Adverbs in Lakhota

[Shannon West]

Hi,
I'm a grad student working on Lakhota (and Assiniboine) at the University of
Victoria in BC (not a lot of speakers of it out here), and I'm curious about
something.  Maybe someone can help.

owayuz^az^a wan hihani John ophethu ki omakiyake
tub                   a   yesterday John buy   COMP he.told-me
'He told me that John bought a tub yesterday'

First, could this Lakhota sentence be ambiguous with respect to 'yesterday'?
Can it also read "he told me yesterday that John bought a tub"?

In this sentence 'he' and 'John' can refer to the same person, a Binding
Condition C violation if everything before the final verb is a single
embedded constituent.  Is it possible that 'John' is the subject of
'omakiyake' that was extracted out of the clause?  i.e.  it would read 'John
yesterday he told me that he bought a tub'.  And if could be, hihani would
also have to move.  The question then is _why_ do these elements move?  And
can 2 elements be extracted out of a complement clause in Lakhota?

I'm more inclined to believe that Binding Condition C doesn't hold in this
language, but I have to be able to give some evidence for this.

So, can anyone help?  I know I'm asking at the busiest time of the year for
some people.  My apologies for that.  Also, if this isn't the appropriate
forum for this kind of question, please let me know.

Thanks in advance,

Shannon West

Wer fremde Sprachen nicht spricht, kennt seine eigene nicht. (Goethe)
He who speaks no foreign language does not know his own.
Kiu ne scipovas fremdan lingvon, tiu ne konas sian propran.

shanwest at uvic.ca
University of Victoria
Victoria, BC