Re: ergative? I don't know...
| From: | Mathias M. Lassailly <lassailly@...> |
|---|
| Date: | Monday, October 26, 1998, 8:55 |
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Sally wrote :
[snip]
[>> = Mathias wrote]
> > I didn't write that deriving epithete adjectives from substantive is an
> > evidence for activeness.
>
> Yes you did... or rather you implied it. Go reread your message above.
> "People in active systems," is the phrase to which "they" refers in your
> sentence: "so they use the noun as adjective (as Latins did : 'bonus' =
> 'the good one')."
? swimming doesn't make me a fish, and using a noun as adjective doesn't make me
speak an 'active' language (I mean nom/acc, not age/pat). But that's a personal
experience.
"Epithete" isn't in my very thorough Dictionary of
> Grammatical Terms in Linguistics--do you mean "epithet"?
I'm French (did you noticed ? :-)
A substantive
> adjective is exactly what you describe above: an adjective such as "good"
> used substantively, i.e., as a noun: The good. The poor. Les
> miserables. Le pauvre. etc. etc. etc.
Yes : il est bon < bonus est.
'bon' is an epithet in French.
Since my question was narrowly
> about whether T. incorporated "active" tendencies, I assumed that all of
> your answer would pertain to defining "active" tendencies.
>
Am I 'off the marks ?'
Read below my opinion on terms 'active'.
> > > If I knew what you were expressing I could figure it out.
> >
> > I'm doing my best. I didn't mean to e offensive. Don't be angry at me,
> > I'm always doing my best :-)
>
> That wasn't anger, Mathias... it was genuine bafflement. I wasn't angry
> with you, I was trying to figure you out. What's baffling is when someone
> asks a simple question about active systems, and somebody else answers it
> with a flood of irrelevancies about "epithete adjectives,"
I don't think it's irrelevant.
or makes
> enigmatic comments like "the unergative is 'oops I didn't mean it.'
I can see you prefer words like 'volitional'. Very chic.
" I
> really value an ability to get to the point in linguistic explanations.
> This is a forum for people with linguistic knowledge to help other people
> without it; not to just show off vocabulary.
I'm delighted you think my English vocabulary is so impressive.
Forgive me if that's what it
> seemed to me that you were doing.
>
> [Just accidentally erased my question that makes sense of your generous
> answer]:
> > Nothing is 'off the mark' to us conlangers. Maybe because I'm no
> > linguist I enjoy transgressing marks all the time with conlangs.
>
> Thank you, that's exactly how I feel as well... or should. I still want
> to thoroughly know the concepts that I'm rejecting or tinkering with.
>
> > Mine
> > are unaspective so I need tons of cases and aspectivers and connectives
> > but I love it. So why not volition outside unergative case of ergative
> > languages and antipassive voice of nom/acc languages ?
>
> My verbs don't express aspect either, except in their "auxiliaries," what
> you are calling, I think, "aspectivers and connectives."
Connectives are French 'pronoms relatifs'.
'Acpectiver' is my clumsy translation for French 'aspectif'. Auxiliary is a very precise
type of verb in French.
A caveat: I
> have found that for dilettante linguists learning a little linguistic
> vocabulary can be even more dangerous than learning none. I'm only saying
> this because you have pleaded for me to understand that you are "trying
> your very best." In your case, perhaps--if you want to be clear to the
> people you're talking to--try to find the established English term for
> concepts like "aspectivers." Is there such a term or is this misspelled?
I try to translate in English terms used by some French Linguists (like Pottier)
like 'aspectivation' which not 'aspect'. For these people aspect shows aspect
in the process or state described in the phrase : to learn > to have learned.
Aspective show aspect possibly implied within the process or state described by
a concept : to learn > to know.
> And restrict your explanations with the fancy vocabulary to the question
> at hand, if a question is asked. That is why I do not want to apply any
> fancy terms to structures I'm not thoroughly sure of... like the term
> "active."
French linguists usually use 'active' for either nom/acc and 'agentive/patientive'
for age/pat systems. They make a strong difference between 'actant' (English
'agent') and 'agent' (English 'agent' :-) that could have spared you many, many
recent posts.
Ergative I've got a handle on. Teonaht is definitely not
> ergative. As for "antipassive," this is a term that is used mostly of
> ergative languages, as I understand it--to express "partially affected
> objects": "He chopped at the tree," as opposed to "He chopped the tree."
> In Teonaht, both would still be in the volitional because V or Non V has
> nothing to do with transitive or intransitive verbs.
>
Not that I know. Unergative is a case. Antipassive is a voice. Over here, I mean.
And that is MY caveat : all your linguistic analysis - were it enhansed by a very
learned vocabulary - refers to syntax, and more specifically English syntax.
You try to describe all systems from the English 'agent' viewpoint as for cases
and from the English 'verb' viewpoint as for predicates, further divided into
'state verbs,'action verbs' and 'auxiliaries'. I was told in my linguistics
classes 10 years ago that this kind of analysis is certainly necessary as a
reference for linguists but already biased with regard to philosophy (yes, we
do learn philosophy at school over here) because it goes from (Fr.) aspective
to unaspective : from instant to eternity, from 'verb' to 'noun' whereas some
languages may go reversely so that the distinction made between cases and verbs
become very questionable. In short : your righteous analysis mixes syntax and
semantics and maybe is a standard over there, but is not here even in my old,
simplistic French books.
> I just try to
> > show you that your volitional system (I call it volitive in my
> > languages) is another way of making active verbs from unspective states,
> > which is very normal since we all (fortunately) have in brain concepts
> > outside time (substantive), time inside concepts (aspective : 'verbs'),
> > time inside time (progression), etc. Don't take it awrong :-)
>
> No, I'm not taking it awrong. But I think it's irrelevant. Do you mean
> "aspectual"?
You think 'aspect' because you think 'sentence'. Time is not only part of syntax,
it's also part of semantics and semantics is part of the syntax and makes it
meaningful. Meaning as the unfathomable very reason why we discuss language.
My volitional verbs have nothing to do with aspectuals
> either. Nothing about the *aspect* of a verb in Teonath (its expression of
> the durative, the progressive, the habitual and other aspects of
> remembered time) affects whether it's volitional or not.
>
You consider habitual, progressive, etc as features stuck on 'verbs'. Other
peoples consider that the clock is also part of concepts, not adjuvant thereto
: you think predicate as abstract from its possible 'agents' (French 'actant',
not 'agent') and when you stop the watch at some stage of the process or
consider the 'agents' outside the predicate and your concept turns into a
substantive maybe embodied in 'agent', 'patient', 'patient as result', etc. But
other peoples think reversely : they focus on an argument and then click the
chronometer on or back from it. That makes a completely different way of
speaking where 'toe', 'to stick', 'branch' may be akind in both semantics and
syntax. If you know some Algonquian structure as well as you can spell it, you
understand what I mean.
> > > For some reason, I am still casting about for a notch to fit this into.
> > > I'd like to know of natlangs that do what T. does. i.e., maintain a basic
> > > nominative/accusative structure and still make distinctions between
> > > volition and non volition.
>
> > I can't help : no natlangs I know do. My language does but it's not a nom/acc
> > language. Slavic have a different verb for transitive (faculty and
> > intransitive), Japanese has an antipassive system :
> > mieru = to be apparent > miru = to see > miseru = to make it apparent (=to show) >
> > misaseru > to make someone see. But nothing to tell 'I see' from 'I look at'
> > with the same root.
>
> Sounds interesting. Maybe we should compare notes, Mathias.
> Volitionality in both our conlangs; this issue of the unaspective...
> whatever that is... ;-)
My notes are above, but I stopped linguistics 9 years ago one year after I
started, so I may not be of much help to you.
>
> Sally
>
Mathias
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
> Sally Caves
> scaves@frontiernet.net
>
http://www.frontiernet.net/~scaves/teonaht.html
>
> Rin euab ouarjo vopy vytssema tohda uo zef:
> ar al aippara brottwav; ad kemban aril yllefo
> brotwav fenom; vybbrysan brotwav an; he ad
> edirmerem brotwav kronom.
>
> "A cat and a man are not all that different.
> Both are on my bed; both lay their head on their
> arm; both have mustaches; both purr when they
> sleep."
> ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>
>