Re: Vjatjackwa (the result of all those sound changes!)
| From: | Amanda Babcock <ababcock@...> |
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| Date: | Monday, December 15, 2003, 1:59 |
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Yay, more opportunities to write about this! (I drove 3 hours to go
take a final exam this weekend, and it was cancelled due to snow. Real
Life getting in the way of conlanging.)
On Fri, Dec 12, 2003 at 10:52:50PM -0600, Nik Taylor wrote:
> Amanda Babcock wrote:
> > Proto-W Witicku Vjatjackwa
> > egg 'tamako* 'tamag 'tOmOg
> > eggs** 'hetama'ko 'hetam'ko i'tOmku
> >
> > * Points for recognizing this.
>
> Japanese _tamago_!
Yep! :) Not above stealing random words, me.
> > . inanimate objects routinely incorporated into verbs
>
> All objects, or only "simple" objects? For example, how would you deal
> with "I bought the book that a friend of mine told me about the other
> day when we were goofing off when we should've been studying"? :-)
> Perhaps "I book-bought the one that ..."?
I understand that the usually-done thing is to incorporate only simple
objects, so that was the way I was going to do. The actual details of
constructing complex sentences had not been worked out yet :) But I also
had a brainflash when I realized that applicatives are a valence-*increasing*
operation, and object-incorporation is (can be) a valence-*decreasing*
operation... which leads to the solution below...
> > . verb agreement affixes use an animacy/proximacy hierarchy,
> > an inverse marker, and the fact that all verbs are either
> > transitive or intransitive (never ditransitive), with
> > transitives being constructed from intransitives via applicatives
>
> So, how do the equivalents of English ditransitives work? For example,
> how would you translate "I gave John the book"? Simple prepositions, or
> something more complex?
I'm on an anti-ditransitives, anti-extra-words kick. So I was going to
go the route of the example monologue about fish-buying that somebody
posted recently, and do like "I go-to home go-by car", or "I give-to John
give-it the book". The two forms of the verb would take different
applicatives (all transitive verbs contain *some* applicative), thus
reducing the repetitive sound of it.
But *then*!... *Then* I thought about the valence-decreasing of object
incorporation! And I decided that an incorporated object changes the
applicative from an infix to a suffix (or something like that - it was
late when I had this brainstorm), and that *the intransitive verb created
by object-incorporation can take a new applicative and become transitive
again in a different direction*.
So now, "I go-to home go-by car" could be "I home-to-go-by car" or
"I car-by-go-to home", or even "I home-to-car-by-go" or "I car-by-home-to-go".
And the second one could be "I book-give-to John". (Sorry for lack
of examples in the language.)
Limits on how many times incorporation could happen would be a function
of decreasing likelihood; three times would be rare, four would sound
flat out wrong to them, two would just sound fancy. One incorporation
with retransitivization would be ordinary everyday speech.
> Interesting ideas! Sorry I don't have more to say. :-)
No, I'm sorry I don't have more to write :) I did write down the
beginnings of the verb agreement system last night, but I haven't
tested them out through sound changes yet.
tu 2->1
tuwo 2->3
tuwowo 2->3-distant, 2->3-inanimate, 2->3-distant-inan
tuhe 2->self
pi 1->3
piwo 1->3-distant, 1->3-inanimate, 1->3-distant-inan
pihe 1->self
0 3->3-distant or 3-inanimate
he 3->3-proximate-animate
hewo 3->self
se 3-distant->3-distant-inanimate
sehe 3-distant->3-distant
sehewo 3-distant->self
*I'm not sure about those last two. I think I had some of the
3-proximate and 3-distant stuff collapsed in my scheme last night.
X-re: invert verb (enables 1->2, 3->2, 3->1, distant->proximate,
inanimate->animate)
la-X: at least one of the arguments to the verb is female (optional)
The X's mean that the core portion of the verb agreement prefix comes
before or after the particle as indicated. The complex as a whole is a
prefix to the verb.
Amanda
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