Re: revisions in Tepa number marking

dirk elzinga wrote:

> Take a sentence with a plural subject in English:
> 'The sheep are running around.' In Tepa this becomes:
>
>         lulpa toko
>         0- RED-  lupa toko
>         3- DIST- run  sheep
>
> Notice that the number marking does not mark an entity, but rather an
> event;  here it shows that the event of running is distributed over a
> number of sheep--the implication is that each sheep is running around
> independently of her neighbors. In the context of a story, the noun
> 'sheep' may be entirely dispensed with, leaving only _lulpa_ 'They
> were running around' or even, 'Running around was going on all over.'
>
> The situation becomes a little more complicated with transitive
> predicates. Suppose you have the following Tepa sentence (my apologies
> for the violent nature of the example!)
>
>         wanpopti nema
>         wa-  n-  RED-  poti nema
>         1>3- TR- DIST- beat man
>
> This has three different meanings in English. It could mean:
>
>         i.   I beat up the men.
>         ii.  We beat up the man.
>         iii. We beat up the men.
>
> Only context can determine which reading is intended since number is
> not marked on the noun but only on the predicate. (However, the first
> reading is not as likely since the implication of the English sentence
> is that the event of beating up happened once to a group of men--that
> might be better expressed with a collective verb form: _wanpokti_. It
> may be possible to use the distributive for a series of similar events
> so a more accurate version of i. would be 'I beat up one man after
> another.')
>
> If this post seems a bit scattered or unorganized then it's an
> accurate reflection of my state of mind WRT Tepa. Comments? Questions?
I like it!  I can envision two possible ways to reduce the ambiguity generated by
this system without losing the spirit of what you're trying to do.  I played
around with both of these strategies when I was working on a sketch for a conlang
a while back, and I came up with a couple ideas that I was fiddling with (the
conlang itself didn't go anywhere, but I might return to some of its major design
features at a later date):

The first thing would be two expand the number of categories in the agreement
system.  I recall that Tepa agreement prefixes only mark person of subject and
object, not number.  This is a cool feature, and I presume you would want to keep
it in the revised Tepa, but you might consider adding some finer person
distinctions than just the standard 1, 2, and 3.  For example:

  1      me (1st singular)
  1+2    me and you, us two (1st dual inclusive)
  1+2+3  me and you and other(s) (1st plural inclusive)
  1+3    me and other(s) (1st dual/plural exclusive)
  2      you (2nd singular, or plural when addressing a group)
  2+3    you and other(s) (2nd plural, when addressing part
            of a group)
  3      other(s) (3rd singular/plural)

A second strategy would be to break up the number marking on verbs into two
domains.  Verbal predicates can be grouped into four different categories
according to their eventivity and punctuality:

  state ("alive", "happy")
  activity ("sing", "eat apples", "hunt for deer")
  activity leading to change-of-state
        ("build a house", "eat the apple")

You could have two parallel systems of plural marking, which operate separately
or together, depending on the semantics of the verb.  One marking set indicates
singular/plural of states (i.e., multiple states, or a single state shared by a
group of entities), while the other set indicates singular/plural of activities
(i.e., multiple activities, or a single activity shared by a group of actors).
Verbs which denote states or changes of state would take state singular/plural
marking (abbreviated SSg/SPl), verbs which denote non-terminal activities would
take activity singular/plural marking (abbreviated ASg/APl), and verbs which
denote an activity terminating in a change of state in the patient would take
both:

  3-happy-SSg     "s/he is happy"
  3-happy-SPl     "they are happy"
                   or "s/he is happy (on different occasions)"

  3-sing-ASg      "s/he sings (once)"
  3-sing-APl      "they sing", "s/he sings (iteratively)"

  3>3-eat-SSg-ASg   "s/he eats it"
  3>3-eat-SPl-ASg   "s/he eats them (collective)"
  3>3-eat-SSg-APl   "they eat it"
  3>3-eat-SPl-APl   "they eat them", "s/he eats them (on
                        different occasions)"

Just a couple ideas...

Matt.