A test for the valence of Lakhota verbs?

Sun Apr 3 03:21:20 UTC 2005

Yes!!  Thanks, Bob and Pam, for clarifying that; I should have thought of
that term myself, since I also teach about "valence".  A verb's valence
refers to the number of arguments it can take, but to reiterate what I was
babbling about this morning, I think there are two kinds of valence: core
and something else (I don't even have a name for the others). Thus I would
hold that English "put" has a valence of two (I put something) in the
core, but nevertheless requires a third participant in the form of a
locative.  Would the rest of you use valence this way, or say that "put"
has a valence of three, one of which must be locative?
	And now I've thought of a Lakhota test for core valence: what does
the wa- 'indefinite' prefix do when added to the verb?  I will repeat an
example I've used many times -- sorry if this is old news to anyone --
that the verb iyuNga 'to ask someone something' has a valence of three.
Besides this, there is the form wiyuNga, with the wa- prefix, which means
'to inquire about'.  The "wa" has replaced the "someone" argument,
reducing the verb's valence from three to two.  There is also a third
form, wawiyuNga, meaning something like 'go around asking lots of
questions; be nosy'.  The second wa- has replaced the "something" argument
of the original verb, and now we're down to an intransitive.
	So the test would be: what (besides 'I gave it to him/her') does
"wak'u" mean?  Does "wa-" delete the recipient and leave the other object,
perhaps something like 'donate (something)'?  Or does it delete the
equivalent of the English direct object and mean 'I gifted him/her'? And
is there a "wawak'u" meaning something like 'be generous' or 'give stuff
to people'?  If so, then I will concede defeat and admit that _k'u_ has
three arguments; if not, I think I may have found an objective argument
for the position I've been trying to justify.
	Sigh.  I'd like the question about "?wawak'u" 'give stuff to
people' asked.  But it's not going to be so simple.  I just looked in
Buechel, and discovered that the verb for 'make donations' is wawicak'u (I
assume that's his spelling of wawichak'u).  If that's what I think it, is,
then "wa" is replacing the thing I'm calling the adjunct, or the semantic
patient, since "wicha", because it's animate, has to be standing in for
the recipient(s).  Now, in a sense, we do have all 3 participants indexed
on the verb.
	I hope there is a speaker on the list with enough patience to read
through this and help us.

David S. Rood
Dept. of Linguistics
Univ. of Colorado
295 UCB
Boulder, CO 80309-0295
USA
rood at colorado.edu

On Sat, 2 Apr 2005, Pamela Munro wrote:

> 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
>
>