Comparative Grammar workshop

[lcumberl at indiana.edu]

I guess I was forming a different notion of our objective - I imagined
collaborative articles that pulled together what each language does with a
particular area, say, post-verbal TAM particles, to provide comparison/
equivalencies across the languages possibly including a consensus list of the
kinds of sentences that can be used to elicit the meanings found in the various
languages. It would be interesting to see where the languages have matching
particles, where there is overlap, and where there are gaps. Continuing with
this one example, many of the TAM particles in Asb have been lost (as is
probably true of a number of the languages we work on) but seeing what is done
in related languages would give a handle on how to look for others, either
through elicitation or by identifying them in older texts. It seems to me that a
comprehensive comparison of even one or two such topics would easily occupy us
for an entire workshop and produce a few very useful articles. 

A project involving a wider range of topics would be an ambitious undertaking -
on a scale that would merit a funded seminar, maybe at the School of American
Research, or through Wenner Gren, or something like that. A workshop with a
limited scope would give us a good start on a couple topics and allow us to
define how a larger seminar might be structured.

Linda



Quoting "R. Rankin" <rankin at ku.edu>:

> > Linda, if you really want to do TAM I'll withdraw my 
> > suggestion to take care of that topic. One of the 
> > reasons why I wanted to do it was that there are, at 
> > least in Lakota, lots of badly underdescribed 
> > auxiliaries involved, but as your mention of syntax 
> > implies, this might be the same in Assiniboine.
> 
> Actually, there are a lot of such things in all the 
> languages.  TAM morphology contains the greatest 
> variety of DIFFERENT inflectional morphemes in the 
> family.  Some, in languages like Tutelo or Biloxi, 
> remain unidentified to this day.  There is no reason 
> why two or more people couldn't cooperate on the TAM 
> topic (or perhaps split it into T, A, and M) and then 
> perhaps divide another topic a different way.  This 
> whole thing is completely open.  Let's don't worry 
> about who does what at the moment.  Trust me, there'll 
> be plenty of fun for everybody.  :-)
> 
> Why doesn't everyone make their own list of topics they 
> would like to see covered and then RANK ORDER them. 
> The organizers can then just amalgamate the lists and 
> submit the result for approval.  Could we maybe 
> accomplish that in the next couple of weeks sometime? 
> Do we need longer?
> 
> And congratulations to Linda!  We all look forward to 
> seeing the finished product of her research.
> 
> Bob 
> 
>