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

Quoting David Peterson <ThatBlueCat@...>:

> (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 one of the ways to say it in Tairezazh: Ta zrón shu sha raig e'
zaves "I want that you eat the bread". There's no overt accusative marker on
the sentence _sha raig e' zaves_ "you eat the bread".

(I used _zave_ "bread" because I do not seem to have a general word
for "food".)

> (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 also works in Tairezazh: Ta zrón raigents zaves shai

This is kind a neat, IMHO; the -s on _raigent_ "eating" markes it as the
object of _zrón_ "want, desire", while that on _zave_ marks it as the one of
_raigent_. It's ambiguous, tho - is _shai_ "your" subject genitive to the
phrase _raigent zaves_ "eating of bread", or a normal genitive to just
_zave_ "bread"? Context should however usually clarify whether "I want your
eating of bread" or "I want eating of your bread" is meant. It later
interpretation is fairly unlikely - it would have to mean that you wanted the
bread eaten but did not care by whom. ("I want to eat your bread" is simply
_ta raig zent zaves shai_, ie "I eat your bread" with a desiderative marker.)

> This is something like what Tagalog does (or am I thinking of
> Cebuano?).  The difference, though, is that genitive constructions work very
> differently in Zhyler.  So, if you wanted to say, "I want the man to eat the
> food", you'd end up with:
>
> [uspan-ja-(ar?)?] sexa-ja-(ar?) [uspan-ja-(ar?)?] usal-uf-(ar?)
> [uspan-ja-(ar?)?] mat-po-l-um
>
> Let me break this down this way:
>
> [uspan-ja-(ar?)?] = food-POS.-(ACC.?)
> sexa-ja-(ar?) = man-POS.-(ACC.?)
> usal-uf-(ar?) = food-GEN.-(ACC.?)
> mat-po-l-um = see-VOL.-obj.-1sg.
>
> The genitive in Zhyler goes as follows: x-POS. y-GEN. = "the y of x" or "x's
> y".  So, if you wanted to say "the man's dog's food", you'd say:
>
> sexa-ja celven-yv-je uspan-uf [man-POS. dog-GEN.-POS. food-GEN.]
>
> And you could go on for as long as you want.  But how could it possibly work
> in this "want" construction?  What we want is "the eating of the food *by*
> the man", or "the man's eating of the food".  I don't see a way to order
> these to make it work.  Oh.  Maybe it's because of that animacy issue, where
> you can say "the eating of the food" in English, but "the food's eating"
> sounds strange.  So would it just be--no.  Because the man owns the eating,
> not the food.  So you couldn't say "the man's food's eating" like you'd say
> "the man's dog's food", because there has the first element has to own the
> second, and the man doesn't own the food.  So it seems like this construction
> just doesn't work, but I just think I'm not thinking about it the right way.
I might be missing something, but couldn't you simply say "man-POS food-POS
eating-GEN-GEN", treating the entire "food-POS eating-GEN" phrase as they 'y'
of your schema above?

                                               Andreas