Re: a grammar sketch...

Yoon Ha Lee wrote:
>
> On Sat, 30 Sep 2000, =?iso-8859-1?Q?J=F6rg?= Rhiemeier wrote:
>
  [...]
>
> > 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?
Head marking has nothing to do with word order, it means that the
semantic
relations between verbs and nouns are not marked on the noun by cases,
but by agreement on the verb.  However, I do not understand head marking
deeply enough to explain properly.  Marcus, please?

> > > 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.
I wasn't intending to say that your "actee" was a dative and the
"accomplice" an accusative or objective.  It is rather that your cases
cannot be comfortably matched onto such traditional terms.

Jörg.