Re: More thoughts about S11 grammar

Hi!

"H. S. Teoh" <hsteoh@...> writes:
> On Tue, Mar 22, 2005 at 02:31:50PM +0100, Henrik Theiling wrote:
> > 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? ;-)
Exactly!  I'd love to comment! :-)))

Anyone else with some recent insights?  I love to read conlang
progress in small, edible pieces. :-)

>..
> > 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.
That was actually my first idea.  However, such a sentence may be used
as relative clause where you want the referent to be the noun that is
verbalised.  This causes problems.  This was especially a problem for
a verbaliser expressing location or possession.  Therefore I decided
that there will be no verbalisers in order to make relative clauses
straight-forward.

> For statements of possession "John has a book" why not verbalize the
> genitive of 'book'?
Because I wanted to reduce noun-noun modification to relative clauses,
too.  There's thus no genitive case (or any equivalent postposition
etc.).  The reason why I wanted this is that a genitive particle would
be a binary concept.  And I wanted to remove all adpositions in favor
of verbs -- which, in turn, are intransive.

> Similarly, for "John is in the house", cliticize the locative of
> 'house'. Assuming of course, that you have some kind of case system.
Ah, no, I'm affraid I haven't. :-)

> 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. :-)
Aha, right!  Hmm.  Two times 'be'...  Then the 'butcher' would be the
predicate because it is not the topic (which is 'John').  Funny!

I'll have to think about this! :-)

> 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>"):
Hehe.  Probably a typical thing many Chinese native speakers do, since
it's not distinguished in most dialects: I think it should be 'zai4',
not 'zhai4'. :-)

Anyway, that's indeed exactly the verb I had in mind for 'there is',
later in my posting.

> > 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 supposed you would tell me something like this... :-)

> I don't think it's awkward at all.
Ah!

> 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.
Ok.  I'm considering this. :-)

> And for the verb to-have, I honestly dislike the verb in English. It's
> sloppy thinking.
Definitely.  However, I especially like the Chinese 'you3' for it's
broad usage.  Especially its verbalising property in
  'you3 yi2si' - 'to be interesting' and
  'you3 yong4' - 'to be useful' / lit.: 'to have use'

I wanted to use this in expressions like 'I am cold': in many German
dialects this is 'kalt haben' (haben = have), so there's an
interesting link, too.  I'd distinguish: 'coldness-be' and
'coldness-have'.

Still I agree that in many cases, I'd not use 'have', e.g. 'own'
would probably be different.

BTW, Mandarin's 'hen3' - 'much, very' is also nice for it's universal
usage.  Combined with the above, I just love expressions like
'hen3 you3 yong4'.

> 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
Ah, this is also nice.  3) is interesting for 'inside of the house'.

> > 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. :-)
Ok.

['have']:
> Yes, definitely splittable. And IMHO splittable into many more than
> merely two verbs. :-)
Yes, good to get some confirmation. :-)

>...
> > 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."
Yes, I know -- in languages that distinguish this, e.g. Tyl Sjok, I
tend to have 'to happen at a certain time' as the third concept, then
it's essive, locative and temporal.

However, Finnish shows that the concepts of 'have', 'be equal to', 'be
a', 'have a property' (be + adjective), 'be located at' are really
just expressions of being in a certain state -- Finnish only has the
copula 'olla' for all of these.  (And Russian just doesn't bother to
mention its copula at all in these case. :-))

If you have transitive verbs (like 'olla'), you can mark the exact
meaning at the object/adjunct (with a case, for example), without
mixing up concepts.

However, for S11, I think I agree with you.  I fact I think that I
*need* different verbs, because they are only intransitive and are
like cases in other langs.

> > 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. ;-)
I think you're right.  Thanks for pushing me back into track! :-)))

> > Yet the normal intransitive verbs just don't feel elegant in some
> > cases.
> [...]
>
> You mean *transitive* verbs?
I meant the normal intransitive verbs in S11 here.  In contrast to the
special ones.

More thinking is necessary, but I think you convinced me to stay with
the original idea.  There are many sentences to run tests on now. :-)

A very helpful answer! :-)

**Henrik

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