Re: Non-static verbs?

On Thu, Aug 17, 2000 at 03:23:14PM +0300, Dan Sulani wrote:
[snip]
>     How would your conlang handle "fleeting possession"
> such as possession of the ball in a fiercely fought game
> of soccer: "Team X has the ball." (but loses it and regains
> it many times within a short span of time).
> This doesn't seem very static to me.
There are at least two ways to express possession in my conlang:

1) Using an adjectival noun -- uses the zero-copula and certain
  (idiomatic) noun cases to indicate possesion. This would be used for
  "more static" cases like "I have a wife and two kids", where the
  possession is long-term.

2) Using a verb of acquisition in past tense, for example:
        obtain(verb) past(loc) the.ball(cvy) Team.X(rcp)
  "past" is a temporal noun indicating past time; hence, "obtain(verb)
  past(loc)" indicates that the event happened in the past (recent past in
  this case). Literally, the sentence means
        the ball was obtained by Team X
  ("rcp" = receptive case, marked on nouns that are receiving something;
  in this case, receiving the ball.)
  You can also use a more active construction like:
        Team.X(org) snatch(verb) past(loc) the.ball(cvy) reflex-rel(org-rcp)
  The "reflex-rel" is a reflexive relative (think of it as a reflexive
  pronoun) referring back the originative noun "Team X". Hence, this
  sentence literally means
        Team X snatched the ball unto themselves
  And since the past temporal noun is present, this means that the
  snatching took place in the past, in this case, the recent past, and
  therefore Team X currently has the ball.

[Note: for further explanation of the various noun cases and how they are
used, see my other message.]

>     Perhaps this type of "have" could be considered active
> and merit a verbally marked word for it, as opposed to
> the static "have" in "I have a car".
There are, indeed, verbs of acquisition. Acquisition implies a change of
state: the change of ownership of the object being acquired; hence there
is a verb for it. But when describing the state of having, no verb is
used, unless, as in the second example above, you're recounting the event
that led to the current state of possession.

[snip]
> The first sentence would come out like "Mine (is) car", while
> the second would be "Car (is) mine!" Difference in emphasis.
Interesting. In my conlang, it would be hard to change the grammatical
markings of words without totally changing the meaning of a sentence.
However, emphasis can be obtained by re-arranging words, since word order
is not that strict.

> To signify "fleeting" possession, one would use a rate marker
> signifying rapid change:
Interesting. I haven't worked out this particular detail yet, but my
conlang would probably handle it by considering that the object is in the
midst of a change (rather than in the final state resulting from an
event). Using this approach, the sentence "Team X has the ball" could
possibly be rendered as:
        pass(verb) the.ball(cvy) Team.X(loc)
Meaning, literally, "the ball was passed in the location of Team X" --
"team X" indicates the current location of the ball, hence in the locative
case; rather than in the receptive case which would mean that the ball was
passed to Team X.

[snip]
> If you really wanted to be nasty, you could use "fistis", signifying
> extremely rapid change, thus hinting at two incredibly inept
> teams out there on the field.  :-)
Interesting. I've never thought of signifying the rate of change in my
conlang. Perhaps I might incorporate this idea into it, somehow! :-)


T