DPs and Demonstratives

[ROOD DAVID S]

Well, dem-det before the noun is absolutely impossible in Lakota, which is
the only one of these languages I know even a little about.  But then,
the order we have is always det-dem anyway.  The evolution of the Dhegiha
articles must be quite different from that of the Lakhota ones.

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:

> >  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,
>
> I was just on the phone with one of our speakers.  I couldn't quite get her
> to offer nu' s^e'akHa for 'that man' on her own, but when I suggested it
> she enthusiastically said that that sounded even better than the
> constructions she had offered.  I got her to say it for me, and also wa?u'
> s^e'dhiNkHe.  Her pronunciation was as I seemed to recall.  I believe there
> is a slight pause/vowel prolongation/drop in volume and maybe pitch,
> between the noun and the following dem-det pair.  I was wondering how it
> would sound if the noun were not accented on the last syllable, so I tried
> nu'z^iNga ('boy'), mi'z^iNga ('girl'), and s^iN'gaz^iNga ('child').  On
> these, she preferred placing the dem-det pair before the noun, as
> s^e'dhiNkHe nu'z^iNga, etc.  Again, there seemed to be a slight pause
> between dem-det and N.  I don't know that I have ever seen this
> construction in the historical literature.
>
> Rory
>