Re: draqa syntax - help please?
| From: | Jörg Rhiemeier <joerg.rhiemeier@...> |
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| Date: | Tuesday, September 26, 2000, 23:52 |
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"H. S. Teoh" wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 26, 2000 at 01:12:37AM +0200, Kristian Jensen wrote:
> [snip]
> > Although Draqa syntax is quite out-of-this-world, there is a lot in it
> > that reminds me of Boreanesian syntax. Boreanesian is a trigger language,
> [...]
> > Like Draqa, the concept of subject/object is almost meaningless. Problem is,
> > the concept of subject/object is so deeply imbedded in linguistic theory that
> > it becomes a necessity to think in those terms.
> [...]
>
> Hmm. That could become a problem in my conlang too. My conlang has a
> system that looks deceptively like a subject/object system but really
> isn't. It's based on a *completely* semantic marking of nouns, and
> actually has several different sentence types. The apparent subject/object
> similarity is in verbal sentences, so that's what I'll talk about here:
I'll try comparing this system with the (very different) system
I use in Nur-ellen. Sure, Nur-ellen is *very* different, but its
case marking of nouns is also semantical. Though in a vastly
different way.
> A verbal sentence *centers* around an event, which is described by one or
> more verbs. Nouns are the various "actors" playing various roles in this
> event, and are marked according to their roles:
Nur-ellen has two cases, agentive and objective, which by themselves
mark agent and patient in a transitive predication, wherein the agent
must be animate and volitional. Besides them, there are several
prepositions of which most govern the objective, but some govern
the agentive. Only animate nouns have an agentive case.
Inanimate nouns are not inflected for case: they are always in the
objective case.
> - nouns that act as an origin, source, or cause of the event are marked in
> the *originative*.
This gets pretty close to the agentive in Nur-ellen, with the exception
of source, which is usually an ablative. In Nur-ellen, an agent must
always be animate and volitional in order to be in the agentive case;
animate agents accidentally doing (or failing to do) something (e.g.,
out of a slip of the mind), and casual observers are marked with
dative, and inanimate "agents" or agents acting on behalf of someone
else, with instrumental. (See my various posts on degrees of volition
for details.)
> - nouns that act as the destination, goal, or recipient of the event are
> marked in the *receptive*.
In many cases, this is covered by the dative in Nur-ellen, but in
others,
by the allative. Animacy is a key factor here: affected persons are
in the dative (or benefactive, or malefactive), inanimate objects and
locations in the allative or objective.
> - nouns that are responsible for the continual progress of the event are
> marked in the *instrumental*.
Nur-ellen also has an instrumental, marked by a preposition.
> - nouns that are being moved, conveyed, or transmitted, are marked in the
> *conveyant*.
These are put in the agentive case if they are their own volitional
cause of movement (e.g. a person going somewhere), otherwise in the
objective case (e.g. something being transported by an external force).
> - nouns that indicate either the general location of the event or the
> specific position of the event at a particular time are put into the
> *locative* case.
Nur-ellen has a variety of local prepositions for this.
This is indeed an interesting case system! Very original, and a
relational typologist's nightmare ;-)
> The originative and receptive look deceptively like subject/object, but in
> fact, it isn't. For example:
> 1) pii'z3d0 tww'ma mir33'nu.
> man(org) talk(verb) children(rcp)
> "The man talks/chats to the children."
> Here, the originative/receptive coincides with subject/object.
Nur-ellen:
I ben ped na i hin.
the AGT.man talk DAT the AGT.child.PL
Agentive and dative (marked by _na_ + agentive), as in most "SAE"
languages.
> 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
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."
> Furthermore:
> 3) lyy's pii'z3d3 loo'ru.
> go(verb) man(cvy) countryside(rcp)
> "The man goes into the countryside".
> Here, what English regards as the "subject" is in the conveyant
> case: because the man is in motion.
In Nur-ellen, the man is the agent of the act of going, and "the
countryside" is an allative (_na_ + objective) adverbial specifying
the direction of the man's movement.
I ben bad na i dorlad.
The AGT.man go to the OBJ.countryside
> 4) jul0'r lyy's mil3da3'.
> house(org) go(verb) girl(cvy)
> "The girl leaves the house."
> This one proves that the originative isn't the subject...
In Nur-ellen: agentive + ablative (_o_ + objective).
I wen avart o i bar.
The AGT.girl leave from the OBJ.house
> 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.
Let's summarize the correspondences observed:
Your lang Nur-ellen
1) originative agentive
receptive dative
2) originative objective
receptive dative
3) conveyant agentive
receptive allative
4) originative ablative
conveyant agentive
5) instrumental instrumental
conveyant objective
receptive benefactive
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.
> At first, I thought my conlang was an active language -- and indeed, it
> does resemble an active language in marking noun cases semantically.
> However, there is no case corresponding to agentive / experiencer /
> absolutive or anything like that. Depending on the event being described,
> the "subject" or "agent" of the sentence could be in any of the five
> cases!
>
> 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.
> [syntactic typoplogy]
>
> This is a hard choice to make. My conlang could be any of SVO, VSO, VOS,
> OVS in its "preferred" word order. If you account for moving words around
> for emphasis/focus, it can be any order at all!
In contrast, Nur-ellen can be held to be SVO, I think, though it allows
for all sorts of alternative word orders.
> (And this only covers
> verbal sentences. There are other sentence types, like the stative which
> consists solely of nouns, that just doesn't fit anywhere in this scheme.)
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.)
> > Another alternative,
> > especially as it seems Draqa is an alien language, is to make up your own
> > theories. In this case, your hands are completely free -- and you can just
> > ignore most of what I have just written ;)
> [snip]
>
> Hmm... my conlang is intended for humans -- or at least, human-like beings
> -- so I'm a bit stuck on this issue. :-(
Nur-ellen is definitely *not* an alien language. Its speakers are
entirely human (though their neighbours tell tales about them
claiming their nature is somewhat special).
I'll continue with the next post, on stative sentences:
>
> From: "H. S. Teoh" <hsteoh@...>
> Subject: She shows forth beauty
> To: CONLANG@LISTSERV.BROWN.EDU
>
> OK, I haven't posted any daily tidbits for my conlang for a few days
> now... so here's another one. Today's tidbit will talk about stative
> sentences.
>
> I've posted a lot about verbal sentences in various threads already, but
> not much on stative sentences at all, so an explanation is in order:
> verbal sentences are used when there's a change in state -- i.e.,
> something is actively happening. When a static situation is being
> described, stative sentences are used. Stative sentences express a static
> relationship between nouns; thus stative sentences lack verbs. These
> static relationships are expressed by the cases of the nouns in the
> stative sentence.
>
> 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.
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?)
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).
> The combination of the originative case with the conveyant case expresses
> a source-expression relationship: the woman shows forth the attribute of
> beauty.
>
> Compare this with the verbal sentence where somebody sees the woman's
> beauty:
> biz3t30' fww't3 d3m3'l pii'z3du.
> woman(org) see(verb) beauty(cvy) man(rcp)
> "The man sees the woman's beauty", or, "the man sees that the
> woman is beautiful."
Nur-ellen:
Na i ben tir i ves vin.
DAT the AGT.man see the OBJ.woman OBJ.beautiful
Or, with a zero-copula relative clause:
Na i ben tir i ves ji vin.
DAT the AGT.man see the OBJ.woman REL OBJ.beautiful
> Here, the verb "fww't3" indicates that an event has occurred -- the beauty
> of the woman has been seen by the man. Notice that "beauty" is in the
> conveyant case, because it is that which is conveyed to the man's sight;
> and the woman is in the originative because she is the source of the
> conveyed beauty.
Interesting! But very logical in the context of this language.
> Not all attributes are expressed using the originative-conveyant
> combination, however. Here's another attributive stative sentence:
> th0'ta3 pii'z3du.
> height(cvy) man(rcp)
> "The man is tall." Literally, "There is height to the man", or,
> "The man possesses height."
In Nur-ellen, it is analogous to the first example, namely
I ven org`l.
The OBJ.man OBJ.tall
> 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"!
> 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!
It is always surprising which distinctions are made in languages.
> Yet other attributes are expressed by other noun case combinations; but
> since this post is getting quite long, I'll save that for next time. :-P
I am looking forward to it.
Jörg.