relative roots
Monica Macaulay
mmacaula at WISC.EDU
Thu Apr 20 01:06:17 UTC 2006
Yeah, that's exactly the point - I just don't think 'thus' is user-
friendly except for linguists who are used to these bizarre
definitions (a good 'hither' one for Menominee is the preverb defined
as 'in the hither course of time' - anybody got a good translation
for that one?!?).
One of the students working as a PA on the project had the following
to say (Becky, I hope you don't mind that I'm forwarding it!):
Hi Monica - I can't remember if I mentioned this when we talked about
it before, but I personally like to gloss relative roots with an X.
So aeN- would be 'in X manner', other relative roots would be 'X
fast', 'X long', 'X many times', etc. This indicates clearly to me
that the relative root denotes a variable that needs to be filled in
by an expression elsewhere in the sentence. Not sure if that works
for all audiences, but anyway it's another option to consider. I
think both 'thus' and 'in that way' are very misleading glosses.
I also totally agree with David Costa's comments about not expecting
a dictionary to explain the grammer to people.
-becky
My first reaction was that using the X would be way too mathmatical-
looking, but it does get across the fact that something needs to be
filled. Has anyone considered this or done it? I think it's
something I would definitely need to get speaker/learner input on
before doing!
- Monica
On Apr 19, 2006, at 6:22 PM, Wayne Leman wrote:
> I agree with Rich on this. And I prefer using an English definite
> as I gloss relative roots in our Cheyenne dictionary. Early in my
> work on Cheyenne I used the Bloomfieldian "thus" but after awhile I
> realized it didn't make much sense to many English speakers, not to
> mention Cheyenne speakers for whom we want the dictionary to be
> user-friendly.
>
> Hence:
>
> Enêheševe 'he did it that way'
> Ehevoo'o 'that's what he said'
>
> Wayne Leman
> Monica,
> There are a couple of considerations with relative roots.
> As I have been arguing for about ten years now (and no one seems to
> notice), relative roots have properties that suggest they are
> analogous to head marking. What I mean is the following.
>
> We translate simple transitive verb forms with something
> that suggests the object slot which must be filled.
>
> waabamaad vta 'see s.o./s.t. (an.)'
>
> Since relative roots analogously license clausal complements, we
> should gloss them analogously with appropriate indefinites:
>
> inaabid vai 'look in a certain direction'
> inaabamaad vta 'see s.o./s.t. (an.) looking like
> s.t.'
> apatood vai 'run along a certain route'
> onjinawaad vta 'kill s.o. for a certain reason'
>
> But with 20/20 hindsight, because the head markings all have null
> definite readings, it would probably be more accurate to gloss them
> with definites.
>
> waabamaad vta 'see him/her/it (an.)'
>
> and
>
> inaabid vai 'look in that direction'
> inaabamaad vta 'see him/her/it (an.) looking like
> that'
> apatood vai 'run along that route'
> onjinawaad vta 'kill him/her/it for that reason'
>
> I used the indefinite option in my dictionary, but I'm thinking
> that if I had it to do over again, I'd go with definites.
>
> Rich
>
>
>
>
>
> At 6:42 PM -0500 4/18/06, Monica Macaulay wrote:
>> I got this very helpful message from David Costa and since it just
>> came to me am taking the liberty of forwarding it to the list. I
>> think the list is set up so that replies just go to the sender and
>> not the list, which is silly. I'll check into changing that.
>>
>> - Monica
>>
>> Begin forwarded message:
>>
>>> From: David Costa <pankihtamwa at earthlink.net>
>>> Date: April 18, 2006 3:06:48 PM CDT
>>> To: Monica Macaulay <mmacaula at WISC.EDU>
>>> Cc: Daryl Baldwin <baldwidw at muohio.edu>
>>> Subject: Re: relative roots
>>>
>>> Monica:
>>>
>>>> We're currently going through the archaic English words that
>>>> Bloomfield used
>>>> in his Menominee lexicon and trying to come up with more
>>>> colloquial
>>>> defintions. While thinking about 'thus' and what we could
>>>> replace it with, I
>>>> realized that there's an intersecting problem, which is due to
>>>> the fact that
>>>> all of the verbs that have 'thus' in their definition - not
>>>> surprisingly -
>>>> have the relative root aeN- in them. We were going to change
>>>> 'thus' to 'in
>>>> that manner' but it occurs to me that that might be interpreted
>>>> as a
>>>> complete definition. So, take the verb that Bloomfield
>>>> translates as 'it
>>>> glows thus' - we could change it to 'it glows in that manner'
>>>> but a
>>>> dictionary user might not realize that it's a verb that needs a
>>>> manner adverb
>>>> - and that using it without one would actually be ungrammatical
>>>> to a native
>>>> speaker. Conversely they might not realize how to translate it
>>>> in a
>>>> sentence; i.e. if you used this verb with 'brightly' the
>>>> meaning would be 'it
>>>> glows brightly' - NOT 'it glows brightly in that manner' or
>>>> something like
>>>> that. Have any of you wrestled with this one and come up with
>>>> a good
>>>> solution?
>>>>
>>> Well, it seems to me that the 'thus'/'in that manner' dilemma and
>>> the worry
>>> about people thinking the gloss is a complete definition are
>>> separate
>>> issues. In our Miami dictionary, we used 'thus' a lot, but I
>>> think that was
>>> just because it's all over the Algonquian literature that way and
>>> we're so
>>> used to it. Perhaps in retrospect '(in) that way' or 'so' might
>>> have been a
>>> bit more user-friendly since 'thus' is such a marginal word in
>>> modern spoken
>>> English.
>>>
>>>> A related issue of course is how much info one puts into a
>>>> dictionary without
>>>> crossing over the line into being a grammar. I think we
>>>> probably are all
>>>> making somewhat different decisions about where to draw that
>>>> line, and I
>>>> haven't decided yet where it would be drawn in a case like this.
>>>>
>>> And this is the second issue! I think the problem of speakers not
>>> knowing
>>> exactly how to use a word grammatically just based on its dictionary
>>> definition is just unavoidable. In my opinion, at the most one
>>> could write
>>> 'relative root' in the gloss along with the form class, then in
>>> the intro
>>> refer the user to a grammatical sketch somewhere; or one could
>>> explain in
>>> the intro that when a word has that prefix and 'thus' (or 'in
>>> that manner',
>>> or whatever) in its gloss, here's what it means, and see the
>>> grammatical
>>> sketch. Explaining the details of how to use a relative root ninety
>>> different times in a dictionary would just drive people crazy,
>>> and they'd
>>> just have to refer to the grammar anyway.
>>>
>>> I've encountered people (not Miamis!) who want Native American
>>> languages to
>>> be spelled just like English, so that they supposedly won't have
>>> to learn
>>> any pronunciation rules. When one learns any new language, one
>>> has to master
>>> that language's spelling and pronunciation idiosyncracies, and
>>> one does not
>>> have the right to expect the rules to be the same as English.
>>> Grammar is
>>> the same way -- I've also had people (again, not Miamis) ask
>>> "can't we learn
>>> this language without any grammar?" The answer is no, of course --
>>> Algonquian grammar is SO different from English grammar, anyone
>>> who wants to
>>> make meaningful use of an Algonquian dictionary is going to have to
>>> familiarize themselves with a certain amount of grammar. Using a
>>> dictionary
>>> of Spanish or Polish or Swahili would be the same way. And you can't
>>> make grammar totally transparent in a dictionary.
>>>
>>> Anyway, I hope these comments are useful.
>>>
>>> Dave
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>> Monica Macaulay
>> Department of Linguistics
>> University of Wisconsin
>> 1168 Van Hise Hall; 1220 Linden Drive
>> Madison, WI 53706
>> phone (608) 262-2292; fax (608) 265-3193
>> http://ling.wisc.edu/~macaulay/monica.html
>
>
> --
> ******************************************************************
>
> Richard A. Rhodes
> Department of Linguistics
> University of California
> Berkeley, CA 94720-2650
> Voice (510) 643-7325
> FAX (510) 643-5688
>
> ******************************************************************
>
Monica Macaulay
Department of Linguistics
University of Wisconsin
1168 Van Hise Hall; 1220 Linden Drive
Madison, WI 53706
phone (608) 262-2292; fax (608) 265-3193
http://ling.wisc.edu/~macaulay/monica.html
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