LACUS FORUM XXXV LACUS FORUM XXXV Language and Linguistics in North America 1608–2008: Diversity and Convergence LACUS © 2009 The Linguistic Association of Canada and the United States ( LACUS ). This volume of the LACUS Forum is being made available by the Linguistic Association of Canada and the United States under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 license. See below. YOUR RIGHTS This electronic copy is provided free of charge with no implied warranty. 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LACUS FORUM XXXV Language and Linguistics in North America 1608–2008: Diversity and Convergence lacus Forum 35 Referees Barbara Bacz David Bennett Patricia Casey Sutcliffe Douglas Coleman Michael Cummins • Patrick Duffley Connie Eble Toby Griffen Michael Kliffer Syd Lamb • Arle Lommel Deryle Lonsdale Alan Melby Robert Orr Bill Spruiell • Lois Stanford Linda Stump Rashidi Bill Sullivan Luke Van Buuren Beverley Watkins • LACUS FORUM XXXV Language and Linguistics in North America 1608–2008: Diversity and Convergence Edited by Patricia Sutcliffe, Lois M. Stanford & Arle R. Lommel the linguistic association of canada and the united states Copyright © 2009 The Linguistic Association of Canada and the United States first edition Published by lacus, the Linguistic Association of Canada and the United States, in Houston, Texas, usa. Current address and contact information for lacus can be found on the World Wide Web at http://www.lacus.org. Manufactured in the United States. issn 0195-377x CONTENTS PREFACE vii • I. Featured Lectures 1 1. Presidential Address: 3 Theme and Topic in Written French and English: A Perspective on Comparative Discourse Analysis Michael Cummings 2. Gender, Transitivity, and Person in Algonkian and Inuktitut 21 John Hewson 3. Language Practices in Louisiana: The Switch from Written 31 French to Written English within the Catholic Church Sylvie Dubois Emilie Leumas 4. Wording Or How Access “Got Verbed” 45 Walter Hirtle 5. presidents’ post-doctoral prize: 57 Language Shift in the Christian Reformed Church Press of West Michigan Kara VanDam • II. Selected Lectures 67 6. Existence and Evaluation: French Il and Ça Impersonals 69 Michel Achard 7. Aspect and Expressions of Habituality in Polish 81 Barbara Bacz 8. The Perception of Linguistic and Nonlinguistic Inputs: 91 The Case of Road Signs David Bowie Jeanne M. Bowie 9. Translating Jean-Charles Pandosy: De Marseille à 103 l’Ouest Canadien, 1847 à 1891 Lorin Card 10. There Are Three Kinds of Abstractions: Abstractions, 109 Damned Abstractions, and Damned Lying Abstractions Douglas W. Coleman 11. Approche Interlocutive de l’Imperfectivite 123 Catherine Douay vi lacus forum 35 Daniel Roulland 12. Can vs. Be Able To: Why “Semi-Modals” Are Not Modals 133 Ryan Fisher Patrick J. Duffley 13. The Liar Or the Mad Dog(s)? Another LACUS Look at 143 the Liar Paradox Rennie Gonsalves 14. Pre-Indo-European Verb-Subject Order 153 Toby D. Griffen 15. The Lexical Contribution of For in the For + Subject + To Infinitive 157 Carleen Gruntman 16. The Medieval Origins of Traditional Grammar: 165 The Occitan Grammatical Tradition Roy Hagman 17. “Quality of Language”: The Changing Face of Quebec 173 Prescriptivism Michael D. Kliffer 18. Places Named for an Odor, or Recalling the Former Home 183 Saul Levin 19. Prolegomena to Saul Levin’s Studies of Semitic and 187 Indo-European J.P. Maher 20. Des Réactions au Compliment en Français Camerounais: 205 Esquisse d’une Typologie Bernard Mulo Farenkia 21. Robert E. Howard: Getting the Linguistic Background Right 219 Robert Orr 22. La Représentation en Trois Dimensions des Systèmes 237 Phonologiques jean-François Smith 23. Hypotaxis and Modal Responsibility 247 William C. Spruiell 24. Nineteenth-Century German Perceptions of Language 257 in North America Patricia Casey Sutcliffe 25. Some More Readings of Alice and the Caterpillar 271 Lucas van Buuren • LANGUAGE INDEX 281 colophon 284 PREFACE acus forum xxv marks a major change in the thirty-five year tradition of lacus volumes. Although lacus authors have been provided with pdf versions of their papers for their own use for a number of years, the primary publication and delivery Lformat remained hard copy. This year, for the first time in the history of the Association, we are distributing a lacus Forum volume entirely in electronic format (although indi- viduals who wish a paper copy will be able to purchase one). Not only is the current year’s volume being placed online, but all of our volumes going back to lacus Forum 23 are now available online (http://www.lacus.org/volumes/). We hope that the shift from paper into e-media will make lacus contributions more easily accessible to a broader audience and, consequently, better known and appreciated. The 2008 lacus conference, held June 1 –14, 2008 on the Campus of Laval University (Université Laval), coincided with the 400th anniversary of the founding of Québec, the oldest French city on the American continent. Université Laval is the oldest Francophone university in the Americas: It traces its origins back to 1663, when Monseigneur François de Laval, the first bishop of New France, founded the Séminaire de Québec with the autho- rization of the King Louis XIV. Given the setting, the Forum theme was fitting: “Language and Linguistics in North America 1608–2008: Diversity and Convergence.” The invited lectures presented during the meeting reflected the linguistic diversity of North America well, especially French in its many North American varieties. Sylvie Dubois’ inaugural lecture documented the long-lasting presence of French in the written records of Louisiana Catholic parishes. Annette Boudreau’s French-language plenary presentation emphasized the French roots and basic morpho-syntactic characteristic of the language spoken by contemporary Acadians. An evening lecture by Walter Hirtle focused on the French linguist Gustave Guillaume’s theory of the word. The Friday afternoon plenary by Claude Poirier centered on Quebec French and summarized the issues of Quebec’s strug- gle for independence by discussing the content of contemporary Quebec dictionaries of French. The presidential address, “Theme and Topic in Written French and English: A Per- spective on Comparative Discourse Analysis.” was delivered by Michael Cummings of York University. In contrast to these French-oriented presentations, John Hewson reminded us of the native linguistic diversity that has existed alongside both French and English by tackling the theoretical problem of describing certain intricate grammatical categories in the Native American languages Algonkian and Inuktitut. This volume contains four papers by invited speakers and a selection of twenty-one peer- reviewed papers out of the forty-five presented at the meeting. Papers at the 2008 confer- ence were presented in either English (thirty-seven papers) or French (eight papers). As a result, we have returned to the French-English tradition at the roots of the Association by including three papers in French. For a number of years lacus has actively encouraged the participation of younger scholars in the Association by granting prizes to those papers by junior scholars deemed to viii Barbara Bacz contribute the most to linguistic knowledge. Kara VanDam (Kaplan University) received the Presidents’ Post-Doctoral Prize for “Language Shift in the Christian Reformed Church Press of West Michigan.” Sondes Hamdi of Laval University, received the Presidents’ Pre- Doctoral Prize for the paper “Conceptual Metaphors of Time in English and in Arabic: A Comparative Cognitive Study,” which was presented in French. The Forum was attended by more than seventy participants. In addition to the numer- ous tourist attractions provided by the City of Québec for its 400th jubilee year and the European atmosphere of Vieux Québec, conference attendees enjoyed a boat ride on the St. Lawrence organized specially for the lacus participants. In addition they experienced a variety of typical local French dishes as part of the traditional Presidential Banquet held at the Hôtel Universel in Ste-Foy. lacus wishes to express heartfelt gratitude to this volume’s editors, Patricia Casey Sutcliffe, Lois Stanford, and Arle Lommel, for their hard work, time, and dedication.