Re: revisions in Tepa number marking

On Thu, 17 Aug 2000, J Matthew Pearson wrote:

> dirk elzinga wrote:
>
> > >   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...
I think I get it now. I suppose that intransitive predicates could
also have dual event marking in the case of expressions like 'I
arrived at the airport' where the first event is the activity of
travelling and the second event is the state of being at the airport.
Is that right, or would 'I arrived at the airport' be considered
transitive in your system? (Do 'transitive' and 'intransitive' mean
anything in this system anyway?)

Dirk

--
Dirk Elzinga
dirk.elzinga@m.cc.utah.edu