Re: DISCUSSION, QUESTION: Verb conjugation by location

On Monday 27 May 2002 7:27 pm, you wrote:
>         Hi all,
>         Last night, I was reading a book on morphosyntax.
>         When the book was discussing inflections, it was mainly discussing
> verb conjugation affixes. It listed as examples the usual person, number,
> time, continuative, etc.
>         Then, it mentioned "location".
>
>         I found this to be very interesting.
>
>         I would imagine that conjugating verbs by location would mainly
> involve a separation of "here|not here" and/or "in my presence|not in my
> presence". Possibly, it could also include "in|not in your presence", but I
> imagine such a construct would be used mainly for future or
> subjunctive/imperative tenses. (I think stating "this happened | is
> happening in front of you," would elicit a "duh, I was there..." response.)
>
>         And so, the $64 question: Does anyone know of any natural languages
> or conlangs in which location is an inherent element in verb conjugations?
> How does this work the language?
Gevey appears to have this sort of location distinction (entirely by accident
- I didn't plan it), but only for people's names.

Gevey verbs agree with their subject noun's "status" (something which is not
easily explained in just a sentence).

To quote from the website grammar: "People's names (and nicknames) tend to
use the animate external status for when that person is present in the group,
or active in the conversation, and the animate simple status for when they
are not present. Thus you could say ta'magzuups tathato yuu pan Jono (John
bought the bread in the shop) if John was standing next to you when you said
it, and ta'magzuups tathate yuu pan Jone when John is not present in the
group."

ta'magzuups  - at/in the shop
tathato  - bought
yuu pan  - bread
Jono - John

This is probably not what you meant, as the effect only works with people's
names (or 3rd person pronouns applied to people). A fuller discussion of
status in Gevey can be found on http://www.kalieda.org/gevey/status.html

Rik

> ______________________________________
> Mike Karapcik   *       Tampa, FL
> Network Analyst *       USF campus
> H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Research Center
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> B+++/R:Wic A+ E+ N1 Is/d K ia-:+ p-- s- m o P S----