VYAKARAN: South Asian Languages and Linguistics Net
Editors: Tej K. Bhatia, Syracuse University, New York
John Peterson, University of Osnabrueck, Germany
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<body class='hmmessage'>I'm not a native speaker to judge your sentences, but one issue that I've discovered on this topic is that certain things are acceptable in speech that wouldn't otherwise be acceptable in written materials.<BR>
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I once got a sentence from a transcribed oral story (in a language related to Hindi) that was effectively:<BR>
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... {small brother my} {water in} {drowning was}<BR>
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That is, the possessive 'my' was after the head noun when it should have been before. It wasn't possible to argue that it was an afterthought or "clarification" because there were only two participants in the story and there was no confusion as to who's brother he was. The "my" wasn't even really necessary from a discourse point of view. <BR>
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This particular example may just have been aberrant, because both of the referents (i.e. the 'brother' and 'my') were "known" entities, but in other examples I have, the purpose for this out of position genitive seems to be to give prominence to the (usually non-established) head noun (in this case, 'brother'). So I guess this might be the English equivalent of "my small BROTHER was drowning in the water!"<BR>
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However, again, I've tried using just this type of construction in translated written stories in order to give prominence to a head noun, but the language helpers consistently dis-prefer it. When I drew their attention to this instance from a "natural story", they eventually said... maybe he was speaking rather than writing the story (they weren't aware that was originally an oral story).<BR>
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Just a thought,<BR>
Bob Eaton<BR>
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> VYAKARAN: South Asian Languages and Linguistics Net<BR>> Editors: Tej K. Bhatia, Syracuse University, New York<BR>> John Peterson, University of Osnabrueck, Germany<BR>> Details: Send email to listserv@listserv.syr.edu and say: INFO VYAKARAN<BR>> Subscribe:Send email to listserv@listserv.syr.edu and say:<BR>> SUBSCRIBE VYAKARAN FIRST_NAME LAST_NAME<BR>> (Substitute your real name for first_name last_name)<BR>> Archives: http://listserv.syr.edu<BR>> <BR>> Dear all,<BR>> <BR>> I'm preparing a paper on discontinuous NPs (DNP) in some Indian languages. <BR>> I got two sets of data that I would be interested in judgements from <BR>> native speakers. It concerns discontinuous NPs in Hindi and Gujarati, I <BR>> got conflicting judgements from different people, but unfortunately some <BR>> of them were not-quite-native speakers. Still, even between native <BR>> speakers there seems to be some variation. I just would like to know how <BR>> widespread this variation is...<BR>> <BR>> Here's the set of Hindi sentences I need more judgements for. Keep in mind <BR>> that the construction might be quite marked and that it probably needs a <BR>> proper context for being acceptable. If so, just imagine any context you <BR>> like... (Maybe the left peripheral noun should be read as a contrastive <BR>> topic, but it's really up to you.)<BR><BR>
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