LINGUIST List 5.68

Thu 20 Jan 1994

Qs: Sound change, French/Korean text, Agreement, Relative clause

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1. , Query: Possible sound changes ( w -> l before low vowels)
2. Jim Frasier, French/Korean text
3. , Query: *These man and woman
4. Nick Nicholas, Relative Clause Accessibili

Does anybody know any examples of such a sound change
(other than in Hopi, which I know about and which is
the reason I am posing the query) or of any theory which
would either predict that such a change is impossible
or else predict that it is possible (in a nontrivial
theory which allows only a small range of possible
sound changes, of course!).

I teach French in high school in Texas. I have a student in one of my
classes whose native language is Korean. I am looking for a French
textbook in Korean at the beginning/intermediate level--the student is
currently in French II. Such a book would be very helpful to her since
she often has trouble understanding explanations and model sentence
translations in English. Thank in advance.

James Frasier Round Rock Independent School District
French Teacher 300 Lake Creek Drive
Round Rock High School Round Rock, Texas 78681
jfrasietenet.edu 1-512-255-2594

Does anybody know of any work which explains why such phrases
are impossible? I myself tend to think that they point to
the inadequacy of the phrase-structure alias constituent
approach to syntax and to the superiority of a dependency
approach, but what do I know.

 Relative Clause Accessibility &Verb Derivatives
In his _Typology and Universals_, William Croft quotes accessibility
in relative clause formation, and promotion of oblique NPs to direct
objects/ direct objects to subjects, as an example of a typological
rule conspiracy with communicative (functional) motivation; he quotes
Givon's research into Austronesian languages to support this.
(_Promotion, accessibility, and case marking: towards understanding
grammars_, _Working Papers in Language Universals_ 19:55-126, 1975).
His conclusion was that "If a language allows relativization of
subjects only, then it has subject-creating verbal derivatives. If a
language allows relativization of subjects and direct objects only,
then it has applicative [object-
creating] verbal derivatives."

Is anyone aware of any further Universals research which confirms or
disconfirms Givon's thesis? I've come across a language where
relative clause accessibility other than for S and DO is dubious, but
which doesn't even have a passive, and am wondering whether this
necessarily means anything. Admittedly, the language in question is
Klingon, so it doesn't exactly threaten the validity of Givon's
posited universal; I'm just wondering whether anyone's aware of any
Terran ;) exceptions to this 'rule'.

Nick Nicholas, Linguistics, University of Melbourne.