Telek grammar tidbit

Here's a small tidbit of Telek grammar for critique.

In a conversation when you are talking about somebody, sometimes you need
to make reference to an object that the person owns.  If the person is more
important to the discourse than the possessed thing, Telek allows you to
move the possessor out of the possessor phrase into the sentence. This can
be done with subjects and objects.  Due to the length of the email, I'll
just discuss Subject Possessor Raising (SPR) this time, and save Object
Possessor Raising for another time.

The first sentence below is a typical sentence.  The second one has SPR.

John s-atool-ym-yl kylawi-'ni
John AsP-hat-POSS-NOM blow.away-PERF
'John's hat blew away.'

John-al s-atool-ym-yl kylawi-'ni
John-NOM AsP-hat-POSS-NOM blow.away-PERF
'John is such that his hat blew away'; 'John had his hat blow away on him.'

Note that in the second sentence, both "John-al" and "s-atool-ym-yl" are
marked as Nominative.  Both are subjects of the sentence: "John" is the
syntactic subject, "hat" is the semantic subject.  The difference between
the subject types can be seen in a sentence that requires switch-reference
marking.

John-al so-duraw, s-atool-ym-yl kylawi-'ni-wed.
John-NOM AsP-sad, AsP-hat-POSS-NOM blow.away-PERF-REAL(DS)
'John is sad, because his hat blew away.'

John-al so-duraw, s-atool-ym-yl kylawi-'ni-wel.
John-NOM AsP-sad, AsP-hat-POSS-NOM blow.away-PERF-REAL(SS)
'John his sad, because his hat blew away.'

In the first example there is a different-subject marker (DS) because the
subjects of the clauses are "John" and "his hat" respectively.  In the
second example there is a same-subject marker (SS) because "his" has been
"raised" to the subject position (even though you can't see it), making
both clauses have the subject "John".  (Technically, the first clause has
the subject "John" and the second one has the subject "his"; but they refer
to the same individual.)

Generally, word order in Telek is fairly free.  For example, "John's hat"
can normally appear before or after the verb.  (But "John" must appear
immediately before "hat")

John s-atool-ym-yl kylawi-'ni
John AsP-hat-POSS-NOM blow.away-PERF
'John's hat blew away.'

kylawi-'ni John s-atool-ym-yl
blow.away-PERF John AsP-hat-POSS-NOM
'John's hat blew away.'

But once SPR sets in, "hat" must stay before the verb, but "John" can move
freely (except that it can't appear between "hat" and "blow away").

John-al s-atool-ym-yl kylawi-'ni
John-NOM AsP-hat-POSS-NOM blow.away-PERF
'John is such that his hat blew away'; 'John had his hat blow away on him.'

s-atool-ym-yl kylawi-'ni John-al
AsP-hat-POSS-NOM blow.away-PERF John-NOM
'John is such that his hat blew away'; 'John had his hat blow away on him.'

*John-al kylawi-'ni s-atool-ym-yl
John-NOM blow.away-PERF AsP-hat-POSS-NOM
'John is such that his hat blew away'; 'John had his hat blow away on him.'

This actually has a very practical reason.  Say you had a sentence like
"His mother's friend's hat blew away".  The sentence would be:

so-mmim so-sawaj s-atool-ym-yl kylawi-'ni
AsP-mother AsP-friend AsP-hat-POSS-NOM blow.away-PERF
'his mother's friend's hat blew away'
You could use SPR to have three subjects: "his mother", "friend", "hat".
(Actually, you could also raise "his" to make it four, but why get
complicated?)  The sentence would be:

so-mmim-il so-sawaj-al s-atool-ym-yl kylawi-'ni
AsP-mother-NOM AsP-friend-NOM AsP-hat-POSS-NOM blow.away-PERF
'his mother is such that her friend is such that her hat blew away"

If I could move anything, then the following sentence would be difficult to
interpret.

*s-atool-ym-yl kylawi-'ni so-sawaj-al so-mmim-il
AsP-hat-POSS-NOM blow.away-PERF AsP-friend-NOM AsP-mother-NOM
'His mother's friend's hat blew away' or 'his friend's mother's hat blew
away' or even 'his hat's mother's friend blew away'.

You might find that last translation silly, but imagine if I replaced "hat"
with "dog" or "brother".  Confusing, eh?  For that reason, only the "most
recently raised" subject can move around; the rest have to stay put.


===============================
Marcus Smith
AIM:  Anaakoot
"When you lose a language, it's like
dropping a bomb on a museum."
   -- Kenneth Hale
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