Syntax of Lakhota Sentence from "Lakota Eyapaha"

[David Costa]

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 <cbloom at ozemail.com.au>:
>> 
>>> 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
>> 
>