OFFLIST: ngwaalq (was: Syntactic differences within parts of speech)

---In conlang@yahoogroups.com, Chris Bates <chris.maths_student@...>
>wrote:
>[Sylvia wrote]
>>Also, who can provide similar examples from their conlangs? Does
>>your conlang have an extra part of speech (two separate kinds of
>>verbs, perhaps, which operate differently)?  Does it contain
>>subclasses within parts of speech (verbs, perhaps, that can't be
>>nominalized? Yes, I'm rather stuck on verbs...) Words which don't
>>fit into any part of speech in the language? Any other relevant
>>examples or thoughts?
>>
>My current conlang ngwaalq has additional word classes not found in
>English: noun classifiers and verb classifiers. These are closed
>classes (about 50 items in each) which have distinct distributional
>and morphological properties to verbs and nouns: namely, noun and
>verb classifiers are the locus of nominal and verbal inflectional
>morphology respectively, and can occur independently (nouns and
>verbs require a classifier, but noun and verb classifiers do not
>require anything explicit to classify).
>On the other hand, ngwaalq lacks a class that English has: adjectives
>(treating adjectives as verbs basically). It also lacks true
>inherently stative verbs (except for verb classifiers): verb
>classifiers distinguish various Aktionsart and telicity related
>distinctions, and stativity is indicated by the choice of a stative
>type verb classifier.
>When a telic verb classifier occurs with a verb related to a state,
>say "to be red", it is interpreted as an accomplishment, in this
>case "to become red". I do not regard these verbs as inherently
>stative, since neither meaning is more basic or more marked than the
>other... telicity and Aktionsart (as well as valency) related
>distinctions are simply mostly marked by the choice of verb
>classifier rather than being inherently associated with a root.
>As for nominalization, verb classifiers (if you count them as a
>subset of verbs) cannot be nominalized. You can form a relative
>clause that contains them, but the nominalizing morphology available
>to open class verbs is unavailable to them. Noun classifiers (again,
>if you count them as nouns) also resist denominalization strongly,
>since one of their main functions is to mark nominality.
This is all great stuff, Chris.
I'd like to see more about ngwaalq.
Where can I find it?

---

Sylvia was more interested in non-closed and non-small classes; or at
least _one_ of her questions said so.  Possibly the question _you_
answered couldn't be answered with an open, major class.

---

Two Eskimos sharing a kayak grew uncomfortably cold, so they lit a
fire in their craft.  Of course it sank; thus proving, once again,
that you can't have your kayak and heat it, too.

-----
eldin

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