LINGUIST List 10.1559

Tue Oct 19 1999

Qs: Passive/Non-Indoeuropean, Notion of Dominance

Editor for this issue: Karen Milligan <karenlinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. Sonja L Launspach, Non-Indoeuropean passive sentences
2. Marco Antonio Young Rabines, Dominance in Generative Grammar

For a discussion of generative theory in my advanced grammar class we are
talking about passives and the way other languages handle this
construction as a comparision. I am trying to find examples of passives in
non-indoeuropean languages to show my students. Does anyone know of any
off hand that I could use?

thanks 
Sonja Launspach

_______________________________________________________________________
Sonja Launspach
Assistant Professor Linguistics
Dept.of English & Philosophy
Idaho State University
Pocatello, ID 83209
208-236-2478
fax:208-236-4472
email: sllaunsisu.edu

	
	I have some questions on the history of a popular hierarchical relation
	that is part of the formal apparatus of most generative grammars:
	"dominance".
	
	1. Who was the first linguist that employed the term?
	2. Where did the term appear for the first time in linguistics?
	3. What were the formal or mathematical properties that were for the first
	time assigned to this hierarchical relation?
	4. Was the notion of "dominance" created "out of nothing" or was it built on
	a previous concept from another discipline?
	5. Does the notion of "dominance" in early transformational generative
	grammar have some relationship with the notion of "representation" (THE
	LOGICAL STRUCTURE OF A LINGUISTIC THEORY, 1955: 173)? This concept was
	stated as follows:
	
	"The level P is based on a relation of representation which we will denote
	by p ("rho"). This is the relation holding, in English, between NP and
	the^old^man, between Sentence and NP^VP, between the latter and
	John^came^home,
	and between N and John. Tentatively, the converse of p can be read as "is
	a".
	That is,
	
	2. p(NP, the^man) if and only if the^man is a NP.
	The relation p has the following properties:
	3. p is irreflexive, asymmetrical, transitive and nonconnected.
	
	Thus p gives a partial ordering of the strings of P. There is a unique prime
	of P which essentially stands "first" in this ordering. This is the prime
	Sentence (S). S is the unique prime that represents every grammatucal
	string. There are also certain primes that are last" in this ordering, i.e.,
	that bear the relation `p to no string. We will call the set containing just
	these primes and the strings formed from them the set P."
	
	Please respond to venuspeterlatinmail.com. Any hints on this most welcome.
	I shall post a summary.>>
	
	Marco Antonio Young Rabines
	Departamento de Ling��stica
	Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos
	Av. Venezuela s/n
	Lima 1
	Per�