another Hocank/Helmbrecht article question

[Koontz John E]

On Wed, 17 Jul 2002, Johannes Helmbrecht wrote:
> First of all, I did not intend to presuppose a definite answer to the
> question whether the nominal head is internal or external in Hocank
> relative clauses with the formula I used in the paper.

I've noticed that (a) Siouanists are a bit diffident about the internally
headed relative clauses in Siouan languages, and (b) non-Siouanists (of
certain stripes) are a bit inclined to encourage this diffidence.  ("You
claim the relative clauses in X work how?  There must be some mistake!")

> However, it might be interesting to note that -ra is not the only
> subordinating element. There is a set of three (attributive)
> demonstrative pronouns which may appear in the same structural
> position. These demonstratives are combinations of the so-called
> positional auxiliaries -naNk (be.sitting), -jee (be.standing), and
> -aNK (be.lying) plus an element -re (this 'proximate') or -ga (that
> 'distal').

Ah, then this explains the =re morpheme I exemplified from Lipkind.

Incidentally, I'm thinking that the contention I made there that noun
clauses generally work like relative clauses comes to me from Johannes, or
possibly Catherine.

> Now, I would like to apply the criteria, Catherine mentioned in her
> contribution to the observations in Hocank. Catherine said that if the
> head noun were always the first constituent in the RC the head noun
> would be external. I do not understand why this is a criteria for
> external headedness, but if this is so, well, as I showed above, then
> this is the case in Hocank.

I think Catherine waffled on this to some extent herself.  I suppose the
issue is that if the head is at the margin and you're trying to justify
putting it inside the margin, it helps if you can show that something
clearly within the margin is "outside" of it (outer-more than it??).

> The second criteria, Catherine mentioned is the status of the head
> noun with respect to definiteness. As can be seen from the examples,
> the head noun almost always carries a definite article.

Which makes it useful to know for sure if we know that -ra marks
definitenes.  Suppose it marked something like referentiality/specificity?

> ... but I have the impression, that the head noun is still definite,
> even if the -ra is missing. So, if it is correct that internal heads
> of RC are indefinite, than the Hocank head noun of RC are clearly
> external. But I have to admit, that this criteria is not clear to me
> either.

I think maybe what Catherine is getting at here is not that the head is
indefinite as such, but that the definiteness of the head is marked on the
clause as a whole, providing an argument for internal status of the head.

And, if I am correctly anticipating the next step, we can argue that the
determiner itself is not the head if we can show that it is optional.

JEK