Re: Back!

Hi All!

I've been away from the list for a disgustingly long time, but I've
still been reading some of the threads on the list, and I've been in
equal parts enthralled, educated, amused and bamboozled.

While I've been away, I've very heavily reworked Thagojian, and I'm
in the process of making a reference grammar, based on the format
given in Thomas Paynes "Describing Morphosyntax".

I have a knotty terminological problem that I'd like some help with,
if y'all'd be so kind...

VPs in Thagojian take an obligatory proclitic which coordinates /
indicates a whole big grab-bag of information.  I need a concise and
descriptive name for this particle, based on the following
descriptions:

1. It expresses whether the verb is in the direct, inverse or
reflexive/reciprocal aspect.

2. It identifies whether one, both or neither of the arguments of
this VP occurs in the preceeding VP, and if so, which one (if
applicable) and whether it's in the same semantic role(s).

2a. It also has special forms to make the entire previous clause into
an argument of this VP.

3. It has unique forms that override the above pragmatic markers if
one of the arguments of this VP is 1st or 2nd person.  If these forms
occur, the appropriate pronomial argument is gapped (i.e. realised as
zero).  (These 'pronomial' forms still have aspectual variants as in
(1) above).

4. A formally identical particle is used to mark inherently possessed
NPs.  (It's possible that inherently possessed nouns are actually
verbs meaning "to own (x)", but that's a topic for a whole nuther
day.)

5. It has a special form used in affirmative and negative imperative
statements.

Since the purpose of this particle is so horrendously wide-reaching,
it's keeping me up nights trying to nail down a good name for it.

It's not a pronoun, as these have a different inflectional pattern
and occur in other posistions within clauses.  In fact, I have a
whole other slew of wierdness about the pronoun / proverb / proadverb
/ proclause / pro-etc system, but this is more in the way of a nifty
piece of trickery inspired by the dreaded Esperanto...


TIA for any suggestions,

---
Pb