LINGUIST List 6.95

Mon 23 Jan 1995

Qs: SALA XVII, German `tschu"s', syntax & memory, "futurate"

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1. "Dennis.Preston", 6.78 Confs: SALA XVII Conference
2. Allan C Wechsler, Q: German `tschu"s'
3. Gisbert Fanselow, syntax & working memory
4. Bertinetto, "futurate" progressive

Can anyone help me with the e-mail address of Bob Berdan at CSU Long Beach? He
is not on the lists I have consulted.
Thanks,
Dennis Preston
(22709mgrmsu.edu)

Does anyone know the etymology of German (tschu"s), "g'bye", "see you
later"? My current guess is that it's from British English "cheers",
but this is based on no historical data whatever.

Please CC Larry Trask (larrytcogs.susx.ac.uk) in any replies.

Are there any languages which allow constructions of the following types:

 Assigner-1 Assigner-2 Receiver-3 Receiver-2 Assigner-3 Receiver-1
 Receiver-1 Receiver-2 Assigner-3 Assigner-2 Receiver-3 Assigner-1

Let me try to explain what I have in mind. Syntactic relations typically
consist of an assigner and a receiver, thus, the subject would be the receiver
of nominative Case and Infl or the verb the assigner of this Case. In those
cases where there is no natural interpretation for the
assigner-receiver-distincion,
the terms can be used as well (e.g. in who does she see trace, we might say
who is the assigner (of whatever thing) and the trace the receiver).

The contrast in parsability between

 the man the woman saw came in
 the man the woman the child loves saw came in

suggest that a sequence
 receiver-1 receiver-2 receiver-3 assigner-3 assigner-2 assigner-1
 the man the woman the child loves saw came in

is hard to parse. For reasons which I am willing to explain to anybody who is
interested, it would be extremely helpful to see whether the above
mentioned sequences of assigners and receivers are easy to parse or not. An
answer would, it seems, tells us a lot about the nature of the restrictions
imposed
on parsing by the working memory. But, unfortunately, corresponing examples
are very hard to construct for German or English. So if anybody knows about
a language in which such constructions occur, I'd appreciate it a lot if he/she
would let me know.

Gisbert Fanselow, Linguistics Dept., Univ. of Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany
fanselowhp.rz.uni-potsdam.de
Gisbert Fanselow

As is well-known,the English progressive may be used also with "futurate"
meaning, as in:
- I am leaving tomorrow.
Does anybody know if there are other languages where the progressive can
have a truly "futurate" meaning, as distinct from a merely "imminential"
meaning (as in: "the train was leaving")? If other languages present this
feature, does the Present tense necessarily have a "habitual-generic"
meaning?
A situation of this sort seems to be observed in Kinyarwanda. Is that
correct? Are there other examples?
Your answers to:
bertinetcibs.sns.it
I shall summarize them in a future message. Thanks.
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