Re: THEORY: Xpositions in Ypositional languages {X,Y}={pre,post}

On 9/24/07, R A Brown <ray@...> wrote:
>
> [snip]
>
> Firstly, as I have pointed out, he says quite explicitly "adpositions
> which occur _or can occur_ inside the noun phrase they accompany"
> [emphasis is mine}. He clearly does not say that it is always inserted
> in the noun phrase.
>
> It would seem to me that you have extrapolated what he says about the
> Australian language Anindilyakwa to inpositions generally. Dryer does
> not do that. Indeed his example from Tümpisa Shoshone is _not_ shown as
> a clitic, nor the adposition _ma_ termed a case marker by Dryer. Indeed,
> it is surely clear from what he goes onto to write, that he does _not_
> consider it a case marker. I quote:
> "Note that the inpositions in Tümpisa Shoshone govern the objective case
> on pronouns, nouns, and their modifiers (though the case is often null,
> as in the noun _ohipim_ 'cold'), as shown on the postnominal modifier in
> (5)."
>
> The postnominal modifier he refers to is _-nna_ which is appended to the
> adjective _natii'iwantü_ 'mean'.
>
> Surely what we have here is what we are familiar with in German,
> Russian, Latin, Greek (both ancient & modern) etc. where nouns etc have
> case markers (i.e. the case endings), and adpositions govern particular
> cases.
>
> As I have said before, I do not see how essentially the Tümpisa Shoshone
> example Dryer quotes differs, in respect to 'inpositions', from Latin
> phrases like: multis cum lacrimis.
The problem I have with the Timbisha example is that adjectives
typically *precede* the nouns they modify in this language (and in its
close relatives Shoshoni and Goshute), but in this example the
modifier (I don't think it's an adjective) is shown to *follow* the
noun. The ending _-nna_, which Dryer (and presumably Dayley) glosses
as an object marker (which it is when appended to nouns), is also a
verb ending which has two functions: i) a nominalizer, and ii) an
aspect marker (some kind of imperfective; tense and aspect are poorly
understood in these languages, in spite of the brave words found in
reference grammars); it is a lot like English _ing_. It makes more
sense to me to see the Timbisha example as containing a nominalized
clause with a null subject; the postposition _ma_ simply comes at the
end of the noun phrase. I read the whole sentence as "He died from a
cold (which was a) mean (one)."

>
> [snip]
>
>  > This still doesn't answer Ray's doubts about the existence of
> inpositions.  But
>  > notice that in Dryer's 1047-language sample he found only 7 languages in
>  > which "inpositions" were the dominant type of adposition.
>
> Even Dryer admits it's a pretty rare animal. But what I said is that I
> do not find his two examples convincing evidence that we need a third
> category of adposition, namely 'inposition.' One would dearly like to
> know a good deal more about the structure of Tümpisa Shoshone and the
> six Australian languages that are claimed to be 'inposition dominant.'
>
> Hopefully, Dirk can shed more light on Tümpisa Shoshone. Do we have
> anyone with expertise in native Australian languages?
I hope what I wrote above was clear; I've been thinking about it all weekend.

Dirk