Comparative Siouan Grammar workshop

Tue Sep 16 11:35:43 UTC 2008

Dear Siouanists,

as was decided in Joplin, the workshop on Comparative Siouan Grammar (CSG) will take place on June, 11-
12 (i.e. Thursday/ Friday), 2009 in Lincoln, Nebraska. Mark takes care of the local organization at Lincoln, 
John Bolye offered to help me to organize this workshop which will then be part of the annual Siouan and 
Caddoan linguistics conference. 

John and I agree on the question that we have to start with the preparation of this workshop as early as 
possible in order to give the potential contributors a chance to do research for their respective papers. The 
particularity of the contributions of this workshop is that the papers will not deal with a certain grammatical 
category or construction in just one Siouan Language (the one we have some expertise in) but in as many 
SLs as possible. So, this implies that all available published and unpublished sources (inlcuding the 
knowledge and field notes of our fellow Siouanists) have to be consulted to get a comparative view of the 
formal and functional diversity of the respective grammatical phenomenon in the SLs (comprising also a 
historical reconstruction if that is possible). 

So, the first step for the next six weeks would be to arrive at an almost final program for the workshop (by 
the end of Octovber) AND a plan for the contents and structure of the volumes which will emerge from this 
research. Both items have to go hand in hand.

Starting from the list of topics and volunteers which we put together during the Billings meeting in June 2006, 
(John found this list eventually on one of his computers), we would like to present a revised and 
systematized list of topics which is given in the table below. Since I do not know if this table comes out 
correctly on your screen, a pdf version is attached to this mail (which hopefully won't be blocked)

Comparative Siouan Grammar (CSG)

Chapters:
Topics
Authors

Introduction
Overview on common Siouan grammar
?

Noun and noun-phrase 
operations
Overview of the noun and noun phrase
?

Determiners and positionals
?Carolyn Quintero+

Definite and indefinite articles
?

Demonstratives
?

Nominal compounds
?

Nominal possession
?John Koontz

Relative clauses
John Boyle

Grammatical relations 
and valency adjusting 
operations
Overview of the basic patterns of the 
marking of clausal participants
?

Instrumentals
?Bob Rankin

Applicatives (locative, instrument and 
benefactive applicatives)
Johannes Helmbrecht

Causative constructions 
Johannes Helmbrecht

Noun incorporation
William de Reuse

Reflexive constructions
?

Oblique objects/ postpositions in SL
Regina Pustet

Verb and verb-phrase 
operations
Overview of the grammatical categories 
of the verb - form and function 
?

Verb classes in SL
?

Deictic motion verbs 
Linda Cumberland

Pre-verbal and post-verbal morphology 
(template of prefixes/suffixes/enclitics)
Bob Rankin

Active-inactive pronominals (pronominal 
affixes, forms and paradigms throughout 
SL)
?John Koontz

Plural marking 
(plural marking on nouns and verbs) 
?John Koontz

Indefinite absolutive *waa-
John Boyle

Tense/ Aspect marking
Regina Pustet

Modality in SL
Iren Hartmann

Pragmatically marked 
structures
Topic and topicalization constructions
?

Focus marking and focus marking 
constructions
?

Negation 
(phrasal negation and clausal negation)
?

Question word questions (t-words)
Bruce Ingham

Clause combinations
Overview of the grammatical devices of 
clause combining in SL
?

Serial verb constructions
?David Rood

Switch reference and clause chaining
Randy Graczyk

Coordination (AND, BUT, OR)
Catherine Rudin

Adverbial subordination (temporal, 
conditional etc.)
John Boyle & Johannes 
Helmbrecht

The SLs individually
1.
The role model for the 
structure of the individual 
sketches could be the 
sketch by David Rood and 
Allan Taylor  in Vol. 17 of 
the Handbook of North 
American Indians

2.

3.

4.

Etc.

As can be seen, the topics are organized around central issues in grammar, the noun and the noun 
phrase, grammatical relations, the verb and the verb phrase, clause combination and pragmatically 
marked clausal structures. The last row in the table indicates that we intend to provide grammatical 
sketches of the individual SLs. The role model of these sketches could be the one of Lakhota by 
David Rood and Allan Taylor in the Handbook (Vol. 17). We have to discuss this later on.

The topics listed above are certainly different and asymmetric with regard to the amount of research 
needed. Plural marking in nouns and verbs and negation probably require less research and are easier 
with regard to data collection than other topics. For instance, I can imagine that it is pretty difficult 
to collect data and information on topic and topicalization strategies in SLs, since these things have   
not been investigated systematically in our languages. Anyway, the asymmetry of the size of the 
topics should not be a principle problem, everyone is free to volunteer for a second topic if he or she 
has spare time and work resources available. The main problem for the individual contributor will be 
to gather the data and information on the chosen topic from the other languages. We have to admit 
that we put Bob Rankin in the field "Instrumentals" although he has never volunteered for this, but 
since prefixes are his topic we thought .... perhaps.... Other names are also accompanied with a 
question mark, because it is not clear to us whether these people really would take over the topic 
they are assigned to in this list.

Now, what we need to know from all participants in the CSG project is the following:

a) Are there topics which need to be included and which are lacking on this list? (for instance, should 
we add a topic "external possession (?)", which is really important in SLs, or not)

b) Are there suggestions to rearrange the list of topics or to reformulate the titles?

c) Who would like to volunteer for the topics still open (i.e. marked with a question mark) ? (note 
that there are many many free fields...)

d) We would also like to get a confirmation from those people who are already on the list whether 
they still intend to submit a paper with the title/ topic indicated (or a different topic/title). 

e) and finally, who of the volunteers would like to present his or her research on the workshop next 
June? (this question is also addressed to people who gave a presentation already on the workshop in 
Billings - it might be the case that the original paper can be broadened and enriched with additional 
data from other SLs now)

We would like to address another question: is it desireable to create a separate mailing platform 
exclusively for the participants of the CSG project or should we continue to use the Siouan List for 
this purpose. In any case, as soon as we have a complete list of contributions and volunteers, I would 
distribute the e-mail address of the them so that people can communicate directly with the other 
participants in this project (for data exchange etc.).

That's it for the moment. 

All the best (also on behalf of John)
Johannes

--

Prof. Dr. Johannes Helmbrecht
Lehrstuhl für Allgemeine und Vergleichende Sprachwissenschaft
Universität Regensburg
Philosophische Fakultät IV 
Sprach- und Literaturwissenschaft
Universitätsstr. 31
93053 Regensburg
Deutschland

Tel: ++49(0)941 943-3388
        ++49(0)941 943-3387 (Sekretariat)
Fax: ++49(0)941 943-2429
E-Mail:    johannes.helmbrecht at sprachlit.uni-regenburg.de
Webseite: http://www-avs.uni-regensburg.de/index.htm
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