Continuing the morphology and syntax discussion

[Danielle E. Cyr]

Years ago I had the privilege to teach an "Introduction to linguistics for
Mi'gmaq teachers.

At some point, I asked the 16 students to translate body parts from English to
Mi'gmaw. They were working in groups of 4. They warned me that, in Mi'gmaw, all
body parts have to have a possessor's indication. I knew that and I was quite
curious to see under which possessor they would write down the body parts in
Mi'gmaw. When I looked at their translations, I immediately saw that, all but
one lady (who had been almost entirely schooled in a non Aboriginal school),
had translated their list under the 'you' person. i.e. your head, your, hand,
your arm, etc.

I asked them to transcribe their lists at home and to bring them back the next
week. When they came back the next week, all of them had transcribed their list
under the 'I' person, thus, my head, my hand, my arm, etc.

I asked them why the change. They said that, in class they were speaking to one
another so it would have been stupid to put the 'I' person as a model. But when
they got home, they could speak only to themselves, so it would have been stupid
to use the 'you' person as a model.

The same thing happen when I asked them to translate verbs fro English to
Mi'gmaw. There is no infinitive in Mi'gmaw, so I was careful to ask them: "How
does none say "to dance" in Mi'gmaw. They invariably came up with the 'you'
person as the model. Yet, when doing the same exercise at home, they came up
with the 'I' person.

I think that this is a significant observation. My impression was, and still is,
that their grammatical "template" is much more fluid than ours.

I wrote about that as "the naturalization of 'I' as the First Person in the
Greco-Judeo-Christian cultures. Adam was created as the first ego. In the
Mi'gmaw culture, on the reverse, Kluskap (the Adamic figure) is created and
remains quite numb and paralyzed until others come to make him more and more
alive and human.

Thus in Judeo-Christian cultures: "Cogito, ergo sum." And in Algonquian and a
lot of other cultures, I suspect, "You are, therefore I am."

And, to conclude, because the Aboriginal peoples did not have to bother about
Aristotle's now entirely fossilized and mummified grammatical categories, they
are more at liberty to reshuffle them as needed or perceived on the go.

Best regards,
Danielle

Quoting Michael McCafferty <mmccaffe at INDIANA.EDU>:

> This "grammatical liberty" regarding animate/inanimate nouns is
> extremely interesting. I wonder how far it can be taken.
>
> Michael McCafferty
>
> Quoting "Danielle E. Cyr" <dcyr at YORKU.CA>:
>
> > Hi Bernie,
> >
> > Wela'lin ugjit this beautiful example of the fluidity of Mi'kmaw and the
> > speaker's freedom to customize it accordingly to his/her own perceptions.
> >
> > This "grammatical liberty" is something that non Aboriginal linguists
> > often have
> > difficulty to cope with.
> >
> > Danielle Cyr
> >
> >
> > Quoting Bernie Francis <plnal at HOTMAIL.COM>:
> >
> >> Hi Richard,
> >>
> >> I wasn't planning on jumping into this but I'll throw out a couple of
> things
> >> to you re animacy/inanimacy at least in Mi'kmaw.
> >>
> >> The tree fell on the house is easily translated in Mi'kmaw as "Kmu'j
> >> eloqtesink+p wen'ji'kuomk."
> >>
> >> kmu'j = tree
> >>
> >> el = directional (that way)
> >>
> >> -oq = long shaped
> >>
> >> -tes = sudden/jerky movement
> >>
> >> -i = stative
> >>
> >> -k = animate
> >>
> >> -+p = past (plus sign represents schwa)
> >>
> >> wen'ji- = french
> >>
> >> -kuom = dwelling
> >>
> >> -k = locative
> >>
> >> The car ran into a tree. "Wutepaqn na't wen me'teskuapnn kmu'jl." ('ran'
> of
> >> course is out of character here. One would use 'to hit' or 'to bump into'
> >> since cars can't run) Therefore "Someone's car hit/bumped into a tree."
> >>
> >> W = 3rd per. possessive
> >>
> >> -utepaqn = car inan.
> >>
> >> na't wen = someone
> >>
> >> me'tesk = bump into
> >>
> >> -uap = past
> >>
> >> n = an.
> >>
> >> n = obv.  ('l' in Restigouche dialect)
> >>
> >> kmu'j = tree an.
> >>
> >> l = obv. an.
> >>
> >> At least in Mi'kmaw Richard, there's nothing ungrammatical about the 2nd
> >> sentence.
> >>
> >> Sometime, animacy/inanimacy is determined by distance, i.e., a bus on my
> >> reserve is inanimate because (I believe) it's walking distance to town. In
> >> Eskasoni a reserve which is 30 miles from Sydney, N.S., it is animate.
> Yet,
> >> my theory falls down when I realize that a motorcycle is inanimate on my
> >> reserve but animate in Eskasoni.
> >>
> >> A fridge is always animate probably because it's very important in the
> >> household whereas a TV is inanimate (or so I thought). I discovered later
> >> that only the box around the TV is inanimate whereas the picture tube is
> >> animate. The new flat screen TV has grammatically taken on the
> >> inanimacy like
> >> the older sets.
> >>
> >> Inanimate objects in Mi'kmaw can easily become animate. It is we Mi'kmaq
> who
> >> may imbue that object with a spirit causing it to become animate. We can
> do
> >> this by recreating it in some way.
> >>
> >> I don't know if I helped or made things even more complicated. In
> >> any event I
> >> decided to send it along for your perusal.
> >>
> >> Good luck Richard.
> >>
> >> berni francis
> >>
> >>
> >> Sent from my iPad
> >>
> >> On 2012-11-01, at 8:04 PM, "Richard RHODES" <rrhodes at BERKELEY.EDU> wrote:
> >>
> >> > Charles (and everyone listening in),
> >> >
> >> >     I think the hardcore linguists are concerned about just how much
> this
> >> discussion will be "inside baseball".
> >> >
> >> >     To whit, Julie presented a wonderful paper on the relevance of
> >> sentience in the formation of Innu intransitive verbs.
> >> >
> >> >     The general background is this: everyone knows that the class of
> >> "natural" animates are those things that are or appear to be capable of
> >> moving under their own power. Hence, cars, trains, and big boats. (These
> are
> >> opposed to words that are purely grammatical animates, like trees and
> >> blackberries, tobacco and pipes, and the like.) For some time, people have
> >> been observing that there are syntactic restrictions on grammatical
> animates
> >> that are not "natural" animates. So many languages have restrictions on
> >> straightforward translations of clauses like:
> >> >
> >> > The tree fell on the house.
> >> >
> >> > Words that are not "natural" animates are banned (or at least greatly
> >> dispreferred) as the subjects of TI's. (If any of the native speakers out
> >> there find such clauses OK in their language, I'd sure like to know.)
> >> >
> >> > Trickier are sentences like:
> >> >
> >> > The car ran into the tree.
> >> >
> >> > Most of my consultants in Ottawa find such sentences completely
> >> ungrammatical, or at the least very weird. But no one has worked much on
> the
> >> problem.
> >> >
> >> > So that brings us to Julie's paper. She argued from features of II verb
> >> derivation that there is a three distinction in animacy. She called the
> most
> >> animate entities sentient. Those that are capable of some kinds of
> >> self-action, but not of awareness (my terms, not hers) teleological. (The
> >> view is more nuanced, but this will do for now.) And all the rest are
> >> inanimate. At that point, some of us would have said she had a paper and
> >> could have walked away.
> >> >
> >> > But, of course, she didn't. Julie wants to do more. So she spent a good
> >> deal of her paper talking about the mechanics of placing the
> >> relevant part of
> >> verb structure in a particular place in the pre-fab structure
> >> dictated by the
> >> approach to syntax she ascribes to.
> >> >
> >> > Phil Lesourd and I asked whether seeking a structural solution was the
> >> right way to go.
> >> >
> >> > My question was based on the English example which was provably
> semantic,
> >> not structural. Phil's question was more general.
> >> >
> >> > But the whole discussion got bogged down. Julie seemed to be saying that
> >> there's great value in UG -- which neither Phil nor I believe -- and
> that's
> >> as far as it got.
> >> >
> >> > More later,
> >> >
> >> > Rich
> >> >
> >> >
> >> >
> >> > On Wed, 31 Oct 2012 11:25:28 -0400, Charles Bishop wrote:
> >> >
> >> > Hi Richard,
> >> > Sorry that I couldn't be at this year's AC.   What was Julie's point?
> >> > Charles
> >> >
> >> > On Oct 30, 2012, at 4:07 PM, Richard RHODES wrote:
> >> >
> >> > Folks,
> >> >
> >> > I'm just putting out a feeler to see if there is interest in
> >> continuing the
> >> syntax morphology discussion online.
> >> >
> >> > It seemed like Julie Brittain's paper on Sunday morning put us
> >> right in the
> >> middle of it again, but half of the folks were already gone by then.
> >> >
> >> > Let me know if it's worth talking in this venue.
> >> >
> >> > Cheers,
> >> >
> >> > Rich Rhodes
> >> >
> >> > Richard A. Rhodes
> >> > Department of Linguistics
> >> > 1203 Dwinelle Hall #2650
> >> > University of California
> >> > Berkeley, 94720
> >> >
> >> >
> >> >
> >> >
> >> >
> >> >
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >
> >
> > "The only hope we have as human beings is to learn each other's
> > languages.  Only
> > then can we truly hope to understand one another."
> >
> > Professor Danielle E. Cyr
> > Department of French Studies
> > York University
> > Toronto, ON, Canada, M3J 1P3
> > Tel. 1.416.736.2100 #310180
> > FAX. 1.416.736.5924
> > dcyr at yorku.ca
> >
>


"The only hope we have as human beings is to learn each other's languages.  Only
then can we truly hope to understand one another."

Professor Danielle E. Cyr
Department of French Studies
York University
Toronto, ON, Canada, M3J 1P3
Tel. 1.416.736.2100 #310180
FAX. 1.416.736.5924
dcyr at yorku.ca