"Ray Brown" <ray.brown@...> wrote:
> While one can argue that the "verb" in Tagalog is only a "quasi-verb"
> since its "enlargements" are treated as attributes (genitives) and not as
> 'objects', and thus consider them as a sub-category of 'noun', it seems to
> me that you then have a category of noun which is a "quasi-noun" in that,
> unlike other nouns, it can be marked for aspect and is marked to indicate
> the participant role of its subject.
English verbal nouns can be marked for aspect as well:
"pushing" - imperfect aspect
"starting to push" - inchoative aspect
"having pushed" - perfect aspect
> The latter feature feature is called _voice_ in IE and other languages. I
> guess the reason that it is not called 'voice' in Tagalog is that while
> with the IE passive, if the Agent is expressed, it is specifically marked
> as agent, but in Tagalog it is a genitive attribute just like any other
> verbal object/ argument.
Some English verbal nouns mark agent with a genitive case as well:
"growth of a plant".
> However, consider Trask's definition of 'voice':
> "The grammatical category expressing the relationship between, on the one
> hand, the participant roles of the NP arguments of the verb and, on the
> other hand, the grammatical relations borne by those same NPs."
>
> This surely is precisely what is going on in Tagalog.
English does something kinda-sorta similar with its gerunds:
"pushing" - active voice
"being pushed" - passive voice
What would a trigger/all-noun pidgin English look like?
--
Damian