The radness of serial verbs (was: Re: "To slurp" in latin)

* taliesin the storyteller said on 2009-01-28 14:20:11 +0100
> <verb> ergo sum, I <verb> therefore I am
Thanks to the hunt for "to slurp" in latin I've been doing a bit
of slurping on my own (in private!) to try to discover what a
slurp sounds like in Taruven. After all, the word seems to be
onomatopoetic wherever it isn't borrowed or inherited, so
onomatopoetic the Taruven word would be. It might just be that I
am in possession of manners but frankly, I find slurping a bit
uncomfortable[1]. Let it therefore be said that also we suffer
for our art :)

So: the newly discovered Taruven word for "to slurp" is "paru"
(try repeating it quickly a couple times, paru-paru-paru...
obvious innit?), with the backed /A/ and the central /u\/ and
trilled /r/ as usual (can't have a slurp without a trill). If
Taruven was like Latin, grammatically, all I'd then need was
1) a word for "to be/to exist"...

I thought of using the adjective (well, stative, as in "stative
verb") for being alive, "kuì", for the meaning "to exist", but
that wouldn't make semantic sense for, say, a table: "the table
is alive"!

Now, "to exist" must obviously be a stative, even if we
ignore the meaning that makes "existing/existant" synonymous
with "current". It's a state, after all, a state even inanimate
things can have. A very pleasant nap produced "thana" so now
there's a word for "to exist"[2].

... and 2) a word for "therefore/because/ergo".

Oops. Taruven ain't like Latin. Adverbs and conjunctions and
subjunctions: no want!

Instead, Taruven uses the wonderful device known as the serial
verb construction (SVC)!

A verb without an overt subject has a first person subject, so
"paru" = "I/we slurp/(are/were/was/will be) slurping".

Two or more verbs without overt subjects is a serial verb
construction where the shared subject is 1st person, so "paru
bogh" = "I slurp then drown" or "I slurp and drown". This *must*
be an SVC since the subject of the non-first verb(s) is covert.
With an overt subject, even a same-subject marker, we'd have two
sentences: "paru lebogh" = "I slurp. The subject of the previous
sentence drowns."

However, "bogh" is an intransitive verb while "thana" is a
stative. Verb followed by stative equals the secondary
predication known as the depictive, not your run-of-the-mill
SVC. "paru þall" = "I slurp thirstily. I thirstily slurp. I am
thirsty, slurp. I slurp, thirsty." One might imagine a covert
"because" there... "I slurp because I am thirsty." Even "I slurp
therefore I am thirsty."

"paru thana" = "I slurp, existingly". Doesn't really work that
well for the meaning "to exist".

"I think therefore I exist" then? Let's try "ār thana". "ār": "I
think (that|in order to)" + "to exist". However, "ār" can't be
in no SVC... because it's a complemented verb. In a complemented
verb, at least one argument is a subordinate clause.

"ār thana" means "I think that I exist", or "I think in order to
exist". The latter is of course pure poetry but doesn't change
the fact that I still don't know how to express
"because/therefore/ergo" in Taruven.

It does mean that I have a suitable phrase for a slurper's
t-shirt though: "thana paruaš": "In order to exist, I slurp".


[1] .. or as it would be in Taruven: ār paru xevve
[2] Turns out there already was a word "thanu" meaning
"original, one and only". Nice!


t., dives into "Grammar of Tariana" to see if/how it's done there