Comparative Siouan Grammar workshop

Thu Sep 18 14:19:19 UTC 2008

Johannes and everyone -
Yes, I'll do coordination, as listed, and I do plan on presenting it at S&CC in Lincoln.

I'm sure there are other topics that could be added, but this looks more than adequate for now! 

Thanks for getting us going-
Catherine

>>> "Prof. Dr. Johannes Helmbrecht" <johannes.helmbrecht at sprachlit.uni-regensburg.de> 9/16/2008 6:35 AM >>>
Dear Siouanists,

as was decided in Joplin, the workshop on Comparative Siouan Grammar (CSG) will take place on June, 11- 12 (i.e. Thursday/ Friday), 2009 in Lincoln, Nebraska. Mark takes care of the local organization at Lincoln, John Bolye offered to help me to organize this workshop which will then be part of the annual Siouan and Caddoan linguistics conference. 

John and I agree on the question that we have to start with the preparation of this workshop as early as possible in order to give the potential contributors a chance to do research for their respective papers. The particularity of the contributions of this workshop is that the papers will not deal with a certain grammatical category or construction in just one Siouan Language (the one we have some expertise in) but in as many SLs as possible. So, this implies that all available published and unpublished sources (inlcuding the knowledge and field notes of our fellow Siouanists) have to be consulted to get a comparative view of the formal and functional diversity of the respective grammatical phenomenon in the SLs (comprising also a historical reconstruction if that is possible). 

So, the first step for the next six weeks would be to arrive at an almost final program for the workshop (by the end of Octovber) AND a plan for the contents and structure of the volumes which will emerge from this research. Both items have to go hand in hand.

Starting from the list of topics and volunteers which we put together during the Billings meeting in June 2006, (John found this list eventually on one of his computers), we would like to present a revised and systematized list of topics which is given in the table below. Since I do not know if this table comes out correctly on your screen, a pdf version is attached to this mail (which hopefully won't be blocked)

Comparative Siouan Grammar (CSG)

Chapters:
Topics
Authors
Introduction
Overview on common Siouan grammar
?
Noun and noun-phrase operations
Overview of the noun and noun phrase
?
Determiners and positionals
?Carolyn Quintero†
Definite and indefinite articles
?
Demonstratives
?
Nominal compounds
?
Nominal possession
?John Koontz
Relative clauses
John Boyle
Grammatical relations and valency adjusting operations
Overview of the basic patterns of the marking of clausal participants
?
Instrumentals
?Bob Rankin
Applicatives (locative, instrument and benefactive applicatives)
Johannes Helmbrecht
Causative constructions 
Johannes Helmbrecht
Noun incorporation
William de Reuse
Reflexive constructions
?
Oblique objects/ postpositions in SL
Regina Pustet
Verb and verb-phrase operations
Overview of the grammatical categories of the verb – form and function 
?

Verb classes in SL
?
Deictic motion verbs 
Linda Cumberland
Pre-verbal and post-verbal morphology (template of prefixes/suffixes/enclitics)
Bob Rankin
Active-inactive pronominals (pronominal affixes, forms and paradigms throughout SL)
?John Koontz
Plural marking 
(plural marking on nouns and verbs) 
?John Koontz
Indefinite absolutive *waa-
John Boyle
Tense/ Aspect marking
Regina Pustet
Modality in SL
Iren Hartmann

Pragmatically marked structures
Topic and topicalization constructions
?
Focus marking and focus marking constructions
?
Negation 
(phrasal negation and clausal negation)
?
Question word questions (t-words)
Bruce Ingham
Clause combinations
Overview of the grammatical devices of clause combining in SL
?
Serial verb constructions
?David Rood
Switch reference and clause chaining
Randy Graczyk
Coordination (AND, BUT, OR)
Catherine Rudin
Adverbial subordination (temporal, conditional etc.)
John Boyle & Johannes Helmbrecht
The SLs individually
1.
The role model for the structure of the individual sketches could be the sketch by David Rood and Allan Taylor  in Vol. 17 of the Handbook of North American Indians
2.
3.
4.
Etc.

As can be seen, the topics are organized around central issues in grammar, the noun and the noun phrase, grammatical relations, the verb and the verb phrase, clause combination and pragmatically marked clausal structures. The last row in the table indicates that we intend to provide grammatical sketches of the individual SLs. The role model of these sketches could be the one of Lakhota by David Rood and Allan Taylor in the Handbook (Vol. 17). We have to discuss this later on.

The topics listed above are certainly different and asymmetric with regard to the amount of research needed. Plural marking in nouns and verbs and negation probably require less research and are easier with regard to data collection than other topics. For instance, I can imagine that it is pretty difficult to collect data and information on topic and topicalization strategies in SLs, since these things have not been investigated systematically in our languages. Anyway, the asymmetry of the size of the topics should not be a principle problem, everyone is free to volunteer for a second topic if he or she has spare time and work resources available. The main problem for the individual contributor will be to gather the data and information on the chosen topic from the other languages. We have to admit that we put Bob Rankin in the field "Instrumentals" although he has never volunteered for this, but since prefixes are his topic we thought .... perhaps.... Other names are also accompanied with a question mark, because it is not clear to us whether these people really would take over the topic they are assigned to in this list.

Now, what we need to know from all participants in the CSG project is the following:

a) Are there topics which need to be included and which are lacking on this list? (for instance, should we add a topic "external possession (?)", which is really important in SLs, or not)

b) Are there suggestions to rearrange the list of topics or to reformulate the titles?

c) Who would like to volunteer for the topics still open (i.e. marked with a question mark) ? (note that there are many many free fields...)

d) We would also like to get a confirmation from those people who are already on the list whether they still intend to submit a paper with the title/ topic indicated (or a different topic/title). 

e) and finally, who of the volunteers would like to present his or her research on the workshop next June? (this question is also addressed to people who gave a presentation already on the workshop in Billings - it might be the case that the original paper can be broadened and enriched with additional data from other SLs now)

We would like to address another question: is it desireable to create a separate mailing platform exclusively for the participants of the CSG project or should we continue to use the Siouan List for this purpose. In any case, as soon as we have a complete list of contributions and volunteers, I would distribute the e-mail address of the them so that people can communicate directly with the other participants in this project (for data exchange etc.).

That's it for the moment. 

All the best (also on behalf of John)
Johannes

--

Prof. Dr. Johannes Helmbrecht
Lehrstuhl für Allgemeine und Vergleichende Sprachwissenschaft
Universität Regensburg
Philosophische Fakultät IV 
Sprach- und Literaturwissenschaft
Universitätsstr. 31
93053 Regensburg
Deutschland

Tel: ++49(0)941 943-3388
        ++49(0)941 943-3387 (Sekretariat)
Fax: ++49(0)941 943-2429
E-Mail:    johannes.helmbrecht at sprachlit.uni-regenburg.de
Webseite: http://www-avs.uni-regensburg.de/index.htm
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