Re: "Transferral" verb form in LC-01

Hi Tim, comments and questions below

On Tue, 25 Jun 2002 00:13:43 +0100, Tim May <butsuri@...> wrote:

>LC-01 is a vaguely logical personal language.  Words are derived
>regularly from a triconsonantal roots by insertion of vowels and
>semivowels and the application of affixes.  A root is considered,
>essentially, to describe a state. All roots may (theoretically) be
>realized as nouns or verbs, the basic noun being "that which verbs",
>something which is in the state described by the root. Word order is
>SOV.
'Yemls roots can also be used as nouns, verbs, adjectives, prepositions.

>Voice
>
>Voice isn't really worked out yet. I have some old notes but I'm
>hoping to make them obselete.
Let's see what you've rejected!

>PPH aspect
>
>All nouns and verbs inflect for aspect, either perfective (state
>described by root is considered as a single action), progressive
>(state is in progress when something else happens), habitual/intrinsic
>(state is something which patient does often, or is in by its nature).
Aspect is one of the things I'ver been trying to take a closer look at
recently.
'Yemls has the perfective (currently called instantive, but I may change
it) and progressive aspects. It also has a resultive aspect for words
referring to actions, meaning a current state from a prior action. 'Yemls
also has the habitual/intrinsic, but classified it as a tense, since it
can occur in addition to other aspect markers but not tense markers.

>ICED aspect
>
> If this infix is applied, the word describes a change in the state of
> the patient. It may be inceptive (entering the state), cessative
> (leaving the state), evolutive (becoming more in the state), or
> devolutive (becoming less in the state).
I expect to borrow your terminology for my revised system.
Would you say that evolutive and devolutive apply only to scale-type
qualities (like hot, fast, heavy, large) and to quantities rather than to,
say, things or actions?

>_Derivation of transatives and ditransitives from simpler forms_
>
> Generally, verbs can be intransitive, transitive or ditransitive. In
> LC-01, I am trying to eliminate transitive and ditransitive roots as
> much as is practical, preferring to derive them from more fundamental
> roots. This is desirable for a number of reasons. It reduces the number
> of roots required, freeing up space for other concepts. It reduces the
> number of roots which must be learnt for basic understanding (although
> it requires a greater knowlege of morphology from a student).
Yes.

> Hopefully, it will also simplify the case system, as I'm finding it
> difficult to come up with a truly satisfying classification of core case
> roles in ditransitives. I don't imagine that all transitives can be
> reduced, but it may prove possible to do away with ditransitive roots
> entirely.
I have this problem too. It seems that there are really a large number of
core case roles, but no more than 3 for a given type of word. It's hard to
decide which get lumped together as a single case.
'Yemls has something like:
A-case (or ergative) for Actions and remote cAuses,
P-case (or absolutive) for Patients, reciPients, Perceivers,
C-case for Clarifiers, Co-patients, etC.
For 'Yemls, syntactic expediency sometimes comes into play also.

I'm sure there are languages which (A) have no ditransitive _forms_, so it
should be possible to (B) eliminate ditransitive roots. The drawback of (A)
is that using essentially multiple separate verbs is inelegant, especially
for marking core case roles. Of course, you're only concerned with (B)
here. What you might consider is, instead of thinking _only_ in terms of
deriving ditransitives from transitives or transitives from intransitives,
also think about deriving transitives from basically ditransitive roots (or
intransitives from transitives) by deleting arguments. This also relates to
grammatical voice, I think.

>Causative
>
> The first tactic along these lines was to add a causative suffix. This
> allows many words which have seperate roots in, say, English to be
> derived in LC-01. For example, a verb "to kill" may be derived from the
> verb "to live", in the cessative aspect, plus a causative.
> Case is another thing that isn't really worked out, but it's understood
> that the subject in a causative construction is in a seperate
> (ergative?) case from the subject of an intransitive or intrinsically
> transitive verb (nominative?).
Makes sense. The subject of causation seems like a remote cause to me,
while the original subject is an agent (for an action) or a patient etc.

> Anyway, the use of the causative allows many transitive verbs to be
> reduced to intransitives, and some ditransitives can be reduced to
> transitives ("to teach" from "to know").
This is the part I didn't understand (examples snipped). Wouldn't a
causative affix _add_ an argument? Oh, wait a second. I interpreted
"reduced" differently from what you intended. You mean that a transitive
verb (with its own root) can be _replaced_ by an intransitive verb +
causative. Let me go back and rewrite some of my comments above ....

Jeff J.

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