Re: Description question

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'?
>
>[<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".


(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??)

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