Re: Ambiguity

Oops. Meant to reply to the list; this only went to Roger. Apologies to
Roger for getting this twice.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Dirk Elzinga <dirk.elzinga@...>
Date: Tue, Jan 6, 2009 at 8:12 AM
Subject: Re: Ambiguity
To: romiltz@yahoo.com


On Sun, Jan 4, 2009 at 10:22 PM, Roger Mills <romiltz@...> wrote:

> In finishing off Prevli Syntax, I've come to a lengthy, complex and rather
> repetitious section dealing with ambiguity in sentences with same-subject 3d
> pers.pronouns, like "he thinks he is sick", "he said that he thinks he is
> sick" and many others. Or, "he asked whether he knew that he had eaten
> rotten meat?"  True, in a discourse, there will probably be context that
> clarifies matters, but in the absence of context, no. One could always stick
> in personal names.
>
> An additional problem that gets a lot of attention is that Prevli has
> inalienable possession, so that in a sentence like "Mary says that she will
> feed the baby", _baby_ MUST carry a possessive suffix, usually -z, so
> "titi-z" 'baby' can mean 'his/her baby' or (in context) 'the baby'. One
> would assume that we mean "Mary will feed (her own) baby", but what if Mary
> is an aunt, a sitter, or just a helpful friend, etc. ?  (The pronoun "she"
> is also ambiguous-- Mary? someone else?) How necessary would it be to be
> absolutely precise in cases like this? Or should we just leave it to our old
> friend "context"?

In Shoshoni, both of these examples are disambiguated by the use of the
pronoun pen(nen),* *which is a sort of reflexive (there is also another
reflexive construction which is similar to the passive and involves a verbal
prefix). For the possessives, the Shoshoni sentences would be:

Mary suten teaippe makatu'i 'Mary will feed her (i.e., not Mary's) baby.'
Mary pennen teaippe makatu'i 'Mary will feed her own baby.'

Unlike others who have posted, I think that--at least in the case of the
obligatory possessives--it is crucial to have a disambiguating strategy, if
for no other reason than to disambiguate the generic use of terms such as
'mother' or 'baby' from specific referents. Navajo has an indefinite
possessive prefix which does this sort of thing.


> There are indeed ways to disambiguate in Prevli, which of course will be
> discussed; but I'm wondering just how many example sentences are worth
> citing, and whether the discussion can be abridged considerably.

That's hard to say without seeing the discussion. Certainly, if you have
examples such as you cited above contrasted with generics and indefinites
that ought to do it ...

Dirk

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