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Re: Non-static verbs?

From:H. S. Teoh <hsteoh@...>
Date:Thursday, August 17, 2000, 13:43
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