Re: Topic and non-topic pronouns

khaT@v@ Tim Smith:

>Does anybody know of any natlangs that use different third-person
pronouns
>(and/or different pronominal agreement markers on verbs) to represent
topics
>and non-topics?
Hmmm... all I can think of is Cree (I had the example in a book but I
don't have the book with me), but that's prolly just the
proximate/obviate dichotomy you mention below (since Cree is Algonquian,
I think)...

>Here's an example of what I have in mind.  I'm assuming a verb
morphology
>that has the following order of morpheme slots: subject - tense -
object -
>stem (sort of like Swahili but without the noun classes).  I'll
abbreviate
>the subject and object agreement affixes as 3sT (third-person singular
>topic) and 3sN (third-person singular non-topic).  In both of the
following
>two examples, "the man" is the topic.
I'm planning to do the same thing in Tech, that is, have a four-slot (or
more!) verb structure where the fully developed stem can bear prefixes
(which indicate mood and other things), a first suffix for subject
number, person, and gender (yes, gender) in various tenses and voices,
and a final suffix which indicates the person (and possibly number and
gender as well) of the direct object and/or indirect object.  So I'll
have a pretty complex verb conjugation schema.  An infix that falls
somewhere in the final suffix would indicate whether or not the object
is "near" or "far"; either I'll use -k- (lenited to -x-) to mark
distance from the speaker and addressee, or a vowel shift.  Also, I plan
on doing things such as conjugation of prepositions and genitive nouns,
where I'll also mark which person, number, gender, and topic/focus
status the antecedent represents.

In other words, I really got my work cut out for me.  Oh boy...

>man 3sT-Past-3sN-see woman = "the man saw the woman"
>
>man 3sN-Past-3sT-see woman = "the woman saw the man" or "the man was
seen by
>the woman"
>This sort of like the proximate vs. obviative distinction in the
Algonquian
>languages, but it's different in that it doesn't involve a
chain-of-being
>hierarchy and direct/inverse marking on verbs.  It seems to me that
this
>accomplishes the same thing as a direct/inverse system (distinguishing
>between the core arguments of a transitive verb without the need for
either
>case marking or fixed word order) with a lot less complexity.
Well I don't know what a direct/inverse system is, could you elaborate?
Also, I've heard of the proximate/obviative distinction referred to in
less formal terms as a third and a "fourth" person...

>I've already thought of ways to extend this system to include focus
marking,
>relative clauses, complement clauses, and indirect discourse, but they
all
>depend on the initial premise that this kind of pronoun system is
plausible.
>Since I don't know of any natlangs that do this, I'm afraid that there
may
>be some deep language-universal reason why it's not plausible.
Hey, it's a conlang, so it's plausible to you, and that's what counts!
I like the idea anyway.

Hey, somebody here knows a lot about Tagalog and the Philippine
languages of the Austronesian family, and it uses some sort of trigger
system to mark topic and other entities in a clause; I'm just not the
expert to really get into how it works.

s@la:w~

Danny
Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com