Re: Participles in Natlangs and in Conlangs

>Questions;
>(2)
>Is it a statistical implicational universal that, if a language has both
>past and present participles, and also both passive and active participles,
>that either the past participle is homophonous with the passive participle,
>or the present participle is homophonous with the active participle, or
>both?
>
>(3)
>Is it a statistical implicational universal that, if a language has both
>perfective and imperfective participles, and also both passive and active
>participles, that either the perfective participle is homophonous with the
>passive participle, or the imperfective participle is homophonous with the
>active participle, or both?
>
>(4) What famous languages are counterexamples to the above?
Finnish violates either (2) or (3); I'm not sure whether the difference
between the 1st and 2nd participles is non-past vs. past, or imperfectiv vs.
perfectiv, but there is still an orthogonal system of four different forms:
1st activ: juokse|va ilves "the running lynx"
1st passiv: juos|ta|va matka "the distance that is being run / is to be run"
2nd activ: juos|sut ilves "the lynx that ran"
2nd passiv: juos|tu matka "the distance that was ran"


>[MODE, MOOD, AND MODALITY AS CATEGORIES OF PARTICIPLES]
I don't have much to add here, but I like the idea - thanks for bringing it
up!


>(9)
>Do any natlangs or conlangs you know about have an inflection (called here
>"-9" because I can't think of anything else offhand) that can be added to a
>verb V to make an adjective V-9 so that "N is V-9" means "N can V"?  It
>seems this would be useful in English; there are common English phrasal
>constructions with this meaning, but they aren't really verbal morphology.
Hm, I'm sure there was at least one word where "-able" conveyed _this_
meaning... but I can't off-hand recall anything.
The prefix form used in "ableminded" etc. might be worth noting, too.

-Finnish uses compounding with "-kykyinen" (lit. "skilled", "skillful") for
this purpos. So we have words one might translate as "visionskilled" for
expressions such as "able to see".


>[PASSIVE PARTICIPLES WITH INCORPORATED AGENTS]
>
>English has at least a few passive participles with incorporated agents.
>The agents so incorporated are never definite and never specific.  I
>suppose they may, or may not, be referential; I'm not sure.
>
>Examples;
>henpecked
>snakebit
>sunburnt (OK, this one is pretty definite, but it's a coincidence.)
>grassstained
>
>(12)
>Can anyone think of any more examples in English?
>Thanks
>
>eldin
I think you can take just about any noun-incorporated verb or estabilished
agent-verb or obliq-verb (instruments, sorces, goals...) expression and make
it into a participle:
steamboiled
chromeplated
dentist-approved
hammerstruck
spoonfed
handmade
The difficulty is in finding an expression where it is indeed the _agent_
that's estabilished; otherwise it does not work. ("The butterfly landed on
me" -/-> *"I was butterflylanded")

Apologies for not including any conlang examples in this message - verb
morphology is not one of my strongest suits.

John Vertical

Reply