LINGUIST List 11.2350

Mon Oct 30 2000

Qs: Socioling/Modern Romania, Quotative Inversion

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

Directory

1. Oanagu, Language change in contemporary Romanians
2. Chris Collins, Quotative Inversion

Dear Linguists,

I am studying sociolinguistics aspects of Contemporary Romanian, as
the use of the language by the media, internet, and other "new"
technologies and techniques, the attitudes language change induces
among politics, media, linguists, writers and common people.

I have looked for similar topics before anything else, and I didn't find any 
interesting information. Language change in contemporary Romanian (since 
1989) is a very recent and difficult sociolinguistic subject, for me as for 
all east european linguists facing change in their language after the fall of 
"communist" societies, so I am not surprised not to find much about it. 


I'm afraid I cannot be more specific because my area of study is emerging 
while I'm studying it, and I am genuinely interested about anything having to 
do with language change related to social change, and especially to 
contemporary change in post-communist east european countries.


Thank you for your collaboration,

Oana GULEI

Dear Editors,

This is a question for the Linguist List:


I am interested in whether languages other than English show the 
transitivity constraint in quotative inversion.
This constraint is illustrated below:

	(1)	a.	"I am so happy," Mary said to John
		b.	"I am so happy," said Mary to John

	(2)	a.	"I am so happy," Mary told John
		b.	*"I am so happy," told Mary John

	(3)	a.	"What is the exchange rate?" Mary asked of John
		b.	"What is the exchange rate?" asked Mary of John

	(4)	a.	"What is the exchange rate?" Mary asked John
		b.	*"What is the exchange rate?" asked Mary John

	As the data in (2b) and (4b) show, a verb in a double object construction 
cannot undergo quotative inversion.
I am interested in finding other languages that show a similar pattern. I 
suspect that languages with a productive V/2
strategy will not have the transitivity constraint, since QI in those 
languages should also trigger V/2. I will post a summary
of the responses that I receive.

Chris Collins
cc42cornell.edu