Re: new parts of speech/cases

Tim May <butsuri@...>
>>>
This is very interesting, but I don't think your examples "The cat
eats the mouse" vs "The cat eats at the mouse" works in English.
"eats at" sounds more like an abbreviated form of "eats away at",
which is more a matter of the action being prolonged in time -
durative aspect maybe.
<<<
actor A's dynamic state causing actor B's state to change may be considered
as focusing on either A's state or on B's state. of course all linguists
would say that "the mouse" is a PATIENT, not a "focus". RM tries to cram all
possible combinations of core roles into a single trinity. where linguists
see a "subject", an "undergoer", an "experiencer", a "topic", a "result" or
whatever, RM sees only "patients" and "focuses".

the traditional way to explain "endocentric" vs. "exocentric" is to give the
example of intransitive vs. transitive verbs and explain that "to eat" can
be either transitive or intransitive: "i'm eating" vs. "i eat
something"--but that's not quite right like your own example shows "to read
a book to someone": "to read a book" focuses on the reader's activity to
"absorb" the message written in the book (this is endocentric) while "to
read to someone" aims at indirectly changing another actor's state by
prompting his listening activity (this is exocentric). of course "to read"
is polysemic: it means "to peruse written information" as well as "to
transfer written information by telling it".

RM has managed to take this into account in his system by classifying the
subject of a dynamic state verb as a "patient", but a dynamic state verb may
change the state of another actor like "to beat (up) the cat" vs. "she beats
the drum to the music".

in a way, dubbing the patient "mouse" of the verb "to eat" a "focus" looks
contrived, but on the other hand it takes into account the fact that the
respective natures of "to smash a mouse" and "to eat a mouse" are quite
different. the difference is that "to eat a mouse" implies preexisting
relations between food and eater: you say "my food" but you don't say "my
smashed".

>>>
I myself was unsatisfied with certain aspects of Morneau's scheme,
which seem to be related to this.  He divides verbs into those which
focus on the state of the patient, and those that focus on the action
of the agent.  I felt that what he refers to as "patient" should
always be the location of the focus, thus turning action verbs into
state verbs where the "state" is that of performing an action.
<<<
final "location" of a focus with some verbs like "to plant trees in the
garden", "to give the woman a present". but compare what about "to build a
house out of bricks", "to grind cereal into flour", etc. the role of
"patient" or "focus" depends entirely on semantics. "tree" and "garden" have
a special semantic relation, "woman" and "present" a (looser) one, "brick"
and "house", "cereal" and "flour" still another one. you pick either as
"patient" or "focus" according to semantic relations (part of it, usually in
it, transformed into, etc.)

>>>
What
Morneau calls the patient of an action verb, I designated the "target"
  - something the patient is affecting, or trying to affect, the state
of, but whose state is not specified.  The Agent, then, can be defined
as the cause of the state (of the patient) defined by the verb.  This
all has the effect of making the system partly ergative, I think,
although I may be confused here.
<<<
i do the same as you do but i tag this on the verb as voices: "to cut
something" is "to make something cut(ted)" while "to break something" is
"to make something break (itself)". this is because "to cut" is
fundamentally exocentric while "to break" is fundamentally endocentric
("intransitive") for purely semantic reasons. and you're right, the first
one is ergative and the second is factitive but ergative langs like Basque
would tag both as ergatives.

actors combine with each other in a time frame, with or without a purpose.
putting everything up together takes no less than a language ;-) "volition",
"aspect", "dynamics", "goal", "transformation", whatever etc. are vectors
you can take into account to build your case system and tell the difference
between "to play the piano" and "to play the music", etc. personally, i've
tried to tag this on actors, then used verb affixes because "one tag on the
verb usually spares two on actors" :-) this is completely a matter of taste.

>>>
One advantage of this system is that it clears up the problem
mentioned by Morneau in this section:
!It's important to emphasize that, when dealing with action concepts, we
!cannot treat AP derivations as we did with state verbs.  In an AP state
!derivation, the agent is causing itself to experience the state that
!normally applies only to the patient.
<<<
see: that's biased. i could call this a PA system and write: "the patient is
applying to another patient the state he usually is himself in." japanese
"mediopassive" verbs work like that a lot but IALists are very fond of
"reflexivity".

>>>
In an AP action derivation, the
!agent is causing the patient to perform the action that is normally
!performed only by the agent.
!
!In other words, in an AP state derivation, the agent EXPERIENCES the
!same thing (i.e. state) as the patient.  In an AP action derivation, the
!patient DOES the same thing (i.e. action) as the agent.
!
!Thus, an AP-s version of a verb such as "to kick" does NOT mean that the
!agent kicks himself.  Instead, it means that the agent is simply
!"kicking"; i.e., he is involved in the activity of "kicking" with no
!specified or discernible target.  This is a subtle distinction, but it
!is an extremely important one.
<<<
this is a typical endocentric/exocentric distinction.
same as the difference between "the wood is burning" vs. "the amber burns
the wood" vs. "the man burns down the house".

>>>
In my revision, an "AP-s" becomes simply "P-s", as nothing is being
stated to cause anything (explicitly).
<<<
well yeah, in the whole of this thread we did not refer to RM's volitional
tag meaning "don't shoot me, i'm a patient but still i am a patient on
purpose!" allowing to dub as "patients" the linguistic real world's roles of
"experiencer", "undergoer", "subject", etc. your dropping the "Agent" part
of the tag doesn't hurt.

>>>
I'm not sure how this helps us with the cat and the mouse, though.
Endocentrically, the cat is patient (and maybe agent too), and the
mouse is either target or focus or maybe both (this is the thing I'm
not happy with in my little system - the difference between target and
focus is not all that clear to me).  Maybe target if the cat is trying
to eat the mouse, "biting at", that kind of thing, and I guess both
for normal usage.  Exocentrically I don't know, cat agent and focus of
passivized "to eat", with mouse as patient?  "The cat causes the mouse
to be eaten by it (the cat)"?  The more I think about this, the less
clear I am on what "endocentric" and "exocentric" mean.  It's quite
possible that I've completely failed to understand your argument.
<<<
strange: when i read the above i feel like you understand it better than i
do myself :-) Once again i'd say that actor A's dynamic state causing actor
B's state to change may be considered as focusing on A's state or on B's
state. this "actor" could be called whatever "patient", "agent",
"experiencer", etc you name it.

>>>
But anyway, I'd be interested to hear what you think about my changes
to RM's system. It does add one more case, perhaps unnecessarily.
<<<
well, given that (i) tagging all possible core roles according to all
possible kinds of predicates is difficult (which is why grammatical cases
exist), and that (ii) RM's system tries to artificially reduce all possible
core roles to a trilogy,--then i'd say that (iii) changing RM's system is
always OK and (iv) keeping it as it is makes perfect sense as well :-))
basically it depends on what you want to do with your conlang.

personally, i've been using RM's system for a while because it's fun to make
everything into three roles but i soon got tired trying to figure out what's
the focus of what and i switched to an exo/endo system.

>>>
You seem to be a deep thinker on such matters, although I often find
your posts difficult to understand.
<<<
well, erm, i'm just reading basic books and trying to spend as little time
as possible thinking and posting about this all so for sure it's messy and
certainly often wrong :-) i am impressed that you read RM long stuff and
take the time to read my posts as well. i have a great time discussing this
matter with you.

mathias




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