Re: Decomposed verbs (OOP-ish but applies to any lang)

Gary Shannon wrote:

>I was wondering is there are any conlangs that do
>without certain verbs by decomposing them into smaller
>pieces.
Omurax does without any verbs at all. There are temporal particles that
show when something happened, if it was finished, how certain is/was it to
happen etc, and case marking shows what role each argument plays. "Verbs"
are thought of as changes of state, and the "subject" is whatever undergoes
such a change.

>For example, (in OOP-sytle ABLE):
(snip)
>can actually be done away with by decomposing it into
>smaller constituent effects:
(snip)
>Or: "About this red book, John caused himself not to
>own it and caused Mary to own it."
(snip)

The verb "give" is a good example because it requires an actor (in the
Ergative), an object (in the Absolutive) and a recipient (in the Illative).

"John gave this red book to Mary" would be:
Ka Ios dadro ni logien kat Mariai
TP Jon-ERG book-ABS NI red-ABS this-ABS Mary-ILL

Verblessly, this is "The red book, by John, to Mary." The temporal particle
|ka| is perfective -- it's finished happening -- and not strictly 'past
tense'.

>The questions are, what minimum set of verbs suffices
>to express all other verbs?  Just as "Own" can replace
>"Give" in the example above, which verbs are
>primative, or elemental in that they cannot be
>deconstructed?
"Own" doesn't replace "give" because it's possible that John was only
lending Mary the book, or handing it to her to stick under the short leg of
the table. But if it does become her property, then this is a change of
state for the book, and is shown with the Translative case.

"John gave the book (permanently) to Mary"
Ka Ios dadro pikosú Marió.
TP John-ERG book-ABS property-TRANS Mary-GEN

or "the book, by John, into Mary's property", with "into" meaning the end
state of "become".

To use Javier's example of "dead" and "die" and "kill", all of these would
include the adjective |bardo| "dead". The dog is the Absolutive, and dead
is the state it becomes in the Translative.

Ka hobaka bardosú.
TP dog-ABS dead-TRANS
"the dog died"
Ka hobaka bardosú Ios.
TP dog-ABS dead-TRANS John-ERG
"John killed the dog"

As for what verbs are 'elemental', I kind of hope that none of them are.
Otherwise Omurax will need a serious overhaul.

M