Re: Focus, interrogatives

BTW - don't reply too promptly - I'm off early tomorrow to 'La Belle
France' for couple of days.  And I hate to think how many emails will be
waiting in my 'post-box' on Saturday ;)

At 11:52 am -0700 1/6/99, Sally Caves wrote:
>This is a very confusing answer to your very generous suggestions
>for topic, comment, and focus.   I've spent an hour on it already,
>and damn it all, missed my eye appointment, and will just have to
>send it as is.
Sorry about the eye appointment.

I'll try to work through your answers.  However, before doing so, it might
be as well to bear in mind one or two things Matt said (since
he's the only qualified linguist among us three, I believe):

"-- If a language is strictly verb-final (SOV, OSV), then there is a
somewhat less strong tendency for it to be strictly wh-in-situ.  I've
read about a dialect of Quechua (SOV) which has wh-fronting, but otherwise
all of the strictly verb-final languages I know of (Japanese, Korean,
Turkish, Hindi, etc.) have wh-in-situ."

"Semantically, interrogatives don't really pattern with either Topic or
Focus, but *syntactically* they clearly pattern with Focus. "

"What all this means for wh-questions in Teonaht I'm not sure.  Since
Teonaht appears to be pretty strictly verb-final, the typologically
realistic thing to do would be to have interrogatives occur either in
their original position, or else immediately before the verb complex
(perhaps immediately before tense marker)."

The first & second quote seem to me to confirm what I understand is your
original idea, i.e. to have the interrogative preceed the verb complex,
which is what I also favored in my previous email.

The middle quote reminds us that although syntactically they pattern with
focus, since they are prompted the replier to provide focus, *semantically*
they don't really pattern with focus or topic.  And, as I pointed out,
there are many natlangs - including our own - which has quite a different
position in the sentence for focus and for interrogatives.

OK.

.....
>
>Christophe had suggested in a previous post that I keep the
>interrogative
>element in the same position its answer would be in the responding
>question.
Yes - some languages do - but so many do not.  Most European languages,
e.g. do not do this.

>And I had suggested that the interrogative element should be in the same
>place that a declarative sentence would put it:
>
>        For his birthday his sister to him a book she gave.
>
>Actually, this is a bad Teonaht sentence.  The classic sentence, I mean
>one that doesn't have a particular focus, allows two things to be
>fronted:
>Either the direct object, or the subject.  Oblique objects are always
>put in the middle.  I've been making this a rule for about a year.
Ok - we're take that as settled - that the 'basic' sentence with no strong
focus.

> So:
>
>        A book to him for his birthday his sister gave    is acceptable.
>                Formal OSV structure: articifial and literary.
>
>So is:  His sister a book to him for his birthday she gave.
>                Less formal and more *natural* SOV structure.
>                Note that the pronoun has to be repeated to
>                preserve the "formal" insistance on OSV.
>
>
>What the subtle differences between these two are I have yet to figure out.
>(I am beginning to think like a Teonivar... that was OSV!)
>I have been explaining it to myself in terms of high and low speaking,
>as well as fiddling with focus and comment.
From your earlier comments, it looks much more like difference in formal &
informal styles, than anything else.

I think it gets confusing thinking around focus and comment.  They are two
separate idea.  'Comment' contrasts with 'topic' and is simply what is
topic.  'focus' is found, if the sentence has one, as part of the comment:
the part that focusses our attention on new info.


Differences of word order concerns themselves with topic and/or focus.

Fonting means either bringing the topic to the front or the focus to the
front.  I get the gut feeling that topic-fronting, as in German, is more
common than focus-fronting as in the Celticlangs.  I suspect Matt will,
however, have more than gut feeling to go on  :)

As the difference in the Teonaht sentences above are involved only with the
position of the subject, then I think we're dealing with 'topic'.  The
grammatical subject tends to be - tho by no means aleays is - the topic.
What I would understand is that
(a)  "A book to him for his birthday his sister gave"
Relates to an earlier form of T when topic got placed next to the verb, and
that:
(b) "His sister a book to him for his birthday she gave"
shows a trend in informal speech towards topic-fronting.

Though what the actual topic is in both sentences would depend upon the
context in which it occurred.  And as there are no other word orders we are
considering, I don't think we can really press topicalization or focussing
very much here.

>The problem with putting the interrogative in the place of "book" in
>either
>of these sentences is that Teonaht likes it to precede the verb, so you
>have to rewrite the syntax:
>
>        1) His sister, to him for his birthday, what thing did she give?
>
>rather than:
>
>        2) What thing his sister to him for his birthday INT she give?
>to echo:   A book     his sister to him for his birthday she did give.
>        (a possibility!  we take the "r" out of "kwer tobre" and
>        put it before the verb:  "ly hdar vergo."  I suppose anything
>        is possible, and T. is far more flexible than I had thought.
Yep - the second is decidedly clumsy. Actually, the first might give
another, and perhaps better, reason for the informal style to fron the
subject: it is just generalizing from the interrogative word order.

>
>1) would seem to focus on sister; unless we think of the T. as thinking
>backwards, and actually making the final element in the sentence (the
>one that resonates with us because we hear it last) the focal point.
No need - final position is very common for focus.  We find this tendency
in Latin, german & English, for example.  That 'sister' comes first does
necessarily imply that she is 'focussed'.  Indeed, in an interrogative
sentence, as Matt says, there isn't a focus - the interrogative is
prompting the replier to provide a focus, and there are plenty of natlang
precedents for interrogatives & focus to be in different positions.

The examples of focus you've shown mean so far have all been in the
*replies to questions* where the reply begins, as in Welsh, with the focus.
So far there has been nothing to suggest focus-fronting in all affirmative
sentences.  And in interrogative sentences, the question is irrelevant
(excuse the pun :)

> I
>can't tell you how much indecision this has given me.  I want to
>rationalize
>this by saying that "sister" and "what thing" are both in focus, but
>sort
>of in the way that you have clashing meter in Old English:
>                         /    \    /  x
>                        Ding down foemen
>
>One sort of compliments the other.  I know this makes absolutely no
>sense
>linguistically.
I think I understand the problem. I suspect some of "clashing" may be due
to confusing 'topic' & 'focus'.  But in the questions above, sister cannot
be focus, tho she may well be topic.  "what thing" is a prompt to provide
focus.

>But places of focus for T. are at both the front of
>the sentence and at the end.  This is due in part by the tyrannical rule
>that the verb can only be in final position in declarative, main
>clauses.
>I used to think it was because the verb was emphasized.  Last thing you
>heard.
If the normal place for the verb is last (as it is in many natlangs), then
it is not emphasize, any more than the Celtic & Semitic langs emphasize the
verb by putting it first.  What's normal & usual is not emphasized.

Right - what I think you're saying is that the beginning & the (pre-verbal)
end of the sentence are the places for "emphasis".  Now this might be
topicalization or focussing; different natlangs seems to give more
importance to one or the other.

Not uncommonly we find one of these positions used for focus & the other
for topic.  Latin, e.g., tends to front the topic and put he focus at the
end.

>  Teonaht is full of contradictions.
So are natlangs  :)

>It's a surrounding kind of language.  It likes to
>surround
>the subject (unless it succumbs to SOV) to a kind of padding: object and
>oblique cases first, then subject, then verb.  Much like the noun
>itself,
>which can have plural affixes on either or both ends.  I think I've hit
>on it.  The subject is in the middle of the sentence as OSV.  So does
>that
>make the middle the focus?  No... it's the place for the subject.
The subject is not likely to be the focus, either. But it may be the place
for the topic - next to the verb.

> Focus comes at the beginning.
Ah - yes it certainly does in reply to questions.  Is this to be general in
affirmative sentences?  Maybe it should be. If so we might have a pattern:
[focus +] rest of the comment (except verb) + topic + verb.
(Not all sentences will need focus)

But the interrogative:
comment (except verb) + topic + interrog. + verb.

Looks good.

>Oh boy.  And of course any of this can be
>violated in poetry.  Or poetic prose.
Of course - poets will always press the language to its extremes and
beyond. I shouldn't worry overmuch about that.

.....
>Maybe.  It's a matter of focus or logic:  the logic that says that the
>interrogative has to fill the place of the object given in the
>declarative
>sentence is perhaps too rigid and unnatural.
I think it is.

<OFF THE TOPIC INTERLUDE>
>> Yes - I entirely agree. A pseudo-Celtic doesn't appeal to me either -
>> especially when you have the real thing  :)
>
>Gotta be careful, here, Ray! <G>  First, that remark unintentionally
>implies a preference for natural languages that all too many of us
>have been subjected to by critics of conlanging; I should know, I read
>the answers to my lunatic survey last fall. ;-)
Not at all.  I admire very much Tolkien's conlangs.  They are very
naturalistic and, although some of the "ingredients" are, maybe, more
obvious than others, the final result is his own unique blend; the
languages don't ape any natlang.

>Second, There are a
>number of conlangers who have based their conlangs on the Celtic
>languages besides Padraic and Andrew and... I think... Gerald Koenig?
I don't know Gerald's off-hand.  But neither Padraic's nor Andrew's are
"Celtic parodies" - indeed they are both _Romance_ based languages.  What I
admire in Andrew's Brithenig is the skilful way he has combined a fully
developed Romance language with the sort of Celtic influences that might
have occurred if BritoRomance had not become extinct.  He's mixed the
ingredients well & produced something unique.  Padraic has done much the
same, it seems to me.

>Or maybe he's the inventor of Jameld.  I visited the pages of someone
>who used to be more vocal on conlang about a year ago who had devised
>something like eleven dialects of Goidelic.  It's not just Celtic that
>has furnished "pseudo" languages: Ferki based his Vranian on Church
>Slavonic, and I think there is someone devising an invented Semitic
>language.
The reason a _pseudo-Celtic_ doesn't appeal to me, personally, is that too
often I've found "pseudo-Celticism" has so little to do with the real Wales
which I love and where I lived for so many years.

>If I had had it in me to make up a new romance language (that's been
>done too... look at Talossan)
No need to look there (there's also Brithenig :)
But I guess this is the one that's been done the most often.  I did several
of these way back in my late teens.  I'd guess that a good half of this
list has probably done his/her Romance conlang.  Actually it's not a bad
way to cut one's teeth in conlanging  :)

>But that's not been the history of my personal
>conlang.  Teonaht was already well under way when I got around to
>studying Welsh.  I didn't want to make it Welsh anymore that
>I wanted to make it Finnish.  It's its own entity.
Yep - that's precisely the sort I like.

>But there are a lot of folks who like
>inventing languages on the model of an existing language, and anything
>should be acceptable on this list!
Indeed, many of us have done this ourselves.

>Even the notion (horrors!!) that one
>likes one's own conlang BETTER than most natural foreign languages.  And
>will perversely devote more of one's own academic time to it than "going
>out there and learning *the real thing.*"
Yes - but if you really want to produce, say, a Semitic conlang, quite
frankly I'd not be impressed unless the inventor had spent sometime
studying actual Semtic languages and learning some of the real thing.

>Often a desire to learn
>languages and a desire to invent one go hand and hand... look at this
>list of polyglots... but I've had this
>"why-aren't-you-out-there-learning-
>other-languages" criticism thrown at my Teonaht-making by members of my
>family for me not to shudder a little when I hear you say that!
But I didn't say that!  Honest, I didn't!

I've been conlanging _and_ learning other languages ever since I was about
nine or ten.  Of course they go hand in hand.
<OFF TOPIC INTERLUDE CONCLUDED>


>> Now, in the examples you gave about Tebnar etc above, it seems to me that
>> in the interrogative sentences you have topic first and then the
>> interrogative in the comment part (i.e. not fronted).  But in the replies
>> the focus is fronted.  That is the replies work like Welsh/Breton, but the
>> questions don't; and the whole thing is, basically, the reverse of English
>> & German!
>>
>> And why not, indeed?  I like it  :-)
>>
>Thanks!  But it makes speaking T. for an anglophone so damned difficult.
But why should it be easy? - otherwise we can just have
yet-another-English-relex.  Thankfully, Teonaht is not that.  If a language
is to have an individuality of its own, then we may well have to work at it
to speak it well.

Ray.