Re: Language universal?
| From: | jesse stephen bangs <jaspax@...> |
|---|
| Date: | Thursday, February 8, 2001, 1:25 |
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Tommaso R. Donnarumma sikayal:
> Jesse S. Bangs wrote:
>
> >A while ago, someone mentioned that prepositions do not ever govern the
> >nominative case in languages that mark case.
>
> Quite not true, I fear... Turkish does have adpositions (they are
> indeed postpositions, but I think it doesn't matter) that govern
> the nominative of nominals other than the singular pronouns:
>
> siz-in için
> you:GEN for
> "For you (sing.)"
>
> siz-ler için
> you:PL.NOM for
> "For you (plur.)"
>
> bu adam için
> this man.NOM for
> "For this man"
>
> Data and examples from Blake 1994.
Wonderful! This is the only clear counterexample that I've seen to the
language universal I mentioned, and it gives me plenty of reason to go on
disregarding that universal with respect to Yivríndil. Thanks to you and
all of the other people who threw in their comments.
This makes me think of another weird feature of the Yivríndil case and
preposition system, though. In Yiv, the case of the object of the
preposition changes according to the syntactic function of the
prepositional phrase: nominative in adjectival phrases, and ablative in
adverbal phrases. Frex:
Niyanet da ni'ild senuya.
Ni-yanet da ni'ild senu-ya.
The-child in the-house run-VERB
"The child [who is] in the house runs."
Niyanet da ni'eldun senuya
Ni-yanet da ni-eld-un senu-ya.
'The child in the-house-ABL run-VERB'
"The child runs in the house."
Much to the consternation of his mother, I'm sure. . .
>
> >Unfortunately, my conlang
> >Yivríndil does just that, and so I says to myself, "This won't do. I
> >don't mind breaking a language universal every now and then, since they
> >all have *some* exceptions, but this one was claimed to have *no*
> >exceptions! And I don't want to be the only exception out there, since I
> >strive for naturalness in my lang."
>
> In my opinion, you can stop worrying and keep your language as it
> is now!
>
> BTW, it is my very humble opinion, and please don't flame me for
> this, that many so-called universals are just statistical data
> about the known languages. But how many languages disappeared
> without ever being described? And how many languages will appear
> in the future?
Of course. I realize that most language universals are very
non-universal, but I try not to violate *too* many of them since I think
that it gives my lang unnatural qualities.
> >So I did a little syntactic
> >slight-of-hand and decided that prepositions govern the accusative case,
> >which is cheating since *the accusative case is never marked*. There was
> >an accusative ending that survived in pronouns until a few hundred years
> >ago (con-timeline), but it's fallen out of use.
>
> :-)
>
> >Is this cheating?
>
> Yes, strictly speaking, I think this was cheating! ;-) Very nice
> attempt, though!
>
> Happy conlanging,
>
> Tommaso.
>
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