Re: What would you call this?

Quoting Tim May <butsuri@...>:

> Andreas Johansson wrote at 2003-06-17 22:11:25 (+0200)
>  > Yza eze reimazo
>  > yza eze reim -azo
>  > 3f  3m  see  PAST
>  > "She saw him"
>  >
>  > As seen, only WO tells us that _yza_ is subject and _eze_ object -
> _eze yza
>  > reimazo_ means "he saw her". Now, we can drop either argument,
> provided we
>  > supply the appropriate suffix on the verb:
>  >
>  > Yza reimolazo
>  > yza reim     -ol      -azo
>  > 3f  see      PASSIVE  PAST
>  > "She saw"
>  >
>  > Eze reimeizazo
>  > eze reim     -eiz        -azo
>  > 3m  contact  ANTIPASSIVE PAST
>  > "He was seen"
>  >
>  > Now, my "gut feeling" is that neither of these suffixes is changing
>  > any valences - they're only telling which argument has got dropped,
>  > the other being found in its normal place. If so, I guess they
>  > shouldn't properly be called "passive" and "antipassive", altho'
>  > I'm at a loss as what else to call them.
>  >
>  > How would you analyze these?
>  >
> Shouldn't these be the other way around?  I mean, I'm probably not
> best placed to say, but they look like an antipassive (demoting
> patient) and passive (demotng agent) respectively.
Damn, mixed it up. Should be:

Yza reimeizazo "She saw"
Eze reimolazo  "He was seen"

Aint that typical? One's trying to give a good example, and end up confusing
oneself bad enough to make basic errors in one's own conlang ...

> I don't know that it's meaningful to say that they don't change a
> valency - reimazo takes two core arguments and reimolazo only one,
> yes?  What does "valency" mean beyond that?
That I'm misusing the word "valency", apparently. I meant that the argument
that is not dropped remains the same kind of argument, unlike the English
pronoun that switches from object to subject in "She saw him" -> "He was seen".

> Is it possible to supply the dropped noun as an oblique argument?
With _-ol_ yes. I've not made up my mind whether there's a corresponding
construction with _-eiz_, but there very well may be, since the language could
certainly use any extra ability to move NPs around.

> Are there any syntactic structures in the language which show either a
> nom/acc or erg/abs distinction, but will work on the other argument of
> a transitive through use of the passive or antipassive respectively?
> Examples might be reflexivization, relativization or conjunction
> reduction (quoting from the table in _Describing Morphosyntax_.
The language is syntactically accusative - "he hit her and ran away" would
indicate that he ran.

Hm, what you're asking is whether a sentence like _eze izi nhazazo noy
reimolazo_ "he cheese eat-PAST and see-PASSIVE-PAST" works for "he ate cheese
and was seen", basically. I don't think so - it'd mean that the cheese was
seen. You'd have to supply and additional _eze_; _eze izi nhazazo noy eze
reimolazo_.

                                                          Andreas

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