LINGUIST List 4.242

Sun 04 Apr 1993

Qs: Instrumentals, Hearing Parents, Gender, Seychelles

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1. Bhuvaneswari Narasimhan, Instrumental NP's
2. M Lynne Murphy, query: hearing kids/deaf parents
3. Andrew Carstairs-McCarthy, Query: Gender systems
4. , Seychelles Kreol

I am interested in the looking at the alternation of
instrumental NP's between subject, object and adjunct
positions, as illustrated below where the instrument -
"the knife" and "the bullet" - appears in different positions
in the sentence:

John cut the bread with the knife.

The knife cut the bread.

John shot the bullet at the bird.

Any observations relating to this issue would be welcome.
Please send email directly to me. Thanks,

Bhuvana Narasimhan

bhuvanaacs.bu.edu

an undergrad student of mine would like to write a paper on the language
acquisition (oral) of the hearing kids of deaf parents. might anyone out
there have any appropriate references?

thanks in advance,
lynne murphy
u of illinois/urbana-champaign
lynnecogsci.uiuc.edu

I would be grateful for any information or references concerning
gender systems which are relatively *large* (i.e. contain 4 or more
controller genders or distinct agreement patterns) and where gender
is *covert* (i.e. is not overtly marked on controllers in the way it
is in most Bantu languages, usually with alliterative concord on
many of the targets as well). Several languages which (apparently)
are like this are mentioned by Grev Corbett in _Gender_, but more
examples would be welcome.

The reason I ask is that I am exploring to what extent gender
systems may obey some kind of 'economy' or 'no blur' principle
similar to what has been suggested for inflection class systems.

I appreciate that the overt/covert distinction is not clear-cut. In
an Indo-European language such as Latin, the gender of a noun is
often predictable with reasonable or complete certainty from its
morphological characteristics. Nevertheless, concord is not
consistently alliterative or rhyming (contrast _bonus servus, bona
puella_ with _bonus agricola, dux_ etc. and _bona fagus, nox_ etc.),
and for the purpose of this inquiry I would classify Latin gender as
covert.
Andrew Carstairs-McCarthy
Department of Linguistics, University of Canterbury, Private Bag 4800,
Christchurch, New Zealand
Phone +64-3-364 2211; home phone +64-3-355 5108
Fax +64-3-364
 2065

 I am an MA/TEFL student at the American University in Cairo. I am
working on a paper about the language situation in the Republic of Sey-
chelles. Having lived there for three years, and being a non-native
speaker of Seychellois Kreol, I have some insights into the situation, but
when I lived there, I was not "into" linguistics. I am interested in finding
someone through this list who knows anything about the language situation
there (i.e., which languages are used for which functions, attitudes toward
language, dialects of Seychellois Kreol, etc.). If there is anyone out
there who has such information, I would appreciate hearing from you at my
e-mail (BITNET) address:
 JODEEWEGAUCACS

Thanks, in advance!
 JoDee Walters
 The American University in Cairo
 Department of Teaching English as a Foreign Language