LINGUIST List 6.1417

Fri Oct 13 1995

Qs: Thai grammar, Bantu, Compounds, Generic you

Editor for this issue: Ann Dizdar <dizdartam2000.tamu.edu>

Directory

1. Richard MacMillan, Q: Thai grammar
2. George Aaron Broadwell, Verb classes and Bantu extensions
3. Scott McDonald, Head order in compounds
4. , Generic you

I am looking for a grammar of the Thai language. Does anyone know where to find
one? Thanks in advance.

Richard MacMillan
The MITRE Corporation
Mail Stop Z401
7525 Colshire Drive
McLean, Virginia 22102
USA
email: macmillanai.mitre.org

 I'm a non-Bantuist co-teaching a field methods course on Ruchiga
(Uganda) this semester, and I'd like to ask for guidance from those more
familiar with these languages.

 All the Bantu languages, so far as I know, have a set of verbal
suffixes, generally called "extensions", among which are the applicative,
reversive, causative, reciprocal, stative, etc. However, it is my
impression that the occurrence and interpretation of some of these
extensions arelexically restricted to particular semantic classes of verbs.
For example,
 * it seems that the applicative typically has a different
interpretation with verbs of motion than with non-verbs of motion,
 * it seems the reversive typically occurs with (a subset of?)
accomplishments, but not activities...

 I'd appreciate references to any work on Bantu extensions that tries
to make explicit the lexical semantics behind these verb classes. I'm most
familiar with lexical decomposition approaches like those of Jackendoff and
Beth Levin, but I'm happy to look at references in any framework. Respond
to me personally, and I will summarize the discussion.
- ------------------------------------------------------------------------
George Aaron Broadwell, g.broadwellalbany.edu
Anthropology; Linguistics and Cognitive Science,
 SUNY-Albany, Albany, NY 12222 | 518-442-4711
- ------------------------------------------------------------------------
"I really do not know that anything has ever been more exciting than
diagraming sentences" -- Gertrude Stein

Dear Linguist List readers,

Does anyone know of a source containing a cross-linguistic survey of head
position in compounds? I am looking for as large a language sample as
possible.

Thanks in advance,

Scott McDonald Centre for Cognitive Science
<scottmcogsci.ed.ac.uk> University of Edinburgh
 2 Buccleuch Place
 Edinburgh EH8 9LW

I am a graduate student at Montclair State University currently working on
my Master's Thesis. My topic is something that I call "generic you."
Specifically, I am interested in the use of the second person pronoun to
refer either to the speaker herself or to a general or hypothetical
situation. An example which I recorded during an interview with a friend
was the following:
 V: [...] I love camping.
 T: Why?
 V: Why? Because you're outdoors, everything's like there. You're
 enjoying it, you relax an' you can take off your watch an' not
 know what time it is. An' you look at the sun an' you know when
 it goes down it's night.

Another time this is often used is when someone is describing a house or
apartment.
"You walk in the front door and there's a bathroom to your right. On the
left is the doorway to the bedroom. If you walk further down the hall, there's
a kitchen directly in front of you and the living room is to your left."

Despite an extensive search, I have had difficulty finding any prior studies
of this use of "generic you." I was hoping someone on the list would be able
to lead me in the right direction or suggest specific studies or references
that might prove useful in my research.

Thank you,
Tricia Gilbert
GILBERTPalpha.montclair.edu