Re: Fluid-S pivot in Old Albic

Hi!

Jörg Rhiemeier <joerg_rhiemeier@...> writes:
> I briefly mentioned yesterday that Old Albic has a fluid-S pivot.
>...
> which can be both.  Fortunately, whether it is active or stative
> can be told by the agreement markers it takes. ...
Interesting and nice system.  Do you know how fluid-S natlangs
actually handle this?  Did you take it from a natlang?

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 and may become ambiguous.  It is not
grammatically defined.  So the system is quite different from Old
Albic.

> This can be taken even further.  If the second verb is transitive,
> there can be _two_ gaps coreferential with the two arguments of the
> first verb:
HAHA!  That's great. :-)

Anyway, I'd usually expect this to be handled with verb coordination,
but still it's funny.

My first conlang Fukhian had a double-reference relative clause,
BTW. :-)

> (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].'
Yeah, that's fun! :-)

> To make things more complex, there are also switch-reference
> pronouns.  The agentive case of the switch-reference pronoun, _ra_,
> is coreferential to a patient in the preceding clause, while its
> objective case, _ram_, is coreferential to an agent.
Nice!  Natlangs like to mark this on verbs, but Qthyn|gai, which also
has this, also uses special pronouns.

I like the system in Old Albic.  My languages' grammars are usually
less strict -- much has to be inferred from context.  Most markers are
optional and the default is to use context.  Old Albic feels quite
different.

**Henrik

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