<html><head><style type="text/css">body {word-wrap: break-word; background-color:#ffffff;}</style></head><body><div style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 16px"><span style="font-size: 18px"><font face="handsetCondensed">If asked the question EAT-FINISH WHO? wouldn't EAT-FINISH JOHN be a grammatical response? Or in conversation especially with children a series like EAT-FINISH MOMMY. EAT-FINISH DADDY. EAT-FINISH JOHN. could this not also be allowed? <br></font></span><span style="font-size: 18px"><font face="handsetCondensed"> That kind of stereotypical structure is not unheard of with children or the elderly. It also shows up in stories.<br></font></span><span style="font-size: 18px"><font face="handsetCondensed"><br></font></span><span style="font-size: 18px"><font face="handsetCondensed">This is my sense of how things work. Have I got it wrong?<br></font></span><span style="font-size: 18px"><font face="handsetCondensed"><br></font></span><span style="font-size: 18px"><font face="handsetCondensed">Ben Karlin<br></font></span><span style="font-size: 18px"><font face="handsetCondensed">St Louis, MO</font></span></div><br><br>-----Original message-----<br><blockquote style="; border-left: 2px solid rgb(16, 16, 255); margin-left: 5px; padding-left: 5px;"><div style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px"><b>From: </b>Albert Bickford <albert_bickford@SIL.ORG><b><br>To: </b>SLLING-L@LISTSERV.VALENCIACC.EDU<b><br>Sent: </b>Fri, Mar 4, 2011 20:15:26 GMT+00:00<b><br>Subject: </b>Re: a Linguistics of ASL question -- grammar<br><br></div><div>
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<font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif">Another way to think
about the situation is that the claim that VS order is impossible
in intransitive clauses in ASL refers specifically to full (not
pronominal) subjects. So, *EAT-FINISH JOHN</font> would be
claimed to be bad. It is commonly the case that pronouns in
languages (especially unstressed pronouns) can show up in places
where nouns cannot, so claims about word order possibilities have to
make clear whether they are talking about the possible positions of
full NPs or also pronouns.<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">Albert Bickford
SIL International (Mexico program and Signed Language Leadership Team)
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:albert_bickford@sil.org">albert_bickford@sil.org</a>
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On 2011/03/04 12:37 PM, Grushkin, Donald A wrote:
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<pre wrap="">Thanks for the response, Susan.
If I understand you correctly, what you're saying is that in "EAT-FINISH", the subject (me) is implied or "understood", so the PRO.1 is a copy of the implied subject?
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From: linguists interested in signed languages [<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:SLLING-L@LISTSERV.VALENCIACC.EDU">SLLING-L@LISTSERV.VALENCIACC.EDU</a>] On Behalf Of Fischer Susan [<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:susan.fischer@RIT.EDU">susan.fischer@RIT.EDU</a>]
Sent: Friday, March 04, 2011 10:13 AM
To: <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:SLLING-L@LISTSERV.VALENCIACC.EDU">SLLING-L@LISTSERV.VALENCIACC.EDU</a>
Subject: Re: a Linguistics of ASL question -- grammar
Sentences like that could be analyzed as an example of subject pronoun copy (discussed by Padden), since first person subject is often zero, and as far as I can tell, has no relation to the presence of FINISH. It would be restricted to unstressed pronouns (you couldn't substitute MYSELF for IX1, for example). I actually talked about a broader category of post-sentential tags in my very old paper on word order in ASL (Sign language and linguistic universals, recently reprinted in SLL), though I didn't call them that. They have to be unstressed. Note also that a language like Japanese, which is strictly verb-final and more generally head-final, permits postposed topics (without the topic marker wa) under the same circumstances, e.g.,
baka da nee, watasi (falling intonation, low stress)
dumb is right? me
I'm sure dumb, aren't I.
SDF
Susan D. Fischer
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:Susan.Fischer@rit.edu">Susan.Fischer@rit.edu</a><a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:Susan.Fischer@rit.edu"><mailto:Susan.Fischer@rit.edu></a>
Center for Research on Language
UCSD
On Mar 4, 2011, at 9:39 AM, Grushkin, Donald A wrote:
Teaching ASL Linguistics again. In Linguistics of ASL (textbook by Valli, Lucas & Mulrooney), it says that in simple sentences with plain intransitive verbs, it is not possible to use VS (Verb Subject) structure. A couple of students pointed out that one can sign EAT-FINISH PRO.1, or RUN-FINISH PRO.1. On the face of it, these do seem to be Verb Subject structures. I hypothesized that the completive FINISH might be changing the structure of the sentence so the rule is not violated. However, I'd like to check with you, the real linguistics experts on this.
--Don Grushkin
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