Re: Referent Tracking

On Wednesday 23 Nov 2005 22:48, Chris Bates wrote:

<snip>

> THis is interesting, because it seems very different to me to other
> switch reference systems (which are often used on verbs in complements
> or on clause chains). It's also a very interesting (and slightly
> strange) rule that bans relative clauses from occuring inside main
> clauses and forces them to occur afterwards... but on the other hand,
> the rule doesn't seem unnatural to me.
>
Before I rejigged the system relative clauses would have relative conjunctions
at the beginning and the end, and could be embedded anywhere within the main
clause - but it was clumsy and cumbersome. The system still needs a little
bit of tweaking I think, but I'm in no hurry.

> One question: how do you handle
> subordinate (complement) clauses like for instance "she was going home"
> in "she said she was going home"? Are they mid-clause or shifted to the
> end (or the beginning)? And if they're shifted to the end, do the
> relative clauses occur before or after them? I do you say (roughly) "the
> woman said she was going home who I met in the shop" or "the woman said
> who I met in the shop that she was going home"?
>
"she was going home" is a dependent clause, with "she said" being the main
clause. Adding "the woman I met in a shop", make that the main clause and
then the whole "she said she was going home" relative to that. Like I said,
the system could still do with some tweaking as I'm not confident it could
cope with every situation!

she said she was going home
ta'meevate ke shashose cuu roub let puuzote

ta'meeven - say to
(subject omitted - assumed to be self)
ke - she
shashos - that (affirming)
roubuu (yuu roub) house
let - uncompleted action
ta'puuzen - go to

second clause drops its subject, adds an e to shashos and shifts the verb from
puuzate to puuzote.

the woman said she was going home who I met in the shop
the woman I met in the shop said she was going home
I met the woman in the shop who [she] said that she was going home

ye gyan gaeshate ista'magzuubz te zhekteh ta'meevate shashose cuu roub let
puuzote

gyane (ye gyan) - woman
gaeshan - meet
ista'magzuubz - in the shop
te - I
zhekteh - relative pronoun (guest subject to host direct object)

<snip>

> I believe that Hebrew (perhaps not Modern Hebrew, I'm unsure) has a rule
> where (generally only one) NP that's new information occurs preverbally,
> and old information occurs after the verb. I don't know of any language
> with exactly the same rule as yours though. I'd be interested to hear
> more detail about it.
>
heres a page on Gevey focus and word order:
http://www.kalieda.org/gevey/focus.html#focustext

Rik