Re: Success and Failure

On Wed, 5 Jul 2000, Joe Mondello wrote:

> I was struck by the passage in "Women, Fire and Dangerous Things" about the
> Japanese "hon" particle being used to indicate success, and I decided that
> rodnús needed a convenient way to grammaticalize success, indeterminate
> result, and failure.  The result has decreased the number of words my
I have this kinda feature in my lang.  It's excellent to find out that
something a little similar actually exists in a natlang.

draqa has a system of locative prefixes in which success is grammaticized:

hr-    * located at
ei-    * successfully to
saga-  * unsuccessfully toward
ieh-   * toward a particular destination
co-    * departing from, originating at
fir-   * in the general direction of
t'ageh-* in a general direction away from


draqa uses location and direction metaphor generously, so that:

wiax (I), lan (home), mehi (s/he/it), fwa (affinity, like),
kiafa (understand)


i wiax eilan         *  I go (went) successfully home
i wiax sagalan       *  I try to get home, but don't make it there
i wiax iehlan        *  I am (was) headed for home


i mehi hrfwa         *  I like her (She is at my affinity)
i mehi eifwa         *  I like her (She successfully arrived
                                        at my affinity)
i mehi sagafwa       *  We try, but I end up not liking her
                             (She unsuccessfully approached my affinity)

i xoi sagakiafa      *  I try and fail to understand it
                             (It unsuccessfully approached
                                  my understanding)


> Failure is indicated by the infix -ól-, and success is the unmarked form.
> Here are some examples:
>
> jey       tob  lobr~ wam fí
> she-PERF. give food  VC2 you
> She's given you food

ja nayu codehi eimehi:

  food from-her succ.-to-you


>
> jey       tob-en      lobr~ wam fí
> she-PERF. give-INDET. food  VC2 you
> She's offered you food (but I don't know whether or not you've accepted it).
>
ja nayu codehi iehmehi:


> jey       tólob      lobr~ wam fí
> she-PERF. give-FAIL. food  VC2 you
> She's offered you food (and you refused it).

ja nayu codehi sagamehi:


This could also mean something else prevented her from getting the food to
you besides you refusing it though.



> This system works very well, and it gives my language certain words and
> nuances it didn't have almost from thin air (such as the appearance of the
> word 'habmen'- "to lobby" from the root 'habmex'- "to persuade")  One major
> issue I have is the  Verb Class Markers.  pairs such as "to offer"/"to give"
> seem to naturally utilize different verb classes ('offer' would normally be a
> verbal action (ra) while 'give' would be a physical action (wam)).  Anyone
> have any Ideas on this?  what I'm concerned about is that by making both
> halves of the pair use the same class markes, different aspects of the action
> may become emphasized (e.g. using the "physical marker" with "offer" gives it
> a less social, civilized connotation (as Tarzan non-verbally thrusting a
> piece of meat in Jane's face or something) while using the "verbal marker"
> with "give" sounds sort of formal, like "bequeath" or "bestow"

The system actually feels very natural.  I wonder why it's not more
common.  I really dig how it takes on some of the functions of aspect.
Good luck.



a liuc'fehi,
.yasmin.