Rudin, Catherine

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OBSERVATIONS ON WH-QUESTIONS IN OMAHAO Catherine Rudin Wayne State College This paper is a preliminary description of "wh"-questions (that is, constituent as opposed to yes-no questions) in Omaha-Ponca, a Siouan language spoken by members of the Omaha·tribe in Nebraska and the Ponca tribe in Nebraska and Oklahoma. For the sake of brevity and since I have worked only with Omaha tribe members, I refer to the language here simply as Omaha. The observations presented here constitute a first step toward a full description of Omaha syntax in general and Omaha wh-constructions in particular; they are not to be taken as a definitive analysis. I have chosen wh-questions for my first foray into Omaha grammar for two reasons. The first is their theoretical importance: a full analysis of Omaha wh-questions will test theoretical constructs such as the Empty Category Principle and the universality of LF wh-movementl The second reason in that interrogative constructions in general are barely touched upon in John Koontz's Preliminary Sketch of the Omaha-Ponka Language, the only modern work on Omaha. In this paper I discuss only word order and surface constituent structure in simple, main clause questions, thereby avoiding numerous thorny issues that arise in the analysis of embedded questions (to give just one instance, it is not clear how, if at all, embedded questions are formally distinguished from headless relatives in Omaha), and also the question of movement at Logical Form2 or other abstract levels of syntax. These are all areas I hope to return to in later work. With these caveats, let us turn to the data. Some Omaha wh-words are listed in (1) . On the left are the three forms Koontz (1984) lists as indefinite (and interrogative) pronouns; the rest are other forms that I consider to be wh-words. (The list is not exhaustive.) 1. ebe 'who' ath~(di/kki) 'when' awatta 'where' ~wa 'which' agu(di) 'where' e~ 'how' an~ 'how many/much' etc. 573 574 1 9 9 0 M A L C Rudin These words function as both interrogatives and indefinites. In general the two usages are formally di~tinguished, but some sentences are probably ambiguous between an interrogative and an indefinite reading. An interrogative wh-word is often (though by no means always3) accompanied by a clause-final question marker (complementizer) a or ~, and has no article or other modifier. The corresponding indefinite pro-form is usually followed by ~' .s.t.i, or an article, and has no question marker. A few examples of the interrogative and indefinite usages of wh-words are given in (2) and (3); compare (2a/3a) and (2b/3b) . All examples in this paper are from my field tapes, recorded during the past year. Some are specifically elicited sentences, but most occurred in conversational or narrative contexts. 2.a. Ebe ttl atta who house inside 'Who is in the house?' b. Jdadf gare=a what she-does-it=Q 'What is she doing?' c. Baby akha tdadf d~be=d?=ha. the what it-sees=Q=! 'What does the baby see?' (woman speaking) 3.a. Ebe=sti ttl atta who=too house inside 'Someone is in the house.' b. Idadf=<e>the gara what=the she-does-it 'She is doing something.' c. Wan~xe ama !~df=ste gahl~e thedi ghost the what=soever it-blows when they-are-n~ppe=n?=bi=ama af raid=pl= quote 'Ghosts are afraid of anything blowing. One of the most basic questions one needs to answer in any study of the syntax of wh-questions is what position the interrogative word or phrase occupies in the hierarchical structure of the sentence. Several S-structure wh-positions are found in the world's languages. One possibility is for wh-words to be "in situ" in the sense that they occupy the same position as the corresponding phrase in a non-interrogative sentence; 1 9 9 0 MAL C Wh-Questions in Omaha in transformational terms they have not been moved. This appears to be the case in Chinese, for example. Another possibility is for wh-words to be in a Comp or Specifier of CP position at S-structure; under standard GB assumptions this means they have been moved, head chains, have coindexed traces, occupy A' (non-argument) positions, and so on, as in most European languages. A third possibility is that wh-words might be moved, but not to Comp or SpecCP position. For instance, I have argued (Rudin 1988) that some wh-words in Serbo-Croatian, Polish, and Czech are adjoined to IP, and interrogative wh-words in Hungarian and Turkish appear to be adjoined to V or VP. In all cases that I'm aware of when wh-elements occupy a specified position other than Comp or SpecCP, that position is a "focus" slot, i.e. a position normally occupied by material with a focused pragmatic/ discourse function. Which of these holds for Omaha? The easy answer is that wh-words fairly clearly are "in situ" in Omaha in the sense that they are not moved to Comp or Spec-CP in the syntax. (However, it should be noted that this does NOT necessarily mean they are in A (argument) positions. All NPs in Omaha are probably adjuncts rather than arguments, argument theta-roles being taken by pronominal elements in the verb; that is, Omaha is probably a pronominal argument language in the sense of Jelinek 1984.) The more complex answer is that the exact position that wh-words are "in situ" in probably depends upon pragmatic or discourse factors such as focus or topicality, the same factors which regulate the order of non-wh constituents in the sentence. These factors remain to be worked out in any detail, even for ordinary declarative sentences. To determine the position of wh-elements, it is necessary to have a basic understanding of the structure of the sentence as a whole. Schema (4) is a rough outline of Omaha clause structure as far as I understand it at present. The verb complex is normally clause-final and is the only obligatory element of the sentence. Infl(ection) is morphologically attached to V, and consists of tense markers, evidentiality markers, and so on. The order of other constituents is relatively free: "(XP)*" represents an indefinite number of NPs or other phrase-level constituents, possibly none. Comp is the position of the interrogative complementizer a and various declarative and imperative mood markers; possibly among others. Not shown in this simplified schema are · 575 576 1 9 9 0 M A L C left- or right-dislocated elements, and sentence introducers such as conjunctions. 4. [cp [rp (XP)* V+Infl] Comp] Rudin By far the most usual linear position for non-predicat i ve wh-elements is as the rightmost XP, immediately before V. This may place it sentence initial, as in the examples in (5), following one major constituent, as in (6), or, less commonly, following more than one constituent, as in (7) . 5.a. b. c !dad~ ~ast~be what you-see-it 'What do you see?' EfSka neg~ how you-think 'What do you think?' !dadf skare wanathe what you-do-it you-eat-somethg 'What did you do after dinner?' nist~ thedi you-finish when 6.a. Bertha akha !dSdf g~ra the what she-does-it 'What is Bertha doing?' b. H~egachadi !dlidf unah~. at-morning what you-cooked-it 'What did you cook this morning?' c. Waxe wa?u 3ikhe athikki weda3e=tta=3ikhe=a white woman the at-what-time she-gives-birth= future=sitting=Q 'When is the white woman going to have her baby?' 1. Di sidadi awa-khe=tta 51~a you yesterday where you-go=Q 'Where did you go yesterday?' The wh-words in sentences like those in (5), (6) and (7) are clearly not in Comp position, since Comp in Omaha, as in most verb-final languages, is to the right of the verb, while Omaha wh-words are to the left of the verb, usually as the first or second element in the sentence. It would be possible to analyse the wh-words in all the sentences we have seen as being in the Specifier 1 9 9 0 MAL C Wh-Questons in Omaha position of CP (SpecCP) . No such position is marked in the schema (4), because I don't have good evidence for one at this point. But if we assume that SpecCP is a left sister to C', as in most languages, the structure of wh-questions might be something like (8); anything preceding the wh-word would be a "left-dislocated" or topicalized phrase; presumably adjoined to CP. Thus in (8b) baby akha is a topic or topic-like element and the wh-word ~ is in SpecCP. 8.a. Ccp Cspec wh l Cc• lIP l ll b. Ccp Baby akha Cspec ~didf l Cc• CIP d~be ]=a ] ] the what it-sees-it=Q 'What does the baby see?' In fact, this analysis has some support, particularly from questions with a quantifier in them. One of the few situations in which the preferred or only word order places the wh-word somewhere other than immediately preverbal is in sentences like (9), which contains the quantifier~· Given structure (8), the oddness of (9b) could be explained by the fact that a quantified phrase is not a likely topic.4 9.a. Ebe w~giae xtawaBe=a who all s/he-likes-them=Q 'Who likes everyone?' b. *W~giae ebe xtawaaeaa all who s/he-likes-them=Q But there are also reasons to treat (most) wh-words as occupying a focus position rather than SpecCP (the preceding word might still be a topic, of course.) For one thing, the wh-element is in the same position as the corresponding word or phrase in the answer: (10) and (11) are examples of question/answer pairs, (10) from a spontaneous conversation, and (11) elicited. 10.a. Hibeg~exe ~did~ uaath~ stockings what you-wear 'What kind of stockings are you wearing?' b. H!beg~exe sabe uwath~. stockings black I-wear 'I'm wearing black stockings.' 577 578 1 9 9 0 MAL C 11.a. John idad~ a~i thf=a what he-brought-it=Q 'What did John bring?' b. John m?kh~ sabe the a~i thl=a coffee the he-brought-it=Q 'John brought the coffee.' Rudin One certainly would not want to call the stative verb .siibf:. in (10b) or the noun m~kh~ sabe the in (llb) a Specifier, and I know of no reason to consider ~ to be in a different position than .s.Ab..e_ or m~kh~ sabe the. Answers and wh-phrases share the pragmatic property of being "in focus" in the sense of conveying the most salient information (or requested information) of the sentence. An immediately preverbal Focus position is rather common crosslinguistically: Basque, Turkish, Hungarian, and Bulgarian, to name just a few, all place focused information right before the verb.5 Wh-movement has been analyzed as a focusing rule, a rule of syntactic movement to the focus position, at least in Hungarian (Horvath 1985) . It is tempting to claim that Omaha too regularly places focused information, including most wh-phrases, in the immediately preverbal position. To substantiate such a claim it would be necessary to do a fairly thorough study of word order correlated with discourse context, a study I have not yet done. But my impression is that the claim would probably hold up • In many cases consultants prefer (Xp> wh Y over wh xp v. For instance, sentence (12a) was volunteered as a translation of "what is Bertha doing?", (12b), with extraposed subject, was readily accepted, but the reaction to {12c), with wh separated from v, was a very doubtful "well, I guess maybe you could say it like that". 12.a. Bertha akha tdAdf gare=a the what she-does-it=Q 'What is Bertha doing?' b. !dadf gare=a Bertha akha what she-does-it the c. ?Idad' Bertha akha gare=a what the she-does-it Although their most usual position is immediately preverbal, wh-words are sometimes found in other l 9 9 0 MAL C Wh-Questions in Qmaha positions, both in natural, connected discourse and in elicited sentences. We have already seen one example, in (9); more are given in (13)-(14). 13.a. Jdadf wa3athe gaha g3! what table on-top it-sits 'What is on the table?' b. wa3athe fdAdf gaha g3!a(a) table what on-top it-sits=Q 14.a. Ttl the ebG d~beKa house the who sees 'Who sees the house?' b. Ebe tt1 the d~be who house the sees It is not clear precisely how these differ from (12) . One possibility is that consultants were simply more easily able to imagine situations in which another element would be more "focusy" than the wh-word in (13)-(14) than in (12), though it is hard to see why tti the in (14b) should be more easily focused than Bertha akha in (12c) . Perhaps a more likely explanation is that a second word order principle, a tendency toward SOV order, interacts with and can at times outweigh the tendency to place focused material adjacent to V. This might account for (13a) and (14b) in particular. However, SOV order is not at all absolute (see e.g. (14a)), not even to the extent of disambiguating sentences with two animates. A group of consultants agreed unhesitatingly that (15a-b) can both have either the SOV or the OSV reading. ((15a) was the form volunteered for both; (15b) was accepted when I suggested it.) 15.a. Mary ebe d~be=a who s/he-saw-him/her=Q b. Ebe Mary d~be=a who s/he-saw-him/her=Q i. 'Who did Mary see?' ii. 'Who saw Mary?' In those cases in which the wh-element is immediately preverbal, one might want to claim movement to this · ; position ("scrambling"; i.e. presumably adjunction to V) -- but certainly the null hypothesis is that no movement has occurred. Having to this point noted no evidence of 579 580 1 9 9 0 MAL C Rudin movement, I assume for now that wh-phrases and indeed all phrases are generated in random order as shown in schema (4) and do not undergo syntactic movement. However, it is possible that evidence of movement may be found in complex sentences, which I have not yet investigated. The preverbal position, however analyzed, is not the only common location of wh-words in Omaha: they also frequently occur as the predicate of the sentence. In this construction the wh-word occupies the position of the verb, followed only by right-dislocated elements (such as~ in the second half of (16a)) and sentence-final particles like the interrogative complementizer a in (16c). 16. a. Dl h!be 3i3ltta awathegt Wittuspa, you shoe your what-kind granddaughter h!be ~i~!tta awathegt ~i shoe your what-kind you 'What kind of shoes do you have? As for you, granddaughter, what kind are your shoes?' b. M~re khe ugaxe fdAdf sky the color what 'What color is the sky?' c. seth~ ebe=a that-the who""Q 'Who is that?' It is also worth mentioning that wh-words can constitute part of a larger wh-phrase, as in most languages. Interestingly, the order of elements within such wh-phrases seems to be quite variable. Examples (17a) and (17b) were both produced by the same speaker, in the course of a single narrative, and contain similar elements, but the word order within what I take to be the wh NP is different. A similar example can be seen in (17c), in abbreviated form: I have come across both ~ nfkkaS~ga and nikkasiga an~ with the same meaning. Obviously the internal structure of wh-phrases deserves further attention. 17.a. ~a wi [NP tctAdf ud~] Skare. day one what good you-did-it 'One day you did something good.' 1 9 9 0 MAL C Wh-Questions in Omaha b. ~a tt~ste [NP ud~ idzldf sti) gare=tta=akha. day some good what too he-will-do-it 'Some day he'll do something good again.' c. ant nlkkasjga I nlkkas!ga ant 'how many people' Multiple questions appear to be possible in Omaha, although, as in most languages, they are not easy to elicit. Several consultants were reasonably happy with (18) . John Koontz (pc) has noted the apparently multiple embedded question (19) in Dorsey (1890) . I hope to find further examples of spontaneously produced multiple questions, as this is a construction of particular interest to me.6 18. Ath~di agudi duaaa new!? when where this-the you-buy-it 'When (and) where did you buy this?' 19. ede awathetta ei ~e!the but whither how he-may-have-gone iaappah~=m=azi, a=bi=ama I-know=neg he-said=prox=quote 'But I don't know where (and) how he may have gone, he said.' One final observation on Omaha wh-questions is that the particle a, which I have assumed to be an interrogative complementizer, is needs further study. In all of the examples above where this a occurs, it is clause-final. In fact, however, it can sometimes be found attached instead to the wh-element itself: 20.a. Mary~ d~be who=Q sees 'Who did Mary see?/Who saw Mary?' b. ~ w~giae xtawa~e who=Q all likes 'Who likes everyone?' (cf. (15)) (cf. ( 9)) It is not clear under what conditions this occurs, or how (if at all) such sentences differ in meaning from the corresponding ones with a attached to the clause-final verb. Like many of the observations presented in this paper, this remains a problem for future research. 581 582 1 9 9 0 M A L C Rudin NOTES OThis paper is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. BNS-8909283 and by the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. I am grateful to my consultants, Mary Clay, Bertha Wolfe, Clifford Wolfe, and Coolidge Stabler, for sharing their knowledge of the Omaha language with me. lFor discussion of these and other "Government-Binding" concepts, see Chomsky 1981 and much subsequent work. Recent textbooks such as Radford 1988 provide an overview of the theory. 2williamson 1984, for instance, argues for movement of wh-words at LF in Lakhota, a language closely related both genetically and typologically to Omaha. Similar arguments have been made for a number of other languages which superficially have no wh-movement; Huang 1982, on Chinese, is the source of most of these arguments. 3use of these particles may be typical of women's speech: a in particular seems to be more frequent in women's speech and has occasionally been remarked on by consultants as "the woman's way". However, a male consultant sometimes uses it as well. 4I am indebted to Barbara Partee for suggesting this example. Ssee, for example, Ortiz de Urbina 1989, Horvath 1985, Rudin 1986. Several MALC audience members agreed during the oral presentation of this paper that focused information is often preverbal in other Siouan languages as well. 6see Rudin 1988. Note that (18) looks somewhat odd with respect to schema (8), since~ is a very likely topic. In (19) I have omitted some of the word-internal morphological information provided by Koontz and Dorsey. REFERENCES Chomsky, Noam. 1981. Lectures on Government and Binding. Dordrecht: Foris. Dorsey, James Owen. 1890. The Cegiha Language. Contributions to North American Ethnology VI. 1 9 9 0 MAL C Wh-Questions in Omaha Horvath, Julia. 1985. Focus in the Theory of Grammar and the Syntax of Hungarian. Dordrecht: Foris. Huang, C. T. J. 1982. Move WH in a Language without WH Movement", The Linguistic Review 1:369-416 Jelinek, Eloise. 1984. "Empty categories, case, and configurationality." Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 2:39-76. Koontz, John E. 1984. Preliminary Sketch of the Omaha-Ponka Language. ms., University of Colorado, Boulder. Ortiz de Urbina, Jon~ 1989. Parameters in the Grammar of Basque. Dordrecht: Foris. Radford, Andrew. 1988. Transformational Grammar. New York: Cambridge University Press. Rudin, Catherine. 1986. Aspects of Bulgarian Syntax: Complementizers and Wh Constructions. Columbus: Slavica Rudin, Catherine. 1988. "On Multiple Questions and Multiple Wh Movement." Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 66:445-501. Williamson, Janice. 1984. Studies in Lakhota Grammar. Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, San Diego. 583 

Observations on wh-questions on Omaha

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Observations on wh-questions on Omaha

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