Query Details
| Query Subject: |
Animacy and Definiteness
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| Author: | Andrew Carnie | |
| Submitter Email: | click here to access email | |
| Linguistic LingField(s): |
Syntax
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| Query: |
Dear Collegues,
I'm looking into the relatedness of definiteness and animacy. Does anyone out there know of a language that overtly marks both (ie has both animacy and definiteness markers) or a language that has both definite determiners yet has a phenomenon that obeys an animacy hierarchy? Many thanks, Andrew For a class of upperclass Japanese college students, I am hoping to 'stretch' their ears a little by having them listen to varying English accents. Taking into account the previous discussions on the list, especially Benji Wald's post titled 'movies/stereotypes' (which points out that rather than making the accents phonetically accurate, they are generally used as a broad brush to mark the characters background) I would still like to make a list of movies that are relatively accessible and have relatively convincing accent portrayals. The goal is not to have them figure out exactly what the difference is between an Alabaman and a Mississippian accent, but just to get some of the broader outlines and, perhaps, pique their interest. I have also noted a previous posting with the subject 'Varieties of English' which suggested some tapes for drama students wanting to learn English accents, which I also hope to make use of. The plan is to use some brief segments in class, thus encouraging the students to watch the whole movie outside class. The university library has a large video collection that can only be used on campus and any recommended videos would be acquired for the library, hopefully avoiding any potential problems with copyright. Also, I'd like suggestions as to two or threeBritish English accents that both have good examples on film and would be useful for showing the range of accents. At the risk of insulting some (hey, you don't have my accent!) I've put together the following list of accents that I'm thinking about. If you are a 'native speaker' of the accent and know of some convincing renderings of these accents on relatively widely distributed films, please let me know. Also, if you know of any films with painfully mistaken renditions of your accent, that would be useful too, as well as any accents that I've left off that have an accurate rendition in some movie. Will post the results to the list. Thank you in advance. List of accents Scottish Irish Australian New Zealand South African Indian Singaporean Jamaican African (finer grained distinctions are welcome) US (southern, New York, Midwest, others?) Canadian Hawaiian English British (suggestions?) Joseph Tomei Kumamoto Gakuen Daigaku Department of Foreign Languages Oe 2 chome, 5-1, Kumamoto 862-0911 JAPAN (81) (0)96-364-5161 x1410 fax (81) (0)96-372-0702 jtomei@kumagaku.ac.jp Dear linguists, Can anyone tell me about a language in which a switch of deixis has taken place in the system of demonstrative pronouns (and adverbs)? I am looking for a language in which the demonstrative denoting proximate deixis came to be used as the one denoting remote deixis and vice versa. If such a language exists does it possess a two- or three-way distinction in its system of demonstratives? Thank you very much in advance. Antje Wendtland University of Goettingen Germany awendtl@gwdg.de |
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| LL Issue: | 9.1462 | |
| Date posted: | 20-Oct-1998 | |
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