Re: Tirelat's newly found activeness (was: Re: TRANS: something slightly more deep)

On Mon, 7 Feb 2000 16:39:22 +0100, daniel andreasson
<daniel.andreasson@...> wrote:

>Anyway. Have you written anything else about this change in Tirelat?
>On your website, it's still NOM and ACC.
Well, that's an easy change to make. Done. But I really need to play around
more with Tirelat morphology and syntax before I get it into a shape that I
can document on the web site without having to spend a lot of time updating
and maintaining it, since it's still evolving.

>And what about the syntax? Will it still be accusative (which I believe
>it is) or will you make it active, which iirc is very rare? That would
>be really cool imho.
Syntax is also active, if that means what I think it does: the subject of
an intransitive verb precedes it if it is an agent, and follows it if it is
a patient.

se  faz  vesti-zi-  n
AGE snow dance-IMPF-NARR
The snow is dancing. (narrative)

n'uri-s   me  riva
blue- DIR PAT sky
The sky is blue. (direct evidential, i.e., I have seen it.)

Note that "snow" is grammatically an "agent" in the first sentence since
"vesti" is a verb that takes an agent, even though the "dancing" of the
snow is really a consequence of air currents moving the snowflakes around
and not a purposeful action of the snow.

Also, some intransitive verbs like "vesti" may take two "subjects", an
agent and what I call a "co-agent", which usually takes the place of the
patient.

se  Djan-Danbar vesti-n    ke     yul
AGE John-Dunbar dance-NARR CO-AGE wolf
John Dunbar dances with wolves.

alternatively: "ke yul se Djan-Danbar vestin". Note: y = voiced velar
fricative. Think of it as a Greek gamma.

>Daniel Andreasson
>
>PS. I think Robert D. Van Valin Jr's article "Semantic Parameters of
>Split Intransitivity" might be a good read. If you haven't already...
I haven't seen that. Is that an article in a magazine, or is it available
online somewhere?

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