DPs and Demonstratives

[Rankin, Robert L]

Then, of course, there's the question whether Siouan has "modifiers" in the Indo-European or Semitic sense.  I think most of us agree that these things have verbal force (or are simply verbs) in Siouan.  

________________________________

From: owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu on behalf of Rory M Larson
Sent: Thu 2/23/2006 1:30 PM
To: siouan at lists.colorado.edu
Subject: Re: DPs and Demonstratives



Bryan wrote:
> Although apposition is certainly something that should be looked at here,
I would issue a word of caution about using this sort of English
translation. In Arabic and Hebrew, for example, in which there is
definiteness concord on adjectives in NP's, teaching grammars often tell
non-Semitic-speakers to think of constructions like

>ha+bayt ha+gadol
>the+house the+big

>as "the house, the big one." This encourages an appositive conception in
the learner's mind. But these constructions are NOT necessarily appositive;
they are simply what is required by Semitic morphosyntax.

That raises an interesting question as to where we draw the line between
apposition and agreement of a modifier with the noun modified.
Indo-European languages have classificatory endings on both nouns and
adjectives that might be analogous to the ha+ in Hebrew, but these are
generally considered modification with concord, not apposition.

Given that ha+bayt ha+gadol is the only way to say "the big house" under
Hebrew rules of morphosyntax, is it necessarily wrong to say that this
grammatical arrangement is apposition?  If the native speaker is actually
thinking in terms that would best translate back into English as "the
house, the big one", wouldn't it be better to call this arrangement
apposition than to subordinate it to the European rule of noun modified by
adjective with concord?

Perhaps one possible test would be: can ha+gadol stand on its own as a
nominal element, meaning "the big one"?

Rory