Strange voices
From: | Pablo David Flores <pablo-flores@...> |
Date: | Tuesday, April 22, 2003, 0:57 |
I'm sketching a new language (provisionally known as Terbian)
and trying to experiment abstractly with verb voices that are
not conventional. Terbian is a Split-S language (if I got the
meaning right). It marks some subjects as Agents (A) and others
as Patients (P), with a fixed pattern for each verb. Besides
these core cases there's also an oblique case (OBL). The voices
I've been trying are these:
1. subject-P verb complement-OBL
becomes -> complement-P APPLIC-verb-* subject-OBL
(APPLIC = applicative, from a fixed set; * = voice operator)
Example: cat-P sleeps on mat-OBL -> mat-P on-sleeps-* cat-OBL
"The mat on-it-sleeps a cat".
This works also with A-subject verbs, though the semantics is tricky:
subject-A verb object-P -> subject-P OBJECT_APPLIC-verb-* [object-OBL]
Example: dog-A bites cat-P -> dog-P OBJECT_APPLIC-bites-* [cat-OBL]
In my mind it looks as if the focus is shifted from the argument(s)
to the verbal action itself: "The dog is the one who bites [the cat]."
Does this make any sense? If so, any ideas for the name of this beast?
Terbian also has a mediopassive and a generic applicative voice that
transforms an oblique argument into a patient ("he swims under the boat"
-> "he underswims the boat").
--Pablo Flores
http://www.angelfire.com/scifi2/nyh/index.html
"Your freedom justifies our war."
(Niccolò Macchiavelli -- slightly paraphrased.)
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