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Interrogatives In Yanomám, Richard A. Thiele

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is a general linguistic description of yes-no and information questions in Yanomám (a member of the Yanomami language family of Brazil and Venezuela) in the descriptive/typological tradition, including morphosyntax and semantics, appropriate responses, certain discourse-pragmatic conditions of their use (such as bias and focus), and intonation patterns.

Some things in the Yanomám language that are typologically unusual are an information question system that utilizes just one interrogative word, interaction of temporal-evidential particles with questions, and the occurrence of hortative constructions in questions.

My sources of information include the limited published works and articles on the language, previously unpublished …

Imyan Tehit Phonology, Ronald Gerhard Hesse

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is a description of the phonology of Imyan Tehit, a West Papuan language of Irian Jaya, Indonesia, couched in the framework of templatic syllable theory espoused by Junko Itô. It is based on 18 months (1989-1991) of linguistic fieldwork, in which the author and his family lived among the Tehit of Haha village, learning their language and culture.

Imyan Tehit has a maximal syllable template [CCVVC], obligatory onsets except word-initially, and a rare liquid coda. Syllable onset, nucleus, and coda are shown to be equally autonomous sub-syllabic structures. If they are complex or branching, they attract syllable stress. …

The Great Tone Split And Central Karen, William G. Kauffman

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is a comparative reconstruction of the tones and initial consonants of Proto-Central Karen based on the languages Eastern Kayah, Western Kayah, Geba, and Padaung. Other Karen languages are referred to but not studied to the same detail.

The study focuses on the great tone split that affected nearly all the languages of Southeast Asia, including Central Karen. I show that an understanding of the great tone split is crucial if one is to discover the phonological characteristics of Proto-Central Karen syllable-initial consonants.

In agreement with Haudricourt's (1946) analysis of Proto-Karen, I conclude that Proto-Central Karen had three proto-tones …

A Grammar Sketch Of Dəməna, Cindy S. Williams

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis provides a description of the morphology and syntax of Dəməna, a Chibchan language of northern Colombia. Dəməna is an SOV language with postpositions and genitive-nominal, noun-adjective word orders.

Unusual features of Dəməna include: case marking suffixes which occur as phrasal affixes, a fusion of person marking and deixis in verbal suffixes, and interaction of temporal and special deixis on question suffixes.

Dəməna exhibits more agreement than would be expected. Causative constructions may contain two different direct object person agreement prefixes side by side on a single verb. In cases of advancement to direct object, the same argument may …

Quiegolani Zapotec Phonology, Susan Regnier

Work Papers of the Summer Institute of Linguistics, University of North Dakota Session

From the introduction: "Quiegolani Zapotec (henceforth QZ) words contain initial consonant clusters of two or even three consonants and most of these consonant clusters show a decreasing slope of sonority. This violates sonority constraints proposed by Greenberg in 1978 and further discussed by Bell and Saka (1983). This, however, is understandable when viewed from a diachronic perspective. This will be discussed in section 6.4.

"Further, QZ, like most Zapotec languages, has a lenis-fortis distinction among some of its consonants. However, this distinction is less clear in QZ than in other Zapotec languages and carries a lower functional load."

Role And Reference Grammar, Robert D. Van Valin Jr.

Work Papers of the Summer Institute of Linguistics, University of North Dakota Session

From the introduction: "Role and Reference Grammar [RRG] (Van Valin 1993a) may be termed a "structural-functionalist theory of grammar"; this locates it on a range of perspectives from extreme formalist at one end to radical functionalist at the other. RRG falls between these two extremes, differing markedly from each. In contrast to the extreme formalist view, RRG views language as a system of communicative social action, and consequently, analyzing the communicative functions of morphosyntactic structures has a vital role in grammatical description and theory from this perspective. Language is a system, and grammar is a system in the traditional structuralist …

Goals And Indirect Objects In Seri, Stephen A. Marlett

Work Papers of the Summer Institute of Linguistics, University of North Dakota Session

From the introduction: "A significant group of Seri verbs display a sensitivity to whether a Goal is singular or plural. (I use the term 'Goal' as a cover term for 'Recipients', 'Addressees', etc.) A verb such as [...] 'give', for example, has the subcategorization frame [1 3/Sg]; that is, it accepts only a subject and an indirect object, and the indirect object must be singular. With such verbs, if the Goal is plural, it must appear as a relational noun phrase (an Oblique).

"The data which appear in this paper of typological interest. I argue that Seri has Indirect Objects, …

Obligatory Dative Clitic Doubling In Spanish, Karol Joy Hardin

Work Papers of the Summer Institute of Linguistics, University of North Dakota Session

From the introduction: "This study investigates the phenomenon of obligatory dative doubling, examining data based upon a critique of two analyses of clitic doubling in Spanish within different grammatical frameworks. Previous analyses propose that dative clitic doubling is obligatory whenever the NP in indirect object position is not a semantic Recipient/Addressee (Goal). J. Albert Bickford's (1985) proposal within Relational Grammar and Osvaldo Jaeggli's (1982) account within Government and Binding are two representative analyses of the phenomenon which argue that conditions for doubling are based upon the thematic role of the superficial indirect object NP. Due to an incomplete corpus of …

Seri Kinship Terminology, Mary B. Moser, Stephen A. Marlett

Work Papers of the Summer Institute of Linguistics, University of North Dakota Session

From the introduction: "The Seri language contains over fifty kinship terms, and as such represents one of the most highly elaborated kinship systems described to date. A list of these terms was given in Kroeber 1931, although Kroeber's list was (understandably) incorrect in certain ways. Our discussion of the Seri kinship terminology centers around, but is not limited to, the set of obligatorily possessed noun stems which are inflected with the following possessive prefixes. [...]

"This paper is organized as follows. In Section 2 we discuss various kinds of terms which, although used to refer to kinsmen, are special in …

The Binding Properties Of Quechua Suffixes, David J. Weber

Work Papers of the Summer Institute of Linguistics, University of North Dakota Session

From the introduction: "This paper sketches an explicitly non-lexicalist application of grammatical theory to Huallaga (Huánuco) Quechua (henceforth HgQ). I hope to demonstrate the advantages of applying the binding theory to many suffixes that have previously been treated only as objects of the morphology. This is possible only if morphology and syntax are more intimately related than allowed under the lexicalist hypothesis.

Section 2 outlines some basic assumptions (categories, structures, Case assignment, θ-marking, etc.) Section 3 discusses inflection, proposing an analysis of SUBJECT MARKING ANOMALY phenomena. Section 4 argues that HgQ's complementizers are really its case-marking suffixes. Section 5 deals …

Front Matter For Sil-Und Work Papers Vol. 37 (1993)

Work Papers of the Summer Institute of Linguistics, University of North Dakota Session

No abstract provided.