obviation in Siouan languages

[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
  
    

ROOD DAVID S <rood at spot.Colorado.EDU> 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
>


       
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