andative

[Alan Knutson]

Sorry, but what follows are the following questions.... are you assuming
only Anglo-Saxons might be reading these descriptions or that these
categories (which is our nature to title or name) should only be accessible
to Anglo-Saxons. So what would be useable (ie coming/going-verbal-mode
(CGVM)

:)
Respectfully
Alan

----- Original Message -----
From: "Nancy E Hall" <nancyh at linguist.umass.edu>
To: <siouan at lists.colorado.edu>
Sent: Friday, June 07, 2002 11:47 AM
Subject: andative


>
> After reading the discussion on the word 'andative', I can't
> resist adding my two cents. As a phonologist who's not a specialist in a
> language family but does typological work that requires consulting
> literature on many families, it drives me nuts to open a grammar and
> immediately be buried in terms like 'andative'. Subfield-specific
> traditions of terminology become so detailed and obscure that they're a
> real barrier to comprehension by outsiders, and then so ingrained that no
> one bothers to explain them. And when they're based on classical
> languages, it becomes hard to even guess what some of the words mean.
> I appreciate it when authors coin an apt Anglo-Saxon term-
> something self-explanatory and easy to remember- instead of a new Latinate
> one. I suggest a filter on new technical terms: take a poll of 10
> non-Siouanist linguist friends and if most can't guess a definition that's
> somewhere in the ballpark of what the word means, throw it out.
> The only thing to be said for classically-derived terminology is
> that it does tend to be uniform across languages. When I have to read an
> article in Russian I'm grateful they don't have their own word for
> 'svarabhakti'...
>
> Nancy
>
>