Re: Using Case to Show Tense

> Patrick Littell wrote:
> Non-reflexive oblique objects can, in happy oblique tradition, be
> omitted without ambiguity, but it turns out that leaving out "nose-i"
> would lead to the listener being unable to properly deduce the aspect.
>  Maybe a doubly case-marked "nose-i-a" would shorten it up a bit.
The goal is indeed to "shorten it up a bit": when three words in a
conlang can express what English takes 10 words to illustrate, that
always gives me joy.Towards this end, I found that you only might
leave out core items when the reflexive affix is on the verb.

 Because I like to overwork my affixes...;-D... it occurred to me to
make the reflexive take the case, rather than do a double-case. How
this is handled is likely going to be phonological, but, for sake of
simplicity, we'll assume there are REF forms for each case.

Thus:

FUT REFL: He-a feed-n:REF. "He will feed himself."

The reflexive points to the remaining argument and says what other
role it satisfies, essentially.

>Use the solution mentioned before: add a "dummy"
> reflective affix to an intransitive verb to make it transitive -- say,
> with an emphatic meaning -- and then add voice to *that*.
Hrm... I don't think I want an emphatic meaning like that, unless
"Reflective" and "Reflexive" are different? I thought they were the
same, but if they are different, might be a good idea to have one be
emphatic, and the other not.

This might give different flavors to the verb... mmmmmmmmmm....

Reflexive: He-a won-n:REFX it-DATIVE "He won himself it."
Reflective: He-a won-nREFC it-DATIVE "He himself won it."

...or something like that :-)

In any case, I'll sum all that has been said so far:

A) Case of nouns according to tense/aspect
Ten/Asp      S     A     P
Past            p     n      p
Past Perf            i       p
Past Prog           p      d
Present        n    a      p
Pres Perf            i
Pres Prog           n      d
Future          a    a      n
Fut Perf              i       a
Fut Prog             a      d

I.E.: Perfect aspect marks the agent as Instrumental, and the patient
as Subject
and
Progressive aspect marks the agent as Subject, and the patient as Dative

*Perhaps I will add more aspects... I could always use semi-clones of
the existing aspects by simply replacing the non-subject case. For
example, I could grammaticalize inception, perhaps using, let's say, a
locative case.
Past Inceptive = l p
Present Inceptive= l n
Future Inceptive = l a
I-L work-p:REF "I began to work."
...etc...

B) Voice of verb determined
Active = no verb affix "PASS" or "APASS"
Passive = verb affix "PASS" and nouns with apparant Perfect aspect
Antipassive = verb affix "APASS" and nouns with apparant Progressive aspect
Reflexive = verb affix "REF" of the form of the "omitted" noun (x:REF)

He-n pen-p hold BUT book-p write-PASS-i:REFX "He held the pen, but the
book wrote itself!"

That's what I have for this morning, but will continue work throughout
the day: have a good one!


On Wed, 23 Mar 2005 22:43:14 -0500, Edward Miller <sewerbird@...> wrote:
> >Damian Yerrick <tepples@...> wrote:
> > Perhaps a race of anime characters that got stuck in their chibi forms,
> > reproduced, and then had to evolve up from there?
>
> *dies of Chibi Cuteness*
>
> > You could always make the verbs into clitics like S11 ;-)
>
> S11 is cool, and if the maker can endure making so many co-verb
> concepts, all the more power to them. I enjoy grammar too much and
> phonology/word-making too little to do that though! :-D
>
> Anyways, back to making tommorow's post...
>
> On Wed, 23 Mar 2005 22:33:05 -0500, Damian Yerrick <tepples@...> wrote:
> > "Edward Miller" <sewerbird@...> wrote:
> > > I wonder how many grammatical items you can express using the same
> > > three case markings... *evil laugh*. The main issue lies in the human
> > > mind parsing it all >.<
> > > I suppose I could always make a conculture made of lilliputians with
> > > heads the size of melons?
> >
> > Perhaps a race of anime characters that got stuck in their chibi forms,
> > reproduced, and then had to evolve up from there?
> >
> > > In ending, I would also appreciate suggestions on introducing aspect
> > > into this system: my design goal for the inflectional aspect (pardon
> > > the pun) of the language is to indicate as much information about the
> > > verb as possible on its nouns, without making the nouns look like
> > > Y'upik Eskimo
> >
> > You could always make the verbs into clitics like S11 ;-)
> >
> > --
> > Damian
> >
>

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