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Re: new parts of speech/cases

From:Kala Tunu <kalatunu@...>
Date:Friday, May 3, 2002, 13:54
Christian Thalmann <cinga@...> wrote:
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> my feeling is that his system is handy but completely > misses the point with important kinds of predicates like "to fill a tank > with water", "to plant a garden with flowers", etc, for which it is hardly > easy to tell the focus from the patient. The Obrenje case system on the other hand works beautifully here -- it's not hard to guess that the predicate should take the predicative case. ;-) <<< well i have to agree: i tried the Obrenje trick of incorporating an object and i always pick the "focus". for some reason "to tree-plant garden" sounds right while "to garden-plant trees" sounds wrong. your "predicative" case looks pretty much like RM focus case's twin though.
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The object of the verb |tog-| "to eat" could be cast into either the predicative case or the objective case, depending on whether the verb action is seen as endocentric or exocentric: Togoq salime i cikkue. /tO"gON sa"li:m i sik"ku:/ Eat:LIQ:3e cat:d OBJ mouse:d "The cat is eating the mouse." (Exocentric: The eating is directed at a particular mouse.) Korow togoq salime u cikku. /kO"row tO"gON sa"li:m M "sikkM/ Again eat:LIQ:3e cat:d PRE mouse:i "The cat is eating mice again." (Endocentric: The cat is performing its habit of mouse-eating.) Does that make sense or did I get the definitions of endo-/exocentric wrong? <<< that's exactly it. your use of the word "habit" shows that the endocentric predicate "to eat mice" makes an action into the attribute of "the cat" like "to twinkle" is the attribute of a star--or rather, the execution of the capacity to eat to feed or to twinkle. of course you could say that any entity born able to eat has the "habit to eat food". that's why RM says that the object of "to eat" is necessarily a focus. BTW is Obrenje's "the cat" a plain agent in both case or do you tag it differently too?
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This is exactly the one example I use to illustrate how an object can take different cases with the same verb depending on its role in the verb action. =) http://catharsis.netpeople.ch/langmaking/cases2.gif <<< and switching the multiple meanings of a verb: "to read" = "to use one's reading ability to acquire a written iformation" or "to tell someone something written". <<< Je renoze u quq. /jE r@"no:Z M NMN/ PER:3s:OBJ name:PST:1 PRE idiot:i "I call him an idiot."
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somehow i was sure of how Obrenje would deal with that!! :-) actually RM has a problem here because the subject rob in "rob calls john an idiot" is a patient, not an agent since rob doesn't truely change john's state but only john's status (i coined: STATUS = STATe of focUS ;-). RM analyses the sentence as: rob calls that--john is an idiot. patient verb focus--patient verb focus. but i really don't agree with that because it crams all verbs of assessment (to measure, to sentence, to consider, etc) in a category of clumsy double verbs, while i think most natlangs find a way to combine "rob", "john" and "idiot" as actors of a single predicate. for instance japanese: rob-wa john-wo baka-ni omou. rob john stupid think. agent patient focus verb. mathias _________________________________________________________________ MSN Photos is the easiest way to share and print your photos: http://photos.msn.com/support/worldwide.aspx