Re: English "another"/Conlang Question

Alex F. wrote:
<<
It seems to require abstracting the meager semantics of "object-of" away
from their instantiation in syntax altogether too much.
 >>

You know, if you just completely eliminate syntax--just pretend
it doesn't exist--language (both nat and con) starts to make a lot
more sense.  For example, imagine you have a toaster.  You plug
the toaster in, put bread in the slots, press down, wait a bit, and
you have toast.  Then let's say someone comes along and says,
"No, you have to sacrifice a goat after you plug in the toaster,
but before you put in the bread.  Otherwise nothing happens."
That goat sacrifice is syntax, and that someone is a syntactician.

Back to the matter at hand...

Alex:
<<
I don't know if you remember the time we were trying to coin a word for
'command' in Kalusa, and among the proposals were things like _kagorota_
|IMP.+speak|?  That felt wrong in largely the same way, which I did an
equally poor job of describing then.
 >>

This was wrong for reasons that had absolutely nothing to do
with syntax.  The reason /kagorota/ didn't work was because
it was totally and absolutely unprecedented.  There wasn't any
pattern that was even remotely close to anything like this, so
it just didn't make sense in the context of the language--even if
there was a story for it (e.g., a particle used for imperatives is
related semantically to commanding someone to do something).

The construction in Kamakawi might seem bizarre, but it's not
unprecedented (and this is part of the background that's missing).
First of all, /i/ is an honest to goodness preposition.  This is its
canonical use:

Mata ei i nawa.
/see I OBJ. fish/
"I see a fish."

But it does have other uses:

Ka hava ei i nawa i ia.
/past eat I OBJ. fish for you/
"I ate a fish for you."

And like just about all the prepositions of Kamakawi, it started
out life as a verb:

A i nawa i aila.
/pres. exist fish LOC. ocean/
"There's a fish in the ocean."

It's a fun little multi-functional preposition.  If it has a basic
meaning anymore, I'm unaware of it.

Kamakawi has many prepositions that began life as verbs (and
which can still act as full verbs, in fact, with little difference in
meaning [e.g., /te/ (p.) on; /te/ (v.) to be on).  One pattern
that's emerged in Kamakawi is the pattern of prepositions
becoming prefixes to words, something like Latin (e.g., ex-, in-,
ad-, ab-).  Some of the preposition > prefix pairs are not highly
productive (e.g., a few are genitival constructions), but collectively,
it's so common to see these guys, that the pattern of {X[P] <-> X-
[Pref.]}
is highly...what do I want to say, lit up?  It's in there and
accessible.
So the move from having a preposition /i/ to a prefix /i-/ wasn't
that difficult.

So, taking a step back, this preposition /i/ marks direct objects
(or sometimes agents, in certain verbs), beneficiaries, sometimes
recipients, general locatives, etc.  So then let's say you have a
pair like this:

katava = palm tree
ikatava = ?

What could be something that's for a palm tree, or on a palm
tree, or at a palm tree?  Palms, for one.  Maybe coconuts, but
palms seem pretty good.  Thus, /ikatava/ = palm.  Hopefully
this doesn't seem like too much of a semantic leap.

Now, if you look at a palm tree as a single thing composed of
many parts, one part of a palm tree might be a palm.  So if you
have this pattern {X[N (Z)] <-> iX[N (part of Z)]}, instantiated,
in this case, by /katava/ <-> /ikatava/, then you have something
upon which to base a series of derivations, e.g.:

tikiki "scarlet honey creeper" > itikiki "feathers from the same"
teli "flower" > iteli "flower petal"
tava "banana" > itava "banana peel"
polao "blowfish" > ipolao "blowfish quill/spine"
eka'i "abalone" > ieka'i "abalone shell"

Those are concrete and fairly easy to explain.  Next, think of
an action as an object (a fairly simple metaphor found in probably
every language).  If an action is an object, then it, too, can be
composed of parts, as well:

olomo "to walk" > iolomo "a step"

This is one way of thinking of the composition of an action.
Walking is a repetitive act composed of many steps.  Thus,
part of walking is a step.

Another way of imagining the composition of an action is to
think of what's involved.  In the act of drinking, several things
are involved: a drinker, a drink, perhaps a container, one's
throat, etc.  For an action like this, possibly the most relevant
part is the object:

nivu "to drink" > inivu "a drink"

A drink or a step can be seen as a single instance of a prolonged
action.  Thus, we can get:

tei "to dance" > itei "a dance"

Of course, lexical pressure can help move the process along.
With "dance", for example, /tei/ is the verb; its associated
adjective is "dancing"; and its associated noun is "dancer" (most
verbs can be divided into those whose associated noun is
agentive; those whose is verbal; and those that don't have one).
As the act of dancing is kind of a repetitive act, the reduplicated
form seemed the most logical for "dancing", the verbal noun:
/teitei/.  For a single dance?  You could use a convoluted
expression, but why not /itei/?

So, back to this:

Alex:
<<
Or was the _i_ just supposed to contribute the semantics of 'object of'
giving rise to e.g. _ikavaka_ 'book = object of writing'?  That just
feels
*really* wrong to me in a way I can't quite describe convincingly.
 >>

Of course, prefixes don't contribute semantics: they're just sounds.
Whether /ikavaka/ is a good instantiation of the pattern, though,
is a fair question.

Once you have these action verbs with derived nouns like "drink",
a new generalization can be made.  There are a whole host of
these zero-derived nouns in English that show that a good many
nouns are actually transitive, if you have the right object:

I cried a good cry.
I danced a dance.
I slept a long sleep.
I swam a good swim.

Even as a native English speaker, I can't tell which ones are good
and which aren't ("I whistled a good whistle"?  "I googled a good
google"?  "I hummed a good hum"?  Does "sing a song" count?),
but the pattern is that a verb begets a zero-derived noun with
essentially the same meaning, and it's treated like the direct object
of the verb.  As you have pairs like this:

nivu "to drink" > inivu "a drink"

Where the derived noun is a canonical object of the old verb,
the pattern can be expanded to include derived nouns that are
canonical--or simply usual--objects of the associated verb.  As
a book (or a pamphlet or a letter) is a typical object of writing,
you get /ikavaka/ "book (or pamphlet, or written thing, but
commonly 'book', as that's what it gets used most for)".

Once you get all the way to here, then, a speaker may well imagine
that it's because things are objects that they get the /i-/.  But I
now see that the analogy I used with respect to my initial objection
was accurate.  Rather than "another", how about Latin with its
prepositional prefixes?  Can you get something like "in incipio"?
I feel like I don't know enough Latin to phrase this question
correctly...  Seems like you do, though.

-David
*******************************************************************
"A male love inevivi i'ala'i oku i ue pokulu'ume o heki a."
"No eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn."

-Jim Morrison

http://dedalvs.free.fr/

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