Re: verb-noun-incorporation mania

> 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.
This sounds even more like a serial verb, actually, though it differs in
a few important ways.  Having just read the chapter on serial verbs in my
Ling book, I have a clearer idea of what I'm talking about.  But looking
more closely at your data I'm a little bit suspicious of some things.

> 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.
Yes, I guessed as much from your previous examples.  I don't know of any
natlangs that do this, but I think it's a good feature anyway.

> 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."
Aha.  This is what seems funny to me.  Your case system is completely
redundant with your serial-verb system, i.e., your cases aren't doing
anything that your verb-incorporation doesn't already do.

In the previous example, you have the word <elww'maba>, glossed as
"I-carrying," where the 1sg pronoun is marked in the instrumental case.
The verb "carry" indicates that the associated 1sg morpheme is the
conveyor of the action rather than the originator.  However, the
instrumental case of the pronoun does the exact same thing.  Why are both
necessary?  Likewise, if the verb "given" indicates that the incorporated
noun "she" is the recipient of the action, why do you include the
recipient case marking?

Splitting apart the noun cases and the verb incorporation, there seem to
be two options.  In one, you only need one verb, but you exhaustively
mark the cases of the nouns.

He(org) 1sg(instr) red-flowers(cvy) 3sgf(rcp) give

Everything is clear in that case.  However, there's another case where
you use serial verbs and incorporation to indicate the same thing, but
don't use cases at all:

He-send flowers-go I-carry she-get

Right now you're doing both.  That's redundant in a way that I don't
think any natlang is.

> 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.)
Right.  I like the case system, but it makes the verb-incorporation
superfluous.

> 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.
Oh, lots of IE langs have participles in central roles.  Greek,
especially, uses participles in dozens of different, unexpected ways.

> Anyhow, I really like the conciseness and symmetry of the
> constructions
> :-)
Which is why it's ironic that redundancy is the biggest problem I have
with it ;-).  Of course, you're allowed to do anything you like with your
language--I, too, often use neat features that aren't found in any
natlang to spice up my conlangs.  But you have to decide how you're going
to go with this one.  This idea just occurred to me as a way you could do
both: with every argument in the sentence, you can chose to either
case-mark the noun or to incorporate a verb.  Case-marked nouns cannot be
incorporated into verbs, and when incorporating a verb you would use some
kind of bare stem.  Thus, you could have sentences like these with
basically the same semantic interpretation:

He(org) give I-carry red-flowers(cvy) 3sgf(rcp).
He(org) give 1sg(instr) red-flowers-go she-get,
etc.

Anyway, it's something for you to think about.

Jesse S. Bangs     Pelíran
jaspax@ juno.com
"We couldn't all be cowboys
Some of us are clowns" --Counting Crows

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