Re: THEORY: Ergativity and polypersonalism

On 20 Jan 2005, at 5.28 pm, Philip Newton wrote:

> ===============================================
>
> On Wed, 19 Jan 2005 21:14:39 -0500, Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>
> wrote:
>> We are all, and that certainly includes Christophe, well aware of the
>> traditional explanation of French grammar.  And that traditional
>> explanation is of course correct in that it describes how French
>> developed.
>>
>> His point is that if you didn't know anything about its history came
>> upon modern French as a spoken language with no writing system, there
>> is
>> absolutely nothing in the language that would lead you in the
>> direction
>> of the traditional analysis.  I'm not sure it would even be identified
>> as a Romance language.  Almost certainly not at first.
>>
>> The implication of this discrepancy is that the traditional analysis,
>> despite its correctness and utility from a historic standpoint, is
>> not necessarily useful in analyzing the modern language from a
>> linguistic standpoint.
>
> *nods*
>
> Similarly -- though not with as wide a discrepancy -- in English,
> perhaps.
Now I think about it, I'm not so sure English is wildly different---I
think most alien abducting Australians, at least, with linguists aboard
the ship would probably come to the conclusion that English is
currently undergoing a period of change to its internal structures, and
thus would try to find out where it's been to see where it's going. I
mean, initially they probably wouldn't distinguish between the -'s of
"John's going to the party" and "John's gone to the party".

On which subject, can anyone direct me to, or give me, the normal
analysis of English verbs and so forth, considering the contractions?
Without ignoring them by saying they're just spoken contractions of the
full form; I find many contracted forms grammatical when the full form
isn't, so they can't be equivalent.

One curious thing about English though is that it's often painted as a
relatively isolating language, but as I understand it (and I might be
*wildly* wrong here, which is the simplest explanation) German tends
not to use its genitive, preferring expressions including 'von', and
doesn't like its simple past tense, preferring expressions paralleling
English past perfects, whereas English enjoys the use of both... OTOH,
I've never heard anyone claiming that German's a relatively isolating
language...

BTW---if a language forms everything with clitics (like English seems
to want to), does it necessarily count as isolating or agglutinative or
something, or can it be whatever it darn well feels like based on other
aspects?

> (Already some features of Latin-derived traditional grammar
> feel unnatural when applied to English, e.g. the sanction against not
> splitting an infinitive; the rules on when to use subjective and
> objective forms of pronouns is, perhaps, a similar thing.)
I'm not so sure the English infinitive is splittable in the first
place, most of the time it seems to be a part of the verb (or element)
that came *before* and the infinitive is always unmarked. Most English
grammars have space for unmarked infinitives in the first place, so it
shouldn't be too bizarre. There's probably something I'm overlooking
though... Probably that English stress and English grammar are
incompatible :)

In any case, I'm a native speaker, so disregard it all as you will.

> =================================================
>
> On Thu, 20 Jan 2005 13:45:56 +1100, Tristan McLeay
> <conlang@...> wrote:
>> Actually, if anyone told you that English has a solid
>> nominative--accusative distinction in pronouns, they were lying.
>
> Though I'd say this depends on the speaker and how much they're
> influenced by a traditional grammar analysis. (Hm, I wonder whether
> this is the equivalent of a spelling pronunciation? Saying something
> because it's how you were taught, not necessarily because it's what
> sounds best.)
I wouldn't've said so. A spelling pronunciation is a mistaken
pronunciation based on the spelling: for instance, if I pronounced
'there' and 'here' to rhyme, because they're spelt the same, at least
one would be a spelling pronunciation (OTOH, if I were a Kiwi and did
that, I would just be following the normal colloquial habit, because
there the two sounds have merged into one... Similarly, I've heard
pronouncing the last syllable of 'Tuesday' with the long A sound
criticised as a spelling pronunciation, but for me it isn't; it's just
what my parents and peers have always said). Saying something because
it's how you were taught, not necessarily because it's what sounds
best, is just succumbing to the power of the establishment ;)

In any case, I would say that *English* doesn't have a solid
distinction, but on this issue (as others) it's flexible enough to
support both speakers who maintain a solid distinction, and those who
don't (like the overwhelming majority of the people I speak with). It
retains the backwards-compatibility for the time being, till people
like you start speaken proper!

>> I think also that normally when there's
>> a strong nom./acc. distinction, the pronoun-in-isolation form is the
>> nominative, whereas in English you'd use the so-called object-form
>> (-'Who would?' -'Me!').
>
> Well... I wouldn't.
It wasn't for no reason I used that example.

>  But my father subscribed to a fairly prescriptive
> view of English grammar, and this influenced the way I speak. For
> example, I try to keep my pronoun cases "correct" (and to use "whom"
> when appropriate, etc.).
Hey, I always use 'whom' when it's appropriate... (It's just that I
subscribe to the view that it's never appropriate to use it :)

(But are you a native speaker of both German and English? I spose that
explains your surname...)

> I used to think that people who spoke otherwise were "wrong" or
> speaking English "badly". I'm starting to be a bit more lenient now
> but I'm not sure I've entirely shaken off my roots in "English as she
> *should* be spoke"-ism (or that I want to: I think the notions of
> "grammar" and "grammatically correct" are useful... though my
> understanding of "grammatically correct may not mesh with someone
> else's internal grammar....).
I find it useful to downgrade your speech so far that even Satan in the
depths of hell has to look down to see it at times.


And from Rene Uittenbogaard, we received the comment:

> > whereas
> > English might say '... with John, the butcher; Jack, the tailer;
> > Sally; the greengrocer and the Prime Minister' (five people),
>
> That's brilliant! I'll start using the semicolon in Dutch for this
> purpose from now on.
Is Dutch in the habit of following the French model? I supposed most
Germanic languages would've done like English... The French way has way
too many words to be anything but unglamorously repetititive.

On 20 Jan 2005, at 8.41 pm, Steg Belsky wrote:

> On Jan 20, 2005, at 6:35 AM, Tristan McLeay wrote:
>> Not keeping up with the current state. The English orthography is
>> behind the times: it reflects pretty accurately Middle English
>> pronunciations (of particular dialects). In reality, of course, many
>> soundchanges, dialect-changes and others have occurred since then (so
>> that occur~occurrence no longer have similar stressed vowels; or the
>> standard pronunciation of 'bury' now comes from a different dialect
>> than the standard spelling).
>
> At the risk of opening up yet another YAEPT (yes, i know it's
> unnecessary... i say "RPG games" too, ya gotta problem withat? ;) )...
>
> The stressed vowel in "occur" and "occurance" in my dialect are both
> the same vowel, /@`/~/r\=/.
Oh damn, and I sat for at least two minutes trying to come up with what
I hope was a clear and unambiguous example. If you want to know what I
say, and thus how I came up with them being different, it's /2:/ and
/a.r/.

--
Tristan.

Replies