Re: Fluid-S pivot in Old Albic

Hi!

Jörg Rhiemeier <joerg_rhiemeier@...> writes:
> Henrik Theiling wrote:
>...
> > In Tyl Sjok (also fluid-S), the system is taken from Chinese, which is
> > accusative, but that doesn't matter: which argument is referred to is
> > purely determined by semantics
>
> So `The child threw the ball and [] sang' can only mean that the
> child sang because balls (at least, ordinary balls) can't sing...
Exactly. :-)

> >       and may become ambiguous.  It is not
> > grammatically defined.
>
> So a sentence like `The child threw the ball and [] fell' is
> ambiguous, because both children and balls can fall?
Yes, that's how it works.

> >       So the system is quite different from Old
> > Albic.
>
> If I remember correctly, Tyl Sjok is isolating, with no kind of
> person-number marking on the verb which makes it clear whether the
> verb is active or stative in Old Albic. ...
Yes. :-)

> In the first two of my examples, the person-number marker is the
> only thing that's different.  How is a sentence such as `A man wrote
> a letter and [] came' resolved in Tyl Sjok?
It cannot be made explicit but by repeating (the head of) what you
refer to:

  jan     ljot jetys      u   kjang.
  man.AGT eat  cherry.PAT and fall.
  'The man eats cherries and [he] falls.'
  'The man eats cherries and [cherries] fall.'

  jan     ljot jetys      u   kjang jan.
  man.AGT eat  cherry.PAT and fall  man.PAT.
  'The man eats cherries and the man falls.'

  jan     ljot jetys      u   kjang jetys.
  man.AGT eat  cherry.PAT and fall  cherry.PAT.
  'The man eats cherries and (the) cherries fall.'

Now, sometimes you can disambiguate by using a SKIP particle.  That
thingy is used instead of an argument and makes explicit its missing.
In the above example, you could say:

  jan     ljot jetys      u   xe   kjang.
  man.AGT eat  cherry.PAT and SKIP fall/fell.
  'The man eats cherries and [the man] fells (the cherry tree?).'

In this example, 'xe', the SKIP particle, marks a missing *agent*
to the verb 'kjang'.  Therefore, it must mean 'to fell' and not
'to fall'.  And since cherries don't fell (they cannot be in control),
it must be the man who fells something.  And probably, that's the
cherry tree.

> > Anyway, I'd usually expect this to be handled with verb coordination,
> > but still it's funny.
>
> What do you mean by "verb coordination"?
Something like

  (Agratara AND aracara) ndero gratath.

With 'AND' being a coordination particle for words.

Instead of
> > > (3) Agratara              ndero   gratath    a   aracara.
> > >     AOR-write-3SG:P-3SG:A man-AGT letter-OBJ and AOR-rip-3SG:P-3SG:A
> > >     `A man wrote a letter and [the man] ripped [the letter].'

> The explicitness of the morphology of Old Albic may create the
> impression of a very strictly regulated language, but it frees
> the language in other ways. ...
> "classical" style (like Latin, Greek, Sanskrit or Quenya), with a
> rich inflectional morphology and great freedom in the realm of
> syntax.
Yeah, that's what I meant.  You seem to like mandatory morphology,
while I usually like my morphology optional. :-)  (But still,
I often have *a lot* of optional morphology like in Qthyn|gai, where
I especially liked to have 'strange' categories mandatory and
'usual' categories optional. :-))

**Henrik

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