person indexing (was: Information)

[Heike Bödeker]

At 10:31 15.12.02 -0800, David Kaufman wrote:
>In the Hopi example Whorf gave, there appears to be no subject at
>all--just the verb form

Anyone on this list happening to be knowledgeable about Hopi morphosyntax?
Is the Hopi verb never inflected for person, as say the verb in Yuki,
Japanese, Korean, Manju or Mongolian? Is there profanely just some "zero
marking" for non-speechact-participants (3rd persons)? Does Hopi have some
formally distinguished category of impersonalization (equivalent to, in
case of actors French on, German man, in case of undergoers Nahuatl tla-,
Chukchi (i)ne-)?

>--which, when one thinks about it, when speaking of natural phenomena like
>a lightning flash, why do we need a subject?

Apart from the fact we have lots of things we could question whether we
really need them ;-) Should it be really such a surprise that there is no
1:1 r'ship between form and (main) function? And there's really extremely
queer uses of pronouns, e.g. in German Es tanzt sich gut auf dem neuen
Parkett. "One can dance well on the new parquet floor", lit: it dances
itself well... <g>

>There really is no subject (no actor per se unless one wants to say God or
>Nature is doing it).

This was indeed the explanation I was given why Sanskrit var.sati "it
rains" is active (parasmaipadam), the Gods are doing it. But then, this is
a widespread idea, too, just to mention another case from the Old World,
the /Xam associated rain with water-loving animals such as the
hippopotamus. Now imagine magical practics involving the invocation of
so-called rain-animals so they may bring the rain along with them. We even
might naively have expected end up with a causative (which, may I say
luckily, is not attested). But then, influence of supernatural beings on
climate, and weathermaking are likewise attested in the New World...

Best,

Heike