Re: a grammar sketch...

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.
>
  ["genders" snipped]
>
> 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 use the terms "agentive" (your "actor") and "objective" (your
"actee").
Both terms occur in Fillmore (1968), where they refer to depth-structure
semantic roles which are reflected by these cases, so I think one can
assume this naming convention to be quite well founded.

The "action" case could be called "predicative"; I cannot say what to
call
the "accomplice" case without further examples of its usage.

> 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

> Tenses:
> The verifiable tenses are:
>   relative past
>   relative present
>   relative future
> The unverifiable tenses are:
>   legendary (remote past, legend, myth)
>   prophetic (remote or unknownable future, i.e. the speaker doesn't expect
>     to live to find out whether his/her/its pronouncement came out right)
Nice!

  [lots of interesting stuff I'd need more time to comment on snipped]

I'll perhaps reply to this later.

Jörg.