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Re: Questions Concerning Grammar

From:Thomas R. Wier <trwier@...>
Date:Tuesday, August 3, 2004, 15:01
From:    Ben Poplawski <thebassplayer@...>
> > This seems to be a bit like the system I have toyed > > with using. The topic is not marked with its own case, > > and whenever an argument is not explicitly stated in > > the verbal aggreement, the topic is assumed to fill > > that role. This is most apparent with 3rd person > > topics. Thus, > > > > Bob-topic me-give-it-their means They give it to me > > (and Bob perhaps owned or made whatever they gave) > > while, Bob-topic give-it-their means They give it to Bob. > > That's ... strange. First of all, topic languages (that I know of) do not > have proniminal affixes for their verbs. Your first example might work, but > it's not something I've seen.
That's only true of prominent East Asian topic languages like Chinese Korean, or Japanese. It's not true of, say, Meskwaki, or many other discourse-configurational languages. (Depends on exactly what you mean by "topic language" though.) ========================================================================= Thomas Wier "I find it useful to meet my subjects personally, Dept. of Linguistics because our secret police don't get it right University of Chicago half the time." -- octogenarian Sheikh Zayed of 1010 E. 59th Street Abu Dhabi, to a French reporter. Chicago, IL 60637