Re: Questions Concerning Grammar

--- Christophe Grandsire
<christophe.grandsire@...> wrote:

> En réponse à Ben Poplawski :
>
>
> >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.
>
> Actually, it's wa which indicates topic and ga which
> indicates subject (In
> sentences like "watashi wa hana ga suki desu": I
> like flowers, the
> non-literal translation is misleading. What is
> translated as an object is
> really the *subject* of the sentence. Literally, it
> gives: "as for me,
> flowers are favourite").
 I think this may just be a case of one language
expressing analytically what another may express
syntheticaly.

(a) They-TOP saw the dog-ABS and ___ ran.
(b) They-ERG saw the dog-ABS and ___ ran.
(c) *They-TOP-ERG saw the dog-ABS and ___ ran.

I interpreted is as having "they" as the assumed
argument of "ran" in
(a) (since it's marked as the topic), "the dog" as the
assumed
argument of "ran" in (b) (since it's in the absolutive
case, which is
the unmarked case), and that (c) is ungrammatical.

Ahh. Cool. Thank you. What I was wondering was if
Topicality could override semantic ergativity (or
accusitivity). I may have stated that wrong, but
anyway I get what you mean.
  I came up with all this based on Arabic and Hebrew
sentence structures. They both have what are called
"thematic sentences" such that (from Arabic):

  alluwwal haw al@iyd alSa@ayr wassa@@ayhu @iyd
  alghaaTr
  The-First(theme) he the-festival the-small and-name-
 his festival the-fastbreaking
  "The first one is the Lesser Festival of the Fast
   Breaking"

  The-fasting(theme) his-meaning that the-people not

  they-eat and-not they-drink
  "The meaning of the fast is that people abstain from

   food and drink"

  Occasion-his(theme) the-pilgrimage and-he he-begins
  in-last day of the-pilgramage
 "The occasion (of the festival) is the last day of
  pilgramage (of Muhammed)"

  The-Muslim(theme)they-celebrate this the-festival
  "All Muslims celebrate this festival"

  "The newspaper(theme) I-read-her"
  "The newspaper(theme) she-informs-me"

  In all these examples, there is a noun topic
preceding the verb (Arabic is VSO) that may or may not
have a referent in the predicate and which often has a
rather loose grammatical relation to the predicate. In
Chinese one can have things like:
 Fish Red Snapper delicious
 "Red Snapper is a delicious fish"
 That tree leaves (I) like
 "I like the leaves on that tree"
 School I not like book read
 "As for school, I don't like reading books"

and from Arabic:
 The-composition the-writing not-she-ceased
the-literature the-Arabic"
 "Arabic literary production has not ceased"

All of these examples are culled from "Teach Yourself
Arabic" J. R. Smart, NTC Publishing Group.

 From what I understand, Biblical Hebrew, especially
in the Pentateuch, uses similar "thematic" devices. I
think (I could easily be wrong) that a topic-comment
structure is found in many polysynthetic languages. I
know that many of them have very grammaticalized
notions of "focus". Is that the same thing?
                            Thank you as always,
                                              Travis







		
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