Theiling Online    Sitemap    Conlang Mailing List HQ   

Voice and dynamicity

From:Aidan Grey <taalenmaple@...>
Date:Sunday, November 27, 2005, 22:20
After reading some more of Morneau's LS, and with input from you folks, I've come up
with a tentative arrangement of voice dynamics for Taalen. I wondered if you
could give me some input on the arrangement I have at the moment.

 Verbs are polysynthetic, as in many Native American langs. There is a specific
marker in one of the "slots" for voice, with active marked by a null affix.
These markers indicate the nature of the subject. In Morneau's terms, they
indicate the following:
  Active:    subject is A
Middle:   subject is AP
Passive: subject is P

 None of these address the nature of the object (except middle, obviously) or
the presence of Morneau's Focus. I think the arrangement is pretty simple, and
logical (though logic is not a real consideration - this is not a loglang). In
addition verbs can take affixes indicating a static or dynamic situation (I am
blue vs. I am becoming blue, respectively, or I carry (habitually) vs. I am
starting to carry - I think).

 One of the verbs that would have the Passive affix is "heal", where the
subject is actually a patient of the verb. But this isn't really a passive, in
the traditional sense; that would mean something like "is healed".

 So the question: what should my "passive" be called? Is there already a term
for this? And what would a likely method for creating a traditional passive be?

 I already have a methodology for creating stative verbs (no adjectives in
Taalen, just stative verbs). For example, to bear "rag-" (an active verb)
creates the stative verb "raede-", which corresponds to a past participle
carried or borne. Intuition says that"'is borne' is not the same as a true
passive. With the heal verb example, the passive "pal-" would have the stative
form "palle-", which emphasizes the state of having been cured, as opposed to
the process of being cured by someone else. Could the static/dynamic
distinction be involved at all, to clarify?

  Thanks for your help!
  Aidan


		
---------------------------------
 Yahoo! Music Unlimited - Access over 1 million songs. Try it free.