LINGUIST List 9.1005

Mon Jul 6 1998

Qs: Valency, Palenquero, Sinhala & Okinawan

Editor for this issue: Brett Churchill <brettlinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. lawson, valency of nouns/nominalisation
2. Ian Mackenzie, Palenquero
3. Paul Hagstrom, Sinhala, Okinawan speakers?

Dear Colleagues,

I am preparing a comprehensive account of recent developments in the field
of "valency of nouns." The account is to be published in the forthcoming
de Gruyter reference handbook on valency. If you have worked in this area,
please pass on any information you have and if you would like to be quoted.

I understand "valency of nouns" in a rather broad sense, and I would like
to deal with related issues as "nominalisation" and "support verbs"
(Funktionsverbgefge) as far as valency issues are concerned. Related
approaches (e.g., constraint grammar) are also welcome.

Yours sincerely,
Wolfgang Teubert
wolfgang.teubertids-mannheim.de

**********************************************
Dr. Wolfgang Teubert
Joyce Thompson (Secretary)
Institut fr deutsche Sprache
Dept. for Lexical Studies
R 5, 6-13
68161 Mannheim

Germany

Tel/Fax: +49 621 1581 415
**********************************************

Does anyone know whether either of the following constructions 
occurs in the Caribbean creole Palenquero?:

(i) 'Predicate Cleft' (with duplication of the predicate), as in 
Papiamentu 'Ta come mi ta come' (literally, in Spanish: 'Es comer 
yo como'; that is (in idiomatic English), 'What I'm doing is eating')

(ii) 'Resumptive pronoun' when the prepositional object of a verb is 
focused and brought to the front of a sentence, as in
Papiamentu 'Ta Wito e ke papia kune awe' (literally, in Spanish, 'Es 
Wito el quiere hablar con el hoy'; that is (in idiomatic English), 
'It's Wito he wants to talk to today')

Any help (and/or references) much appreciated
Ian Mackenzie
Newcastle University

I'm in desperate need of native speaker consultants both for Sinhala
(Sinhalese) and for Okinawan (of the dialect spoken around Shuri). I do
not have too many questions to ask, but the ones I do have are quite
important to my dissertation research on question formation. If anyone
reading this either speaks one of these two languages or knows somebody who
might be able to help, I would greatly, greatly appreciate hearing from you.

Thanks in advance...

 -Paul Hagstrom
 hagstrommit.edu