Re: Fluid-S pivot in Old Albic

Jörg Rhiemeier wrote:


>Hallo!
>
># 1 wrote:
>
> > With the most recent change in the Vbazi grammar (more recent that the
>post
> > in which I described it), it seems simple to represent the two meanings
>of
> > "The man threw the ball and fell"
> >
> > That change is that the verb can no longer inflect for the dative
>argument
> > as principal argument and the dative argument always goes after the
>verb.
> > That way, the verb can only agree for the object if there is one or the
> > subject if not.
> >
> > So, the verbs agrees in person, number, and case(Nom/Acc) with its
> > absolutive argument.
>
>So an intransitive verb has a nominative marker, and a transitive
>verb has an accusative marker?
>
Yes, eaxactly. In sentences like "I sleep" and "You love me" the two verbs
are marked for the first person but "love" will also take the accusative
marker

Thinking about this, I don't know if in fact it should be classed as a
transitive marker...

> > This way it is easy to distinct "The man threw the ball and [the man]
>fell"
> > and "The child threw the ball and [the ball] fell" by using nominative
>or
> > accusative on "to fall"
> >
> > jaljl jehi jylnjyzbeinjai ai jylmizdjai
> > jal -jl   jehi  jyl -njyzbein-jai       ai  jyl -mizd-jai
> > ball-ACC  Man   PAST-throw    3rd/S/ACC and PAST-fall-3rd/S/ACC
> > The man threw the ball and (the ball) fell
> >
> > jaljl jehi jylnjyzbeinjai yi jylmizdja
> > jal -jl   jehi  jyl -njyzbein-jai       yi  jyl -mizd-ja
> > ball-ACC  Man   PAST-throw    3rd/S/ACC and PAST-fall-3rd/S/NOM
> > The man threw the ball and (the man) fell
>
>You seem to like the letter |j|, or whatever phoneme you use it
>to represent ;-)
>
It's only due to chance the words for "man", "ball", "throw", and "fall",
the past prefix and the 3rd person suffix each contain the phoneme /j/
written as |j|. Actually, it's not phoneme that appears so often in the
language, that sentence is special. :-P

> > (The conjonction "and" between two verbs is not the same depending if
>the
> > two verbs have the same ending or not, a third one is used when it is
> > between two nouns.)
> >
> > It would be the only possibility for an intransitive verb to take an
> > accusative ending, it depends of the first mark used in the sentence.
> >
> > Does this work?
>
>I see no reason why it shouldn't, though I haven't seen anything
>like that before.  Very original!
>
Thanks

- Max

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