Re: Fluid-S pivot in Old Albic

Hallo!

Henrik Theiling wrote:

> Hi!
>
> Jörg Rhiemeier <joerg_rhiemeier@...> writes:
>
> [...]
>
> > 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'.
If I understand your language correctly, a _xe_ *after* _kjang_
would mark a missing patient, which would be just as ambiguous
as a gap because it can refer to both the man and the cherries.

>       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.
Yes ;-)

> > > 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.
Of course!  Indeed, the sentence

Agratara a aracara ndero gratath.

would be the normal way to put it; my example would rather express
something like `A man wrote a letter - and [instead of sending]
ripped it.'

> > 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. :-)
Yes.  I protracted the "language bug" from my elder brother's
school grammar of Latin when I was 10 years old, and since then,
I have always had a taste for inflectional paradigms - cases, tenses,
person/number markers, and all that.

>       (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. :-))
Yes.  Your languages, while not appealing to my taste for naturalism,
are always highly original.

Greetings,

Jörg.

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