Re: interesting websites: topic-prominent languages, Lisu, etc.

In a message dated 10/1/00 9:52:34 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
yl112@CORNELL.EDU writes:

> Fun.  :-)  I did notice my Japanese grammar noted the difference between
>  "wa" and "ga," and how "topic" wasn't always what an English-speaker
>  would consider "subject."  I *think* the Korean equivalents are "(n)un"
>  and "(i)ka."
Yeah, I noticed that about Japanese. Gave the entire class tons of trouble.
>
>  Alas, I'm doing the boring subject-prominent thing in Chevraqis.  :-p
I'm curious now: my language Finvaran uses a fairly odd system of markers
based not on the grade-school-issue subject/direct-object/indirect-object
division, but on a more precise
agent/patient/goal/recipient/instrument/etc...... division with suffixes
designating each. Is an "agent-prominent" language considered
"subject-prominent"? The distinction is usually not a big deal, but comes up
in passive voice: in English, "The house was painted last week" has "the
house" as the subject. The Finvaran equivalent has *no* agent.... the house
is still the patient of the action "paint (past tense)". I think I actually
have a subject- and topic-prominent language on my hands; the noun order is
free since they're all marked, and the first noun is considered the most
important to the meaning of the sentence ("She went to the party" emphasizes
"she"; "the party, she went to" emphasizes "party") but the agent is the
default first noun when you don't want a particular "topic". (This is like
Japanese, sorta, except that Japanese doesn't have BOTH a topic and a subject
in one sentence very often if at all.) Just the agent vs. subject distinction
makes it confusing.


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