k?u and related argument problems.

[Pamela Munro]

Absolutely. A verb's valence refers to its number of arguments, I'd say!

R. Rankin wrote:

> 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
>>
>>
>>
>
>

--
Pamela Munro,
Professor, Linguistics, UCLA
UCLA Box 951543
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1543
http://www.linguistics.ucla.edu/people/munro/munro.htm