Re: Help: Zhyler ECM/Raising Verbs (Longish)

* ThatBlueCat@aol.com said on 2004-04-04 11:34:29 +0200
> Zhyler has a whole bunch of suffixes. [..] At least one, though, works
> as a (subject) raising or ECM verb would.  As anyone who speaks a
> language knows, these types of verbs (well, provided you know to what
> they refer) are odd.  In order to try to sweep that under the rug, I
> decided to make one such verb a suffix and not a verb.  The result is
> the volitive suffix, which indicates wanting.  The intent of this
> suffix is to add desire to a verb.  So, if you want to say "I want a
> chocolate", you add the volitive to "eat" or "possess".
I need a suffix for that myself, haven't really looked into the entire
mood/modality-question properly. I already have a suffix for ability/
capability (some of the uses of can/able):

    î        cthalann
    î        ctha            =lann
    2s.agent cross.3.patient -able
    (S)He can cross/pass it/them
    (S)He is capable of crossing/passing it/them
    It/they is/are crossable/passable for/by him/her

There are other meanings of can, more like "should" or "will do it",
that isn't covered by this (derivational) suffix though.

> The problem that arose was with sentences like "I want you to do x" or
> "I want the man to do x".  You can't just add the suffix to the verb,
> because it doesn't work if the speaker is different from the subject.
I have an entirely separate class of verbs for this, that is: verbs that
can take another sentence/clause as an argument. There is also a suffix
that turns ordinary verbs into this class... Funny thing is, in the
latest relay (Amanda's relay 9) I had to use more of these weird verbs
than I used "ordinary" verbs!

> You don't run into this problem with something like "can", though,
> because you can't get, *"I can you to run" (meaning something like,
> "I'm able to (be?) your running").  However, you do run into the
> problem here.
Why not the reading "I enable you to run"?

> The first part of my solution was simply to add a dummy verb, and that
> verb is "to see".
>
> So far, I've only got two things down: (1) The verb is "to see"; and
> (2) the subject of the verb is the one who wants x to do whatever.
> Everything else I have no idea what to do.  Here are some of my ideas:
>
> (2) The direct object of the verb "to see" is the whole sentence
> itself.  So this would be like a subject raising construction: "I want
> [you to eat the food]" or actually "I want that [you eat the food]".
> If this is the case, though, does the whole phrase get an accusative
> tag?  Each member of the phrase (note: Zhyler can double-case mark)?
> Also, how can a verb be an object?
This is what I do. It's the sentence that is the object and I don't
bother marking it in any way, as the subject of the enveloping verb is
marked specially and you thus are bound to pick up that *bing* "this is
an embedded clause!", especially as the weird verbs are the *only* way
to make embedded clauses :)

> (4) The embedded clause is the object of the verb "to see", but rather
> than being a verb, it's a verbal noun.  What this would require is a
> genitive construction, such that the meaning is something like, "I
> want your eating of the food".  This is something like what Tagalog
> does (or am I thinking of Cebuano?).
Why not like in a Turkish relative clause? I want food-eating-you.

    The man that plows my fields -> The my-fields-plowing-man

I want something like this for relative clauses in Taruven but aren't
quite there yet...

HTH,


t.

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