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

* 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.

It's my default "need a name for examples"-name right now.

> 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).

> > 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.

> 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

> 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? Anyway, I still don't
have an acceptable word for "hit".


t.