obviation in Siouan languages

[REGINA PUSTET]

> 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.
   
  Right. But the main reason why I called the system "messy" is that more than one Japanese linguist told me that despite the huge amount of literature that is available on the subject, there is no satisfactory description of distribution of wa and ga yet.
   
  > 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?  
   
  My guess is that it cannot. At least I don't have examples of this type.
   
  > 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)"?
   
  In this case, there’s two different pragmatic categories at work: topic (in the sense of “emphasized constituent”) and contrast. This kind of topic is marked via e (cha) in Lakota. I’m not sure whether an e (cha)- constituent can be additionally marked with iNs>, or not.
   
  Regina
   
  

Rory M Larson <rlarson at unlnotes.unl.edu> wrote:
    > 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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