Re: help: Naming Trentish voice markers

Muke Tever <alrivera@...> wrote:

>Okay.   I'm working through my notes on Trentish... got to a section on
voice,
>trying to write this up, and I don't really know how to name all these.
Here are my best guesses, based on the view I have adopted
from Rick Morneau's _Lexical Semantics_ (which I might
recommend if you can invest the time to work your way through).



>Assuming that I've got all this right, a trent can say:
>
>    kat'elamenñy      "I am painting the house."
>          Agentfocus Patientfocus marking
>           high       low             zero
Active voice.



>    kat'epa lamen     "The house is being painted."
>          Agentfocus Patientfocus marking
>           no agent   high            zero
Passive voice, if I understand that there is an optional
agent which is not expressed, and thus is related to the next
example.  Alternately, middle voice, assuming that the agent
is totally inexpressible, and this example is not related
to the next example.



>    kat'epa ñ?uulamen "The house is being painted by me."
>          Agentfocus Patientfocus marking
>           low        high         ?uu-
Inverse voice, if you are just switching agt and pat.
topicality.  If we relate this to the above example, then
maybe passive voice, with optional agent expressed.



>    tlilamenñy        "I am painting."
>          Agentfocus Patientfocus marking
>           high       no patient   tli-
Anti-middle, assuming that patient is totally unexpressible.
Anti-passive, assuming we could somehow add the patient,
which doesn't seem to be the case.  (Note that adding "anti-"
to the voice name indicates that the patient is getting
demoted, at least as Morneau uses the terms.)



>    Uklamenñy         "I am painting [myself/part of myself]"
>          Agentfocus Patientfocus marking
>           high       agt=pat      Uk-
Active voice with A=P reflexive construction.



>    englamenñy        "I am painting teeth"
>          Agentfocus Patientfocus marking
>           high       low             zero
Active voice again.



>    engapa Uklamenñy  "I am painting [my] teeth"
This is where it gets interesting!  We have the reflexive
construction, which should remove the patient from the
argument structure, yet we have an apparent patient anyway.
I would offer here that "engapa" is actually a sort of
locative, which adds information corresponding to the
patient, and is not a true patient, especially since we
can remove it without being ungrammatical.  Incidentally,
while this construction sounds odd to the English ear,
"I paint myself (-on) the teeth", it sounds perfectly fine
to francophones.


Regards,

---   Mike

Reply