Re: THEORY: Tukang Besi (was Re: THEORY: Cross-Referencing the Arguments of Consecutive Verbs, And Similar Things)

--- In conlang@yahoogroups.com, "David J. Peterson" <dedalvs@G...>
wrote:
> Tom wrote:
> <<
> Hello, anyone who feels like answering.
>  >>
>
> I have kind of a response, but not a specific one.  I had some
> trouble trying to picture what you were describing.  Examples
> would be helpful.  :)
A probably not-best example of the Middle Welsh can be found at
http://canol.home.att.net/chap25.html

A discussion of the waw-consecutive can be found at
http://www.basicsofbiblicalhebrew.com/Files/consecutive2.pdf
On the 6th page of that 17 page document (page 197 of the journal it
was in) is a discussion of Genesis 4:1, which is a waw-consecutive
sentence, so they say.

There appears to be some disagreement about the existence and use of
waw-consecutive as a pragmatic device for thematic progression and
coherence of discourse and narrative in other Semitic languages such
as Aramaic.

One good serial verb example is here:
http://www.sil.org/linguistics/GlossaryOfLinguisticTerms/WhatIsASerial
VerbConstruction.htm

More serial verb examples are here:
http://cslipublications.stanford.edu/HPSG/1/hpsg00muansuwan.pdf

Google turns up others; these two seemed at first glance they might
be the best of the first ten.

>
> Anyway, you mentioned applicatives, and whether are not they
> can occur in ergative languages.  The answer is, of course, yes.
> And I have a kind of example from Tukang Besi, though I don't
> believe this language can accurately be classified as accusative,
> ergative, trigger, or anything I've even ever really seen.  It's
> quite an extraordinary language, and I hope I can explain it
> accurately.
>
> All of this is based on a talk that was given at the undergrad.
> typology class I TA'd at UCSD by Mark Donohue (visiting from
> the University of Singapore).  He's an amazing guy.  I'm going
> to try to reconstruct what he said about Tukang Besi (a language
> for which he wrote the grammar) based on his handout, which
> can be downloaded at the following url:
>
> http://ling.ucsd.edu/~djp/dlstuff/verbinitialhandout.pdf
Thanks.  I printed it off.

>
> Tukang Besi is a language of central Indonesia, and is at least
> distantly related to Tagalog.  It has an agreement pattern and
> case marking system that strikes me as really quite fascinating.
> Below are some facts which would lead one to believe that
> Tukang Besi is simply a nominative/accusative language:
>
> (1)
> (a) Ku'ita te ana (na iaku).  /1sg.-see ACC. child (NOM. I)/ "I saw
a
> child."
> (b) *Ku'ita na iaku te ana.  For same.  [word order = VOS]
> (c) Kurato (na iaku) di kampo.  /1sg.-arrive (NOM. I) OBL.
village/
> "I arrived at the village."
>
> So, essentially, the order is VOS, the language is a prodrop
language,
> and oblique arguments follow the subject.
>
> Now here's an alternative way of expressing (1a).
>
> (2)
> (a) Ku'ita'e (te iaku) na ana.  /1sg.-see-3sg. (ACC.? I) NOM.?
> child/  "I saw the child."
> (b) Ku'ita'e na ana te iaku.  Variant word order is grammatical.
>
> So now the case marking has switched, the subject is now obligatory
> and the object non-obligatory, and the word order is flexible.
> Importantly, though, this wasn't triggered by a valence-changing
> affix, but by the presence of optional third person object agreement
> on the verb (somewhat reminiscent of Georgian).
>
> So far, the system can be summarized as follows:
>
> (3)
> (a) Monovalent verbs: Agrees with the subject via prefix, and the
> lone argument is marked with /na/.
> (b) Bivalent verbs: If the object is not marked on the verb, the
> agent is marked with a prefix, the word order is VP(A), /na/
> marks the agent, and /te/ the patient.
> (c) Bivalent verbs: If the object is marked on the verb, the agent
> is marked with a prefix and the patient with a suffix.  The word
> order is either V(P)A or VA(P), /te/ marks the agent, and /na/
> marks the patient.
>
> A confusing, but regular system.  Now for a ditransitive sentence:
>
> (4)
> (a) Kuhu'uke te boku (te iaku) na ana.  /1sg.-give-3sg. ACC.? book
> (ACC.? I) NOM.? child/  "I gave the child a book."
>
> Now the "nominative" case is marking the recipient, and the
> "accusative" case is marking both the agent and patient (or theme),
> with the subject yet again the pro-droppable argument.
>
> The way Donohue characterized these case markers is as follows:
>
> (5)
> (a) di = a general oblique/adjunct marker
> (b) te = marks core terms not marked by /na/
> (c) na = marks one obligatory term in the clause (marks the P or
IO
> if the verb has object marking; otherwise, marks S or A)
>
> Interestingly, there are several passive markers which tend
> not to be used (or are certainly not as common as the English
> passive) which are rather specific:
>
> (6)
> (a) Noto'ita na ana.  "The child was seen."
> (b) Note'ita na ana.  "The child happened to get seen."
> (c) Nomo'ita na ana.  "The child was visible."
> (d) Nopo'ita'ita na ana.  "The children looked at each other.
>
> That latter is a reciprocal marker.
>
> In addition to this, there's an applicative marker (and it seems
> to be lexicalized which verb takes which applicative marker).
> So you can get the following (using an intransitive verb):
>
> (7)
> (a) Norato na mori di kampo.  /3sg.-arrive NOM. student OBL.
> village/  "The students arrived at the village."  (Normal)
> (b) Noratomi te kampo na mori.  "The students arrived at the
> village."  (Applicative)
> (c) Noratomi'e na kampo te mori.  "The students arrived at the
> village."  (Applicative + Obj. Marking)
> (d) Notoratomi na kampo.  "The village was arrived at."
(Applicative
> + Passive)
>
> So essentially there are a bunch of different ways to say the
> same thing.  Why?  Donohue said that the privileged nature of
> the /na/ marker allowed it to be used pragmatically for particular
> stylistic reasons.  He offers a couple stories (which I won't
> transcribe,
> but just describe) as examples.  One of them involves a chicken
> and a woman named Wa Sabusaburengki.  The story goes like this
> (I'll mark what argument gets marked with what case in parentheses):
>
> (8)
> (a) Once upon a time, there was a (INST) lady, and her (te) name
> was (te) Wa Sabusaburengki.
> (b) (Te) Wa Sabusaburengki was going to decapitate a (te) chicken.
> (c) Just as (pro-drop) she was about to decapitate that (na)
chicken...
> (d) ...(na) the chicken said...
>
> So up until the second verb "decapitate", no verb has object
agreement.
> Object agreement is used on the second verb "decapitate", so that
the
> chicken, the patient, can be marked with /na/.  And why mark "the
> chicken" with /na/?  Because up until that point, the story
introduces
> the woman and talks about what she's doing.  /Na/ is used to alert
> the listener that a change in subject is coming up.  And then when
> "the chicken" appears as the subject again, /na/ is used again.
>
> This example was fairly simple.  Mark also gave a much longer
> story that essentially tracks all its arguments throughout in one
> way or another so that they can be referred to with /na/ whenever
> they become the focus of attention.  This is done with agreement
> marking on the verb, applicatives, and passives--all of it for
> pragmatic purposes.
>
> So, that's about a third of his handout.  The rest goes into the
> history of the language, which is even more interesting (and
> which Austronesian buffs will find familiar).  Anyway, this is
> a really interesting system that I've wanted to share for awhile,
> but I've been busy.  It probably would've been better to try
> to explain it right when I heard about and it was fresh in my
> mind, but at least I can offer the handout for you to look at on
> your own.
>
I will try to understand it.

Thank you

Tom H.C. in MI