Re: THEORY: Active case-marking natlangs

Jörg wrote:

>Marcus Smith <smithma@...> writes:
>
>[paragraphs rearranged]
>
> > The feature that I find distinctive of "active" and Fluid-S systems like
> > that of Tokana is that active languages have a much smaller range of
> > "cases". The subject of an active/volitional verb is marked the same as the
> > subject of a transitive verb, and the subject of a stative/non-volitional
> > verb is marked like the object of a transitive verb. Tokana uses further
> > cases to draw even more distinctions that are not found in typical "active"
> > languages. (I'm going to continue calling the marking in "active" languages
> > "case" even though I believe they are something else.)
>
> > I would not consider Tokana and Nur-Ellen active, because they make use of
> > more cases and degrees of activity/volitionality/etc than do the typical
> > active natlangs.
>
>Hmmm, this is what I call an interesting view!  Add more subject cases
>to an active language in order to distinguish degrees of volition, and
>it is no longer an active language?  This sounds weird.
Only if you define "active" by the fact that the subject can change "case"
based on various parameters. If you define "active" by which cases are
used, then this is not wierd at all. And if you re-read what I wrote, that
is exactly how I am defining it. There are four proto-typical roles
(ignoring ditransitives and experiencers): Subject of a transitive (S),
object of a transitive (P), subject of an "active" verb (A), and subject of
a "stative" verb (O). (Defining "active" and "stative" is not easy, and I'm
not even going to try here since it is irrelevant.) Accusative languages
group these four roles as S/A/O (nom) vs P (acc). Ergative languages group
the roles as P/A/O (erg) vs S (abs). Active languages group them as S/A
(active) vs P/O (stative). Tokana and Nur-ellen pull S and A apart and have
a system like S1/A1 vs S2/A2 vs S3/A3 vs P/0. This is why I do not consider
them active. They are most certainly Split/Fluid-S; but Active is only a
subset of Split/Fluid-S.

>   Marcus gives some examples:
>
> > Take Mohawk for example. This language has two "cases" -- I call them "A"
> > and "O" following the work of Mark Baker. "A" marks the subject of a
> > transitive or an "active" intransitive verb (more on this below), and "O"
> > marks the object of a transitive or subject of a "stative" instransitive
> > verb. No matter what level volitionality and semantics, the subject of a
> > transitive verb does not take anything other than an A-subject.
>
>So a sentence like "The stone breaks the window" would mark "stone" as A
>and "window" as O, no matter about animacy or volition.
You assume that "The stone breaks the window" is even a possible sentence.
You may be right, but you may not be. I don't know about this particular
example. But I do know about the verb "drop" -- it does not exist in
Mohawk. You have to say "fall" with the benefactive: _wahowir^'se'_ 'The
baby fell on him'. "Him" is expressed by the benefactive applicative and
"object" agreement, _wir_ 'baby' is incorporated into the verb.

The grammar of a language can impose sever restrictions on the possible
sentences. For example, it is *absolutely* impossible to say "Jesus died
for us" in Chickasaw, despite the fact that most Chickasaw speakers are
religious and would love to say that. This is a direct result of the fact
that "die" takes stative agreement, which is incompatible with a
benefactive argument. Also in Chickasaw, the object of _banna_ 'want' can
be 3rd peson, but not 1st or 2nd; this is directly a result of the
agreement system. Mohawk does not allow an inanimate indirect object;
arguablly a side-effect of the agreement system.

Now, this caveat aside, marking "the stone" as A can easily be explained
without appeal to animacy or volition. The semantics (and structure) of the
verb "break" in "The stone breaks the window" can be decomposed into
something like "X cause Y break". If the principles that assign A vs P
marking specifies that the argument of "cause" is assigned A marking, then
volition and animacy are irrelevant in this case.

> >       (An
> > exception is the verb for "want", which takes an O-subject and does not
> > have any marking for the object. Wierd, but attested in other language
> > families.)
>
>OK, exceptions and irregular forms occur everywhere (except, perhaps, in
>some auxlangs).  This is sort of a verb of emotion, hovering in the
>"grey area" between active and stative.
It happens cross-linguistically = not irregular. Paraphrasing: "One
counter-example is an exception, two is a  robust generalization." - Ken
Hale or Morris Halle (I've seen it attributed to both).

> > The distinction is not really based on active/stative, as seen by the fact
> > that _royo't^e'_ 'he works' is marked as stative, and _rakowan^_ 'he is
> > big' is marked as active.
>
>Interesting!  After all, "to work" is a typical active verb, and "to be
>big" is as stative as it can be!  These examples make the entire thing
>stand on its head ;-)
That's why they're fun. :)

> >       The same pair shows that volition is also not the
> > proper motivation. These are not isolated examples -- there are others. As
> > a last attempt to get a proper generalization, we can look at the
> > unaccusative/unergative distinction. This doesn't work either. The common
> > assumption about Mohawk incorporation is that only themes can be
> > incorporated into the verb, but there is no correlation between which verbs
> > allow incorporation and which case their subject takes: _ta'kawis^'ne'_
> > 'the glass fell' (A-subject, incorporated), _teyoa'shara'tsu_ 'The knife is
> > dirty' (O-subject, incorporated). Also, if you take an intransitive verb
> > and add an reflexive or semi-reflexive morpheme, the subject must be marked
> > as "A" no matter what the non-reflexive form takes.
>
>So it boils down to: the choice of A- or P-marking for the subject of a
>particular intransitive verb is completely arbitrary (fixed, but
>arbitrary)!?!  At least that is what I read out of it.  It doesn't
>matter *why* some verbs use A-marking and others use P-marking: all
>that's important is that both types of markings occur in intransitive
>sentences ;-)
Close, but not exactly. There are very strong tendancies based on
event/state, volition, etc. However, none of these tendancies are without
exception.

>   Personally, I find this definition a bit weak, and would
>call that "split-S" instead.  To me, the term "active" seems to indicate
>that the type of marking is determined by the active-ness of the verb.
This is the root of our disagreement. I define active based on the case
pattern, you define it on variability. Now, for why I think the case
pattern definition is superior. Chickasaw is fairly variable in its marking
as a result of volitionality, but Mohawk is fairly rigid. Yet both display
the same pattern of case. Under your definition, you would (most likely) be
forced to conclude that Mohawk is not active. This cannot be correct. My
definition allows Chickasaw and Mohawk to be grouped together (as they
should be), but only to the exclusion of languages like Tokana and
Nur-ellen. This is not a bad thing for two reasons. First of all, we can
use the term Fluid-S to classify all the languages that have variable
subject case. Also, even nominative-accusative and ergative-absolutive
languages allow for variability in subject marking. A great many of them,
for example, allow for dative subjects with psych-predicates. Also, many
ergative languages are nominative-accusative in the pronoun system or in
the perfect. Thus, if you define "active" according to variability in the
case of a subject, it is not clear how you would separate Hindi from
Chickasaw, which absolutely must be done if the classification system is to
be meaningful at all.

 > Chickasaw shows that active marking is not the same as case marking.

>It apparently also shows what we have already seen in Mohawk - that
>active marking has little to do with whether a verb is actually active
>or not:
It does not show that at all. All it shows is that active marking and case
marking are not the same thing. It says absolutely nothing about the
semantics of the verb or how they express activity.

>  I remember an earlier posting from Marcus in which he told us
>that numerals in Ch. are active verbs!  Well, what I would expect from
>an active language that treats numerals as verbs is that they are
>stative.  But apparently, I expect way too much of an active language.
That is because you do not work with them. You take generalizations that
were made by others, and have tried to make sense of the generalizations.
You have not looked at the raw data and tried to put together a coherent
picture of your own. I was bothered by these at first too; but now they
make sense to me. They feel right. When I say "be red" or "be tall" is a
state, this is because these predicates describe a property of their
subject argument. When I say "work" or "laugh" is an event, I am saying the
subject is temporarily in the midst of some action. Now, what about "be
three"? This is *not* a property of the subject, this is a temporary
situation that the subject is in. Thus, in some ways it is more similar to
an event and it deserves to be treated like an event. But it isn't really
an event, because nothing happens; therefore it could reasonablly be
treated like a state. Languages, then, should differ on this point. They
probably do, though Daniel would probably know more about that than I.

>Well, case inflection is *one* way to do active marking; another way to
>do it is verb agreement, and the latter may of course go together with
>case marking of a different kind (examples: nom-acc in Chickasaw;
>erg-abs in Amman-iar).
A sentence can have multiple cases for the same argument? Now that's wierd.




Marcus Smith

"Sit down before fact as a little child,
be prepared to give up every preconceived notion,
follow humbly wherever and to whatsoever abysses Nature leads,
or you shall learn nothing."
                -- Thomas Huxley