Re: A Survey

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)")?
Active and antipassive, yes.  Middle, kinda.  Many verbs can be
intransitive or transitive.  For example, "break", you could have "break
X-erg Y-abs" or "break X-abs" which would be like a middle voice

Also, Continental Vulgar Uatakassi distinguished passive.

> 2. If the answer to #1 was "yes," what method(s) does your language(s) use
> to make some/all of the above distinctions?
Antipassive is marked by a prefix.

In CVU, there was no single way to mark passive.  The basic method was
to use an auxiliary, but which auxiliary was used depended on the verb.
For example:

The man told the boy the story.
The boy heard-tell the story (from the man)
The story spoke-itself-tell to the boy (by the man)

The man tore the paper.
The paper split-tear (by the man)

The man hit the boy
The boy hurt-hit (by the man)

The man kicked the boy
The boy hurt-kick (by the man)

The farmer killed the pig
The pig died-kill (by the farmer)

The soldier stabbed the enemy
The enemy died-stab (by the soldier) - if it resulted in death
The enemy hurt-stab (by the solider) - if the enemy survived

The woman grew the flowers
The flowers lived-grow (by the woman)

The man gave the boy a book
The boy received-give a book (from the man)
The book went-give to the boy (by the man)

And so forth.  "See" was used as a generic when no specific verb fit.

> 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")?
Verbal/nominal morphology for one.  Some verbs and nouns share a common
root, for example, _klu_ can be either "a stab" or "to stab".  However,
there could never be confusion, because when actually used, the noun
would require, at the very least, a gender marker (pi-), while the verb
could occur in the bare stem if used as an imperative, otherwise would
have to have personal affixes at the least.

Also, there are a number of nominalizing and verbalizing suffixes that
are sometimes used, as well as completely different roots in some cases.

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