Re: OT: THEORY Fusion Grammar

>
> On 7/14/06, Gary Shannon <fiziwig@...> wrote:--- Patrick Littell <
> puchitao@GMAIL.COM> wrote:
>
> >
> > To the extent that a language lacks constituency, it
> > will be a
> > counterexample; the extreme examples of
> > nonconfigurationality
> > (Warlpiri, etc.) would lead to nearly insurmountable
> > problems.  (In
> > Warlpiri you could, for example, put "dog" and the
> > beginning and "old"
> > at the end and "ugly" in the middle.)
>
> Interesting. I'd love to take a look at some sample
> sentences in Warlpiri. What is it that links these
> distant elements syntactically or semantically?
>

In the case of Warlpiri, case.  (Other languages could use gender, too.)

Some sample Warlpiri sentences, as per request:

1. Kurdu-jarra-rlu wita-jarra-rlu ka-pala maliki wajilipi-nyi.
child-DU-ERG small-DU-ERG PRES-DU dog.ABS chase-NPAST
"The two small children are chasing the dog."

2. Kurdu-jarra-rlu ka-pala maliki wajilipi-nyi wita-jarra-rlu.
child-DU-ERG PRES-DU dog.ABS chase-NPAST small-DU-ERG
"The two small children are chasing the dog."

3. Maliki ka-pala kurdu-jarra-rlu wajilipi-nyi wita-jarra-rlu.
dog.ABS PRES-DU child-DU-ERG chase-NPAST small-DU-ERG

(These examples come from Bresnan (2001) Lexical-Functional Syntax, Problem
Set 1.)

The problem with Warlpiri -- and although it's not too common, Warlpiri
isn't alone in working like this -- is that constituency simply doesn't play
much role in the grammar.  As is clear from the above, we get our structural
information from case rather than word order.  For Warlpiri, nearly any
order is grammatical -- there are (at least) n-1 factorial possible ways to
order an n-word sentence.

Warlpiri has *some* constituency, but there's no requirement that "child"
and its modifiers have to be placed anywhere near each other. NPs are
possible, but not required.  (We need to postulate NPs in order to explain 1
above.  The one restriction on word order is that the auxiliary ("kapala"
here) needs to be the second element in the sentence.  Thus,
"Kurdu-jarra-rlu wita-jarra-rlu" in 1 must be a constituent.  There is no
similar evidence for VPs, however.)  I am also under the impression that
clauses are at least constituents -- if they weren't, there'd be an unholy
mess trying to sort out which ABSs and which ERGs go with what clauses.

So Warlpiri and friends (Dyirbal for example, if you want more names to look
up) present a problem for any nearly theory that cut its teeth, so to speak,
on English.  (For example, any transformational theory in which (1)
sentences are generated with constituents and (2) movement must be motivated
is going to have some trouble, since it will require movement all over the
place without much motivation for it.)

A similar problem for your above hypothesis can be formulated for a language
with less configurationality than (say) English but a stronger gender
system.  The rest of the list can probably furnish examples from Latin and
Greek poetry; unless I've thrown them out I had some good Russian examples.
I'm figure we could find some Bantu examples if we looked, too.

-- Pat

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