Re: Head-marking languages and adpositions?

Quoting Amanda Babcock <langs@...>:

> I'm very curious about how head-marking languages work.  I get the part
> about marking the possessed object instead of the possessor, but what
> about other types of heads?  Are there ever adpositions in these languages,
> and if so, do the adpositions take marking?  (I'm thinking here of the
> opposite of languages where the objects of adpositions are marked for
> case.) If so, how?
Many of these questions are addressed in Johana Nichols' book
_Linguistic Diversity in Space and Time_:

<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0226580563/qid=1032500429/
sr=1-2/ref=sr_1_2/002-0471600-9432818?v=glance&s=books>

It's not for the beginner, but it addresses all sorts of statistical
correlations in re head-markedness.

> If anybody has a grammar up of a comprehensively head-marking conlang,
> pointers to that would be appreciated, too :)
What exactly do you mean by a "comprehensively" head-marking
conlang?  Such a language would certainly be odd from the vantage
point of natural languages, since most natural languages have
elements of both head-marking and dependent-marking.

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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

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