Re: Active again.

Amanda Babcock wrote:

> Ok, this is a reply to a message more than a month old, but what the
> heck:
As the old Conlang Saying [TM] goes: On Conlang-L no thread ever
really dies (the NERD Law, or more correctly, the Pharrell Law :).

> Daniel:
> > I wouldn't, but when looking at the syntax (and especially
> > co-reference) it's clearly accusative. Interestingly though,
> > the syntax is also active.
> >
> > "She hit him and ran" would be no problem because the left-out
> > subject of "ran" is AGT ("run" is a controlled event and thus
> > takes an AGT subject), i.e. the same as "she". This would mean
> > the same as in English.
> >
> > But "She hit him and fell down" would mean that "he" fell down,
> > since the left-out subject of "fell" is PAT, i.e. the same as
> > "him" in the first clause. Thus:
> >
> >      She:AGT hit him:PAT and [he:PAT] fell down.
> This prompts the question, if you're still working on this: how do
> you write "She ran and fell down"?
I thought I wouldn't get any comments on this. :)

It's an interesting question. I'll begin by adjusting my
last example above, so it means that "she" fell down after
hitting "him". What you need to do is insert a DIFFERENT
marker on the verb, which basically says that the implied,
left-out argument is different from what you'd expect. So:

She:AGT hit him:PAT and fell down:DIFF.

This means that even though the left out argument of "fell down"
SHOULD be a PAT and thus "him", it's marked by "DIFFERENT"
and then you know that it is in fact "she" who falls down.
But "she" is still marked as PAT so she doesn't have control
of her falling.

Well, "she" isn't overtly marked as PAT ("she" isn't even
in the second clause at all :), but that is what's implied
by this DIFFERENT marker. I think it's pretty neat.

So, leading to your question with two one-place predicates,
where one is AGT and the other one is PAT. This would be:

She:AGT ran and fell down:DIFF

There IS no other argument than "she", but you still have
to mark "fell down" with the DIFF marker, so that you know
that she fell by mistake. And you also know that there isn't
anyone else unmentioned, who did the falling.

Of course, you could say "She:AGT ran and she:PAT fell down",
but that wouldn't be as neat. :) This sentence wouldn't be
interpreted as having two participants (two "shes") in it,
since Piata distinguishes between two third persons (obviative
and proximate).

I hope that made sense. If you or anyone else has a better
suggestion as how to solve this syntactic problem above, I'd
be more than happy to hear it!

Some sort of voice, like Henrik suggested, would perhaps be possible. I'm eager to
see what you, Henrik, can come up with!

Daniel Andreasson

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