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Talk:Otomi grammar

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A fact from Otomi grammar appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 23 August 2009 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows: Did you know... that Otomi grammar, the grammar of the indigenous Otomi languageofMexico has traits of active/stative alignment, but has no adjectives? A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2009/August.

Here are three publications containing analyses of parts of Otomi syntax. They were already included in the bibliography of the article, Otomi language. While I would agree that there is a dearth of published description of and research into Otomi syntax, there is more than nothing, there is enough to create a respectable sized section in an article for Wikipedia addressing Otomi grammar.

Lastra, Yolanda. 1998. Ixtenco Otomí. LINCOM Europa. See Section 3, Syntax, pp. 24-32.

Palancar 2008. Juxtaposed Adjunct Clauses in Otomi: Expressing Both Depictive and Adverbial Semantics. IJAL, 74(3). Obvious from the word "clauses".

Echegoyen, Artemisa. 1979. Luces contemporáneas del otomí: gramatica del otomi de la Sierra. Instituto linguistico de verano. See capitulos 32 & 36. Author not credited on title page, but credited in Ethnologue's bibliography for Otomi, Eastern Highland. This is in fact the earlier version of Voigtlander and Echegoyen 1985, which is the version cited in this Wikipedia article. Unlike the 1985 edition, it was not issued under the series, Gramáticas de Lenguas Indígenas de México.

Beyond these three works, a search of linguistics databases may turn up more published analyses of Otomi syntax. In any case, even the most primitive grammar is going to say something about how to form negative and interrogative sentences, and those are matters in the domain of syntax.

Beyond that, one can oneself analyze the data that has been published in volumes in the series, Archivo de Lenguas Indígenas de México. Many (perhaps none) of these volumes do not offer syntactic analysis. They all give the results of the standardized questionnaire of 594 sentences developed for the Archivo project. The questionnaire is explained for example on p. 14 in the following title in the series: Lastra, Yolanda (1989) (PDF facsimile, stored at ERIC online database). Otomi de San Andrés Cuexcontitlan, Estado de México. Series: Archivo de Lenguas Indígenas de México, no. 13, a work which is publicly available online, and which also was already included in this article's bibliography. As explained there, investigators alter the list of questions very slightly as required by the nature of the particular language being investigated.

In the above Lastra 1998, Lastra advises that she had already published a much larger work on the dialect of Ixtenco, in 1997. That work is another in the Archivo series. As reported by Monica Macauley in her review of it, in regard to syntax it offers only the questionnaire results and no examination or analysis of those results, except to discuss word order (review of Lastra 1997, El otomí de Ixtenco, Mexico City: UNAM, in IJAL, 1999 July, 65(3):375-377). This is just as with Lastra 1989. Here we have nearly 600 elicited sentences for at least two Otomi dialects, one from the Southwestern group and one from the Eastern group. Dale Chock (talk) 01:04, 28 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Using Lastra 1997 I have infact begun such a section at the main Otomi language - Palancar 2008 is good but very specialised. Voigtlander and Echegoyen is very bad and includes a lot of flawed analysis I wouldn't trust it on morphology and less so on syntax. We can't use the Archivo de Lenguas Indígenas sources since drawing conclusion based on the sample phrases would be Original Research. Lastra 1998 seems to be the best bet apart from Hess 1968 which is extremely difficult to get a hold of. ·Maunus·ƛ· 01:37, 28 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]