From: Wayne Leman (wleman@mcn.net)
Date: Thu Apr 27 2000 - 09:06:54 EDT
<x-charset iso-8859-1>>
>--- "Wayne Leman" wrote:
>the Cheyenne data that a
>concept of "newsworthy" first explained what Cheyenne speakers put first
>(that is, fronted) in their sentences.
>--- end of quote ---
>
>The concept of newsworthiness is also useful in describing the order of
adjective and noun in Koine Greek, or so I once argued this in a paper. One
potential problem with using the concept 'newsworthy,' however, is that it
is often left undefined. Rather linguists (including Marianne Mithun, who
first introduced the term)
Right, my work has interacted with Marianne.
apply it in an intuitive sense for whatever language they happen to be
working on; Wayne, I wonder if you might venture a working definition of the
"newsworthy" as your wife applied it to Cheyenne.
I can't, since I can't remember it, but I believe my wife did in her thesis.
Her thesis has been revised and published by SIL. Go to the SIL website:
Look around for the Publications pages. The name of the book is something
like:
Major Constituent Order in Cheyenne, by Elena M. Leman, 1999
It is not very expensive. Much less expensive than ordring the thesis
through University Microfilms. Besides, the printed version is an improved
edition.
If nothing else, email the Academic Bookstore at SIL. Their email address in
listed on the SIL publications pages.
>
>--- You wrote:
> One needs to approach 90% or higher
>percentages for constituent order patterns before we can start to suggest
>that there is some kind of default constituent order.
>--- end of quote ---
>
>Wayne, where are you getting the number 90%?
>From my functionalist, statistically-oriented colleagues in the Dept. of
Linguistics at the Univ. of Oregon. I can't recall the exact percentage, but
I know that it's quite high before we can call it significant enuf to speak
of something other than word order tendencies.
Wayne
>
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