Re: THEORY: transitivity

Ah, this is Daniel Andreasson!  Okay, I'm coming back to this post,
having butted into Nik Taylor's reply to you.

Pasasgen/Mensa wrote:
>
> Hello all.
>
> I've been thinking about making a lang which distinguishes
> between zero-transitive, intransitive, transitive and
> ditransitive (is that the English term?) verbs in that
> the conjugation would be different in each form.
> (And possibly also distinguish between verbs that
> don't have an agent, eg. "I sleep" and verbs that do.)
Do you mean, by your last statement, to distinguish between verbs
that don't have a volitional subject ("I sleep"--involuntarily) and
verbs that do ("I kick back vigorously--quite voluntarily")?  Because
I do just this in Teonaht, and I call them Agents and Experiencers.
Both of these categories can take transitive or intransitive verbs.

> 0. (It) rains   [no S or O]
> 1. I sleep    [only S]
> 2. I eat (food)    [S and O]
> 3. I give (it to you)    [1 S and 2 Os]
>
> The question is if transitive verbs should be conjugated
> as intransitive if they don't have an object.
This has always been a question of mine.  But my language is much more
interested in whether one does something by choice or involuntarily.
So "I eat" is more likely to be categorized as agentive rather than
intransitive.

> "-e" marks transitivity.
> "-y" marks intransitivity.
> Alt. 1:
> Na mrine. - I eat.
> Na mrine nando. - I eat food.
> or
>
> Alt. 2:
> Na mriny. - I eat.
> Na mrine nando. - I eat food.
>
> Has any of you done this in your langs, or do you know
> what the standard is in natlangs?
This is a good question, Daniel, and I don't know how to answer it.
I guess it depends on how much importance you place on transitivity.
Ergative/absolutive languages do; nominative/accusative languages
don't, and tend to make no distinctions in form for "eat," whether
it be transitive or intransitive.  In Teonaht, however, you would
say  "ry oua" if you are listening volitionally to a concert, but
"ry ouan" if you are hearing an annoying noise and are pissed off
about it.

A good question to ask yourself is whether "eat" always implies an
object, regardless of whether you state it or not.  Given that you
can't be eating without something to eat, then I'd say don't make
the distinction.

1.  Mother's cooking.
2.  Mother's cooking dinner.
3.  Mother's cooking  (she's in a pot stewing, or she's mad as hell)

If "cook" doesn't have this third possibility in your language, which
is kind of a middle voice, then I'd say make the two constructions
transitive.  It's really interesting.

> A second thought:
>
> Perhaps this is just some kind of object agreement on
> the verb:
> "-y" = hey, there are no objects!
> "-e" = listen up, there's an object as well.
> "-u" = look out, two objects coming your way!
> "-i" = what? Not even a subject?
>
> Then I might expand this into:
> "-er" = there's an object and it's 1p. (I.e. probably me)
> "-et" = one object and it's 2p.
> "-ek" = one object, 3p.
> etc.
> => Na mrinek nando.
> 1p.sg. eat.1obj.3p food.
>
> This might be really fun!
>
> Do you have any comments?
I think these sound good.  Of course, the presence of the object
will make the sentence clear, so you might ask yourself if in
the logic of language development these distinctions are necessary,
but we have so much redundancy already in languages I don't think
this should be an issue.

Sally
http://www.frontiernet.net/~scaves/verbs.html    <--went up recently.