Re: Questions Concerning Grammar

From:    Ben Poplawski <thebassplayer@...>
> > This seems to be a bit like the system I have toyed
> > with using. The topic is not marked with its own case,
> > and whenever an argument is not explicitly stated in
> > the verbal aggreement, the topic is assumed to fill
> > that role. This is most apparent with 3rd person
> > topics. Thus,
> >
> > Bob-topic me-give-it-their means They give it to me
> > (and Bob perhaps owned or made whatever they gave)
> > while, Bob-topic give-it-their means They give it to Bob.
>
> That's ... strange. First of all, topic languages (that I know of) do not
> have proniminal affixes for their verbs. Your first example might work, but
> it's not something I've seen.
That's only true of prominent East Asian topic languages like Chinese
Korean, or Japanese.  It's not true of, say, Meskwaki, or many other
discourse-configurational languages.  (Depends on exactly what you mean
by "topic language" though.)

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Thomas Wier	       "I find it useful to meet my subjects personally,
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