Re: verb-noun-incorporation mania

On Tue, Nov 20, 2001 at 12:20:40AM -0800, Jesse Bangs wrote:
> On Mon, 19 Nov 2001 14:41:14 -0500 "H. S. Teoh" <hsteoh@...>
> writes:
> > In the process of getting ideas for revamping my conlang, I came up
> > with
> > this (probably totally insane) verbal/nominal incorporation
> > mechanism.
> > Basically, the idea is that verbs do not need to be standalone; they
> > can
> > stick themselves into the middle of a noun. And multiple nouns in
> > the same
> > sentence can have these attached verbs. For example:
>
> This is not unprecedented.  However, in every analysis I've ever seen,
> both of conlangs and natlangs, we call this noun-incorporation.  The verb
> is viewed as central and the noun is said to incorporate into the verb.
Hmm, interesting. What I had in mind is more of a construction like:
        <verbA>-<nounA> <verbB>-<nounB> <verbC>-<nounC> ...
where each noun has a different case (function) in the sentence.

>
> > eTuw'mab0 Kyy'kh3tau t3 my'd3m3l fww'tujub0' teme.
> > "I-asserting hurting-to-woman, no-prettiness showing-from-you!"
> >
> > In English, "I said to the woman, hurting her, You are not pretty!"
[snip]
> Here's something interesting.  It is more common for objects to
> incorporate than subjects, and if this is subject-incorporation, how is
> it different from subject agreement?
Well, currently my conlang doesn't really distinguish between subject and
object :-P Each of the five noun cases are selected more or less
semantically. For example,
        eba'    byy'jh 3kac33'     jobu'
        I       give   red-flowers her
        (instr) (v)    (plur,cvy)  (rcp)
        "I deliver red flowers to her" -- here, the instrumental case on
        "I" indicates that I am *not* the sender of the flowers but just
        the delivery man. To indicate the sender, the originative is used:

        chi't0 byy'jh 3kac33'     jobu'
        He     give   red-flowers her
        (org)  (v)    (plur,cvy)  (rcp)
        "He gives flowers to her".

Because of this, I got the idea of incorporating verbs onto various nouns
-- for example, using the above sentences:

        chi't0 elww'maba  3kac33'     byy'jhojobu'
        he     I-carrying red-flowers given-to-her
        (org)  (instr)    (plur,cvy)  (rcp)
        "He, through my carrying of them, [gave] red flowers received by
        her."
        Or, in proper English, "He gave red flowers which I delivered to
        her"; alternatively, "She received the red flowers I carried from
        him."

_elww'maba_ is the incorporation of the verb _laa'ma_, to carry, and
_eba'_, instrumental case of ebi', "I" (masc).

_byy'jhojobu'_ is the incorporation of _byy'jh_, to give, and _jobu'_,
feminine intimate pronoun. Because _jobu'_ is in the receptive case, it is
clear that she is not the giver but the recipient of the gift.

[snip]
> > (snip)
> > The idea behind this (convoluted) construction is that the same
> > action can
> > ave multiple verbs to describe it, relative to the role of each
> > associated noun.
>
> I think a syntactician would analyze this differently, but since I'm not
> a syntactician I can't say for sure.  It almost seems like a serial-verb
> construction, where verbs with separate objects but the same subject are
> strung together.  In this case the "subject," being the originator, is
> constant through the phrase, but various verbs are used in series to
> describe different aspects of the action.  (Excuse the hideously bad
> explanation of a serial verb.)
[snip]

Hmm, I suppose then my odd idea is a result of the fact that my conlang
doesn't distinguish between subject and object :-) (The originative is not
necessarily what one might call a "subject" either... with verbs of
motion, it marks the point of origin and what one might call a subject is
in the conveyant case.)

I'd say, the way I construct these things almost seems to be participial.
Perhaps the incorporated verbs are just acting as participles? Except that
unlike participles in IE langs that I'm familiar with, these actually play
central roles in the main sentence.

Anyhow, I really like the conciseness and symmetry of the constructions
:-)


T

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