Re: Split nominative and Nik's new project

Sally Caves wrote:
> Wasn't this giving the listener more information than
> was needed?  There's a reason why you have to distinguish between A and P,
> because these two can coexist in the same clause; but what's the
> functional reason for distinguishing between A and S in a
> nominative/accusative language?  (yours?  definitely mine)
Well, what's the use in marking gender on adjectives?  Why shouldn't
languages give the listener more info than needed?  But anyways, there
is a reason for it.  Teonaht, as you pointed out, also makes that
volitional/non-volitional in verbs, mine doesn't.  So, by way of the
noun (and only via the noun), one can distinguish between "he killed him
(intentionally)" and "he killed him (accidentally)" or "she ran
(intentionally)" and "she ran ("accidentally")" - in that last pair, the
distinction would actually work out to be more of "she ran [to exercise
or for fun]" and "she ran [to escape the big scary monster that wanted
to eat him]".  Of course, in practice, there would be certain verbs that
by their very nature would contain volitionality.  For example, "murder"
in English is by definition volitional, and you wouldn't say "she
accidentally murdered him".  There might be words like that which
couldn't take the volitional nominative or the non-volitional
nominative.

P.S., I shouldn't have posted that info at that point - I've changed
nearly all of it, but not the split-nominative.

--
"It has occured to me more than once that holy boredom is good and
sufficient reason for the invention of free will." - "Lord Leto II"
(Dune Chronicles, by Frank Herbert)
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