DPs and Demonstratives

[ROOD DAVID S]

 The "comma-like" pause (which probably entails pitch changes as well as
just a pause) is exactly what I would expect if this is a two-part
construction.

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

On Tue, 21 Feb 2006, Rory M Larson wrote:

> > Rory,
> >            Are there any intonational clues, e.g. a separation of N from
> > dem-det that doesn't occur with n-det alone?
> >            David
>
> That's a good question, to which I wish I had a better answer.  The N
> dem-det construction occurs occasionally in the 19th century historical
> literature, and I'm sure our speakers have not objected to constructions
> using it, but off the top of my head I can't recall them ever using it
> spontaneously.  N dem-det may be a device for packing information into
> complex sentences, which do not seem to be much used anymore, at least by
> our speakers.
>
> What I think I can say is that in both N-det and dem-det constructions, the
> first element is sharply accented, with the -det very de-accented and
> almost swallowed by the preceding element, as it were.  The relationship of
> -det to its preceding element is apparently very tight.
>
> ((Thinking about it a little bit more, perhaps I do recall the intonational
> pattern of some speaker-originated N dem-det constructions, but I'd like to
> make what I say very tentative until I can confirm it.  I THINK I have
> heard such phrases as "Nu' s^e'akHa" or "Wa?u' s^e'dhiNkHe", in which there
> seems to be a tiny bit of dead space, or prolongation of the accented final
> vowel, at the end of the noun before the demonstrative, which itself is
> sharply accented as usual.  The effect might be like putting a comma after
> the noun.  Again, don't take this impression of mine too seriously yet.
> I'll aim to keep this question in mind in future sessions with our
> speakers.))
>
> Perhaps other Dhegihanists can weigh in on this?
>
> Rory
>