Re: What would you call this?

Quoting Peter Bleackley <Peter.Bleackley@...>:

> Staving Thomas Wier:
>
> >  this is a language where nouns
> > > inflect for four levels of definiteness and a gender-dependent number
> > > system*.  However, these aren't involved in the marking of the verb to
> > > determine word order.
> >
> >Wait -- I'm confused.  How does changing the inflection on the verb
> >free up the word order when you say the word order of the two actants
> >is fixed, as either OS or SO?  It really does sound like what you're
> >describing is a discourse function of the language. It sounds like
> >when objects are fronted before subjects, i.e. in some sense topicalized,
> >the verb must agree with that special change in syntax by a special
> >affix/change.
>
> The only language I that makes significant use of free word order is Latin
> (default SOV, but often free).
Latin is actually considerably more rigid than say Meskwaki
or Dyirbal.

> Latin, of course, is an inflecting language
> and its cases play a large role in freeing the word order. I wanted to do
> things differently, and devise a system for free word order without cases.
Well, if you want to get rid of cases, you can use lots more inflection on
the verb (i.e., make it more head-marking).  Georgian verbs, for
example, inflect for subject, object, indirect object, tense, aspect,
location, direction, causativization, mood, voice and number of the
actants. This, in principle, means it can move things around most
anywhere it wants (in practice it's about as rigid as Latin).

> The main thing I had to achieve to allow word order to be free was to
> identify the verb, subject and object. The verb can be easily distinguished
> from the nouns morphologically, we now just need to determine which noun is
> which. Since I wasn't using case, I decided to mark the order of the nouns
> on the verb. This distinguishes between SO (default) and OS (marked)
> orders.
But note that your word order is not in principle absolutely free
then: you're specifying an unmarked and a marked construction. Because
this doesn't seem to affect the grammatical relations of Subject and
Object (the arguments so marked remain the same, if I understand you),
the reason for marking order seemed to me more like a discourse feature.

> Once this is established, the verb can go wherever the speaker
> likes - before, between or after the nouns. An intransitive sentence would
> normally be in the default form, and SV and VS orders are possible.
> However, if an intransitive sentence is marked, it is effectively passive.
Well, only if it changes the relations of the verb.  Can you elide
arguments of the verb without so changing the grammatical relations?
If so, then this is no passive.

 =========================================================================
Thomas Wier            "I find it useful to meet my subjects personally,
Dept. of Linguistics    because our secret police don't get it right
University of Chicago   half the time." -- octogenarian Sheikh Zayed of
1010 E. 59th Street     Abu Dhabi, to a French reporter.
Chicago, IL 60637

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