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Re: causation particles

From:Kala Tunu <kalatunu@...>
Date:Thursday, April 25, 2002, 18:16
i think your "li" is basically a factitive auxiliary cum-resultive preposition.
however, i don't know any natlang doing what your lang does. three natlangs i
know display a string of actions one after the other in their chrono-logical
order and optionally end the string with "to become (into)" to show result but
none of them details whether each strung action is tentative or successful. plus
the subject of your second verb is different from the subject of the first verb.
however:

your lang (Malat?) does like this:
le veka   li       zato i    va
I  talked (result) left CASE he
I talked, and as a result he left
and:
le li       piko i    va
I  (result) dead CASE he
I did something to make him die

note that substituting "(result") with "make" will make both sentences
englishish by making the second verb a factitive:
le veka li-zato (i) va.
i talk make-leave (IND) him.
and:
le li-piko (i) va.
i make-die (IND) him.

however, i understand that "li" is different from the verb "to make" becaue it
makes it clear that "to leave" is NOT the object of "to talk" but its result.

natlangs i know do like this:
i talk (result) make-leave him
or:
i talk (result) he leaves
(past is either an auxiliary before the verb or a final adverb)

Tunu does like this:
i already talk-into making-unstay him.
kami atoli lale-nya kai-bingita kama.
and:
i make-unlive him.
kami akai-pengehi kama.

Garrett Jones <alkaline@...> wrote:
>>>
i was wondering if a particular feature that i made up for my conlang occurs in any natural languages. My language is a causation-based language, and there are be essentially two predicates in any given transitive sentence. One is for the agent and its action, and the second is for the patient and its resulting state. A connector word may or may not appear between the two predicates two show the relation between the two. It may signal direct causation, indirect causation, reason, or other ways the the first event had the second event occur. With no particle word, direct manipulation is implied. For example: [snip!!!] <<< Mathias http://takatunu.free.fr/tunugram.htm

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Garrett Jones <alkaline@...>