Re: Switch Systems and Relative Animacy

On the bus home I was just thinking about replacing the system I
proposed with full subject agreement (including 4th person), and then
indicating whether the object was of higher or lower animacy (ie very
limited object agreement). But the idea of always agreeing with the NP
of highest animacy (of the two) and indicating whether that is the
subject or object is interesting (I'm not sure if that's what you were
proposing). So for example:

I-saw-subj  him
I saw him

he-saw-subj it
he saw it

but not:

*he-saw-obj I
I saw him

because I outranks he in terms of animacy. This wouldn't be a trigger
system though, since it would apply to subject and object only, and the
most animate of the two would have to be selected for verbal agreement.
Is that what you had in mind?
 If you just meant that topic normally occurs first, a lot of languages
employ fronting for this purpose. :) The language I'm currently
learning, Basque, has the rule that topics come first, and the most
focused element is immediately pre-verbal. An example (from a Basque song):

Eta nik txoria maite nuen
And I, I loved *that bird*

Since nik "I" is fronted, it's the topic, and txoria "bird" is
immediately preverbal, so that's the focus.

>I haven't worked out the details of the obviative yet (preceeding clause
>references) in emíndahken, but it also involves an animacy hierarcy (see
>below). So far I have decided that basic sentence order is SOV (or APV
>if you will) with the understanding that the A is higher than P. So normal
>order is not marked. If P happens to be higher, then there is a verbal
>affix /aK/ to indicate that. The twist is that the NP showing the higher
>animacy must *always* come first :). I still have a lot of work on the
>verbs to do, since it will incorporate subject and object (and ditransitive)
>markers, as well as a healthy supply of mode markers. (Native American
>languages rule!) :)
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