Re: Grammar-holes: secondary predication

Taliesin wrote:
> Secondary predication is a phenomenon related to two of the
> suggestions given in the thread "Difficult clauses":
>
> "We spent all night talking about I can't remember what."
> "She bought I lost count how many kinds of cheese."
One could get close to these in Kash, but only colloquially:

mikocañ ondre yuno liri ta pole manimbur
we-discuss night entire about not can I-remember

Note that a single vowel changes the meaning entirely:
mikocañ ondre yuno lire ta pole manimbur
'we talked all night about (the fact that) I can't remember' (about my
inability to remember)

yatraka naya-naya yemo re ta pole mapinal
she-buy kind-kind fruit REL not can I-count (No cheese on Cindu!)

More "correct" might be yatraka....yemo mo ta pole mapinal '...but I
couldn't count (them)'
>
> Here's some examples:
>
> "They eat fish raw" = they eat fish, the fish being raw as they eat it
> "They eat fish naked" = they eat fish, they are naked while doing so
>
> The above are depictive secondary predications, the first on the
> object and the second on the subject. It might be possible to
> interpret them the other way around of course but in this
> example the semantics trump the syntax.
Yes, that is the problem, even in Kash; in fact I think they make a
distinction between _raw_ (need not be cooked) and _uncooked_ (ought to be
cooked. Thus some Cindu ethnic group(s) might enjoy numu toluka (raw fish,
sushi), whereas sailors bobbing around in a life-raft might have to subsist
on numu tranami (uncooked).

As for 'naked', we don't have a specific word (so far); it's not an
unnatural state for Kash. One is simply inga elimbeyi "without clothes" or
maybe tralimbe alhtough that's more 'un-worn=not 2d hand'
>
> There's a third type of secondary predication, the resultative:
>
> "Jane cooked the chicken hot" can mean:
This is peculiar English no matter how you interpret it, IMHO...... Can you
create a better example?

> English can use other things than adjectives as the second
> predicate though:
>
> "Jane cooked the chicken in a dreadful state"
Or maybe: "Jane cooked the chicken in a state of shock" I'm sure 99% of us
would say that Jane was in a state of shock, not the chicken.  Semantics
again. I think Kash would have to split this up into: Jane was in a s.o.s.
AND/WHEN she cooked the chicken.

> AFMCL, it should be possible to do resultatives with serial verb
constructions but as for depictives? Hmm..

Kash has serial verbs, but I think they require a closer relationship
between the members, so that "yafasan yanami popo" she-hot she-cook popo
would sound a little odd. But yahuluñ yanami popo 'she-fast/quick she
cook...' is fine.

We can also have:
anala senda iyama inopra ratu
child-pl PROG they-run they-cross street
The children were running across they street (I.e. they were crossing the
street running)-- a compound action as it were.

Whereas "The children were running (and they were) across the street-- an
action at a location-- would simply be different:
anala senda iyama ri andoprani ratu
                  LOC other-side-of street

The simple "he painted the house red" has two possibilities I think:
yarunguni çisu punani
he-CAUS-color red house-the  OR maybe just

yarucisu punani
he-CAUS-red house-the

runguni+COLOR has to be idiomatic for 'to paint COLOR', since--
yarunguni punani çisu would mean 'he painted the red house'

> Is this a hole in your grammars also?
Not really, but thanks for making me think about it :-)