k?u and related argument problems.

[R. Rankin]

Ah, OK, thanks, Pam.  I assume we're talking about what
I teach as "valence" then.  I wasn't sure.  Bob


----- Original Message -----
From: "Pamela Munro" <munro at ucla.edu>
To: <siouan at lists.colorado.edu>
Sent: Saturday, April 02, 2005 3:14 PM
Subject: Re: k?u and related argument problems.


> Sorry to be obscure!
>
> In English, with a verb like "eat" we can use two
> nouns, e.g. "John" and
> "bread": we can say "John ate bread". But with a verb
> like "dine", we
> can't: we can say "John dined", but not "*John dined
> bread". (Yes, you
> can put "bread" in the sentence, but you have to do
> it in a
> prepositional phrase, "John dined on bread".) That's
> what I mean by
> "adding random nouns", which may have been an odd
> phrase, but I'm just
> trying to avoid theory-specific terminology. You
> can't freely add
> "bread" to a sentence with "dine", even though
> semantically it makes
> sense that when one dines food is involved.
>
> Thus, in Lakhota, some verbs are associated with one
> ordinary noun
> phrase (not part of a postpositional phrase), some
> with two, and some,
> like k'u 'give', with three. I can't give you a
> Lakhota example of a
> verb that seems semantically as though it should take
> more associated
> nouns than it does (my Lakhota isn't ready enough for
> that), but I can
> give you a Chickasaw one.
>
> In Chickasaw, owwatta means 'hunt'. But it's
> intransitive -- it is not
> possible to add a noun phrase specifying what was
> hunted (like 'deer')
> no matter how much you want to. (Thus, it's like
> English 'dine'.)
>
> Thus, I consider the number of non-oblique noun
> phrases (neither in pre-
> or postpositional phrases or marked with oblique case
> markers) a verb
> can be associated with is its number of arguments. I
> feel that this
> shows that the number of arguments a verb has is not
> necessarily
> associated with the inflectional pattern it takes. I
> pointed out that in
> English we'd certainly say a verb like 'hunt' or
> 'eat' is transitive
> (though both can also be used intransitively, as
> David pointed out),
> even though the English verbs inflect only for their
> subject, never for
> their object. As David noted, that is a
> language-specific fact. So, in
> contrast, in Lakhota (and also Chickasaw) a verb may
> have three
> arguments, but it can be inflected to show the person
> and number of only
> two of these.
>
> Anyway, that's what I was trying to say. (I don't
> think that whether one
> accepts the PAH really matters for this, but I'll
> leave that matter to
> others!)
>
> Pam
>
> R. Rankin wrote:
>
>> Excuse a question from someone who has always done
>> more phonology and
>> morphology than syntax.  Pam wrote something in one
>> of postings to the
>> effect that "you can't just add nouns in Dakotan
>> sentences."  (The
>> quote is inexact because I don't have the message
>> here on my home
>> computer -- sorry.)  This was in reference to the
>> argument structure
>> of k?u.
>>
>> I guess I'm having a little trouble picturing what
>> this means and what
>> its implications are.  Could Pam or anyone give me
>> an example of this
>> restriction, especially compared to some language
>> (English would be
>> fine) in which you *can* add such forbidden nouns,
>> whatever they might
>> be (but wouldn't be able to in Dakotan)?
>>
>> Sorry to be so thick, but I'm missing something
>> here. (And I'm also
>> thinking about how this whole discussion might play
>> out if you accept
>> the 'pronominal argument hypothesis' for Siouan.
>> Then all the
>> nominals would be something like adjuncts, and I'm
>> curious to know
>> what the restrictions on such adjuncts might be.)
>>
>> Bob
>>
>
> --
> Pamela Munro,
> Professor, Linguistics, UCLA
> UCLA Box 951543
> Los Angeles, CA 90095-1543
> http://www.linguistics.ucla.edu/people/munro/munro.htm
>
>
>