Re: Personal Conjugation based on Closeness

On Fri, Mar 28, 2003 at 01:19:23PM -0500, Roger Mills wrote:
> H.S.Teoh wrote:
>
> > > >        He was walking with his father and another man, and he told him
> > > >        that he will visit him again.
> > > >
> > > >[snip] In Ebisedian, however, this is completely unambiguous:
>
> Very ambiguous in Kash, and it's been bothering me for days.  The
> formal/literal translation, with tense markers:
Care to provide a legend for your abbreviations? I'm having trouble
deciphering some part of this.

> senda yaharansa yam amañi i kaçun liya, i ne yakotasa re ne yatolito cis.
> PROG 3/walk/Past with his-father/acc and man/acc other, (and) 3/dat
> 3/say/Past CONJ 3/dat 3/visit/Fut again.
>
> As it stands, and out of context, the 2nd clause beginning with i 'and'
> would suggest strongly that there has been a change of subject. If you
> omitted _i_ (as you could), then the subj. of yakotasa would be assumed =
> subj. of yaharansa.
I see.

> In the clause following yakotasa, _re_ definitely indicates change of subj.
> Again, if re is omitted, then the subj. of yatolito = subj. of yakotasa (a
> sort of serial verb construction), (and may/maynot = subj.yaharan, depending
> on the preceding paragraph).
Cool. How does _re_ indicate a change of subject though?

> In this second clause, the two ya- subj.markers and the two _ne_'s are
> completely ambiguous. To disambiguate (just as in Engl.) you'd have to
> repeat the nouns, or use their equiv. of "former, latter" etc.
Right, which was something that bothered me when designing Ebisedian;
which was why I introduced the associative tags.

> If one or another _ne_ was not replaced by a noun, it would be assumed
> to refer back to the "he" subj. of yaharansa.  Similarly, any ya- that
> had no noun (nom.)  supplement. A couple exs.:
>
> (Let A be the subj. of walk, B=father, C=other man)
> 1.(first clause unchanged), [no i 'and'] yakotasa amayeni re kaçut ya liya
> ne yatolito cis.
> ........and A told B that C would visit A again.
Is there a reflexive in there that refers back to A again, or is it just
assumed by default?

> 2. (first clause unch.), _i_ amani ne yakotasa (no RE'that') yatolito kaçute
> ya liya cis.
> ....and B told A that B would visit C again.
I'm not sure I understand how _re_ would imply a change in subject?

> 3. (first clause unch.), i amani ne yakotasa re ya liya ne yatolito cis.
> ...and B told A that C would visit A again
>
> NB this:
> 4. ..........i amani ne yakotasa re ya liya _netu_ yatolito cis.
> ...and B told A that C would visit _B_ ('himself') again.
Aha, so _netu_ is a reflexive? Why wasn't it needed in (1)?

> (Uh-oh, this probably needs work-- what if the verb were lolan 'protect'
> instead of 'toli'-- I see the solution, but this post is getting too long,
> and me brain hurts.)
Hehehe, yes, that example was deliberately hyper-ambiguous. :-)


T

--
Winners never quit, quitters never win. But those who never quit AND never
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