Adverbs in Lakhota

[Richard C. Lundy]

Shannon,  et.al.;

I am a Native Studies instructor at Nebraska Indian Community College with
graduate training in psychology as well as in culural anthropology.  The courses
I teach include Dakota Language,  although my own dialect is Lakota.
Specifically,  my family is from the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe and I have lived
and worked in Rapid City,  therefore interacting with many speakers from other
Lakota Rez communities.   Besides all that resume' stuff,  I was looking at you
bathtub sentence.  To me,  it reads, " He/she told me that John bought a bathtub
in the morning or this morning."  (although the this would have to be understood
by the context of dialog)  In my learning of Lakota,  yesterday is htalehan.  If
I understand your concerns re: John and his role,   the word order that you
present means to me that John was the buyer and not the teller.  Otherwise, it
would read,  "Owayuzanzan wan hihanni opetun John omakiyake (lo).  Or move his
name to the beginning of the sentence. I'm not a linguist so please excuse my
layman's  orthography.  I hope this helps a little.
Good luck.

Richard Lundy    rlundy at huntel.net

Shannon West wrote:

> 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
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