Re: Volition in Anohim

You know I can't leave this message alone! :)  Volition is the meat and
drink of the active Teonim.  I'm still making mistakes in it.

----- Original Message -----
From: "bob thornton" <arcanesock@...>


> The nature of volition in Anohim is very complicated.
This sounds like a response to a question, Bob.  Did I miss a thread that
was called something else and developed into a discussion of volitionality?

> Whether a motion is voluntary or involuntary is always
> marked. Several verbs, mainly of transference are also
> always marked. Kill is considered a motive verb.
It is in Teonaht, too, but where the form of the word impedes (like lis
(get) or den (tell), one can always tell from the article whether the
subject is v or nv.  So Teonaht has a peculiar kind of active system, one
that has a volitional S along with a volitional V.  Many of the verbs are
ambivolitional (where the meaning changes), whereas as some are always
volitional, others always non-volitional.  So in some cases it is the
subject that determines volitionality, and in other cases the verb.  But
both S and V have to be marked in some way.

> Volition sometimes changes the meaning of the word.
> Get/take and kill/die are two volition pairs.
Lisned, bettairem in Teonaht:  get/take.  A subject with lis is the passive
recipient of action, and lisned is often used to express what we call the
"passive":  aid bikar(em) eton-li lis.  "The tree gets its chopping."  There
is a different word for "receive" that is volitional, since one can refuse
to receive something.

However, I don't see kill/die as a volitional pair so much as a
subject/recipient pair.  One can die at the hands of one who kills.  One can
die in one's bed.  One can commit suicide.  I've also noted that idioms in
language don't necessarily have to make sense to us in our first language.
But it sort of feels like making get/give a volitional pair.  Do you see
what I mean?  Get/take I understand.  In Teonaht, conceivably, one can kill
by accident as in manslaughter.  It's an important legal verb.

Here are some verbs that are always volitional:

say, talk, do, give, make, go, come, allow, decide, attack, read, write,
chase, conquer, promise, command,  doff, don, clothe, feed, cook, eat,
drink, love, hate, prefer, holler, spit, pray, convict, berate, and a host
of others.

Here are some verbs that are always non-volitional:

be, exist, be ignorant of, be absent, be present, be happy, sad, blue,
fiery, stupid and a bunch of other stative verbs in T; get, sleep, fall
asleep, wake up, sicken, vomit, bleed, die, dream, have (inalienable),
beware, trip, fall down, etc.

The ambivolitional verbs cover the senses, of course, and cognition:

hear/listen to; see/watch or look at; smell/sniff; feel/touch or caress;
taste/lick; know of/find out about; perceive/test etc.

But the ambivolitional verbs, I find, as I write more and more in Teonaht,
are a much bigger category than those verbs that are only one or the other:

cry (in response to)/mourn;
laugh (at a joke)/deride or make light of
dislike/hate (to the point of malice)
like/prefer
stand (as a tree does)/stand up or take a stand
lie (as a log does)/lie down, lie low
follow (as a shadow does)/pursue
live (breathe)/dwell
breathe/draw breath
bounce/rebound actively, return with renewed vigor
die passively/commit suicide
walk (as a clock or any machine part does)/walk somewhere
stop/cease purposely
sit (as a spoon does)/sit down
rest (out of fatigue)/rest deliberately
speed up (as a ball does rolling down a hill/hasten
think (wandering thoughts)/contemplate
be ignorant of/ignore
believe (blindly)/believe something you've given thought to
misspeak/lie
make a mistake/be in wilful error
defecate (shit one's pants)/defecate on will
urinate (piss oneself)/urinate, relieve oneself
etc.

    Then:
boil (as water does)/boil something in a pot
freeze (as water does)/freeze something
heat up (as anger does)/heat someone up
drown (as a swimmer does)/immerse
end (as a play does)/put an end to

     (here we are getting into states and creating states, and these AV
verbs are usually distinguished by intransitivity/transitivity.  There is
also a suffix (-ma) that turns an adjective or a nonvolitional intransitive
into a volitional transitive:

    worry/make worried
    anger/make angered
    cool/make cold
    bleed/make bleed
    vomit/make vomit
    sleep/put to sleep
    put to sleep (because you are boring)/put to sleep (actively hypnotize)
etc.

> Voluntary actions are marked with a rising tone and
> the prefix a- /?&/-
>
> Involuntary actions are marked with a falling tone and
> the prefix i- /?I/-
Do I detect a sense of hierarchy expressed by rising and falling tone?  The
Teonim, little elitests and warriors that they are, definitely privilege the
agents over the experiencers.  This attitude is challenged, though, in some
contemplative practices where the experiencer is superior to the agent, the
visionary superior to the false prophet.

> The tone is marked on the root, not the prefixes.
>
> EX1:
>
> I died (recently) (involuntarily)
Who's speaking??  Ghosts cannot use volitional verbs in Teonaht, nor can the
Deity use non-volitional verbs, although the writers cheat by combining the
non-volitional subject with a volitional verb.  This is necessary to
maintain semantic coherence in story-telling and religious instruction.

> Úv ponhúe ita^ng
>
> 1sg-BEN 1sg-be-NPAST-STAT die-INV
>
> I killed him (recently) (he died involuntarily)
>
> Uf jacúe whíz ita^ng
>
> 1sg-NOM 1sg-do-NPAST DEM-sentient being-far both-BEN
> die-INV
>
> To show that an action is done by the subject
> involuntarily, but is involuntarily experienced put
> the BEN case on the one who is done unto, and put
> noun-verb behind the BEN cased noun, and use the
> subject's conjugation for the major verb.
>
> Reverse the scheme for the reversed volition. When
> both are voluntary or both involuntary, volition is
> not marked, but gathered from the connotation of the
> phrase.
>
> If I am unclear, do please ask for elaboration,
>
> -The Sock.
Sounds good, Sock! :)

Sal
http://www.frontiernet.net/~scaves/verbs.html

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