Re: Verbs derived from noun cases

Hi!

Peter Bleackley <Peter.Bleackley@...> writes:
> Suppose for each case of a noun, there is a verbal form, which turns CASE-X
> into BE-CASE-X. For example BE-NOM-X = "to be X", BE-GEN-X = "belong to X".
> How many cases would the noun need before verbs were no longer needed as a
> separate part of speach?
That question is too general to be answered with just one number.  On
the one end of the extreme, if you have enough nouns, you'd need only
one case, probably called genitive (the generic modifier case
expressing relations of any kind).  On the other hand, you could have
as many cases as other languages verbs...

For a conlang, you should first decide whether you want few or many
cases and then start to think of what you want.

One unnatural thing with the construction as such is that you only
have one modifier BE- for the verbal form.  You should either rename
that or have more than one.  E.g. West Greenlandic has (at least) the
following derivational clitics that change a fully inflected noun
phrase into a new verb.  Depending on the case of the noun, different
clitics are used (I don't have the grammar at hand, and I cannot
remember all actual vocabulary, so there will be question marks):

illu = house
-Voq = indicative 3rd person singular

allative:  illu+mut + kaq  -> to go (in)to the house
           illumukarpoq    =  (s)he/it goes to the house

ablative:  illu+?   + q    -> to come from (out of) the house

perlative: illu+?   + q    -> to go through the house

locative:  illu+mi  + ik   -> to be in/at the house
           illumiippoq     =  (s)he/it is in/at the house

equative:  illu+?   + ik   -> to be like a house

Of course, you could collapse these into one affix, but BE- would
probably be an inappropriate gloss.

There are affixes for stems, too, but that's something different:
           illu     + u    -> to be a house
           illuuvoq           (s)he/it is a house

(Again, I hope I used all the fusion rules correctl.)


My own Fukhian does things a bit like that actually, which I only
found after a recent reanalysis: the whole verbal morphology is really
used as a clitic: the inflection is added to (ususally) the first word
of a phrase, whatever that is.  There is no affix at all, you just add
the verbal inflection to the bare (or modified) stem.  This would be
like above, but whichout -kaq, -q, -ik and -u at all.  If the stem is
not inflected, it must be the first word in the phrase and is then
seen as a proper verb.  But in sentences with only inflected nouns,
you can reorder the nouns freely and then add the verbal inflection to
the first word in a sentence, like a clitic.

The classes noun and verb fall together into one group of stems then.
Fukhian does have adjectives, though.  It was intended to be
different, but the reanalysis clearly showed that Fukhian has no verbs
syntactically.

**Henrik