LINGUIST List 4.975

Mon 22 Nov 1993

Qs: Preposition, Analysis, Anthropologist, Russian

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1. Frederick Newmeyer, Preposition stranding (part 2)
2. Paul T Kershaw, Q: Comments on analysis
3. Lew Hassell -- x6380 -- MS L331, anthropologist s/w
4. , Russian yers

Does anybody know of a language that does not allow stranded
prepositions, but was known to have them at an earlier stage in its
history? Or, alternatively, a language that has them now, with evidence
that at an earlier stage it did not have them?

Fritz Newmeyer
fjnu.washington.edu

 I have a foreign officemate who asks me questions about English syntax
(mostly grammaticality judgments; she's still learning). Today she came up
with an interesting pair of sentences, to wit:
 (1) a. Not until we lose our health do we know its value.
 b. Until we lose our health we don't know its value.
It seems to me that the Aux (to use old terminology; I'll switch in a second)
in (1a) MUST be moved, and that in (1b) CAN'T. That is, the examples in (2)
seem ill-formed:
 (2) a. *Not until we lose our health we know its value.
 b. *Until we lose our health don't we know its value.
The question, of course, is why?
 The analysis I gave is roughly this. First of all, it's fairly obvious,
assuming that the AdvP "Until we lose our health" has the same function and
similar relation in (1a) and (1b), that it is the negation in initial position
in (1a) that triggers the inversion (speaking more modernly, the movement of
the agreement features in Infl, perhaps already attached to "do", to Comp).
This suggests (to me) that the Neg element has moved from its position with I"
(perhaps within an NegP daughter of I') into Spec of C".
 My manifold question is this: Has data like (1) been treated at length
anywhere? What do the syntacticians out there think? Are there major problems
with my analysis (probably), and if so, how should we analyze (1a)?
 Reply to me, and if there's interest, I'll post a summary.
Queryingly yours,
Paul Kershaw, Michigan State University, KershawPStudent.MSU.Edu

Some time back I seem to remember talk about one or more field note
organizers specifically for the sorts of notes an anthropologist
would take. Am I crazy? (Don't answer that.) Does anyone know of
such software?

Thanks

Lew

Can someone familar with Russian either answer the following question, or
direct me to the appropriate references? In Phonologica 1988 (= Proc 6th
Intl Phonology Mtg), Jonathan Kaye describes the behavior of yers
(underlyingly high, probably lax vowels) in Russian as follows (pg. 149):

(1) Yers are nonhigh...before a syllable whose head vowel is a yer.
(2) Yers are deleted.

The second statement refers to a yer which hasn't undergone lowering. My
understanding of this process is that in any sequence of two or more yers
(with no other vowels intervening), all but the first yer would disappear;
the description in Spencer's "Morphological Theory" (pg. 102-3) seems to
confirm this. I would like to know whether my understanding is correct.
What happens when three or more yers appear in sequence (in stems and/or
suffixes, but not in prefixes, since the latter introduce complications
that I won't go into here)? Concrete examples would be helpful.

BTW, Kaye refers to a then (1988) unpublished work by Morris Halle entitled
"On the Phonology-Morphology Interface," which might answer my question.
Does anyone know if this has since been published?