Re: Tatari Faran: volition, verb complements, phonology update, and more

Hallo!

On Mon, 1 Nov 2004 17:12:24 -0800,
"H. S. Teoh" <hsteoh@...> wrote:

> Hey conlangy folks, what's up with all these squabbles that always
> come up in the absence of Tatari Faran posts? Are the AUXLANG folk
> invading us again? ;-)
>
> Tatari Faran has grown a lot since the last update. I don't even
> remember what exactly has changed since, but anyway, instead of
> inundating the list with an exhaustive coverage, I thought I'd pick
> out a few gems to show off with. So here they are, in no particular
> order:
>
>
> 1) The lexicon now has 211 entries. Lest you get the wrong idea,
> however, it should be noted that verbs and verb complements are listed
> separately, and I've entered some phonological contractions as
> separate entries to prevent my own confusion in the future.
> Nevertheless, this does show impressively fast growth compared to
> Ebisédian.
Or Old Albic, which still has hardly more than 300 words.  I am indeed
quite slow at inventing words.

> 2) Ah yes, volition, the eyebrow-raiser in my subject line. ;-)
Yeah!  Volition!  I have to comment as Old Albic also grammaticalizes
degrees of volition.

>       I
> found out that due to the nature of Tatari Faran's core case system,
> volitive and involitive meanings of the same verb referent must be
> realized as distinct verbs. For example, in English we use "smell"
> both in the volitive sense "smell this and see" and in the involitive
> sense "I smell something burning". In Tatari Faran, two distinct verbs
> are necessary:
>
>         huena ... hiim  [hMna ... hi:m]
>                 To sniff at something (volitive)
>
>         fahun ... uen   [fahun ... Mn]
>                 To smell something (involitive)
>
> They are necessarily different because of the core cases that are used
> differently with each verb: for _huena_, the sniffer is marked with
> the originative case:
>
>         simani ko  huena huu na  hiim.
>         wolf   ORG smell 1sp RCP COMPL
>         ["simani kO "hMna hu: na hi:m]
>         "The wolf smelled me (sniffed at me)."
>
> For _fahun_, the smeller is marked with the receptive, since the smell
> involuntarily arrived at his/her nose:
>
>         huu na  fahun punareis sa  uen.
>         1sp RCP smell stink    CVY COMPL
>         [hu: na fa"hun puna4ejsa Mn]
>         "I smelt an unpleasant odor."
In Old Albic, the case markings are different but the verb is the same.
The case of the subject is agentive if volitional, dative if not:

Arachchasa            a         valchva.
AOR-smell-1SG:P-3SG:A the:C-AGT wolf-AGT
`The wolf smelled me (sniffed at me).'

Arachama              mana    smalth   nabenim.
AOR-smell-3SG:P-1SG:A 1SG-DAT odor-OBJ unpleasant-OBJ
`I smelt an unpleasant odor.'

See also my post from July 27 on degress of volition in Old Albic:

http://listserv.brown.edu/archives/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0407D&L=conlang&P=R15311

> [more examples and other stuff snipped]
Greetings,

Jörg.

Reply