Re: OT: Another analytic question

Hey!

Altough this may have been answered already ...

DISCLAIMER: The contents of this mail base on my comparably
small knowledge of syntactics and semantics.

On Wednesday 12 January 2005 02:22, Gary Shannon wrote:

 > For example, suppose I used the particles "su", "ob",
 > and "indo" in the sentence "Su John gave ob book indo
 > (to) Mary." Now I can shuffle the pieces around
 > without confusing the roles of the various players and
 > write: "Indo Mary gave ob book su John." or "Ob book
 > indo Mary gave su John." "su John" always tells us
 > that John is the subject no matter where "su John"
 > appears in the stream of words that makes up the
 > sentence.
 >
 > Are there any analytic natlangs (or conlangs) that
 > completely mark the roles of the participants so that
 > word order is (relatively) free? Or am I venturing
 > into unexplored (or unproductive) territory?

This is called case marking and is already used in the Real
World™. Swahili AFAIK even goes as far as marking verbs or
so for both, subject and object in some way. I'd be glad if
somebody could explain that again. Actually, I could have a
look at Describing Morphosyntax, but anyway ... As for
conlangs, my conlangs Ayeri and Daléian do this all the
time. In Ayeri, the heavy case marking is something I'd
like to get rid of or at least shorten if I'm ever going to
work out descendands. Back to natlangs, the German definite
articles behave similar:

Singular: Plural:

m f n | m/f/n
-------------------+-------
NOM der die das | die
GEN des der des | der
DAT dem der dem | den
ACC den die das | die


1a. Der Mann gibt der Frau den Stift.
S V DAT ACC

1b. Der Frau gibt der Mann den Stift.
DAT V S ACC

1c. Den Stift gibt der Mann der Frau.
ACC V S DAT

1d. Gibt der Mann der Frau den Stift?
V S DAT ACC

The fronted object always tells you that this is the
important bit for the speaker in that sentence. It's where
the emphasis is and maybe could be even called "focus".

Although the order of the objects in the sentence is mixed
up, you can all the time identify which roles the objects
have. In English this is theoretically possible as well,
but it sounds a little bit odd:

2a. The man gives the woman the pen. (S-V-IO-DO)
2b. The woman the man gives the pen. (IO-S-V-DO)
2c. The pen the man gives the woman. (DO-S-V-IO)
2d. Gives the man the woman the pen? (V-S-IO-DO)

Then, there are languages like the Austronesian ones and
also my own conlang Ayeri, which would do it similar to
this:

3a. Ayonin ang iliyà envanyam tamayalei.
man.TRG TRG:AGT give.3sg woman.BEN pen.PAT
-> THE MAN gives the woman the pen.

3b. Ayonang yam iliyà envanin tamayalei.
man.AGT TRG:BEN give.3sg woman.TRG pen.PAT
-> The man gives THE WOMAN the pen.

3c. Ayonang le iliyà envanyam tamayaon.
man.AGT TRG:PAT give.3sg woman.PAT pen.TRG
-> The man gives the woman THE PEN.

Questions are not formed by changing the order of the
objects in the sentence. Note that the pen is inanimate and
thus gets the inanimate suffixes of course. "-in" and "-on"
thus both are marking the trigger depending on its noun
class.

In 3. you can see that the word order does not necessarily
change to emphasis things, and it is more than this not
necessary to determine the case of the object. Thus, word
order is completely up to the speaker in fact. Note that
the case morpheme that marks the case of the triggered
object on the verb and the verb itself are not separable,
at least not in my conlang.

I conclude that in my opinion and as far as I know your
ideas are no rubbish. Natlangs have already done it.
(N'Hadi? :-P)

Carsten



NB: I don't know if "object" used as a group name is the
right word for the units usually called "Subject" and
"Object(s)" that each verb needs.

--

Eri silveváng aibannama padangin.
Nivaie evaenain eri ming silvoieváng caparei.
-- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Le Petit Prince

http://www.beckerscarsten.de/?conlang=ayeri