Re: revisions in Tepa number marking

dirk elzinga wrote:

> > 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)"
>
> This looks like number agreement on an ergative pattern, with the
> absolutive argument marked SSg/SPl and the ergative argument marked
> ASg/APl. Or am I not understanding it correctly?
No.  It's still *events* rather than *individuals* which are being pluralized.  It's
just that verbs like "eat" are broken up into two sub-events (the activity of eating,
and the resulting state of having been eaten), each of which may be singular or plural
independently of the other.

Think of it this way:  "X eats Y" can be thought of as meaning "X participates in the
activity of eating, and as a result, Y comes to be in the state of having been eaten".
In principle, it should be possible to have 'plural' activities leading to a 'singular'
state (e.g., many individuals acting together on a single object, or a single person
acting many times on a single object), or a 'singular' activity leading to 'plural'
states (e.g., a single individual acting on a collection of objects), and so on.  I
dunno, it would need to be worked on a bit, but it might be a cool thing to explore...

Matt.