Hindi and Gujarati discontinuous NPs

[E. Bashir]

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A comment on one of the examples is inserted below,
marked "EB:"

--- Bob Eaton <pete_dembrowski at HOTMAIL.COM> wrote:

> > Did you ever find someone who accepted the
> construction outside of this > story context? 
>  
> Yes, but again usually only with oral materials. One
> work involved a narration track and in that they
> didn't mind such marked constructions, because it
> was someone speaking it. Also, even in written
> materials, we used it several times in speech quotes
> within the narrative. So if a character in a written
> story says it in a dialog, they had no problem with
> it.
>  
> > And did you ever happen to see some intervening
> material > between the possessive and its phrase?
> sorry for shouting (with caps), but *ALL THE TIME*! 
>  
> And *that* works just fine in written materials (I'm
> actually writing a paper on this myself :-) But by
> way of teasers, here are a few examples (Kangri):
>  
> इस बास्‍ते इह़नां
> गल्‍लां दा भ़ी
> तुसां जो बड़ा
> ध़्‍यान रखणा पौणा
> है।
> is baste {ihnaa.n gallaa.n daa} bhii {tusaa.n jo}
> {baRaa dhyaan} rakhNaa pauNaa hai.
> this reason these things GEN also you DAT great
> attention keep-INF-ms FORCE-INF-ms PRES-sg
> 'For this reason, you must pay CLOSE ATTENTION to
> these things.'
>  
> In this example, the "of these things" phrase is a
> genitive possessive phrase whose head noun is the
> later 'attention'. Notice that the dative subject
> 'you DAT' (as well as an the additive 'also')
> intervene between that possessive phrase and its
> head noun (or more likely, the possessive phrase was
> preponed before the subject). The pragmatic effect
> of this movement is to give prominence to the head
> and its degree modifier 'close attention' (as shown
> by caps in the free translation), which remained
> in-situ.
>  
> इक्‍की ग्रांए दी
> दूए ग्रांए कन्‍नैं
> दुसमणी थी।
> ik-kii graa.ne dii [duuee graa.ne kannai.n] dusmaNii
> th-ii
> one-obl village GEN other village with emnity
> PAST-ms
> 'There was EMNITY between one village and another.'
>  
> Here again, the initial 'one village GEN' is the
> genitive possessive phrase of the head noun 'emnity'
> (as can be seen by the feminine agreement on the
> GEN), but the entire 'object' phrase (with (an)other
> village) intervenes between the possessive phrase
> and the head noun. Again, the function seems to be
> to give prominence to the head noun 'emnity'.

EB:  In this second example, the second postpositional
phrase [duuee graa.ne kannai.n] could simply be
analyzed as an adjectival modifier of dusmaNii
'enmity', in which case there is nothing unusual about
the word order.
> Bob
>  
>  
>  
>
_________________________________________________________________
> Back to work after baby–how do you know when
> you’re ready?
>
http://lifestyle.msn.com/familyandparenting/articleNW.aspx?cp-documentid=5797498&ocid=T067MSN40A0701A



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