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Re: Agreement Idea

From:Eric Christopherson <rakko@...>
Date:Wednesday, May 30, 2007, 1:51
On May 29, 2007, at 2:57 PM, David J. Peterson wrote:

> I just finished grading one of my student's finals, and, as a result, > came up with a bizarre agreement idea. > > Let's say a language had ten or so noun classes, SOV word order, > and the verb, instead of agreeing with the subject, or the object, > or anything like that, simply agreed with whatever the closest > argument was: > > Class I: ka- > Class II: me- > Class III: ri- > Class IV: tu- > > Oh, and let's say /-i/ dative, /-u/ accusative, /-e/ instrumental, > /-o/ past tense: > > (1) kaven meluri ritapu tunese tuxoro. > /I-man II-woman-DAT III-flower-ACC IV-tongs-INS IV-give-PAST/ > "The man gave the woman a flower with tongs." > > And, of course, word order would have to be variable for this > to be interesting: > > (2) kaven meluri tunese ritapu rixoro. > (3) kaven tunese ritapu meluri mexoro. > (4) tunese ritapu meluri kaven kaxoro. > > And it'd be even more interesting with relative clauses: > > (5) kaven meluri se ridum rijalo tunese tuxoro. > /I-man II-woman-DAT REL. III-frog III-see-PAST IV-flower-INS IV- > give-PAST/
But <tunese> is IV-tongs-INS, not IV-flower-INS; it should be <ritapu>.
> "The man gave the woman the frog saw a flower."
Wow. I had a hard time deciphering even the gloss of that!
> > Which could then become... > > (6) kaven tunese meluri se ridum rijalo rixoro.
Or rather <kaven ritapu meluri se ridum rijalo rixoro>.
> > Then at this point, I suppose you could associate whatever > pragmatic meaning (or even grammatical meaning) you wanted > to the use of agreement. Perhaps the only way a verb could be > fronted was if it was fronted with the NP it agrees with...
Interesting.
> > All right, back to grading.