Tough-movement and raising

[pne]

The grammar of the Niuean language that I have (by Seiter, IIRC), uses the term "tough-movement" (I don't remember off-hand whether he used the hyphen in the book or not).

I recently came across this term again on the CONLANG mailing list, and don't really know what it means.

Apparently, it involves or is related to raising, which I think I sort of understand from the examples given, but I don't know what to make of tough-movement.

Can any of the linguistics geeks on my friends list provide any insight on TM and possibly raising? isabeau? pthalogreen?

Comments

[fweebles.livejournal.com]

What is raising in this context?

Vowel-raising is a pitch/tone thing that often makes it easier to distinguish central-Canadians,mostly Ontarians, from Americans (this is the idea that Americans think Canadians say "aboot" comes from).

I'm not sure this is what you're talking about, though.

raising

[pne.livejournal.com]

No -- I mean raising a phrase(?) from a subordinate structure to a superordinate one.

Something like "I see (he is drinking coffee)" --> "I see him drinking coffee", I think, where the subject of the subordinate clause is "raised" into the main clause and becomes an object of "see". Or "I want (he does his homework)" --> "I want him to do his homework".

I may be a bit off on my examples but that's the general gist of what I gathered.

Re: raising

[fweebles.livejournal.com]

Aha, not at all what I was thinking:

http://www.yorku.ca/twainweb/troberts/raising.html

:)

Re: raising

[pne.livejournal.com]

*nods* Yes, pretty much completely unrelated. Thanks for the interesting link, though. (And having listened to the "about the house" clip, I'm not sure how you can hear "aboot" out of that.)

Re: raising

[fweebles.livejournal.com]

Americans do, because they often pronounce "ou" as owwwwwwwwwwwwwwww, with a drawn-out w that almost comprises an entirely separate syllable.

I've been told I say "aboot", which I definitely do not. :)

Re: raising

[angharad.livejournal.com]

Well, it's the difference between "u" (Italian vowel) and "w" (Welsh vowel) being the final portion of your diphthong. It confuses the Americans.

Re: raising

[fweebles.livejournal.com]

I should add that "Americans" is an overgeneralization. The "ou -> ow" pronunciation happens primarily in the midwest and mid-south US.

On the other hand, people who live in Minnesota and Wisconsin, for example, often sound like Manitobans (and also say things like "eh" and "aboot").

Re: raising

[angharad.livejournal.com]

Yah, they sure do! It's a hoot! <----(must be said in those vowels for maximum humour)

Tough-movement

[ubykhlives.livejournal.com]

OK, here we go. :D

It is tough to please John (without tough-movement)
John is tough to please (with tough-movement)

As far as I can tell, in tough-movement, the focus of the sentence - in this case, the object noun John - is promoted to subject position, triggered by a restricted class of words (including easy, impossible and difficult). A tough-construction is simply one in which the dummy syntactic subject (it) and the syntactic object (John) are co-ordinated in this way. This paper (http://www.rceal.cam.ac.uk/Working%20Papers/andersonsum.htm) has a more technical definition.

Hope this helps. :)

Re: Tough-movement

[ubykhlives.livejournal.com]

the object noun John is promoted to subject position

and out of the subordinate clause to please (John).

Re: Tough-movement

[angharad.livejournal.com]

Sooo, nothing to do with constipation, then. (;