Lakhota/Nakota help

[Shannon West]

Hi everyone.  It's been a quiet list lately.  I suspect everyone is very
busy.  I know I am.  I'd still like to pick your collective brain though if
you have a little time.  :)

I'm working on a paper about the nature of subjects and objects in
Assiniboine Nakota (though I'm adding a lot of Lakhota because of a big lack
of Assiniboine).  I'm working within a Minimalism framework (Sorry, Brent).

ta(i)-oištimatipi ki he Joe(*i,j) yuškaN
3POSS bedroom det     Joe clean

I have this translated as "She cleaned Joe's room" and "Joe cleaned her
room" (gender difference just used to show mandatory disjoint reference).
How can I tell which element is the subject? It seems to me that the subject
is the zero marked third person, and not Joe.

Q2. John wowaši dayaN okihi cen owakiya = "I hired John because he works
well".

How do we know that it John is the object of the verb owakiya, and not the
zero 3rd person?  i.e. "This morning, I hired him because John works well"
(and John and him are coreferential - ungrammatical in English of course)
Relative clauses come first in the sentence regardless of whether it
modifies subject or object, but I wonder, is John part of the relative
clause in the above sentence?  Or is the relative clause [wowaši dayaN okihi
cen]?  Any ideas how I might make a case for either side?  Presumably, if
John is not part of the relative clause, one should be able to put an adverb
in there before wowaši.  I have no idea if such a thing is possible.

Zeroes are really a pain sometimes.  But lots of fun :)

On another note, I'm having a hard time converting some papers I wrote to
.pdf (it's doing some very odd things to the formatting) or anything else
that is fairly accessible (I'm a WordPerfect user).  I haven't forgotten my
promise to share.  When I break down and get someone else to do it (that is,
after this rush is over), I'll post it somewhere.  If you have WP and want a
copy, let me know and I'll forward it on.

Pinamayaya,
Shannon West  - shanwest at uvic.ca

p.s.  Richard Lundy, if you're still getting this list, would you drop me a
line?  I lost your email address in what I call "The Y2K crash".  Tragic, I
say.  ;)