Re: Existential voice

On Monday, May 2, 2005, at 09:17 , Gregory Gadow wrote:

> Thanks for the comments, Ray.
You're welcome.

> As for my joke about why not me or the dog raining, I was just pointing
> out an oddity of idiomatic English that has always amused/annoyed me ;-b
Now you can add Zeus & his chamber pot to the other amusements  :)

> I am trying to grammaticalize a verb form with no participant roles. As
> I'm refining the rules for creating the active and passive voices, I found
> that I needed some kind of regularity in how to express a situation such
> as "it is raining." My current grammar requires a "before phrase" for
> active and passive verbs, and I want to avoid using a dummy subject;
I agree about the dummy subjects - I don't like 'em either!

> that
> means coming up with a voice that is neither active nor passive and thus
> does not require a "before phrase." (In Glörsa, the "before phrase" --
> kizakinwes [kIzA'kInh\Es] -- would be the subject of an active voice verb
> and the object of a passive voice verb.)
Umm - sounds a bit like ergativity   :)

> It sounds like I'm on the right path, even if it is a bit unbeaten.
Yep - if, for whatever reason(s), Glörsa active & passive require such
preverbal NPs, and you do not want to have non-referential dummy preverbal
NPs, I guess you are.
=========================================

On Tuesday, May 3, 2005, at 05:56 , Herman Miller wrote:

> Gregory Gadow wrote:
[snip]
>> yövïnan [jovi'nAn] - to harvest
>> yövïnawne [jovi'nAh\nE] - "it is harvesting" (the crops are ripe and
>> everyone is busy harvesting them)
>
> If Descartes had had this verb form, he could have started with "it is
> thinking"
But Descartes DID have hve just such a verb form available. Don't forget
he wrote in Latin.

_cogitatur_ has precisely that meaning - thinking is happening, without
specifying any thinker or what is being thought.

> (which seems to avoid the circular reasoning, but then I'm not
> sure if you can really get anywhere from there without some extra
> assumptions about the way that thinking works....)
Umm - but if René had written _cogitatur_ instead of his famous _cogito_,
what we he have put next? _sum_ hardly follows.

Cogitatur (ergo) estur ?
(I recall that Christophe argued at some length that René Descartes wrote
'cogito sum', not 'cogito ergo sum'    :)

Thinking is going on, (therefore) being is happening - without specifying
any "be-er" or entity. But 'being' surely presupposes that something or
someone exists?

In any case, this seems to me no less circular reasoning than the
canonical _cogito (ergo) sum_ and if you are not likely to get anywhere
without some assumption about the way thinking works, I think it is
probably even less likely you can proceed without making some assumption
about being?

>
>> I know what I'm trying to say, but the use looks very strange. Even
>> stranger was when I put the verb "to hope" in this voice and adding the
>> modifiers for strong definitiveness (föle) and habitual action (zëthe):
>>
>> hütawne föle zëthe [hutA'h\nE fo'lE ze'TE]
>>
>> This sentence could be translated as, "it has a habit of repeatedly
>> hoping, most definitely" or more loosely, "hope springs eternal."
>>
>> What I would like to ask is,
>>
>> * Am I using the term "voice" correctly?
>> * Given my description, does it look like I'm using this voice correctly?
>> * Are there any natlangs with something similar that I could use as a
>> model?
>> * Any suggestions on how I can extend to other uses I haven't thought of?
>
> It's probably better to define it as a valence decreasing operation. I
> don't know if any language that does this ... Thomas E. Payne gives
> examples of "impersonal passives" which can make the subject of an
> intransitive verb unspecified, but this wouldn't work with transitive
> verbs like your two examples.
But it does! In what way do _metitur_ and _speratur_ not mean the same as
Gregory's "yövïnawne" and "hütawne" respectively?

These make both the subject and the object of transitive verbs unspecified.

> (He also writes "We know of no languages
> that employ specific morphology just for impersonal passives". Is it
> possible that this verb form has other uses besides the "existential
> voice"?)
AFAIK this is so. It is true that the passives of transitive verbs I have
given above may be used impersonally, i.e. with a subject which, in the
case of the passives, is the 'done-to' entity; but they may also have
subjects, for example:
frumentum metitur - the corn is being harvested
pax ardenter speratur - peace is ardently hope for
haud cogitandum cogitatur - the unthinkable is being thought

What Gregory appears to want is a verb form that must be used impersonally
and cannot have a subject NP.

> Then again, I don't know of any really good reason not to call it a voice.
I agree - if a language employs specific morphology just for 'impersonal
passives' and for no other use then - as I have argued in a previous mail
- it could be considered a voice. My only query is why it would be
necessary to do this - but I guess Gregory has answered that.

Ray
===============================================
http://home.freeuk.com/ray.brown
ray.brown@freeuk.com
===============================================
Anything is possible in the fabulous Celtic twilight,
which is not so much a twilight of the gods
as of the reason."      [JRRT, "English and Welsh" ]

Reply