responses to Tokana comments

Hi folks,

Well, this is my last message before taking off on my 2-week holiday.
Heartfelt thanks to Jim, Brad, Tim, Sally, and Kristian for your kind
words.  To respond briefly to your questions:

(1) How did I get it up so fast?  By working virtually non-stop on it
for 3 1/2 days, time which would have been more sensibly spent working
on my dissertation.  The latter has languished for far too long, but
there it is... :-)

(2) Difference between ellipsis and gapping: This terminological
distinction was introduced by John Cowan in his comments on the TRG, and I
merely carried it over in my reply.  "Ellipsis" refers to the deletion of
a noun phrase in a main clause (almost always the topic) when it is
coreferential with another noun phrase in the same position in an earlier
main clause.  For instance, consider the sentence below:

  Te      homa  pusukena Tsion, lat      te      homa  iasekma
  the:Abs bread made-the John,  and:then the:Abs bread ate-we
  "John made the bread and then we ate the bread"

Since "te homa" occupies the topic position in both clauses, the second
occurrence of this noun phrase may be deleted, or 'elided':

  Te      homa  pusukena Tsion, lat      iasekma
  the:Abs bread made-the John,  and:then ate-we
  "John made the bread and then we ate (it)"

Topics may be elided even when they do not occur in the same sentence as
a preceding coreferential topic, although I don't think I give any
examples of this in the TRG.

  Ne      Tsion itskane inlotka.   Kuoponekma     iasloh.
  the:Abs John  arrived yesterday  talked:with-we today
  "John arrived yesterday.  We talked with (him) today."

"Gapping" refers to the fact that when an argument within an embedded clause
is coreferential with the topic of the same sentence, the former is
obligatorily deleted.  This leads to pairs like the following:

  Inai    Melie    iona uimanna      Tsion
  the:Dat Mary-Dat know love-Dep-the John
  "Mary knows that John loves her"
  i.e. "Mary knows that John loves Mary"

  Inai    Melie    iona uimanna      Tsion ne
  the:Dat Mary-Dat know love-Dep-the John  him/her:Abs
  "Mary knows that John loves him/her"
  i.e. "Mary knows that John loves some previously mentioned person other
        than Mary herself"

The null object in the first example (called a "gap") obligatorily refers
back to the topic, i.e. Mary.  The fact that the object pronoun is overt in
the second sentence means that it *cannot* refer back to the topic, but must
refer to someone else instead.

I hope that makes it clear.  Any additional questions and comments will be
answered when I get back at the end of the month.  In the meantime, happy
Christmas/Hanukkah/Solstice/Kwanzaa/whatever to you all!

Matt.

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Matt Pearson
mpearson@ucla.edu
UCLA Linguistics Department
405 Hilgard Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1543
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