Re: Trigger language?

On Tue, Jan 21, 2003 at 01:08:20AM -0500, Josh Roth wrote:
[snip]
> I realized that when I said 'locational'; I meant it in a metaphorical as
> well as physical way. I don't think the two examples below contradict such a
> label.
OK, I guess I took the term too literally. :-)

> Of course, you have to take any label for a semantic-based system with a
> grain of salt, because even two different languages with, say,
> location-based systems will interpret some nouns' roles differently.
Absolutely.

> I mean, you could see 'beauty' as moving, or as staying still. But if an
> Ebisedian speaker sees it as moving more than as not moving, and
> consequently uses the conveyant case, well there you go.
Yep.

[snip]
> I think most languages do this, at least to some degree. Take this English
> example: "Go away!"'s not a nice thing to say.
>
> Or, a sentence can be made into a noun phrase: [His injuring me] led me to
> leave the city.
Yeah, that's what it's doing here. There are two kinds of sub-clauses in
Ebisedian; relative clauses that modify a noun, and subclauses which are
sentences that behave like a noun.

[snip]
> >Refresh my memory, what's a tripartite lang again? :-)
>
> One where subjects of intransitive verbs (S), subjects of transitive verbs
> (A), and objects (O) are all treated differently. Thus you have three
> categories for what nom-acc and erg langs only divide into two.
I see.

> I didn't state my hierarchy so well. The last part shouldn't be "where
> syntactic positions determine case," of course, because many nom-acc, erg,
> and tri langs have somewhat free word order. It's really more like "where
> case is dependent on status as a subject or object," i.e., correlated in some
> way with the structure of the sentence.
Right.

> Actually you could have two main groupings, like this:
[snip]
> I'm not claiming that this is completely right.
It does make *some* sense, though. The original motivation for the
Ebisedian system was because I was struggling to reconcile the semantics
of active vs. passive sentences with what I perceived as overly different
grammatical realizations of them.

[snip]
> >Depending on context, this could be variously rendered:
> >
> >1) he(org) cause(v) man(cvy) <rcp-subclause>see(v) I(rcp)</subclause>
> >
> >Literally, "he causes the man to be seen by me".
>
> If it is here, why wouldn't 'man' always be in the conveyant? Whether you
> think of him as the *origin* of a certain instance of seeing, or an image
> being *conveyed* to someone's eyes, he's really doing the same thing in the
> causative and non-causative sentences!
OK, I think I didn't give an unambiguous parse of that sentence. The main
sentence should be analysed as:
- origin: he
- event: cause
- patient: man (here, the conveyant case is used with a patient meaning,
  because the man is undergoing the "causing" the "he" is doing.
  Basically a metaphoric conveyance, if you will.)
- result: <subclause> (this is why the subclause is in the receptive case)

In other words, "he" is "causing" the "man" towards a result. The result
itself is described by the subclause. I've actually left out an
originative noun in the subclause -- Ebisedian tends to elide nouns that
are "understood"; but there really should be a reflexive particle in the
originative case, referring back to "man". Anyway, the subclause breaks up
as:
- (Implied origin: man)
- Event: see
- Seer: I

Does this make sense now? :-)

> Perhaps I was wrong and E is not purely semantically based. That's fine.
> What I personally might do though, is always have the object of sight in
> the conveyant, and express the sentences like this:
>
> I(rcp) see man(cvy) = I see the man
> I(rcp) see man(cvy) he(org) = He shows me the man; he causes the man to be
> seen by me
In Ebisedian, there is a difference between the object itself and the
visual representation of the object. The object of sight is always
originative, and the visual representation is always conveyant (being that
which is conveyed from the object to the seer). Hence you have sentences
like:
        woman(org) see(v) beauty(cvy) I(rcp)
        "I see the woman's beauty", or "I see that the woman is
        beautiful."

[snip]
> >2) he(instr) cause(v) man(cvy) <rcp-subclause>see(v) I(rcp)</subclause>
> >
> >Same as (1), except that this also implies some effort on the part of
> >"he".
>
> According to what you wrote way up above, I'd think this would imply
> that the source of the action was elswhere, and 'he(instr)' was just
> helping to propel the image of the man somehow to its destination,
> willfully or not.
This would be the case if the sentence were constructed this way:
        he(instr) man(org) see(v) I(rcp)

However here, "he" in the instrumental case merely means that "he" is
actively causing the man towards the result described by the subclause,
which is that I see the man. I guess I didn't make the parse clear enough.

> >3) he(org) make-appear(v) man(cvy) I(rcp)
> >
> >He shows the man to me. Basically, using a different verb as you
> >suggested.
>
> OK, but I still wonder, why 'man(cvy)' here and 'man(org)' elsewhere? Unless,
> noun case is a function of sentence structure as well as semantics.
Basically, in this case the conveyant case is again acting like a patient
case. The verb basically describes the process by which something which
was previously invisible now becomes visible. This is different from the
verb "to see", which describes the process by which the sight of something
already visible is transmitted to the seer.

> >For the binoculars part, it's a totally different construct depending on
> >the context. If he is showing me the man by giving me the binoculars, it
> >would be:
> >        man(org) see(v) <subclause...>binoculars(instr) I(rcp)
> >
> >where the subclause would have the effect of "he(org) give(v)
> >binoculars(cvy)". I.e., "I see the man through the binoculars he gave me."
> >(I'm omitting the details so as not to bore you with the intricate
> >workings of subclauses in Ebisedian.)
>
> Would the subclause be considered a noun phrase, with a case of its own, or
> it is considered a modifier of 'binoculars' (i.e., a relative clause), or is
> simply a separate clause, which happens to be in the middle of this one?
In this case, it's a relative clause.

> >Of course, this sentence can be rearranged in many ways, one of the
> >perhaps more interesting of which is "adjoinment", which is basically two
> >sentences "rammed" together at a common word:
> >
> >he(org) give(v) I(rcp) binoculars(cvy)-(instr) see(v) man(org) I(rcp).
> >
> >Basically, this is "ramming" together "he(org) give(v) I(rcp)
> >binoculars(cvy)" and "binoculars(instr) see(v) man(org) I(rcp)".
> >Morphologically speaking, the instr case marker *prefixes* the word for
> >binoculars in the first sentence. A rough translation of this would be
> >"he
> >give me the binoculars through which I see the man".
>
> Sounds like a relative clause. Kar Marinam does the same thing for relative
> clauses; the subject of the rc and the head noun must be the same, and this
> noun takes both cases. And you can't always tell from the noun which case is
> meant for which clause, which makes it extra fun.
Actually, the previous example was a relative clause. Here, it's a
slightly odd construction where two separate sentences are "abbreviated"
together. It's a bit hard to illustrate in English, but it's like saying:
        The ball hit Mary went upstairs.

where "Mary" is both the last word in the first sentence (the ball hit
Mary) and the first word in the second sentence (Mary went upstairs). In
Ebisedian of course, "Mary" would have two case markings, but since
there's no such construct in English, I'm just exploiting the null
morpheme for nominative/accusative forms of "Mary". :-)

> >Note, however, that it is perfectly legal to have more than one noun per
> >noun case, which may or may not have the same semantic function. Word
> >order may become important in this case. Examples:
> >        I(cvy) go(v) city(rcp) house(rcp) woman(rcp)
> >        "I go to the city, to the woman's house."
[snip]
> I'd say the semantic functions are close enough in both of those to be
> considered the same.
[snip]

Yes, which is why Ebisedian basically treats them the same.


T

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