LINGUIST List 13.1744

Thu Jun 20 2002

Qs: Copula/American Eng, Inflection Patterns/DP/NP

Editor for this issue: Karen Milligan <karenlinguistlist.org>



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Directory

  • Brenda Guo, Copula in Spoken American English
  • Michael Hughes, Inflection patterns in the DP/NP

    Message 1: Copula in Spoken American English

     Date: Wed, 19 Jun 2002 10:40:10 +0000
    From: Brenda Guo <Research139aol.com>
    Subject: Copula in Spoken American English


    I am looking for syntactic and/or pragmatic explanations for constructions like the examples below taken from spoken American English. If any of you have read anything about this type of sentence where a form of the copula appears twice, or even have thought about it for that matter, I would love to hear what you've found.

    Example 1:

    Speaker A: "We have items such as Ferrari wine, Ferrari Golf clubs, and Ferrari Mont Blanc pens in our boutique which are really big sellers at Christmas." Speaker B: "People buy those things as Christmas gifts?" Speaker A: "The thing is is people who are into cars are really into cars."

    Example 2:

    Speaker C: "There is a great web site you and your listeners should take a look at. You can find it at [web address given]. Can you guess what that site is about?" Speaker D: "I'd guess it offers free computer games." Speaker C: "What it is is it is developed applications for computers similar to parental control type software or other content filtering programs."

    Subject-Language: English; Code: ENG

    Message 2: Inflection patterns in the DP/NP

     Date: Wed, 19 Jun 2002 18:54:04 +0000
    From: Michael Hughes <hughesling.ucsd.edu>
    Subject: Inflection patterns in the DP/NP


    I am curious to know which categories in the DP/NP are most often inflected for gender, case, and number, cross-linguistically. In particular, I would like to know about the relative frequency of concord marking on the determiner, adjective, and noun. What patterns are attested? Are there languages that exclusively mark one of these categories? Is it ever the case that the adjective is the only lexcial category that is marked for gender/case/number? Is marking the determiner more or less typical than marking the head noun? References in this regard would be greatly appreciated. Beyond that, if you would care to send, directly to me, a summary of concord patterns in the language(s) you are familiar with, I would be happy to post a summary.

    Many Thanks, Michael Hughes