LINGUIST List 5.201

Tue 22 Feb 1994

Qs: Chipewyan; Affect; Body language; Linguistics; Spanish

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Directory

1. Steven Schaufele, query on Chipewyan enclitic conjunction(s) -u
2. Elina Savino, affect/emotion
3. , Query: Body Language
4. , What Linguistics is About
5. , Qu: Spanish Corpora

I was just reading a recent issue of Folia Linguistica (vol. 26/3-4, 1992) in
which Eung-Do Cook, in a short note (pp. 467-470) 'Polysemy, Homophony, and
Morphemic Identity of Chipewyan -u', reports three distinct functions served in
 the Chipewyan language by (homophones of) the enclitic conjunction -u.

One of these is to conjoin clauses within a sentence.

(1) a. Pit taga heya-u, Ju dechen yaghe ts'en heya ni
 Pete by-water walks-& Joe bush in to walks (past)
 'Pete walked along the water, and Joe walked into the bush.'

 b. Ts'enidher ni-u nathesti k'i
 i-wake-up (past)-& i-dream (emph)
 'I woke up and it was only a dream.'

Another function is to mark yes-no questions.

(2) a. Lidi natser-u?
 tea strong-u
 'Is the tea strong?'

 b. Tu baidhi-u?
 water you-want-u
 'Are you thirsty?'

(Cook notes that -u is not used with other types of questions; presumably,
these have wh-elements or other interrogative markers.)

And Cook cites a third function, which hann calls 'enumerative'. In a list of
more than two items, each item will be marked with -u (sandhi has been undone).

(3) ilaghe-u, nake-u, taaghe-u, dii-u, ...
 one-& two-& three-& four-&
 'one, two, three, four, ...'

In a list of only two items, the enclitic conjunction apparently need only
appear once.

(4) Pit tani bek'ike ilaghe ts'ekuaze-u nadene deneyuaze
 Pete 3 his-siblings 1 girl-& 2-people boy
 'Pete (has) three siblings, one girl and two boys.'

Cook notes that other conjunctions in Chipewyan are not enclitic and can only
conjoin items in pairs.

Cook regards these three functions as distinct, and concludes that -u is the
common phonological representation for three distinct morphemes. I, on the
other hand, see a suggestion of a common thread amongst them. In all cases
exemplified by Cook, -u signals a semantic incompleteness, the approach of
something further. In the case of clausal conjunction, -u signals that the
clause may be syntactically complete (i'm not sure this is, in fact, the case,
since in the examples Cook gives the first clausal conjunct seems to be lacking
 any kind of tense marker, which from what little i know about the Athabaskan
languages ought to be obligatory), but that a further proposition or
predication is to be made. In yes-no questions, the presence of -u signals
that the clause may be syntactically complete but that a response is
pragmatically required. And in what Cook calls the enumerative function -u
signals (repeatedly) that there is more to come, or at least that the sequence
is (potentially) open-ended.

Am i missing something? Or is there really a common thread to these functions
of -u? And if there is, in what sense can or should we claim that these
functions are distinct and their phonological encoding(s) merely homophonous?

(As a Sanskritist, i can't help being amused by the parallel between the fact
that Chipewyan has an enclitic conjunction -u and the fact that Vedic Sanskrit
did too, as described in Jared Klein's 1978 monograph The Particle _u_ in the
Rigveda: a Synchronic and Diachronic Study, Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.
 There are obvious differences, of course; most importantly, the Vedic u
conjoins only clauses, while the Chipewyan u can apparently conjoin NPs as
well. And, of course, this is pure coincidence; no one's suggesting a genetic
link between Sanskrit and Chipewyan on the basis of one enclitic.)

--
Dr. Steven Schaufele fcoswsnytud.hu
Room 119
Research Institute for Linguistics (Department of Theoretical Linguistics)
Hungarian Academy of Sciences (Eotvos Lorand University)
P. O. Box 19
1250 Budapest
Hungary

Dear LINGUIST netters,

few days ago, I was discussing with some collegues about the difference
between affective and emotional attitudes in communication. One of them
argued that there is no difference at all, while another one and me claimed
there there is a difference, consisting in the "awareness" of the first one
(in interacting with you, I WANT to show you my attitudes towards you) with
respect to the second one. Am I right?
I would like to know much more about the subject, then any suggested
readings are also welcome.
Later, I'll send a summary to the list.
Thank you very much in advance.

 Michelina (Elina) Savino
 Universitaet des Saarlandes
 Saarbruecken - Germany

 I am posting this at the request of a colleague, a political
 scientist interested in group decision-making processes:

 "Who could give me some good advice about research on the role
 of the physical body in framing the meaning of communications?

 "I've run some experiments in which some subjects could see each
 other as they worked on a common problem, and others could not. It
 turns out that this difference affected the solution methods they
 learned.

 "I could use some guidance to literature that might be relevant
 and, if possible, people who read e-mail to discuss it with."

Please respond to me (jlawlerumich.edu); I will forward responses,
and if appropriate summarize for the list.

John Lawler Program in Linguistics University of Michigan

I will be giving a seminar in Philosophy of Linguistics next year. The
two central topics are:

a. What linguistics is about (Possible answers: minds, brains,
communities, behaviour, abstract mathematical systems, etc.)

b. Psychological Reality and Indeterminacy

I have lots of readings to choose from by philosophers (Quine, Davidson,
Putnam, Pylyshyn, Fodor, Katz, Soames, Bromberger, George, Higginbotham,
and others); but I'd like to include more papers by linguists. I'm
particularly interested in to-the-point articles on what linguistics is
about. Suggestions?

Thanks in advance,
Rob

 --
Robert Stainton -- Philosophy -- Carleton University
rstaintoccs.carleton.ca

 We are posting this query in order to gather information on
existing (commercial or private) computerized corpora (annotated
text, dictionaries ...) and related software (parsers, taggers,
concordancers...) FOR SPANISH, as well as information centers, data
sources... In brief, anything related to electronic corpora that
might be useful for the study of Spanish. Our aim is to create a
Catalog of Spanish Corpora and Related Resources, that will be
available through anonymous ftp when completed. We have started our
search with Edwards' 'Survey of Electronic Corpora and Related Resources'
in Edwards, Jane A. & Martin D. Lampert (eds). TALKING DATA:
TRANSCRIPTION AND CODING IN DISCOURSE RESEARCH. As a first step,
we are especially interested in, in order of priority:

 i) name of corpus/software
 ii) Compilers and/or project coordinator (if under
 development)
 iii) Available through ...
 iv) Content description
 v) Availability status: for free, for academic research
 only,etc / price
 vi) References
 vii) Miscellaneous

We would greatly appreciate your help. Please, address your
answers to:

 Mila Ramos milaguvax.georgetown.edu
 Jorge Baldizon baldizojguvax.georgetown.edu
 Dpt. of Linguistics
 Georgetown University