Re: More thoughts about S11 grammar

On Tue, Mar 22, 2005 at 02:31:50PM +0100, Henrik Theiling wrote:
> Hi!
>
> To break the creative (relative) silence on the list with some
> on-topic stuff, here're some thoughts about S11.
You mean it's time to make another Tatari Faran post? ;-)


[...]
> Now, after some investigation on how far this can be pushed, I arrived
> at a few point where it was unelegant to stick to the rules strictly:
>
>    - noun-noun modification:
>         John's book
>         the house's inside  (needed in: 'John is in the house.')
>
>    - sentences expressing states:
>         John is a butcher.
>         John has a book.
>         John is in the house.
>
> Since states are nouns, it seems these two items can be unified.
> Indeed, 'John has a book' and 'John's book' seem to be very similar.
Indeed.


> I think these sentences show that some relations cannot easily be
> split into two verbs: they feel inheritently binary (=transitive).
I disagree. For statements of equivalence, e.g. John is a butcher, why
not verbalise the predicate? John-butcher(ises). Cliticize the
predicate. For statements of possession "John has a book" why not
verbalize the genitive of 'book'? Similarly, for "John is in the
house", cliticize the locative of 'house'. Assuming of course, that
you have some kind of case system.

Alternatively, if you don't like verbalizing states, you could just
repeat the same clitic for 'to be':

	John-BE EVID butcher-BE.
	John-BE EVID house-LOC.

After all, nothing says you can't use the same verb for different
NP's in a sentence when the whole point is to state that they're
referring to the same thing. :-)

The LOC marker could, of course, be an actual verb meaning "to be
located in" or "to be the location of <something>". You could also use
a different verb for the second -BE, if you prefer, like the
equivalent of Mandarin's _zhai4_ ("to be present at <someplace>"):

	John-be_present EVID house-be_location_of.


> E.g. 'have' or 'be': it feels very awkward to me to split these to
> mark a) 'the one who has/is' and 'the one who is had/been'.
Sounds like you're going through what I went through when I got to the
point in Ebisédian grammar when I suddenly realized that it has to be
able to somehow express stative concepts. :-)

I don't think it's awkward at all. It only seems awkward because we
have to use circumlocutions in English (or our L1) to express the
concept.  It's really very simple. I honestly like the idea of
repeating the verb to-be in statements of the form "A is B"... this
also has the nice consequence that it's completely transitive (in the
mathematical sense): to say "A is B which is C which is D" you simply
tack on more NP's:

	A-BE EVID B-BE C-BE D-BE

Has the same elegance as the mathematical expression A = B = C = D.

And for the verb to-have, I honestly dislike the verb in English. It's
sloppy thinking. There are too many overloaded meanings which leads to
unnecessary conflation of distinct concepts. Why not use completely
different verbs? E.g.

1) John has (owns) the box:
	John-own EVID box-to_be_under_the_care_of

2) John has (is holding/carrying) the box:
	John-carry EVID box-carried

3) John has (as part of his body) two arms:
	John-have_as_a_part EVID two_arms-to_be_part_of

4) John has (as an attribute) insight:
	John-to_be_attributed_with EVID insight-to_be_attributed_to


[...]
> Therefore, there is probably going to be closed class of special
> verbs.  I don't dare to call them transitive yet, since they feel
> special: put differently -- they are verb-like clitics that convert a
> noun into a predicate.  The predicate's argument is left unmarked.
Ah, similar idea to my former suggestion. But now that I think of it,
I think I prefer my latter suggestion. :-)


[...]
> In contrast to the other special verbs above, 'to have' seems more
> naturally splittable into two verbs 'have' and 'own', however, and
> could in fact express several shades of 'to have':
Yes, definitely splittable. And IMHO splittable into many more than
merely two verbs. :-)


>     John-HEARSAY-own book-have.
>     'John has a book.'
>     'There is a book and John owns it.'
>
>     John-HEARSAY-be.located book-have.
>     'John has a book.'
>     'There is a book and it is with John.'
>
> But then, it seems like 'be.located' can be split, too. *sigh*
Why sigh? *I* think it's perfectly reasonable to have distinct verbs
for "to be somebody" and "to be in someplace"! In fact, Mandarin
treats them as distinct concepts:

	wo3 shi4  ren2
	1sp to_be man
	"I am a man."

	wo3 zhai4    fang2 li3.
	1sp to_be_at house inside
	"I am in the house."


> I don't know what exactly will be needed.  Hopefully you have some
> thoughts about what will most probably be special verbs?
I don't like the idea of special verbs. The monovalent-verb-only idea
is the right way to go. You just have to unlearn the wrong ways you
picked up from your L1. ;-)


> It is strange that I wanted to ultimately eliminate the need for
> distinguishing arguments and adjuncts and now arrived at a similarly
> arbitrary borderline between special verbs and normal verbs.
Not if you take the monovalent verb idea to its logical conclusion.
:-) And I'm claiming that the logical conclusion is not as inelegant
as it may appear. One just needs to interpret the words in the right
way. :-)


> Yet the normal intransitive verbs just don't feel elegant in some
> cases.
[...]

You mean *transitive* verbs?


T

--
Indifference will certainly be the downfall of mankind, but who cares? --
Miquel van Smoorenburg

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