Re: THEORY: Serial Verb Constructions With "Kill" (was: THEORY: "Finite Verbs" vs "Non-Finite Verbs" in Languages with Poly-Personal Agreement)

Please forgive me for taking so long to respond.
My guess is that I forgot to because your contributions don't show up on
the Yahoo! mirror-site.  But I'm not sure.

On Wed, 16 Aug 2006 11:41:42 +0200, taliesin the storyteller <taliesin-
conlang@...> wrote:

>*Eldin Raigmore said on 2006-08-16 01:51:13 +0200
>>On Tue, 18 Jul 2006 00:13:02 +0200, taliesin the storyteller <taliesin-
>>conlang@NVG.ORG> wrote:
>>>jehan Seva kirja kru ilisiaT
>>>
>>>This is, obviously :), an SVC: Jehan go cut kill Ilisi.
>>>S is [S], T is [T], aT marks objects
>>
>>I find it interesting that your first example of a serial verb
>>construction uses a verb meaning "kill" as part of the series.
>
>As I say later, I still have *very* few transitive verbs. "kirja" was
>originally just used for how a boat cuts through waves.
>
>>Is "Jehan" the Taruven equivalent of "Jack", by any chance?
>
>The entire set of words deriving from hebrew Jochanan actually: so:
>John, Joe, Johnny, Jane, Jean, Joan, Anne, Hannah, Sean, Ian, Jack etc.
I knew Anne and Hannah were related to each other, but I didn't know they
were related to Jochanan.

Also I usually think of Joe as related to Joseph rather than to Jochanan.

(The rest of those names were a group to me already.)

>It's my default "need a name for examples"-name right now.
Like "Devadatta" in Sanskrit?

>>And what's the difference, if any, between the Taruven for "cut" and the
>>Taruven for "rip"?
>
>Cut needs an (implied) instrument. Rip will only be done without an
>implement (cannot take an NP marked for instrumental).
Makes sense.

>>>jehan Seva saies, kiri ilisiaT ao kru iaT
>>>
>>>means "Jehan go to.river, I/we cut Ilisi and.then I/we kill him/her"
>>>
>>>This is ambiguous btw: did I/we kill Ilisi or Jehan? It might be that
>>>there is also a marker for same object but I haven't discovered one so
>>>far.
>>
>>I assume you mean "I haven't discovered a 'SameObject vs DifferentObject'
>>morphology in Taruven so far."
>
>Yep. Btw, the "ao" implies that the clause to the right happened at the
>same time or later than the clause to the right. "ao" only conjoins
>clauses.
Interesting.  (And I'm glad I apparently understood it.)

>>Remind me, please, what the differences are between Types I, II, III,
>>and IV of object-incorporation?
>
>Most people just differ between type I and type not-I, collapsing II,
>III and IV, but I'll try:
>
>I:   "Lexical compounding". Lexicalized incorporation. The verb is
>     modified by a constituent and decreases in valency by 1. Transitive
>     -> Intransitive. Many languages used to have this and now only have
>     frozen forms left, hence lexicalized.
>II:  "Manipulation of case". Valency not decreased, the incorporated
>     constituent is replaced by another constituent that changes in case.
>     This could maybe be used for passivization: incorporate the subject
>     and change the prior object into the (syntactic) subject.
>III: "Manipulation of discourse". The incorporated constituent serves as
>     background information. No change in valency.
>IV:  "Classificatory". The incorporated constituent shows the class of
>     the NP, no change in valency.
>
>I recommend this survey:
>http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~pycha/2006%20LSA%20Handout%20final.pdf
Thanks.  I've looked it up and read the first two pages; I've printed it
out and will finish reading it later.

>>It just seems natural to use "cut kill" as a serial verb construction,
>>especially if your subject is named Jack. I suppose if he were named
>>Maxwell, you'd use a "hit kill" SVC.
>
>Jack the Ripper I have heard of, who's Maxwell?
Look for instance at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwell's_Silver_Hammer
http://www.stevesbeatles.com/songs/maxwells_silver_hammer.asp
(In this case the (first) victim's name was Joan.)

>Anyway, I still don't have an acceptable word for "hit".
>t.
>=========================================================================
Thanks.
-----
eldin