Re: Lahabic Syntax

On Mon, Oct 02, 2000 at 04:37:29PM -0400, The Gray Wizard wrote:
[snip]
> I would consider this an attributive usage.  Although periphrastic, it maps
> well with attributive adjectives in other languages and would probably be
> translated as such in free translation.  How would you answer the question,
> "What color is the horse?"?
(*)     k3'      m3ng0'.
        red(cvy) horse(org)
        "The horse is red", i.e., "The horse shows forth red."

The grammatical decomposition of this sentence is identical to that of the
subordinate clause: in the sentence I gave before,
        lyy's n3 k3' d0 m3ng3' loo'ri
the auxilliary inflection relative (particle) "d0" corresponds with
"m3ng0'" in (*). So, you could represent the sentence logically as
        (the *horse is red) runs through the countryside.
where the parenthesis represent the embedded clause, and the * on "horse"
marks it as the "linking word"-- the word that joins the embedded clause
to the main clause.

This construction is almost a literal embedding -- the only thing
different is that the linking word is marked with the aux inflection
particle: technically speaking, "d0 m3ng3'" is an inseparable unit, like a
noun with two simultaneous cases, the case it's inflected for functions in
the main clause, and the case of the particle "d0" is its function in the
embedded clause. So, "k3' d0 m3ng3'" is technically identical to "k3'
m3ng0'".

You can see the same sentential "overlapping" in sentence adjoinment: if
you had two sentences:

1)      pii'z3d0 fww't3 mir33'nu.       "The child saw the man."
        man(org) see(v) child(rcp)

2)      luy's m3r33'n3   jhi'lu.        "The child went into the room."
        go(v) child(cvy) room(rcp)

you can string them together by using "mir33'ni" (child) as the linking
word:
        pii'z3d0 fww't3 l3       mir33'nu   luy's jhi'lu.
        man(org) see(v) aux(cvy) child(rcp) go(v) room(rcp)
        "The child saw the man [and the child] went into the room."

Here, "l3 mir33'nu" is a unit that behaves like the receptive in the first
sentence and the conveyant in the second sentence.

The semantics of this kind of adjoining is a causal chain: the child went
into the room because he/she saw the man. If a subordinate clause is used
instead:
        pii'z3d0 fww't3 nu       luy's jhi'lu    d3       mir33'nu.
        man(org) see(v) aux(rcp) go(v) room(rcp) aux(cvy) child(rcp)
        The man sees the child who goes into the room.

the subclause "nu luy's jhi'lu d3 mir33'nu" ("child who goes into the
room") will be understood to be a detached event; i.e., a secondary idea
not necessarily related to the event of the main clause.


T