LINGUIST List: Vol-5-883. Fri 12 Aug 1994. ISSN: 1068-4875. Lines: 254 Subject: 5.883 Sum: Lexeme for 'Two Hands', Who Is Your Name?, Question-answers Moderators: Anthony Rodrigues Aristar: Texas A&M U. Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan U. Asst. Editors: Ron Reck -------------------------Directory------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sat, 6 Aug 94 22:39:17 EDT From: amr@zeus.cs.wayne.edu Subject: Lexeme Meaning 'Two Hands' 2) Date: Sat, 6 Aug 94 22:34:04 EDT From: amr@zeus.cs.wayne.edu Subject: Summary: Who Is Your Name? 3) Date: Wed, 10 Aug 1994 13:40:26 -0400 (EDT) From: Mike Dickey Subject: Sum: question-answering -------------------------Messages-------------------------------------- 1) Date: Sat, 6 Aug 94 22:39:17 EDT From: amr@zeus.cs.wayne.edu Subject: Lexeme Meaning 'Two Hands' In my response for examples of lexemes meaning 'the two hands together', I received only one example. Blaine Erickson mentions Japanese ryoo-te and moro-te, but these are both apparently transparent compounds. Redei's Uralisches Etymologisches Worterbuch gives data for this in some Uralic languages, and it is my conjecture that such a word also existed in Proto-Indo-European, and this is the word from which the IE numeral for '10' (and the related forms meaning '20' and '100') will one day be recognized as being derived from. Alexis Manaster Ramer -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: Sat, 6 Aug 94 22:34:04 EDT From: amr@zeus.cs.wayne.edu Subject: Summary: Who Is Your Name? My query about languages which say 'who is your name', 'who are you called', or the like, was prompted by my reading a Sumerian grammar in which an example of this is given and then apparently taken as evidence that the scribe who wrote the text in question (in the Old Babylonian period) was confused about the proper usage of Sumerian words for 'who' and 'what'. It occurs to me, on the other hand, that this is a perfectly normal usage in many languages, and as such, it could serve to indicate exactly the opposite, namely, that the scribe in question was using Sumerian exactly right, and that the problem was rather than the European (and Semitic) languages typically known to Sumerologists do not use these constructions (although I have a feeling, which I have not verified, that Classical Greek may have used it). Anyway, here is the list of examples I obtained, for which I am grateful. Any additional data will also be appreciated. Great thanks to the contributors, although in some cases, I regret that I only know them by their email address or first name. [Please, guys, tell who all are your names!!!!!] Indonesian (gt6qc@qcvaxa.acc.qc.edu, ruddy@phoenix.cs.uga.edu, David Gil): Siapa namamu? or Namanya siapa? who name+2nd p part. Javanese (gt6qc@qcvaxa.acc.qc.edu, ruddy@phoenix.cs.uga.edu) jenenge sapa? name + def. particle /sapa = who Maaori (Laurie Bauer): Ko wai to ingoa? equative-particle + who? + singular-second-person-neutral-class-possessive-pronoun + name "What is your name?" Maaori-influenced English in New Zealand (Laurie Bauer): Primary school children in NZ regularly ask Who is your name? This is usually attributed to Maaori interference, and it is certainly part of the English of people who are influenced by Maaori; but it is also heard from people who have no obvious direct influence from Maaori (such as my own white middle-class children, at one stage). Swahili (Ralf Grosserhode, Chet Creider, Karen Peterson) Jina lako nani? - Who is your name? Unaitwa nani? - Who are you called? Sakao, a.k.a. Sakau, spoken in Espiritu Santo, Vanuatu (J. Guy): aase-n hi? name-his who? (Port-Olry dialect) nwase-n hi? (Lowerie dialect) Tolomako, also spoken in Espiritu Santo (J. Guy): na gise-na i sei? name-his who? (Sakao /e/ = [e], Tolomako /g/ = ) Marrithiyel, Marramaninjsji, Marringarr (of the Western Daly sub-group), Ngan'gityemerri (of the Southern Daly sub-group), and possibly other languages of the Daly River region, Northern Australia (Ian Green): e.g. Marrithiyel nginimba fuma nanj who name 2sPronoun(=Possessive) "What" is your name ? e.g. Ngan'gityemerri piwarri nyinyi kene name 2sPro who "What" is your name ? References: Green, Ian 1989 Marrithiyel: a language of the Daly River region of Australia's Northern Territory. Unpublished PhD thesis, ANU. Reid, Nicholas John 1990 Ngan'gityemerri: a language of the Daly River region of the Northern Territory of Australia. Unpublished PhD thesis, ANU. Kiribati (=Gilbertese, Kiribatese (Martin Silverman, Shelly ??): antai arana? what is his name? ara-na who name-3s Also thanks to Raymond Tang and Randy Harris for writing in on this subject, and a special acknowledgement to Joanne Sher Grumet for the (to me) truly surprising usage in the Romany dialect Kalderash: Kasko san? "Whose [sic] are you." Reference: Gjerdman and Ljungberg "The Language of the Swedish Coppersmith Gipsy Johan Dimitri Taikon" Lundequista/Uppsala (1963). -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3) Date: Wed, 10 Aug 1994 13:40:26 -0400 (EDT) From: Mike Dickey Subject: Sum: question-answering My apologies that this summary has taken a little while; reponses have petered out only in the last couple of days. Many thanks to all those who responded: Stavros Macrakis, Andrew Carstairs-McCarthy, Angus Grieve-Smith, Paul Black, Don Churma, Dave Wharton, Shanley Allen, Shabani Ramazani, Christopher Bader, Bruce Boling, Herb Stahlke, Thierry van Steenberghe, Michal Starke, George Halliday, Kate Kearns, Bob Rothstein, Margagret Winters, Marc Picard, Dorine Houston, and Bart Peeters. I realized moments after I'd posted my query that I should have said "languages other than French and English" rather than just "other than English." Most of the respondents at least mentioned French, noting that "moi" was the only answer possible in this case. Angus Grieve-Smith and Dave Wharton both related a joke in which a clerk in an English-speaking country responds to a French customer's query of "Who here speaks French?" with the ungrammatical "je." People disagreed about just *why* "moi" was the only possible response, however, and about why "me" was ok and "I" was out in English. Several people objected to labelling "je" and "moi" nominative and non-nominative/accusative, preferring "emphatic" for "moi" and "unemphatic" for "je." Bert Peeters and Bruce Boling used "conjunctive/disjunctive," and Michal Starke referred to the distinction as "strong/weak." Several respondents noted that "je" was basically a clitic which appears only directly before the verb, leaving "moi" as the only possible free-standing response. Bruce Boling grouped French, English, Irish, and Scots Gaelic as "conjunctive/disjunctive" languages, which organize their pronominal systems around a conjunctive/disjunctive opposition. In these languages, when a pronoun is directly attached to a verb, it is in the conjunctive form. When it is not, it is in the disjunctive form. So in French, the 1st person singular object pronoun and the free-standing 1st person sing. pronoun (neither of which is attached to the verb) have the same form, the disjunctive "moi," which serves as the answer to a question. Michal Starke argued that English and French subject pronouns are weak while their object pronouns are strong, with the weak pronouns unable to stand on their own in answer to a question. He reported that Northern Italian dialects behave in the same way. As for English, Herb Stahlke referred to his CLS 20 paper, where he argues that "me" is possible and "I" is out as an answer for pragmatic reasons: "I" occurs only in very specific discourse contexts, with "me" appearing elsewhere. As for languages other than English and French, Paul Black reported that in some Cushitic languages -- namely Konso and Gidole -- the object pronoun form is used in answering a question rather than the subject form, much like French. He noted that this is also true of Oromo (a.k.a. Galla) and possibly Somali. Shabami Ramanazi noted that the same is true for Swahili: only the object pronoun can be used in answer to a question. Both "I" and "I do" are out. Don Churma reported that in Hausa, to answer a question with a pronoun, one would use the independent form of the pronoun with a "stabilizer," e.g., "Nii (1st sg. pro) cee (stabilizer)." In other cases, the pronoun is fused with/attached to a tense or aspect marker. Shanley Allen said that in Inuktitut, there is only one form of the pronoun, which serves for subject, object, and possessives. This would be the form used for answering questions. George Halliday noted that in Scots Gaelic, the form used to answer a question is the "emphatic" form, which is the same for object and subject. The question of why these these facts hold is open. The conjunctive/disjunctive contrast explains the difference between French and Spanish nicely. In French, the object pronoun is the only possible free-standing answer to a question, while in Spanish, it is the subject pronoun. The conjunctive form (the form attached to the verb) is the subject in French but the object in Spanish: French subject pronouns are clitics only, and Spanish object pronouns are clitics only. Therefore, the disjunctive form (the form that can stand alone) is the object pronoun in French and the subject pronoun in Spanish. This also works nicely for English: in colloquial English, "I" appears only directly before verbs. Bob and I left. Me and Bob left. *I and Bob left. This makes it look much like a conjunctive form. That leaves "me" as the disjunctive form, explaining why "me" is good but "I" is out as an answer to a question. "I do" is ok, since here "I" is directly adjacent to "do." This explanation would also hold if we take "I" to be a weak, clitic-like pronoun, which must be attached to a verbal element. (This might be another way of looking at the conjunctive/disjunctive contrast.) The reason that English permits "I do" as an answer to a question would then stem from the fact that English has "do" support (and whatever reasons underlie that). But this would leave unexplained the fact that Swahili allows "me" but not "I do," assuming that Swahili has either "do" support or some equivalent. It might explain why Hausa has to have a stabilizer with its free-standing pronoun, however: maybe its free-standing pronoun is weak and clitic-like, just like "I." This would also explain why the pronoun is usually fused with tense/aspect markers. Thanks again to everybody who responded. If anyone has any comments or further insight or data, please send it along. -- Mike Mike Dickey University of Massachusetts, Amherst mkdickey@linguist.umass.edu -------------------------------------------------------------------------- LINGUIST List: Vol-5-883.