Re: Animacy, Inverse Systems and Word Order

Caveat lector: I am not an expert on animacy systems, but the following
reflect what I know from my reading.

> I'm toying with a new language that has animacy as well as an inverse system.
>   I have a couple of questions about natural languages with inverse systems
> (i.e., what's attested, what's not).
>
> First: Do languages with animacy and inverse systems ever have noun cases?
I don't believe so. You can have case with either animacy *or* an inverse
system, but if you have all three one of them seems like it'll be
redundant.

> Second, assume the following:
>
> 1.) togo = man
> 2.) luka = wolf
> 3.) mata = see
> 4.) -s = inverse
> 5.) Humans are considered to be of higher animacy than animals.
> 6.) Verb-final word order.
>
> According to the above system, both /togo luka mata/ and /luka togo mata/
> would mean "The man sees the wolf."
>
> However, let's say a language has preferred SOV word order.
I believe it is typical of animacy/inverse language to have very free word
order. This is, in fact, the reason for having animacy rules: you can
always know who did what to whom while putting your arguments in whatever
order is appropriate for the discourse.

>  Would this mean that you would never see /luka togo mata/?  Or are
> there systems where the noun with higher animacy must *necessarily*
> precede/follow the noun with lesser animacy, making one of the two word
> orders impossible?  And, if this is so, let's say that you'd have:
I can't say much about what is *necessarily* true, or even about specific
examples of such systems. What I do know is that strict word order
considerations are not typical of animacy-heirarchy languages. I don't
even think you can consider languages "SVO" or "SOV" or whatever.

> I don't really know much about animacy/inverse systems, so I was wondering.
> Also, does having case obviate the need for an inverse system?
Yes, as I said above. Animate/inverse is a way of having unambiguous
argument structure without any marking of the noun arguments themselves.

--
Jesse S. Bangs jaspax@u.washington.edu
http://students.washington.edu/jaspax/
http://students.washington.edu/jaspax/blog

"We're counting on our virtues,
Cause it's too hard to count the dead."
 - Jason Webley

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