Re: A Survey

On Tue, Sep 30, 2003 at 05:12:41PM -0700, Sylvia Sotomayor wrote:
[snip]
> That said, Kélen makes a big distinction between 'change-of-state'
> situations and otherwise.
! That's very much like Ebisedian, even though Ebisedian has verbs. In my
response, I've mainly assumed that actual state change occurred; if it
were describing a static condition of being broken, the sentences would
have no verbs and be very different in structure.

> 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.
That's an interesting distinction.

> 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)
Care to give interlinears? :-) I'm curious as to how this parses.

At any rate, knocking on a door and breaking a door use different verbs in
Ebisedian. The verb I used in my response, _Ca'ne_, means to shatter. A
different verb would be needed for a non-destructive knocking. :-) Also,
if describing a broken door (rather than the event of a door breaking), no
verb would be used, but the appropriate adjectival noun would be employed.

> The first two sentences use the relational SE, which denotes transaction
> and not a change of state.
SE?

> The last two sentences use NI, which does denote a change of state.
NI?

> 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)
Interlinears please :-)

> 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.
[snip]

What is the function of _jataxéta_?


T

--
Once bitten, twice cry...

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