DPs: I got it backwards

[Rory M Larson]

David,

This is a very interesting idea you are raising, but I wonder if you could
clarify it a little by offering interlinear example sentences, with
bracketted clauses labeled.

If I am following you correctly, you propose two grammatical categories of
functional morphemes that qualify or constrain noun phrases in Lakhota.
Category 1 is the set of 'specificity' markers (he/le/ka), which have also
been called "demonstratives".  Category 2 is the set of 'definiteness'
markers (ki/waN/cha/eya/etaN, etc.), some of which  may also be called
"articles".

To make a sentence conveying the information "The boy who saw the horses
told us about them", three assertions are implied:

1. There was a certain boy;

2. He saw the horses;

3. He told us about them.

In Lakhota, this works out to something like:

  Hoks^i'la waN he   s^uN'kawakHaN' wic^a[saw]  ki  [he.told.us].
  Boy       a   that horses         he.saw.them the  he.told.us.

(My Lakhota, of course, is rusty!  Please correct!)

The article/definiteness-marker (waN, ki) ties tightly to the end of the
preceding material to wrap it up into a noun phrase.

  [[Hoks^i'la] waN]
  [A [boy]]

  [[Hoks^i'la waN he   s^uN'kawakHaN' wic^a[saw] ]  ki]
  [The [boy who saw the horses]]

Its order is fixed.

The demonstrative/specificity-marker (he) is more loose in where it
appears.  It can function either as a noun modifier (like Japanese sono) or
as a representative of the noun phrase itself (Japanese sore).  In this
respect, it is bi-functional, like the English word 'that'.  ("Did you see
that horse?" vs. "Did you see that?")

In the construction above, the function of the demonstrative he is
arguable.  There are two possibilities:

1. It modifies the preceding NP as "that (newly introduced) boy".

2. It is a stand-alone noun representative placed in apposition to the
preceding NP as "A boy, he saw the horses..."

>            There are also a lot of cases where the sequence N+ki+dem
looks as
> if the "dem" were really some kind of resumptive pronoun, kind of like
> "the boy, he told us about it".  I have no solid evidence for that
> intuition, however.

That would fit with possibility 2.  I have the same intuition, both about
Lakhota he and OP e.  I think the "resumptive pronoun" construction may be
a common grammatical feature in these languages.

Is the above discussion a fair paraphrase of your argument?

Best,
Rory