we don't have anything like a dialect survey at any point in time for Omaha (and) Ponca. Anyway, I hope I can keep getting away with Omaha-Ponca, though anything on the subject ought to begin by explaining the terminology. There's no harm that I can see in using the terms Omaha and Ponca to refer to the results of working with one community, but it becomes problematic if the generic content of the Dorsey corpus is used. And, oc course, in the present paucity of material, I don't think any Omaha speakers should hesitate to consult "Ponca" material and vice versa. And I very much hope that anyone noting differences will report them! From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Mon Jun 11 23:53:10 2007 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2007 17:53:10 -0600 Subject: obviation In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Mon, 4 Jun 2007, Rankin, Robert L wrote: > Taking off from Dave's comment, ... I would be perfectly willing to live with a rule of saying "Ponca and Omaha" and/or Ponca in the Ponca edition and "Omaha and Ponca" and/or "Omaha" in the Omaha edition, as long as the granting agencies will pay for two editions. Or, if they want one edition, we could say "Omaha and Ponca, or, as the case may be, Ponca and Omaha" alternating with "Ponca and Omaha, or, as the case may be, Omaha and Ponca." I can insert that with what Bob calls a "search and destory" operation keyed on Omaha-Ponca. On certain occasions, one might want a form like Cegwean, pronounced Seg-Way-An. There are a few places where one has to write Ponka, of course, in citing Dorsey. He used that form, or Cegiha (C = capital cent sign [sic] = edh), to refer to Omaha-Ponca. From goodtracks at peoplepc.com Tue Jun 12 00:12:20 2007 From: goodtracks at peoplepc.com (goodtracks at peoplepc.com) Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2007 19:12:20 -0500 Subject: Fw: Committee recommends near doubling of Native Language program funding Message-ID: ----- Original Message ----- From: goodtracks at peoplepc.com To: Steve Ellsworth ; Patt Cc: JComer ; DANWE ; RUEBEN AxeweHu Sent: Monday, June 11, 2007 3:43 PM Subject: [TalkIndianOK] Fw: Committee recommends near doubling of Native Language program funding ----- Original Message ----- From: Pat Benabe To: FNSA-L at vm-listproc.cc.ku.edu Sent: Monday, June 11, 2007 2:53 PM Subject: Committee recommends near doubling of Native Language program funding For Immediate Release Contact: June 8, 2007 Ryan Wilson: (206) 420-9194 r_lakota at hotmail.com ________________________________ House Appropriations Subcommittee Recommends Near Doubling of Native Language Program Funding New funds targeted at Native American language nests, language survival schools, and language restoration programs. The House Labor, HHS, Education and Related Agencies Subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee met Thursday, June 7, 2007, to mark up the FY 2008 Labor, HHS appropriations bill. Included in the mark-up was an increase in funding for Native American Programs in HHS, from $44 million to $47 million, with the extra $3 million targeted at implementation of language immersion and restoration programs authorized by the recently passed Esther Martinez Native American Languages Preservation Act of 2006. Currently less than 10 percent of the ANA budget is spent on language programs, with only 1 percent spent on immersion programs. The new funds would increase total funding for ANA language programs from the current level of approximately $4 million to a new level of approximately $7 million. "This day may well mark the turning point in our efforts to halt the dramatic decline in Native languages and, indeed, to commence their revitalization," said Ryan Wilson (Oglala Lakota), President of the National Alliance to Save Native Languages. President Wilson added, "Although the National Alliance sought a $10 million boost, this new funding will definitely jump-start a lot of critical programs and is a great increase in a tough budgetary environment." The National Alliance to Save Native Languages represents a broad coalition of Indian country, including tribes, tribal organizations, language experts, teachers and students, united in their goal of revitalizing Native languages. The National Alliance held a language summit in Washington, DC on June 4-5, 2007, and has held many meetings over that last nine months with members of Congress and their staff to express the importance of Native language survival and to urge support for language immersion and restoration efforts. President Wilson stated, "Indian Country had a great champion in Congressman Tom Udall (D-NM) on the Labor, HHS Subcommittee. He was a co-sponsor of the Esther Martinez legislation and, when he became a member of the Appropriations Committee this year, made it a personal priority to secure funding for its programs." President Wilson added, "This national effort also secured great backing from the leadership of the Native American caucus with the co-chairs, Congressman Dale Kildee (D-MI) and Congressman Rick Renzi (R-AZ) sending a joint letter to the appropriators urging their support for increased funding. We remain grateful for Congresswoman Heather Wilson's (R-NM) leadership on the authorizing legislation, and that of House Education Committee Chairman George Miller (D-CA) and Ranking Member Buck McKeon (R-CA), as well as many others who have been allies in this effort." There are about 175 Native languages still spoken in the United States, but scholars believe that 155 languages are "moribund," meaning that they are spoken only by adults who are no longer passing the language actively down to the next generation. Native educators have found that immersion programs are successful at teaching fluency in Native languages to the next generation, which means that these languages will survive. President Wilson noted, "Our work is not done. This is only a beginning, albeit a good one. The Senate appropriators have yet to decide on funding for these programs, where we want to seek even higher increases. Even with new funding, ultimate responsibility for success lies within our own communities. Indian country has been united in this effort, with great leadership not only from the National Alliance's membership, but also from the National Indian Education Association, National Congress of American Indians, the Navajo Nation, and literally scores of other tribes and tribal organizations. If we remain united, we shall succeed!" The Esther Martinez Native American Languages Preservation Act of 2006 or HR 4766 was signed and passed into law by President George W. Bush in December 2006 amending the Native American Programs Act of 1974 adding clauses that would open up grant opportunities to Native American Language Nests, Native American Language Survival Schools, and Native American Language Restoration Programs. ________________________________ Related Links: http://www.savenativelanguages.org Onawa L. Lacy Johnston & Associates, LLC 1455 Pennsylvania Ave, NW Suite 400 Washington, DC 20004 lacy at johnstondc.com (202) 652-2296 www.johnstondc.com __._,_.___ Messages in this topic (1) Reply (via web post) | Start a new topic Messages | Files | Photos | Links | Database | Polls | Members | Calendar Change settings via the Web (Yahoo! ID required) Change settings via email: Switch delivery to Daily Digest | Switch format to Traditional Visit Your Group | Yahoo! Groups Terms of Use | Unsubscribe Visit Your Group SPONSORED LINKS a.. Oklahoma home equity loan b.. Culture change c.. Oklahoma mortgage loan d.. Corporate culture e.. Oklahoma worker comp Give Back Yahoo! for Good Get inspired by a good cause. Y! Toolbar Get it Free! easy 1-click access to your groups. Yahoo! Groups Start a group in 3 easy steps. Connect with others. . __,_._,___ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Tue Jun 12 00:45:27 2007 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2007 18:45:27 -0600 Subject: obviation In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Mon, 4 Jun 2007, Bryan Gordon wrote: > Back to the main topic: A few observations on proximate/obviative as I used it in regard to Omaha-Ponca: 1) It was not a felicitous choice of words. Ardis' terminology is probably better, on the whole. It certainly has the virtue of not confusing things with irrelevant details of Algonquian grammar. 2) As I used to make a point of saying, in using the terms proximate and obviative I was drawing an analogy between comments made by Omaha-Ponca speakers with whom Dorsey worked and comments made by Kickapoo speakers in a Kickapoo language project grammar of Kickapoo that I had run into. Both groups of speakers described certain (more) obviative forms as applying to a) actions by unseen actors b) actions where the actor was acting on the instructions of someone else As far as I can determine, the Kickapoo examples so described were not the classical Algonquian obviative, but something peculiar to the Fox group in Algonquian, called a second obviative. The authors of the Kickapoo grammar used the terms proximate and obviative only for this distinction and ignored the (primary) proximate and obviative entirely, as far as I can recall. In itself that was interesting. In this context, the unseen, but reported actor and the instructed actor are logically, but not grammatically, more remote (obviative, off the path) than a typical (proximate, near by) actor. I believe that the primary proximate/obviative distinction of Algonquian is a grammaticalized scheme for distinguishing two third persons in order of the internal logic of a sentence or at least a set of related clauses, and rather a different thing. I will not try to recover what my authorities (Paul Voorhis and Ives Goddard) had to say about second obviatives, but it seemed to fit the case. My recollection is that a secondary obviative has to apply to the subject. (That should rouse the somewhat quiescent Algonquianists to full explanatory power.) 3) So, in applying this logic to Omaha-Ponca et al., consider that Omaha-Ponca third person animate subjects are almost always proximate, and third person objects are absolutely always obviative. But sometimes a sentence has a subject that is more remote than the incoming set of agents and patients, and then such subjects are marked as obviative. The usual markings of a proximate are the plural enclitic with the punctual verb, the plural a-prefix with motion verbs, and the akha/ama articles with a definite subject. To indicate obviativity, use singular marking with the verb, and switch from the akha/ama articles to the set usually used with animate objects. For convenience I use the term proximate article with the akha/ama articles, and obviative article with the dhiNkhe/thaN/dhiN/ma and sometimes khe set used with objects and obviative subects. I've mentioned before that I suspect plural marking applies to proximates in Omaha-Ponca because Siouan plural marking is historically a sort of focus marker. It signalized that the subject was the pre-eminent one among several possible ones. Not so much "they did it" as 'It was he among them all who did it." So omitting the "plural marker" in Omaha-Ponca doesn't so much reduce things to "he did it," as to "someone did it." Following this logic, Dakotan pluralized nominals like thi'=pi would not historically be 'they live there' but 'a certain one lives there; he lives there'. A plural subject used to forground the object would either be a subsequent development, or a relict case of =pi being used to focus the object instead of the subject. From pustetrm at yahoo.com Mon Jun 11 18:41:35 2007 From: pustetrm at yahoo.com (REGINA PUSTET) Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2007 11:41:35 -0700 Subject: Switching topics In-Reply-To: Message-ID: (quoting Wally Chafe) >I remember a Lakota speaker in Oakland telling how she heard a loud noise in the night. She looked out the window "and here" (yunkhan) somebody had plowed into their car. So two speakers evidently came up independently with that translation. Make that four: Both of my Pine Ridge speakers independently provided ‘and here’ as their favorite translation for yuNkhaN. Regina --------------------------------- Fussy? Opinionated? Impossible to please? Perfect. Join Yahoo!'s user panel and lay it on us. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pustetrm at yahoo.com Mon Jun 11 18:47:41 2007 From: pustetrm at yahoo.com (REGINA PUSTET) Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2007 11:47:41 -0700 Subject: obviation in Siouan languages In-Reply-To: <640983.33557.qm@web27010.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Message-ID: (quoting Bruce Ingham) >my experience is that postpositional phrases don't take everything that other core noun phrases do, ie they less frequently show the Topic marker ki/k'uN and I don't think iNs^ or iNs^ eya occur with postpositions. I can't envisage a phrase like mni iNs^ el. If this doesn't work (I'm not sure), something like na iNs> mni el sounds doable to me. But we better leave the asnwer to native speakers... Regina --------------------------------- Building a website is a piece of cake. Yahoo! Small Business gives you all the tools to get online. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From linguista at gmail.com Tue Jun 12 03:12:08 2007 From: linguista at gmail.com (Bryan Gordon) Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2007 22:12:08 -0500 Subject: Switching topics In-Reply-To: <823219.27293.qm@web54609.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: I don't suppose yunkhan might be similar in function to egithe ('egiðe) in Omaha and Ponca? This one is usually translated in Dorsey as "behold" or "eventually" or "it happened that", and I've heard good translations such as "turns out" or "on the other hand". - Bryan Gordon 2007/6/11, REGINA PUSTET : > (quoting Wally Chafe) > >I remember a Lakota speaker in Oakland telling how she heard a loud noise > in > the night. She looked out the window "and here" (yunkhan) somebody had > plowed into their car. So two speakers evidently came up independently with > that translation. > > Make that four: Both of my Pine Ridge speakers independently provided 'and > here' as their favorite translation for yuNkhaN. > > Regina > > > > ________________________________ > Fussy? Opinionated? Impossible to please? Perfect. Join Yahoo!'s user panel > and lay it on us. > > From willemdereuse at unt.edu Tue Jun 12 15:34:52 2007 From: willemdereuse at unt.edu (willemdereuse at unt.edu) Date: Tue, 12 Jun 2007 10:34:52 -0500 Subject: obviation in Siouan languages In-Reply-To: <76726.90540.qm@web54606.mail.re2.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Thank you Regina, David, and Wally for your input. I was thinking that chaNke might have originated as a contraction of cha + hanke. Cha is 'and so' and haNke is "part of, half of', so chaNke might mean something like 'and so, part of (the continuing storyline)' Any thoughts about this? Quoting REGINA PUSTET : > (quoting David Rood) > > For what it's worth, my purely anecdotal impression is that "chanke" marks > a more or less expected continuation of a narration (hence translations > like "and so" or "and then" or "and next", while "yunkhan" (or yukhan) > means "I bet you weren't expecting this next event". They thus correlate > very often with switch reference (or switch-scene, or switch-topic) > because a new or changed element in the conversation or narration is often > somewhat unexpected by the hearer. > > > Precisely. I don’t have much to add to this. A switch-reference > analysis for yuNkhaN and chaNkhe is untenable because there are too > many counterexamples to a DS analysis for yuNkhaN and an SS analysis > for chaNkhe. yuNkhaN occurs frequently with DS but is fine with SS > when the event is unexpected; chaNkhe occurs a lot with SS but is > fine with DS as well. > > Willem’s impression that yuNkhaN vs. chaNkhe have something to do > with obviation stems from the fact that both switch reference and > obviation function to “highlight” changing referents in discourse, so > there is a connection. But as David says, what we are looking at in > Lakota is a system in which switch reference is a secondary byproduct > of pragmatic factors inherent in the meaning of the participating > elements. > > Regina From Rgraczyk at aol.com Tue Jun 12 15:35:46 2007 From: Rgraczyk at aol.com (Rgraczyk at aol.com) Date: Tue, 12 Jun 2007 11:35:46 EDT Subject: Switching topics Message-ID: Crow has a rather peculiar verb dee that indicates that something unusual or unexpected will occur in the following clause. I call it the 'mirative'. 'Lo and behold' would be a good translation; I sometimes translate it 'and what do you know!' or 'to his surprise'. Latin 'mirabile dictu' would work also. Dee is suffixed to the preceding verb and agrees with it in person and number, so it is more than a discourse connective. It is always followed by the switch-subject marker -m, as it requires a different subject in the following clause. This seems similar to what is being described for yuNkhaN. I often wondered if other Siouan languages had anything like dee. Randy ************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cqcqcq1 at earthlink.net Tue Jun 12 16:26:59 2007 From: cqcqcq1 at earthlink.net (Carolyn Quintero) Date: Tue, 12 Jun 2007 09:26:59 -0700 Subject: Switching topics In-Reply-To: Message-ID: The Osage cognate is ekithe ('ekiðe) (1s 'ekibre) is 'believe'. So maybe ekithe 'he believed'? Carolyn Carolyn Quintero, PhD Inter Lingua, Inc. 1711 East 15th St. Tulsa OK 74104 2105 East Ocean Blvd #2 Long Beach CA 90803 tel 918 852 9860 cquintero at interlinguainc.com -----Original Message----- From: owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu [mailto:owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu] On Behalf Of Bryan Gordon Sent: Monday, June 11, 2007 8:12 PM To: siouan at lists.colorado.edu Subject: Re: Switching topics I don't suppose yunkhan might be similar in function to egithe ('egiðe) in Omaha and Ponca? This one is usually translated in Dorsey as "behold" or "eventually" or "it happened that", and I've heard good translations such as "turns out" or "on the other hand". - Bryan Gordon 2007/6/11, REGINA PUSTET : > (quoting Wally Chafe) > >I remember a Lakota speaker in Oakland telling how she heard a loud noise > in > the night. She looked out the window "and here" (yunkhan) somebody had > plowed into their car. So two speakers evidently came up independently with > that translation. > > Make that four: Both of my Pine Ridge speakers independently provided 'and > here' as their favorite translation for yuNkhaN. > > Regina > > > > ________________________________ > Fussy? Opinionated? Impossible to please? Perfect. Join Yahoo!'s user panel > and lay it on us. > > -- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.472 / Virus Database: 269.8.14/845 - Release Date: 6/12/2007 6:39 AM No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.472 / Virus Database: 269.8.14/845 - Release Date: 6/12/2007 6:39 AM No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.472 / Virus Database: 269.8.14/845 - Release Date: 6/12/2007 6:39 AM From tmleonard at cox.net Tue Jun 12 17:04:10 2007 From: tmleonard at cox.net (Tom Leonard) Date: Tue, 12 Jun 2007 12:04:10 -0500 Subject: local reactions to language family terms In-Reply-To: Message-ID: I have read the comments on this topic with interest. I agree with Mark Swetland's observation that we should not take one person's comments as being representative of the Tribe. In my experience, I have heard some opposition to the term "Omaha-Ponca", but not much. Frankly, the term is not used in the community. Similarly, I would tend to doubt "O-P" is used in Macy, either. Of the opposing sentiments I have heard, little tends to come from fluent speakers. Rather, in my own opinion, this sort of thing seems to turn into a political football tossed into the well guarded turf of "specialized knowledge" and status - but generally not amongst those who spoke Ponca as their first language. Fluent speakers are quick to point out that Ponca and Omaha are mutually intelligible ("we can understand them and they can understand us"). But, they are also quick to point out that "it's not the same language" or "they talk different than we do". In my opinion, the difference seems to be primarily in "usage", akin to the American and British use of English. An example I was given by one of my Ponca relatives points out that the Ponca term for a wagon translates as "running wood", whereas the Omaha term, I believe, translates as "walking wood". Ponca speakers understand "zhaN maNthiN" to be a wagon, but most would never think to say it that way. I've heard fluent Omaha speakers say the inverse was true, as well. They recognize "zhaN naN'ge" as meaning "wagon", but as a Ponca speaker would say it. Ponca people have long held that they are "related" to the Omaha ("they're our relatives") but that they have always been a separate entity - the two tribes living together at one time but always distinct from one another. I've heard Omaha people describe the relationship in a similar manner. Accordingly, as long as you acknowledge this commonly held tradition, and explain it as proposed, I'm not sure where the problem lies. You may not get a consensus on everyone liking the term "Omaha-Ponca" - I don't think you ever will - but I think we've got bigger fish to fry. The language of _both_ the Omaha and Ponca people is in severe trouble. In my opinion, it's more important that we all get on the same side of the rope, rather than worry about those complaining about terms. wetha'wa zhi'de naN'ba wi wi'ta...... TML > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jfu at centrum.cz Tue Jun 12 21:21:03 2007 From: jfu at centrum.cz (Jan Ullrich) Date: Tue, 12 Jun 2007 23:21:03 +0200 Subject: obviation in Siouan languages In-Reply-To: <20070612103452.w767rlzk2tk4wwok@eaglemail.unt.edu> Message-ID: > I was thinking that > chaNke might have originated as a contraction of cha + hanke. Cha is 'and > so' and haNke is "part of, half of', so chaNke might mean something like > 'and so, part of (the continuing storyline)' Any thoughts about this? I do not know what the etymology of the word is, but it is probably relevant to mention here that it occurs in two variants: with aspirated kh (chaNkhe) and with unaspirated k (chaNke). In my experience, chaNkhe is used in the southern sub-dialect of Lakota (Pine Ridge, Rosebud and Cheyenne River), while chaNke is used by speakers from Standing Rock. There are some speakers in the south who use the unaspirated form, but very few. The non aspirated form is also used in Yankton-Yanktonai and Santee-Sisseton Dakota dialects. Jan From pustetrm at yahoo.com Wed Jun 13 06:48:42 2007 From: pustetrm at yahoo.com (REGINA PUSTET) Date: Tue, 12 Jun 2007 23:48:42 -0700 Subject: obviation in Siouan languages In-Reply-To: <20070612103452.w767rlzk2tk4wwok@eaglemail.unt.edu> Message-ID: (quoting Willem DeReuse) >Thank you Regina, David, and Wally for your input. I was thinking that chaNke might have originated as a contraction of cha + hanke. Cha is 'and so' and haNke is "part of, half of', so chaNke might mean something like 'and so, part of (the continuing storyline)' Any thoughts about this? Sounds like a possible analysis. Maybe the second component is actually haNkeya 'finally', which would fit better semantically. The first component must be cha 'and so'. As a matter of fact, my Pine Ridge speakers hardly use chaNk(h)e any more -- they told me it's a word that you hear mostly from reservation elders. The conjunction that expresses continuation of the storyline as expected, in their speech, is cha. The semantic and syntactic properties of chaNkhe and coordinating cha seem to be identical anyway. Regina --------------------------------- Sick sense of humor? Visit Yahoo! TV's Comedy with an Edge to see what's on, when. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From willemdereuse at unt.edu Wed Jun 13 16:02:21 2007 From: willemdereuse at unt.edu (willemdereuse at unt.edu) Date: Wed, 13 Jun 2007 11:02:21 -0500 Subject: obviation in Siouan languages In-Reply-To: <669306.41622.qm@web54604.mail.re2.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Thanks Regina. My Standing Rock and Pine Ridge consultants didn't use chaNk(h)e much either. It is clear, though, that in Deloria's Dakota Texts, chaNk(h)e is used in ways very distinct from the way cha is used. I do not think they were equivalent then. Willem Quoting REGINA PUSTET : > Sounds like a possible analysis. Maybe the second component is > actually haNkeya 'finally', which would fit better semantically. The > first component must be cha 'and so'. As a matter of fact, my Pine > Ridge speakers hardly use chaNk(h)e any more -- they told me it's a > word that you hear mostly from reservation elders. The conjunction > that expresses continuation of the storyline as expected, in their > speech, is cha. The semantic and syntactic properties of chaNkhe and > coordinating cha seem to be identical anyway. > > Regina > > > > > > > --------------------------------- > Sick sense of humor? Visit Yahoo! TV's Comedy with an Edge to see > what's on, when. From cbloom at ozemail.com.au Wed Jun 13 19:23:16 2007 From: cbloom at ozemail.com.au (Clive Bloomfield) Date: Thu, 14 Jun 2007 05:23:16 +1000 Subject: Syntax of Lakhota Sentence from "Lakota Eyapaha" Message-ID: Greetings folks, I've been content to remain in "deep lurk mode" here for a quite a while, but now at last curiosity has got the better of me again! I was wondering if any Lakhota scholar, or knowledgable person here could explain the syntactical construction of the following interesting sentence from "Lakota Eyapaha", by Ivan STARR (Lakota Books, Kendall Park, N.J., 1996. Page 27)? (Especially the second part of the sentence "enclosed" by "iNs^e....eyas^") "Oecun was^te kecamin iNs^e iwaNblakahe eyas^." [ /OéchuN was^té kechámiN iNs^é iwáNblakahe éyas^/ ] The translation supplied on Page 29, (presumably done by the author himself), reads : "I'VE BEEN STUDYING THIS PROBLEM AND FROM MY OBSERVATIONS I THINK IT CAN BE DONE EASILY." Just to make myself clear, I have no problem at all with "free" translations, or with Lakhota Word-Order of conjunctions, or in subordinate clauses. Also, the construction of : "oéchuN was^té kechámiN" [="I think/thought that it is/was easy to do/easily done."] is 100% familiar to me. I am also familiar enough with the conjunction (or is it an adverb?) "iNs^é" (meaning here, one supposes, something like "in fact/indeed/ actually"), as well as the 1stPersonSing form of the verb : "iwáNyaNkA" [="look at; examine carefully/research; compare"] with added "Progressive" aspectual suffix : "haN/he". What puzzles me somewhat is exactly how "éyas^" is operating there. What meaning, precisely, does "éyas^" add to that sentence? Is it an adversative conjunction? Does it link up with "iNs^é", to form a sort of "concessive complex" (so to speak) meaning "even though/ although"? Might it perhaps convey some idea of Indefiniteness? Any observations would be appreciated. Toksha akhe, Clive Bloomfield. From pustetrm at yahoo.com Thu Jun 14 07:46:04 2007 From: pustetrm at yahoo.com (REGINA PUSTET) Date: Thu, 14 Jun 2007 00:46:04 -0700 Subject: Syntax of Lakhota Sentence from "Lakota Eyapaha" In-Reply-To: <49654B17-D87D-4055-8A4D-ADBF9D185A0F@ozemail.com.au> Message-ID: Sentence-final eyas^ occurs in my data also. It imposes a concessive meaning that is sometimes hard to capture in translations. In wakhaN-yaN ma-wa-ni is^ta ma-sanila eyas^. spiritual-ADV walk-1SG.AG-walk eye 1SG.PAT-one+sided EYAS^ 'I'm walking in a spiritual way, although I'm blind on one eye 'although' works as a translation. The next example is a tougher case: tuwa lel hi sece eyas^. someone here arrive maybe EYAS^ 'Maybe someone has arrived' Here eyas^ implies that the arrival of 'someone' should have been noticed by the speaker. A more literal translation of your example might be something like 'although I have dealt with this in great detail [continuative -haN intensifies action] (and I actually should have encountered problems), I think it is easy to do'. iNs^e is an attenuating particle that can be translated by 'just' or 'maybe' in many cases. BTW: is there a typo in kechámiN ? I'm familiar with the form kechaNmi for 'I think that' only. Regina Clive Bloomfield wrote: Greetings folks, I've been content to remain in "deep lurk mode" here for a quite a while, but now at last curiosity has got the better of me again! I was wondering if any Lakhota scholar, or knowledgable person here could explain the syntactical construction of the following interesting sentence from "Lakota Eyapaha", by Ivan STARR (Lakota Books, Kendall Park, N.J., 1996. Page 27)? (Especially the second part of the sentence "enclosed" by "iNs^e....eyas^") "Oecun was^te kecamin iNs^e iwaNblakahe eyas^." [ /OéchuN was^té kechámiN iNs^é iwáNblakahe éyas^/ ] The translation supplied on Page 29, (presumably done by the author himself), reads : "I'VE BEEN STUDYING THIS PROBLEM AND FROM MY OBSERVATIONS I THINK IT CAN BE DONE EASILY." Just to make myself clear, I have no problem at all with "free" translations, or with Lakhota Word-Order of conjunctions, or in subordinate clauses. Also, the construction of : "oéchuN was^té kechámiN" [="I think/thought that it is/was easy to do/easily done."] is 100% familiar to me. I am also familiar enough with the conjunction (or is it an adverb?) "iNs^é" (meaning here, one supposes, something like "in fact/indeed/ actually"), as well as the 1stPersonSing form of the verb : "iwáNyaNkA" [="look at; examine carefully/research; compare"] with added "Progressive" aspectual suffix : "haN/he". What puzzles me somewhat is exactly how "éyas^" is operating there. What meaning, precisely, does "éyas^" add to that sentence? Is it an adversative conjunction? Does it link up with "iNs^é", to form a sort of "concessive complex" (so to speak) meaning "even though/ although"? Might it perhaps convey some idea of Indefiniteness? Any observations would be appreciated. Toksha akhe, Clive Bloomfield. --------------------------------- Park yourself in front of a world of choices in alternative vehicles. Visit the Yahoo! Auto Green Center. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cbloom at ozemail.com.au Thu Jun 14 15:11:27 2007 From: cbloom at ozemail.com.au (Clive Bloomfield) Date: Fri, 15 Jun 2007 01:11:27 +1000 Subject: Syntax of Lakhota Sentence from "Lakota Eyapaha" In-Reply-To: <556376.86055.qm@web54601.mail.re2.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Hello Regina, First of all, many thanks for those enlightening & subtle comments, as well as for the extra data. Your second example is most intriguing! Is "eyas^" there on its way to becoming a sentence-final (adverbial?) particle, (in addition to the more usual conjunctional use), I wonder? Presumably also some degree of Ellipsis is operative? (e.g. a suppressed concessive clause, or such.) Incidentally, "kecamin" is as it appears in Starr's trad. orthography, (I inserted the aspirated c, and the penultimate word- accent [probably incorrectly, from another source], as well as interpreting the final "-n" as a nasal, in my transcription ) but perhaps it may be a typo. I thought it was probably a (sub-)dialectal variant of "kéchaNmi". Starr tells us at one point that he is Oglala, from Pine Ridge (but of Hunkpapa ancestry, through one of his grandfathers : "Ehanni tunkasilawaye kin Ojula Hunkpapa heca." [p. 53]..."Lehanl Oglala na Hunkpapa we hankeke ematanhan." [p. 54]). On checking just now, I notice that my edition of Fr. Buechel's Grammar [p.70, #49, e) ] , rather confusingly, gives "kécami" (accented thus, & sans aspirate) as 1stPsg. of "kéciN", whereas Buechel-Manhart Dict. has "kéc(h)anmi" from "kéc(h)iN" To tell you the truth, I find Fr. Manhart's system of denoting aspirated stops very trying (and difficult to even see, without the aid of a large magnifier!) Regards, Clive. P.S. Wishing you & your team great success with the Reference Grammar. Sorely needed! Oglu waste eciciyapelo. On 14/06/2007, at 5:46 PM, REGINA PUSTET wrote: > Sentence-final eyas^ occurs in my data also. It imposes a > concessive meaning that is sometimes hard to capture in > translations. In > > wakhaN-yaN ma-wa-ni is^ta ma- > sanila eyas^. > spiritual-ADV walk-1SG.AG-walk eye 1SG.PAT-one+sided EYAS^ > 'I'm walking in a spiritual way, although I'm blind on one eye > > 'although' works as a translation. The next example is a tougher case: > > tuwa lel hi sece eyas^. > someone here arrive maybe EYAS^ > 'Maybe someone has arrived' > > Here eyas^ implies that the arrival of 'someone' should have been > noticed by the speaker. A more literal translation of your example > might be something like 'although I have dealt with this in great > detail [continuative -haN intensifies action] (and I actually > should have encountered problems), I think it is easy to do'. > iNs^e is an attenuating particle that can be translated by 'just' > or 'maybe' in many cases. > BTW: is there a typo in kechámiN ? I'm familiar with the form > kechaNmi for 'I think that' only. > > Regina > > > > > Clive Bloomfield wrote: > > > "Oecun was^te kecamin iNs^e iwaNblakahe eyas^." > [ /oéchuN was^té > kechámiN iNs^é iwáNblakahe éyas^/ ] > > The translation supplied on Page 29, (presumably done by the author > himself), reads : > > "I'VE BEEN STUDYING THIS PROBLEM AND FROM MY OBSERVATIONS I THINK IT > CAN BE DONE EASILY." > What puzzles me somewhat is exactly how "éyas^" is operating there. > What meaning, precisely, does "éyas^" add to that sentence? Is it an > adversative conjunction? Does it link up with "iNs^é", to form a sort > of "concessive complex" (so to speak) meaning "even though/ > although"? Might it perhaps convey some idea of Indefiniteness? > > Any observations would be appreciated. > Toksha akhe, > Clive Bloomfield. > > > > > Park yourself in front of a world of choices in alternative vehicles. > Visit the Yahoo! Auto Green Center. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From willemdereuse at unt.edu Thu Jun 14 15:36:07 2007 From: willemdereuse at unt.edu (willemdereuse at unt.edu) Date: Thu, 14 Jun 2007 10:36:07 -0500 Subject: Syntax of Lakhota Sentence from "Lakota Eyapaha" In-Reply-To: <3C3C9AD1-243F-4328-9DD5-40F0EFE2434A@ozemail.com.au> Message-ID: I do not think we need to consistently distinguish sentence final particle from conjunction in the case of an element like eyas^. Lakota conjunctions tend to be phonologically clause-final anyway, rather than elements right in between two clauses. There is only one eyas^; no syntactic change in progress needs to be postulated. If the conjunction is final some degree of ellipsis can be assumed. You have the same thing in very colloquial English. To retranslate Regina's examples: "I'm walking in a spiritual way; I'm blind in one eye, but..." "Maybe someone has arrived, but..." It is easier, and less colloquial, to do this in Lakota, because there need not be an intonational break or comma between the eyas^ and the preceding clause. Willem Quoting Clive Bloomfield : > Hello Regina, First of all, many thanks for those enlightening & > subtle comments, as well as for the extra data. > Your second example is most intriguing! Is "eyas^" there on its way > to becoming a sentence-final (adverbial?) particle, (in addition to > the more usual conjunctional use), I wonder? > Presumably also some degree of Ellipsis is operative? (e.g. a > suppressed concessive clause, or such.) > > On 14/06/2007, at 5:46 PM, REGINA PUSTET wrote: > >> Sentence-final eyas^ occurs in my data also. It imposes a >> concessive meaning that is sometimes hard to capture in >> translations. In >> >> wakhaN-yaN ma-wa-ni is^ta ma- sanila >> eyas^. >> spiritual-ADV walk-1SG.AG-walk eye 1SG.PAT-one+sided EYAS^ >> 'I'm walking in a spiritual way, although I'm blind on one eye >> >> 'although' works as a translation. The next example is a tougher case: >> >> tuwa lel hi sece eyas^. >> someone here arrive maybe EYAS^ >> 'Maybe someone has arrived' >> >> Here eyas^ implies that the arrival of 'someone' should have been >> noticed by the speaker. A more literal translation of your example >> might be something like 'although I have dealt with this in great >> detail [continuative -haN intensifies action] (and I actually >> should have encountered problems), I think it is easy to do'. >> iNs^e is an attenuating particle that can be translated by 'just' >> or 'maybe' in many cases. >> BTW: is there a typo in kechámiN ? I'm familiar with the form >> kechaNmi for 'I think that' only. >> >> Regina From pustetrm at yahoo.com Thu Jun 14 16:27:51 2007 From: pustetrm at yahoo.com (REGINA PUSTET) Date: Thu, 14 Jun 2007 09:27:51 -0700 Subject: Syntax of Lakhota Sentence from "Lakota Eyapaha" In-Reply-To: <20070614103607.2rm8i01pwzs4oo8o@eaglemail.unt.edu> Message-ID: (quoting Clive Bloomfield) > Is "eyas^" there on its way to becoming a sentence-final (adverbial?) particle, (in addition to the more usual conjunctional use), I wonder? Presumably also some degree of Ellipsis is operative? (e.g. a suppressed concessive clause, or such.) (quoting Willem DeReuse) > There is only one eyas^; no syntactic change in progress needs to be postulated. If the conjunction is final some degree of ellipsis can be assumed. You have the same thing in very colloquial English. To retranslate Regina's examples: "I'm walking in a spiritual way; I'm blind in one eye, but..." "Maybe someone has arrived, but..." Like Willem, I'm hesitating to postulate two distinct eyasˆ-morphemes. But then, what Clive describes is exactly what happened to the coordinator tkha 'but', which now marks various modal and aspectual categories, such as irrealis, counterfactual, and avertive. The meanings involved include 'would have', 'should have', and 'almost'. All these originate in the elliptical sentence types Willem illustrates with English examples. This is what I'll talk about at SCLC in October, if my abstract is accepted. Thanks for the clarification regarding kechaNmi, Clive! Regina --------------------------------- Ready for the edge of your seat? Check out tonight's top picks on Yahoo! TV. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cbloom at ozemail.com.au Thu Jun 14 21:54:40 2007 From: cbloom at ozemail.com.au (Clive Bloomfield) Date: Fri, 15 Jun 2007 07:54:40 +1000 Subject: Syntax of Lakhota Sentence from "Lakota Eyapaha" In-Reply-To: <20070614103607.2rm8i01pwzs4oo8o@eaglemail.unt.edu> Message-ID: Thanks Willem - your namesake of Occam's whisker-trimmer deftly applied! And rightly so. Do you know, I had thought sentence-final "but" only applied nowadays in the most Aussie of colloquial Englishes : speakers (d'un certain âge) from rural Queensland (some assert)! I haven't heard it since I was a lad, when it was probably much more widespread in working-class Australian English. I remember such utterances as : "We'll be goin' inter town temorrer orright, young feller-me-lad! Not takin' you but." ( Unmistakeable air of finality : a pronounced full- stop! I had a blighted childhood. ;) ) I was quite startled to hear that it is current in other English variants. I live & learn! Regards, Clive. On 15/06/2007, at 1:36 AM, willemdereuse at unt.edu wrote: > I do not think we need to consistently distinguish sentence final > particle from conjunction in the case of an element like eyas^. > Lakota conjunctions tend to be phonologically clause-final anyway, > rather than elements right in between two clauses. There is only > one eyas^; no syntactic change in progress needs to be postulated. > If the conjunction is final some degree of ellipsis can be > assumed. You have the same thing in very colloquial English. To > retranslate Regina's examples: "I'm walking in a spiritual way; I'm > blind in one eye, but..." "Maybe someone has arrived, but..." It is > easier, and less colloquial, to do this in Lakota, because there > need not be an intonational break or comma between the eyas^ and > the preceding clause. > > Willem > > Quoting Clive Bloomfield : > >> Hello Regina, First of all, many thanks for those enlightening & >> subtle comments, as well as for the extra data. >> Your second example is most intriguing! Is "eyas^" there on its >> way to becoming a sentence-final (adverbial?) particle, (in >> addition to the more usual conjunctional use), I wonder? >> Presumably also some degree of Ellipsis is operative? (e.g. a >> suppressed concessive clause, or such.) >> >> On 14/06/2007, at 5:46 PM, REGINA PUSTET wrote: >> >>> Sentence-final eyas^ occurs in my data also. It imposes a >>> concessive meaning that is sometimes hard to capture in >>> translations. In >>> >>> wakhaN-yaN ma-wa-ni is^ta ma- >>> sanila eyas^. >>> spiritual-ADV walk-1SG.AG-walk eye 1SG.PAT-one+sided EYAS^ >>> 'I'm walking in a spiritual way, although I'm blind on one eye >>> >>> 'although' works as a translation. The next example is a tougher >>> case: >>> >>> tuwa lel hi sece eyas^. >>> someone here arrive maybe EYAS^ >>> 'Maybe someone has arrived' >>> >>> Here eyas^ implies that the arrival of 'someone' should have >>> been noticed by the speaker. A more literal translation of your >>> example might be something like 'although I have dealt with this >>> in great detail [continuative -haN intensifies action] (and I >>> actually should have encountered problems), I think it is easy >>> to do'. >>> iNs^e is an attenuating particle that can be translated by >>> 'just' or 'maybe' in many cases. >>> BTW: is there a typo in kechámiN ? I'm familiar with the form >>> kechaNmi for 'I think that' only. >>> >>> Regina > From pankihtamwa at earthlink.net Fri Jun 15 00:11:42 2007 From: pankihtamwa at earthlink.net (David Costa) Date: Thu, 14 Jun 2007 17:11:42 -0700 Subject: Syntax of Lakhota Sentence from "Lakota Eyapaha" In-Reply-To: <2E02565F-86B4-43A9-B5C8-1294AF451F5F@ozemail.com.au> Message-ID: I can't do that in my idiolect, but it seems to me like in such dialects, 'but' is just being made more syntactically like 'though', which can be either clause-initial or clause-final with no difference in meaning. Dave > > Thanks Willem - your namesake of Occam's whisker-trimmer deftly > applied! And rightly so. > > Do you know, I had thought sentence-final "but" only applied nowadays > in the most Aussie of colloquial Englishes : speakers (d'un certain > âge) from rural Queensland (some assert)! > I haven't heard it since I was a lad, when it was probably much more > widespread in working-class Australian English. I remember such > utterances as : > "We'll be goin' inter town temorrer orright, young feller-me-lad! Not > takin' you but." ( Unmistakeable air of finality : a pronounced full- > stop! I had a blighted childhood. ;) ) > I was quite startled to hear that it is current in other English > variants. I live & learn! > Regards, > Clive. > > On 15/06/2007, at 1:36 AM, willemdereuse at unt.edu wrote: > >> I do not think we need to consistently distinguish sentence final >> particle from conjunction in the case of an element like eyas^. >> Lakota conjunctions tend to be phonologically clause-final anyway, >> rather than elements right in between two clauses. There is only >> one eyas^; no syntactic change in progress needs to be postulated. >> If the conjunction is final some degree of ellipsis can be >> assumed. You have the same thing in very colloquial English. To >> retranslate Regina's examples: "I'm walking in a spiritual way; I'm >> blind in one eye, but..." "Maybe someone has arrived, but..." It is >> easier, and less colloquial, to do this in Lakota, because there >> need not be an intonational break or comma between the eyas^ and >> the preceding clause. >> >> Willem >> >> Quoting Clive Bloomfield : >> >>> Hello Regina, First of all, many thanks for those enlightening & >>> subtle comments, as well as for the extra data. >>> Your second example is most intriguing! Is "eyas^" there on its >>> way to becoming a sentence-final (adverbial?) particle, (in >>> addition to the more usual conjunctional use), I wonder? >>> Presumably also some degree of Ellipsis is operative? (e.g. a >>> suppressed concessive clause, or such.) >>> >>> On 14/06/2007, at 5:46 PM, REGINA PUSTET wrote: >>> >>>> Sentence-final eyas^ occurs in my data also. It imposes a >>>> concessive meaning that is sometimes hard to capture in >>>> translations. In >>>> >>>> wakhaN-yaN ma-wa-ni is^ta ma- >>>> sanila eyas^. >>>> spiritual-ADV walk-1SG.AG-walk eye 1SG.PAT-one+sided EYAS^ >>>> 'I'm walking in a spiritual way, although I'm blind on one eye >>>> >>>> 'although' works as a translation. The next example is a tougher >>>> case: >>>> >>>> tuwa lel hi sece eyas^. >>>> someone here arrive maybe EYAS^ >>>> 'Maybe someone has arrived' >>>> >>>> Here eyas^ implies that the arrival of 'someone' should have >>>> been noticed by the speaker. A more literal translation of your >>>> example might be something like 'although I have dealt with this >>>> in great detail [continuative -haN intensifies action] (and I >>>> actually should have encountered problems), I think it is easy >>>> to do'. >>>> iNs^e is an attenuating particle that can be translated by >>>> 'just' or 'maybe' in many cases. >>>> BTW: is there a typo in kechámiN ? I'm familiar with the form >>>> kechaNmi for 'I think that' only. >>>> >>>> Regina >> > From Granta at edgehill.ac.uk Fri Jun 15 09:22:55 2007 From: Granta at edgehill.ac.uk (Anthony Grant) Date: Fri, 15 Jun 2007 10:22:55 +0100 Subject: Syntax of Lakhota Sentence from "Lakota Eyapaha" In-Reply-To: Message-ID: It's possible to use "though but" in this way in Geordie, the colloquial English of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, in which the sentence would be something like: Us are gannin into toon tomorra neet, bonny lad - not takkin you, though but. It may also occur in Mackem, the colloquial English of nearby Suinderland. Anthony >>> David Costa 06/15/07 1:11 am >>> I can't do that in my idiolect, but it seems to me like in such dialects, 'but' is just being made more syntactically like 'though', which can be either clause-initial or clause-final with no difference in meaning. Dave > > Thanks Willem - your namesake of Occam's whisker-trimmer deftly > applied! And rightly so. > > Do you know, I had thought sentence-final "but" only applied nowadays > in the most Aussie of colloquial Englishes : speakers (d'un certain > âge) from rural Queensland (some assert)! > I haven't heard it since I was a lad, when it was probably much more > widespread in working-class Australian English. I remember such > utterances as : > "We'll be goin' inter town temorrer orright, young feller-me-lad! Not > takin' you but." ( Unmistakeable air of finality : a pronounced full- > stop! I had a blighted childhood. ;) ) > I was quite startled to hear that it is current in other English > variants. I live & learn! > Regards, > Clive. > > On 15/06/2007, at 1:36 AM, willemdereuse at unt.edu wrote: > >> I do not think we need to consistently distinguish sentence final >> particle from conjunction in the case of an element like eyas^. >> Lakota conjunctions tend to be phonologically clause-final anyway, >> rather than elements right in between two clauses. There is only >> one eyas^; no syntactic change in progress needs to be postulated. >> If the conjunction is final some degree of ellipsis can be >> assumed. You have the same thing in very colloquial English. To >> retranslate Regina's examples: "I'm walking in a spiritual way; I'm >> blind in one eye, but..." "Maybe someone has arrived, but..." It is >> easier, and less colloquial, to do this in Lakota, because there >> need not be an intonational break or comma between the eyas^ and >> the preceding clause. >> >> Willem >> >> Quoting Clive Bloomfield : >> >>> Hello Regina, First of all, many thanks for those enlightening & >>> subtle comments, as well as for the extra data. >>> Your second example is most intriguing! Is "eyas^" there on its >>> way to becoming a sentence-final (adverbial?) particle, (in >>> addition to the more usual conjunctional use), I wonder? >>> Presumably also some degree of Ellipsis is operative? (e.g. a >>> suppressed concessive clause, or such.) >>> >>> On 14/06/2007, at 5:46 PM, REGINA PUSTET wrote: >>> >>>> Sentence-final eyas^ occurs in my data also. It imposes a >>>> concessive meaning that is sometimes hard to capture in >>>> translations. In >>>> >>>> wakhaN-yaN ma-wa-ni is^ta ma- >>>> sanila eyas^. >>>> spiritual-ADV walk-1SG.AG-walk eye 1SG.PAT-one+sided EYAS^ >>>> 'I'm walking in a spiritual way, although I'm blind on one eye >>>> >>>> 'although' works as a translation. The next example is a tougher >>>> case: >>>> >>>> tuwa lel hi sece eyas^. >>>> someone here arrive maybe EYAS^ >>>> 'Maybe someone has arrived' >>>> >>>> Here eyas^ implies that the arrival of 'someone' should have >>>> been noticed by the speaker. A more literal translation of your >>>> example might be something like 'although I have dealt with this >>>> in great detail [continuative -haN intensifies action] (and I >>>> actually should have encountered problems), I think it is easy >>>> to do'. >>>> iNs^e is an attenuating particle that can be translated by >>>> 'just' or 'maybe' in many cases. >>>> BTW: is there a typo in kechámiN ? I'm familiar with the form >>>> kechaNmi for 'I think that' only. >>>> >>>> Regina >> > ----------------------------------------------------- This email and any attachments are confidential and intended solely for the use of the individual to whom it is addressed. Any views or opinions presented are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of Edge Hill University or associated companies. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender as soon as possible and delete it and all copies of it. 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However, it is the responsibility of the recipient to ensure that it is virus free and no responsibility is accepted by Edge Hill University for any loss or damage arising in any way from its use. ----------------------------------------------------- From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Fri Jun 15 21:52:03 2007 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Fri, 15 Jun 2007 15:52:03 -0600 Subject: obviation in Siouan languages In-Reply-To: <20070612103452.w767rlzk2tk4wwok@eaglemail.unt.edu> Message-ID: On Tue, 12 Jun 2007, willemdereuse at unt.edu wrote: > Thank you Regina, David, and Wally for your input. I was thinking that > chaNke might have originated as a contraction of cha + hanke. Cha is 'and > so' and haNke is "part of, half of', so chaNke might mean something like 'and > so, part of (the continuing storyline)' Any thoughts about this? Does the syntax of that make sense? Just as a form you'd expect historical *yaNk-e or *htaNk-e (possibly *thaNk-e or *t-haNk-e) In the latter case, some preceding e or i, perhaps no longer present, would be needed to produce the affrication. From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Fri Jun 15 21:45:23 2007 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Fri, 15 Jun 2007 15:45:23 -0600 Subject: Switching topics In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Mon, 11 Jun 2007, Bryan Gordon wrote: > I don't suppose yunkhan might be similar in function to egithe > ('egiðe) in Omaha and Ponca? This one is usually translated in Dorsey > as "behold" or "eventually" or "it happened that", and I've heard good > translations such as "turns out" or "on the other hand". I visualize e'gidhe as 'and then, just as you'd expect', so I find it a bit difficult to think of it as a marker of unexpectedness, or some surprising development, but it does seem to mark some kind of a period or transition in a narrative. My recollection is that the "beware lest you ..." construction is e'=gidhe ...=ttE pairing e'gidhe with the future (irrealis). The marker that is usually associated with something surprising is -de-, as in e'=de or e'=de=gaN, etc., cf. the focus marker e or the conjunct marker =e=gaN. Dorsey usually renders it 'but'. My own paltry text collection seems to be free of this form. From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Fri Jun 15 23:00:17 2007 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Fri, 15 Jun 2007 17:00:17 -0600 Subject: Cognacy of the Omaha and Ponca (was Re: local reactions ...) In-Reply-To: <466ED20A.90004@cox.net> Message-ID: On Tue, 12 Jun 2007, Tom Leonard wrote: > Ponca people have long held that they are "related" to the Omaha ("they're > our relatives") but that they have always been a separate entity - the two > tribes living together at one time but always distinct from one another. I've > heard Omaha people describe the relationship in a similar manner. This sense of connection is probably behind LaFlesche's term 'cognate tribes', extending to all the Dhegiha peoples. He probably doesn't have the current linguistic sense in mind as such and I also doubt he means 'speaking languages full of cognate words'. I'm not sure if 'agnate' might not be the proper term for what he has in mind, for that matter. My attempt to make sense of his term is to assume that he refers not to common descent, lingusitic or otherwise, but to parallel institutions and organizations, or perhaps to something of what Tom reports as a sense of being connected, but always extant. Notice that Tom reports the Ponca and Omaha as seeing themselves more like separated siblings (without explicit parents) than as children (descendents) of a single parent entity. This is analogous to Americans and Canadians thinking of themselves and the English as all formerly living together in England before, for some reason, the Americans and (Anglo-)Canadians all moved to North America, leaving the English behind. In fact, I believe we tend to think of ourselves as children of England. The concept that all present branches of a group have always been logically separate, though not perhaps originally physically separate, is one that reappears in Dhegiha accounts, and I think it is is common in similar situations in the Plains area. The other Dhegiha example occurs in the "Ohio Origin" legend in which the five tribes are conceived of as moving down the Ohio together and then splitting off from the main body at various points. The specifically Omaha and Ponca versions of this continue the process in dividing the Omaha and Ponca. >>From a linguistic and ethnographic perspective, even if we try to escape the folk modelling of the process, it makes perfect sense to see the Omaha and Ponca as offshoots or a single earlier entity. Apart from the obvious and particular similarities of the two languages, the clan structure of the Omaha and Ponca is more or less complementary, when compared with that of other Dhegiha groups like the Osage or Kaw. In other words, you have to add the Omaha and Ponca clan sets to come up with something like the set exhibited among the Osage or Kaw. There are some overlaps, but it certainly looks like some event fissioned the original combined system. I don't know that we have to assume anything unusual for this event. Both groups were internally divided into villages (Omaha) or bands (Ponca) when encountered. I assume the Omaha vs. Ponca fission was simply an earlier, but fairly recent fissioning that persisted. Incidentally, the complex and rather well-developed interior structuring of the Omaha "Left Hands Side" clan - also its large size compared with other clans - suggests to me that it represents the reverse process, i.e., it is an absorbed entity that was originally more independent. This absorption is well advanced, if this is the case, and it may have occurred before the Omaha-Ponca split. An analogy here might be the Cheyenne-Suhtai merger or the association of the Kiowa and the "Kiowa Apache." Or consider the widespread fusions in the Caddoan groups. (The Caddo "proper" even incorporate one of the original Quapaw villages, the ImaNhaN, demonstrating again that lingusitically dissimilar elements can be absorbed fairly quickly.) So, while the traditions of both ethnographees and ethnographers tends to assume constancy of language, we have to keep in mind that there is no reason why all elements in the mix were always Dhegiha speaking. It does seem likely that any entity that divided into the linguistically similar Omaha and Ponca must have been primarily speaking an earlier version of Omaha-Ponca, but the Left Hand Side people, if originally separate, need not have been Omaha-Ponca, or even Dhegiha speakers. I tend to keep the idea that languages can change in mind when trying to explain the several Dakota bands north of the Omaha-Ponca area named Waz^az^a. Compare Dhegiha waz^az^e 'Osage', the name of one of the "standard" Dhegiha clans. And of course, examples like this, and certainly like Imaha, warn us not to be too agressive in explaining names of clans or tribes in terms of their current language. Maybe we're puzzled by the etymology of words like Kansa and Ponca, etc., because they're not Siouan words, or at least not Dhegiha words. Turning from that point back to Bryan's apology for looking at still more Algonquian data, I'd say don't apologize. I don't think we whould degenerate to looking always at all languages, but if we are consistent in applying such glances to Siouan problems, I think we are OK. I like to see us looking at other languages, especially nearby ones, in connection with Siouan, because I think we can only profit from knowing more, collectively, about the wider linguistic context of Siouan. Not just vocabulary elements, of course, but also grammatical issues like obviation in Algonquian, or clause syntax, etc. For example, I think Bob Rankin's usage "conjunctive (marker)" for the Omaha-Ponca =e=gaN 'having ...' marker in clauses, borrowing from Algonquian descriptive models, has been very helpful to me. Maybe my scheme of calling certain things in Dhegiha "obviative," wasn't quite as helpful, though it has attracted people to thinking about what is actually going on. A couple of debts need to be acknowledged. One is that I think that it was actually Bob Rankin who suggested I should look at whether the OP "plural singulars" etc. might be marking something like the proximate/obviative. This is a case where in acknowledging the debt I need to observe that he suggested looking at this would be interesting. He didn't recommend that I take over the terms. So, while he deserved the credit for pointing us in that direction, he's innocent of any terminological gaffes. The other debt is owed to Boas, who send Frida Hahn to Oklahoma to discoved, among other things, what that -bi- was at the end of Omaha-Ponca verbs (or stuck on the front of things like biama 'they say'). Even before that, of course, Dorsey experimented with endless approaches to explaining the particle coglomerations at the end of Omaha-Ponca sentences, and also meticulously recorded his consultants observations on the implications of using one kind of article vs. another, or of including a "plural marker in a singular form or not. In the end it was a very good thing that Dorsey and other consultants managed to produce quite a few sentences with mixed structures that later consultants seized upon as ungrammatical. From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Fri Jun 15 23:11:42 2007 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Fri, 15 Jun 2007 17:11:42 -0600 Subject: obviation in Siouan languages In-Reply-To: <200706122321.19448@centrum.cz> Message-ID: On Tue, 12 Jun 2007, Jan Ullrich wrote: > I do not know what the etymology of the word is, but it is probably > relevant to mention here that it occurs in two variants: with aspirated > kh (chaNkhe) and with unaspirated k (chaNke). ... (distribution of > forms) Bob Rankin has pointed out in various other contexts that alternations between -ke/a and -khe/a in verb finals usually have two different sources. One pattern is *CV-ka => CVka vs. *CVh-ka => CVkha. This explains the doublet suffixes of similar meaning in Da -ka ~ -kha, OP -ga ~ -kka, IO -ge ~ -khe, Wi -k ~ -ke. A slightly different pattern occurs with *CVC-ka, e.g., Da -ka, OP -ka, IO -ke, Wi -ke. The other pattern, which I think applies here is that many positional verbs have an inflected auxiliary *he attached to them. In Dhegiha this appears in the first person as *he and in the second person as *s^e. It is usually absent in the third person. Elsewhere it tends to lead to doublets in -kA vs. -khA, etc. From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Fri Jun 15 23:19:46 2007 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Fri, 15 Jun 2007 17:19:46 -0600 Subject: Syntax of Lakhota Sentence from "Lakota Eyapaha" In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Thu, 14 Jun 2007, David Costa wrote: > I can't do that in my idiolect, but it seems to me like in such dialects, > 'but' is just being made more syntactically like 'though', which can be > either clause-initial or clause-final with no difference in meaning. Yeah. I'd have to use "though" or "however" instead of that final "but." By the way, now that I've deleted the encrustation successive previous comments that followed, let me suggest that it is not really necessary or even desirable to retain the entire history of an exchange as a sort of appendix to one's own contribution. That's what the list archive is for. Or what you save of past contributions locally. Just make sure that it's clear who said what and delete what's not needed to provide a foundation of sorts to your response. From John.Koontz at Colorado.EDU Fri Jun 15 21:58:03 2007 From: John.Koontz at Colorado.EDU (Koontz John E) Date: Fri, 15 Jun 2007 15:58:03 -0600 Subject: local reactions to language family terms In-Reply-To: <466ED20A.90004@cox.net> Message-ID: On Tue, 12 Jun 2007, Tom Leonard wrote: > I have read the comments on this topic with interest. I agree with Mark > Swetland's observation that we should not take one person's comments as being > representative of the Tribe. In my experience, I have heard some opposition > to the term "Omaha-Ponca", but not much. Frankly, the term is not used in the > community. Similarly, I would tend to doubt "O-P" is used in Macy, either. Good observation. It's essentially a learned term, fulfilling learned needs. From John.Koontz at Colorado.EDU Fri Jun 15 22:03:50 2007 From: John.Koontz at Colorado.EDU (Koontz John E) Date: Fri, 15 Jun 2007 16:03:50 -0600 Subject: 'Wagon' (Re: local reactions to language family terms) In-Reply-To: <466ED20A.90004@cox.net> Message-ID: On Tue, 12 Jun 2007, Tom Leonard wrote: > ... one of my Ponca relatives points out that the Ponca term for a wagon > translates as "running wood", whereas the Omaha term, I believe, translates > as "walking wood". Ponca speakers understand "zhaN maNthiN" to be a wagon, > but most would never think to say it that way. I've heard fluent Omaha > speakers say the inverse was true, as well. They recognize "zhaN naN'ge" as > meaning "wagon", but as a Ponca speaker would say it. I've seen naNge characterized as 'going on four legs' as opposed to 'going on two legs'. I think in this context maNdhiN is essentially just 'to move, to proceed', but it is the conventional rendering of 'walk', too. This is an interesting neologism, in that the 'walking wood' form is pretty widespread in Mississippi Valley Siouan. I think it's the form in Ioway-Otoe, for example. \ I don't recall a term, off hand, for 'travois'. I was wondering about four vs. two legs! From goodtracks at peoplepc.com Sat Jun 16 13:11:27 2007 From: goodtracks at peoplepc.com (goodtracks at peoplepc.com) Date: Sat, 16 Jun 2007 08:11:27 -0500 Subject: Cognacy of the Omaha and Ponca (was Re: local reactions ...) Message-ID: ----- Original Message ----- From: "Koontz John E" To: Sent: Friday, June 15, 2007 6:00 PM Subject: Cognacy of the Omaha and Ponca (was Re: local reactions ...) > On Tue, 12 Jun 2007, Tom Leonard wrote: >> Ponca people have long held that they are "related" to the Omaha >> ("they're our relatives") but that they have always been a separate >> entity - the two tribes living together at one time but always distinct >> from one another. I've heard Omaha people describe the relationship in a >> similar manner. > > This sense of connection is probably behind LaFlesche's term 'cognate > tribes', extending to all the Dhegiha peoples. He probably doesn't have > the current linguistic sense in mind as such and I also doubt he means > 'speaking languages full of cognate words'. I'm not sure if 'agnate' > might not be the proper term for what he has in mind, for that matter. My > attempt to make sense of his term is to assume that he refers not to > common descent, lingusitic or otherwise, but to parallel institutions and > organizations, or perhaps to something of what Tom reports as a sense of > being connected, but always extant. > > Notice that Tom reports the Ponca and Omaha as seeing themselves more like > separated siblings (without explicit parents) than as children > (descendents) of a single parent entity. This is analogous to Americans > and Canadians thinking of themselves and the English as all formerly > living together in England before, for some reason, the Americans and > (Anglo-)Canadians all moved to North America, leaving the English behind. > In fact, I believe we tend to think of ourselves as children of England. > > The concept that all present branches of a group have always been > logically separate, though not perhaps originally physically separate, is > one that reappears in Dhegiha accounts, and I think it is is common in > similar situations in the Plains area. The other Dhegiha example occurs > in the "Ohio Origin" legend in which the five tribes are conceived of as > moving down the Ohio together and then splitting off from the main body at > various points. The specifically Omaha and Ponca versions of this > continue the process in dividing the Omaha and Ponca. > >>>From a linguistic and ethnographic perspective, even if we try to escape > the folk modelling of the process, it makes perfect sense to see the Omaha > and Ponca as offshoots or a single earlier entity. Apart from the obvious > and particular similarities of the two languages, the clan structure of > the Omaha and Ponca is more or less complementary, when compared with that > of other Dhegiha groups like the Osage or Kaw. In other words, you have > to add the Omaha and Ponca clan sets to come up with something like the > set exhibited among the Osage or Kaw. There are some overlaps, but it > certainly looks like some event fissioned the original combined system. > > I don't know that we have to assume anything unusual for this event. Both > groups were internally divided into villages (Omaha) or bands (Ponca) when > encountered. I assume the Omaha vs. Ponca fission was simply an earlier, > but fairly recent fissioning that persisted. > > Incidentally, the complex and rather well-developed interior structuring > of the Omaha "Left Hands Side" clan - also its large size compared with > other clans - suggests to me that it represents the reverse process, i.e., > it is an absorbed entity that was originally more independent. This > absorption is well advanced, if this is the case, and it may have occurred > before the Omaha-Ponca split. An analogy here might be the > Cheyenne-Suhtai merger or the association of the Kiowa and the "Kiowa > Apache." Or consider the widespread fusions in the Caddoan groups. (The > Caddo "proper" even incorporate one of the original Quapaw villages, the > ImaNhaN, demonstrating again that lingusitically dissimilar elements can > be absorbed fairly quickly.) > > So, while the traditions of both ethnographees and ethnographers tends to > assume constancy of language, we have to keep in mind that there is no > reason why all elements in the mix were always Dhegiha speaking. It does > seem likely that any entity that divided into the linguistically similar > Omaha and Ponca must have been primarily speaking an earlier version of > Omaha-Ponca, but the Left Hand Side people, if originally separate, need > not have been Omaha-Ponca, or even Dhegiha speakers. > > I tend to keep the idea that languages can change in mind when trying to > explain the several Dakota bands north of the Omaha-Ponca area named > Waz^az^a. Compare Dhegiha waz^az^e 'Osage', the name of one of the > "standard" Dhegiha clans. And of course, examples like this, and > certainly like Imaha, warn us not to be too agressive in explaining names > of clans or tribes in terms of their current language. Maybe we're > puzzled by the etymology of words like Kansa and Ponca, etc., because > they're not Siouan words, or at least not Dhegiha words. > > Turning from that point back to Bryan's apology for looking at still more > Algonquian data, I'd say don't apologize. I don't think we whould > degenerate to looking always at all languages, but if we are consistent in > applying such glances to Siouan problems, I think we are OK. > > I like to see us looking at other languages, especially nearby ones, in > connection with Siouan, because I think we can only profit from knowing > more, collectively, about the wider linguistic context of Siouan. Not > just vocabulary elements, of course, but also grammatical issues like > obviation in Algonquian, or clause syntax, etc. > > For example, I think Bob Rankin's usage "conjunctive (marker)" for the > Omaha-Ponca =e=gaN 'having ...' marker in clauses, borrowing from > Algonquian descriptive models, has been very helpful to me. Maybe my > scheme of calling certain things in Dhegiha "obviative," wasn't quite as > helpful, though it has attracted people to thinking about what is actually > going on. > > A couple of debts need to be acknowledged. One is that I think that it was > actually Bob Rankin who suggested I should look at whether the OP "plural > singulars" etc. might be marking something like the proximate/obviative. > This is a case where in acknowledging the debt I need to observe that he > suggested looking at this would be interesting. He didn't recommend that > I take over the terms. So, while he deserved the credit for pointing us > in that direction, he's innocent of any terminological gaffes. The other > debt is owed to Boas, who send Frida Hahn to Oklahoma to discoved, among > other things, what that -bi- was at the end of Omaha-Ponca verbs (or stuck > on the front of things like biama 'they say'). Even before that, of > course, Dorsey experimented with endless approaches to explaining the > particle coglomerations at the end of Omaha-Ponca sentences, and also > meticulously recorded his consultants observations on the implications of > using one kind of article vs. another, or of including a "plural marker in > a singular form or not. In the end it was a very good thing that Dorsey > and other consultants managed to produce quite a few sentences with mixed > structures that later consultants seized upon as ungrammatical. > From shokoohbanou at yahoo.co.uk Sat Jun 16 13:50:53 2007 From: shokoohbanou at yahoo.co.uk (shokooh Ingham) Date: Sat, 16 Jun 2007 14:50:53 +0100 Subject: Syntax of Lakhota Sentence from "Lakota Eyapaha" In-Reply-To: <20070614103607.2rm8i01pwzs4oo8o@eaglemail.unt.edu> Message-ID: This is a bit like the use of -tkha following a verb as in wai-kte -tkha 'I should have gone' or wowas^i echamuN-tkha 'I used to work', where the sentences seem to have an elided sentence following them ie 'I was going to go, but (I didn't)' or 'I worked, but (I've stopped now)'. It seems less easy to distinguish subordinating from non subordinating conjunctions in Lakota since upi k'uN hehan inkiyayapi 'when they came we went away' and upi na hehan unkiyayapi 'they came and then we went away' are not as easily differentiated from each other syntactically because you can also have upi hehan unkiyayapi which might be translated either way. I suppose it is also a characterstic of what is esentially an unwritten language, since you don't have to decide where the sentences begin and end. Bruce willemdereuse at unt.edu wrote: I do not think we need to consistently distinguish sentence final particle from conjunction in the case of an element like eyas^. Lakota conjunctions tend to be phonologically clause-final anyway, rather than elements right in between two clauses. There is only one eyas^; no syntactic change in progress needs to be postulated. If the conjunction is final some degree of ellipsis can be assumed. You have the same thing in very colloquial English. To retranslate Regina's examples: "I'm walking in a spiritual way; I'm blind in one eye, but..." "Maybe someone has arrived, but..." It is easier, and less colloquial, to do this in Lakota, because there need not be an intonational break or comma between the eyas^ and the preceding clause. Willem Quoting Clive Bloomfield : > Hello Regina, First of all, many thanks for those enlightening & > subtle comments, as well as for the extra data. > Your second example is most intriguing! Is "eyas^" there on its way > to becoming a sentence-final (adverbial?) particle, (in addition to > the more usual conjunctional use), I wonder? > Presumably also some degree of Ellipsis is operative? (e.g. a > suppressed concessive clause, or such.) > > On 14/06/2007, at 5:46 PM, REGINA PUSTET wrote: > >> Sentence-final eyas^ occurs in my data also. It imposes a >> concessive meaning that is sometimes hard to capture in >> translations. In >> >> wakhaN-yaN ma-wa-ni is^ta ma- sanila >> eyas^. >> spiritual-ADV walk-1SG.AG-walk eye 1SG.PAT-one+sided EYAS^ >> 'I'm walking in a spiritual way, although I'm blind on one eye >> >> 'although' works as a translation. The next example is a tougher case: >> >> tuwa lel hi sece eyas^. >> someone here arrive maybe EYAS^ >> 'Maybe someone has arrived' >> >> Here eyas^ implies that the arrival of 'someone' should have been >> noticed by the speaker. A more literal translation of your example >> might be something like 'although I have dealt with this in great >> detail [continuative -haN intensifies action] (and I actually >> should have encountered problems), I think it is easy to do'. >> iNs^e is an attenuating particle that can be translated by 'just' >> or 'maybe' in many cases. >> BTW: is there a typo in kechámiN ? I'm familiar with the form >> kechaNmi for 'I think that' only. >> >> Regina --------------------------------- Yahoo! Mail is the world's favourite email. Don't settle for less, sign up for your freeaccount today. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From goodtracks at peoplepc.com Sat Jun 16 21:32:50 2007 From: goodtracks at peoplepc.com (goodtracks at peoplepc.com) Date: Sat, 16 Jun 2007 16:32:50 -0500 Subject: No subject Message-ID: Bob, John, Johannes, whoever: Does the following gloss "....she makes me jealous for her" (female speaker) seem to fit the English notion of "She makes me jealous."??? I believe that there was some past discussion on these kind of sentence contructions with intransitives & causitive suffixes. Wáße irókunpi náha aré áma wáñi mínachi ñíthinhingihi ki, Because she has all the good looking men all the time, she makes me jealous for/ of her. ñíthin = jealous ñíthinhi = cause one to be jealous ñíthin + hin (I/ me) + (for/ to) + hi (causative suffix). Thanking you in advance for your review(s) Jimm -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From marino at skyway.usask.ca Sun Jun 17 06:59:18 2007 From: marino at skyway.usask.ca (Marino) Date: Sun, 17 Jun 2007 00:59:18 -0600 Subject: No subject In-Reply-To: <002001c7b05d$e913bb20$c814133f@JIMM> Message-ID: "She makes me jealous for her" (1) and "she makes me jealous" (2) mean two different things, to me. There may be either 2 or 3 parties to the situation being described: "she(i) makes me jealous for her(i)" or "she(i) makes me jealous for her(j)". (1) This has a benefactive meaning, to me. I am made to feel jealous on somebody else's behalf, whether that person is the same as the subject of the sentence, or another person. I don't feel myself to be at a disadvantage. (2) I am made to feel jealous of her or of somebody else. I am the one who is made to feel disadvantaged. The sex of the speaker, in English, would seem to be irrelevant. Mary At 03:32 PM 6/16/2007, you wrote: >Bob, John, Johannes, whoever: >Does the following gloss "....she makes me jealous for her" (female >speaker) seem to fit the English notion of "She makes me jealous."??? I >believe that there was some past discussion on these kind of sentence >contructions with intransitives & causitive suffixes. > >Wáße irókunpi náha aré áma wáñi mínachi ñíthinhingihi ki, Because she has >all the good looking men all the time, she makes me jealous for/ of her. > >ñíthin = jealous >ñíthinhi = cause one to be jealous >ñíthin + hin (I/ me) + (for/ to) + hi (causative suffix). > >Thanking you in advance for your review(s) >Jimm > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Tue Jun 19 15:33:39 2007 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Tue, 19 Jun 2007 09:33:39 -0600 Subject: your mail In-Reply-To: <002001c7b05d$e913bb20$c814133f@JIMM> Message-ID: On Sat, 16 Jun 2007, goodtracks at peoplepc.com wrote: > Bob, John, Johannes, whoever: Does the following gloss "....she makes me > jealous for her" (female speaker) seem to fit the English notion of > "She makes me jealous."??? I'd say, "she makes me jealous of her." > W��e ir�kunpi n�ha ar� �ma w��i m�nachi ��thinhingihi ki, > Because she has all the good looking men all the time, she makes me > jealous for/ of her. > > ��thin = jealous > ��thinhi = cause one to be jealous > ��thin + hin (I/ me) + (for/ to) + hi (causative suffix). > > Thanking you in advance for your review(s) > Jimm You're welcome! I'm wondering if a dative is needed here. Isn't hiN the regular patient form for the first person? Would 'she makes me jealous' or 'it makes me jealous' work here? From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Tue Jun 19 15:35:46 2007 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Tue, 19 Jun 2007 09:35:46 -0600 Subject: No subject In-Reply-To: <6.1.2.0.0.20070617001602.020f85b8@sask.usask.ca> Message-ID: On Sun, 17 Jun 2007, Marino wrote: > The sex of the speaker, in English, would seem to be irrelevant. By way of clarification, I think that "female speaking" glosses the final k(h)i. From goodtracks at peoplepc.com Tue Jun 19 18:05:26 2007 From: goodtracks at peoplepc.com (goodtracks at peoplepc.com) Date: Tue, 19 Jun 2007 13:05:26 -0500 Subject: your mail Message-ID: "gi-" would be the dative (to/ for) and yes, hiN- (me) is the direct personal pronoun, but if used without the gi-, then would it not gloss to be... 1. I am jealous OR 2. I cause another to be jealous WHEN the intent is that because of the actions of the other person, that person and her actions the the source of "I, myself" being jealous of her and her actions. > We irkunpi nha ar ma wi mnachi thinhingihi ki, ?????? Well, I see my original sentence got chewed up, and the SIL font didnt carry over. Wáße irókunpi náha aré áma wáñi mínachi ñíthinhingihi ki, Wange irokuNpi naha are ama wanyi mina-chi nyithiNhiNgihi ki. Perhaps, that is more clear. jgt ----- Original Message ----- From: "Koontz John E" To: "siouan at lists.colorado.ed" Cc: "RUEBEN AxeweHu" Sent: Tuesday, June 19, 2007 10:33 AM Subject: Re: your mail On Sat, 16 Jun 2007, goodtracks at peoplepc.com wrote: "....she makes me jealous for her" (female speaker) seem to fit the English notion of > "She makes me jealous."??? I'd say, "she makes me jealous of her." > We irkunpi nha ar ma wi mnachi thinhingihi ki, > Because she has all the good looking men all the time, she makes me > jealous for/ of her. > > thin = jealous > thinhi = cause one to be jealous > thin + hin (I/ me) + (for/ to) + hi (causative suffix). > > Thanking you in advance for your review(s) > Jimm You're welcome! I'm wondering if a dative is needed here. Isn't hiN the regular patient form for the first person? Would 'she makes me jealous' or 'it makes me jealous' work here? From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Wed Jun 20 19:13:13 2007 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Wed, 20 Jun 2007 13:13:13 -0600 Subject: IO Causative (Re: your mail) In-Reply-To: <007601c7b29d$215c3890$675d133f@JIMM> Message-ID: On Tue, 19 Jun 2007, goodtracks at peoplepc.com wrote: > "gi-" would be the dative (to/ for) and > yes, hiN- (me) is the direct personal pronoun, but if used without the gi-, > then would it not gloss to be... > 1. I am jealous OR > 2. I cause another to be jealous Or, rather, I think, 'Someone makes me jealous', right? I think the first person agent of the causative is =ha(a). > WHEN the intent is that because of the actions of the other person, that > person and her actions the the source of "I, myself" being jealous of her and > her actions. > >> We irkunpi nha ar ma wi mnachi thinhingihi ki, > ?????? Well, I see my original sentence got chewed up, and the SIL font > didnt carry over. Yes. For those of us not using Windows, the SIL fonts are not visible and turn to soup, though I think the result was more or less interpretable in this case. Note also that I don't see any special fonts, any color, any italics, etc. I could manage something spiffier, but I think it is best that I be at the lowest common denominator, since that means if somebody can't see it somewhere, then I am in the same boat. > Wáße irókunpi náha aré áma wáñi mínachi ñíthinhingihi ki, > Wange irokuNpi naha are ama wanyi mina-chi nyithiNhiNgihi ki. > > Perhaps, that is more clear. Improved, if less beautiful! So, nyithiN=hiNgihi k(h)i jealous P1-DAT-CAUSE DECLf Am I right in understanding that in nyithin=...gihi the nyithiN is invariant, and only the =hi is inflected? Of course, you're right, the -gi- before the -hi CAUSATIVE makes it dative. Somehow I lost track of that -gi-. Or is this gi- the suus or reflexive possessive? I think that 'she makes me jealous' or less literally 'I am jealous of her' are reasonable translations. As for why it is dative and not simply transitive *nyithiN=hiNhi, I think that the implication is that the underlying verb is transitive, not intransitive. The underlying verb may not occur, but it would be, hypothetically, something like (?) nyithiN 'to envy something' For example, (?) ha-nyithiN 'I envy it (her popularity)'. Might have to be possessive, like (??) ginyithiN 'to envy someone's'? (Or would that be (??) garanyithiN?) I forget how the prefixes work in IO and Winnebago! So, when this is causativized the underlying agent becomes the dative (as in nyithiN=hiNgihi 'she makes for me to envy it'. Not that it works that way, with 'for', in English, where we have to say 'she makes me envy it', but it does in a lot of languages, and perhaps we can see the me in English as dative, too. And, of course, we are translating 'to make someone envy something' as 'to make someone jealous of something'. Here I'm just retailing an abbreviated version of Bernard Comrie's discussions of the case structure of causatives. Generally speaking, Mississippi Valley Siouan languages do show dative forms of the causative with underlying transitive verbs, and simple forms of the causative with underlying intransitive verbs, but there's not always a simple correlation, and in some cases - Dakotan? - it more or less arbitrary. I think the simple and dative causative stems are: simple dative Da =ya =khiya OP =dhe =khidhe IO =hi =gihi (?) Wi =hii =gigi (PreWi *=ki-khi) I make the Proto-Siouan forms: PMV *=h(i)-PRO ~ *=PRO-re *=PRO-k-hi ~ *=PRO-k-hi-re PS *=hi#PRO-e *=k-hi(#PRO-e) ~ *=PRO-k-hi(ra) I assume hi is something like a subordination marker, e.g., the "for" in 'I intend for (you to attend)." The original causative root is *e, which has epenthetic -r- (*-re) when a pronoun like *wa- or *ra- is prefixed. However, in Winnebago and IO, *hi-a-E (first person a < *wa) and *hi-ra-E (second person ra < *ya) appear as =haa and =raa, reflecting contractions and elisions. Either the -re was never there, or it was lost. I rather suspect the latter. In general the hi seems to have been handled later on as a pre-verb, and in Proto-Mississippi Valley the dative stem seems to have been formed in *k- on the hi, i.e., like the datives of h-stems. In Dakotan and Dhegiha the simple causative is from *-re (with pronoun preceding it) and the preceding *hi is lost. In Winnebago and IO it appears that the *hi is more or less merged with the following pronoun, and the *-re is lost. From rankin at ku.edu Mon Jun 25 18:41:32 2007 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Mon, 25 Jun 2007 13:41:32 -0500 Subject: FW: Ergativity Research Seminar @ MIT -- for what it's worth. Message-ID: Subject: Ergativity Research Seminar @ MIT Please see attachment. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Call for Papers.pdf Type: application/pdf Size: 48042 bytes Desc: Call for Papers.pdf URL: From linguista at gmail.com Fri Jun 1 02:31:53 2007 From: linguista at gmail.com (Bryan Gordon) Date: Thu, 31 May 2007 21:31:53 -0500 Subject: obviation in Siouan languages In-Reply-To: Message-ID: How about a giant summary? Little of what follows is my original work; I'm sure you've all heard much of this before but it's just too much information to keep in your head at once. I believe that there is some sort of historical areal influence that links the Algonquian phenomenon with the Siouan. It has been proposed before that the Algonquian phenomenon preceded the Siouan, and that makes sense to me considering the hit-and-miss dispersion of obviation in Siouan compared to Algonquian. There are certainly some serious differences, though. I'll use the pair Omaha-Ponca/Ojibwe to explicate: The Ojibwe obviative canonically serves as a part of the theme/animacy system in such sentences as: Onaagaans egaasaanig obi-dakonaan. Dish.DIM P.small+OBV+P 3s.TS-hold.DIR.OBV She carried me a little bitty dish. (DIM - diminutive, P - participial, TS - towards speaker, TS - towards speaker) The covert subject is proximate, so the dish and its "small" participle are both marked obviative. The verb is marked Direct because the argument structure is the same direction as the animacy hierarchy (2 > 1 > 3Prox > 3Inan/Obv). It is not clear whether two referents are "stuck" with their obviation/proximacy assignments once assigned. Any Algonquianists know the answer? If so, then certainly there is some referent-tracking behaviour going on here; if not, though, it's not clear that this is any more than a weird sort of case-marking. While I haven't seen Ojibwe referents switching from obviative to proximate or vice-versa within a short span of text, I have noticed obviative referents switching relatively rapidly (and, unsurprisingly, have not noticed that for proximates). For instance: Mii iw animoshishan wegitiziimimaad anindowa gaa-aawid. CNF CMP dog.CTP.OBV P.have.for.parent.DIR.3s.P such P.PST-be.sth.3s.P Gii-bezhigowan oniijaanisiwaan akwezensan. PST-sole.OBV 3.POSS.child.3p woman.DIM.OBV One such [farmer] was one of those who had a dog for a parent. They had an only child, a daughter. In the first sentence the obviative is a dog; in the second, it is the child; the proximate is the same for both, although the number changes. (This is a good example of another areal phenomenon, in which a singular can become plural when it includes "implicit" others such as, in this case, a husband.) I'd be interested in whether there are any cases of obviation in Ojibwe sentences with inverse thematic morphology (where the argument structure is the reverse of the animacy hierarchy - this has sometimes been called passive, but is not). I've never seen any such cases. Of course, it's not even theoretically possible in OP, as we'll see. The Omaha-Ponca obviative, like the Ojibwe obviative, occurs with animate referents alone. However, Ojibwe marks animate obviatives and inanimate plurals with much of the same morphology, which suggests that the effect starts out somewhere pretty close to VP or TP/IP/whatever-you-like in the syntax. This is not the case at all for OP. As mentioned earlier in this thread, there are a couple of different phenomena that have to do with obviation in OP. The most noticeable is that there are separate groups of articles. Some of the obviative articles encode the same positional information as the inanimate articles: kHe for horizontally scanned inanimates vs. kHe for dead animates tHe for vertically scanned inanimates vs. tHaN for standing animates ge for scattered/diffuse inanimates vs. ma for multiple animates or generic classes Others do not: there is no inanimate analogue to "thiN" - moving; nor any animate analogue to "thaN" - symmetrical/round. The proximate animate articles are akHa and ama, and seem to have nothing to do with the obviative articles historically, synchronically, positionally, pragmatically, semantically or anyhow at all. The obviation system of OP, in short, is epiphenomenal compared to the well-integrated obviation of Ojibwe. Also, OP animate objects are almost never marked with a proximate article, and animate subjects likewise are only marked obviative when they occur in an intransitive sentence. In Ojibwe, on the other hand, an object is never marked obviative unless there is another animate referent competing for attention. I believe there must be two referents in short-term memory (activated) in order for obviation to occur in Ojibwe; this is not the case for OP, which has encoded obviation in a fashion more similar to Indo-European case-marking. We've all seen a few examples of how Siouan split transitivity intersects with obviation. The other way that obviation is marked in OP is actually quite the opposite: proximacy is marked with the "plural" morpheme at clause-end! So it is quite possible that in OP proximacy is the marked phenomenon, in direct contrast to marked obviation in Ojibwe. A potential gold mine, which I would love to hear others' thoughts on, is the Legend of Ukiabi (Dorsey 1890 pp 609-612). In this story there's an action sequence in which Ukiabi and his son are constantly being referent-tracked. The following differences are apparent, some of which have been analysed as obviation effects, and others which I've never heard mention of: Ukiabi gets the proximate -bi and -i ("plural") affixes. His son does not. Ukiabi gets the proximate a- prefix on motion verbs and "have". His son does not. Ukiabi gets the proximate continuatives ama and akHa. His son has only one sentence marked with a continuative, and it is kHe (lying/dead/horizontal). Ukiabi's sentences regularly end with evidential tHe. His son's do not. His son's sentences regularly end with reportive/dubitative ama. His do not. From marino at skyway.usask.ca Fri Jun 1 02:53:00 2007 From: marino at skyway.usask.ca (Marino) Date: Thu, 31 May 2007 20:53:00 -0600 Subject: obviation in Siouan languages In-Reply-To: Message-ID: The papers are: Muehlbauer, Jeffrey "Opportunistic verbal correlates to obviation in Plains Cree: the 'obviative' suffix -yi-" Piriyawiboon, Nattaya "Reconsidering the obviative" Muehlbauer is at UBritish Columbia (jefmuehl at interchange.ubc.ca) , and Piriyawiboon (n.piriyawiboon at utoronto.ca) is at U Toronto. Both papers were presented at the Canadian Linguistic Association Meeting, 2007, in Saskatoon. Muehlbauer's paper is, as the title suggests, focused on Plains Cree. He uses corpus data from Bloomfield's "Sacred Stories" and Ahenakew/Wolfart published texts as well as elicitation data from 6 speakers, including their metalinguistic judgements. Piriyawiboon's paper is focused on Nishnaabemwin of S Ontario. Mary At 12:53 PM 5/31/2007, you wrote: >As Rory points out, Dhegiha languages have something very similar >distinguishing primary from non-primary actors. Ardis's dissertation was >at least partly on this distinction in Omaha. > >I have toyed with the idea of trying to redefine the "switch-reference" >distinction in those Siouan languages that have it as an obviation >distinction. Such redefinition clearly works in Muskogean, where it is >the only way to tie "S-R" and argument marking particles together without >a hopelessly complex appeal to homophony, but I haven't really gotten down >to the business of trying to demonstrate it in Siouan. Clearly the more >inclusive concept of "referent tracking" operates in Siouan grammars, >though it differs from language to language. If I had to guess, I'd say >it is historically primary in Algonquian but secondary in Siouan. > >What were the papers you're referring to on Algonquian? > >Bob > >________________________________ > >From: owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu on behalf of Marino >Sent: Thu 5/31/2007 12:20 AM >To: siouan at lists.colorado.edu >Subject: obviation in Siouan languages > > > >There were two excellent papers on obviation in Cree at the CLA >meetings. One of the presenters asked me if there is obviation in any of >the Siouan languages. I have a vague memory that this has come up before, >but I can't find time to troll through the archives. Any suggestions? > >Best >Mary Marino > > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From marino at skyway.usask.ca Fri Jun 1 03:22:30 2007 From: marino at skyway.usask.ca (Marino) Date: Thu, 31 May 2007 21:22:30 -0600 Subject: obviation in Siouan languages In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Well, to put it baldly, obviation is a systematic morphological distinction in 3rd-person reference, whereby one referent is focused (proximate) and other 3rd-person referents (obviatives) are given *some sort* of background status. In Algonquian, this seems to be always confined to animate nominals. In Plains Cree at least, nominals in the 3rd person can be divided into 3 groups: animates whose internal state the speaker has knowledge of, animates whose internal state the speaker does not have knowledge of, and inanimates that cannot have an internal state. There are also various morphological correlates to obviation in verbal morphology. One such morpheme is -yi- , which Muehlbauer discusses in his CLA paper. To quote from his abstract: "Verbal morphemes can be exploited to track obviation, but do not inherently encode it." Mary At 08:10 AM 5/31/2007, you wrote: >Mary, would you be willing to offer a brief explanation of what obviation >means in Algonquian? There has certainly been a good deal of discussion >about a distinction, or a partially overlapping pair of distinctions, in >Omaha-Ponka, for which the categories "proximate" and "obviative" have >been proposed, I believe originally by John Koontz. My understanding is >that there is some uncertainty as to whether the distinctions in question >are equivalent to the Algonquian distinction or not. > >Thanks, >Rory -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From willemdereuse at unt.edu Fri Jun 1 15:35:46 2007 From: willemdereuse at unt.edu (willemdereuse at unt.edu) Date: Fri, 1 Jun 2007 10:35:46 -0500 Subject: obviation in Siouan languages In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Hi all: I have always thought that the chankhe/yunkhan alternation of conjunctions in Lakota texts, first discussed by Chafe (I think) and then by Dahlstrom had something to do with obviation. It is definitely not switch-reference. Does Richard Lungstrum's diss. say anything about this? I am sorry to say I have not yet gotten hold of a copy of Richard's diss. Willem de Reuse Quoting "Rankin, Robert L" : > As Rory points out, Dhegiha languages have something very similar > distinguishing primary from non-primary actors. Ardis's dissertation > was at least partly on this distinction in Omaha. > > I have toyed with the idea of trying to redefine the > "switch-reference" distinction in those Siouan languages that have it > as an obviation distinction. Such redefinition clearly works in > Muskogean, where it is the only way to tie "S-R" and argument marking > particles together without a hopelessly complex appeal to homophony, > but I haven't really gotten down to the business of trying to > demonstrate it in Siouan. Clearly the more inclusive concept of > "referent tracking" operates in Siouan grammars, though it differs > from language to language. If I had to guess, I'd say it is > historically primary in Algonquian but secondary in Siouan. > > What were the papers you're referring to on Algonquian? > > Bob > > ________________________________ > > From: owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu on behalf of Marino > Sent: Thu 5/31/2007 12:20 AM > To: siouan at lists.colorado.edu > Subject: obviation in Siouan languages > > > > There were two excellent papers on obviation in Cree at the CLA > meetings. One of the presenters asked me if there is obviation in any of > the Siouan languages. I have a vague memory that this has come up before, > but I can't find time to troll through the archives. Any suggestions? > > Best > Mary Marino > > > > From marino at skyway.usask.ca Fri Jun 1 16:51:42 2007 From: marino at skyway.usask.ca (Marino) Date: Fri, 1 Jun 2007 10:51:42 -0600 Subject: obviation Message-ID: I need to correct my earlier e-mail: Nishnaabemwin (Piriyawiboon's paper) is Ojibwe, not Cree. Mary From pankihtamwa at earthlink.net Fri Jun 1 17:05:37 2007 From: pankihtamwa at earthlink.net (David Costa) Date: Fri, 1 Jun 2007 10:05:37 -0700 Subject: obviation In-Reply-To: <6.1.2.0.0.20070601104821.021a4088@sask.usask.ca> Message-ID: Odawa, to be exact. David > I need to correct my earlier e-mail: Nishnaabemwin (Piriyawiboon's paper) > is Ojibwe, not Cree. > > Mary > From rood at spot.Colorado.EDU Fri Jun 1 20:50:51 2007 From: rood at spot.Colorado.EDU (ROOD DAVID S) Date: Fri, 1 Jun 2007 14:50:51 -0600 Subject: obviation in Siouan languages In-Reply-To: <20070601103546.t61b2v2njxogwgs8@eaglemail.unt.edu> Message-ID: Lungstrum's dissertation claims that chanke and yukhan are switch reference markers, defining "reference" as any major change of scene, characters, point of view, or some other discontinuity. I wasn't convinced. David David S. Rood Dept. of Linguistics Univ. of Colorado 295 UCB Boulder, CO 80309-0295 USA rood at colorado.edu On Fri, 1 Jun 2007, willemdereuse at unt.edu wrote: > Hi all: > > I have always thought that the chankhe/yunkhan alternation of conjunctions in > Lakota texts, first discussed by Chafe (I think) and then by Dahlstrom had > something to do with obviation. It is definitely not switch-reference. Does > Richard Lungstrum's diss. say anything about this? I am sorry to say I have > not yet gotten hold of a copy of Richard's diss. > > Willem de Reuse Quoting "Rankin, Robert L" : > >> As Rory points out, Dhegiha languages have something very similar >> distinguishing primary from non-primary actors. Ardis's dissertation was >> at least partly on this distinction in Omaha. >> >> I have toyed with the idea of trying to redefine the "switch-reference" >> distinction in those Siouan languages that have it as an obviation >> distinction. Such redefinition clearly works in Muskogean, where it is the >> only way to tie "S-R" and argument marking particles together without a >> hopelessly complex appeal to homophony, but I haven't really gotten down to >> the business of trying to demonstrate it in Siouan. Clearly the more >> inclusive concept of "referent tracking" operates in Siouan grammars, >> though it differs from language to language. If I had to guess, I'd say it >> is historically primary in Algonquian but secondary in Siouan. >> >> What were the papers you're referring to on Algonquian? >> >> Bob >> >> ________________________________ >> >> From: owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu on behalf of Marino >> Sent: Thu 5/31/2007 12:20 AM >> To: siouan at lists.colorado.edu >> Subject: obviation in Siouan languages >> >> >> >> There were two excellent papers on obviation in Cree at the CLA >> meetings. One of the presenters asked me if there is obviation in any of >> the Siouan languages. I have a vague memory that this has come up before, >> but I can't find time to troll through the archives. Any suggestions? >> >> Best >> Mary Marino >> >> >> >> > > From marino at skyway.usask.ca Sat Jun 2 18:03:03 2007 From: marino at skyway.usask.ca (Marino) Date: Sat, 2 Jun 2007 12:03:03 -0600 Subject: obviation In-Reply-To: Message-ID: I think of Odawa as a variety of Ojibwe and I tend to refer every named variety in the respective regions to either *Ojibwe* or *Cree* - I am sure that this is very inexact from an Algonquianist perspective. Is there an issue here with the speech community? Do speakers of the varieties of Odawa object to having their languages referred to as Ojibwe? Mary At 11:05 AM 6/1/2007, you wrote: >Odawa, to be exact. > >David > > > > I need to correct my earlier e-mail: Nishnaabemwin (Piriyawiboon's paper) > > is Ojibwe, not Cree. > > > > Mary > > From linguista at gmail.com Sat Jun 2 20:59:34 2007 From: linguista at gmail.com (Bryan Gordon) Date: Sat, 2 Jun 2007 15:59:34 -0500 Subject: obviation In-Reply-To: <6.1.2.0.0.20070602115823.0210ed80@sask.usask.ca> Message-ID: Actually, that can be a pretty serious issue (speaker preference). There are some Odaawaa speakers who dislike having their language called Ojibwe, others who consider Ojibwe a "family" to which Odaawaa belongs. Most Ojibwe/Chippewa people around these parts (Minnesota, Wisconsin, Upper Peninsula) consider Odaawaa a different language from their varieties, but there is great mutual intelligibility. Maybe a safe, neutral terminology that would satisfy both linguists and speakers would be something like "Odaawaa Ojibwe". I suppose you'd have to ask an Odaawaa speaker to find out whether that would solve the problem. I don't know any in this area. - Bryan 2007/6/2, Marino : > I think of Odawa as a variety of Ojibwe and I tend to refer every named > variety in the respective regions to either *Ojibwe* or *Cree* - I am sure > that this is very inexact from an Algonquianist perspective. Is there an > issue here with the speech community? Do speakers of the varieties of > Odawa object to having their languages referred to as Ojibwe? > > Mary > > At 11:05 AM 6/1/2007, you wrote: > >Odawa, to be exact. > > > >David > > > > > > > I need to correct my earlier e-mail: Nishnaabemwin (Piriyawiboon's paper) > > > is Ojibwe, not Cree. > > > > > > Mary > > > > > From mawakuni-swetland2 at unlnotes.unl.edu Sun Jun 3 14:41:27 2007 From: mawakuni-swetland2 at unlnotes.unl.edu (Mark J Awakuni-Swetland) Date: Sun, 3 Jun 2007 09:41:27 -0500 Subject: local reactions to language family terms Message-ID: An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pankihtamwa at earthlink.net Sun Jun 3 18:54:12 2007 From: pankihtamwa at earthlink.net (David Costa) Date: Sun, 3 Jun 2007 11:54:12 -0700 Subject: obviation In-Reply-To: Message-ID: I'm no expert, but my impression was that the most commonly preferred name for the language of the Odawa by the people themselves was Nishnaabemwin. Of course, Nishnaabemwin is the same word as Ojibwe Anishinaabemowin, but run through Odawa's syncope rules. It's also worth pointing out that while no tribal communities in Canada use the name 'Ottawa' anymore (AFAIK), there is in fact a recognized Ottawa tribe in Oklahoma who always call themselves 'Ottawa'. Among the linguistic community, on the other hand, it's accepted that Odawa/Ottawa, Algonquin, Chippewa/Ojibwe, Salteaux, and Severn Ojibwe/Ojicree are all forms of one language complex, which linguists often call 'Ojibwean'. David > > Actually, that can be a pretty serious issue (speaker preference). > There are some Odaawaa speakers who dislike having their language > called Ojibwe, others who consider Ojibwe a "family" to which Odaawaa > belongs. Most Ojibwe/Chippewa people around these parts (Minnesota, > Wisconsin, Upper Peninsula) consider Odaawaa a different language from > their varieties, but there is great mutual intelligibility. Maybe a > safe, neutral terminology that would satisfy both linguists and > speakers would be something like "Odaawaa Ojibwe". I suppose you'd > have to ask an Odaawaa speaker to find out whether that would solve > the problem. I don't know any in this area. > > - Bryan > > 2007/6/2, Marino : >> I think of Odawa as a variety of Ojibwe and I tend to refer every named >> variety in the respective regions to either *Ojibwe* or *Cree* - I am sure >> that this is very inexact from an Algonquianist perspective. Is there an >> issue here with the speech community? Do speakers of the varieties of >> Odawa object to having their languages referred to as Ojibwe? >> >> Mary >> >> At 11:05 AM 6/1/2007, you wrote: >>> Odawa, to be exact. >>> >>> David >>> >>> >>>> I need to correct my earlier e-mail: Nishnaabemwin (Piriyawiboon's paper) >>>> is Ojibwe, not Cree. >>>> >>>> Mary >>>> >> >> From rankin at ku.edu Mon Jun 4 14:30:23 2007 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Mon, 4 Jun 2007 09:30:23 -0500 Subject: obviation Message-ID: Taking off from Dave's comment, since the granting agencies are forcing us to play these little games, I'd suggest (tongue- partly- in-cheek) that Mark call the language he wishes to document "ie angota" 'our language' (at least that's how it would be in Kansa). Then in parens use the ISO 3 letter codes for the bureaucrats. If that isn't viable, then just vary "Omaha and Ponca" with "Ponca and Omaha" throughout the document. I can't imagine how everyone could possibly be made happy no matter what you do though. People can be wonderfullly creative when it comes to obstructing the advance of knowledge. Bob > I'm no expert, but my impression was that the most commonly preferred name for the language of the Odawa by the people themselves was Nishnaabemwin. Of course, Nishnaabemwin is the same word as Ojibwe Anishinaabemowin, but run through Odawa's syncope rules. >> Actually, that can be a pretty serious issue (speaker preference). From linguista at gmail.com Mon Jun 4 20:47:15 2007 From: linguista at gmail.com (Bryan Gordon) Date: Mon, 4 Jun 2007 15:47:15 -0500 Subject: local reactions to language family terms In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Mark's comments are well-thought out and on target. I was speaking with a fellow graduate student (?shti wax? sk?xti tHaN - quite white) about field work in indigenous communities earlier in the spring. As is typical of academics who know nothing about indigenous communities, she was completely shocked that there exist indigenous people who would reject the accumulated knowledge of the discipline of linguistics even in the face of rapidly shrinking speaker populations. She was also quite sure that there must be a simple, theoretically acceptable way to describe indigenous languages without offending anyone. That's just not the case. Linguists may grow tired of putting entries in their paper like "Language X, also known as Y, a member of the Z family, referred to as W by speakers from place V, as U by speakers from place T, and not considered to be the same language by speakers of mutually intelligible language S..." but that's just a hazard of the profession! The reality is that the landscape of political designation and cultural designation is constantly shifting, and that linguists, even indigenous linguists, are a part of a colonial academic system that has no right to make those decisions on behalf of any indigenous community. As I see it, we are faced with two choices: either we fill our papers with long-winded descriptions like the one above, or we choose to behave disrespectfully towards speaker communities. I know which choice I prefer! C'mon, our rep is already bad enough, let's not make it worse for the sake of brevity in one section of a paper. There is no easy answer, and as soon as we think we have found one, we are already beginning down the path of entitlement and disrespect. - Bryan Gordon PS: Here are a couple of templates I use regularly in my writing: Ponca is a language indigenous to the area of the Niobrara Valley, part of present-day Nebraska and South Dakota. The language's main speech community is currently located in north central Oklahoma. Ponca is mutually intelligible with the Omaha language, but is not considered by Ponca and Omaha people to be the same language. Linguists usually speak of the "Omaha-Ponca" language, of the "Dhegiha" family (Siouan - Central - Mississippi Valley). Ojibwe is the name of some closely related languages and also of a family of languages. Minnesota Ojibwe, also called Chippewa, is spoken in present-day Minnesota. Closely related forms are also spoken in Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Salteaux, from western Ontario and eastern Manitoba, is considered by some, but not all, speakers, to be the same language. In the language itself, "Anishinaabemowin" is used to describe this particular language, while "Ojibwemowin" may be used to describe either this language or the whole family. The family also includes "Nishnaabemwin," or Ottawa, which is spoken in central and eastern Ontario, and is similar to forms spoken in the islands of Lake Huron. This form is not considered to be the same language, but is sometimes referred to as "Ojibwe" as well. Anishinaabemowin and Nishnaabemwin fluent speakers enjoy extensive mutual intelligibility, but this may not be the case for all speakers. These descriptions are long, it is true, but I believe they only barely pass the muster of descriptive sufficiency. 2007/6/3, Mark J Awakuni-Swetland : > Yes, it can be an emotion-driven mess. > > I recall the discussion raised by our Wichita hosts at the Anadarko SCLC a > few years ago. They voiced opposition to the label "Caddoan" being applied > to their language. David Rood gave a credible explanation about it being a > linguist-applied term that did not intend any classification or attack upon > the individual tribe's status, language, or sovereignty... to little avail. > > In a recent grant application I described an O/P dictionary project... with > the O/P reflecting Dorsey's classification. When I approached the Southern > Ponca for a letter of support their first comments were about that > designation. They requested I change the project title to "Omaha and Ponca" > so as to reduce the impression that the Ponca are somehow part of the > "Omaha". > > Bryan suggests asking an Odaawaa person for clarification on tribal > preferences. Yet we all know that one person cannot represent the tribe > (although outsiders routinely settle on the approachable or pliable > individual's opinion as being representative of the whole). > > Even in the Southern Ponca situation, the former Council's ideas did not > represent the current Council's ideology... and neither were guaranteed to > represent all of the factions of the community. > > Uthixide > Mark Awakuni-Swetland > oNska abthiN! > > -----owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu wrote: ----- > > To: siouan at lists.colorado.edu > From: "Bryan Gordon" > Sent by: owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu > Date: 06/02/2007 03:59PM > Subject: Re: obviation > > Actually, that can be a pretty serious issue (speaker preference). > There are some Odaawaa speakers who dislike having their language > called Ojibwe, others who consider Ojibwe a "family" to which Odaawaa > belongs. Most Ojibwe/Chippewa people around these parts (Minnesota, > Wisconsin, Upper Peninsula) consider Odaawaa a different language from > their varieties, but there is great mutual intelligibility. Maybe a > safe, neutral terminology that would satisfy both linguists and > speakers would be something like "Odaawaa Ojibwe". I suppose you'd > have to ask an Odaawaa speaker to find out whether that would solve > the problem. I don't know any in this area. > > - Bryan > > 2007/6/2, Marino : > > I think of Odawa as a variety of Ojibwe and I tend to refer every named > > variety in the respective regions to either *Ojibwe* or *Cree* - I am sure > > that this is very inexact from an Algonquianist perspective. Is there an > > issue here with the speech community? Do speakers of the varieties of > > Odawa object to having their languages referred to as Ojibwe? > > > > Mary > > > > At 11:05 AM 6/1/2007, you wrote: > > >Odawa, to be exact. > > > > > >David > > > > > > > > > > I need to correct my earlier e-mail: Nishnaabemwin (Piriyawiboon's > paper) > > > > is Ojibwe, not Cree. > > > > > > > > Mary > > > > > > > > > > From willemdereuse at unt.edu Mon Jun 4 22:42:06 2007 From: willemdereuse at unt.edu (willemdereuse at unt.edu) Date: Mon, 4 Jun 2007 17:42:06 -0500 Subject: local reactions to language family terms In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Very interesting comments from Mark and Bryan. To some extent, name recognition makes it a bit easier. I work with Apaches, and I do not see any move to change the term Apache to the Native term Nnee, or Ndee, or Dinde, etc. etc., whereas Navajos like the term Dine and Papagos are now Tohono O'odham. The term Apache is so recognizable, even though it is, as far as we can tell, a Zuni word for enemy! Also if one used the native words for "Apache", one would have to decide on which spelling to use, depending on which Aapche variety/language. Apache is equally un-Apache to al Aapches and that si its appeal... From linguista at gmail.com Mon Jun 4 23:44:57 2007 From: linguista at gmail.com (Bryan Gordon) Date: Mon, 4 Jun 2007 18:44:57 -0500 Subject: obviation In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Back to the main topic: I found this example from Nishnaabemwin/Ottawa/Odaawaa/East Ojibwe: Gakina ogii-boodaakwenan aniw makakoonsan bangwaaboo ate-magak. All PST-she.put.in.kettle the little.boxes lye being.there Nibaagoba aw abinoojiins. Sleep.DUB.PRET the child. Ogii-odaapinaan. PST-she.picked.her.up. What's interesting here is that the object marker in the third sentence is obviative, but the child is not marked obviative in the second sentence. I'm not saying this is different from how it would work in Siouan, in fact it's probably exactly the same. What it definitely means for me is that obviation has just as much to do with simple case as with referent tracking. The only reason the child needs to be marked obviative in "Ogii-odaapinaan" is that there is another third-person referent from which the child must be disambiguated, and as the object the child gets marked obviative. 2007/6/4, Rankin, Robert L : > Taking off from Dave's comment, since the granting agencies are forcing us to play these little games, I'd suggest (tongue- partly- in-cheek) that Mark call the language he wishes to document "ie angota" 'our language' (at least that's how it would be in Kansa). Then in parens use the ISO 3 letter codes for the bureaucrats. If that isn't viable, then just vary "Omaha and Ponca" with "Ponca and Omaha" throughout the document. I can't imagine how everyone could possibly be made happy no matter what you do though. People can be wonderfullly creative when it comes to obstructing the advance of knowledge. Bob > > > I'm no expert, but my impression was that the most commonly preferred name > for the language of the Odawa by the people themselves was Nishnaabemwin. Of > course, Nishnaabemwin is the same word as Ojibwe Anishinaabemowin, but run > through Odawa's syncope rules. > > >> Actually, that can be a pretty serious issue (speaker preference). > > > From lameen at gmail.com Mon Jun 4 23:46:42 2007 From: lameen at gmail.com (Lameen Souag) Date: Tue, 5 Jun 2007 00:46:42 +0100 Subject: local reactions to language family terms In-Reply-To: Message-ID: I'm not sure whether this was the author's intention, but Bryan's comments gave me the impression of saying that what we say about a given language should to some extent be determined by the preferred ideologies of their speakers. Now whether to call two more-or-less mutually intelligible speech varieties the same or different languages is usually determined by political as well as linguistic factors (you don't often hear people talk about dialects of the Scandinavian language, for example); and it's hard to see what calling a given variety a "language" or a "dialect" of some other language says that can't be said more precisely by talking about degrees of mutual intelligibility. Even the name of a language family is essentially arbitrary; if words like "Bantu" or "Caddoan" are found to be politically problematic, changing them is inconvenient but possible. But it is worth setting out such justifications clearly, if only to encourage thinking about where linguists should draw the line. If some speakers of Wichita were to object not just to the term "Caddoan" but to linguists saying their language is related to Caddo (the way some Hungarians object to the idea that their language is related to Finnish), should linguists working on the language steer clear of doing any classification or reconstruction? If some speakers of Hebrew object to Hebrew being described as a descendant of Proto-Semitic or any other implication that Hebrew has not been around since the creation of the universe (as a few do), should linguists stop attempting to reconstruct Proto-Semitic? If the Libyan government insists that Berber/Tamazight is descended from Arabic (as it does), should linguists working on Libyan Berber languages make the same claim and cite government-approved papers in support of it (thus, incidentally, offending at least some speakers of those languages)? I would hope not; yet scenarios are easily conceivable where these would have exactly the same practical advantages as the far less problematic practice of not calling two mutually intelligible varieties the same language. - Lameen Souag On 04/06/07, Bryan Gordon wrote: > Mark's comments are well-thought out and on target. I was speaking > with a fellow graduate student (?shti wax? sk?xti tHaN - quite white) > about field work in indigenous communities earlier in the spring. As > is typical of academics who know nothing about indigenous communities, > she was completely shocked that there exist indigenous people who > would reject the accumulated knowledge of the discipline of > linguistics even in the face of rapidly shrinking speaker populations. > She was also quite sure that there must be a simple, theoretically > acceptable way to describe indigenous languages without offending > anyone. > > That's just not the case. Linguists may grow tired of putting entries > in their paper like "Language X, also known as Y, a member of the Z > family, referred to as W by speakers from place V, as U by speakers > from place T, and not considered to be the same language by speakers > of mutually intelligible language S..." but that's just a hazard of > the profession! The reality is that the landscape of political > designation and cultural designation is constantly shifting, and that > linguists, even indigenous linguists, are a part of a colonial > academic system that has no right to make those decisions on behalf of > any indigenous community. > > As I see it, we are faced with two choices: either we fill our papers > with long-winded descriptions like the one above, or we choose to > behave disrespectfully towards speaker communities. I know which > choice I prefer! C'mon, our rep is already bad enough, let's not make > it worse for the sake of brevity in one section of a paper. There is > no easy answer, and as soon as we think we have found one, we are > already beginning down the path of entitlement and disrespect. > > - Bryan Gordon > > PS: Here are a couple of templates I use regularly in my writing: > Ponca is a language indigenous to the area of the Niobrara Valley, > part of present-day Nebraska and South Dakota. The language's main > speech community is currently located in north central Oklahoma. Ponca > is mutually intelligible with the Omaha language, but is not > considered by Ponca and Omaha people to be the same language. > Linguists usually speak of the "Omaha-Ponca" language, of the > "Dhegiha" family (Siouan - Central - Mississippi Valley). > Ojibwe is the name of some closely related languages and also of a > family of languages. Minnesota Ojibwe, also called Chippewa, is spoken > in present-day Minnesota. Closely related forms are also spoken in > Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Salteaux, from western > Ontario and eastern Manitoba, is considered by some, but not all, > speakers, to be the same language. In the language itself, > "Anishinaabemowin" is used to describe this particular language, while > "Ojibwemowin" may be used to describe either this language or the > whole family. The family also includes "Nishnaabemwin," or Ottawa, > which is spoken in central and eastern Ontario, and is similar to > forms spoken in the islands of Lake Huron. This form is not considered > to be the same language, but is sometimes referred to as "Ojibwe" as > well. Anishinaabemowin and Nishnaabemwin fluent speakers enjoy > extensive mutual intelligibility, but this may not be the case for all > speakers. > These descriptions are long, it is true, but I believe they only > barely pass the muster of descriptive sufficiency. > > 2007/6/3, Mark J Awakuni-Swetland : > > Yes, it can be an emotion-driven mess. > > > > I recall the discussion raised by our Wichita hosts at the Anadarko SCLC a > > few years ago. They voiced opposition to the label "Caddoan" being applied > > to their language. David Rood gave a credible explanation about it being a > > linguist-applied term that did not intend any classification or attack upon > > the individual tribe's status, language, or sovereignty... to little avail. > > > > In a recent grant application I described an O/P dictionary project... with > > the O/P reflecting Dorsey's classification. When I approached the Southern > > Ponca for a letter of support their first comments were about that > > designation. They requested I change the project title to "Omaha and Ponca" > > so as to reduce the impression that the Ponca are somehow part of the > > "Omaha". > > > > Bryan suggests asking an Odaawaa person for clarification on tribal > > preferences. Yet we all know that one person cannot represent the tribe > > (although outsiders routinely settle on the approachable or pliable > > individual's opinion as being representative of the whole). > > > > Even in the Southern Ponca situation, the former Council's ideas did not > > represent the current Council's ideology... and neither were guaranteed to > > represent all of the factions of the community. > > > > Uthixide > > Mark Awakuni-Swetland > > oNska abthiN! > > > > -----owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu wrote: ----- > > > > To: siouan at lists.colorado.edu > > From: "Bryan Gordon" > > Sent by: owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu > > Date: 06/02/2007 03:59PM > > Subject: Re: obviation > > > > Actually, that can be a pretty serious issue (speaker preference). > > There are some Odaawaa speakers who dislike having their language > > called Ojibwe, others who consider Ojibwe a "family" to which Odaawaa > > belongs. Most Ojibwe/Chippewa people around these parts (Minnesota, > > Wisconsin, Upper Peninsula) consider Odaawaa a different language from > > their varieties, but there is great mutual intelligibility. Maybe a > > safe, neutral terminology that would satisfy both linguists and > > speakers would be something like "Odaawaa Ojibwe". I suppose you'd > > have to ask an Odaawaa speaker to find out whether that would solve > > the problem. I don't know any in this area. > > > > - Bryan > > > > 2007/6/2, Marino : > > > I think of Odawa as a variety of Ojibwe and I tend to refer every named > > > variety in the respective regions to either *Ojibwe* or *Cree* - I am sure > > > that this is very inexact from an Algonquianist perspective. Is there an > > > issue here with the speech community? Do speakers of the varieties of > > > Odawa object to having their languages referred to as Ojibwe? > > > > > > Mary > > > > > > At 11:05 AM 6/1/2007, you wrote: > > > >Odawa, to be exact. > > > > > > > >David > > > > > > > > > > > > > I need to correct my earlier e-mail: Nishnaabemwin (Piriyawiboon's > > paper) > > > > > is Ojibwe, not Cree. > > > > > > > > > > Mary > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > From linguista at gmail.com Tue Jun 5 00:21:18 2007 From: linguista at gmail.com (Bryan Gordon) Date: Mon, 4 Jun 2007 19:21:18 -0500 Subject: local reactions to language family terms In-Reply-To: <375f01a70706041646y240f21fq697358b53021d3e6@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: I think it is possible to be sensitive and respectful to the wishes of those in the community while at the same time keeping to the rigours and standards of academia, for the most part. I have argued that Israeli Hebrew is to large extent a relexified Slavic/Germanic creole, and that hits much closer to home than any claim that Wichita and Caddo come from the same language thousands of years ago. If linguists want to claim this latter point (and most do), while not angering our hosts (and we are at best guests in a host's household and should do well to remember that), then we can simply explicitly state the point rather than using terminological shorthand like "Wichita is a Caddoan language." Why not try, "Most linguists believe that Wichita and Caddo languages both come from the same language long, long ago, and someone somewhere decided to use the word Caddoan to describe this, but this does not mean that Wichita people are Caddo people!" If that is still too offensive to work with, maybe the methods of linguistics are simply not welcome in the Wichita household, which is a contingency we should always be prepared to work with. 2007/6/4, Lameen Souag : > I'm not sure whether this was the author's intention, but Bryan's > comments gave me the impression of saying that what we say about a > given language should to some extent be determined by the preferred > ideologies of their speakers. > > Now whether to call two more-or-less mutually intelligible speech > varieties the same or different languages is usually determined by > political as well as linguistic factors (you don't often hear people > talk about dialects of the Scandinavian language, for example); and > it's hard to see what calling a given variety a "language" or a > "dialect" of some other language says that can't be said more > precisely by talking about degrees of mutual intelligibility. Even > the name of a language family is essentially arbitrary; if words like > "Bantu" or "Caddoan" are found to be politically problematic, changing > them is inconvenient but possible. > > But it is worth setting out such justifications clearly, if only to > encourage thinking about where linguists should draw the line. If > some speakers of Wichita were to object not just to the term "Caddoan" > but to linguists saying their language is related to Caddo (the way > some Hungarians object to the idea that their language is related to > Finnish), should linguists working on the language steer clear of > doing any classification or reconstruction? If some speakers of > Hebrew object to Hebrew being described as a descendant of > Proto-Semitic or any other implication that Hebrew has not been around > since the creation of the universe (as a few do), should linguists > stop attempting to reconstruct Proto-Semitic? If the Libyan > government insists that Berber/Tamazight is descended from Arabic (as > it does), should linguists working on Libyan Berber languages make the > same claim and cite government-approved papers in support of it (thus, > incidentally, offending at least some speakers of those languages)? I > would hope not; yet scenarios are easily conceivable where these would > have exactly the same practical advantages as the far less problematic > practice of not calling two mutually intelligible varieties the same > language. > > - Lameen Souag > > On 04/06/07, Bryan Gordon wrote: > > Mark's comments are well-thought out and on target. I was speaking > > with a fellow graduate student (?shti wax? sk?xti tHaN - quite white) > > about field work in indigenous communities earlier in the spring. As > > is typical of academics who know nothing about indigenous communities, > > she was completely shocked that there exist indigenous people who > > would reject the accumulated knowledge of the discipline of > > linguistics even in the face of rapidly shrinking speaker populations. > > She was also quite sure that there must be a simple, theoretically > > acceptable way to describe indigenous languages without offending > > anyone. > > > > That's just not the case. Linguists may grow tired of putting entries > > in their paper like "Language X, also known as Y, a member of the Z > > family, referred to as W by speakers from place V, as U by speakers > > from place T, and not considered to be the same language by speakers > > of mutually intelligible language S..." but that's just a hazard of > > the profession! The reality is that the landscape of political > > designation and cultural designation is constantly shifting, and that > > linguists, even indigenous linguists, are a part of a colonial > > academic system that has no right to make those decisions on behalf of > > any indigenous community. > > > > As I see it, we are faced with two choices: either we fill our papers > > with long-winded descriptions like the one above, or we choose to > > behave disrespectfully towards speaker communities. I know which > > choice I prefer! C'mon, our rep is already bad enough, let's not make > > it worse for the sake of brevity in one section of a paper. There is > > no easy answer, and as soon as we think we have found one, we are > > already beginning down the path of entitlement and disrespect. > > > > - Bryan Gordon > > > > PS: Here are a couple of templates I use regularly in my writing: > > Ponca is a language indigenous to the area of the Niobrara Valley, > > part of present-day Nebraska and South Dakota. The language's main > > speech community is currently located in north central Oklahoma. Ponca > > is mutually intelligible with the Omaha language, but is not > > considered by Ponca and Omaha people to be the same language. > > Linguists usually speak of the "Omaha-Ponca" language, of the > > "Dhegiha" family (Siouan - Central - Mississippi Valley). > > Ojibwe is the name of some closely related languages and also of a > > family of languages. Minnesota Ojibwe, also called Chippewa, is spoken > > in present-day Minnesota. Closely related forms are also spoken in > > Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Salteaux, from western > > Ontario and eastern Manitoba, is considered by some, but not all, > > speakers, to be the same language. In the language itself, > > "Anishinaabemowin" is used to describe this particular language, while > > "Ojibwemowin" may be used to describe either this language or the > > whole family. The family also includes "Nishnaabemwin," or Ottawa, > > which is spoken in central and eastern Ontario, and is similar to > > forms spoken in the islands of Lake Huron. This form is not considered > > to be the same language, but is sometimes referred to as "Ojibwe" as > > well. Anishinaabemowin and Nishnaabemwin fluent speakers enjoy > > extensive mutual intelligibility, but this may not be the case for all > > speakers. > > These descriptions are long, it is true, but I believe they only > > barely pass the muster of descriptive sufficiency. > > > > 2007/6/3, Mark J Awakuni-Swetland : > > > Yes, it can be an emotion-driven mess. > > > > > > I recall the discussion raised by our Wichita hosts at the Anadarko SCLC a > > > few years ago. They voiced opposition to the label "Caddoan" being applied > > > to their language. David Rood gave a credible explanation about it being a > > > linguist-applied term that did not intend any classification or attack upon > > > the individual tribe's status, language, or sovereignty... to little avail. > > > > > > In a recent grant application I described an O/P dictionary project... with > > > the O/P reflecting Dorsey's classification. When I approached the Southern > > > Ponca for a letter of support their first comments were about that > > > designation. They requested I change the project title to "Omaha and Ponca" > > > so as to reduce the impression that the Ponca are somehow part of the > > > "Omaha". > > > > > > Bryan suggests asking an Odaawaa person for clarification on tribal > > > preferences. Yet we all know that one person cannot represent the tribe > > > (although outsiders routinely settle on the approachable or pliable > > > individual's opinion as being representative of the whole). > > > > > > Even in the Southern Ponca situation, the former Council's ideas did not > > > represent the current Council's ideology... and neither were guaranteed to > > > represent all of the factions of the community. > > > > > > Uthixide > > > Mark Awakuni-Swetland > > > oNska abthiN! > > > > > > -----owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu wrote: ----- > > > > > > To: siouan at lists.colorado.edu > > > From: "Bryan Gordon" > > > Sent by: owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu > > > Date: 06/02/2007 03:59PM > > > Subject: Re: obviation > > > > > > Actually, that can be a pretty serious issue (speaker preference). > > > There are some Odaawaa speakers who dislike having their language > > > called Ojibwe, others who consider Ojibwe a "family" to which Odaawaa > > > belongs. Most Ojibwe/Chippewa people around these parts (Minnesota, > > > Wisconsin, Upper Peninsula) consider Odaawaa a different language from > > > their varieties, but there is great mutual intelligibility. Maybe a > > > safe, neutral terminology that would satisfy both linguists and > > > speakers would be something like "Odaawaa Ojibwe". I suppose you'd > > > have to ask an Odaawaa speaker to find out whether that would solve > > > the problem. I don't know any in this area. > > > > > > - Bryan > > > > > > 2007/6/2, Marino : > > > > I think of Odawa as a variety of Ojibwe and I tend to refer every named > > > > variety in the respective regions to either *Ojibwe* or *Cree* - I am sure > > > > that this is very inexact from an Algonquianist perspective. Is there an > > > > issue here with the speech community? Do speakers of the varieties of > > > > Odawa object to having their languages referred to as Ojibwe? > > > > > > > > Mary > > > > > > > > At 11:05 AM 6/1/2007, you wrote: > > > > >Odawa, to be exact. > > > > > > > > > >David > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > I need to correct my earlier e-mail: Nishnaabemwin (Piriyawiboon's > > > paper) > > > > > > is Ojibwe, not Cree. > > > > > > > > > > > > Mary > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > From pustetrm at yahoo.com Tue Jun 5 09:59:20 2007 From: pustetrm at yahoo.com (REGINA PUSTET) Date: Tue, 5 Jun 2007 02:59:20 -0700 Subject: SCLC 07 In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Hi Bob, How?s it going? I?m glad that the date for SCLC ?07 has been changed. It?s a lot easier for me to attend that way. I have applied for some funding (travel money) for this conference, and in order to complete this application, my institution needs to know the exact date of the conference. Would it be possible to obtain some official or semi-official document from you that can be used for this purpose? Such as a general announcement on Siouanlist or something like that. In the previous announcements, the date was not 100% clear yet, as I understand it. Thanks a lot! I?m also attaching my conference abstract. Best, Regina --------------------------------- The fish are biting. Get more visitors on your site using Yahoo! Search Marketing. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: abstract.doc Type: application/msword Size: 23552 bytes Desc: 1585669817-abstract.doc URL: From pustetrm at yahoo.com Tue Jun 5 10:14:10 2007 From: pustetrm at yahoo.com (REGINA PUSTET) Date: Tue, 5 Jun 2007 03:14:10 -0700 Subject: SCLC 07 In-Reply-To: <533619.44772.qm@web54604.mail.re2.yahoo.com> Message-ID: My previous message was meant for Bob Rankin only, but I inadvertently sent it to the whole list. Sorry! Regina REGINA PUSTET wrote: Hi Bob, How?s it going? I?m glad that the date for SCLC ?07 has been changed. It?s a lot easier for me to attend that way. I have applied for some funding (travel money) for this conference, and in order to complete this application, my institution needs to know the exact date of the conference. Would it be possible to obtain some official or semi-official document from you that can be used for this purpose? Such as a general announcement on Siouanlist or something like that. In the previous announcements, the date was not 100% clear yet, as I understand it. Thanks a lot! I?m also attaching my conference abstract. Best, Regina --------------------------------- The fish are biting. Get more visitors on your site using Yahoo! Search Marketing. --------------------------------- Be a better Heartthrob. Get better relationship answers from someone who knows. Yahoo! Answers - Check it out. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From heike.boedeker at netcologne.de Tue Jun 5 13:39:59 2007 From: heike.boedeker at netcologne.de (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Heike_B=F6deker?=) Date: Tue, 5 Jun 2007 15:39:59 +0200 Subject: Differential case marking in Algonquian (was: obviation in Siouan languages) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Dear Bryan, > It is not clear whether two referents are "stuck" with > their obviation/proximacy assignments once assigned. Any No, they definitely aren't stuck with any of that. There's multiple proximatives (all NPs marked PRX instead of an PRX/OBV gradation), as well as both proximate and obviate shifts attested. A good account probably still being Goddard (1984) for Fox. Whereby Fox seems to not make much use of absolutives, i.e. zero-marked NPs, which are pervasive e.g. in Blackfoot and Potawatomi (Hockett 1948, text I, b): nu?nape-cu ?o-weni?ke-t ?esp:un indian:AN-TOP DEM-go.trap:AI-3:PTC racoon:AN ki-yawu. PT-accompany:AI "The Indian, who (=> when) he went trapping, the raccon was with him. Instead of otherweise expected either: nu?nape-n-cu niw-weni?ke-nu-t ?esp:un ki-yawu or: nu?nape-cu ?o-weni?ke-t ?esp:un-un ki-yaw-nu-t. > Algonquianists know the answer? If so, then certainly > there is some referent-tracking behaviour going on here; > if not, though, it's not clear that this is any more than > a weird sort of case-marking. Partly it certainly does serve referent-tracking functions, but I for one wouldn't hesitate to call that differential case marking actually. It's not all that weird to have both differential subject as well as differential object marking, c.f. e.g. Burmese. > I'd be interested in whether there are any cases of > obviation in Ojibwe sentences with inverse thematic > morphology (where the argument structure is the reverse > of the animacy hierarchy - this has sometimes been called > passive, but is not). I've never seen any such cases. Of > course, it's not even theoretically possible in OP, as > we'll see. I'm not sure I understand this correctly. Just why should an inverse verb form not be able to occur with an OBV marked NP? Apart from the fact it indeed is not a passive because it is not detransitivized (Alg. lgs. additionally have such options, too, btw) but transitive, horribile dictu like an ergative construction. Anyway, if Cree textbook examples (taken from Ellis ?1983) will do as a first starter: Moos kii-kiisis-ok-ow ni-kaawiy-a elk:AN PV:AFF-cook-INV-PRX 1:POR-mother-OBV "The elk (PRX) was cooked by my mother (OBV)" That also works in the conjunct order, btw (Ellis ?1983: 504): Tantee kaa-ataawee-t where? CO:REL-sell:AI-3:S kaa-i?i-nakat-ikot o-kosis-a CO:REL-ANA-leave:TA/TI-4>3 3:POR-son:AN-OBV "Where did the trader's son leave him?" References: Ellis, Clarence Douglas (?1983): Spoken Cree. West coast of James Bay. Edmonton, AB: Pica Pica Goddard, Ives (1984): The obviative in Fox narrative discourse.PAC 15: 273-286 Hockett, Charles F. (1948): Potawatomi, IV: Particles and sample texts. IJAL 14/4, 213-225 All the best, Heike From rankin at ku.edu Tue Jun 5 14:20:19 2007 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Tue, 5 Jun 2007 09:20:19 -0500 Subject: FW from Linguist List: MALC 2007. Official announcement and call for papers. Message-ID: Full Title: Mid America Linguistics Conference Short Title: MALC Location: Lawrence, Kansas, USA Start Date: 26-Oct-2007 - 28-Oct-2007 Contact: Sara Rosen Meeting Email: rosen at ku.edu Meeting URL: http://www.linguistics.ku.edu Meeting Description: The Department of Linguistics at the University of Kansas is pleased to announce that it will be hosting the 2007 Mid-America Linguistics Conference (MALC). The conference will take place on October 26-28 2007 at the University of Kansas campus in Lawrence. We invite abstracts in all areas of linguistics, including (but not restricted to) phonology, phonetics, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, historical linguistics, sociolinguistics, neurolinguistics, and psycholinguistics. Interdisciplinary papers are more then welcome. This year's meeting will feature special interest sessions on Psycho/Neurolinguistics, Endangered Languages, and/or African Languages. Each presentation will be allowed 20 minutes plus 10 minutes for discussion. You may also submit to the poster session. Linguistic Subfield: General Linguistics LL Issue: 18.1433 Mid America Linguistics Conference Call for Papers Call Deadline: 01-Aug-2007 Please send abstracts of maximum 500 words in Word or PDF format to Mircea Sauciuc (mcs at ku.edu) or Sara Rosen (rosen at ku.edu). Your name, affiliation, mailing address and email address should be included in the body of the email, in addition to whether you are submitting to a poster or presentation session. The deadline for abstract submission is August 1, 2007. Acceptance notification will go out by early September. From shokoohbanou at yahoo.co.uk Wed Jun 6 13:37:44 2007 From: shokoohbanou at yahoo.co.uk (shokooh Ingham) Date: Wed, 6 Jun 2007 14:37:44 +0100 Subject: obviation in Siouan languages In-Reply-To: Message-ID: It would be a great help if they were, as I always find this difficult in Lakota. The is^ eya complex often seems to signify a change of topic or subject, but it is very hard to tie down Bruce ROOD DAVID S wrote: Lungstrum's dissertation claims that chanke and yukhan are switch reference markers, defining "reference" as any major change of scene, characters, point of view, or some other discontinuity. I wasn't convinced. David David S. Rood Dept. of Linguistics Univ. of Colorado 295 UCB Boulder, CO 80309-0295 USA rood at colorado.edu On Fri, 1 Jun 2007, willemdereuse at unt.edu wrote: > Hi all: > > I have always thought that the chankhe/yunkhan alternation of conjunctions in > Lakota texts, first discussed by Chafe (I think) and then by Dahlstrom had > something to do with obviation. It is definitely not switch-reference. Does > Richard Lungstrum's diss. say anything about this? I am sorry to say I have > not yet gotten hold of a copy of Richard's diss. > > Willem de Reuse Quoting "Rankin, Robert L" : > >> As Rory points out, Dhegiha languages have something very similar >> distinguishing primary from non-primary actors. Ardis's dissertation was >> at least partly on this distinction in Omaha. >> >> I have toyed with the idea of trying to redefine the "switch-reference" >> distinction in those Siouan languages that have it as an obviation >> distinction. Such redefinition clearly works in Muskogean, where it is the >> only way to tie "S-R" and argument marking particles together without a >> hopelessly complex appeal to homophony, but I haven't really gotten down to >> the business of trying to demonstrate it in Siouan. Clearly the more >> inclusive concept of "referent tracking" operates in Siouan grammars, >> though it differs from language to language. If I had to guess, I'd say it >> is historically primary in Algonquian but secondary in Siouan. >> >> What were the papers you're referring to on Algonquian? >> >> Bob >> >> ________________________________ >> >> From: owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu on behalf of Marino >> Sent: Thu 5/31/2007 12:20 AM >> To: siouan at lists.colorado.edu >> Subject: obviation in Siouan languages >> >> >> >> There were two excellent papers on obviation in Cree at the CLA >> meetings. One of the presenters asked me if there is obviation in any of >> the Siouan languages. I have a vague memory that this has come up before, >> but I can't find time to troll through the archives. Any suggestions? >> >> Best >> Mary Marino >> >> >> >> > > --------------------------------- Yahoo! Mail is the world's favourite email. Don't settle for less, sign up for your freeaccount today. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pustetrm at yahoo.com Thu Jun 7 09:36:42 2007 From: pustetrm at yahoo.com (REGINA PUSTET) Date: Thu, 7 Jun 2007 02:36:42 -0700 Subject: obviation in Siouan languages In-Reply-To: <782368.77186.qm@web27007.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Message-ID: In my data, i(N)s^ is used mainly as a marker for strong contrast, as in Sally is^tiNme na Harry iNs^ TV waNyaNke S. sleep and H. CON TV watch ?Sally is sleeping and Harry is watching TV? or Sally is^tiNme na iNs^ Harry TV waNyaNke S. sleep and CON H. TV watch ?Sally is sleeping and Harry is watching TV? This can, but doesn?t have to, be accompanied by topic change, introduction of a different argument, and similar notions. Regina shokooh Ingham wrote: It would be a great help if they were, as I always find this difficult in Lakota. The is^ eya complex often seems to signify a change of topic or subject, but it is very hard to tie down Bruce ROOD DAVID S wrote: Lungstrum's dissertation claims that chanke and yukhan are switch reference markers, defining "reference" as any major change of scene, characters, point of view, or some other discontinuity. I wasn't convinced. David David S. Rood Dept. of Linguistics Univ. of Colorado 295 UCB Boulder, CO 80309-0295 USA rood at colorado.edu On Fri, 1 Jun 2007, willemdereuse at unt.edu wrote: > Hi all: > > I have always thought that the chankhe/yunkhan alternation of conjunctions in > Lakota texts, first discussed by Chafe (I think) and then by Dahlstrom had > something to do with obviation. It is definitely not switch-reference. Does > Richard Lungstrum's diss. say anything about this? I am sorry to say I have > not yet gotten hold of a copy of Richard's diss. > > Willem de Reuse Quoting "Rankin, Robert L" : > >> As Rory points out, Dhegiha languages have something very similar >> distinguishing primary from non-primary actors. Ardis's dissertation was >> at least partly on this distinction in Omaha. >> >> I have toyed with the idea of trying to redefine the "switch-reference" >> distinction in those Siouan languages that have it as an obviation >> distinction. Such redefinition clearly works in Muskogean, where it is the >> only way to tie "S-R" and argument marking particles together without a >> hopelessly complex appeal to homophony, but I haven't really gotten down to >> the business of trying to demonstrate it in Siouan. Clearly the more >> inclusive concept of "referent tracking" operates in Siouan grammars, >> though it differs from language to language. If I had to guess, I'd say it >> is historically primary in Algonquian but secondary in Siouan. >> >> What were the papers you're referring to on Algonquian? >> >> Bob >> >> ________________________________ >> >> From: owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu on behalf of Marino >> Sent: Thu 5/31/2007 12:20 AM >> To: siouan at lists.colorado.edu >> Subject: obviation in Siouan languages >> >> >> >> There were two excellent papers on obviation in Cree at the CLA >> meetings. One of the presenters asked me if there is obviation in any of >> the Siouan languages. I have a vague memory that this has come up before, >> but I can't find time to troll through the archives. Any suggestions? >> >> Best >> Mary Marino >> >> >> >> > > --------------------------------- Yahoo! Mail is the world's favourite email. Don't settle for less, sign up for your free account today. --------------------------------- You snooze, you lose. Get messages ASAP with AutoCheck in the all-new Yahoo! Mail Beta. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From shokoohbanou at yahoo.co.uk Thu Jun 7 10:57:43 2007 From: shokoohbanou at yahoo.co.uk (shokooh Ingham) Date: Thu, 7 Jun 2007 11:57:43 +0100 Subject: obviation in Siouan languages In-Reply-To: <548946.95772.qm@web54608.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Interestingly, however, your two examples do show change of topic. Can you think of an example where it doesn't? Bruce REGINA PUSTET wrote: In my data, i(N)s^ is used mainly as a marker for strong contrast, as in Sally is^tiNme na Harry iNs^ TV waNyaNke S. sleep and H. CON TV watch ?Sally is sleeping and Harry is watching TV? or Sally is^tiNme na iNs^ Harry TV waNyaNke S. sleep and CON H. TV watch ?Sally is sleeping and Harry is watching TV? This can, but doesn?t have to, be accompanied by topic change, introduction of a different argument, and similar notions. Regina shokooh Ingham wrote: It would be a great help if they were, as I always find this difficult in Lakota. The is^ eya complex often seems to signify a change of topic or subject, but it is very hard to tie down Bruce ROOD DAVID S wrote: Lungstrum's dissertation claims that chanke and yukhan are switch reference markers, defining "reference" as any major change of scene, characters, point of view, or some other discontinuity. I wasn't convinced. David David S. Rood Dept. of Linguistics Univ. of Colorado 295 UCB Boulder, CO 80309-0295 USA rood at colorado.edu On Fri, 1 Jun 2007, willemdereuse at unt.edu wrote: > Hi all: > > I have always thought that the chankhe/yunkhan alternation of conjunctions in > Lakota texts, first discussed by Chafe (I think) and then by Dahlstrom had > something to do with obviation. It is definitely not switch-reference. Does > Richard Lungstrum's diss. say anything about this? I am sorry to say I have > not yet gotten hold of a copy of Richard's diss. > > Willem de Reuse Quoting "Rankin, Robert L" : > >> As Rory points out, Dhegiha languages have something very similar >> distinguishing primary from non-primary actors. Ardis's dissertation was >> at least partly on this distinction in Omaha. >> >> I have toyed with the idea of trying to redefine the "switch-reference" >> distinction in those Siouan languages that have it as an obviation >> distinction. Such redefinition clearly works in Muskogean, where it is the >> only way to tie "S-R" and argument marking particles together without a >> hopelessly complex appeal to homophony, but I haven't really gotten down to >> the business of trying to demonstrate it in Siouan. Clearly the more >> inclusive concept of "referent tracking" operates in Siouan grammars, >> though it differs from language to language. If I had to guess, I'd say it >> is historically primary in Algonquian but secondary in Siouan. >> >> What were the papers you're referring to on Algonquian? >> >> Bob >> >> ________________________________ >> >> From: owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu on behalf of Marino >> Sent: Thu 5/31/2007 12:20 AM >> To: siouan at lists.colorado.edu >> Subject: obviation in Siouan languages >> >> >> >> There were two excellent papers on obviation in Cree at the CLA >> meetings. One of the presenters asked me if there is obviation in any of >> the Siouan languages. I have a vague memory that this has come up before, >> but I can't find time to troll through the archives. Any suggestions? >> >> Best >> Mary Marino >> >> >> >> > > --------------------------------- Yahoo! Mail is the world's favourite email. Don't settle for less, sign up for your free account today. --------------------------------- You snooze, you lose. Get messages ASAP with AutoCheck in the all-new Yahoo! Mail Beta. --------------------------------- Yahoo! Answers - Get better answers from someone who knows. Tryit now. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pustetrm at yahoo.com Thu Jun 7 13:49:55 2007 From: pustetrm at yahoo.com (REGINA PUSTET) Date: Thu, 7 Jun 2007 06:49:55 -0700 Subject: obviation in Siouan languages In-Reply-To: <712393.51860.qm@web27015.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Message-ID: It all depends on how you define ?topic?. If topic is the same as the English subject, then there is, as you say, a topic change on the two examples I gave. It?s different here: h^tal-ehaN wophethuN wa-I na iNs^ le aNpetu ki chuwignake waN wa-kayeg^e yesterday shop 1SG.AG-go and CON this day DEF dress IDF 1SG.AG-sew ?yesterday I went shopping and today I sewed a dress? h^tal-ehaN wophethuN wa-I na le aNpetu ki iNs^ chuwignake waN wa-kayeg^e yesterday shop 1SG.AG-go and this day DEF CON dress IDF 1SG.AG-sew ?yesterday I went shopping and today I sewed a dress? Harry Sally wowapi k?u na iNs^ Mary waks^ica cha k?u H. S. book give and CON M. plate such give ?Harry gave Sally books and he gave Mary plates? Regina shokooh Ingham wrote: Interestingly, however, your two examples do show change of topic. Can you think of an example where it doesn't? Bruce REGINA PUSTET wrote: In my data, i(N)s^ is used mainly as a marker for strong contrast, as in Sally is^tiNme na Harry iNs^ TV waNyaNke S. sleep and H. CON TV watch ?Sally is sleeping and Harry is watching TV? or Sally is^tiNme na iNs^ Harry TV waNyaNke S. sleep and CON H. TV watch ?Sally is sleeping and Harry is watching TV? This can, but doesn?t have to, be accompanied by topic change, introduction of a different argument, and similar notions. Regina shokooh Ingham wrote: It would be a great help if they were, as I always find this difficult in Lakota. The is^ eya complex often seems to signify a change of topic or subject, but it is very hard to tie down Bruce ROOD DAVID S wrote: Lungstrum's dissertation claims that chanke and yukhan are switch reference markers, defining "reference" as any major change of scene, characters, point of view, or some other discontinuity. I wasn't convinced. David David S. Rood Dept. of Linguistics Univ. of Colorado 295 UCB Boulder, CO 80309-0295 USA rood at colorado.edu On Fri, 1 Jun 2007, willemdereuse at unt.edu wrote: > Hi all: > > I have always thought that the chankhe/yunkhan alternation of conjunctions in > Lakota texts, first discussed by Chafe (I think) and then by Dahlstrom had > something to do with obviation. It is definitely not switch-reference. Does > Richard Lungstrum's diss. say anything about this? I am sorry to say I have > not yet gotten hold of a copy of Richard's diss. > > Willem de Reuse Quoting "Rankin, Robert L" : > >> As Rory points out, Dhegiha languages have something very similar >> distinguishing primary from non-primary actors. Ardis's dissertation was >> at least partly on this distinction in Omaha. >> >> I have toyed with the idea of trying to redefine the "switch-reference" >> distinction in those Siouan languages that have it as an obviation >> distinction. Such redefinition clearly works in Muskogean, where it is the >> only way to tie "S-R" and argument marking particles together without a >> hopelessly complex appeal to homophony, but I haven't really gotten down to >> the business of trying to demonstrate it in Siouan. Clearly the more >> inclusive concept of "referent tracking" operates in Siouan grammars, >> though it differs from language to language. If I had to guess, I'd say it >> is historically primary in Algonquian but secondary in Siouan. >> >> What were the papers you're referring to on Algonquian? >> >> Bob >> >> ________________________________ >> >> From: owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu on behalf of Marino >> Sent: Thu 5/31/2007 12:20 AM >> To: siouan at lists.colorado.edu >> Subject: obviation in Siouan languages >> >> >> >> There were two excellent papers on obviation in Cree at the CLA >> meetings. One of the presenters asked me if there is obviation in any of >> the Siouan languages. I have a vague memory that this has come up before, >> but I can't find time to troll through the archives. Any suggestions? >> >> Best >> Mary Marino >> >> >> >> > > --------------------------------- Yahoo! Mail is the world's favourite email. Don't settle for less, sign up for your free account today. --------------------------------- You snooze, you lose. Get messages ASAP with AutoCheck in the all-new Yahoo! Mail Beta. --------------------------------- Yahoo! Answers - Get better answers from someone who knows. Try it now. --------------------------------- Ready for the edge of your seat? Check out tonight's top picks on Yahoo! TV. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From shokoohbanou at yahoo.co.uk Thu Jun 7 16:01:20 2007 From: shokoohbanou at yahoo.co.uk (shokooh Ingham) Date: Thu, 7 Jun 2007 17:01:20 +0100 Subject: obviation in Siouan languages In-Reply-To: <666308.120.qm@web54608.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Those are interesting examplels. I think it is not topic in the sense of English subject, but something more general. They are all definite in the sense of either having ki or being proper names. So I suppose iNs^ le aNpetu ki, le aNpetu ki iNs^ and iNs^Mary could all be changes of topic in some definition of the term Bruce REGINA PUSTET wrote: It all depends on how you define ?topic?. If topic is the same as the English subject, then there is, as you say, a topic change on the two examples I gave. It?s different here: h^tal-ehaN wophethuN wa-I na iNs^ le aNpetu ki chuwignake waN wa-kayeg^e yesterday shop 1SG.AG-go and CON this day DEF dress IDF 1SG.AG-sew ?yesterday I went shopping and today I sewed a dress? h^tal-ehaN wophethuN wa-I na le aNpetu ki iNs^ chuwignake waN wa-kayeg^e yesterday shop 1SG.AG-go and this day DEF CON dress IDF 1SG.AG-sew ?yesterday I went shopping and today I sewed a dress? Harry Sally wowapi k?u na iNs^ Mary waks^ica cha k?u H. S. book give and CON M. plate such give ?Harry gave Sally books and he gave Mary plates? Regina shokooh Ingham wrote: Interestingly, however, your two examples do show change of topic. Can you think of an example where it doesn't? Bruce REGINA PUSTET wrote: In my data, i(N)s^ is used mainly as a marker for strong contrast, as in Sally is^tiNme na Harry iNs^ TV waNyaNke S. sleep and H. CON TV watch ?Sally is sleeping and Harry is watching TV? or Sally is^tiNme na iNs^ Harry TV waNyaNke S. sleep and CON H. TV watch ?Sally is sleeping and Harry is watching TV? This can, but doesn?t have to, be accompanied by topic change, introduction of a different argument, and similar notions. Regina shokooh Ingham wrote: It would be a great help if they were, as I always find this difficult in Lakota. The is^ eya complex often seems to signify a change of topic or subject, but it is very hard to tie down Bruce ROOD DAVID S wrote: Lungstrum's dissertation claims that chanke and yukhan are switch reference markers, defining "reference" as any major change of scene, characters, point of view, or some other discontinuity. I wasn't convinced. David David S. Rood Dept. of Linguistics Univ. of Colorado 295 UCB Boulder, CO 80309-0295 USA rood at colorado.edu On Fri, 1 Jun 2007, willemdereuse at unt.edu wrote: > Hi all: > > I have always thought that the chankhe/yunkhan alternation of conjunctions in > Lakota texts, first discussed by Chafe (I think) and then by Dahlstrom had > something to do with obviation. It is definitely not switch-reference. Does > Richard Lungstrum's diss. say anything about this? I am sorry to say I have > not yet gotten hold of a copy of Richard's diss. > > Willem de Reuse Quoting "Rankin, Robert L" : > >> As Rory points out, Dhegiha languages have something very similar >> distinguishing primary from non-primary actors. Ardis's dissertation was >> at least partly on this distinction in Omaha. >> >> I have toyed with the idea of trying to redefine the "switch-reference" >> distinction in those Siouan languages that have it as an obviation >> distinction. Such redefinition clearly works in Muskogean, where it is the >> only way to tie "S-R" and argument marking particles together without a >> hopelessly complex appeal to homophony, but I haven't really gotten down to >> the business of trying to demonstrate it in Siouan. Clearly the more >> inclusive concept of "referent tracking" operates in Siouan grammars, >> though it differs from language to language. If I had to guess, I'd say it >> is historically primary in Algonquian but secondary in Siouan. >> >> What were the papers you're referring to on Algonquian? >> >> Bob >> >> ________________________________ >> >> From: owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu on behalf of Marino >> Sent: Thu 5/31/2007 12:20 AM >> To: siouan at lists.colorado.edu >> Subject: obviation in Siouan languages >> >> >> >> There were two excellent papers on obviation in Cree at the CLA >> meetings. One of the presenters asked me if there is obviation in any of >> the Siouan languages. I have a vague memory that this has come up before, >> but I can't find time to troll through the archives. Any suggestions? >> >> Best >> Mary Marino >> >> >> >> > > --------------------------------- Yahoo! Mail is the world's favourite email. Don't settle for less, sign up for your free account today. --------------------------------- You snooze, you lose. Get messages ASAP with AutoCheck in the all-new Yahoo! Mail Beta. --------------------------------- Yahoo! Answers - Get better answers from someone who knows. Try it now. --------------------------------- Ready for the edge of your seat? Check out tonight's top picks on Yahoo! TV. --------------------------------- Inbox full of unwanted email? Get leading protection and 1GB storage with All New Yahoo! Mail. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rlarson at unlnotes.unl.edu Thu Jun 7 18:01:19 2007 From: rlarson at unlnotes.unl.edu (Rory M Larson) Date: Thu, 7 Jun 2007 13:01:19 -0500 Subject: obviation in Siouan languages In-Reply-To: <257320.54706.qm@web27015.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Well, how _do_ we define "topic", or "subject" for that matter? I've been learning Japanese recently, which makes this distinction using particles: wa - topic marker ga - subject marker wo - object marker ga is used to mark either the one that is doing the action or the one you are trying to identify as the point of the communication. It normally appears only in the latter case or in embedded clauses. In most simple sentences, the subject uses the topic marker wa. However, wa can also replace the object marker wo, and can be used to mark prepositional phrases as well as nouns. Both wa and ga can be used contrastively, in ways that would involve vocal emphasis in English. For ga, the issue is on clarifying who it is we are talking about: It was _Sally_ (ga) that slept (not Harry). But for wa, alternate topics are taken as given points of reference for contrasting information: _Sally_ (wa) is sleeping, while _Harry_ (wa) is watching TV. It seems to me that "topic" means an uncontroversial point of reference to which further information can be related. That point of reference can be a subject noun, but doesn't have to be. It can be an adverb, a prepositional phrase, a full clause, or an object noun just as easily. I think all of the examples Regina cites might reasonably match the Japanese contrastive wa usage: > Sally is^tiNme na Harry iNs^ TV waNyaNke S. sleep and H. CON TV watch ?Sally is sleeping and Harry is watching TV? or Sally is^tiNme na iNs^ Harry TV waNyaNke S. sleep and CON H. TV watch ?Sally is sleeping and Harry is watching TV? Or: '_Sally_ (wa) is sleeping and _Harry_ (wa) is watching TV' (The contrasting topics are subject nouns.) > h^tal-ehaN wophethuN wa-I na iNs^ le aNpetu ki chuwignake waN wa-kayeg^e yesterday shop 1SG.AG-go and CON this day DEF dress IDF 1SG.AG-sew ?yesterday I went shopping and today I sewed a dress? h^tal-ehaN wophethuN wa-I na le aNpetu ki iNs^ chuwignake waN wa-kayeg^e yesterday shop 1SG.AG-go and this day DEF CON dress IDF 1SG.AG-sew ?yesterday I went shopping and today I sewed a dress? Or: '_yesterday_' (wa) I went shopping and _today_ (wa) I sewed a dress' (The contrasting topics are adverbs of time.) > Harry Sally wowapi k?u na iNs^ Mary waks^ica cha k?u H. S. book give and CON M. plate such give ?Harry gave Sally books and he gave Mary plates? Or: 'Harry gave _Sally_ (wa) books and he gave _Mary_ (wa) plates' (The contrasting topics are indirect object nouns.) The main mechanical difference would be that in Japanese, wa always follows its topic and is used to mark both in a contrast, while in Lakhota, iNs^ appears only on the second one in a contrast, and can either precede or follow its topic. Would this be a helpful interpretation of iNs^ ? Rory -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pustetrm at yahoo.com Thu Jun 7 18:31:41 2007 From: pustetrm at yahoo.com (REGINA PUSTET) Date: Thu, 7 Jun 2007 11:31:41 -0700 Subject: obviation in Siouan languages In-Reply-To: Message-ID: >>From what I know about Japanese, case marking in that language is so messy (especially when it comes to wa) that using it as a template for describing other languages will inevitably make these look messy too. As far as I remember, there are so many rules to the use of wa that this marker is really hard to pin down functionally. But the specific notion of contrast expressed by double wa does go with what we see in Lakota, I think, so this is a good analogy. In case the idea is out there, I would not analyze iNs> a topic marker though. It is simply a marker for what Wally Chafe once referred to as 'focus of contrast'. Regina Rory M Larson wrote: Well, how _do_ we define "topic", or "subject" for that matter? I've been learning Japanese recently, which makes this distinction using particles: wa - topic marker ga - subject marker wo - object marker ga is used to mark either the one that is doing the action or the one you are trying to identify as the point of the communication. It normally appears only in the latter case or in embedded clauses. In most simple sentences, the subject uses the topic marker wa. However, wa can also replace the object marker wo, and can be used to mark prepositional phrases as well as nouns. Both wa and ga can be used contrastively, in ways that would involve vocal emphasis in English. For ga, the issue is on clarifying who it is we are talking about: It was _Sally_ (ga) that slept (not Harry). But for wa, alternate topics are taken as given points of reference for contrasting information: _Sally_ (wa) is sleeping, while _Harry_ (wa) is watching TV. It seems to me that "topic" means an uncontroversial point of reference to which further information can be related. That point of reference can be a subject noun, but doesn't have to be. It can be an adverb, a prepositional phrase, a full clause, or an object noun just as easily. I think all of the examples Regina cites might reasonably match the Japanese contrastive wa usage: > Sally is^tiNme na Harry iNs^ TV waNyaNke S. sleep and H. CON TV watch ???Sally is sleeping and Harry is watching TV??? or Sally is^tiNme na iNs^ Harry TV waNyaNke S. sleep and CON H. TV watch ???Sally is sleeping and Harry is watching TV??? Or: '_Sally_ (wa) is sleeping and _Harry_ (wa) is watching TV' (The contrasting topics are subject nouns.) > h^tal-ehaN wophethuN wa-I na iNs^ le aNpetu ki chuwignake waN wa-kayeg^e yesterday shop 1SG.AG-go and CON this day DEF dress IDF 1SG.AG-sew ???yesterday I went shopping and today I sewed a dress??? h^tal-ehaN wophethuN wa-I na le aNpetu ki iNs^ chuwignake waN wa-kayeg^e yesterday shop 1SG.AG-go and this day DEF CON dress IDF 1SG.AG-sew ???yesterday I went shopping and today I sewed a dress??? Or: '_yesterday_' (wa) I went shopping and _today_ (wa) I sewed a dress' (The contrasting topics are adverbs of time.) > Harry Sally wowapi k???u na iNs^ Mary waks^ica cha k???u H. S. book give and CON M. plate such give ???Harry gave Sally books and he gave Mary plates??? Or: 'Harry gave _Sally_ (wa) books and he gave _Mary_ (wa) plates' (The contrasting topics are indirect object nouns.) The main mechanical difference would be that in Japanese, wa always follows its topic and is used to mark both in a contrast, while in Lakhota, iNs^ appears only on the second one in a contrast, and can either precede or follow its topic. Would this be a helpful interpretation of iNs^ ? Rory --------------------------------- Fussy? Opinionated? Impossible to please? Perfect. Join Yahoo!'s user panel and lay it on us. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From linguista at gmail.com Thu Jun 7 21:52:20 2007 From: linguista at gmail.com (Bryan Gordon) Date: Thu, 7 Jun 2007 16:52:20 -0500 Subject: obviation in Siouan languages In-Reply-To: <929737.55667.qm@web54609.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Topics can easily be described in Prague-school terms quite simply as "old information." The Japanese topic behaviour generally aligns with contexts where "as for TOPIC" would be possible in English, e.g. "As for yesterday, I went shopping, while as for today, I sewed a dress" or "As for Sally, Harry gave her books, while as for Mary, he gave her plates." Japanese ga cannot be translated with "as for", on the other hand: "#!As for Harry, he slept, not Mary." This, from the Prague-school terminology, is precisely the opposite of a topic: it is a focus, or "new information." We already know that someone slept, the new information is the identity of the sleeper. In the other contexts, the dates and characters are not important, but rather the new information is what is associated with them. Of course, to make things even more complicated, both topic and focus have similar syntactic behaviour in many languages. But it is also quite common cross-linguistically to see topics fronted and foci right-edged. Ojibwe is one such language, and so is Finnish. Spanish, too, to a certain extent, right-displaces new and left-displaces old information. In fact, that's precisely what English "as for" does, is moves old information left. The sort of focus that contrasts with topic in pragmatic terms should not be confused with the entirely different cognitive/psychological use of the word focus, which is ironically enough almost never associated with a pragmatic focus and almost always with a pragmatic topic. Ojibwe has particles that seem to behave similarly to the Lakhota/Dakota particles mentioned earlier. I know this is the Siouan list, but we've been comparing Algonquian and Siouan during the whole thread, so why stop now? One is (i)dash (I believe in Cree this is itahsh), and can be appended to just about any constituent, as long as that constituent is near the left edge. It serves to contrast the constituent before it with something mentioned earlier. Some examples: Gii-nagamo dash gii-niimi'iwed PST-sing CTR PST-make.dance While he had them dance, he sang. Bezhig onik odanokaazon dewe'iged nagamod. Bezhig idash odanokaazon onik nisaad. One arm he.worked.with drumming singing. One CTR he.worked.with arm killing. He used one arm to drum while he sang. One arm he used to kill. Zhingiben' dash ashkwaandeng gii-niimi. Gomaapii dash gii-dooskaabi a'aw zhingiben'. Hell.diver CTR at.the.door PST-dance. A.while CTR PST-peek D hell.diver Hell-Diver, now, was dancing at the door. After a while he peeked out. (i)dash is also contracted onto many other function words to create things like aaniish "well now", awenesh "now, who on earth", miish "now, that's who/what"... What these have in common is simply contrast, not topic or focus. In the first example, in fact, dash is appended to the focus (we already knew about the dancing before this sentence), while in the second example there's a topic with idash, and in the third there's a focus again on Hell-Diver, and then a contrastive topic on the elapsing of time. Contrast is not necessarily related to topic or focus, as Rory notes by exploring the two very different contrastive particles in Japanese. The other contrastive particle I'm thinking of in Ojibwe is (i)sa, which is just as common as (i)dash, and is appended to things which could be said to answer contrastive questions, even if the question is not overtly stated. For instance: "Wegonesh iw ziing? 'Akawaabin' sa wii nii gigii-inin." "What.CTR D sizzle? 'Watch.out' CTR I you I.told.you "What's that sizzling? I told you 'Watch out'" (not something else) Babaa-anokiitaage apane. Mii sa iw ezhi-bimaadizid. Always.going.around-working.for always. FOC CTR D way-she.lives She's always going around working for people. That's the way she lives (and not some other way). Sometimes (i)sa just throws extra intensity on something which may not be contrastive in any significant way beyond that it is not what was just being talked about. Aw isa niningwan gaa-aawid gagwaanisagakamig gaa-gidimaaginaagozid. D CTR son-in-law PST-was.so awfully PST-looking.wretched That son-in-law of mine looked awfully wretched. Although these things can clearly be used for switch-reference-like effects, much like the proximate -(b)i in Omaha-Ponca, which has little if anything to do with contrast, topic or focus, I'd hesitate to call them that. These contrastive particles also have no distributional restrictions relative to obviation, and can occur on obviatives and proximates alike. Part of the reason -(b)i is called proximate in OP is that it does NOT appear on verbs that agree with obviative subjects. At least, not above margin of error. I wonder what the distribution of these Lakhota/Dakota particles is relative to "obviation" or "case marking" or whatever else Lakhota/Dakota has in its repertoire. From rlarson at unlnotes.unl.edu Fri Jun 8 13:55:38 2007 From: rlarson at unlnotes.unl.edu (Rory M Larson) Date: Fri, 8 Jun 2007 08:55:38 -0500 Subject: obviation in Siouan languages In-Reply-To: <929737.55667.qm@web54609.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: > From what I know about Japanese, case marking in that language is so messy (especially when it comes to wa) that using it as a template for describing other languages will inevitably make these look messy too. As far as I remember, there are so many rules to the use of wa that this marker is really hard to pin down functionally. Hmm. I hadn't thought of Japanese as being particularly messy. It does take a certain amount of internalization for us westerners, because their logical system is so different from what we are used to in European languages. >But the specific notion of contrast expressed by double wa does go with what we see in Lakota, I think, so this is a good analogy. In case the idea is out there, I would not analyze iNs> a topic marker though. It is simply a marker for what Wally Chafe once referred to as 'focus of contrast'. I hadn't meant to imply that iNs^ was a general topic marker, only that it seemed to mark the second topic used in the equivalent of a double wa type contrast. I guess my question would be whether it says: "This is the other topic that I am raising to contrast with the topic I was referring to a moment ago"; or whether it says: "I am now presenting a contrast". Does iNs^ point to the contrasting topic (Harry, today, Mary), or does it simply introduce the entire contrasting phrase? As a possible test, can iNs^ ever be non-adjacent to the contrasting topic? Also, can it be used in a ga type contrast or focus: "It is _Sally_ (ga) who is sleeping; iNs^ _Harry_ (ga) is the one who is watching TV. (You had them confused)"? Rory -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pustetrm at yahoo.com Mon Jun 11 07:03:50 2007 From: pustetrm at yahoo.com (REGINA PUSTET) Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2007 00:03:50 -0700 Subject: obviation in Siouan languages In-Reply-To: Message-ID: > Hmm. I hadn't thought of Japanese as being particularly messy. It does take a certain amount of internalization for us westerners, because their logical system is so different from what we are used to in European languages. Right. But the main reason why I called the system "messy" is that more than one Japanese linguist told me that despite the huge amount of literature that is available on the subject, there is no satisfactory description of distribution of wa and ga yet. > Does iNs^ point to the contrasting topic (Harry, today, Mary), or does it simply introduce the entire contrasting phrase? As a possible test, can iNs^ ever be non-adjacent to the contrasting topic? My guess is that it cannot. At least I don't have examples of this type. > Also, can it be used in a ga type contrast or focus: "It is _Sally_ (ga) who is sleeping; iNs^ _Harry_ (ga) is the one who is watching TV. (You had them confused)"? In this case, there?s two different pragmatic categories at work: topic (in the sense of ?emphasized constituent?) and contrast. This kind of topic is marked via e (cha) in Lakota. I?m not sure whether an e (cha)- constituent can be additionally marked with iNs>, or not. Regina Rory M Larson wrote: > From what I know about Japanese, case marking in that language is so messy (especially when it comes to wa) that using it as a template for describing other languages will inevitably make these look messy too. As far as I remember, there are so many rules to the use of wa that this marker is really hard to pin down functionally. Hmm. I hadn't thought of Japanese as being particularly messy. It does take a certain amount of internalization for us westerners, because their logical system is so different from what we are used to in European languages. >But the specific notion of contrast expressed by double wa does go with what we see in Lakota, I think, so this is a good analogy. In case the idea is out there, I would not analyze iNs> a topic marker though. It is simply a marker for what Wally Chafe once referred to as 'focus of contrast'. I hadn't meant to imply that iNs^ was a general topic marker, only that it seemed to mark the second topic used in the equivalent of a double wa type contrast. I guess my question would be whether it says: "This is the other topic that I am raising to contrast with the topic I was referring to a moment ago"; or whether it says: "I am now presenting a contrast". Does iNs^ point to the contrasting topic (Harry, today, Mary), or does it simply introduce the entire contrasting phrase? As a possible test, can iNs^ ever be non-adjacent to the contrasting topic? Also, can it be used in a ga type contrast or focus: "It is _Sally_ (ga) who is sleeping; iNs^ _Harry_ (ga) is the one who is watching TV. (You had them confused)"? Rory --------------------------------- Be a better Heartthrob. Get better relationship answers from someone who knows. Yahoo! Answers - Check it out. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pustetrm at yahoo.com Mon Jun 11 07:05:37 2007 From: pustetrm at yahoo.com (REGINA PUSTET) Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2007 00:05:37 -0700 Subject: obviation in Siouan languages In-Reply-To: Message-ID: > I wonder what the distribution of these Lakhota/Dakota particles is relative to "obviation" or "case marking" or whatever else Lakhota/Dakota has in its repertoire. To me, there is no evidence for the existence of obviation in Lakota, if we define obviation as a system for manipulating pragmatic perspective. As for compatibility of iNs^ with case markers, I don't have too many examples for non-core relations in contrastive position, but I assume that iNs^ goes with any type of argument, including those marked with postpositions. Regina Bryan Gordon wrote: Topics can easily be described in Prague-school terms quite simply as "old information." The Japanese topic behaviour generally aligns with contexts where "as for TOPIC" would be possible in English, e.g. "As for yesterday, I went shopping, while as for today, I sewed a dress" or "As for Sally, Harry gave her books, while as for Mary, he gave her plates." Japanese ga cannot be translated with "as for", on the other hand: "#!As for Harry, he slept, not Mary." This, from the Prague-school terminology, is precisely the opposite of a topic: it is a focus, or "new information." We already know that someone slept, the new information is the identity of the sleeper. In the other contexts, the dates and characters are not important, but rather the new information is what is associated with them. Of course, to make things even more complicated, both topic and focus have similar syntactic behaviour in many languages. But it is also quite common cross-linguistically to see topics fronted and foci right-edged. Ojibwe is one such language, and so is Finnish. Spanish, too, to a certain extent, right-displaces new and left-displaces old information. In fact, that's precisely what English "as for" does, is moves old information left. The sort of focus that contrasts with topic in pragmatic terms should not be confused with the entirely different cognitive/psychological use of the word focus, which is ironically enough almost never associated with a pragmatic focus and almost always with a pragmatic topic. Ojibwe has particles that seem to behave similarly to the Lakhota/Dakota particles mentioned earlier. I know this is the Siouan list, but we've been comparing Algonquian and Siouan during the whole thread, so why stop now? One is (i)dash (I believe in Cree this is itahsh), and can be appended to just about any constituent, as long as that constituent is near the left edge. It serves to contrast the constituent before it with something mentioned earlier. Some examples: Gii-nagamo dash gii-niimi'iwed PST-sing CTR PST-make.dance While he had them dance, he sang. Bezhig onik odanokaazon dewe'iged nagamod. Bezhig idash odanokaazon onik nisaad. One arm he.worked.with drumming singing. One CTR he.worked.with arm killing. He used one arm to drum while he sang. One arm he used to kill. Zhingiben' dash ashkwaandeng gii-niimi. Gomaapii dash gii-dooskaabi a'aw zhingiben'. Hell.diver CTR at.the.door PST-dance. A.while CTR PST-peek D hell.diver Hell-Diver, now, was dancing at the door. After a while he peeked out. (i)dash is also contracted onto many other function words to create things like aaniish "well now", awenesh "now, who on earth", miish "now, that's who/what"... What these have in common is simply contrast, not topic or focus. In the first example, in fact, dash is appended to the focus (we already knew about the dancing before this sentence), while in the second example there's a topic with idash, and in the third there's a focus again on Hell-Diver, and then a contrastive topic on the elapsing of time. Contrast is not necessarily related to topic or focus, as Rory notes by exploring the two very different contrastive particles in Japanese. The other contrastive particle I'm thinking of in Ojibwe is (i)sa, which is just as common as (i)dash, and is appended to things which could be said to answer contrastive questions, even if the question is not overtly stated. For instance: "Wegonesh iw ziing? 'Akawaabin' sa wii nii gigii-inin." "What.CTR D sizzle? 'Watch.out' CTR I you I.told.you "What's that sizzling? I told you 'Watch out'" (not something else) Babaa-anokiitaage apane. Mii sa iw ezhi-bimaadizid. Always.going.around-working.for always. FOC CTR D way-she.lives She's always going around working for people. That's the way she lives (and not some other way). Sometimes (i)sa just throws extra intensity on something which may not be contrastive in any significant way beyond that it is not what was just being talked about. Aw isa niningwan gaa-aawid gagwaanisagakamig gaa-gidimaaginaagozid. D CTR son-in-law PST-was.so awfully PST-looking.wretched That son-in-law of mine looked awfully wretched. Although these things can clearly be used for switch-reference-like effects, much like the proximate -(b)i in Omaha-Ponca, which has little if anything to do with contrast, topic or focus, I'd hesitate to call them that. These contrastive particles also have no distributional restrictions relative to obviation, and can occur on obviatives and proximates alike. Part of the reason -(b)i is called proximate in OP is that it does NOT appear on verbs that agree with obviative subjects. At least, not above margin of error. I wonder what the distribution of these Lakhota/Dakota particles is relative to "obviation" or "case marking" or whatever else Lakhota/Dakota has in its repertoire. --------------------------------- Got a little couch potato? Check out fun summer activities for kids. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From shokoohbanou at yahoo.co.uk Mon Jun 11 15:35:07 2007 From: shokoohbanou at yahoo.co.uk (shokooh Ingham) Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2007 16:35:07 +0100 Subject: obviation in Siouan languages In-Reply-To: <196690.335.qm@web54609.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: I haven't checked this , but my experience is that postpositional phrases don't take everything that other core noun phrases do, ie they less frequently show the Topic marker ki/k'uN and I don't think iNs^ or iNs^ eya occur with postpositions. I can't envisage a phrase like mni iNs^ el. Rather the pronoun iye can occur giving examples like lena wowakhaN kiNhaN iye el aikichigluthapi 'they tested each other on these holy powers' Bruce REGINA PUSTET wrote: > I wonder what the distribution of these Lakhota/Dakota particles is relative to "obviation" or "case marking" or whatever else Lakhota/Dakota has in its repertoire. To me, there is no evidence for the existence of obviation in Lakota, if we define obviation as a system for manipulating pragmatic perspective. As for compatibility of iNs^ with case markers, I don't have too many examples for non-core relations in contrastive position, but I assume that iNs^ goes with any type of argument, including those marked with postpositions. Regina Bryan Gordon wrote: Topics can easily be described in Prague-school terms quite simply as "old information." The Japanese topic behaviour generally aligns with contexts where "as for TOPIC" would be possible in English, e.g. "As for yesterday, I went shopping, while as for today, I sewed a dress" or "As for Sally, Harry gave her books, while as for Mary, he gave her plates." Japanese ga cannot be translated with "as for", on the other hand: "#!As for Harry, he slept, not Mary." This, from the Prague-school terminology, is precisely the opposite of a topic: it is a focus, or "new information." We already know that someone slept, the new information is the identity of the sleeper. In the other contexts, the dates and characters are not important, but rather the new information is what is associated with them. Of course, to make things even more complicated, both topic and focus have similar syntactic behaviour in many languages. But it is also quite common cross-linguistically to see topics fronted and foci right-edged. Ojibwe is one such language, and so is Finnish. Spanish, too, to a certain extent, right-displaces new and left-displaces old information. In fact, that's precisely what English "as for" does, is moves old information left. The sort of focus that contrasts with topic in pragmatic terms should not be confused with the entirely different cognitive/psychological use of the word focus, which is ironically enough almost never associated with a pragmatic focus and almost always with a pragmatic topic. Ojibwe has particles that seem to behave similarly to the Lakhota/Dakota particles mentioned earlier. I know this is the Siouan list, but we've been comparing Algonquian and Siouan during the whole thread, so why stop now? One is (i)dash (I believe in Cree this is itahsh), and can be appended to just about any constituent, as long as that constituent is near the left edge. It serves to contrast the constituent before it with something mentioned earlier. Some examples: Gii-nagamo dash gii-niimi'iwed PST-sing CTR PST-make.dance While he had them dance, he sang. Bezhig onik odanokaazon dewe'iged nagamod. Bezhig idash odanokaazon onik nisaad. One arm he.worked.with drumming singing. One CTR he.worked.with arm killing. He used one arm to drum while he sang. One arm he used to kill. Zhingiben' dash ashkwaandeng gii-niimi. Gomaapii dash gii-dooskaabi a'aw zhingiben'. Hell.diver CTR at.the.door PST-dance. A.while CTR PST-peek D hell.diver Hell-Diver, now, was dancing at the door. After a while he peeked out. (i)dash is also contracted onto many other function words to create things like aaniish "well now", awenesh "now, who on earth", miish "now, that's who/what"... What these have in common is simply contrast, not topic or focus. In the first example, in fact, dash is appended to the focus (we already knew about the dancing before this sentence), while in the second example there's a topic with idash, and in the third there's a focus again on Hell-Diver, and then a contrastive topic on the elapsing of time. Contrast is not necessarily related to topic or focus, as Rory notes by exploring the two very different contrastive particles in Japanese. The other contrastive particle I'm thinking of in Ojibwe is (i)sa, which is just as common as (i)dash, and is appended to things which could be said to answer contrastive questions, even if the question is not overtly stated. For instance: "Wegonesh iw ziing? 'Akawaabin' sa wii nii gigii-inin." "What.CTR D sizzle? 'Watch.out' CTR I you I.told.you "What's that sizzling? I told you 'Watch out'" (not something else) Babaa-anokiitaage apane. Mii sa iw ezhi-bimaadizid. Always.going.around-working.for always. FOC CTR D way-she.lives She's always going around working for people. That's the way she lives (and not some other way). Sometimes (i)sa just throws extra intensity on something which may not be contrastive in any significant way beyond that it is not what was just being talked about. Aw isa niningwan gaa-aawid gagwaanisagakamig gaa-gidimaaginaagozid. D CTR son-in-law PST-was.so awfully PST-looking.wretched That son-in-law of mine looked awfully wretched. Although these things can clearly be used for switch-reference-like effects, much like the proximate -(b)i in Omaha-Ponca, which has little if anything to do with contrast, topic or focus, I'd hesitate to call them that. These contrastive particles also have no distributional restrictions relative to obviation, and can occur on obviatives and proximates alike. Part of the reason -(b)i is called proximate in OP is that it does NOT appear on verbs that agree with obviative subjects. At least, not above margin of error. I wonder what the distribution of these Lakhota/Dakota particles is relative to "obviation" or "case marking" or whatever else Lakhota/Dakota has in its repertoire. --------------------------------- Got a little couch potato? Check out fun summer activities for kids. --------------------------------- Yahoo! Mail is the world's favourite email. Don't settle for less, sign up for your freeaccount today. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From willemdereuse at unt.edu Mon Jun 11 15:42:57 2007 From: willemdereuse at unt.edu (willemdereuse at unt.edu) Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2007 10:42:57 -0500 Subject: obviation in Siouan languages In-Reply-To: <196690.335.qm@web54609.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Quoting REGINA PUSTET : >> I wonder what the distribution of these Lakhota/Dakota particles is >> relative to > "obviation" or "case marking" or whatever else Lakhota/Dakota has in > its repertoire. > > To me, there is no evidence for the existence of obviation in > Lakota, if we define obviation as a system for manipulating pragmatic > perspective. Regina: I was wondering if you had any thoughts/ideas about the yuNkhaN/chaNke alternation in Lakota. I agree with Dave Rood's earlier answer to my question about this, i.e. that Lungstrum's dissertation has not elucidated this convincingly. There is definitely some sort of alternation in Deloria's Dakota Texts, even though texts by (at least some) modern speakers do not seem to have this. Willem de Reuse From rood at spot.Colorado.EDU Mon Jun 11 15:58:03 2007 From: rood at spot.Colorado.EDU (ROOD DAVID S) Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2007 09:58:03 -0600 Subject: obviation in Siouan languages In-Reply-To: <20070611104257.4lv2sxj2huo00woo@eaglemail.unt.edu> Message-ID: For what it's worth, my purely anecdotal impression is that "chanke" marks a more or less expected continuation of a narration (hence translations like "and so" or "and then" or "and next", while "yunkhan" (or yukhan) means "I bet you weren't expecting this next event". They thus correlate very often with switch reference (or switch-scene, or switch-topic) because a new or changed element in the conversation or narration is often somewhat unexpected by the hearer. Eli James used to translate "yukhan" as "and here" in useages like (this one is made up): "They were walking along and here all the time someone had been following them". David S. Rood Dept. of Linguistics Univ. of Colorado 295 UCB Boulder, CO 80309-0295 USA rood at colorado.edu On Mon, 11 Jun 2007, willemdereuse at unt.edu wrote: > Quoting REGINA PUSTET : > >>> I wonder what the distribution of these Lakhota/Dakota particles is >>> relative to >> "obviation" or "case marking" or whatever else Lakhota/Dakota has in >> its repertoire. >> >> To me, there is no evidence for the existence of obviation in Lakota, if >> we define obviation as a system for manipulating pragmatic perspective. > > Regina: > > I was wondering if you had any thoughts/ideas about the yuNkhaN/chaNke > alternation in Lakota. I agree with Dave Rood's earlier answer to my > question about this, i.e. that Lungstrum's dissertation has not elucidated > this convincingly. > > There is definitely some sort of alternation in Deloria's Dakota Texts, even > though texts by (at least some) modern speakers do not seem to have this. > > Willem de Reuse > From chafe at linguistics.ucsb.edu Mon Jun 11 16:35:38 2007 From: chafe at linguistics.ucsb.edu (Wallace Chafe) Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2007 09:35:38 -0700 Subject: Switching topics In-Reply-To: Message-ID: I wasn't going to say anything because I've been away from Siouan linguistics for many years, but David's message rings a loud bell for me. I remember a Lakota speaker in Oakland telling how she heard a loud noise in the night. She looked out the window "and here" (yunkhan) somebody had plowed into their car. So two speakers evidently came up independently with that translation. I've long had a suspicion that most (or all?) of what has been called switch-reference is just a special case of switch-topic. The switch-reference notion arose because people were making up isolated sentences. I hope everybody realizes that "topic" here is what is sometimes called "discourse topic", which has little if anything to do with the "topic-comment" use of this term. Wally > For what it's worth, my purely anecdotal impression is that "chanke" > marks a more or less expected continuation of a narration (hence > translations like "and so" or "and then" or "and next", while "yunkhan" > (or yukhan) means "I bet you weren't expecting this next event". They > thus correlate very often with switch reference (or switch-scene, or > switch-topic) because a new or changed element in the conversation or > narration is often somewhat unexpected by the hearer. Eli James used to > translate "yukhan" as "and here" in useages like (this one is made up): > "They were walking along and here all the time someone had been following > them". (David Rood) From shokoohbanou at yahoo.co.uk Mon Jun 11 19:01:49 2007 From: shokoohbanou at yahoo.co.uk (shokooh Ingham) Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2007 20:01:49 +0100 Subject: Switching topics In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Yes I've often noticed that the yuNkhaN could very well be translated into the Biblical 'lo and behold' prefacing some unexpected event. Bruce Wallace Chafe wrote: I wasn't going to say anything because I've been away from Siouan linguistics for many years, but David's message rings a loud bell for me. I remember a Lakota speaker in Oakland telling how she heard a loud noise in the night. She looked out the window "and here" (yunkhan) somebody had plowed into their car. So two speakers evidently came up independently with that translation. I've long had a suspicion that most (or all?) of what has been called switch-reference is just a special case of switch-topic. The switch-reference notion arose because people were making up isolated sentences. I hope everybody realizes that "topic" here is what is sometimes called "discourse topic", which has little if anything to do with the "topic-comment" use of this term. Wally > For what it's worth, my purely anecdotal impression is that "chanke" > marks a more or less expected continuation of a narration (hence > translations like "and so" or "and then" or "and next", while "yunkhan" > (or yukhan) means "I bet you weren't expecting this next event". They > thus correlate very often with switch reference (or switch-scene, or > switch-topic) because a new or changed element in the conversation or > narration is often somewhat unexpected by the hearer. Eli James used to > translate "yukhan" as "and here" in useages like (this one is made up): > "They were walking along and here all the time someone had been following > them". (David Rood) --------------------------------- What kind of emailer are you? Find out today - get a free analysis of your email personality. Take the quiz at the Yahoo! Mail Championship. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pustetrm at yahoo.com Mon Jun 11 18:39:38 2007 From: pustetrm at yahoo.com (REGINA PUSTET) Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2007 11:39:38 -0700 Subject: obviation in Siouan languages In-Reply-To: Message-ID: (quoting David Rood) > For what it's worth, my purely anecdotal impression is that "chanke" marks a more or less expected continuation of a narration (hence translations like "and so" or "and then" or "and next", while "yunkhan" (or yukhan) means "I bet you weren't expecting this next event". They thus correlate very often with switch reference (or switch-scene, or switch-topic) because a new or changed element in the conversation or narration is often somewhat unexpected by the hearer. Precisely. I don?t have much to add to this. A switch-reference analysis for yuNkhaN and chaNkhe is untenable because there are too many counterexamples to a DS analysis for yuNkhaN and an SS analysis for chaNkhe. yuNkhaN occurs frequently with DS but is fine with SS when the event is unexpected; chaNkhe occurs a lot with SS but is fine with DS as well. Willem?s impression that yuNkhaN vs. chaNkhe have something to do with obviation stems from the fact that both switch reference and obviation function to ?highlight? changing referents in discourse, so there is a connection. But as David says, what we are looking at in Lakota is a system in which switch reference is a secondary byproduct of pragmatic factors inherent in the meaning of the participating elements. Regina ROOD DAVID S wrote: For what it's worth, my purely anecdotal impression is that "chanke" marks a more or less expected continuation of a narration (hence translations like "and so" or "and then" or "and next", while "yunkhan" (or yukhan) means "I bet you weren't expecting this next event". They thus correlate very often with switch reference (or switch-scene, or switch-topic) because a new or changed element in the conversation or narration is often somewhat unexpected by the hearer. Eli James used to translate "yukhan" as "and here" in useages like (this one is made up): "They were walking along and here all the time someone had been following them". David S. Rood Dept. of Linguistics Univ. of Colorado 295 UCB Boulder, CO 80309-0295 USA rood at colorado.edu On Mon, 11 Jun 2007, willemdereuse at unt.edu wrote: > Quoting REGINA PUSTET : > >>> I wonder what the distribution of these Lakhota/Dakota particles is >>> relative to >> "obviation" or "case marking" or whatever else Lakhota/Dakota has in >> its repertoire. >> >> To me, there is no evidence for the existence of obviation in Lakota, if >> we define obviation as a system for manipulating pragmatic perspective. > > Regina: > > I was wondering if you had any thoughts/ideas about the yuNkhaN/chaNke > alternation in Lakota. I agree with Dave Rood's earlier answer to my > question about this, i.e. that Lungstrum's dissertation has not elucidated > this convincingly. > > There is definitely some sort of alternation in Deloria's Dakota Texts, even > though texts by (at least some) modern speakers do not seem to have this. > > Willem de Reuse > --------------------------------- Ready for the edge of your seat? Check out tonight's top picks on Yahoo! TV. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Mon Jun 11 23:43:17 2007 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2007 17:43:17 -0600 Subject: local reactions to language family terms In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Sun, 3 Jun 2007, Mark J Awakuni-Swetland wrote: > Yes, it can be an emotion-driven mess. ... > In a recent grant application I described an O/P dictionary project... > with the O/P reflecting Dorsey's classification. When I approached the > Southern Ponca for a letter of support their first comments were about > that designation. They requested I change the project title to "Omaha and > Ponca" so as to reduce the impression that the Ponca are somehow part of > the "Omaha". Thanks, Mark! I'm glad to hear some Ponca views of this. Just for the record, I've always intended Omaha-Ponca as a sort of "tight" coordination construction, like Crow-Hidatsa or Eskimo-Aleut or Serbo-Croatian, or, escaping the surly bonds of linguistics, Canadian-American as in "Canadian-American Relations." I definitely never meant one term to modify the other, e.g., as a modifier-modified construction like Anglo-Norman, etc. Admittedly most of the tight coordinations like this that come to me are names of linguistic groupings! As far as the relative order of things, I put Omaha before Ponca because the rhythm worked better for me than Ponka-Omaha. I definitely didn't intend to put Omaha first or, on the other hand to refer to something like the Omaha form of Ponca, etc. For what it is worth, OP seems safer than PO as a two letter abbreviation, since that leaves OM and PO for Omaha and Ponca alone, when they is needed. I don't have any problem with the expression Omaha and Ponca per se, but in practical terms, there seems to be only one language being shared by these two or actually three (Omaha, Northern Ponca, Southern Ponca) political groups. Although some interesting things surface (sometimes) when you look at the nominal affiliation of speakers in the Dorsey corpus, there are even more noticeable differences in the sample that seem to have nothing to do with Omaha vs. Ponca. I suspect there really are small real differences between the two communities since speakers always implied that they could tell one from another, and Omaha speakers often suspected that my strange pronunciation could be accounted for by Ponca influence. (Sadly, a serious English accent was more like it.) However, while I have some slight idea of where some those differences might lie, gained from comments by Tom Leonard and more recently from Kathy Shea's extensive work, I don't know that I would like to be put on the spot about them, and a lot of the ones I know of are fairly recent in origin. I think I've mentioned that the wide distribution in both communities of gdhebaN 'ten' from earlier ghdhebdhaN (as recorded by the Long Expedition and clearly the original form, cf. Dakotan (wi)kc^emna). This suggests that the boundary between Omaha and Ponca may have been fairly permeable in the 1800s. The same applies to the change of s^n to n in certain forms (the same ones). Unfortunately, we don't have anything like a dialect survey at any point in time for Omaha (and) Ponca. Anyway, I hope I can keep getting away with Omaha-Ponca, though anything on the subject ought to begin by explaining the terminology. There's no harm that I can see in using the terms Omaha and Ponca to refer to the results of working with one community, but it becomes problematic if the generic content of the Dorsey corpus is used. And, oc course, in the present paucity of material, I don't think any Omaha speakers should hesitate to consult "Ponca" material and vice versa. And I very much hope that anyone noting differences will report them! From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Mon Jun 11 23:53:10 2007 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2007 17:53:10 -0600 Subject: obviation In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Mon, 4 Jun 2007, Rankin, Robert L wrote: > Taking off from Dave's comment, ... I would be perfectly willing to live with a rule of saying "Ponca and Omaha" and/or Ponca in the Ponca edition and "Omaha and Ponca" and/or "Omaha" in the Omaha edition, as long as the granting agencies will pay for two editions. Or, if they want one edition, we could say "Omaha and Ponca, or, as the case may be, Ponca and Omaha" alternating with "Ponca and Omaha, or, as the case may be, Omaha and Ponca." I can insert that with what Bob calls a "search and destory" operation keyed on Omaha-Ponca. On certain occasions, one might want a form like Cegwean, pronounced Seg-Way-An. There are a few places where one has to write Ponka, of course, in citing Dorsey. He used that form, or Cegiha (C = capital cent sign [sic] = edh), to refer to Omaha-Ponca. From goodtracks at peoplepc.com Tue Jun 12 00:12:20 2007 From: goodtracks at peoplepc.com (goodtracks at peoplepc.com) Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2007 19:12:20 -0500 Subject: Fw: Committee recommends near doubling of Native Language program funding Message-ID: ----- Original Message ----- From: goodtracks at peoplepc.com To: Steve Ellsworth ; Patt Cc: JComer ; DANWE ; RUEBEN AxeweHu Sent: Monday, June 11, 2007 3:43 PM Subject: [TalkIndianOK] Fw: Committee recommends near doubling of Native Language program funding ----- Original Message ----- From: Pat Benabe To: FNSA-L at vm-listproc.cc.ku.edu Sent: Monday, June 11, 2007 2:53 PM Subject: Committee recommends near doubling of Native Language program funding For Immediate Release Contact: June 8, 2007 Ryan Wilson: (206) 420-9194 r_lakota at hotmail.com ________________________________ House Appropriations Subcommittee Recommends Near Doubling of Native Language Program Funding New funds targeted at Native American language nests, language survival schools, and language restoration programs. The House Labor, HHS, Education and Related Agencies Subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee met Thursday, June 7, 2007, to mark up the FY 2008 Labor, HHS appropriations bill. Included in the mark-up was an increase in funding for Native American Programs in HHS, from $44 million to $47 million, with the extra $3 million targeted at implementation of language immersion and restoration programs authorized by the recently passed Esther Martinez Native American Languages Preservation Act of 2006. Currently less than 10 percent of the ANA budget is spent on language programs, with only 1 percent spent on immersion programs. The new funds would increase total funding for ANA language programs from the current level of approximately $4 million to a new level of approximately $7 million. "This day may well mark the turning point in our efforts to halt the dramatic decline in Native languages and, indeed, to commence their revitalization," said Ryan Wilson (Oglala Lakota), President of the National Alliance to Save Native Languages. President Wilson added, "Although the National Alliance sought a $10 million boost, this new funding will definitely jump-start a lot of critical programs and is a great increase in a tough budgetary environment." The National Alliance to Save Native Languages represents a broad coalition of Indian country, including tribes, tribal organizations, language experts, teachers and students, united in their goal of revitalizing Native languages. The National Alliance held a language summit in Washington, DC on June 4-5, 2007, and has held many meetings over that last nine months with members of Congress and their staff to express the importance of Native language survival and to urge support for language immersion and restoration efforts. President Wilson stated, "Indian Country had a great champion in Congressman Tom Udall (D-NM) on the Labor, HHS Subcommittee. He was a co-sponsor of the Esther Martinez legislation and, when he became a member of the Appropriations Committee this year, made it a personal priority to secure funding for its programs." President Wilson added, "This national effort also secured great backing from the leadership of the Native American caucus with the co-chairs, Congressman Dale Kildee (D-MI) and Congressman Rick Renzi (R-AZ) sending a joint letter to the appropriators urging their support for increased funding. We remain grateful for Congresswoman Heather Wilson's (R-NM) leadership on the authorizing legislation, and that of House Education Committee Chairman George Miller (D-CA) and Ranking Member Buck McKeon (R-CA), as well as many others who have been allies in this effort." There are about 175 Native languages still spoken in the United States, but scholars believe that 155 languages are "moribund," meaning that they are spoken only by adults who are no longer passing the language actively down to the next generation. Native educators have found that immersion programs are successful at teaching fluency in Native languages to the next generation, which means that these languages will survive. President Wilson noted, "Our work is not done. This is only a beginning, albeit a good one. The Senate appropriators have yet to decide on funding for these programs, where we want to seek even higher increases. Even with new funding, ultimate responsibility for success lies within our own communities. Indian country has been united in this effort, with great leadership not only from the National Alliance's membership, but also from the National Indian Education Association, National Congress of American Indians, the Navajo Nation, and literally scores of other tribes and tribal organizations. If we remain united, we shall succeed!" The Esther Martinez Native American Languages Preservation Act of 2006 or HR 4766 was signed and passed into law by President George W. Bush in December 2006 amending the Native American Programs Act of 1974 adding clauses that would open up grant opportunities to Native American Language Nests, Native American Language Survival Schools, and Native American Language Restoration Programs. ________________________________ Related Links: http://www.savenativelanguages.org Onawa L. Lacy Johnston & Associates, LLC 1455 Pennsylvania Ave, NW Suite 400 Washington, DC 20004 lacy at johnstondc.com (202) 652-2296 www.johnstondc.com __._,_.___ Messages in this topic (1) Reply (via web post) | Start a new topic Messages | Files | Photos | Links | Database | Polls | Members | Calendar Change settings via the Web (Yahoo! ID required) Change settings via email: Switch delivery to Daily Digest | Switch format to Traditional Visit Your Group | Yahoo! Groups Terms of Use | Unsubscribe Visit Your Group SPONSORED LINKS a.. Oklahoma home equity loan b.. Culture change c.. Oklahoma mortgage loan d.. Corporate culture e.. Oklahoma worker comp Give Back Yahoo! for Good Get inspired by a good cause. Y! Toolbar Get it Free! easy 1-click access to your groups. Yahoo! Groups Start a group in 3 easy steps. Connect with others. . __,_._,___ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Tue Jun 12 00:45:27 2007 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2007 18:45:27 -0600 Subject: obviation In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Mon, 4 Jun 2007, Bryan Gordon wrote: > Back to the main topic: A few observations on proximate/obviative as I used it in regard to Omaha-Ponca: 1) It was not a felicitous choice of words. Ardis' terminology is probably better, on the whole. It certainly has the virtue of not confusing things with irrelevant details of Algonquian grammar. 2) As I used to make a point of saying, in using the terms proximate and obviative I was drawing an analogy between comments made by Omaha-Ponca speakers with whom Dorsey worked and comments made by Kickapoo speakers in a Kickapoo language project grammar of Kickapoo that I had run into. Both groups of speakers described certain (more) obviative forms as applying to a) actions by unseen actors b) actions where the actor was acting on the instructions of someone else As far as I can determine, the Kickapoo examples so described were not the classical Algonquian obviative, but something peculiar to the Fox group in Algonquian, called a second obviative. The authors of the Kickapoo grammar used the terms proximate and obviative only for this distinction and ignored the (primary) proximate and obviative entirely, as far as I can recall. In itself that was interesting. In this context, the unseen, but reported actor and the instructed actor are logically, but not grammatically, more remote (obviative, off the path) than a typical (proximate, near by) actor. I believe that the primary proximate/obviative distinction of Algonquian is a grammaticalized scheme for distinguishing two third persons in order of the internal logic of a sentence or at least a set of related clauses, and rather a different thing. I will not try to recover what my authorities (Paul Voorhis and Ives Goddard) had to say about second obviatives, but it seemed to fit the case. My recollection is that a secondary obviative has to apply to the subject. (That should rouse the somewhat quiescent Algonquianists to full explanatory power.) 3) So, in applying this logic to Omaha-Ponca et al., consider that Omaha-Ponca third person animate subjects are almost always proximate, and third person objects are absolutely always obviative. But sometimes a sentence has a subject that is more remote than the incoming set of agents and patients, and then such subjects are marked as obviative. The usual markings of a proximate are the plural enclitic with the punctual verb, the plural a-prefix with motion verbs, and the akha/ama articles with a definite subject. To indicate obviativity, use singular marking with the verb, and switch from the akha/ama articles to the set usually used with animate objects. For convenience I use the term proximate article with the akha/ama articles, and obviative article with the dhiNkhe/thaN/dhiN/ma and sometimes khe set used with objects and obviative subects. I've mentioned before that I suspect plural marking applies to proximates in Omaha-Ponca because Siouan plural marking is historically a sort of focus marker. It signalized that the subject was the pre-eminent one among several possible ones. Not so much "they did it" as 'It was he among them all who did it." So omitting the "plural marker" in Omaha-Ponca doesn't so much reduce things to "he did it," as to "someone did it." Following this logic, Dakotan pluralized nominals like thi'=pi would not historically be 'they live there' but 'a certain one lives there; he lives there'. A plural subject used to forground the object would either be a subsequent development, or a relict case of =pi being used to focus the object instead of the subject. From pustetrm at yahoo.com Mon Jun 11 18:41:35 2007 From: pustetrm at yahoo.com (REGINA PUSTET) Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2007 11:41:35 -0700 Subject: Switching topics In-Reply-To: Message-ID: (quoting Wally Chafe) >I remember a Lakota speaker in Oakland telling how she heard a loud noise in the night. She looked out the window "and here" (yunkhan) somebody had plowed into their car. So two speakers evidently came up independently with that translation. Make that four: Both of my Pine Ridge speakers independently provided ?and here? as their favorite translation for yuNkhaN. Regina --------------------------------- Fussy? Opinionated? Impossible to please? Perfect. Join Yahoo!'s user panel and lay it on us. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pustetrm at yahoo.com Mon Jun 11 18:47:41 2007 From: pustetrm at yahoo.com (REGINA PUSTET) Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2007 11:47:41 -0700 Subject: obviation in Siouan languages In-Reply-To: <640983.33557.qm@web27010.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Message-ID: (quoting Bruce Ingham) >my experience is that postpositional phrases don't take everything that other core noun phrases do, ie they less frequently show the Topic marker ki/k'uN and I don't think iNs^ or iNs^ eya occur with postpositions. I can't envisage a phrase like mni iNs^ el. If this doesn't work (I'm not sure), something like na iNs> mni el sounds doable to me. But we better leave the asnwer to native speakers... Regina --------------------------------- Building a website is a piece of cake. Yahoo! Small Business gives you all the tools to get online. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From linguista at gmail.com Tue Jun 12 03:12:08 2007 From: linguista at gmail.com (Bryan Gordon) Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2007 22:12:08 -0500 Subject: Switching topics In-Reply-To: <823219.27293.qm@web54609.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: I don't suppose yunkhan might be similar in function to egithe ('egi?e) in Omaha and Ponca? This one is usually translated in Dorsey as "behold" or "eventually" or "it happened that", and I've heard good translations such as "turns out" or "on the other hand". - Bryan Gordon 2007/6/11, REGINA PUSTET : > (quoting Wally Chafe) > >I remember a Lakota speaker in Oakland telling how she heard a loud noise > in > the night. She looked out the window "and here" (yunkhan) somebody had > plowed into their car. So two speakers evidently came up independently with > that translation. > > Make that four: Both of my Pine Ridge speakers independently provided 'and > here' as their favorite translation for yuNkhaN. > > Regina > > > > ________________________________ > Fussy? Opinionated? Impossible to please? Perfect. Join Yahoo!'s user panel > and lay it on us. > > From willemdereuse at unt.edu Tue Jun 12 15:34:52 2007 From: willemdereuse at unt.edu (willemdereuse at unt.edu) Date: Tue, 12 Jun 2007 10:34:52 -0500 Subject: obviation in Siouan languages In-Reply-To: <76726.90540.qm@web54606.mail.re2.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Thank you Regina, David, and Wally for your input. I was thinking that chaNke might have originated as a contraction of cha + hanke. Cha is 'and so' and haNke is "part of, half of', so chaNke might mean something like 'and so, part of (the continuing storyline)' Any thoughts about this? Quoting REGINA PUSTET : > (quoting David Rood) > > For what it's worth, my purely anecdotal impression is that "chanke" marks > a more or less expected continuation of a narration (hence translations > like "and so" or "and then" or "and next", while "yunkhan" (or yukhan) > means "I bet you weren't expecting this next event". They thus correlate > very often with switch reference (or switch-scene, or switch-topic) > because a new or changed element in the conversation or narration is often > somewhat unexpected by the hearer. > > > Precisely. I don?t have much to add to this. A switch-reference > analysis for yuNkhaN and chaNkhe is untenable because there are too > many counterexamples to a DS analysis for yuNkhaN and an SS analysis > for chaNkhe. yuNkhaN occurs frequently with DS but is fine with SS > when the event is unexpected; chaNkhe occurs a lot with SS but is > fine with DS as well. > > Willem?s impression that yuNkhaN vs. chaNkhe have something to do > with obviation stems from the fact that both switch reference and > obviation function to ?highlight? changing referents in discourse, so > there is a connection. But as David says, what we are looking at in > Lakota is a system in which switch reference is a secondary byproduct > of pragmatic factors inherent in the meaning of the participating > elements. > > Regina From Rgraczyk at aol.com Tue Jun 12 15:35:46 2007 From: Rgraczyk at aol.com (Rgraczyk at aol.com) Date: Tue, 12 Jun 2007 11:35:46 EDT Subject: Switching topics Message-ID: Crow has a rather peculiar verb dee that indicates that something unusual or unexpected will occur in the following clause. I call it the 'mirative'. 'Lo and behold' would be a good translation; I sometimes translate it 'and what do you know!' or 'to his surprise'. Latin 'mirabile dictu' would work also. Dee is suffixed to the preceding verb and agrees with it in person and number, so it is more than a discourse connective. It is always followed by the switch-subject marker -m, as it requires a different subject in the following clause. This seems similar to what is being described for yuNkhaN. I often wondered if other Siouan languages had anything like dee. Randy ************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cqcqcq1 at earthlink.net Tue Jun 12 16:26:59 2007 From: cqcqcq1 at earthlink.net (Carolyn Quintero) Date: Tue, 12 Jun 2007 09:26:59 -0700 Subject: Switching topics In-Reply-To: Message-ID: The Osage cognate is ekithe ('eki?e) (1s 'ekibre) is 'believe'. So maybe ekithe 'he believed'? Carolyn Carolyn Quintero, PhD Inter Lingua, Inc. 1711 East 15th St. Tulsa OK 74104 2105 East Ocean Blvd #2 Long Beach CA 90803 tel 918 852 9860 cquintero at interlinguainc.com -----Original Message----- From: owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu [mailto:owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu] On Behalf Of Bryan Gordon Sent: Monday, June 11, 2007 8:12 PM To: siouan at lists.colorado.edu Subject: Re: Switching topics I don't suppose yunkhan might be similar in function to egithe ('egi?e) in Omaha and Ponca? This one is usually translated in Dorsey as "behold" or "eventually" or "it happened that", and I've heard good translations such as "turns out" or "on the other hand". - Bryan Gordon 2007/6/11, REGINA PUSTET : > (quoting Wally Chafe) > >I remember a Lakota speaker in Oakland telling how she heard a loud noise > in > the night. She looked out the window "and here" (yunkhan) somebody had > plowed into their car. So two speakers evidently came up independently with > that translation. > > Make that four: Both of my Pine Ridge speakers independently provided 'and > here' as their favorite translation for yuNkhaN. > > Regina > > > > ________________________________ > Fussy? Opinionated? Impossible to please? Perfect. Join Yahoo!'s user panel > and lay it on us. > > -- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.472 / Virus Database: 269.8.14/845 - Release Date: 6/12/2007 6:39 AM No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.472 / Virus Database: 269.8.14/845 - Release Date: 6/12/2007 6:39 AM No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.472 / Virus Database: 269.8.14/845 - Release Date: 6/12/2007 6:39 AM From tmleonard at cox.net Tue Jun 12 17:04:10 2007 From: tmleonard at cox.net (Tom Leonard) Date: Tue, 12 Jun 2007 12:04:10 -0500 Subject: local reactions to language family terms In-Reply-To: Message-ID: I have read the comments on this topic with interest. I agree with Mark Swetland's observation that we should not take one person's comments as being representative of the Tribe. In my experience, I have heard some opposition to the term "Omaha-Ponca", but not much. Frankly, the term is not used in the community. Similarly, I would tend to doubt "O-P" is used in Macy, either. Of the opposing sentiments I have heard, little tends to come from fluent speakers. Rather, in my own opinion, this sort of thing seems to turn into a political football tossed into the well guarded turf of "specialized knowledge" and status - but generally not amongst those who spoke Ponca as their first language. Fluent speakers are quick to point out that Ponca and Omaha are mutually intelligible ("we can understand them and they can understand us"). But, they are also quick to point out that "it's not the same language" or "they talk different than we do". In my opinion, the difference seems to be primarily in "usage", akin to the American and British use of English. An example I was given by one of my Ponca relatives points out that the Ponca term for a wagon translates as "running wood", whereas the Omaha term, I believe, translates as "walking wood". Ponca speakers understand "zhaN maNthiN" to be a wagon, but most would never think to say it that way. I've heard fluent Omaha speakers say the inverse was true, as well. They recognize "zhaN naN'ge" as meaning "wagon", but as a Ponca speaker would say it. Ponca people have long held that they are "related" to the Omaha ("they're our relatives") but that they have always been a separate entity - the two tribes living together at one time but always distinct from one another. I've heard Omaha people describe the relationship in a similar manner. Accordingly, as long as you acknowledge this commonly held tradition, and explain it as proposed, I'm not sure where the problem lies. You may not get a consensus on everyone liking the term "Omaha-Ponca" - I don't think you ever will - but I think we've got bigger fish to fry. The language of _both_ the Omaha and Ponca people is in severe trouble. In my opinion, it's more important that we all get on the same side of the rope, rather than worry about those complaining about terms. wetha'wa zhi'de naN'ba wi wi'ta...... TML > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jfu at centrum.cz Tue Jun 12 21:21:03 2007 From: jfu at centrum.cz (Jan Ullrich) Date: Tue, 12 Jun 2007 23:21:03 +0200 Subject: obviation in Siouan languages In-Reply-To: <20070612103452.w767rlzk2tk4wwok@eaglemail.unt.edu> Message-ID: > I was thinking that > chaNke might have originated as a contraction of cha + hanke. Cha is 'and > so' and haNke is "part of, half of', so chaNke might mean something like > 'and so, part of (the continuing storyline)' Any thoughts about this? I do not know what the etymology of the word is, but it is probably relevant to mention here that it occurs in two variants: with aspirated kh (chaNkhe) and with unaspirated k (chaNke). In my experience, chaNkhe is used in the southern sub-dialect of Lakota (Pine Ridge, Rosebud and Cheyenne River), while chaNke is used by speakers from Standing Rock. There are some speakers in the south who use the unaspirated form, but very few. The non aspirated form is also used in Yankton-Yanktonai and Santee-Sisseton Dakota dialects. Jan From pustetrm at yahoo.com Wed Jun 13 06:48:42 2007 From: pustetrm at yahoo.com (REGINA PUSTET) Date: Tue, 12 Jun 2007 23:48:42 -0700 Subject: obviation in Siouan languages In-Reply-To: <20070612103452.w767rlzk2tk4wwok@eaglemail.unt.edu> Message-ID: (quoting Willem DeReuse) >Thank you Regina, David, and Wally for your input. I was thinking that chaNke might have originated as a contraction of cha + hanke. Cha is 'and so' and haNke is "part of, half of', so chaNke might mean something like 'and so, part of (the continuing storyline)' Any thoughts about this? Sounds like a possible analysis. Maybe the second component is actually haNkeya 'finally', which would fit better semantically. The first component must be cha 'and so'. As a matter of fact, my Pine Ridge speakers hardly use chaNk(h)e any more -- they told me it's a word that you hear mostly from reservation elders. The conjunction that expresses continuation of the storyline as expected, in their speech, is cha. The semantic and syntactic properties of chaNkhe and coordinating cha seem to be identical anyway. Regina --------------------------------- Sick sense of humor? Visit Yahoo! TV's Comedy with an Edge to see what's on, when. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From willemdereuse at unt.edu Wed Jun 13 16:02:21 2007 From: willemdereuse at unt.edu (willemdereuse at unt.edu) Date: Wed, 13 Jun 2007 11:02:21 -0500 Subject: obviation in Siouan languages In-Reply-To: <669306.41622.qm@web54604.mail.re2.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Thanks Regina. My Standing Rock and Pine Ridge consultants didn't use chaNk(h)e much either. It is clear, though, that in Deloria's Dakota Texts, chaNk(h)e is used in ways very distinct from the way cha is used. I do not think they were equivalent then. Willem Quoting REGINA PUSTET : > Sounds like a possible analysis. Maybe the second component is > actually haNkeya 'finally', which would fit better semantically. The > first component must be cha 'and so'. As a matter of fact, my Pine > Ridge speakers hardly use chaNk(h)e any more -- they told me it's a > word that you hear mostly from reservation elders. The conjunction > that expresses continuation of the storyline as expected, in their > speech, is cha. The semantic and syntactic properties of chaNkhe and > coordinating cha seem to be identical anyway. > > Regina > > > > > > > --------------------------------- > Sick sense of humor? Visit Yahoo! TV's Comedy with an Edge to see > what's on, when. From cbloom at ozemail.com.au Wed Jun 13 19:23:16 2007 From: cbloom at ozemail.com.au (Clive Bloomfield) Date: Thu, 14 Jun 2007 05:23:16 +1000 Subject: Syntax of Lakhota Sentence from "Lakota Eyapaha" Message-ID: Greetings folks, I've been content to remain in "deep lurk mode" here for a quite a while, but now at last curiosity has got the better of me again! I was wondering if any Lakhota scholar, or knowledgable person here could explain the syntactical construction of the following interesting sentence from "Lakota Eyapaha", by Ivan STARR (Lakota Books, Kendall Park, N.J., 1996. Page 27)? (Especially the second part of the sentence "enclosed" by "iNs^e....eyas^") "Oecun was^te kecamin iNs^e iwaNblakahe eyas^." [ /O?chuN was^t? kech?miN iNs^? iw?Nblakahe ?yas^/ ] The translation supplied on Page 29, (presumably done by the author himself), reads : "I'VE BEEN STUDYING THIS PROBLEM AND FROM MY OBSERVATIONS I THINK IT CAN BE DONE EASILY." Just to make myself clear, I have no problem at all with "free" translations, or with Lakhota Word-Order of conjunctions, or in subordinate clauses. Also, the construction of : "o?chuN was^t? kech?miN" [="I think/thought that it is/was easy to do/easily done."] is 100% familiar to me. I am also familiar enough with the conjunction (or is it an adverb?) "iNs^?" (meaning here, one supposes, something like "in fact/indeed/ actually"), as well as the 1stPersonSing form of the verb : "iw?NyaNkA" [="look at; examine carefully/research; compare"] with added "Progressive" aspectual suffix : "haN/he". What puzzles me somewhat is exactly how "?yas^" is operating there. What meaning, precisely, does "?yas^" add to that sentence? Is it an adversative conjunction? Does it link up with "iNs^?", to form a sort of "concessive complex" (so to speak) meaning "even though/ although"? Might it perhaps convey some idea of Indefiniteness? Any observations would be appreciated. Toksha akhe, Clive Bloomfield. From pustetrm at yahoo.com Thu Jun 14 07:46:04 2007 From: pustetrm at yahoo.com (REGINA PUSTET) Date: Thu, 14 Jun 2007 00:46:04 -0700 Subject: Syntax of Lakhota Sentence from "Lakota Eyapaha" In-Reply-To: <49654B17-D87D-4055-8A4D-ADBF9D185A0F@ozemail.com.au> Message-ID: Sentence-final eyas^ occurs in my data also. It imposes a concessive meaning that is sometimes hard to capture in translations. In wakhaN-yaN ma-wa-ni is^ta ma-sanila eyas^. spiritual-ADV walk-1SG.AG-walk eye 1SG.PAT-one+sided EYAS^ 'I'm walking in a spiritual way, although I'm blind on one eye 'although' works as a translation. The next example is a tougher case: tuwa lel hi sece eyas^. someone here arrive maybe EYAS^ 'Maybe someone has arrived' Here eyas^ implies that the arrival of 'someone' should have been noticed by the speaker. A more literal translation of your example might be something like 'although I have dealt with this in great detail [continuative -haN intensifies action] (and I actually should have encountered problems), I think it is easy to do'. iNs^e is an attenuating particle that can be translated by 'just' or 'maybe' in many cases. BTW: is there a typo in kech?miN ? I'm familiar with the form kechaNmi for 'I think that' only. Regina Clive Bloomfield wrote: Greetings folks, I've been content to remain in "deep lurk mode" here for a quite a while, but now at last curiosity has got the better of me again! I was wondering if any Lakhota scholar, or knowledgable person here could explain the syntactical construction of the following interesting sentence from "Lakota Eyapaha", by Ivan STARR (Lakota Books, Kendall Park, N.J., 1996. Page 27)? (Especially the second part of the sentence "enclosed" by "iNs^e....eyas^") "Oecun was^te kecamin iNs^e iwaNblakahe eyas^." [ /O?chuN was^t? kech?miN iNs^? iw?Nblakahe ?yas^/ ] The translation supplied on Page 29, (presumably done by the author himself), reads : "I'VE BEEN STUDYING THIS PROBLEM AND FROM MY OBSERVATIONS I THINK IT CAN BE DONE EASILY." Just to make myself clear, I have no problem at all with "free" translations, or with Lakhota Word-Order of conjunctions, or in subordinate clauses. Also, the construction of : "o?chuN was^t? kech?miN" [="I think/thought that it is/was easy to do/easily done."] is 100% familiar to me. I am also familiar enough with the conjunction (or is it an adverb?) "iNs^?" (meaning here, one supposes, something like "in fact/indeed/ actually"), as well as the 1stPersonSing form of the verb : "iw?NyaNkA" [="look at; examine carefully/research; compare"] with added "Progressive" aspectual suffix : "haN/he". What puzzles me somewhat is exactly how "?yas^" is operating there. What meaning, precisely, does "?yas^" add to that sentence? Is it an adversative conjunction? Does it link up with "iNs^?", to form a sort of "concessive complex" (so to speak) meaning "even though/ although"? Might it perhaps convey some idea of Indefiniteness? Any observations would be appreciated. Toksha akhe, Clive Bloomfield. --------------------------------- Park yourself in front of a world of choices in alternative vehicles. Visit the Yahoo! Auto Green Center. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cbloom at ozemail.com.au Thu Jun 14 15:11:27 2007 From: cbloom at ozemail.com.au (Clive Bloomfield) Date: Fri, 15 Jun 2007 01:11:27 +1000 Subject: Syntax of Lakhota Sentence from "Lakota Eyapaha" In-Reply-To: <556376.86055.qm@web54601.mail.re2.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Hello Regina, First of all, many thanks for those enlightening & subtle comments, as well as for the extra data. Your second example is most intriguing! Is "eyas^" there on its way to becoming a sentence-final (adverbial?) particle, (in addition to the more usual conjunctional use), I wonder? Presumably also some degree of Ellipsis is operative? (e.g. a suppressed concessive clause, or such.) Incidentally, "kecamin" is as it appears in Starr's trad. orthography, (I inserted the aspirated c, and the penultimate word- accent [probably incorrectly, from another source], as well as interpreting the final "-n" as a nasal, in my transcription ) but perhaps it may be a typo. I thought it was probably a (sub-)dialectal variant of "k?chaNmi". Starr tells us at one point that he is Oglala, from Pine Ridge (but of Hunkpapa ancestry, through one of his grandfathers : "Ehanni tunkasilawaye kin Ojula Hunkpapa heca." [p. 53]..."Lehanl Oglala na Hunkpapa we hankeke ematanhan." [p. 54]). On checking just now, I notice that my edition of Fr. Buechel's Grammar [p.70, #49, e) ] , rather confusingly, gives "k?cami" (accented thus, & sans aspirate) as 1stPsg. of "k?ciN", whereas Buechel-Manhart Dict. has "k?c(h)anmi" from "k?c(h)iN" To tell you the truth, I find Fr. Manhart's system of denoting aspirated stops very trying (and difficult to even see, without the aid of a large magnifier!) Regards, Clive. P.S. Wishing you & your team great success with the Reference Grammar. Sorely needed! Oglu waste eciciyapelo. On 14/06/2007, at 5:46 PM, REGINA PUSTET wrote: > Sentence-final eyas^ occurs in my data also. It imposes a > concessive meaning that is sometimes hard to capture in > translations. In > > wakhaN-yaN ma-wa-ni is^ta ma- > sanila eyas^. > spiritual-ADV walk-1SG.AG-walk eye 1SG.PAT-one+sided EYAS^ > 'I'm walking in a spiritual way, although I'm blind on one eye > > 'although' works as a translation. The next example is a tougher case: > > tuwa lel hi sece eyas^. > someone here arrive maybe EYAS^ > 'Maybe someone has arrived' > > Here eyas^ implies that the arrival of 'someone' should have been > noticed by the speaker. A more literal translation of your example > might be something like 'although I have dealt with this in great > detail [continuative -haN intensifies action] (and I actually > should have encountered problems), I think it is easy to do'. > iNs^e is an attenuating particle that can be translated by 'just' > or 'maybe' in many cases. > BTW: is there a typo in kech?miN ? I'm familiar with the form > kechaNmi for 'I think that' only. > > Regina > > > > > Clive Bloomfield wrote: > > > "Oecun was^te kecamin iNs^e iwaNblakahe eyas^." > [ /o?chuN was^t? > kech?miN iNs^? iw?Nblakahe ?yas^/ ] > > The translation supplied on Page 29, (presumably done by the author > himself), reads : > > "I'VE BEEN STUDYING THIS PROBLEM AND FROM MY OBSERVATIONS I THINK IT > CAN BE DONE EASILY." > What puzzles me somewhat is exactly how "?yas^" is operating there. > What meaning, precisely, does "?yas^" add to that sentence? Is it an > adversative conjunction? Does it link up with "iNs^?", to form a sort > of "concessive complex" (so to speak) meaning "even though/ > although"? Might it perhaps convey some idea of Indefiniteness? > > Any observations would be appreciated. > Toksha akhe, > Clive Bloomfield. > > > > > Park yourself in front of a world of choices in alternative vehicles. > Visit the Yahoo! Auto Green Center. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From willemdereuse at unt.edu Thu Jun 14 15:36:07 2007 From: willemdereuse at unt.edu (willemdereuse at unt.edu) Date: Thu, 14 Jun 2007 10:36:07 -0500 Subject: Syntax of Lakhota Sentence from "Lakota Eyapaha" In-Reply-To: <3C3C9AD1-243F-4328-9DD5-40F0EFE2434A@ozemail.com.au> Message-ID: I do not think we need to consistently distinguish sentence final particle from conjunction in the case of an element like eyas^. Lakota conjunctions tend to be phonologically clause-final anyway, rather than elements right in between two clauses. There is only one eyas^; no syntactic change in progress needs to be postulated. If the conjunction is final some degree of ellipsis can be assumed. You have the same thing in very colloquial English. To retranslate Regina's examples: "I'm walking in a spiritual way; I'm blind in one eye, but..." "Maybe someone has arrived, but..." It is easier, and less colloquial, to do this in Lakota, because there need not be an intonational break or comma between the eyas^ and the preceding clause. Willem Quoting Clive Bloomfield : > Hello Regina, First of all, many thanks for those enlightening & > subtle comments, as well as for the extra data. > Your second example is most intriguing! Is "eyas^" there on its way > to becoming a sentence-final (adverbial?) particle, (in addition to > the more usual conjunctional use), I wonder? > Presumably also some degree of Ellipsis is operative? (e.g. a > suppressed concessive clause, or such.) > > On 14/06/2007, at 5:46 PM, REGINA PUSTET wrote: > >> Sentence-final eyas^ occurs in my data also. It imposes a >> concessive meaning that is sometimes hard to capture in >> translations. In >> >> wakhaN-yaN ma-wa-ni is^ta ma- sanila >> eyas^. >> spiritual-ADV walk-1SG.AG-walk eye 1SG.PAT-one+sided EYAS^ >> 'I'm walking in a spiritual way, although I'm blind on one eye >> >> 'although' works as a translation. The next example is a tougher case: >> >> tuwa lel hi sece eyas^. >> someone here arrive maybe EYAS^ >> 'Maybe someone has arrived' >> >> Here eyas^ implies that the arrival of 'someone' should have been >> noticed by the speaker. A more literal translation of your example >> might be something like 'although I have dealt with this in great >> detail [continuative -haN intensifies action] (and I actually >> should have encountered problems), I think it is easy to do'. >> iNs^e is an attenuating particle that can be translated by 'just' >> or 'maybe' in many cases. >> BTW: is there a typo in kech?miN ? I'm familiar with the form >> kechaNmi for 'I think that' only. >> >> Regina From pustetrm at yahoo.com Thu Jun 14 16:27:51 2007 From: pustetrm at yahoo.com (REGINA PUSTET) Date: Thu, 14 Jun 2007 09:27:51 -0700 Subject: Syntax of Lakhota Sentence from "Lakota Eyapaha" In-Reply-To: <20070614103607.2rm8i01pwzs4oo8o@eaglemail.unt.edu> Message-ID: (quoting Clive Bloomfield) > Is "eyas^" there on its way to becoming a sentence-final (adverbial?) particle, (in addition to the more usual conjunctional use), I wonder? Presumably also some degree of Ellipsis is operative? (e.g. a suppressed concessive clause, or such.) (quoting Willem DeReuse) > There is only one eyas^; no syntactic change in progress needs to be postulated. If the conjunction is final some degree of ellipsis can be assumed. You have the same thing in very colloquial English. To retranslate Regina's examples: "I'm walking in a spiritual way; I'm blind in one eye, but..." "Maybe someone has arrived, but..." Like Willem, I'm hesitating to postulate two distinct eyas?-morphemes. But then, what Clive describes is exactly what happened to the coordinator tkha 'but', which now marks various modal and aspectual categories, such as irrealis, counterfactual, and avertive. The meanings involved include 'would have', 'should have', and 'almost'. All these originate in the elliptical sentence types Willem illustrates with English examples. This is what I'll talk about at SCLC in October, if my abstract is accepted. Thanks for the clarification regarding kechaNmi, Clive! Regina --------------------------------- Ready for the edge of your seat? Check out tonight's top picks on Yahoo! TV. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cbloom at ozemail.com.au Thu Jun 14 21:54:40 2007 From: cbloom at ozemail.com.au (Clive Bloomfield) Date: Fri, 15 Jun 2007 07:54:40 +1000 Subject: Syntax of Lakhota Sentence from "Lakota Eyapaha" In-Reply-To: <20070614103607.2rm8i01pwzs4oo8o@eaglemail.unt.edu> Message-ID: Thanks Willem - your namesake of Occam's whisker-trimmer deftly applied! And rightly so. Do you know, I had thought sentence-final "but" only applied nowadays in the most Aussie of colloquial Englishes : speakers (d'un certain ?ge) from rural Queensland (some assert)! I haven't heard it since I was a lad, when it was probably much more widespread in working-class Australian English. I remember such utterances as : "We'll be goin' inter town temorrer orright, young feller-me-lad! Not takin' you but." ( Unmistakeable air of finality : a pronounced full- stop! I had a blighted childhood. ;) ) I was quite startled to hear that it is current in other English variants. I live & learn! Regards, Clive. On 15/06/2007, at 1:36 AM, willemdereuse at unt.edu wrote: > I do not think we need to consistently distinguish sentence final > particle from conjunction in the case of an element like eyas^. > Lakota conjunctions tend to be phonologically clause-final anyway, > rather than elements right in between two clauses. There is only > one eyas^; no syntactic change in progress needs to be postulated. > If the conjunction is final some degree of ellipsis can be > assumed. You have the same thing in very colloquial English. To > retranslate Regina's examples: "I'm walking in a spiritual way; I'm > blind in one eye, but..." "Maybe someone has arrived, but..." It is > easier, and less colloquial, to do this in Lakota, because there > need not be an intonational break or comma between the eyas^ and > the preceding clause. > > Willem > > Quoting Clive Bloomfield : > >> Hello Regina, First of all, many thanks for those enlightening & >> subtle comments, as well as for the extra data. >> Your second example is most intriguing! Is "eyas^" there on its >> way to becoming a sentence-final (adverbial?) particle, (in >> addition to the more usual conjunctional use), I wonder? >> Presumably also some degree of Ellipsis is operative? (e.g. a >> suppressed concessive clause, or such.) >> >> On 14/06/2007, at 5:46 PM, REGINA PUSTET wrote: >> >>> Sentence-final eyas^ occurs in my data also. It imposes a >>> concessive meaning that is sometimes hard to capture in >>> translations. In >>> >>> wakhaN-yaN ma-wa-ni is^ta ma- >>> sanila eyas^. >>> spiritual-ADV walk-1SG.AG-walk eye 1SG.PAT-one+sided EYAS^ >>> 'I'm walking in a spiritual way, although I'm blind on one eye >>> >>> 'although' works as a translation. The next example is a tougher >>> case: >>> >>> tuwa lel hi sece eyas^. >>> someone here arrive maybe EYAS^ >>> 'Maybe someone has arrived' >>> >>> Here eyas^ implies that the arrival of 'someone' should have >>> been noticed by the speaker. A more literal translation of your >>> example might be something like 'although I have dealt with this >>> in great detail [continuative -haN intensifies action] (and I >>> actually should have encountered problems), I think it is easy >>> to do'. >>> iNs^e is an attenuating particle that can be translated by >>> 'just' or 'maybe' in many cases. >>> BTW: is there a typo in kech?miN ? I'm familiar with the form >>> kechaNmi for 'I think that' only. >>> >>> Regina > From pankihtamwa at earthlink.net Fri Jun 15 00:11:42 2007 From: pankihtamwa at earthlink.net (David Costa) Date: Thu, 14 Jun 2007 17:11:42 -0700 Subject: Syntax of Lakhota Sentence from "Lakota Eyapaha" In-Reply-To: <2E02565F-86B4-43A9-B5C8-1294AF451F5F@ozemail.com.au> Message-ID: I can't do that in my idiolect, but it seems to me like in such dialects, 'but' is just being made more syntactically like 'though', which can be either clause-initial or clause-final with no difference in meaning. Dave > > Thanks Willem - your namesake of Occam's whisker-trimmer deftly > applied! And rightly so. > > Do you know, I had thought sentence-final "but" only applied nowadays > in the most Aussie of colloquial Englishes : speakers (d'un certain > ?ge) from rural Queensland (some assert)! > I haven't heard it since I was a lad, when it was probably much more > widespread in working-class Australian English. I remember such > utterances as : > "We'll be goin' inter town temorrer orright, young feller-me-lad! Not > takin' you but." ( Unmistakeable air of finality : a pronounced full- > stop! I had a blighted childhood. ;) ) > I was quite startled to hear that it is current in other English > variants. I live & learn! > Regards, > Clive. > > On 15/06/2007, at 1:36 AM, willemdereuse at unt.edu wrote: > >> I do not think we need to consistently distinguish sentence final >> particle from conjunction in the case of an element like eyas^. >> Lakota conjunctions tend to be phonologically clause-final anyway, >> rather than elements right in between two clauses. There is only >> one eyas^; no syntactic change in progress needs to be postulated. >> If the conjunction is final some degree of ellipsis can be >> assumed. You have the same thing in very colloquial English. To >> retranslate Regina's examples: "I'm walking in a spiritual way; I'm >> blind in one eye, but..." "Maybe someone has arrived, but..." It is >> easier, and less colloquial, to do this in Lakota, because there >> need not be an intonational break or comma between the eyas^ and >> the preceding clause. >> >> Willem >> >> Quoting Clive Bloomfield : >> >>> Hello Regina, First of all, many thanks for those enlightening & >>> subtle comments, as well as for the extra data. >>> Your second example is most intriguing! Is "eyas^" there on its >>> way to becoming a sentence-final (adverbial?) particle, (in >>> addition to the more usual conjunctional use), I wonder? >>> Presumably also some degree of Ellipsis is operative? (e.g. a >>> suppressed concessive clause, or such.) >>> >>> On 14/06/2007, at 5:46 PM, REGINA PUSTET wrote: >>> >>>> Sentence-final eyas^ occurs in my data also. It imposes a >>>> concessive meaning that is sometimes hard to capture in >>>> translations. In >>>> >>>> wakhaN-yaN ma-wa-ni is^ta ma- >>>> sanila eyas^. >>>> spiritual-ADV walk-1SG.AG-walk eye 1SG.PAT-one+sided EYAS^ >>>> 'I'm walking in a spiritual way, although I'm blind on one eye >>>> >>>> 'although' works as a translation. The next example is a tougher >>>> case: >>>> >>>> tuwa lel hi sece eyas^. >>>> someone here arrive maybe EYAS^ >>>> 'Maybe someone has arrived' >>>> >>>> Here eyas^ implies that the arrival of 'someone' should have >>>> been noticed by the speaker. A more literal translation of your >>>> example might be something like 'although I have dealt with this >>>> in great detail [continuative -haN intensifies action] (and I >>>> actually should have encountered problems), I think it is easy >>>> to do'. >>>> iNs^e is an attenuating particle that can be translated by >>>> 'just' or 'maybe' in many cases. >>>> BTW: is there a typo in kech?miN ? I'm familiar with the form >>>> kechaNmi for 'I think that' only. >>>> >>>> Regina >> > From Granta at edgehill.ac.uk Fri Jun 15 09:22:55 2007 From: Granta at edgehill.ac.uk (Anthony Grant) Date: Fri, 15 Jun 2007 10:22:55 +0100 Subject: Syntax of Lakhota Sentence from "Lakota Eyapaha" In-Reply-To: Message-ID: It's possible to use "though but" in this way in Geordie, the colloquial English of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, in which the sentence would be something like: Us are gannin into toon tomorra neet, bonny lad - not takkin you, though but. It may also occur in Mackem, the colloquial English of nearby Suinderland. Anthony >>> David Costa 06/15/07 1:11 am >>> I can't do that in my idiolect, but it seems to me like in such dialects, 'but' is just being made more syntactically like 'though', which can be either clause-initial or clause-final with no difference in meaning. Dave > > Thanks Willem - your namesake of Occam's whisker-trimmer deftly > applied! And rightly so. > > Do you know, I had thought sentence-final "but" only applied nowadays > in the most Aussie of colloquial Englishes : speakers (d'un certain > ?ge) from rural Queensland (some assert)! > I haven't heard it since I was a lad, when it was probably much more > widespread in working-class Australian English. I remember such > utterances as : > "We'll be goin' inter town temorrer orright, young feller-me-lad! Not > takin' you but." ( Unmistakeable air of finality : a pronounced full- > stop! I had a blighted childhood. ;) ) > I was quite startled to hear that it is current in other English > variants. I live & learn! > Regards, > Clive. > > On 15/06/2007, at 1:36 AM, willemdereuse at unt.edu wrote: > >> I do not think we need to consistently distinguish sentence final >> particle from conjunction in the case of an element like eyas^. >> Lakota conjunctions tend to be phonologically clause-final anyway, >> rather than elements right in between two clauses. There is only >> one eyas^; no syntactic change in progress needs to be postulated. >> If the conjunction is final some degree of ellipsis can be >> assumed. You have the same thing in very colloquial English. To >> retranslate Regina's examples: "I'm walking in a spiritual way; I'm >> blind in one eye, but..." "Maybe someone has arrived, but..." It is >> easier, and less colloquial, to do this in Lakota, because there >> need not be an intonational break or comma between the eyas^ and >> the preceding clause. >> >> Willem >> >> Quoting Clive Bloomfield : >> >>> Hello Regina, First of all, many thanks for those enlightening & >>> subtle comments, as well as for the extra data. >>> Your second example is most intriguing! Is "eyas^" there on its >>> way to becoming a sentence-final (adverbial?) particle, (in >>> addition to the more usual conjunctional use), I wonder? >>> Presumably also some degree of Ellipsis is operative? (e.g. a >>> suppressed concessive clause, or such.) >>> >>> On 14/06/2007, at 5:46 PM, REGINA PUSTET wrote: >>> >>>> Sentence-final eyas^ occurs in my data also. It imposes a >>>> concessive meaning that is sometimes hard to capture in >>>> translations. In >>>> >>>> wakhaN-yaN ma-wa-ni is^ta ma- >>>> sanila eyas^. >>>> spiritual-ADV walk-1SG.AG-walk eye 1SG.PAT-one+sided EYAS^ >>>> 'I'm walking in a spiritual way, although I'm blind on one eye >>>> >>>> 'although' works as a translation. The next example is a tougher >>>> case: >>>> >>>> tuwa lel hi sece eyas^. >>>> someone here arrive maybe EYAS^ >>>> 'Maybe someone has arrived' >>>> >>>> Here eyas^ implies that the arrival of 'someone' should have >>>> been noticed by the speaker. A more literal translation of your >>>> example might be something like 'although I have dealt with this >>>> in great detail [continuative -haN intensifies action] (and I >>>> actually should have encountered problems), I think it is easy >>>> to do'. >>>> iNs^e is an attenuating particle that can be translated by >>>> 'just' or 'maybe' in many cases. >>>> BTW: is there a typo in kech?miN ? I'm familiar with the form >>>> kechaNmi for 'I think that' only. >>>> >>>> Regina >> > ----------------------------------------------------- This email and any attachments are confidential and intended solely for the use of the individual to whom it is addressed. Any views or opinions presented are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of Edge Hill University or associated companies. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender as soon as possible and delete it and all copies of it. 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However, it is the responsibility of the recipient to ensure that it is virus free and no responsibility is accepted by Edge Hill University for any loss or damage arising in any way from its use. ----------------------------------------------------- From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Fri Jun 15 21:52:03 2007 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Fri, 15 Jun 2007 15:52:03 -0600 Subject: obviation in Siouan languages In-Reply-To: <20070612103452.w767rlzk2tk4wwok@eaglemail.unt.edu> Message-ID: On Tue, 12 Jun 2007, willemdereuse at unt.edu wrote: > Thank you Regina, David, and Wally for your input. I was thinking that > chaNke might have originated as a contraction of cha + hanke. Cha is 'and > so' and haNke is "part of, half of', so chaNke might mean something like 'and > so, part of (the continuing storyline)' Any thoughts about this? Does the syntax of that make sense? Just as a form you'd expect historical *yaNk-e or *htaNk-e (possibly *thaNk-e or *t-haNk-e) In the latter case, some preceding e or i, perhaps no longer present, would be needed to produce the affrication. From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Fri Jun 15 21:45:23 2007 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Fri, 15 Jun 2007 15:45:23 -0600 Subject: Switching topics In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Mon, 11 Jun 2007, Bryan Gordon wrote: > I don't suppose yunkhan might be similar in function to egithe > ('egi?e) in Omaha and Ponca? This one is usually translated in Dorsey > as "behold" or "eventually" or "it happened that", and I've heard good > translations such as "turns out" or "on the other hand". I visualize e'gidhe as 'and then, just as you'd expect', so I find it a bit difficult to think of it as a marker of unexpectedness, or some surprising development, but it does seem to mark some kind of a period or transition in a narrative. My recollection is that the "beware lest you ..." construction is e'=gidhe ...=ttE pairing e'gidhe with the future (irrealis). The marker that is usually associated with something surprising is -de-, as in e'=de or e'=de=gaN, etc., cf. the focus marker e or the conjunct marker =e=gaN. Dorsey usually renders it 'but'. My own paltry text collection seems to be free of this form. From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Fri Jun 15 23:00:17 2007 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Fri, 15 Jun 2007 17:00:17 -0600 Subject: Cognacy of the Omaha and Ponca (was Re: local reactions ...) In-Reply-To: <466ED20A.90004@cox.net> Message-ID: On Tue, 12 Jun 2007, Tom Leonard wrote: > Ponca people have long held that they are "related" to the Omaha ("they're > our relatives") but that they have always been a separate entity - the two > tribes living together at one time but always distinct from one another. I've > heard Omaha people describe the relationship in a similar manner. This sense of connection is probably behind LaFlesche's term 'cognate tribes', extending to all the Dhegiha peoples. He probably doesn't have the current linguistic sense in mind as such and I also doubt he means 'speaking languages full of cognate words'. I'm not sure if 'agnate' might not be the proper term for what he has in mind, for that matter. My attempt to make sense of his term is to assume that he refers not to common descent, lingusitic or otherwise, but to parallel institutions and organizations, or perhaps to something of what Tom reports as a sense of being connected, but always extant. Notice that Tom reports the Ponca and Omaha as seeing themselves more like separated siblings (without explicit parents) than as children (descendents) of a single parent entity. This is analogous to Americans and Canadians thinking of themselves and the English as all formerly living together in England before, for some reason, the Americans and (Anglo-)Canadians all moved to North America, leaving the English behind. In fact, I believe we tend to think of ourselves as children of England. The concept that all present branches of a group have always been logically separate, though not perhaps originally physically separate, is one that reappears in Dhegiha accounts, and I think it is is common in similar situations in the Plains area. The other Dhegiha example occurs in the "Ohio Origin" legend in which the five tribes are conceived of as moving down the Ohio together and then splitting off from the main body at various points. The specifically Omaha and Ponca versions of this continue the process in dividing the Omaha and Ponca. >>From a linguistic and ethnographic perspective, even if we try to escape the folk modelling of the process, it makes perfect sense to see the Omaha and Ponca as offshoots or a single earlier entity. Apart from the obvious and particular similarities of the two languages, the clan structure of the Omaha and Ponca is more or less complementary, when compared with that of other Dhegiha groups like the Osage or Kaw. In other words, you have to add the Omaha and Ponca clan sets to come up with something like the set exhibited among the Osage or Kaw. There are some overlaps, but it certainly looks like some event fissioned the original combined system. I don't know that we have to assume anything unusual for this event. Both groups were internally divided into villages (Omaha) or bands (Ponca) when encountered. I assume the Omaha vs. Ponca fission was simply an earlier, but fairly recent fissioning that persisted. Incidentally, the complex and rather well-developed interior structuring of the Omaha "Left Hands Side" clan - also its large size compared with other clans - suggests to me that it represents the reverse process, i.e., it is an absorbed entity that was originally more independent. This absorption is well advanced, if this is the case, and it may have occurred before the Omaha-Ponca split. An analogy here might be the Cheyenne-Suhtai merger or the association of the Kiowa and the "Kiowa Apache." Or consider the widespread fusions in the Caddoan groups. (The Caddo "proper" even incorporate one of the original Quapaw villages, the ImaNhaN, demonstrating again that lingusitically dissimilar elements can be absorbed fairly quickly.) So, while the traditions of both ethnographees and ethnographers tends to assume constancy of language, we have to keep in mind that there is no reason why all elements in the mix were always Dhegiha speaking. It does seem likely that any entity that divided into the linguistically similar Omaha and Ponca must have been primarily speaking an earlier version of Omaha-Ponca, but the Left Hand Side people, if originally separate, need not have been Omaha-Ponca, or even Dhegiha speakers. I tend to keep the idea that languages can change in mind when trying to explain the several Dakota bands north of the Omaha-Ponca area named Waz^az^a. Compare Dhegiha waz^az^e 'Osage', the name of one of the "standard" Dhegiha clans. And of course, examples like this, and certainly like Imaha, warn us not to be too agressive in explaining names of clans or tribes in terms of their current language. Maybe we're puzzled by the etymology of words like Kansa and Ponca, etc., because they're not Siouan words, or at least not Dhegiha words. Turning from that point back to Bryan's apology for looking at still more Algonquian data, I'd say don't apologize. I don't think we whould degenerate to looking always at all languages, but if we are consistent in applying such glances to Siouan problems, I think we are OK. I like to see us looking at other languages, especially nearby ones, in connection with Siouan, because I think we can only profit from knowing more, collectively, about the wider linguistic context of Siouan. Not just vocabulary elements, of course, but also grammatical issues like obviation in Algonquian, or clause syntax, etc. For example, I think Bob Rankin's usage "conjunctive (marker)" for the Omaha-Ponca =e=gaN 'having ...' marker in clauses, borrowing from Algonquian descriptive models, has been very helpful to me. Maybe my scheme of calling certain things in Dhegiha "obviative," wasn't quite as helpful, though it has attracted people to thinking about what is actually going on. A couple of debts need to be acknowledged. One is that I think that it was actually Bob Rankin who suggested I should look at whether the OP "plural singulars" etc. might be marking something like the proximate/obviative. This is a case where in acknowledging the debt I need to observe that he suggested looking at this would be interesting. He didn't recommend that I take over the terms. So, while he deserved the credit for pointing us in that direction, he's innocent of any terminological gaffes. The other debt is owed to Boas, who send Frida Hahn to Oklahoma to discoved, among other things, what that -bi- was at the end of Omaha-Ponca verbs (or stuck on the front of things like biama 'they say'). Even before that, of course, Dorsey experimented with endless approaches to explaining the particle coglomerations at the end of Omaha-Ponca sentences, and also meticulously recorded his consultants observations on the implications of using one kind of article vs. another, or of including a "plural marker in a singular form or not. In the end it was a very good thing that Dorsey and other consultants managed to produce quite a few sentences with mixed structures that later consultants seized upon as ungrammatical. From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Fri Jun 15 23:11:42 2007 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Fri, 15 Jun 2007 17:11:42 -0600 Subject: obviation in Siouan languages In-Reply-To: <200706122321.19448@centrum.cz> Message-ID: On Tue, 12 Jun 2007, Jan Ullrich wrote: > I do not know what the etymology of the word is, but it is probably > relevant to mention here that it occurs in two variants: with aspirated > kh (chaNkhe) and with unaspirated k (chaNke). ... (distribution of > forms) Bob Rankin has pointed out in various other contexts that alternations between -ke/a and -khe/a in verb finals usually have two different sources. One pattern is *CV-ka => CVka vs. *CVh-ka => CVkha. This explains the doublet suffixes of similar meaning in Da -ka ~ -kha, OP -ga ~ -kka, IO -ge ~ -khe, Wi -k ~ -ke. A slightly different pattern occurs with *CVC-ka, e.g., Da -ka, OP -ka, IO -ke, Wi -ke. The other pattern, which I think applies here is that many positional verbs have an inflected auxiliary *he attached to them. In Dhegiha this appears in the first person as *he and in the second person as *s^e. It is usually absent in the third person. Elsewhere it tends to lead to doublets in -kA vs. -khA, etc. From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Fri Jun 15 23:19:46 2007 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Fri, 15 Jun 2007 17:19:46 -0600 Subject: Syntax of Lakhota Sentence from "Lakota Eyapaha" In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Thu, 14 Jun 2007, David Costa wrote: > I can't do that in my idiolect, but it seems to me like in such dialects, > 'but' is just being made more syntactically like 'though', which can be > either clause-initial or clause-final with no difference in meaning. Yeah. I'd have to use "though" or "however" instead of that final "but." By the way, now that I've deleted the encrustation successive previous comments that followed, let me suggest that it is not really necessary or even desirable to retain the entire history of an exchange as a sort of appendix to one's own contribution. That's what the list archive is for. Or what you save of past contributions locally. Just make sure that it's clear who said what and delete what's not needed to provide a foundation of sorts to your response. From John.Koontz at Colorado.EDU Fri Jun 15 21:58:03 2007 From: John.Koontz at Colorado.EDU (Koontz John E) Date: Fri, 15 Jun 2007 15:58:03 -0600 Subject: local reactions to language family terms In-Reply-To: <466ED20A.90004@cox.net> Message-ID: On Tue, 12 Jun 2007, Tom Leonard wrote: > I have read the comments on this topic with interest. I agree with Mark > Swetland's observation that we should not take one person's comments as being > representative of the Tribe. In my experience, I have heard some opposition > to the term "Omaha-Ponca", but not much. Frankly, the term is not used in the > community. Similarly, I would tend to doubt "O-P" is used in Macy, either. Good observation. It's essentially a learned term, fulfilling learned needs. From John.Koontz at Colorado.EDU Fri Jun 15 22:03:50 2007 From: John.Koontz at Colorado.EDU (Koontz John E) Date: Fri, 15 Jun 2007 16:03:50 -0600 Subject: 'Wagon' (Re: local reactions to language family terms) In-Reply-To: <466ED20A.90004@cox.net> Message-ID: On Tue, 12 Jun 2007, Tom Leonard wrote: > ... one of my Ponca relatives points out that the Ponca term for a wagon > translates as "running wood", whereas the Omaha term, I believe, translates > as "walking wood". Ponca speakers understand "zhaN maNthiN" to be a wagon, > but most would never think to say it that way. I've heard fluent Omaha > speakers say the inverse was true, as well. They recognize "zhaN naN'ge" as > meaning "wagon", but as a Ponca speaker would say it. I've seen naNge characterized as 'going on four legs' as opposed to 'going on two legs'. I think in this context maNdhiN is essentially just 'to move, to proceed', but it is the conventional rendering of 'walk', too. This is an interesting neologism, in that the 'walking wood' form is pretty widespread in Mississippi Valley Siouan. I think it's the form in Ioway-Otoe, for example. \ I don't recall a term, off hand, for 'travois'. I was wondering about four vs. two legs! From goodtracks at peoplepc.com Sat Jun 16 13:11:27 2007 From: goodtracks at peoplepc.com (goodtracks at peoplepc.com) Date: Sat, 16 Jun 2007 08:11:27 -0500 Subject: Cognacy of the Omaha and Ponca (was Re: local reactions ...) Message-ID: ----- Original Message ----- From: "Koontz John E" To: Sent: Friday, June 15, 2007 6:00 PM Subject: Cognacy of the Omaha and Ponca (was Re: local reactions ...) > On Tue, 12 Jun 2007, Tom Leonard wrote: >> Ponca people have long held that they are "related" to the Omaha >> ("they're our relatives") but that they have always been a separate >> entity - the two tribes living together at one time but always distinct >> from one another. I've heard Omaha people describe the relationship in a >> similar manner. > > This sense of connection is probably behind LaFlesche's term 'cognate > tribes', extending to all the Dhegiha peoples. He probably doesn't have > the current linguistic sense in mind as such and I also doubt he means > 'speaking languages full of cognate words'. I'm not sure if 'agnate' > might not be the proper term for what he has in mind, for that matter. My > attempt to make sense of his term is to assume that he refers not to > common descent, lingusitic or otherwise, but to parallel institutions and > organizations, or perhaps to something of what Tom reports as a sense of > being connected, but always extant. > > Notice that Tom reports the Ponca and Omaha as seeing themselves more like > separated siblings (without explicit parents) than as children > (descendents) of a single parent entity. This is analogous to Americans > and Canadians thinking of themselves and the English as all formerly > living together in England before, for some reason, the Americans and > (Anglo-)Canadians all moved to North America, leaving the English behind. > In fact, I believe we tend to think of ourselves as children of England. > > The concept that all present branches of a group have always been > logically separate, though not perhaps originally physically separate, is > one that reappears in Dhegiha accounts, and I think it is is common in > similar situations in the Plains area. The other Dhegiha example occurs > in the "Ohio Origin" legend in which the five tribes are conceived of as > moving down the Ohio together and then splitting off from the main body at > various points. The specifically Omaha and Ponca versions of this > continue the process in dividing the Omaha and Ponca. > >>>From a linguistic and ethnographic perspective, even if we try to escape > the folk modelling of the process, it makes perfect sense to see the Omaha > and Ponca as offshoots or a single earlier entity. Apart from the obvious > and particular similarities of the two languages, the clan structure of > the Omaha and Ponca is more or less complementary, when compared with that > of other Dhegiha groups like the Osage or Kaw. In other words, you have > to add the Omaha and Ponca clan sets to come up with something like the > set exhibited among the Osage or Kaw. There are some overlaps, but it > certainly looks like some event fissioned the original combined system. > > I don't know that we have to assume anything unusual for this event. Both > groups were internally divided into villages (Omaha) or bands (Ponca) when > encountered. I assume the Omaha vs. Ponca fission was simply an earlier, > but fairly recent fissioning that persisted. > > Incidentally, the complex and rather well-developed interior structuring > of the Omaha "Left Hands Side" clan - also its large size compared with > other clans - suggests to me that it represents the reverse process, i.e., > it is an absorbed entity that was originally more independent. This > absorption is well advanced, if this is the case, and it may have occurred > before the Omaha-Ponca split. An analogy here might be the > Cheyenne-Suhtai merger or the association of the Kiowa and the "Kiowa > Apache." Or consider the widespread fusions in the Caddoan groups. (The > Caddo "proper" even incorporate one of the original Quapaw villages, the > ImaNhaN, demonstrating again that lingusitically dissimilar elements can > be absorbed fairly quickly.) > > So, while the traditions of both ethnographees and ethnographers tends to > assume constancy of language, we have to keep in mind that there is no > reason why all elements in the mix were always Dhegiha speaking. It does > seem likely that any entity that divided into the linguistically similar > Omaha and Ponca must have been primarily speaking an earlier version of > Omaha-Ponca, but the Left Hand Side people, if originally separate, need > not have been Omaha-Ponca, or even Dhegiha speakers. > > I tend to keep the idea that languages can change in mind when trying to > explain the several Dakota bands north of the Omaha-Ponca area named > Waz^az^a. Compare Dhegiha waz^az^e 'Osage', the name of one of the > "standard" Dhegiha clans. And of course, examples like this, and > certainly like Imaha, warn us not to be too agressive in explaining names > of clans or tribes in terms of their current language. Maybe we're > puzzled by the etymology of words like Kansa and Ponca, etc., because > they're not Siouan words, or at least not Dhegiha words. > > Turning from that point back to Bryan's apology for looking at still more > Algonquian data, I'd say don't apologize. I don't think we whould > degenerate to looking always at all languages, but if we are consistent in > applying such glances to Siouan problems, I think we are OK. > > I like to see us looking at other languages, especially nearby ones, in > connection with Siouan, because I think we can only profit from knowing > more, collectively, about the wider linguistic context of Siouan. Not > just vocabulary elements, of course, but also grammatical issues like > obviation in Algonquian, or clause syntax, etc. > > For example, I think Bob Rankin's usage "conjunctive (marker)" for the > Omaha-Ponca =e=gaN 'having ...' marker in clauses, borrowing from > Algonquian descriptive models, has been very helpful to me. Maybe my > scheme of calling certain things in Dhegiha "obviative," wasn't quite as > helpful, though it has attracted people to thinking about what is actually > going on. > > A couple of debts need to be acknowledged. One is that I think that it was > actually Bob Rankin who suggested I should look at whether the OP "plural > singulars" etc. might be marking something like the proximate/obviative. > This is a case where in acknowledging the debt I need to observe that he > suggested looking at this would be interesting. He didn't recommend that > I take over the terms. So, while he deserved the credit for pointing us > in that direction, he's innocent of any terminological gaffes. The other > debt is owed to Boas, who send Frida Hahn to Oklahoma to discoved, among > other things, what that -bi- was at the end of Omaha-Ponca verbs (or stuck > on the front of things like biama 'they say'). Even before that, of > course, Dorsey experimented with endless approaches to explaining the > particle coglomerations at the end of Omaha-Ponca sentences, and also > meticulously recorded his consultants observations on the implications of > using one kind of article vs. another, or of including a "plural marker in > a singular form or not. In the end it was a very good thing that Dorsey > and other consultants managed to produce quite a few sentences with mixed > structures that later consultants seized upon as ungrammatical. > From shokoohbanou at yahoo.co.uk Sat Jun 16 13:50:53 2007 From: shokoohbanou at yahoo.co.uk (shokooh Ingham) Date: Sat, 16 Jun 2007 14:50:53 +0100 Subject: Syntax of Lakhota Sentence from "Lakota Eyapaha" In-Reply-To: <20070614103607.2rm8i01pwzs4oo8o@eaglemail.unt.edu> Message-ID: This is a bit like the use of -tkha following a verb as in wai-kte -tkha 'I should have gone' or wowas^i echamuN-tkha 'I used to work', where the sentences seem to have an elided sentence following them ie 'I was going to go, but (I didn't)' or 'I worked, but (I've stopped now)'. It seems less easy to distinguish subordinating from non subordinating conjunctions in Lakota since upi k'uN hehan inkiyayapi 'when they came we went away' and upi na hehan unkiyayapi 'they came and then we went away' are not as easily differentiated from each other syntactically because you can also have upi hehan unkiyayapi which might be translated either way. I suppose it is also a characterstic of what is esentially an unwritten language, since you don't have to decide where the sentences begin and end. Bruce willemdereuse at unt.edu wrote: I do not think we need to consistently distinguish sentence final particle from conjunction in the case of an element like eyas^. Lakota conjunctions tend to be phonologically clause-final anyway, rather than elements right in between two clauses. There is only one eyas^; no syntactic change in progress needs to be postulated. If the conjunction is final some degree of ellipsis can be assumed. You have the same thing in very colloquial English. To retranslate Regina's examples: "I'm walking in a spiritual way; I'm blind in one eye, but..." "Maybe someone has arrived, but..." It is easier, and less colloquial, to do this in Lakota, because there need not be an intonational break or comma between the eyas^ and the preceding clause. Willem Quoting Clive Bloomfield : > Hello Regina, First of all, many thanks for those enlightening & > subtle comments, as well as for the extra data. > Your second example is most intriguing! Is "eyas^" there on its way > to becoming a sentence-final (adverbial?) particle, (in addition to > the more usual conjunctional use), I wonder? > Presumably also some degree of Ellipsis is operative? (e.g. a > suppressed concessive clause, or such.) > > On 14/06/2007, at 5:46 PM, REGINA PUSTET wrote: > >> Sentence-final eyas^ occurs in my data also. It imposes a >> concessive meaning that is sometimes hard to capture in >> translations. In >> >> wakhaN-yaN ma-wa-ni is^ta ma- sanila >> eyas^. >> spiritual-ADV walk-1SG.AG-walk eye 1SG.PAT-one+sided EYAS^ >> 'I'm walking in a spiritual way, although I'm blind on one eye >> >> 'although' works as a translation. The next example is a tougher case: >> >> tuwa lel hi sece eyas^. >> someone here arrive maybe EYAS^ >> 'Maybe someone has arrived' >> >> Here eyas^ implies that the arrival of 'someone' should have been >> noticed by the speaker. A more literal translation of your example >> might be something like 'although I have dealt with this in great >> detail [continuative -haN intensifies action] (and I actually >> should have encountered problems), I think it is easy to do'. >> iNs^e is an attenuating particle that can be translated by 'just' >> or 'maybe' in many cases. >> BTW: is there a typo in kech?miN ? I'm familiar with the form >> kechaNmi for 'I think that' only. >> >> Regina --------------------------------- Yahoo! Mail is the world's favourite email. Don't settle for less, sign up for your freeaccount today. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From goodtracks at peoplepc.com Sat Jun 16 21:32:50 2007 From: goodtracks at peoplepc.com (goodtracks at peoplepc.com) Date: Sat, 16 Jun 2007 16:32:50 -0500 Subject: No subject Message-ID: Bob, John, Johannes, whoever: Does the following gloss "....she makes me jealous for her" (female speaker) seem to fit the English notion of "She makes me jealous."??? I believe that there was some past discussion on these kind of sentence contructions with intransitives & causitive suffixes. W??e ir?kunpi n?ha ar? ?ma w??i m?nachi ??thinhingihi ki, Because she has all the good looking men all the time, she makes me jealous for/ of her. ??thin = jealous ??thinhi = cause one to be jealous ??thin + hin (I/ me) + (for/ to) + hi (causative suffix). Thanking you in advance for your review(s) Jimm -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From marino at skyway.usask.ca Sun Jun 17 06:59:18 2007 From: marino at skyway.usask.ca (Marino) Date: Sun, 17 Jun 2007 00:59:18 -0600 Subject: No subject In-Reply-To: <002001c7b05d$e913bb20$c814133f@JIMM> Message-ID: "She makes me jealous for her" (1) and "she makes me jealous" (2) mean two different things, to me. There may be either 2 or 3 parties to the situation being described: "she(i) makes me jealous for her(i)" or "she(i) makes me jealous for her(j)". (1) This has a benefactive meaning, to me. I am made to feel jealous on somebody else's behalf, whether that person is the same as the subject of the sentence, or another person. I don't feel myself to be at a disadvantage. (2) I am made to feel jealous of her or of somebody else. I am the one who is made to feel disadvantaged. The sex of the speaker, in English, would seem to be irrelevant. Mary At 03:32 PM 6/16/2007, you wrote: >Bob, John, Johannes, whoever: >Does the following gloss "....she makes me jealous for her" (female >speaker) seem to fit the English notion of "She makes me jealous."??? I >believe that there was some past discussion on these kind of sentence >contructions with intransitives & causitive suffixes. > >W??e ir?kunpi n?ha ar? ?ma w??i m?nachi ??thinhingihi ki, Because she has >all the good looking men all the time, she makes me jealous for/ of her. > >??thin = jealous >??thinhi = cause one to be jealous >??thin + hin (I/ me) + (for/ to) + hi (causative suffix). > >Thanking you in advance for your review(s) >Jimm > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Tue Jun 19 15:33:39 2007 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Tue, 19 Jun 2007 09:33:39 -0600 Subject: your mail In-Reply-To: <002001c7b05d$e913bb20$c814133f@JIMM> Message-ID: On Sat, 16 Jun 2007, goodtracks at peoplepc.com wrote: > Bob, John, Johannes, whoever: Does the following gloss "....she makes me > jealous for her" (female speaker) seem to fit the English notion of > "She makes me jealous."??? I'd say, "she makes me jealous of her." > W??e ir?kunpi n?ha ar? ?ma w??i m?nachi ??thinhingihi ki, > Because she has all the good looking men all the time, she makes me > jealous for/ of her. > > ??thin = jealous > ??thinhi = cause one to be jealous > ??thin + hin (I/ me) + (for/ to) + hi (causative suffix). > > Thanking you in advance for your review(s) > Jimm You're welcome! I'm wondering if a dative is needed here. Isn't hiN the regular patient form for the first person? Would 'she makes me jealous' or 'it makes me jealous' work here? From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Tue Jun 19 15:35:46 2007 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Tue, 19 Jun 2007 09:35:46 -0600 Subject: No subject In-Reply-To: <6.1.2.0.0.20070617001602.020f85b8@sask.usask.ca> Message-ID: On Sun, 17 Jun 2007, Marino wrote: > The sex of the speaker, in English, would seem to be irrelevant. By way of clarification, I think that "female speaking" glosses the final k(h)i. From goodtracks at peoplepc.com Tue Jun 19 18:05:26 2007 From: goodtracks at peoplepc.com (goodtracks at peoplepc.com) Date: Tue, 19 Jun 2007 13:05:26 -0500 Subject: your mail Message-ID: "gi-" would be the dative (to/ for) and yes, hiN- (me) is the direct personal pronoun, but if used without the gi-, then would it not gloss to be... 1. I am jealous OR 2. I cause another to be jealous WHEN the intent is that because of the actions of the other person, that person and her actions the the source of "I, myself" being jealous of her and her actions. > We irkunpi nha ar ma wi mnachi thinhingihi ki, ?????? Well, I see my original sentence got chewed up, and the SIL font didnt carry over. W??e ir?kunpi n?ha ar? ?ma w??i m?nachi ??thinhingihi ki, Wange irokuNpi naha are ama wanyi mina-chi nyithiNhiNgihi ki. Perhaps, that is more clear. jgt ----- Original Message ----- From: "Koontz John E" To: "siouan at lists.colorado.ed" Cc: "RUEBEN AxeweHu" Sent: Tuesday, June 19, 2007 10:33 AM Subject: Re: your mail On Sat, 16 Jun 2007, goodtracks at peoplepc.com wrote: "....she makes me jealous for her" (female speaker) seem to fit the English notion of > "She makes me jealous."??? I'd say, "she makes me jealous of her." > We irkunpi nha ar ma wi mnachi thinhingihi ki, > Because she has all the good looking men all the time, she makes me > jealous for/ of her. > > thin = jealous > thinhi = cause one to be jealous > thin + hin (I/ me) + (for/ to) + hi (causative suffix). > > Thanking you in advance for your review(s) > Jimm You're welcome! I'm wondering if a dative is needed here. Isn't hiN the regular patient form for the first person? Would 'she makes me jealous' or 'it makes me jealous' work here? From John.Koontz at colorado.edu Wed Jun 20 19:13:13 2007 From: John.Koontz at colorado.edu (Koontz John E) Date: Wed, 20 Jun 2007 13:13:13 -0600 Subject: IO Causative (Re: your mail) In-Reply-To: <007601c7b29d$215c3890$675d133f@JIMM> Message-ID: On Tue, 19 Jun 2007, goodtracks at peoplepc.com wrote: > "gi-" would be the dative (to/ for) and > yes, hiN- (me) is the direct personal pronoun, but if used without the gi-, > then would it not gloss to be... > 1. I am jealous OR > 2. I cause another to be jealous Or, rather, I think, 'Someone makes me jealous', right? I think the first person agent of the causative is =ha(a). > WHEN the intent is that because of the actions of the other person, that > person and her actions the the source of "I, myself" being jealous of her and > her actions. > >> We irkunpi nha ar ma wi mnachi thinhingihi ki, > ?????? Well, I see my original sentence got chewed up, and the SIL font > didnt carry over. Yes. For those of us not using Windows, the SIL fonts are not visible and turn to soup, though I think the result was more or less interpretable in this case. Note also that I don't see any special fonts, any color, any italics, etc. I could manage something spiffier, but I think it is best that I be at the lowest common denominator, since that means if somebody can't see it somewhere, then I am in the same boat. > W??e ir?kunpi n?ha ar? ?ma w??i m?nachi ??thinhingihi ki, > Wange irokuNpi naha are ama wanyi mina-chi nyithiNhiNgihi ki. > > Perhaps, that is more clear. Improved, if less beautiful! So, nyithiN=hiNgihi k(h)i jealous P1-DAT-CAUSE DECLf Am I right in understanding that in nyithin=...gihi the nyithiN is invariant, and only the =hi is inflected? Of course, you're right, the -gi- before the -hi CAUSATIVE makes it dative. Somehow I lost track of that -gi-. Or is this gi- the suus or reflexive possessive? I think that 'she makes me jealous' or less literally 'I am jealous of her' are reasonable translations. As for why it is dative and not simply transitive *nyithiN=hiNhi, I think that the implication is that the underlying verb is transitive, not intransitive. The underlying verb may not occur, but it would be, hypothetically, something like (?) nyithiN 'to envy something' For example, (?) ha-nyithiN 'I envy it (her popularity)'. Might have to be possessive, like (??) ginyithiN 'to envy someone's'? (Or would that be (??) garanyithiN?) I forget how the prefixes work in IO and Winnebago! So, when this is causativized the underlying agent becomes the dative (as in nyithiN=hiNgihi 'she makes for me to envy it'. Not that it works that way, with 'for', in English, where we have to say 'she makes me envy it', but it does in a lot of languages, and perhaps we can see the me in English as dative, too. And, of course, we are translating 'to make someone envy something' as 'to make someone jealous of something'. Here I'm just retailing an abbreviated version of Bernard Comrie's discussions of the case structure of causatives. Generally speaking, Mississippi Valley Siouan languages do show dative forms of the causative with underlying transitive verbs, and simple forms of the causative with underlying intransitive verbs, but there's not always a simple correlation, and in some cases - Dakotan? - it more or less arbitrary. I think the simple and dative causative stems are: simple dative Da =ya =khiya OP =dhe =khidhe IO =hi =gihi (?) Wi =hii =gigi (PreWi *=ki-khi) I make the Proto-Siouan forms: PMV *=h(i)-PRO ~ *=PRO-re *=PRO-k-hi ~ *=PRO-k-hi-re PS *=hi#PRO-e *=k-hi(#PRO-e) ~ *=PRO-k-hi(ra) I assume hi is something like a subordination marker, e.g., the "for" in 'I intend for (you to attend)." The original causative root is *e, which has epenthetic -r- (*-re) when a pronoun like *wa- or *ra- is prefixed. However, in Winnebago and IO, *hi-a-E (first person a < *wa) and *hi-ra-E (second person ra < *ya) appear as =haa and =raa, reflecting contractions and elisions. Either the -re was never there, or it was lost. I rather suspect the latter. In general the hi seems to have been handled later on as a pre-verb, and in Proto-Mississippi Valley the dative stem seems to have been formed in *k- on the hi, i.e., like the datives of h-stems. In Dakotan and Dhegiha the simple causative is from *-re (with pronoun preceding it) and the preceding *hi is lost. In Winnebago and IO it appears that the *hi is more or less merged with the following pronoun, and the *-re is lost. From rankin at ku.edu Mon Jun 25 18:41:32 2007 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Mon, 25 Jun 2007 13:41:32 -0500 Subject: FW: Ergativity Research Seminar @ MIT -- for what it's worth. Message-ID: Subject: Ergativity Research Seminar @ MIT Please see attachment. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Call for Papers.pdf Type: application/pdf Size: 48042 bytes Desc: Call for Papers.pdf URL: