DPs and Demonstratives

[ROOD DAVID S]

Thanks, Armik -- it's always good to have concrete data instead of
impressions.  Given what you've said, my theory that the DEM is a
resumptive pronoun is clearly called into question, at least for "le" and
in this expression.  I wonder if "he" would behave differently, since
that's the one that's most often used as a third person pronoun.
	I don't think this is relevant to the Dhegiha discussion, however,
since there are too many differences: the whole article system is
different, and the order dem-det is impossible in Lakota but normal there.
	David

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

On Thu, 23 Feb 2006, Mirzayan Armik wrote:

>
>   I'm not sure how much this will help, but I thought I'd send just a note
> about the pitch-accent of these constructions in Lakhota as I've seen them
> in some of my analysis.
>
> I can't say anything too conclusive because I was actually concentrating
> on the pitch accents on other parts of intonational phrase when I did
> some work on the subject.
>
> The piece of data I was working with didn't have too many explicit noun
> phrases that had both the dem and the det, but I do remember running into
> just a couple of cases of [dem N det] and [N det dem].
>
> The one Lakhota [dem N det] construction that I remember was:
>
>     le* aNpe*tu ki osni*yelo
>     this  day   the  it's cold
>     dem   N     det
>
> In this clause the "le" has a rather high and broad pitch peak followed by
> a downstepped peak on the 2nd syllable of the noun. It is a bit hard to
> figure out what the "ki" is doing as it is really short, compressed
> between the noun and the following verb. It seems to almost participate in
> somewhat of an upstep into the verb that comes next. In either case, it
> definitely seems that the ki here is accentually dependent on the material
> around it (as was mentioned by Rory and John). I have a confusion as to
> the actual alignment of the pitch contour with the segmental tier in the
> "ki" region, so I can't say more on it without going back and looking at
> more cases (and with different lenghts of nouns and so on, if I can find
> such examples in the other spoken samples).
>
> As for the [N det dem], I didn't find many cases of this in the
> conversation I had recorded. I found a couple of cases, but the
> intonational pattern seems harder to sort out than the [dem N det] or
> simply the [N det] cases. I have one case with (suprisingly) the same
> noun:
>
>      aNpe*tu ki le ,   chaNte*-washte*ya wache*kiyapi  ....
>      day     the this    with good heart they pray
>      N       det dem
>
> In the opening phrase of this sentence the 2nd syllable of the noun
> "aNpe*tu" has a high pitch peak and one sees a downstepped, gradual
> falling pattern on the ki-le sequence. The whole phrase is pronounced
> together, so there is no pause between the N and the det and there is
> definitely no pause between the det and the dem. That is, ki-le is very
> glued together, and my ear tells me that there is a secondary accent on
> the "le", but if there is one it is a very slight accent (almost invisible
> on the pitch track, which shows a somewhat gradual falling contour over
> the whole ki-le sequence). The /e/ on the demonstrative is lengthened, but
> the speaker has definitely put a phrase boundary after the "le" (which
> I've indicated by the comma above), so I would need different cases, at
> least one without a phrase boundary there and possibly also different
> lengths and accent locations of the N, to say anything more.
>
> Don't know if this illuminates anything, but I'm afraid that's all I have
> for now.
>
> Armik
>
> On Wed, 22 Feb 2006, Koontz John E wrote:
>
> > On Tue, 21 Feb 2006, ROOD DAVID S wrote:
> >> 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.
> >
> > Belatedly chiming in, I think this is definitely the case, and it is
> > certainly consistent with Bob's work deriving most of the Dhegiha articles
> > from the positional verbs:  noun det dem => noun det dem positional (= NP
> > + V) => noun dem=positional.  Perhaps it would make sense in a purely
> > diachronic context to consider the Dhegiha articles as something like an
> > obligatory accompaniment of a now missing noun-final definite article in
> > the Dakota fashion.  They are conditioned by (concordial in definiteness)
> > with this deleted element, and concordial in position/shape with the noun.
> >
> > If this is true, then Dhegiha N dem=det would be expected to match Dakotan
> > N=det dem approximately in functionality, and Dhegiha dem N=det to match
> > Dakotan dem N=det.  I think this is consistant with what you and Rory have
> > both said, i.e., I think you are both treating the posposed dem forms as
> > resumptive and/or appositive.
> >
> > I always thought of the OP N dem=det forms as less marked, but I think we
> > established contrary to my expectations (and without actual statistics)
> > that dem N and dem N=det are actually more common in the texts.  I believe
> > it is possible for dem=det N to occur, or even things like dem=det N=det
> > and N=det dem=det, especially in modern usage.  I have never seen the
> > article (det) before the noun without a preceding dem (or pro, perhaps, in
> > the case of e=) to depend upon.  Like the Dakota definite articles the
> > Dhegiha definite articles are obligatorily enclitic, and the
> > demonstratives are not.  I don't know about pauses and prolongations, but
> > I am pretty sure that the demonstrative is always a new high pitch.  I
> > think dem N has both components accented, too.  I'm not sure about
> > anything like downstepping or other possible indications of phrase
> > structure and whether there is any difference in the two cases.  I
> > completely agree with Rory that the definite article is swallowed up by or
> > accentually dependent upon the preceding element.  It is never a new high.
> >
> > I'm not sure if indefinite articles are enclitic to the preceding element
> > or not.  They never follow a demonstrative, as far as I know.  Dhegiha
> > lacks the elaborate partitive realis coding of indefinites in Dakotan.
> > It does distinguish waN (singular) vs. duba ~ j^uba (plural, plural
> > diminutive).  I'm not sure if duba is partitive as well as plural.
> > There is a sort of "topicalizer" =de that seems to have some properties in
> > common with Dakotan =c^ha, but I'm not sure if it still exists.
> >
> > I'm waiting for clarification and probably some corrections from Ardis and
> > Catherine!
> >
>