From: "Roger Mills" <romilly@...>
Muke Tever wrote:
>>Okay, in my new conlang Dunamy I have sentences like this (morphemes
>>separated by periods):
>>
>> gges.i tak.s ara gae
>> chase dog ? cat
>> "The dog chases the cat."
>>
>> pi.ggés gae.s ara tak
>> chase dog ? cat
>> "The cat is chased by the dog."
>
>Have you mis-typed in No. 2? Isn't gae 'cat'?
Yes I have. You're right.
>>[<Ara> is a word that marks 'gae' as the patient in the first sentence and
>>'tak' as the agent in the second. This looks like active and passive but
>>that doesn't seem quite right. Is there a better way to describe this?
>>And what do I call <ara>?
>
>Looks like active/passive-- but I find "ara" very confusing with two such
>disparate and contradictory functions.....Is it really necessary in No. 1?
>If not, then it could fairly clearly be the agent marker in passive
>sentences, like "by".
Well, it is necessary in both sentences. I wouldn't say it's so much
contradictory as it marks the "other" core function. <Piggés> in the second
sentence basically tells you that the topic marked for tense (gaes) is the
patient, and <ggesi> in the first sentence says that the topic marked for
tense (taks) is the agent.
>(snips)
>>The tense is marked on the subject.]
>>How common is it for nouns to be the carrier of tense like this?
>
>Conlangs aside, not very, I think. Though I recall an Indonesian lang.
that
>uses one set of pronouns for past, a different set for future (don't recall
>offhand where present fits in-- since it had hints of being a
>realis/irrealis system, present would probably be considered realis,
>wouldn't it??)
Hmmkay.
*Muke!