Re: GROUPLANG: Pronouns

Mathias M. Lassailly wrote:

>> Well, we seem to have set on
>>
>> agent
>> patient
>> undergoer
>> absolutive
>> causative
>> modifier
>> determinant
>> predicate
>>
>> Mathias told us about the 10 "universal" cases. I personally think we
>> can make do with the ones we have so far, which are already not a few.
>>
>I agree. I withdraw my 'absolutive', 'agent' and causative' cases. I suggest
>you change the name of
>'undergoer' into 'absolutive', which seems to be the correct lingics description for
>this case, and
>one among the next 'modifier' or 'determinant' cases into 'attributive'. Now we
>could realize without
>changing the system (only re-naming it) that we're halfway of ergative/absolutive
>(=Basque, Sumerian)
>and agent/patient/attribute (=some Amerindian and New-Guinean languages)
>systems. Attributive is '-s'
>in = hi-s parent, hi-s redness, hi-s arm, hi-s home, etc.

Sounds fine. Let us go back and define things (Nik seems to have missed
the posts about cases, so I'll try and make some examples... for all of us).


Agent: well, this is obvious, this is the one who is doing something to another one.
"THE DOG bit me."

Patient: this is the one who gets X-ed by an agent.
"The dog bit ME."

Absolutive: (previously undergoer) the one experiencing something
without being its agent or its patient.
"THE DOG sees me"

Causative: the one causing an action to be performed over someone else.
"HE got the dog killed" (caus-HE abs-dog pred-die, I think)

Attributive: (previously modifier/determinant) having the stated attribute.
"THE RED dog bit me"

Predicate: this marks "verbs", i. e. actions, states, etc.
"The dog BIT me"


>The '10 cases' don't count in lative, locative and situative cases. I suggest we
>use suspensive verbs
>for the latter : I let him go to the house thru woods = him woods go-thru-susp house go-to
>By the way, what are the cases of 'I', 'him', 'woods' and 'house' ? How
>structure 'I let him raise the >hand' ?
"I let him go-through woods, go-to the house"
I should say:

caus-I att-free abs-he woods pred-go_thru-susp, house pred-go_to
"I cause him to be free to go through woods, [and] go into the house"

* abs-he and not pat-he because I'm not exactly "freeing" him from chains...
He's just free, because of me, but I didn't free him (that's why caus-I and
not ag-I) and he hasn't been freed.

* woods: uninflected or could it be absolutive? The woods are gone through...

* house: same as for "woods".


"I let him raise the hand"

caus-I att-free abs-he ag-he pat-hand pred-rise

That sounds more like "I let him free, and he raises the hand".
But that would probably be

caus-I abs-he pred-free "I cause him to be free"

A bit twisted, but understandable, I think.


--Pablo Flores