Re: THEORY: "Finite Verbs" vs "Non-Finite Verbs" in Languages with Poly-Personal Agreement

* Eldin Raigmore said on 2006-07-17 18:30:25 +0200
> My best understanding to-date is as follows; is it correct? In
> Norwegian there is no point in talking about "finite" vs "non-finite"
> Verb forms, since _all_ Norwegian verbs are non-finite. However in
> Norwegian there _is_ a distinction between tensed and untensed
> verb-forms.
Norwegian linguists consider the tense-carrying forms (present and
past, or if you like non-past and past) to be finite, the rest not
IIRC.

> OTOH
> http://tinyurl.com/nk52j
> says:
> "A finite verb is a verb form that occurs in an independent clause,
> and is fully inflected according to the inflectional categories marked
> on verbs in the language."
The only inflectional category on verbs in Norwegian is tense.
Reflexive/passive used to be productive but no longer is.

> This would imply that the verb of a subordinate clause could never be
> considered finite, no matter how completely inflected it is.
Remember that in natural language, "and" has the function of a boolean
or...

> > > I want my lang to have a switch-reference system, too. In a
> > > switch-reference system, some verbs are obligatorily marked to
> > > show whether some referent is the same as, or different from, a
> > > similar referent of a reference clause.
> >
> > AFMCL, it does switch-reference, or basically has a prefix to show
> > same subject as previous clause in a clause chain. If the subject is
> > different, it needs its own NP. Also, it's the only time the verb
> > agrees with anything... if we disregard type 4 object-incorporation
> > as agreement.
>
> Ooh!  I wanna see!  I wanna see!
Okay. Taruven has a weird form of pro-drop, to start with: a dropped
subject means the subject is 1st person, a dropped object means the
object is 3rd person, a dropped indirect object means the indirect
object is 3rd person *animate*.

It also has serial verb constructions:

jehan Seva kirja kru ilisiaT

This is, obviously :), an SVC: Jehan go cut kill Ilisi.
S is [S], T is [T], aT marks objects

Seva kiri kru ilisiaT

This is, obviosly, also an SVC: I/we go cut kill Ilisi.

As is this:

Seva kiri kru = I go cut kill someone/something

All very nice for newspaper headlines.

If you tell a story and the events happen consequtively and you need to
add detail you can't use an SVC, so you clause chain instead:

jehan Seva saies, lekiri ilisiaT ao lekru iaT

Jehan go to.river, same.subject-cut Ilisi and.then same.subject-kill him/her.

(In this particular example the clause-chaining implies that it took
some time between each act since if not an SVC would have been
sufficient.)

Now this...

jehan Seva saies, kiri ilisiaT ao kru iaT

means "Jehan go to.river, I/we cut Ilisi and.then I/we kill him/her"

This is ambiguous btw: did I/we kill Ilisi or Jehan? It might be that
there is also a marker for same object but I haven't discovered one so
far.

Furthermore, all words capable of acting as transitives may incorporate
an object. Sometime these combinations fossilize, like riTann, meaning
"give name", ergo baptize.

Type I object-incorporation is basically: the object is incorporated,
turning the verb into an intransitive modified by the former object:

kirja veigaT "I cut down a/the tree(s)"
\-> kirjaveige "I am tree-cutting"

If theory is to be believed, to have type IV one needs to also have type
II and III, but I have no good examples.

On to type IV:

kirja SakraaT "I cut down cherry-trees"
\-> kirjaveige SakraaT "I am tree-cutting cherry-trees"

Another, similar phenomenon:
kirja kair veigevunaT "I cut down four small trees"
\-> kirjaveige kairvunaT "I tree-cut four small ones(trees)"

So, the incorporated object remains an object and is modified by
anything else that is marked with the object-marker.

Yet another example:

jehan kirjaveige IlisiaT "Jehan cut down Ilisi as he/she would fell a tree"

Back to the very lexicalized incorporations: with riTann, the name
itself would be marked as an object:

yriTannra xaiaT "they named him 'Pain'/he was named 'Pain'"

What's really going on is that the "object" is still accessible and is
modified attributively just like the case with "kirjaveige" above.

Sorry for the bloody examples, I don't have that many transitive verbs
to demonstrate with yet :)


t., who knows that the last sentence can be interpreted at least two ways