Re: a grammar sketch...

On Sat, 30 Sep 2000, =?iso-8859-1?Q?J=F6rg?= Rhiemeier wrote:

> Yoon Ha Lee wrote:
> >
> > ...for an unnamed language I've been thinking of working on, but haven't
> > actually started yet as far as choosing phonemes, word-generation,
> > anything like that.
> >
> > 4 cases:
> > actor: that which is responsible for what happens
> > actee: that which is affected by what happens
> > accomplice: that which helps accomplish what happens
> > action: that which happens
> >
> > I suspect there are more standard names I should be using, because this
> > is looking like another active case system.  These are shown by inflection.
>
> It indeed looks like an active case system, and there are unfortunately
> no standardized names for such cases as apparently, all active languages
> in the "real world" seem to be head marking.
I'm a little lost.  What does "head marking" mean?  Is that the same as
when languages put adjectives after the noun, etc.?  Or have I gotten
the terminology reversed?

> > Something like "I gave her flowers" would render casewise:
> > I: actor
> > her: actee (the intent of the action is to make "her" a gift-recipient)
> > flowers: accomplice (the flowers were complicitous in the giving-act)
> > giving: action
>
> Traditionally, "here" is in dative case and "flowers" in accusative, or
> as
> we are talking active langs here, objective case.
>
> In Nur-ellen, the sentence is
>
> Im      annent    na  he          ljös.
> AGT.1SG give-PAST DAT AGT.3SG.FEM OBJ.flower.PL
I thought of that, except (as H.S. Teoh has done, rather more coherently)
"accusative" and "dative" seem somehow wrong, because the *point* of the
action is for "her" to have the flower, not for the flower to belong to
"her," so "her" is in some sense the recipient of the action.  :-/  I
*know* I'm saying this poorly.

Thanks for your thoughts.  :-)

Cheers,
yHL