Re: draqa syntax - help please?

On Wed, Sep 27, 2000 at 01:52:55AM +0200, Jörg Rhiemeier wrote:
> "H. S. Teoh" wrote:
[snip delicious comparison of cases in my conlang with Nur Ellen]
>
> This is indeed an interesting case system!  Very original, and a
> relational typologist's nightmare ;-)
I guess the fact that I like thinking "out of the box" may have something
to do with this :-)

I notice that your case system carefully distinguishes between animacy and
non-animacy. The POV of my conlang is more leaned towards the semantic
function of the noun in the context of the event, regardless of animacy or
volition on the part of the noun itself. So, a fountain gushing up water
would be marked in the originative the same way as a man speaking words,
or a place out of which something else moves.

[snip]
> > BUT:
> > 2)      mir33'n0      fww't3    pii'z3du.
> >         children(org) see(verb) man(rcp)
> >         "The man sees the children."
> >         The object being seen is regarded as the transmitter of its own
> >         appearance; hence the strange reversal of the expected cases.
>
> Nur-ellen treats this differently.  This is a typical sentence
> of perception, where the perceiving entity goes into the dative
> and the object of perception into the objective:
>
> Na  i   ben     tir i   jin.
> DAT the AGT.man see the OBJ.child.PL
Very interesting! It does seem to resemble the way my conlang handles the
verb to see, at least as far as using the receptive (dative) case is
concerned.

>
> Without the dative preposition, the sentence expresses deliberate
> observation:
>
> I   ben     tir   i   jin.
> The AGT.man watch the OBJ.child.PL
> "The man watches the children."
My conlang uses another verb, "zota'", "to look at", to express this. It
might interest you to know that this verb uses rather different case
markings from "fww't3":
        pii'z3d0 zotuw'     mir33'nu.
        man(org) look(verb) children(rcp)
        "The man looks at the children", or, "the man looks in the
        direction of the children" (hence children in the receptive case:
        they are the destination of the man's looking.)

(Just in case you're wondering, "zotuw'" is the perfective deliberative of
"zota'". I didn't indicate this in the interlinear to avoid clutter and
possible confusion. If you *really* want to know, though, the deliberative
must be used here to properly convey the meaning of "watch" -- if I used,
say, the incidental, the sentence would read "The man happened to look at
the children" -- i.e., he isn't actively watching them, but just
happened to look in their direction.)

[snip]
> > Another one of my favorite pathological (from the POV of subject/object
> > systems) cases:
> > 5)      byy'jh     pii'z3da   3lymo3'n     biz3tau'.
> >         give(verb) man(instr) flowers(cvy) woman(rcp)
> >         "The man delivers the flowers to the woman."
> >         Why is the man in the instrumental case? Because he is the person
> >         delivering the flowers sent by somebody else. If "man" is put into
> >         the originative, the sentence becomes "The man gives flowers to
> >         the woman".
>
> In Nur-ellen:   instrumental (_ni_ + objective)
>               + objective
>               + benefactive (_an_ + agentive).
>
> Ni   i   ven     an`n i   ljös          an  i   bes.
> INST the OBJ.man give the OBJ.flower.PL BEN the AGT.woman
>
> Nur-ellen agrees here with your language by using the instrumental
> for someone acting on behalf of someone else.
Very interesting! My conlang looks at it from another angle, though: the
instrumental is used for nouns that are responsible for carrying through
with the event. In this example, the person delivering the flowers is
important to the completion of the event of giving -- without this person,
the flowers would not have been delivered to the woman.

Similarly, the instrumental is also used for the vehicle of motion, when
used with verbs of motion, because it is the vehicle that keeps the motion
going.

> Let's summarize the correspondences observed:
[snip summary of comparisons]
> It seems that no regular match can be observed.  The only correspondences
> occuring twice in these samples are rec./dat. in 1) and 2),
> and conv./agt. in 3) and 4).  The correspondence of the instrumentals
> with each other in 5) is striking.
Yep. I'll be very interested to see how much the instrumental cases in our
conlangs overlap :-)

[snip]
> > So my question is... what *is* this system?? I've read a bit about active
> > langs, ergative langs, and trigger langs, and my conlang doesn't seem to
> > fit in any of those categories (although it seems closest to active).
>
> It seems to stand on its own.  It is none of the ones mentioned.
> No trigger, but also not accusative, not ergative, and also not really
> an active language.  At least, nothing I'd recognize as active from
> what little experience I have with relational typology.
> But interesting out of its own right.
>
> It makes the active system in Nur-ellen (or do you find a reason why
> it is not active, Marcus?) look tame, even with its degrees of volition.
Hahaha! Is my conlang really *that* off-the-wall? :-P

[snip]
> Nur-ellen also has sentences which consist of two nouns, or a noun and
> an adjective, and the predicative nouns and adjectives are inflected
> for tense!  (For an example, see below.)
Cool! Well, my conlang can have stative sentences with more than two
nouns, too, though I haven't worked out all the details yet.

[snip]
> > Here's an example of a stative sentence: (cover story :-P)
> >         biz3t30'   d3m3'l.
> >         woman(org) beauty(cvy)
> >         "The woman is beautiful." Literally, "the woman shows forth beauty".
>
> Nur-ellen:
>
> I   ves       vin.
> the OBJ.woman OBJ.beautiful
>
> Nur-ellen is a zero-copula language; and as "the woman" isn't actively
> doing anything in this sentence, the case marking is objective.
Cool. I like that idea. I observe again that here, the case marking
reflects the volition, or "activity" (activeness?) of the noun.

>
> As I said, predicative nouns and adjectives are marked for tense:
>
> Voromir     gondirent      e        Davrob`l.
> OBJ.Boromir OBJ.mayor-PAST GEN.PART OBJ.Tavrob`l
> "Boromir was mayor of Tavrob`l."
>
> (Yes, case and tense markers on the same word!  So here is the
> 64,000 dollar question: is _gondirent_ a noun or a verb?)
I'd say, it's something like a participle. After all, participles do have
both case and tense markings (esp. in natlangs like Attic Greek) :-P

>
> This, however, implies that the condition does not hold in the present.
> So if one talks about a women one has seen once, one would rather say
> _I ves vin_ "The woman is beautiful" rather than _I ves vinent_
> "The woman was beautiful"; the latter would imply that she is no longer
> beautiful (because she has gained 50 pounds in the meantime, suffered
> a terrible accident, had herself peirced, or whatever).
My conlang would simply insert a temporal noun in the locative case, to
indicate that it's talking about a previous state which may or may not
hold in the present.

[snip]
> > Not all attributes are expressed using the originative-conveyant
> > combination, however. Here's another attributive stative sentence:
[...]
> > This construct is known as the possessive stative. The conculture regards
> > the thing possessed as being focused towards its possessor; hence, the
> > possessee is in the conveyant case, and the possessor in the receptive.
> > (Another way to think of this is that the possessor is the recipient of
> > the possessee during some past acquisition.)
>
> An interesting view.  Just the reverse "direction" of "conveyance"!
Not really. The conveyant noun is implicitly "moving" from the originative
(source) to the receptive (destination). So when used with an originative
noun, it marks a motion away from something; when used with a receptive
noun, it marks a motion towards something.

> > Height is a spatial attribute; all spatial attributes are expressed by the
> > possessive stative (conveyant + receptive). "Expressive" attributes such
> > as beauty, wisdom, etc., are expressed by the previous construct, the
> > expressive stative (originative + conveyant).
>
> Nice!  So there are properties which "move" "towards" the entity having
> them, and other properties which "move" "away from" it?  Interesting!
There are more too... I'll post the details of that in the next tidbit :-)

> It is always surprising which distinctions are made in languages.
[snip]

I find it very fascinating that Nur Ellen pays a lot of attention to the
agency of its nouns. (Is this a common thing in active langs?) The case
markings depend very much on whether the noun is actively doing something
(agentive), or is passive (objective), or neither (ablative, etc.). My
conlang makes distinctions along different axes, so to speak.


T