obviation in Siouan languages

[Rory M Larson]

> From what I know about Japanese, case marking in that language is so
messy (especially when it comes to wa) that using it as a template for
describing other languages will inevitably make these look messy too. As
far as I remember, there are so many rules to the use of wa that this
marker is really hard to pin down functionally.

Hmm.  I hadn't thought of Japanese as being particularly messy.  It does
take a certain amount of internalization for us westerners, because their
logical system is so different from what we are used to in European
languages.

>But the specific notion of contrast expressed by double wa does go with
what we see in Lakota, I think, so this is a good analogy.
In case the idea is out there, I would not analyze iNs> a topic marker
though. It is simply a marker for what Wally Chafe once referred to as
'focus of contrast'.

I hadn't meant to imply that iNs^ was a general topic marker, only that it
seemed to mark the second topic used in the equivalent of a double wa type
contrast.  I guess my question would be whether it says: "This is the other
topic that I am raising to contrast with the topic I was referring to a
moment ago"; or whether it says: "I am now presenting a contrast".  Does
iNs^ point to the contrasting topic (Harry, today, Mary), or does it simply
introduce the entire contrasting phrase?  As a possible test, can iNs^ ever
be non-adjacent to the contrasting topic?  Also, can it be used in a ga
type contrast or focus: "It is _Sally_ (ga) who is sleeping; iNs^ _Harry_
(ga) is the one who is watching TV.  (You had them confused)"?

Rory
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