[Lingtyp] Studies of discourse in ergative languages

Tasaku Tsunoda tsunoda at ninjal.ac.jp
Mon Oct 12 01:30:14 UTC 2015


Dear Professor Gildea,

    Thank you very much for your information.

    Unfortunately, I do not read Spanish, but I might get in touch with the
people you recommended.

    Again, many thanks.
   
-- 
Tasaku Tsunoda

E-mail adresses
(1) tsunoda at ninjal.ac.jp
    Probably until the 30th September 2013
(2) tasakutsunoda at nifty.com
    From the 27th April 2013

From:  Spike Gildea <spike at uoregon.edu>
Date:  2015年10月12日月曜日 2:14
To:  角田 太作 <tsunoda at ninjal.ac.jp>
Cc:  "Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org" <Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
Subject:  Re: [Lingtyp] Studies of discourse in ergative languages

I have three quick recommendations.

This ms by Geoffrey Haig and Stefan Schnell gives both a review of the
literature and some new conclusions based on their own corpus studies.
https://www.academia.edu/12395366/The_discourse_basis_of_ergativity_revisite
d

For those who read Spanish, here is a very nice conference proceedings
paper:

Vázquez Álvarez, Juan Jesús and Roberto Zavala Maldonado. 2013. La
estructura argumental preferida en el chol, una lengua agentiva.
Proceedings of the 2013 Conference on the Indigenous Languages of Latin
America (CILLA). Ausitn: University of Texas.
http://www.ailla.utexas.org/site/cilla6_toc.html

Also for those who read Spanish, there is also an excellent recent MA
thesis from CIESAS (Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en
Antropología Social) Sureste on Mam de Cajolá (Mayan).

Pérez Vail, José Reginaldo. 2014. La inversión y obviación en el mam de
Cajolá. Mexico, D.F.: CIESAS MA Thesis.
http://repositorio.ciesas.edu.mx/handle/123456789/326

This thesis uses extensive analysis of discourse to help understand the
complexities of voice in a language with ergative main clause verbal
indexation plus five different passive constructions, one antipassive
construction, and (with discourse patterns confirmed in elicitation) the
obligatory use of one of the detransitive voice constructions when a
third person agent acts on a Speech Act Participant patient (i.e., the
genesis of main clause hierarchical grammar).

Although this is the only CIESAS graduate thesis I have read, I think
the pool of theses from this program is likely to be a rich resource for
discourse-informed studies of indigenous languages of Mesoamerica,
including languages with both ergative and hierarchical main clause
patterns. I spent three weeks there in 2013, which gave me the chance to
interact extensively with both the students and faculty -- I was really
impressed by the entire program and I expect great things from their
work. All students are fluent speakers of the language they study and,
as a part of their studies, they use their fluency to collect
substantial corpora of the languages with which they are working. As a
result, all their descriptive and theoretical conclusions are informed
by extensive knowledge of discourse patterns. If you are interested in
knowing more about the work produced there, I encourage you to get in
touch with any of the faculty: Roberto Zavala, Gilles Polian, and Eladio
Mateo Toledo.

Best,

Spike

On 10/10/15 8:34 PM, Tasaku Tsunoda wrote:
>  Dear Professor Everett,
> 
>      Thank you very much for your information.
>      It is really appreciated.
> 
>  Best wishes,
> 
>  Tasaku Tsunoda
> 
> 
>  From: "Everett, Daniel" <DEVERETT at bentley.edu
>  <mailto:DEVERETT at bentley.edu>>
>  Date: 2015年10月10日土曜日 20:39
>  To: 角田 太作 <tsunoda at ninjal.ac.jp <mailto:tsunoda at ninjal.ac.jp>>
>  Cc: "Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
>  <mailto:Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>"
>  <Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
>  <mailto:Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>>, 角田 太作
>  <tasakutsunoda at nifty.com <mailto:tasakutsunoda at nifty.com>>
>  Subject: Re: [Lingtyp] Studies of discourse in ergative languages
> 
>  Here is one article, by Caleb Everett:
> 
>  
> http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/jbp/sl/2009/00000033/00000001/art00001?c
> rawler=true
> 
>  DLE
>  Sent from my iPhone
> 
>  On Oct 10, 2015, at 06:04, Tasaku Tsunoda <tsunoda at ninjal.ac.jp
>  <mailto:tsunoda at ninjal.ac.jp>> wrote:
> 
>>  Dear Colleagues,
>> 
>>  Would anyone please advise me of studies of discourse in ergative
>>  languages?
>> 
>>       In particular, I would appreciate information on studies of
>>  discourse in languages that have syntactic ergativity.
>> 
>>  Thanking you in advance,
>> 
>>  Tasaku Tsunoda
>> 
>> 
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> 
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