Re: very confused - syntax question

J.Barefoot wrote:
>
> It was bound to happen sooner or later - I have thoroughly confused myself
> with my own syntax.
> Here's the deal: only a topic or an agent/experiencer can be a subject. So
> if the originator of the action is not an agent/experiencer per se, the
> patient is topicalized/focused (I recall we discussed the difference, but I
> don't quite recall the discussion), the verb is put is the middle voice, and
> the originator of the action is assigned another appropriate role, such as
> benefactor.
These are rules that you want to stick to?  I can understand that you
do,
but I haven't been following prior discussions of your rules of syntax,
so
I'm in the dark.

> This is the case for the verb "kanyan," "to win," where the
> patient is topicalized and the "agent" is a benefactor.  So far, so good?
Where is the agent?  Below you give us a relative clause, where you seem
to
leave the agent out.  To my mind, a new agent is created in the relative
clause with "who," but this might not be how you've structured your
language.

> Here's the problem: for purposes of word order, the benefactor is not an
> object, or is it?  Can a verb still be transitive when the subject isn't the
> originator?
> Here's the phrase that got the whole mess started:
>
> ta rusa-k@-mi siu na a-kanyase ko kanyan-al-ena inya kah
> with brother-pl-my two that the-prize TOP.past won-middle-they.resumptive
> they.resumptive BEN
> with my two brothers who won the prize
>
> Should "kanyan" be inflected for third person plural?  I hope I've made
> myself at all clear, because I don't even know what I'm saying/asking.
>
> very, very, very confused (and a little frightened),
> Jennifer
Ah, don't be frightened, Jennifer!  I'm glad to see that someone else
besides myself is going through this kind of confusion.  It's creative,
and you'll have to work it out.  Let me see if I understand you and I
probably don't:

In order to follow the rules that you've made for your language, you
are unsure whether "won" can be a third person plural if it comes in
this relative clause, whether it can still be transitive (even though
it seems to take an object of the clause), and whether the benefactor
(brothers?) is an object or a subject.  And this is because the rules
dictate that only agents/experiencers can be subjects.  Patients that
are made to act like subjects (as in a relative clause) have a different
set of rules requiring a middle-voice.  So you want to say something
like:  with my two brothers whom the prize was won to, or something like
that, right?

I'm relentlessly European in my understanding of languages, and in
devising Teonaht and its relative clauses, I've made it generally
follow the rules of languages familiar to me, where patients that
act like subjects in relative clauses are treated like subjects:

        I saw the boy who closed the door:
        Il      beto elry ke  cosa el    ihai      il       jentwar
        Obj.art boy did-I see close-PAST subj.rel. obj.art. door

Patient boy becomes agent of closing door, and is treated as agent
_ihai_
in the relative clause only.   To save yourself confusion, you might
want to treat the relative clauses as mini-declarative statements with
their own agents and patients, but if you want to make your language
interesting and different, or if you are patterning it after another
type of language, then you can leave it in the middle voice like that.
You might ask Matt Pearson what he does with relative clauses.  In
English
that's a proper relative clause:  My father praised my brothers who won
the
prize.  It's adjectival, acting to modify "brothers."  In some instances
in Teonaht you can turn the whole phrase into an adjective phrase:

My father drank wine with my prize-winning brothers.

Or: juxtapose another declarative sentence with agent:

My father drank wine with my brothers, they won the prize.

The latter is in fact how many languages, including English, developed
the proper relative, which is a modification of he/they/pick your
subject
pronoun.

Improper relative:

        My father praised my brothers with whom the King spoke.

The relative pronoun is not the subject, but in the oblique case.  King
is
the subject in the attached phrase:

        My father praised my brothers the king spoke to them.

This probably doesn't clear anything up, but I hoped to give you some
other options.  Maybe you can make me see what you're REALLY trying to
do.  If you want to keep the interesting notion that patients that act
as objects do (as in relative phrases) must take the middle voice, then
maybe you could do something like this:

   My father drank with my brothers the prize was won to them.
   My father drank with my brothers to them/whom the prize wins/was won.

There you would have what I think you're describing: a prize that is the
TOPIC in the relative phrase (instead of the relative pronoun), the
middle
voice for "win," in the singular rather than the plural because it goes
with "prize," and which is intransitive.  Perhaps that's what you're
looking
for.

Sally
http://www.frontiernet.net/~scaves/teonaht.html
http://www.frontiernet.net/~scaves/whatsteo.html