Comparative Grammar workshop

[ROOD DAVID S]

	Ok, now that we seem to have a bit of a picture of what this event
might be, let me leave that part of it to Bob and John B. (and John K.)
	Boulder seems to have been designated as the location, though I
won't mind if a consensus develops that we should go to Ponca City
instead.
	We seem to be talking about looking at massive numbers of details,
which require time to mull over, and which cause brain rebellion after a
certain length of time.  So I'm guessing we might want 3 days for this,
perhaps the evening of an arrival day, three days of meetings, and
departure on the fourth morning?  That's 4 nights of lodging??  I would
guess that we should expect to pay out at least $75 per night for sleeping
space other than at John's house.  Is that too much (either time or
money)?  We are mostly professional academics, so we will have no trouble
talking for whatever length of time we are together.
	Would people prefer to straddle a weekend or make it all mid-week?
I would vote for a Thursday night arrival, Fri Sat and Sun meetings with
Monday morning departures, but I'm open.
	If we try to do this during football season, I'll have to avoid
home game weekends.  There's no point planning around the weather: we can
have airport-closing blizzards any time after Sept. 3rd, and outdoor
swimming weather into the first week of November, depending on nature's
whims in any particular year (and maybe both in the same year).
	Do people think there are likely to be more than 20 participants?

	So far we've heard from only a few folks about this -- are there
silent bystanders out there who would like to submit an opinion?

	David


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

On Fri, 24 Jun 2005, Carolyn Quintero wrote:

> I think this sort of workshop would be very helpful.  Wish I'd had such an elicitation guide when I had Osage speakers to consult.  A pre-workshop list of topics (and specific examples) for those attending would allow us to gather some pertinent data to have at hand for group comparison work.
> Carolyn Q.
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Koontz John E <John.Koontz at colorado.edu>
> Sent: Jun 23, 2005 11:49 PM
> To: siouan at lists.colorado.edu
> Subject: Re: Comparative Grammar workshop
>
> On Thu, 23 Jun 2005, John Boyle wrote:
> > I agree with Bob.  This kind of workshop would be very valuable for
> > those of us preparing to write descriptive grammars (as well as those
> > of us who are interested in historical and comparative linguistics).
>
> This has elements of a notion that Bob has put forward before.  I think
> the expression used was something like "an elicitation guide" or
> "suggestions for Siouanists doing fieldwork."  I remember contributing
> some fairly informal notes to something for Louanna Furbee.  The idea was
> to list verbs that tended to be irregular and might be overlooked, suggest
> what personal forms might not be predictable from others, etc.  To some
> extent, of course, we use Boas & Deloria in that light, though this is
> more because it is so detailed on morphology than because Dakota prepares
> you for everything you might find in the area of Siouan morphology or
> phonology.  Of course, Boas & Deloria isn't much help with syntax and
> Dakota phonology.
>
> I don't think there's much long term point to this sort of meeting if it
> doesn't lead to some sort of publication.  Langacker's volume on
> Uto-Aztecan is a sort of prolegomena to a series of Uto-Aztecan grammars.
> I don't know what the series was ultimately like.
>
> > Although I think it is important to look at how the languages work
> > syntactically as well.  Here I mean things like, how do adverbs work?
> > Does the language allow movement for topic or focus constructions?
> > How do the languages do coordination? etc.
>
> I agree that syntax would be an important part of this.
>
> If people want to meet in Boulder that's fine with me, not to mention very
> convenient.  I'd be willing to help with local arrangements.
>
>