happy news

[Catherine Rudin]

Congratulations to Armik!!!  And to David as well.
Catherine

>>> ROOD DAVID S <David.Rood at Colorado.EDU> 12/1/2010 7:11 AM >>>

I am pleased to announce to everyone on this list that Armik Mirzayan just 
finished his dissertation on Lakota intonation and prosody.  It's been a 
long time in the works, but I am very proud of what he has done.  To me 
the most interesting finding is one that clarifies a long-standing mystery 
for me.  You may know that the question enclitic in Lakota is 
sentence-final /he/, and that the e-ablaut form of the continuous (is 
verb-ing) enclitic is also /he/, though that one is underlying /haN/. 
Speakers always seem to know whether a given sentence is a continuative 
declarative or a question, even though the enclitics are identical.  It 
turns out that questions have a different intonation pattern at the 
beginning of the sentence -- a question starts higher and often realizes 
the highest pitch slightly after the first stressed syllable.  I guess I 
never thought to listen to the beginning of utterance for the clue.
Of course there's a lot more, much of which is of interest to 
phoneticians and intonation specialists rather than just to Siouanists.
The work should be available from UMI on whatever schedule they 
manage.  Armik has lost his connection with this list due to some CU email 
address decision, but I've included his current email in this message if 
you want to write to him.
Best wishes,
David


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