Re: Miapimoquitch text: Eye Juggler (long)

On Thursday, January 22, 2004, at 05:22  PM, Tim May wrote:

> Dirk Elzinga wrote at 2004-01-21 08:31:15 (-0700)
>> Hi everyone.
>>
>> So this is where the rubber hits the road (as my dad would
>> say). I've been hinting around for a while now about the changes
>> I've made to Miapimoquitch. Well, I spent the day yesterday
>> translating a text -- it's a version of the Great Basin story "Eye
>> Juggler".
>
> Masterful work.  I'm always pleased to see Miapimoquitch material.  I
> have some questions.
>
> Questions about the first clause:
>
>>
>> 1.  [s1'piD1 ?i ?a'p1ja j1'hamm1Ga "1s1'p1G1~: ?i ?a'taBun1]
>>      sepite i apeya ehammeka esepeken i atapune
>>
>>      se-    pite i   a=  peya   e=  hamme  -ka
>>      3poss- see  OBL DS= Coyote SS= play:U -UN
>>
>>      e=  se-    <Vk>   pen   i   a=  tapune
>>      SS= 3poss- <COLL> child OBL DS= Cottontail
>>
>>      Coyote saw Cottontail's children playing.
>>
>> Experiencers are expressed as possessors in predicates of sensory
>> perception and cognition ("psych predicates"). Psych predicates are
>> syntactically intransitive as are other possessive expressions; the
>> possessor can appear as an adjoined oblique predicate, as is the
>> case with _peya_ 'Coyote' and _tapune_ 'Cottontail'.
>>
>
> It took me a while to understand this, and I'm not entirely certain I
> grasp it even now.  What I understand you to have here is a series of
> three intransitive predicates linked by the same-subject relation:
>
> seen - playing - children
>
> [I write "seen" rather than "see" as the subject, if I'm following
> this, is the experienced party rather than the experiencer]
Right ...

> with oblique, different-subject possessors attached to the first and
> third.  Do I have this right?
Yes.

> Now, you mention that possessive expressions are syntactically
> intransitive - are the oblique possessor arguments then optional?
Yes, they are.

> If
> so, what would "sepite ehammeka esepeken i atapune" mean?  What about
> "pite ehammeka esepeken i atapune"?  Are these valid sentences?
The first would be '(He) saw Cottontail's children playing'; there is
an implied third person subject when there is no overt person marking
on the predicate. The second sentence would be '(He) saw his children
playing.' Since neither implied 'he' nor 'his' is a subject, there is
no way to tell if they are coreferential or not (switch reference is
only sensitive to subjects), so there is a potential ambiguity between

He[1] saw his[1] children playing.

and

He[1] saw his[2] children playing.

> Does _pen_ show the same ambiguity between "offspring" and "juvenile"
> as English "child"?
No. There is a lexical suffix _-ttsi_ glossed 'young, diminutive' which
is intended to refer to the young of a species. The word _pen_ is
restricted to offspring, but only when young. There are separate words
for 'son' and 'daughter' which can be used for adult offspring as well
as children.

Dirk
--
Dirk Elzinga
Dirk_Elzinga@byu.edu

"Speech is human, silence is divine, yet also brutish and dead;
therefore we
must learn both arts."                                      - Thomas
Carlyle

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