Re: Ayeri: How would you name this construction?

Hi!

Carsten Becker <carbeck@...> writes:
>...
> Ayeri HAS an infinitive, but does not make use of it, except
> for giving the base form of a verb.
>...
Why not drop this form, call the -yam form infinitive, and
rewrite all lexicon entries? :-)

> ...
>   Sira ma.langu.ay.ang bihan.yam narān.ye.in iyạ.ena
>   T:P PST.strain.1s.A understand.BEN speech.PL.T 3s.GEN
>   I strained to understand his words.
>
> (T = Trigger; A = agent, P = patient, as usual; PL = plural)
>
> Now there you've got the same in English -- "strained TO
> understand" (and the same construction exists as well in
> German) so I guess it's really some bias towards German --
>...
Well, strikingly, Finnish does something very similar, but showed me
that it's not benefactive or dative 'to'/'zu', but more of an
allative.  IIRC, Finnish adds -ma + -CASE to verb stems to form similar
stuff, maybe some finnoglot could clarify usage and give more usages
possibly with different cases.  And maybe tell us how it's called in
Finnish.  What I seem to remember are phrases like:

   Tuli     tanssimaan.
   come.IMP dance-'MA'-ALL
   'Come dance!'

Lit. 'Come to dancing.', with 'to' in the sense of 'whither?' (thus
allative case).

So this 'MA' is a morpheme that makes a certain form of the Finnish
verb that allows adding case endings.  Searching for a name, I'd
probably call it either supine (as Yitzik said), infinitive, or maybe
gerund.

Further, I think the above structure is also used to form progressive
forms in Finnish (which are often formed with locatives in natlangs).
Just use adessive case of the -MA verb form:

   Olen tanssimassa.
   I.am dance-'MA'-ADE
   'I am dancing.'

Lit.: 'I am at dancing.'.

>From this parallel between IE and Finnish, I'd find benefactive case
surprising for such constructs, but why not.

>...
> _-Yam_ can nevertheless also be added to verbs to make them
> gerunds:
Perfect! :-)

**Henrik
--
Relay 13 is online:
http://www.conlang.info/relay13/

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