Re: Active again.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Peter Clark" <peter-clark@...>

>         Well, as I said, it's up to you to determine how you treat
medio-passives.
> Although let me just make sure I have things clear in my head. Does
Teonaht
> looks like this:
>         Transitive sentences:
>                 1. I(A) ate the meat(P).
>                 2. I(E) heard loud music(P). (And it woke me up.)
>         Intransitive sentences:
>                 3. I(Sa) ran. (The subject has the same case as an agent)
>                 4. Me(Se) fell. (The subject has the same case as an
experiencer)
>                 5. The pig(Sp) cooks. (The subject has the same case as a
patient)

Very close.  The only problem is that Teonaht is predominantly accusative,
so that #4 of "Intransitive sentences" would never have me, "ol," as the
subject of an intransitive verb.  The pronouns, because they are so old, and
so hard for me to change, have the old nominative/accusative case markings:
y, "I"; ol, "me"; fy, "thou," fel "thee"; etc.  The emphasized pronouns,
which do make a distinction between A and E, are taking over in colloquial
Teonaht, and stand at the head of a sentence:  Yryi, il gnadol elry ennyve.
"As for me-volitional, the meat I (not marked except as nominative) ate."
And in sentences with nouns, the same is true, except that an article will
indicate the noun's volitionality, as will the verb:  Li zef nelry kebo.
"The man fell.  But the verb, along with the article, indicates lack of
volitionality with that final "n."

As I said, Teonaht is the result of mixed relations, so to speak.  The same
verb can be used to mean "hear" or "listen," but it acquires
synctacticity--if I can use that term--by changing its gerundive form from
"ouarem" (a volitional verb) to "ouaned" (a non-volitional verb), wherein
the ghost of that -ned is reflected in the prefixed preterite particle:
nel, instead of the volitional -el.  There are tons of verbs that do this,
shading the meanings of verbs that are their English equivalents.

So this complicates the matter of whether I have a semantic based system or
not.

Believe me, this developed over a number of years.  I haven't "restructured"
Teonaht so much as I've moved it, like a natural language, towards new
developments, retaining old developments.  How Teonaht lost its case systems
is a history I have yet to explain; they are fiercely retained in a
mysterious "mother" tongue called Nendeylyt, which someday I should flesh
out.

Sally Caves
scaves@frontiernet.net
Eskkoat ol ai sendran, rohsan nuehra celyil takrem bomai nakuo.
"My shadow follows me, putting strange, new roses into the world."