Re: Unattested... but possible?

On Thu, 24 Mar 2005 09:11:13 -0800, Joseph a.k.a Buck <zhosh@...> wrote:

> Ch'ol is/was lowland Maya, and Maya has similar structures. "te" can mean
> "here/there" in Maya. I wonder if the ethnographer had pointed to a feral
> cur, would the uttered phrase have been " laj jman te ts'i'e " or " laj jman
> ts'i'e ". Assumed context can blur both response and interpretation.
(These examples are Tzeltal, incidentally, although it doesn't really
change anything.)

I think the verb "-man" (buy) requires "possession agreement" with its
object.  I bought it, so its mine; you bought it, so it's yours.  I
would suspect this could be violated if I were to purchase your dog
from you, but not with the plain "ts'i'". On the other hand, "-mil"
doesn't require this:

laj jmil ts'i'.  (I killed a dog.)
laj jmil te ts'i'e.  (I killed the dog.)

(That "e" just gets stuck onto the last definite noun in any clause.)

Do you know if the Tzeltal "te" and the Maya "te" are cognate, by any
chance?  (I think it's "tyi" in Ch'ol.)  There are just too many
particles that start with "t".  "Te" is the definite article, "ta" is
the (only) preposition, "to" means "up until" and is used with both
time and space -- it's part of the phrases that mean "here" and
"there".  Oh, and to make it even more fun, they keep making each
other disappear.  "To" seems to disappear in the presence of "te",
which disappears in the presence of "ta".

> Does anyone here know if this structure exists in non-Mayan American
> languages?
I think the Nahuan languages and some other unrelated Mesoamerican
languages do things in quite a similar manner, but it's pretty clearly
areal influence.

Purely subjectively, I've always found some other verb-initial
languages like Gaelic or Arabic to be pretty "possessive".  That is,
they make their possessive constructions do an awful lot of work.  I
have a car = Gaelic "There's a car at me!"  I know Gaelic = "There's
Gaelic at me!"  That one always makes me laugh.

> I elected early in Dis's evolution to indicate plurals by changing initial
> consonants from unvoiced to voiced (more or less). Thus
> si- = I
> zi- = we
> etc.
The language I'm making for a friend's book does precisely this.
Well, precisely its opposite.  Voice indicates singular, lack thereof
indicates plural.  Null number and verb negation is handled by the
nasal, as if you had ni- "not me/us!"

Are there any Mayan languages that mutate initial consonants?  It
could reasonably have happened to a sort of Tzeltal-Tzotzil language,
I think.  Their possessive and name systems lead them to onsets like
jp- and xk-.  "Jp?"  That's just shouting for a mutation, to me!

> Dis also has
> si- + se- --> sye
> ti- + te- --> tye
> tsi- + tse- --> che
What would these be used for?  I am your... constructions?  Like
Nahuatl "nimotoch": "I am your rabbit."
--
Patrick Littell
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