Re: Active again.

On Saturday 29 March 2003 05:55 pm, Sally Caves wrote:
> Joa~o has expressed some worries that too much of Conlang is off-topic.
> Okay, here's a question I have about natural languages of the "active"
> persuasion.  What natural languages are considered "active," and why is
> this particular term invoked?
        Check out Daniel Andreasson's thesis on active languages:
http://home.swipnet.se/escape/active.pdf


> Why "active"?  The term does not seem intuitive.
        Because it sounds better than "split intransitive"? :) I suppose it's because
active systems can show the level of activity involved: "He fell," means he
deliberately fell, while "Him fell," means he slipped on the ice or
something. In the first example, he is an agent in his falling, while in the
second, he is the recipient of falling.

>     A language in which subjects of both
>     transitive and intransitive verbs which
>     are semantically agents are treated
>     identically for grammatical purposes
>     while non-agent subjects and direct
>     objects are treated differently.
>
> From this description, it sounds as though an active language has to be an
> off-shoot of an ergative language.
        Translating Trask:
1.      He (agent) shot the deer (patient). (Transitive)
2.      He (agent) fell. (Intransitive, subject is agent)
3.      Him (patient) fell. (Intransitive, subject is patient)

        So "deer" in #1 and "him" in #3 would be identically marked as patients.
Unlike an ergative system, the case of the subject in an intransitive
sentence can vary.


It goes on:
>
>     In some active languages lexical verbs
>     are rigidly divided into those taking agent
>     subjects and those taking non-agent
>     subjects; in others, some lexical verbs
>     can take either to denote, for example,
>     differing degrees of control over the action.
>
> What would be an example of a non-lexical verb?
        I don't really understand what he means by "lexical" verbs, either, but I
just gave you an example of the second type (i.e., denoting differing degrees
of control).

> Are there any accusative languages that make a distinction between agent
> and experiencer the way my Teonaht does with its "split nominative"?
        You'll have to remind me what exactly you mean by "split nominative." Russian
(most definitely an accusative language) and many others indicate experiencer
by the dative case. So "I'm hot" would be "To me is heat." Is this what you
are referring to?

> One thing I was thinking of doing was dropping the final vowel off of nouns
> in both the non-agent subject and the patient; most nouns in Teonaht end in
> a vowel, as do most vowels:
        Care to rephrase that part? "Most vowels end in vowels"? I should hope so! :)
        As for dropping endings, Enamyn does that to patientive nouns. As a general
rule, the patientive form is the simplest morphologically. Subject is
indicated by other means (namely, the absolute tense marking), so doesn't
apply in this case.
        :Peter
--
Oh what a tangled web they weave who try a new word to conceive!

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