Re: A Survey

On Monday 29 September 2003 08:41 pm, Rob Haden wrote:
> I'm curious to see everyone's answers to the following questions:
>
> 1. Does your language(s) distinguish between active ("X breaks Y"),
middle
> ("X breaks (apart)"), and passive ("X is broken (by Y)")?
>
> 2. If the answer to #1 was "yes," what method(s) does your language(s)
use
> to make some/all of the above distinctions?
>
> 3. What method(s) does your language(s) use to distinguish between
basic
> nouns and verbs of the same root (i.e. "a hit" vs. "he hits")?
>
To begin with, Kélen has no verbs as such, so 'he hits' and 'she broke
it' have nouns for 'a hit' or 'broken thing' instead.

That said, Kélen makes a big distinction between 'change-of-state'
situations and otherwise. For example, when something breaks, it
changes its state from whole to broken. When someone is hit, however,
that person is still the same, maybe feeling a little pain and
humiliation, but not otherwise changed. An inanimate object that's been
hit isn't changed either, unless it becomes damaged, which would be a
different word.

So, lets consider the following:
She hit the door (with her hand, knocking, say...)
The door was hit (by someone unspecified)
She broke the door (hit it too hard, i guess)
The door is broken/The door broke.

tamma jataxéta mo jaxúra;
        (She gave a hit/strike/blow to the door)
te jataxéta mo jaxúra;
        (Someone/something gave a hit/strike/blow to the door)
órra ñamma jaxúra jahúwa;
        (She made the door a broken thing)
órra ñi jaxúra jahúwa;
        (Someone/something made the door broken) or
        (The door became broken/made itself broke)
The first two sentences use the relational SE, which denotes transaction
and not a change of state. The last two sentences use NI, which does
denote a change of state. Further, the first two differ from each other
in that only an animate source gets marked on SE. So 'tamma' parses to
SE+past+3p.sg.source+null/inanimate goal. NI also inflects for animate
agent. This means that an inanimate source/agent is treated the same
way as an unspecified or non-existent one:

te jataxéta mo jaxúra to janíran;
        (The branch gave a hit/strike/blow to the door)
órra ñi jaxúra jahúwa á janíran;
        (The branch made the door broken)

Passive is not distinguished in Kélen.

I discovered recently that nouns such as jataxéta prefer the
distributive jattaxétien to the regular plural form jataxéti, as in:
te jattaxétien mo jaxúra to janíran;
        (The branch gave hits/strikes/blows to the door)
This is probably because the distributive conveys the idea of repetition
over time and the plural does not.



--
Sylvia Sotomayor
sylvia1@ix.netcom.com
kelen@ix.netcom.com

Kélen language info can be found at:
http://home.netcom.com/~sylvia1/Kelen/kelen.html

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