Re: Questions Concerning Grammar

>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. (I know that in Japanese you can have
simultaneously a topic and subject in a transitive sentence, but I can't
think up of any examples.) It would make more sense to have
Bob-[poss.]-"it"-[d.o.] for a sentence like that. Besides, if Bob was
already the topic on hand, he wouldn't be mentioned. It's already assumed
your talking about him. "Me-give-it-their", or just "Give" would work just
fine. (Topic languages may omit all nouns and pronouns from a sentence -- a
sentence consisting of a single verb with no person marking is perfectly fine.)

>  Similarly for benefactor--whenever a verb occurs in
>a sentence with expressed topic and *is not marked*
>for benefaction, the topic is assumed to be the
>benefactor or malefactor. I've thought of including an
>inflection indicating a nontopic ind. obj as well.
Again, there are no pronominal affixes on verbs in topic languages (again,
that I know of). Japanese uses particles to indicate such relationships: wa
- subject; ga - topic; o - direct object; ni - locative; usually used for
indirect objects; e - destination; de - instrument, ablative; etc.

I read your post in full again -- yeah, you could use it in your own system.
It's just not very natural -- no natlangs I know of, topic languages, do that.

Erg... I'm tired, so if my post made no sense, please forgive me.

Ben

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