Re: Success and Failure

Joe a écrit:

I was struck by the passage in "Women, Fire and Dangerous Things" about the
 Japanese "hon" particle being used to indicate success,
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i never heard of that "hon" ibn that sense. what's that ?
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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
 language needs, leaving me with some collapsed meanings to play around with
 My solution is this:

 Tense and aspect previously behaved like so:
     Past:       first consonant of verb becomes voiced.
     Perfective: first consonant of subject becomes voiced.
     Future:     verb is suffixed with -n
     Incipient:  subject is suffixed with -n

 I've collapsed the incipient and the future, so that suffixing -n on the
 subject is now the future tense marking.  The verb suffix -n now indicates
 indeterminate result.

 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

 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).

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

 where
 VC2     Verb Class 2 (which deals with physical actions)
 PERF.   Perfective
 FAIL.       Failure
 INDET.  Indeterminate result

 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"

 Any Ideas?
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i find the way you classify verbs according to their "nature" very neat.
"fuzzy" verbs like "give" have shades like tentative, perfective, accepted,
etc. depending on the continuum of action they are part of.
the problem is - like you illustrate it - that verbs of the "give" kind have
different acceptions depending on the partner's behaviour.
whether "to give" is "successful" actually depends on the (incipient)
partner's
volition and ability. some partners are inanimate patients, others are
beneficiaries and some even process the "gift".
likewise "i talk to him" implies that he can process the information
i address to him and "i feed her" means that she is able to consume her meal.
available conlangs use different tricks to refer to that (in)ability:

(i) you pidginize SVO-SVO-SVO :
i give it he accept it / i give it he receive it / i give it he take it /
i don't give it he grab it / etc.

(ii) you watakassize :
me_sentient_class2-ergative he_sentient_class2-dative
it_stupid_class35-absolutive give

(iii) you teonathize :
it me give-volitive

(iv) you pilipinotrigerize :
giver i of him on it / givee he of me on it /  given it of me to him

(v) you lojbanize :
give origin-me destination-he via-LA

etc.

all fun

mathias