Comparative Siouan Grammar workshop

Tue Sep 23 20:24:29 UTC 2008

Johannes, John et al.,

The organizational chart looks good to me.  I am happy with the affix/clitic sections assigned to me and will be happy to try to address the instrumental prefixes also, as you suggest.  I have already done reconstructions of these, so notes on their relative positions, uses, etc. are what is left for me to work on.  The suffixes/enclitics will take the most time and effort.

I would suggest that your first topic, "Overview on common Siouan grammar" be postponed until the other chapters have been written and presented.  Then someone could summarize the conclusions.

Somewhere it was suggested that there be a survey of the sound correspondence sets for Siouan.  John Koontz some years ago sent me a copy of such a survey in chart form that he had compiled.  With a little discussion, it would be ideal, and he would be the ideal person to do it, if you can break him away from his other responsibilities.  

In light of our earlier discussion, with its mild disagreements, on the relationship between this volume and linguistic theory, I'd like to suggest a second volume of studies.  The first vol. would be the one we are presently working on -- intended for language specialists and as theory-neutral as we can make it using our own best judgment.  The second volume would be aimed specifically at general linguists (theorists/typologists) and would address "implications of Siouan linguistics for linguistic theory and typology."  There are already a number of exceptional characteristics that make Siouan languages special and interesting to theoreticians.

The status of adjectives/stative verbs in Siouan. (modified nouns as mini-rel. clauses, etc.).
Reduplication patterns in Siouan (yamni/yamnimni, etc.).
Status of nasal sonorants as universals.
Clausal incorporation and the limits of incorporation (as in Crow).
Phonetic obstruents as phonological sonorants (b, d, g; m, n, ng; w, r, l).

Those are just a few I can imagine off the top of my head.  Those with a more formal bent will be able to think of many more.  Such contents would be very different from the "Handbuch" type of thing we're working on right now.  But both slants are very important.  

That's it for now.  I'll be happy to try to provide answers to questions re Kansa and Quapaw.

Bob

________________________________

From: owner-siouan at lists.Colorado.EDU on behalf of Prof. Dr. Johannes Helmbrecht
Sent: Tue 9/16/2008 6:35 AM
To: siouan at lists.Colorado.EDU; jpboyle at uchicago.edu
Subject: Re: Comparative Siouan Grammar workshop

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
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93053 Regensburg
Deutschland

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