Re: Tirelat's newly found activeness

Herman Miller wrote:

> Daniel:
> > Yes, partly that. Dixon writes that the unmarked case is most likely
> > the leftmost in a clause. The question is which case is the unmarked in
> > an active lang.
> I thought the agent tended to be first even in ergative languages.
I don't know actually. That's what he wrote. But you have a point.
Maybe he just means the S-function of intransitive verbs.

> In any case, both cases in Tirelat are marked.
Really? Why? (Ok, stupid question in the conlang world, but apart from
that you wanted to... :)

> Everything in Tirelat syntax is either a noun, verb, adjective, adverb, or
> a grammatical particle that marks the function of words and holds phrases
> together. So a relative clause, for instance, is formally a prepositional
> phrase that functions as an adjective.
That's neat. So, do the particles also make prepositional phrases or
how do you handle those? Do you use a particle that might be seen as
a preposition that makes up an adverbial phrase?

> Tirelat specifically has a
> conjunction "te" that joins two verbs. Complementation isn't something that
> I've dealt with yet, mainly because I've been avoiding it so far.
He, he... Me too.

> > I'm not sure why U+U wouldn't be treated the same way as A+A with
> > such a rule.
> Me neither. "Fell and died he" sounds fine to me. But "He came and died"
> can only mean "he came and killed" (!) in Tirelat (agent of death =
> killer).
Yes, just like Rinya. That's what I like the most about this kind
of case-marking.

> Well, in this case "I jumped and you saw" seems fine, although I think it
> really ends up meaning "I jumped and you saw [my act of jumping]". To make
> it more explicit, I'd rather just add "me" than using the "DIFF"
> construction.
Well, yes. But if you *really, really* wanted a suffix, what would
you do then... ;) (ok, now I'm just being silly).

Daniel