DPs and Demonstratives

[shokooh Ingham]

Interesting point about the Hebrew and Arabic
constructions.  I have often referred to this as
'apposition' in Arabic, but as you say it is more
general than apposition in say English and is in fact
the general way of arranging coreferent nouns together
whether we would call the second one an adjective as
in al-bet al-kabir 'the house the big' ie 'the big
house' or where we would call the second a noun as in
al-walad al-shaikh 'the boy who is a shaikh' or 'the
shaikh boy, boy-shaikh'.  The point is in Arabic that
this differs from the other structure, the possessive
or attributive one, where the two are not coreferent
as in walad al-shaikh 'the boy (son) of the shaikh' 

Bruce
 --- Bryan Gordon <linguista at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 2/22/06, Rankin, Robert L <rankin at ku.edu> wrote:
> >
> > The DEM-DET NOUN just isn't possible as a single
> constituent in Kaw, and,
> > I suspect in Dhegiha generally, at least in
> Dorsey's day.  And I never
> > recorded anything like that either in the '70's. 
> So I think Rory's original
> > statement that these are "appositives" or
> renewed-mention constructions must
> > be what is responsible for what he got over the
> phone with DEM-DET preceding
> > the N.  I'd render it "That one, the man" or "That
> one, the woman", etc. in
> > English, where "man/woman" clarifies what "that
> one" is referring to.
> 
> 
> 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.
> 
> - Bryan Gordon
> 
> "That man" or "that woman" would, I think, have to
> be [[DEM] [wo/man DET]]
> > or [[wo/man] [DEM-DET]], with the latter possibly
> having appositive-like
> > properties also.
> >
> > Bob
> >
> > ________________________________
> >
> > From: owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu on behalf of
> ROOD DAVID S
> > Sent: Tue 2/21/2006 6:21 PM
> > To: siouan at lists.colorado.edu
> > Subject: RE: DPs and Demonstratives
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > 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
> > >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> 



		
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