LINGUIST List 14.1491

Fri May 23 2003

Qs: Fieldwork; Non-configurational Languages

Editor for this issue: Naomi Fox <foxlinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. Dan Everett, Histories of fieldwork: regional and global
2. Ananda Lima, Approaches to Non-configurationality

Folks,

I am looking for histories of fieldwork in different parts of the
world, e.g. when it began, by whom, what the motivations were, how it
has developed since, and its current status. This is not an exhaustive
list and I know that different accounts will only tell bits of the
whole story. I am interested in either personal or general
accounts. If there is a book, journal, or article that you value
highly as a good resource on the history of fieldwork, I would very
much appreciate hearing from you at my Manchester email address. If
there are sufficient responses, I will post a summary.

Thanks much,

Dan Everett 

I am a linguistics student currently looking at accounts to
non-configurational languages like Walpiri. Non-configurational
languages tend to exhibit a number of properties (e.g.: pronominal
agreement markers, overt case marking of DPs, lack of pleonastic
subjects, discontinuous DPs) which seem to be related to their
(mostly) free-word order (note below). I have been looking at GB/
minimalist approaches (e.g.: Hale 1983, Jelinek 1984, Legate 2002,
Pensalfini In Press), as well as LFG accounts (e.g. Nordlinger, 1998),
which mainly (in a very simplified description of these accounts)
explore the possibility of having the overt DPs which seem to be
arguments being adjuncts (thus freely ordered), while either pro or
pronominal markers occupy the argument positions. I would like to know
if anyone is aware of a categorical grammar approach to the question
or any other literature which may be interesting or add to the
approaches I mentioned.

I will post the results of my query later.

Thank you,

Ananda Lima

Note: this is not directly concerned with scrambling languages like
Japanese, where there is relatively free word order, but where the
order seems to be more clearly derived from a base order.