Balkan tongues (was: biloxi update)

[John Boyle]

>
>
>>
>>  BTW, how do you judge the Lakota construction "Ateunyanpi mahpiya ekta
>>  nanke cin"? Aren't there two sentences: "ateunyan pi" and "(mahpiya
>>  ekta) nanke" made a noun with kind of adjectival phrase by the following
>>  'definite article' _kin_?
>
>Ate7unyanpi is a nominalized verb; a very ordinary way to say "my father"
>is atewaye kin.  It's the head of a relative clause; the clause is marked
>by the final "kin".  There is no article after "ate7unyanpi" because heads
>of relative clauses are ALWAYS marked indefinite, even if they're unique,
>like this one is.  At least, that's my analysis.
>

I think that David's analysis is correct.  The head has to be marked
as indefinite even if the referent is clearly definite.  This is true
in all (or most) of the Siouan languages since they all have
internally headed relative clauses (IHRCs) (we think).  The possibly
exception being Hocank.  There seems to be a constraint that the head
of an IHRC can not be marked as definite.  This is what Williamson
(1987) calls "The Indefiniteness Constraint".  This seems to be the
case because of how the heads get interpreted in the semantic
component of the grammar.

John Boyle